They're Watching (2010) (27 page)

"Maybe you're not just a second-rate screenwriter."

"Yeah, I'm a second-rate suspect, too." A banging on the metal door. I lowered my voice. "He's coming back in, so one more thing. They didn't book me. I don't think I've actually been arrested."

Gable shoved the door open. "Chat time's over, Davis. Time to move."

Sally said, "What do you mean? They printed you and read you your rights?"

I eyed Gable. "Just the former."

A brief silence. "So they probably asked if they could print you, making it consensual even though you thought you didn't have a choice."

"Exactly."

"You can be held for questioning--for a reasonable time--without being arrested."

Gable said, "Did I just talk to you?"

"Yes," I said to him, "I'm wrapping it up."

"If they haven't booked you yet," Sally said, "then the DA's skittish about charging you."

I asked, "Why?"

"It's a weird fucking case, to say the least, and she has--had--me and Valentine pressing an alternate scenario. Her office can't afford another embarrassment, which means moving slow and right. You can be charged whenever--she's not gonna want to jump in on day one unless she's positive everything is lined out and she's got the case together. They waited a year to charge Robert Blake, and look how that turned out."

"Get off the phone," Gable said.

I fisted the receiver. "But the latest stuff--"

"I know," Sally said. "I'm not gonna lie to you. The e-mails, fabricated or not, are damning. The DA's deciding whether to charge you right now, and her moving the case to Robbery-Homicide is a pretty good indication of which way she's leaning."

Gable blew out a sigh and started toward me.

I said, "Listen, Frank, I gotta go. Can you--"

"Call the DA with the new leads you gave me? If they yield, yes. Evidence like that could be the deciding factor--push her to play it conservatively and hold off on the arrest."

I thought of the hulking inmate in the hall, how he'd lunged at me. If things went badly, by tonight I'd be sharing a cage with men like him. "How long will it take you?"

"Give us two hours, then force their hand."

I did my best to keep desperation from my voice. "How am I even supposed to know how to . . . ?"

Sally said, "They'll have to formally charge you or let you go."

I said, "But I don't want to push it if--" Gable was staring at me, so I stopped.

"It's your only play," she said. "Two hours. By then either we'll have gotten something to the DA or your leads are a bust."

Gable reached for the phone impatiently, but I turned away. My hand was squeezing the receiver so tightly that my fingers ached. "How will I know which?"

"You won't."

Gable put his thumb down on the telephone base, severing the connection.

An hour and fifty-seven minutes in the hard wooden chair of the interrogation room left me sore, my lower back cramped. Working in shifts, Gable and his partner had hammered me on every aspect of my life, and I'd answered honestly and consistently, all the while tamping down my panic and racking my brain for how to play it when the time came. Up until now, Gable had been careful to phrase everything as a question--"Step into this room for me?" As long as I complied, there was no need to arrest me, and I didn't let on that I was aware of my options. Until now.

Gable paced in front of me, his watch flashing again into view. I'd bought Sally and Valentine their two hours to look for conflicting evidence and talk to the DA. It was time to force the issue and see whether I wound up free or in a cell.

"Am I under arrest?"

Gable stopped. Grimaced. Then, carefully: "I never said that."

"Pretty heavily implied."

"At the crime scene, you said you were willing to go with Detectives Richards and Valentine to cooperate. You gave your full consent to go to the station with them. All we did was transfer you. We asked you to come with us. We asked if we could print you. We asked if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions."

"So," I said, "I'm free to go?"

"Not quite. We're allowed to hold you for--"

"A reasonable time to question me. Right. I've been in custody now for about sixteen hours. You detain me much longer without charges, that might piss off a jury if we get there."

"When we get there."

"You're out of reasons to prolong my detention. I've answered all your questions. You've had time to search my house and my office, so it's not like you need to hold me to prevent me from destroying evidence. You know where to find me if you decide to take me back into custody. I'm not a flight risk. My face is on every news channel, so even if I wasn't in dire financial straits, I couldn't exactly throw on a pair of Groucho glasses and hop a flight to Rio."

Gable had stopped pacing, his surprise giving way to irritation.

I continued, "So please tell the DA I'm done cooperating. She needs to pull the trigger and arrest me now--or let me try to get back to my life."

Gable crouched so his head was lower than mine. He worked his lip. "You've known. You've been planning this. The whole time." He glared at me with equal parts hatred and amusement. "That was your lawyer on the phone, was it?"

I didn't answer.

"Good lawyer," he said.

"The best."

"I need to make a phone call of my own. I'll be back to you shortly with an answer. One way or another."

The door closed, leaving me with the throbbing in my back and my doleful reflection in the two-way mirror. To say I looked like hell would be an understatement. My face was pale and puffy, dark crescents holding up my eyes. My hair was thoroughly mussed; I'd been tugging at it anxiously. My joints ached. Leaning over, I ground the heels of my hands into my eye sockets.

I might never go home again.

Did California have lethal injection or the electric chair?

How the hell did I wind up here?

A creak to my right and Gable loomed in the doorway. Desperate, I tried to read his face. It was tight and filled with disdain.

He turned, walking off, flinging the door open in a burst of temper. It smashed against the outside wall and wobbled back, giving off a tuning-fork vibration.

I sat in my chair, watching that door wobble. I rose. I walked out. Gable was nowhere to be seen. The plastic tub holding my possessions had been placed on the floor outside the jamb, the throwaway cell phone right there on top, for anyone to see. I looked for my Sanyo before remembering that Sally had taken it to review the bits of recorded footage. My knees cracked as I crouched to pick up the tub. The elevators were in view at the end of the hall. My breath echoing in my skull, I walked toward them, braced for someone to seize me, condemn me--the inverse of a last-minute pardon.

