Fire Angel (32 page)

He believed in himself, didn't he? Yeah, he did.

He got so pumped up, he believed in himself so much that when he met an absolutely gorgeous woman on the plane from Reno back to L.A., when fate intervened by way of mechanical difficulties, he relentlessly pursued the woman, won her over, convinced her, and himself, that she was the love of his life.

He loved the way she looked, her long, dark curly hair, her brilliant green eyes, a little spattering of freckles across her nose, endless legs. He loved the way she talked, intelligent but down to earth. He loved the way she laughed, low and throaty. And he loved her frank but good-hearted assessment of even the basest elements of human nature, the way she hesitated before spilling the punch line of a joke.

He clicked with her; he absolutely clicked with her. As the world was about to click with his wonderful book, just as soon as he finished it, anyway.

As he held gorgeous Kate in his arms in a motel room, rain drumming down on the windows, his whole life opened up with possibilities. He decided he would not only quit his job and write his book, he'd write it for her, to prove himself worthy of her: this tough, strong, vulnerable, beautiful, smart, funny woman who got his jokes. A woman who didn't say,
Yuck, you interview criminals? You follow them around? You think they're sort of interesting?
Because she more or less did all that herself. She was a woman who was street smart. She was a woman who saw the dark side of life and still smiled, instead of seeing the rose-colored glasses side and whining like most women he knew.

And oh, he knew she'd been hurt, had just been hurt in fact, and he loved the idea of being the one to kiss the sore place away. He loved having the chance to be her hero.

But of course, once their High Sierra tryst was over, he never heard from her again.

She dumped him at the airport, refused to give him a phone number, never called! That should've been a sign for Andy not to quit his job, not to write a book and dedicate it to her. But for some reason, losing track of Kate made him even more determined to write his book.

The sources he dug up in the Valley didn't know anyone like her. He'd never gotten her last name — pretty lame for a reporter — and he was half beginning to believe he'd just imagined her, dreamed his dream girl.

But in his heart he knew she was real and what he'd felt was too real for her not to have felt it, too.

When she saw his picture on the back cover of his best-selling, award-winning novel, then she'd regret ditching him. She'd read what he wrote and know that he was right for her, good for her. Then she'd find him. Then he'd have her back. He felt sure that she'd only left him standing there at the Southwest ticket counter like that because she'd been hurt so badly, so recently, that she was afraid to trust her feelings, to trust him. She wasn't in Reno to help a friend with
her
divorce. That was a lie easily seen through. She was in Reno dealing with her own.

But if she read Andy's book, if she saw how sensitively he portrayed his female protagonist who ended up looking quite a bit like Kate, then she'd know she could trust Andy, then she'd see into his heart, his mind, his soul. There would be no barriers.

The problem was that now the chances were quite slim. It was obvious the book would never be published, that Kate would ever read his book and get how sensitive and trustworthy, not to mention brilliant, he was.

The light was fading altogether from the sky and Andy ran faster. He ran like demons were pursuing him, and maybe they were. He was not going to be famous, or well respected, or rich, or even just some schlub sitting around a bookstore waiting to accost strangers and force them to buy his cheaply printed small press paper back. He would be lucky at this point not to be sitting
outside
a bookstore holding a tin cup. He was thirty-six years old, he had seventeen dollars to his name, but at least he could still run a seven-minute mile.

Just as Andy finished his run, his cell phone rang and he hesitated before answering it. For one thing he was out of breath. For another, credit card companies had discovered his cell number even though he'd canceled his regular cellular plan to save money months ago and was using a pay-as-you-go burner phone.

The number on the phone display didn't look like a creditor calling though, there was an actual, non-800 number associated with the incoming call, so he answered it.

“Andrew Wallace?”

No one called him Andrew; he was always Andy. He didn't reply and he almost hung up.

But the voice went on without his acknowledgment. “Mr. Wallace, this is Susan Roe from the Lexa Corporation Human Resources Department. We'd like to bring you in for an interview tomorrow — ”

Andy had started sending out his resume a month back. There weren't a lot of jobs for retired crime reporters slash unemployed novelists; he'd exhausted any hope of getting back on a paper rather quickly. It was a very competitive marketplace, he was told. A lot more competitive than it had been when he started as an intern some fifteen years ago at a weekly, working his way painstakingly up to the big leagues as an actual reporter for a prestigious daily newspaper, only to abandon his profession.

Even newspapers far away from L.A., in say, suburban Bakersfield, and Gilroy, the garlic capitol of central California, rejected him now. The editor there at least interviewed Andy before rejecting him, but pointed out that they had tons of qualified journalistic aspirants, some of whom had graduated from Stanford or Harvard — they were young, eager, cheap. Why would they want to hire someone who was a product of Humboldt State and wasn't as young or eager or cheap, no matter how good his clips were? The writing was only part of it, dependability was just as important. The editors could always rewrite a bad writer, but they couldn't go out and do the writer's leg work for him if he should chose to quit on a whim one day. So why would they hire someone who had quit his last job for something that sounded like a whim and spent the last year totally out of the game?

So Andy started sending out resumes for other kinds of jobs. Commission sales. Short order cook. And the one available at the Lexa Corporation. He remembered that ad. It was one of those jobs that sounded so awful he was sure someone would call him about it, and sure enough, they had: catalog copy writer for a manufacturer of gadgets and kitchenware. “Mr. Wallace? You
are
still interested?”

