Light Before Day (29 page)

The cell phone on Dwight's belt rang. He answered, his face tightening when he heard the person on the other end. He grunted something. The person on the other end spoke again. I recognized Jimmy's voice.

"Not a chance," Dwight said.

Jimmy said something that made Dwight rise slowly to his feet, as if he had been told that an angry ex-wife was about to come charging into the office. He turned his back to me and inclined his head. I could see the back of his neck flex with tension. It was obvious that Jimmy had threatened him. But the threat was taking a while. Probably something about what happens to a homicide detective who recruits a private citizen to write a novel about an open case.

Dwight turned, his eyes on the desk between us, and handed me his cell phone.

"Don't tell him shit," Jimmy said. The fear in his voice surprised me.

"Okay."

"Nate's here. So's your Jeep," he said. "Brenda's waiting outside the station."

"Okay."

As Jimmy spoke, Dwight threw open the door to the office, then took up a position against it, his arms crossed over his chest.

Jimmy said, "If he doesn't let you out of there, you ask him about the unmarked car he had parked outside of my house three days before Samuel Marchand broke into my house with a tire iron. The car he pulled when his superiors got wind he'd assigned it there. You ask him about the phone call he got from Marchands wife. The one where she told him that her husband had read my novel, beat the shit out of her, and bought an Amtrak ticket for LA."

"All right," I said, trying to absorb the flood of incrimination.

"That son of a bitch set a trap for Marchand and I was the bait—and he knows it. If Brenda hadn't come early that night, I would be dead." Jimmy wanted me out of Dwight Zachary's custody. He was more afraid of what Billy Hatfill might have on me than I was. That was saying something.

I told him goodbye and hung up. Without another word, I brushed past Dwight and out the open door. I was several steps away when I heard Dwight say my name. I turned. "My phone, please," he said meekly.

I was still holding his cell phone. I gave it back to him, expecting him to get some last dig in.

Instead he stared down at the floor, his lips pursed, his eyes vacant, his soul sold.

The Cadillac was idling next to the curb, just outside the substation parking lot. Early-morning light misted the massive glass walls of the Pacific Design Center. Brenda appeared as caffeinated and alert as the other early-morning drivers. This wasn't the first time I had been chased home by the sunrise.

As we pulled down the Wiltons' long gravel path, I noticed that my Jeep was nowhere to be seen. Jimmy was waiting for us in the living room. He hadn't changed clothes since the night before, and his hair was rumpled and sweat-matted. Brenda left us alone.

"The bathhouse didn't have any kind of security system," he said, "and all the eyewitnesses fled when Nate started screaming. There was a back door. It was open, of course. The attendant says it was all regulars who came in. Except for Koffler, who arrived a few minutes after Nate did."

"It was a trap," I said. "Koffler got me to wait for him at Hummer Park, then went after Nate."

Jimmy didn't refute this.

"Corey's dead," I finally said, surprised by the lack of emotion in my voice. "There's no way he would have left town without paying Koffler. And the e-mail to Melissa was last-minute, half-assed. That tape took too much work to fire off in a single e-mail. He and Billy must have agreed to do something else with it. But Billy decided he didn't want to."

"You think Billy killed Corey?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And Scott Koffler? You think Billy killed him, too?"

"Yes."

"Too bad we've got no evidence that Koffler and Billy knew the other was involved."

"We've got no evidence that they didn't."

"True," he said quietly. "And I agree with you. I think Corey leaving town without paying Koffler is stupid. Beal stupid." He centered me in his weary gaze. "That's why Corey killed him."

"Bullshit."

"Is it?" he asked. "You just skip over the most relevant questions, don't you? Who stood to profit from Koffler's murder? The guy who had hired him. We know that wasn't Billy Hatfill."

"Koffler's body was posed, Jimmy. He had a towel around his waist and his hands were folded across his chest. Earlier this year, my friend Paul Martinez died of a drug overdose in a bathhouse. They found him flat on his back, with a towel around his waist and his hands folded across his chest.

