Red Light (39 page)

Merci wondered how
Zamorra had time for a three-hour drive to San Diego and back when he didn't
have time for anything else. She banished that thought as suspicious and
mean-spirited.

"Then I went
through the Whittaker evidence list again—nothing like that in her wardrobe. I
double-checked the dry cleaning you picked up—nothing there, either. Now, how
about Mike? Does he have a coat or shirt like that—gray background, with purple
and green-accents?"

She got out her blue
notebook and made a note of her partner's findings. "No. Mike doesn't have
anything like that. Not that I know of."

"I also sent
down human hair—two samples I got from the kitchen floor. Dark and wavy. One is
an inch long, the other an inch and a
half.
Whittaker's hair was blond.
So is Mike's. I think our kitchen man left when he fought, left his prints on
the drawer runner and the floor, snagged his jacket or shirt."

"Moladan's
got dark hair."

"No.
CAL-ID's got him, but there was no hit on the prints."

"Lance
Spartas?"

"I
got him to volunteer a full set, right and left. No."

"Del
Viggio?"

"His alibi
washed with Molodan's girl, Cindy. It wasn't him. Ok we know this guy was in
her apartment that night. We know he's not a crook with a sheet because AFIS
and CAL-ID would have them. Merci spoke before she thought it through, and the
words sound strange when they came out. "What about a woman? Women wear
sport coats. They leave fingerprints."

Zamorra
looked across at her. "Coiner?"

"She paid Mike a
visit in jail late last night. She brought him food. I'm just fishing now, Paul.
It sounds wrong."

Zamorra went silent
again. Then, "We know she likes him. Maybe we don't know how much. Or what
she was getting back. Or not getting. But if you take it that way, you have to
figure maybe they weren't struggling on the floor. Maybe they were getting it
on ten feet from a from corpse. You factor in Coiner and you've got special
circumstances. That's lying in wait and conspiracy. That's the death
penalty."

Merci stood and
walked once around the room. She could feel the strong, dark currents moving
around inside.

"They
... that wouldn't bend the drawer runners."

He
said nothing, implying that maybe it would.

"Why
would she give up the brass, Paul? Why not overlook it?"

"Because
someone
was going to find it. This way, it would take suspicion off of
her."

"And
put it on Mike."

Zamorra looked down
at the table, then back to Merci. "Insurance, in case you and Mike came
through all this intact."

"Did
you include females in the CAL-ID search?"

"No.
But I can do it that way, easy enough."

"Go ahead. It
still doesn't make sense to me, Paul. The prints won't come up as Lynda's. And
her hair is light brown."

Zamorra shrugged.
"He wasn't alone in that apartment. Someone else was there. They did
something in the kitchen. Mike knows. He

wasn't alone. I'd bet my life on it."

• • •

Merci walked Gary Brice's
envelope down to the lab just before ten that morning. A deputy she'd never
seen before stopped her at the front desk, asked her to sign in and state
reason for visit. She waited ten minutes for Gilliam to come out and get her.
He closed his office door behind them and they sat.

"Sorry," he
said. "We've got a full lockdown while we examine the evidence from Mike's
place."

"What
did they take in the search?"

"A homemade
sound suppressor, one pair of chukka boots, his forty-five Colt and seven
rounds of ammunition. Also some correspondence—cards and letters."

"I
need to see them, the letters."

Gilliam frowned.
"You're off the case, Merci. Why see the letters now?"

She told him what
Gary Brice had received in the U.S. mail yesterday afternoon. She set the
plastic bag with the legal-sized envelope in it on Gilliam's desk.

"If you've got
the originals in evidence, I'll know they weren't just taken from Mike's place
and copied to be sent to Brice. I'll know that were taken from Mike's place,
copied and
returned
for us to find. Wheeler and Teague might want to
know that."

Gilliam
looked at her with something close to disbelief.

"James, Gary
Brice is going to write his story. It's going to be about a vice cop, a homicide
investigator and a prostitute. I'd like to know who set us up for that."

"The originals
are in the fuming chamber right now. Here, I'll take that."

Gilliam
snagged the plastic bag a little impatiently, Merci thought

The pressure is making fools of us all, she thought.

• • •

Ten minutes later Merci
knew what she wanted to know: Four of cards and one of the letters collected
from Mike's had been photocopied earlier, mailed to Brice, then returned to
Mike's Modjeska Canyon home.

And
there wasn't a trace of a fingerprint on any of them. Yet.

"Give it
time," said Gilliam. "Six more hours, minimum. I'll set the envelope
to Brice right now."

Lynda Coiner, bent
over a microscope, looked aside at Merci, then back to her instrument.

Evan O'Brien,
scientifically clad in a white lab coat, stood beneath a bright overhead
examination light, looking down at a small bundle wrapped in what Merci
recognized as her own underwear.

He looked at her,
then at the underwear, then back at her again. No expression. He shrugged.

One of the younger
technicians walked past with a tray of vials filled with blood. He looked at
Merci with controlled alarm, like she was a leper.

"Let
us get on with our work," said Gilliam, taking her arm. "Do I get to
know the results on the storage payment envelope stamp? The one I brought in
with the gun? This is
Bailey
I'm talking about now, not Whittaker."

"Negative,"
he said. "No latents. Now, I imagine you want to get on your way to Aubrey
Whittaker's apartment pretty quick. For Wheeler and Teague, of course."

He
escorted her to the door. "Tell Zamorra we've got better facilities than
San Diego P.D.," he said. "Tell Zamorra we're on his side here. We'd
like to know whose side
he's
on."

