15th Affair (13 page)

“Duh. It’s all over the Internet. I can
read
. You think my mom had something to do with him?”

“We’re asking everyone if they know him,” Conklin said.

My partner thanked the girl, gave her his card, and told her to call anytime. Then she got out of the car. I got out, too, and watched her walk up the block with her chin tucked down. When she turned up the walk to her house, I got back into the passenger seat.

My partner said, “Here’s what I think. Alison Muller is a cheat, a narcissist, and a terrible mother. Going out on a limb, here, she’s also a pathological liar. You know where that leaves us?”

He touched his thumb and forefinger together, held up the zero for me to see.

“Exactly,” I said.

I called Brady to check in.

He said, “Monterey PD forwarded the Muller file to me an hour ago. They’re treating her as a missing person. Detectives talked with neighbors, friends, business associates. They’ve got nothing.”

That made all of us.

I HAD TOLD
Conklin that I was just fine after my beating last night, that I was cleared by the hospital and fit for duty. But even the pressure of buckling my seat belt caused a starburst of pain to radiate out from my ribs, wrap around my back, and shoot up to the top of my head.

I did my best not to wince. Or scream.

We were heading north on Ocean View Boulevard, Conklin saying we should stop off somewhere and grab something to eat.

I said, “Fine,” but I was preoccupied.

I was looking into the side-view mirror, seeing a black BMW crossover holding steady a few car lengths behind us. I thought I’d seen that car parked across the street from the Muller-Khan house through the bedroom windows. And now I was thinking I’d glimpsed it peripherally when I was watching Caroline Khan return to her home.

“Rich, the BMW behind us. The Asian guys who got into my face outside Claire’s office the other night. They were driving a vehicle like that.”

Conklin flicked his eyes to the mirror and said, “OK, we’ll keep our eyes on it,” adding that there might be a few thousand identical cars in this town.

I tried to relax.

Monterey Bay was on our left, with gorgeous houses along the right, as we headed in the direction of downtown Monterey. The view was a fine backdrop for my roiling mind. I was thinking about Ali Muller, wondering where the hell my husband was and what made Joe any different than Ali Muller. I didn’t like where my thoughts were going, so I glanced into the side-view mirror again.

The BMW had dropped back behind a panel van, but it was still keeping up with us when we passed Lovers Point Park and veered right onto the arterial.

“It’s still on our tail,” I said to my partner when we stopped at a light in downtown Pacific Grove. We took a right down a street lined with shops and restaurants, most of them closed on a Sunday, and yes, there it was. The black BMW was two cars behind our taillights.

The Pacific Grove post office was ahead on our right.

“Rich. Pull up over there.”

Conklin braked at the curb, and while the SUV had time and distance enough to slow and cruise past, the driver freaked. He jerked the wheel hard, then hit the gas and shot through the stop sign at the corner.

“Go,” I said to my partner.

As we tore up the asphalt, I radioed dispatch, saying to notify Monterey PD that we were in pursuit of a suspicious vehicle. I gave them the make, the model, and the two numbers I’d been able to grab off the plate.

Conklin switched on the lights and siren and I gripped the armrest. We flew along Lighthouse Avenue, following the BMW onto a residential block called Ridge Road. Ridge T’d into another block of homey houses with front yards, and as Conklin took a two-wheeled turn, I prayed that no dogs, cars, or children would get between us and the SUV.

I switched the mic to bullhorn mode, leaned out the window, and shouted, “This is the police! Pull over.
Now
.”

The BMW kept on going.

THE DRIVER OF
the BMW had the bit in his teeth, and also a solid lead. He sped past the gate in the residents’ lane and switched around on the winding roads, taking us out to 17 Mile Drive, the scenic route that goes around the peninsula and through Carmel.

I was beat up again from the chase, slammed from side to side against the straps, feeling like I’d been thrown into a commercial-grade clothes dryer.

But as soon as we hit the divided two-lane drive, our speed was cut in half. Traffic filled in between the treed divider on our left and the vegetation and backyard fencing on our right.