"Last Saturday, when Billy first came to me, he asked me if I still thought about Paul. Billy knew the guy as well, you see? Billy was at the funeral. Paul's friends were all making inappropriate speeches about what a fabulous drug addict he was, in front of the guy's entire family. None of whom knew he was gay or a drug addict. I walked out. Billy told me that I made a lot of people
angry
when I did that. I got the sense that Billy was one of them."

Jimmy looked at me hard. I could practically hear the gears working in his brain, and then I saw his thoughts clouded by worry or sympathy. "Get some sleep," he said. "There's a bedroom off the living room."

"Where's my Jeep? You said it was here."

Jimmy leaned on his cane so his spine was straight where he sat. "When you wake up, you're going to call Billy Hatfill and ask him to meet you on neutral territory. Brenda and I will follow you. He wants you to find out what he has on you as much as you want to know. You're going to play that. You're going to tell him what you've figured out and see where that gets you."

I glared at him. His gaze didn't waver.

"In the meantime, your Jeep will remain at an undisclosed location and the two security guards will prevent you from leaving this property." He gave me a few seconds to absorb this.

"Until when?" I asked.

"Until I say so!" he snapped. He got to his feet and smoothed the flaps of his shirt as if we had just concluded a routine business meeting. "You are not setting foot on Martin Cale's yacht.

I don't care if it ends up in my swimming pool. You're not setting foot on it."

He limped off into the kitchen. I was too exhausted to rebel against the fact that I had been turned into a prisoner. When I looked up, I saw Brenda's shadow retreat from the top of the stairs. I heard the door to the master bedroom close a few seconds later.

The guest bedroom had a queen-size bed with a square black leather headboard. The heavy velvet curtains had been drawn, but a thin sliver of gray light fell across Nate's sleeping form. I stripped down to my underwear and crawled into bed beside him.

Brenda Wilton had told me that I needed to find faith. I tried to replay her words, in her gentle voice, over and over again, hoping that slumber would follow. It almost did. But then I was roused out of my near sleep by the wet sounds of Nate crying into his pillow. I put an arm around him and pulled his body against mine. He fell asleep again.

I felt my feet hit the floor. I walked into the living room. I opened the door to the liquor cabinet. Less than an hour before, it had been fully stocked. Now it was completely empty. I remembered how Jimmy had gone into the kitchen and waited for me to leave. In the kitchen, I looked in the wastebasket and saw that Jimmy had poured out every bottle so quietly that he hadn't made a sound I could hear from just down the hall.

A week earlier, I would have pulled out one of the bottles and tried to shake the last drops down my throat. I might even have hurled the empty bottle through the kitchen window in a blind rage. But now I returned to the bedroom, my limbs as light as if I had downed a stiff drink in one swallow. Being cared for was starting to feel less new and less frightening.

I feel asleep within minutes.

My cell phone awakened me. It was ringing inside my crumpled jeans, several feet away from the bed. It was a little past noon and Nate was curled into the fetal position with a sheet-covered fist in front of his mouth and a lax expression that told me his dreams were providing him with a nice escape. My keys rested on the nightstand, but my Jeep key had been removed from the ring.

"Did you hear about Scott Koffler?" Billy Hatfill asked me.

I groped for the right response and missed.

"He was murdered," he said mildly, as if being murdered was a minor indignity, like shitting your pants. In the background, I could hear the chirping anchors of some noon news broadcast. I figured Billy was calling me to gloat. "Are you there?" he asked.

"I'm here. Let's meet. How about an hour from now? Lunch, maybe?"

"No."

The curtness of his response set my pulse racing. He hadn't taken the bait because he knew it was bait. It was a small confirmation of Jimmy's theory.

"Everett will be at your place around nine," he said. "Wear that leather jacket of yours. It's colder out on the water."

"I don't think I'm going to be able to make it."

He fell silent. He didn't lower the volume on the television.

"Cale won't be willing to reschedule."

"That's a shame," I said.

I listened for the sound of the receiver cracking in his grip. I heard him lower the volume on the television. Nate rolled over in bed and blinked at me. I turned my back to him.

"Who are you and what have you done with Adam Murphy?" Billy asked. He was struggling to control his voice. I remembered Jimmy's instructions from earlier that morning: Give Billy something. Let him know what I was onto and see how he reacted.