“Oh yes,” Andy said, trying to sound enthusiastic and breathe normally at the same time. “Very, very interested.”

• • •

Sergeant Ed Bryan kept casting smoldering glances at Kate and flexing his enormous body-builder biceps like she should be super impressed with his buffed and tanning-bed-bronzed physique.

And in case she could possibly be so thick as to misinterpret his obvious consuming interest in her, he snapped his fingers and solicitously made sure she got a cup of coffee. He attempted to rub her shoulders because she seemed “tense,” and then, for good measure, told her that she had “really great legs.”

“I ought to know, I see runners every day at the gym, hitting the old treadmill — you oughta try treadmills, Kate, you don't find too many dead bodies with no prints lying around treadmills.”

“I guess it sort of depends on the kind of gym you frequent,” Kate said.

“Ha,” Ed said, although he didn't seem particularly amused.

She supposed it was hard for him to be amused and keep running his eyes over her, up and down like he was peeling off the thirty-dollar sweatshirt the janitor at the Observatory had allowed her to leave forty dollars for in the closed gift shop. Even though it was stamped with gold lettering that read “See the Real Hollywood Stars,” Kate was glad she'd made the purchase. Especially when she saw the homicide detective on call was Ed of the roving eye.

“You ever see a guy with his fingerprints burnt off before?” she asked Ed, trying to engage him in an actual work-related discussion.

“Well, not since I left the bomb squad,” Ed said, making his own joke, but still not cracking a smile. “And that was a different kind of burnt.”

Kate watched as the body was hoisted onto a stretcher, headed downtown for the coroners. The guy in the designer suit and shoes had been shot in the head with a small caliber weapon, probably a .22. He had no ID and his finger prints were burned off by some kind of acid, which Kate could still smell.

“Vic's fresh, the perp knew just where and when to off him, right after the Observatory closed, sometime between five and six. It doesn't look like a mob hit, but there's a real aura of professionalism about this. You see that, don't you?” she asked Ed.

“You're overthinking this, that's what I see. You're always overthinking, Kate, makin' things tougher than they are. You know my motto.”

Kate did. All too well, having heard it a million times.

“Keep it simple, stupid.” Now Ed was smiling. He cracked himself up.

“Sometimes the most obvious solution to a problem … the best way to scratch an itch — ” He was not just smiling; he was leering now, and leaning close. “ — is right in front of you.”

“Yeah, well,” Kate said, not backing away an inch. “Since you're right in front me, tell me, Ed, what's the obvious thing I'm overthinking about well-dressed, nameless, no prints guy?”

“Oh, come on. Drug related. A shot to the back of the head? Some kinda dispute, making a statement over turf. That fancy suit? He was a big time dealer, maybe crossed somebody.”

“A statement is better made when the vic has a name.”

Ed puffed out his pecs. “Everybody who needs to know already knows. I guarantee it. And as for us knowing, I have the best CIs in the division. You know that. I can turn up the word on the street by tomorrow night. I'll get what you
need
, put this baby to
bed
fast.”

He aggressively emphasized the words need and bed.

Kate shrugged. “I don't think this is about some kind of drug deal. I mean go ahead and ask your informants. I know you have good street cred and all, but I'm gonna work this another way.”

“How's that, when you don't have a name, don't have prints?”

“I'm going to start with the clothes. That's not an off-the-rack-at-Sears suit. It's not only designer, but looks custom tailored to me.”

Ed shook his head. He sighed. “You know, you don't have to start at all, if you don't want. You could just go on home. This can be all my case.”

“Your case?”

“Sure. I know you got eleven unsolved. You're working hard already, and whether you wanna second guess my pitch or not, I think I can knock this one outta the ball park fast.”

Sometimes Ed's metaphors just left Kate stunned into silence. He took her silence for acquiescence and pushed on.

“After all, I'm on shift tonight, not you. I traded out with Royce, so I can go to that biker thing in Laughlin next month. Now there's something else you should try, instead of thinking all the time. Get on a bike. Wind in your face, sun on your back, wrap your legs round that engine — ”

“Uh-huh. Well, maybe sometime.”

“Point is if you'd just gone on home instead of out for that jog of yours, this one would be mine anyway.”

There was a part of Kate that just plain wanted to agree. To give up what looked like a freaky mess and let Ed run with his dumb drug hit idea. Let him run straight into a wall with it. What did she care? Lt. Douglas wouldn't care if she turned it over. And then she could go home, sink into a warm bath, eat microwave three-cheese gourmet pasta, see what was playing On Demand, and get a good night's sleep. Alone.

On the other hand, Kate had an actual chance of solving this case. She could feel it. Sometimes you just felt it when you knew you could work one through, figure out the perp's design; nail him flat.

Solving a tough case was as Zen as Kate got. And she could use some Zen right now. She could also use the satisfaction of maybe taking some crazy, finger-print-erasing, murdering asshole off the streets. She knew right now, flat out, that Ed and his buxom biceps were never going to do that.

And she could always see what was playing On Demand and get her good night's sleep, alone, tomorrow night. So, for the second time in one evening, Crusader Kate put lazy Kate in her place.

“I appreciate your offer, Ed,” Kate said briskly, “but I found him, and I'm not gonna turn him over.”

“Suit yourself,” Ed shrugged. “But you got yourself a partner on this one.”

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