Our lights and sirens flashed and screamed, and as cars scrambled to get out of our way, we passed Rip Van Winkle Open Space at a jerky forty miles per hour. Conklin was doing a fine job under the circumstances, weaving around the balky cars and the ones that were hugging the edge of the golf course on our right.

It was clear to me that the guy we were chasing knew his way around this town when he pulled hard to the right, cut across scrub terrain, and skirted the Pacific shoreline before clipping a pickup truck at a stop sign and making a breathtaking and hazardous left onto Ocean Road.

Horns blew. Brakes squealed and pileups ensued. I radioed dispatch again, reporting that we were still in pursuit and needed assistance. Forthwith.

The driver of the black BMW took Bird Rock Road, a narrow and winding road that passed through a forested stretch of yet another golf course, and he did it at seventy. Then he broke from the road and cut across the links.

We followed into chaos and panic as golf carts tipped and golfers scattered. Flags were mown down and sand sprayed out from under tires before the BMW got back onto Bird Rock Road, taking a wide loop toward 17 Mile Drive again.

We lost ground on the links.

Our well-used Ford was a repurposed drug dealer’s ride that had been ridden hard for three hundred thousand miles. It was no match for the spanking-new four-wheel-drive crossover. By the time we got out to the drive, there were dozens of cars between us, but I spotted our BMW stuck in the same traffic up ahead.

My partner focused on the road and the BMW buried inside a pack of other vehicles a hundred fifty feet in front of us. We passed Pebble Beach at a crawl, then merged onto Highway 1 heading north.

And now the traffic was so thick that our bleating sirens couldn’t budge it.

Where were the patrol cars we needed to assist us?

Where was the roadblock? The choppers?

Was the driver of the BMW a deadbeat dad or a dope dealer? Or was he one of the men who had attacked me? My gut said he was one of my attackers—and not to let him get away.

I counted three black SUVs in the near distance, any of which could have been the BMW we were chasing, but I couldn’t make out the plates.

We stopped and started and gained ground where we could, but after we passed the Highway 68 exit toward Salinas, I recognized the long gash in the passenger-side door of a BMW crossover cruising at high speed down the off-ramp.

“Ah, shit, Richie, we lost him.”

“Christ,” Conklin said. “Sorry about that, Linds.”

Just then, a couple of cherry-lit Highway Patrol cruisers came up from behind. They weren’t after the BMW. They were signaling us to pull over.

My partner said, “What now?” and cursed as he braked the car on the verge.

We buzzed down our windows, put our hands where they could be clearly seen, and waited for the cops. Gravel crunched under hard-soled boots. A pair of uniformed Sheriff’s Department officers approached our windows.

“We’re on the job,” I said to the one who appeared two yards off my right shoulder. “I’m opening my jacket to show you my badge.”

MONDAY MORNING, I
cracked my eyes open around 3 a.m.

Joe’s side of the bed was stone cold and I heard Julie crying from her room next door. I rolled gingerly out of bed, trying not to press hard on my full-body bruises, and within a couple of minutes, I was cuddling with my daughter in our favorite rocker. I even sang her back to sleep with one of my mother’s Irish lullabies.

Mission accomplished, Martha and I grabbed another couple of hours in the big bed before our nanny rang the bell.

I left Mrs. Godsend in charge of the baby and the border collie, and at 8 a.m., I was having breakfast with Conklin.

The crummy break room looks its best on Monday mornings. It wasn’t Muller-Khan clean, but at least it didn’t look like potbellied pigs had had a party in there.

I made a fresh pot of French Vanilla roast to go with the bag of churros my partner had brought with him. We were soaking up the relative calm while waiting for Brady to get out of a meeting with the brass and the NTSB on the WW 888 disaster.

Conklin had the morning paper and opened it to Cindy’s column on page eight. She’d run the pictures again of the young snoops in room 1418, asking for anyone who recognized either of them to please come forward.

“They’re from out of state,” I said. “Or out of the country. Could be tourists, right? Any other time, we’d have an ID, but…” I didn’t have to say the obvious. The city’s agonized attention was focused on the crash and the ongoing search for answers. Of which there were none.

