Red Light (30 page)

Woman
: "So,
where's this new john?"

Man
: "He'll be
here."

Woman
: "What's he
do? Is he one of those big important guys?"

Man: "No
. He's a
regular guy."

Woman: "How
come
we gotta meet in an orange grove? He get off doing it outdoors?"

Man
: "Yeah,
that's what he said."

Woman: "I
'm
charging him triple what
I
charge
you.
I
already told you
that."

Man
: "Fine, Patti. You charge him what you want.
"The woman hums a tune. It sounds like she's dancing, moving around.

Woman
: "I think I was reincarnated as me. Before, I
was a whale way down in the deep. Next, I'm gonna be a butterfly."

Man
: "They only
live for a couple of weeks."

Woman: "So
, then I'll get to be a lion. Or maybe an eagle or a
hummingbird."

Man
: "Can you see
the man in the moon?"

Woman
: "Lemme see
now."

The woman's voice is fainter. Like the microphone is
farther away, or perhaps she has turned around.

Woman
: "Oh, yeah. There he is. Can't figure if he's
happy or sad tonight. I think he changes moods. How do you know it's not a
woman, though? Maybe I could get reincarnated as the first woman in the
moon."

Man grunts. The
sound of liquid on glass. Again. Then a shuffling sound. Footsteps. A pause.
Then a loud blast, quickly followed by another.

Man
, quietly:
"Oh, God. Oh, my God."

Distant sounds. Grunting. Footsteps. Something being
dragged. A man sobbing. Footsteps. Quiet.

Merci
sat there for a long minute, listening to the tape hiss, Tim turned to her with
an odd look on his face.

"It's
okay," she said quietly. "It's okay, little man. I'm sorry. I
shouldn't have done that to you."

She
clicked off the player, picked up Tim and walked him into living room. She
looked out at the brightly lit yard and the dark grove beyond the fence. Just a
few miles from here, she thought. Myford and Fourth. A hot night in early
August, 1969.

She sat in the
rocker, sang a quiet song to him. A few minutes he went heavy and limp in her
arms and she carried him into his room. She put him in the crib, raised the
bars, turned on the monitor.

For a long while she
stood and watched him, his arms thrown back, his mittens on against the drafts
of the old house. She decided at moment that she wouldn't lead him into her
kind of life. Until now she'd always figured he could choose someday. Now it
seemed to her that the best thing she could do for him was to keep him from
doing what she did, from listening to things like he'd just heard when he was
no longer too innocent to understand them. Anything, she thought, be anything
but a cop.

Back in her bedroom she played the end of the tape
again. Then she turned to the last page of Patti Bailey's black book and found
the entry for August third.

4SV/6CM/7DL/8:30FD/11KQ

It must have been KQ
at eleven, she thought: too light to see the man in the moon at eight-thirty.
Not dark enough to hide the parked car, to make them invisible walking into the
grove at Myford and Fourth.

KQ.

KQ, with dope he
gives away. KQ, with a new "friend." KQ, whose other friends have
plenty of money. KQ, married and messing around with Patti Bailey on the side.
KQ, with a .38 Special on him, and his date unsuspecting.

Or maybe she was used
to the gun, because he was a cop. Thus, the free dope, the weapon, the double
shifts at work. And the trust. Bailey trusts him. Friend of Bill Owens and
Ralph Meeks?

Merci played the end
of the tape once more and tried to picture it, to see things that weren't right
in front of her, as Hess had tried to teach her. She closed her eyes and
imagined Patti Bailey standing on the dirt road along the dark trees, her back
to KQ on the cable spool, looking out at the man in the moon, at the water in
the culvert that looked to her like silver being poured. She saw KQ set down
his bottle, lift himself off the rough wood of the cable spool, walk over to
Patti and shoot her in the back. Twice, fast. Then KQ sobbing, pulling off her
clothes and dragging the woman away.

The tape ran another
ten minutes. Nothing but the quiet of the orange trees on a hot summer night.
It clicked off.

Mike called at ten.
"Hi, Merci. Sorry it's late, but I miss you."

"Nice
to hear you."

"Really? Don't
answer that. Last night was special to me. Sounds weird to say thanks, but
thanks."

"It sounds weird
to say you're welcome, so I won't.
I...
yes. It's
special to me, too."

"What
are you doing?"

She said she was
reading over the Bailey case file. "I asked your Dad about it today."

"Any
help?"

"He's
trying."

"It's
a wonder he can remember anything, with all the beer he drinks."

"He's
pretty sharp still."

Mike was quiet for a
beat. "You feel like going away for a week?" Just drop everything,
cash in the vacation time? Carver in vice, he's got a line on a condo on Maui.
We could leave, like Friday or something. Just forget everything. Stay warm,
get a tan, maybe go fishing."

"I
can't do that. You know I can't."

"Bring
Tim."

"It's
not that. I've just got a full plate at work."

More
silence. "How's the Whittaker case coming?"

"It's
coming."

"Am
I still one of your suspects?"

"No.
You weren't a suspect, Mike."

"Even
when I said I did it?"

Merci
said nothing.

"You might not
believe this, but somehow I'm going to make this all up to you."

"It's
not me you owe."

"Who
then?"

"I
have no idea, Mike. Aubrey Whittaker maybe."

Mike went quiet
again. When he spoke his voice was so low could hardly hear him.

"I owe somebody.
I messed up. I shouldn't have done what I did. It makes everything bad. It
stains everything. All I had was my reputation. Now it's gone. Shot to hell. I
don't know how to get that stain off me."

