Red Light (31 page)

She brought him to
bed with her. He stopped crying almost instantly, then fell asleep against her
chest while Merci stroked his small soft head and listened to the rain
splattering onto the patio. She looked back to doorway and realized she'd left
every light on, including the one in bedroom.

She
rolled over, wrapped the pillow over her head and thought.

We'll be giving him every chance to explain himself.

And
what explanation was there? That he'd hidden a silencer in his tackle box, but
decided not to use it?

That
it must be someone else's, planted there to frame him?

She could almost
believe that. Almost. But it didn't account for his chukka boots with the blood
on them, or the letters Aubrey had written him implying that she thought
exposing him would be a good thing. It didn't explain the evidence—a card
handwritten by him—gone missing from the crime lab. It didn't explain the fact
that he'd had dinner in her apartment and allegedly left less than an hour
before she was murdered. It didn't explain the underwear Merci had let him
have, against her better instincts, later used to conceal a silencer.

She pictured the scene
again. She saw Mike leaving Aubrey Whittaker's place, his blond hair bouncing
as he takes the steps. She saw him coming back up a few minutes later—he looks
tighter, more purposeful. She saw him standing in the porch light, knocking.
She saw Aubrey at the door, peering through the peephole and opening the door
to the guy who'd just
left...

• • •

She got up and delivered
sleeping Tim back to his crib, then dressed. It was just after 5
a.m
.
The world was still dark as she guided her Impala down the rut-riddled dirt
road that led away from her house, her right hand absently feeling around in
the space behind her seat—a habit by now. The rain boiled in the puddles, and
in her brights it looked like acid frothing up, a witches' brew, something that
would put your eyes out. She'd only slept four hours, and her head felt
pressured, her eyeballs tight, her body heavy and inefficient.

Mike, I'm so damned
sorry.

•
• •

The head of hotel
security, Ronald, met her in the lobby and took her up to room 350. They made
the elevator ride in silence, Merci assuming that Ronald didn't think much of
lady detectives.

Brighton let them in.
Clay Brenkus shook her hand firmly and said, "It took a lot of balls for
you to do this, young lady. Congratulations and good luck."

"I
hope we have more than luck, Mr. Brenkus."

"It's
Clay, and all we're doing is getting the truth. It isn't your truth or mine.
It's McNally's. He did it or he didn't. We're going to find which."

Guy Pitt, one of the
assistant DAs Merci had worked with, got coffee and a croissant from a tray.
"I'm going to depose you," he said quietly. "Marion here is
going to swear you in, do the recording. Okay?”

Merci nodded. It felt
just like a dream but she couldn't wake up. The rain washed down the windows in
gallons.

A thin and lusterless
woman rose from one of the couches extended her hand. "I'm ready to start
when you are, Guy."

"Merci, it's
going to be me and Clay, two of our investigators, sheriff and two of his men.
I'll ask the questions. Remember, Mike confessed to you—about the shooting and
about having a silencer in possession. I'm still going to frame them in a way
to make what you seem reasonable and necessary, given the emergency exception
under
Mincey versus Arizona.
All that means is, if you hadn't made
warrantless search, the evidence would have been destroyed. This sworn
testimony, but you're not in court. Relax, tell the truth, and if don't
understand something, just ask."

"Yeah."

"All
right?"

"Yeah,
Guy, I'm all right."

"When we're
done, everyone's going into the room next door to interview Mike. You'll be
able to hear and see from in here—we've a camera set up next door, a
closed-circuit monitor over there by couch. If we have to, we'll shuttle some
people back and forth, get some direction from you, clarify something. But we
don't want you in there. We don't want him to know you're here, or what you
did. Nothing about that yet."

Brighton walked her
over toward the couch, a heavy arm around her shoulder. "You did the right
thing."

"Then
how come everybody has to keep telling me?"

"Easy does it."

• • •

The deposition took almost an hour. It was the usual
thing with lawyers—too many questions, then more questions.
And the
flyfishing tackle box that you described, what was the purpose of that box so
far as you knew?

It held flyfishing tackle.

Was it used exclusively for flyfishing or for other
kinds of fishing, so far as you knew?

Just flyfishing.

You say it was the only handmade box on the
workbench?

Only one I saw.

And you say you had knowledge that it was handmade by
Mr. McNally?

Yes.

And was the box in plain view, on the workbench of
the workshop where Mr. McNally lives?

There was a net over it. But I could see the box
through the mesh. It wasn't hidden from view. It was obscured, slightly.

Or, questions she'd rather they never asked, but they did anyway.

Sergeant Rayborn, how could you be certain the undergarment—the
undergarment surrounding the sound suppressor you found in the flyfishing
tackle box—belonged to you?

Because I gave it to him.

When she was finished
Merci went into the bathroom, washed her face in hot water, used one of the fat
luxurious terry washcloths to scrub out all the whatever it was that seemed to
be roiling out from inside her like poison. She threw the wet cloth into the
corner just for spite, then felt bad, picked it up, rinsed it, squeezed it damp
and hung it carefully over the shower rod, got angry for feeling bad then threw
it back in the corner again.

• • •

Sitting down on the
couch in room 348, Mike McNally had an expression like Hess used to have when
he came out of a radiation treatment— stunned but undefeated. His face was
pale. He sat on his hands. He stared at the camera for long beat, then studied
someone across the room from him with a nervous disdain, like a rattlesnake
looking up at a shovel.

"You're
videotaping this?" he asked.

"Yes,"
said Brighton brusquely. "You don't mind?"