Richie closed the paper, straightened out the sections, and said, “I’m just going to float something. Blue sky. Don’t jump all over me.”

I said, “Go ahead.”

“It’s about Joe.”

“OK.”

“He’s an airport security consultant, right? He’s working on something related to the crash. That’s what he said in the message he left you.”

“Right.”

“So we see him on the hotel security tape. We see him outside the Chan house. Why? What if Joe had high-level intel that a Michael Chan was involved in terrorism? He finds out that there’s a Michael Chan in Palo Alto. He goes out there and follows Chan back here to the hotel, OK?”

“OK, OK, I’m with you.”

“So Joe’s waiting in the lobby for Chan to leave, say, but instead, we arrive with CSI and Claire, et cetera, heading up to the fourteenth floor. Joe can’t get involved in that, but he drives out to the house in Palo Alto the next day—”

“Why does he do that?”

“He doesn’t know Chan is dead. He’s waiting for him to come home.”

“OK.”

“And he sees our car in front of the house and peels off. Hell, maybe when he looks into the van’s lens, he knows full well that it’s doing surveillance on Chan.”

“So you think Joe’s on assignment to bird-dog Michael Chan?”

“Yeah. Then, two days later, the plane goes down. And now Joe’s got the same passenger manifest Claire’s got. And Michael Chan is on the plane. And he can’t call
you
,” said my partner. “There’s some blackout protocol, whoever he’s working for. They don’t want to be hacked by terrorists.”

“That’s good, Rich. I like it.”

And I did. It was the first meaningful and still innocent explanation for where Joe was and what he was doing.

It made sense.

So why wasn’t I buying it?

Brady appeared in the doorway of the break room.

He gripped both sides of the doorjamb for a couple of seconds, just long enough to say, “We’ve got Alison Muller’s lease car. Brown Lexus. Left in a parking lot at Seattle-Tacoma International. It’s white-glove clean, like it was detailed inside and out. No prints, no trash, no body in the trunk. No nothing. And Muller’s name isn’t on any airline passenger list.

“Thought you’d like to know.”

I CALLED OUT
to Brady as he broke from the doorway.

“Lieu, I need a minute.”

He turned, saying, “A minute’s all I’ve got. They’re waiting for me upstairs.”

He shut the door and joined Conklin and me at the table, moving the paper and the sugar canister aside to make room for his massive arms. Then he looked at me as if to say
Well, what is it?

I thought about what Conklin had said, that if I told Brady about the beatdown, he was going to take me out of the game. But now I had to tell him everything. I took a breath and got started.

“There are some Asian guys dogging me,” I said, “four of them, and I’ve never gotten a good look at any of them. Night before last, I was roughed up on the street—”

Brady got up, opened the door, and shouted across the room to our steady and uncomplaining squad assistant, Brenda, “Tell Jacobi I’m running late.”

When he came back, he was glaring at me. He looked conflicted—furious and worried. He was checking out the scrape on the side of my jaw, which I’d somewhat covered with makeup, and my blackening eyes.

“How bad?”

“I’m good. I went to the ER. I’m bruised, but no broken bones, no internal injuries, no concussion. They kept me overnight and released me in the morning.”

Now he let me have it.

“You got beaten by four guys and you didn’t tell me? What’s wrong with you, Boxer? Don’t you think knowing that would impact decisions I have to make? Do not ever,
ever
keep intel away from me again. And watch your ass. Do not work alone. Understand?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. Really.”

“What did these guys want?”

“I cannot figure it out. One of them shouted at me. Heavy accent. It sounded like ‘Do you know Chan?’ And maybe ‘Who you work for?’ I can’t swear to that, Brady. But they didn’t kill me and they could have. I never got in a punch.”

Conklin was crossing and recrossing his legs, sighing, his body language conveying frustration and maybe suffering along with me.

Brady said, “Tell me all of it.”

I had to do it. I told him there might have been as many as four incidents: the confrontation at the ME’s office, the body slam at the NTSB meeting, then the beatdown outside my apartment building, and yesterday’s cross-country steeplechase in and around Monterey—which might or might not have anything to do with the other three incidents.