But I got there. Once the doors slid closed behind me, I leaned weakly against the elevator wall, plastic tub under my arm. The ride down to the main floor took an eternity. When the doors opened, no one was there waiting to grab me. I trudged across the lobby, through the solid front doors, and out into the dusk. A polluted breeze blew up from the street, but the air felt as fresh as spring in my lungs. I dumped the disposable cell in the trash.

I had some trouble keeping my balance down the wide steps. I walked over to the street and sat heavily on the curb, my feet in the gutter, buses and cars blowing by. A brittle leaf fluttered against the asphalt like a dying bird. I watched it, then watched it some more.

"Get up." There she was above me, backlit. I was surprised and also somehow not. "We've got work to do." Sally offered a hand, and after a moment I took it. I got halfway to my feet when my knees went out, and I lowered myself back onto the curb.

"I think I need a minute," I said.

Chapter
36

"Two things did it," Sally told me as we barreled along the 101. "The gas station had digital security footage of you at the counter, which the clerk e-mailed right over. That alibied you for the break-in at Conner's and got a second suspect into the mix. Enough to give the DA pause."

Valentine was still off trying to run down Elisabeta, so I rode in the front of the sedan, which made me feel vaguely human again. I dialed Ariana for the fifth time, but all her numbers remained busy. Sally had given me my Sanyo cell phone back, after declaring the recorded clips on it useless. When I'd turned it on, it had been jammed with excited condolences from virtually everyone who had the number, too many to listen to right now, given my state of mind.

"And," Sally continued, "the computer you rented at Kinko's--a Compaq. It had a bunch of time-stamped documents implanted in various places, showing the planning of the crime, your obsession with Conner, stuff going back a year. Beyond the question of why you would leave that stuff on a rented computer, it's impossible that you created those documents."

"Because the time stamps didn't match the dates I rented the computer?"

"Even better." She let slip a pleased smile. "The serial number on the Compaq shows it to have shipped as part of a bulk buy on December fifteenth. Which means the computer didn't yet exist when you were supposedly generating incriminating documents on it. Looks like you outthought them on one front--they were counting on you to check your e-mail at home or at the office."

"Me: one. Bad guys: ninety-seven."

"Hey," she said, "it's a start."

I resumed calling our house, Ariana's cell phone, her work. Busy or off the hook. Full mailbox. No answer.

A blinking icon on my cell phone caught my eye. A text message. Another threatening communication? Nervously, I thumbed it onto the screen, relaxing when I saw that it was from Marcello: I FIGURE U MIGHT NEED THIS RITE ABOUT NOW. The accompanying photograph was a freeze-frame from the footage I'd recorded onto my phone. It showed the windshield reflection of the Vehicle Identification Number, blown up and clarified. Closing my eyes, I gave private thanks for Marcello's postproduction skills.

Sally said, "What?"

I held out the phone so she could see the image. "This is the VIN of the car from the second e-mail. Where the guy filmed through the windshield to show me the route to that Honda in the alley."

She unclipped the radio and called in the VIN, asking the desk officer to look into it. She gave a few uh-huhs, then an "Oh, really?" When she signed off, she said, "That club girl? She had a miscarriage. So the paternity suit's a dead end. At least that paternity suit. As for the VIN, that should be easy. We'll get word back on the car soon."

"Thank you," I said. "For taking me seriously. All of it. I know you're out on a limb."

The tires thrummed over the freeway exit. "Let's be clear about something. I like you, Patrick. But we're not friends. Someone got murdered. He may have been an asshole, but he was killed in my jurisdiction, and that angers me. Deeply. I want to know who killed him and why--even if it's you--and there is no condition more motivating to me than curiosity. Plus, call me old-fashioned, but the thought of an innocent person behind bars makes me chafe. Justice, truth, and all that crap. So I appreciate your thanks, but you should know I didn't do any of it for you."

We drove in silence. I looked out my window for a time before trying Ariana again. And again. The home phone was still busy--had she taken it off the hook? Between attempts my cell rang. I checked caller ID eagerly, but it was the Northridge film department. Probably not calling to offer me a raise. Frustrated, I threw my phone onto the dash. It rattled against the windshield. I took a few deep breaths, staring at my lap. At first I hadn't noticed we'd stopped moving.

We were parked outside a familiar run-down Van Nuys apartment complex. Sally climbed out, but I just sat there, taking in the bent security gate and the courtyard beyond. VACANCY, written on rusted metal, swaying from the gutter. A PARTMENTS FOR R ENT.

All the signs had been there, and yet I'd read none of them.

Sally knocked the hood impatiently, and I climbed out, regarding the building with awe. It was familiar, and yet altered in my mind, given what had transpired. The directory box, with its blank renter spot for Apartment 11. I thought about how I'd tried to call up to the apartment anyway, but the line had been out of service. How pleased I'd been with myself when I'd figured out to punch in the entry code. So pleased I hadn't lingered on the fact that I was heading to an apartment with no renter and a disconnected call-up line.

We stopped before the locked front gate. Sally waited expectantly until I realized why. Reaching out a trembling finger, I pressed the four numbers. The gate buzzed, and Sally tugged it open, giving me an after-you wave.

Up the stairs, down the floating hall to Beeman's apartment. That old-fashioned keyhole where I'd seen Beeman's eye peering out at me.

"I reached the manager by phone," Sally said. "He claims the place hasn't been rented in months. Water damage--I guess the owner's waiting to pay for mold remediation. The manager's not on site to let us in. And I can't get a warrant. It's not my case, you know. Shame." Sally put her hands on the railing, looked out across the courtyard below, humming to herself. Something classical. I watched the back of her head.