"You
were falling in love. It happens."

She wanted to give
him a chance to confirm it. Even after everything that she'd found, it still
mattered if he had betrayed her in his heart, whether he'd taken the woman to
bed or not. Whether he'd murdered her or not. How petty, she thought, but it
was too late to recall her statement.

"No, I wasn't.
I'm in love with you. But I
just...
I
swear, Merci, I just thought I could ... change her. Make her different. Help
her get out of what she was. That's what I wanted."

"She's
out."

"Yeah. Okay.
Look, Merci, I'm thinking I'll take that Maui trip anyway. Alone. I'm going to
fly out on Friday. I just got to get away for a few days. Everybody in the
department seems to know I had dinner with that girl."

"Do
what you need to do, Mike."

"I'll
let you know. Merci, please believe in me. I'm worth it. I'm going to make you
see I'm worth it. It's just kind of hard to see right now."

• • •

Evan O'Brien called at 10:40.

"No dice on the
.38 Special, Merci—too old, too dry, too rusted. Nothing off the Inland Storage
envelope. Those no-lick stamps are great, people bear down and presto. But yours
was clean. I can try an iodine fume. Then ninhydrin or silver nitrate. I
wouldn't put the chances at real good."

"What
about the envelope itself?"

"I
actually did think of that. Clean, Lady Dick."

"Thanks for
trying."

"It's my job,
pain in the ass that it is sometimes. You're lucky you left when you did today.
Zamorra blasts in here this afternoon and practically punches out Gilliam.
It's about the evidence from the Whittaker scene, but I wasn't clear on exactly
what
evidence. Then Brighton storms in here later and lectures Gilliam
behind closed doors for twenty minutes. I could see them—both really pissed
off. Then Gilliam comes out and says the lab is now off limits to anyone who
doesn't work in it. Off limits specifically to Mike McNally, Paul Zamorra and
Merci Rayborn. We're setting up a sign-in, sign-out sheet by the door, just
like a crime scene."

The anger shot up
through her. "What the hell did I do to get on list?"

"Don't ask me,
but Zamorra glared and Brighton spoke and Gill clamped down. I'm calling you
from home right now—I didn't want to use the lab line to call one of my own
detectives. Shit, a bunch of paranoid old farts, if you ask me. I go upstairs
later to run something by arson guys, I see Brighton's got Pat McNally in his
office. It's like old boy's club around there. Soon as you make sheriff, I hope
you got the good sense to put me in charge of the lab."

"I'll
see what I can do."

"Glandis
pulse you on his move for Brighton's job?"

"Yeah."

"Me, too. I told
him I thought he'd be great. It's not my fault he’s stupid enough to believe me."

Merci
was surprised to hear a woman giggle quietly in the background.

"Gotta
go," said O'Brien.

"I
guess you do."

She hung up and wondered
what Brighton could possibly be telling Big Pat. Or not telling him. She would
like to have been a fly on the for that one.

• •

Brighton called at 11:05.
He told her they were going to bring Mike to room 348 of the Newport Marriott
the next morning at eight o'clock sharp. They'd have a closed-circuit video
camera set up. He told her to be there at six so they could set her up in 350,
next door.

"I don't think
you should be the one to question him at this point.” said Brighton. "I
don't think he should see you. There's no need for that right now. Later,
Merci, we might need you for that. Leave Zamorra out. You can bring him up to
speed later."

"I agree. I
understand."

"But I want you
to direct us. Clay Brenkus and one of his assistants are going to depose you,
first off. That'll give them the rough outline to follow—what he said, how you
found what you found. Clay and I are going to sit in, let Mike know this is the
real thing. I'll have a couple of deputies, men I trust, just in case Mike gets
belligerent. We'll give him every chance to explain himself. Every chance,
Merci. We'll have two DA investigators in position out at Mike's place, ready
to go as soon as he gives us permission to search."

"What if he
doesn't? He's got no reason to let us waltz in there and search his home."

"Then we'll
arrest him. That, based on his confession to you, the hair and fiber evidence
from the Whittaker scene, and the fact that he was with her an hour before she
died. We can do a warrantless search on the emergency exception—that's assuming
he'll destroy the evidence. I think that's a reasonable assumption, and so does
Clay. The forty-five was in plain view, so we're covered there. We'll book it,
shoot it and get our own casing. Even if we have to get phone warrants we can
do that in less than a day."

She couldn't talk at
first. She felt like she was in a bullet train in a tunnel, darkness smearing
past the windows, no chance for clarity or perspective. It was Tuesday, exactly
one week since the murder of Aubrey Whittaker. One
week.
Now they were
going to question Mike McNally in connection with that homicide.

"I
can't believe this is happening," she said quietly.

"It's only
started to happen. Strap yourself in, young lady. It's going to be a long,
rough ride."

She woke up suddenly in the dark, rain roaring down
on the house, Tim's cries coming through the monitor she'd turned up full blast
because she slept like the dead. Her first thought was that some tremendous
disaster had just befallen him, and she headed to his room fast, throwing on
all the lights on the way.

The darkness seemed
to reach for her and this scared her, and she hated the darkness for it. Her
heart was pounding hard by the time got to her son. He looked up at her with
wide blue eyes filled with tears, his legs kicking, and she understood that the
storm had scared him, that was all, just a baby's fear of a storm.

She carried him back
to her room. Goodness, she thought: Would it be great to be assured and
confident and a little bit mean again, she was before Hess? Before the Purse
Snatcher? Before it was such ordeal to get to your baby in a rainstorm?