"I'll
tell him."

• • •

Merci stepped into
the cold, bright apartment. Through the windows she could see the Pacific,
brown with runoff. Her eyes went to the dark chalk outline on the carpet,
Aubrey Whittaker's final silhouette.

Everything
looked the same. She stepped around the chalk and went down the hall to the
bedroom. Nothing looked disturbed. In the dresser she found the collection of
notes and letters, recognizing two from the copies sent to Gary Brice—stolen
from a sealed crime scene, copied, returned.

She
stood on the front porch for a long moment, picturing what had happened for
what seemed like the thousandth time. She wondered if Hess would have been
proud of her. Then she excused herself from Hess and closed her eyes and tried
to see what had happened that night, just over a week ago, Tuesday, December
the eleventh. She pictured Mike coming up the stairs. He's dressed in trousers
and a sport coat and his black sweater, the one that shows his muscles and
contrasts with his golden hair. He's purposeful but unhurried. His hands are
empty but his coat is open. The forty-five is tucked into his left armpit,
because the silencer makes it too long to fit in the holster. He stands in
front of the door and wipes his right hand through his hair before he knocks.
It's a quiet knock. The yellow porch light is on. Aubrey comes to the door,
looks out. She sees it's Mike, wonders if he's left something. She opens the
door. She smiles—half a greeting, half a question. Mike reaches under his coat
and draws the gun, fires once and pushes her back into the room as she falls.
She's dead before she hits. He walks around her, gets her under the arms and
drags her a few feet further in—so he can shut the door. He shuts it. The look
on his face one of wild fear.

After that Merci saw
nothing.

• • •

She opened her eyes, surprised
to see Wheeler and Teague starting the stairs, followed by Chuck Brighton.

Wheeler, the thin
one, got there first. Teague lumbered up behind him, followed by Brighton,
whose eyes were hidden behind dark aviator shades.

"Orange
County Sheriff," said Wheeler.

"Prove
it," said Merci.

Wheeler badged her
with a sly grin and walked past her into apartment.

Teague
said hello and told her he wanted to talk later.

"Any
time."

Then Brighton, who
stopped and looked at her. She saw sky and clouds where his eyes should be.
"Thought I'd see this for myself."

"Someone's been
in here, messing with evidence. It's the second time this week, if I've got it
figured right."

Brighton peeled off
the glasses. He looked a hundred years old. "Gilliam showed me the
letters. The ones to Gary Brice."

"They came from
here—bedroom dresser, top right drawer. Who ever took them brought them back
here for us to seize."

"Rayborn,
what in the hell is going on?"

"Maybe Wheeler
and Teague can find out. I've got some ideas, they're not good ideas."

"No mas
on this, Merci. No more involvement from you. When
Bob Rule finds out about you and Mike—"

"I
understand."

"So
keep it clean. We've got a case to make."

"Yes,
sir."

Brighton nodded.
"Unbelievable zoo back at headquarters. You stay away from it if you can.
Nobody's asking about you and Mike, for what that's worth. So far."

"They
will, when Brice's article hits the paper."

"You
and Zamorra take the murdered jogger and the chopped-up boy. Those will keep
you busy."

Inwardly,
Merci cringed at the words "chopped-up boy." She thought of a couple
of things she'd like to say, but she didn't.

"I need deputy
time cards for the Bailey case," she said.

"Time
cards from thirty years ago? We wrote them by hand. I don't know if we keep
them that far back."

"We do. They're
in the records building, but you need to clear it."

He
put the glasses back on, looked out toward Coast Highway, then back to her.
"You still think we were the bad guys. Even back then."

"I'm just ruling
us out."

"That's
a weak argument. But from you, I'll accept it. Talk to Mel. He can
authorize."

She
took the cell phone from her belt, punched in the number and held it out to
Brighton. "It's Records. Would you mind? They won't hustle it for Glandis
or me."

Brighton looked at her from behind the dark glasses, then took the
phone.

M
erci saw the news crews and uplink vans set up
outside the head quarters entrance, so she put her head down and accelerated.
She was already halfway through them by the time they realized who sho was. She
brushed away the mikes and answered everything with the same three words: No
damned comment. She lost them in the lobby where a uniformed deputy clicked her
through the personnel door and that was that.

The detective pen was
almost empty now, midday, the dicks either in the field or out to lunch. The
thought occurred to her that with one of their own arrested for murder, now was
a good time not to be seen. And everybody was dying to talk to everybody else.
Cancun would be a beehive of gossip right now, she thought.

The box of time cards
was on her desk. It smelled of old paper and the corners were crumpled. She
signed the Records Section slip on top and set the slip in her routing box.

She lugged the box
into the empty conference room, then went back for the Bailey file and a fresh
cup of coffee. A lieutenant passed her in the hallway. He raised his eyebrows
and shrugged, but he said nothing.

Standing over the
interview room table, Merci lifted out the time cards. They were organized by
week. The assignment rosters were collected for each month, then stapled and
put in manila folders.

To the left of the
cards she set Patti Bailey's date book, opened to the last day of her life,
August 4, 1969.

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

One thing, she
thought. Give me just one thing: the owner of the initials KQ. If he was a
sheriff's deputy, he'll be in here.

It took her twenty
minutes to strike out. She went through every time card filled out for the year
and came up with no KQ.
No Anybody Q,
for that matter.

Code? It has to be.

She
tried reversing them and looked through the time cards again.