"Ever heard of the Vanished Three?" I asked him.

No response.

"Terrance Davidson. Roger Vasquez. Ben Clamp. I heard they spent some time up at your place. Back when it was Joseph's place."

"They did," Billy said. "For two years I've been waiting for someone to ask me about those guys. I guess I shouldn't be surprised it was you. What would you like to know?"

"Were you aware that they were bringing teenage boys back to the house, then drugging them so Joseph could rape them?"

"I take it one of these
boys
told you this. Did you bother to ask him why he didn't press charges?"

"I can set up a meeting with one of those boys," I retorted. "You can ask him yourself."

Billy breathed into the phone. "You never told me your sister was a schoolteacher," he finally said. "It's Candace, right? I like how she hyphenated her maiden name and her married name.

Very New South. Candace Murphy-Bergeron. How old are the kids that she teaches at—"

"Billy—"

"Oh, never mind. It's right here on the website. Fourth and fifth grade math. Does she ever check the e-mail address they have for her on here? I should drop her a line. Tell her what a little investigator you've turned into."

"Corey gave you something on me. What was it?"

He made a small moan in his throat that sounded both piteous and gratified. "You know me, Adam. There aren't many things I can't bring myself to say. This is one of them. Besides, he didn't
give
me anything. That makes it sound like I asked for it."

"What happened?"

"I told you when you came to my house," he said. "He wanted to teach you a lesson. He thought your mother's death wasn't enough."

I made myself wait for him to say more.

"Everett will be at your apartment at nine o'clock." He hung up.

I found Jimmy sitting on the terrace in his robe with a cup of coffee. I recounted my conversation with Billy Hatfill.

"It's a shame you won't be going," he said after I finished. I waited for him to say more. "I've got some new DVDs in there if you and Nate want to watch anything."

Later that afternoon, Nate and I were in the living room working on our fourth hour of daytime television. I had spent most of the time studying the two security guards as they made their rounds outside.

"I need to go," Nate said for the third time that day.

"It's not safe."

"Thanks, Captain Obvious. I'm being held prisoner by a weird old guy with a limp."

"He's a very famous novelist."

"I don't read novels," he said. He got to his feet. "This is stupid. I'm leaving."

I grabbed his arm. "Nate, out of the three people who took a ride in Scott Kofner's BMW last Wednesday, you're the only one who's still alive."

He pulled his arm free and sank down onto the leather sofa. "Last night was a Godshot," he finally said.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's when your Higher Power intervenes in your fife for your own good," he said. "I was going to use. I never got the chance."

I studied him to see if he was for real. He was. "That's a good way to look at it."

Jimmy poked his head in and gave us a strained smile. "You sure you guys don't want to watch one of those movies?" he asked.

"Do hot guys fuck in them?" Nate asked.

"You're charming," Jimmy said.

He left. Nate crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at the television, as if the cast of
General Hospital
needed a stern talking-to.

At five o'clock, the evening news started. Nate changed the channel, probably so we wouldn't have to see Scott Koffler's face. With elaborate casualness, I got to my feet and patted Nate on the back of the head, mumbled something about being back in a minute, and went in the guest bedroom, shutting the door behind me.

The room's window looked out the back of the house, into a curtain of dense foliage. At five-fifteen, one of the guards took a smoke break behind the Cadillac, leaving the other to do rounds along the perimeter of the property by himself. As soon as the active guard was out of sight, I opened the window and dropped to all fours in the dirt.

I crawled through beds of ferns until I was in the canopy of eucalyptus branches. At the fence, I hooked my belt around one of the spikes at the top, pulled on both ends, and tried several vertical steps until I could get my hands around the spikes themselves. Once I did, I pulled myself up—too hard and too fast.

One of the spikes caught between two of my ribs. I thought it might tear my stomach open.

Then I lost my left grip. In what seemed like one motion, my ass hit the other side of the fence and I fell headfirst to the gravel shoulder on the other side, thudding directly against the bruises on my face courtesy of Elena Castillo and Philip Percy. Then I was on my feet, limping and struggling for breath as I jogged off in the direction of Outlook Drive, where my friend Rod Peters had agreed to meet me on the condition that I was sober.