"What's this
about, sir?" Mike sat forward, leaning toward the coffee table in front of
him.

"Aubrey
Whittaker, Tuesday night, last week."

Mike looked around.
Merci could see part of Brighton's should and the back of his head as he faced
his vice detective. She could see Brenkus in profile, at the top of the screen.
Between them were the DA investigators. The two deputies Brighton had mentioned
were off camera.

"Look,
Mike," said Brighton. His voice was low, unhurried, confidential.
"You had dinner with Aubrey Whittaker last week. She was murdered shortly
after you left. I want you to tell me about that night. Everything about it.
Your reason for accepting such an invite. Your feeings about the girl. Your
state of mind when you got there. Heck, tell about the dessert, too. I just
want to know what happened. I want know everything that happened. Because
frankly, Mike, we've got some evidence collected that looks incriminating to
us. This is your chance spill it, come clean, get the record straight. We can
be done with this and out of here in a couple of hours if you just tell us the
truth. We can all go back to work, get on with things. That's what we'd all
like most."

Merci watched Mike's
expression go from alertness to surprise to disbelief to embarrassment to
anger. Mike wasn't subtle. Mike wasn’t devious. Mike was obvious, his face an
honest reflection of his heart. It was like watching a chameleon change colors.

"You
think I killed her."

It
wasn't a question.

"We
don't think anything," said Brenkus. "All we're after is truth,
Mike."

"Oh,"
he said with sarcasm. "All right."

Mike
sat back for a moment, then forward again. Merci could see his eyes get that
distant look, then refocus, leading him back to the present. He nodded, as if
sealing a deal with himself. He took a deep breath.

"I'm going to
stand up," he said. "I'm going to walk to that window, look out. Any
of you dumb monkeys got a problem with that?"

Brenkus looked to
Brighton, Brighton to McNally, then glanced off to his left. Shadows in the
room moved. Mike stood and walked toward the window, offscreen.

Everyone stood. The
two plainclothes deputies followed him, trying to seem casual, unsure of how
much urgency to show.

Merci looked out the
window: rain slanting down through the dark morning sky.

Mike came back to the
couch, but he didn't sit. "Well then, here's the truth: I won't answer a
single one of your questions until I've got a lawyer."

Nobody spoke for a
moment. Clay Brenkus shook his head and sighed.

"That's the hard
way, Mike," said Brighton. "We'll need to go downtown for that."

"Let's
go."

Mike had his forty-five
out before Merci knew what he was doing. His arm straightened and the barrel
lined up with Brighton. Bodies in motion then, and curses from unseen men in
the room, shadows moving quick. Pitt jumped out of camera. Brenkus rolled off
his seat. Brighton froze.

Mike spun the
automatic around his finger, stopped it barrel up, his fingers out, then set it
on the coffee table.

"May
God forgive you assholes."

Then he looked
straight at the monitor, which meant he looked straight at Merci. She'd never
seen cold rage on his face before, but she saw it now. She didn't know he could
look this way.

"You stupid
woman," he said. "I can't believe you did this, you stupid, gutless
bitch."

• • •

Brighton came in after
they led Mike out. His face looked gray, ten years older than he'd looked the
day before.

"With
regards to the rest of this day at headquarters," he said to Merci,
"miss it."

"I
will."

His hard eyes bored
into her. "I don't know what to say, Merci, don't know how this is going
to play out. I just know that when the press finds out we've arrested our own
vice cop in the Whittaker murder, it’s going to be worse than a circus. Stay
low. I'll take the heat."

She
nodded. "I've got some interviews set up. The Bailey case."

"Do what you
need to do. Look, I had a talk with Paul Zamorra yesterday. I think he's on the
verge of hurting somebody, probably himself. I offered him a week off to get
his wife settled, but he wouldn't take it. I think he should take it. I want
you to encourage him in that direction. I don't want to force a leave on him,
but I will."

"I
understand, sir."

Brighton held up his
hand. It was trembling. "Mike could have shot me a minute ago. It's just
catching up with me. Maybe I
am
too old this job. Maybe I should get out
while I've still got an ass to sit on."

R
alph Meeks answered his door wearing sheepskin boots
that Merci thought made him look like a Sherpa.

"You're
soakin' wet, honey."

"It's
been raining six hours straight."

He was a short,
skinny man, his legs lost in the baggy slacks he tucked into the boots. Bright
little eyes, hair like steel wool. He wore a turtleneck under a bulky sweater
with reindeer trailing across the yoke and chest.

Standing in the
doorway, he rotated a large cigar and blew the smoke away from her. "Well,
come in. At least you're good looking. What, six feet?"

"Five-eleven,"
she said, stepping into the towering entryway.

"I'm five-seven.
I'm also seventy-nine years old. They make 'em bigger now. D cup?"

Her mouth parted in
disbelief. Ralph Meeks cackled. "Just playin' with ya. My wife was flat as
a window, so it doesn't really matter to me."

"Play
some other way, Mr. Meeks, I'm here to—"

"I know, I know.
To find out about who killed Patti Bailey and all those other current events.
Now you walk down this shiny floor here
eleven
steps, turn left when you
get to the room that smells like burning wood. Where it smells like burning
wood, there's fire. Go in and sit by that fire. I'll get you some hot
chocolate."

"No,
thank you, I—"

"It's already
made, you're gettin' it. Go, march, lady—I don't have all day."

She counted ten steps
while she took in what she could see of house: marble entryway with a big
chandelier up high, a living room with white carpet and a view of the storm-blasted
beach just a few yards away, a library with shelves twelve feet high and
rolling ladders to get them with.