Never Fear (15 page)

“As is my right, I'll wait for my lawyer to arrive before I answer—”

Hazzard cut him off. “What did you do to your wife?”

My father looked away from his questioner and down at his hands.

“In one year she made three trips to the emergency room. Why was that?”

The camera zoomed in for a close-up of his face as question after question began to fly.

“What did you do to her?”

He said nothing.

“Did you beat her?”

Silence.

“You twisted her arm, causing bruising . . .”

The list kept growing.

“You hit her . . . you choked her by the neck . . . you threw her against a wall . . .”

He didn't react. It was as if he had stepped into another room and was no longer hearing his interrogator's words. My father closed his eyes and began to lower his head.

“What did you do to your daughter, Mr. Manning? ”

My father froze.

“Your daughter?”

He slowly lifted his head and glared into the lens.

“What did you do to her?”

The blackness of his eyes seemed barely able to contain the rage let loose inside. And then just as quickly it seemed to pass.

“I loved her,” he said softly.

The questions continued but I didn't hear them. I don't know what else, if anything, he said, or what details he was asked. A minute passed, another, maybe ten, I wasn't sure. When I looked at the screen again, there was only static. Harrison walked over and turned it off.

“I'm not . . .” I started to say but couldn't finish the sentence. I got up from the chair and walked back out into the cool night. Where there had been lights from ships out on the ocean, now there was only darkness. Harrison stepped up behind me but didn't say a word.

“I think I missed some of that,” I said. “Did you hear it all?”

“Yes.”

“Did they . . . Did my father give any more answers after he spoke of me?”

“No, he didn't say a word. Hazzard kept asking questions until Gavin arrived.”

Harrison picked up the throw and placed it over my shoulders again.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I don't think a child should ever hear a parent in that situation.”

“Do you believe him . . . my father?”

“That he loved you . . . yes, I believe that.”

“What about the rest?”

Harrison shook his head. His hands pulled me against his chest and I could feel his heart beating against my back.

“I don't know,” Harrison said.

“When we were on Martel where Victoria vanished, I had this sense that . . .”

“What?”

“I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like a frightened little girl instead of a Homicide lieutenant.”

“You don't have to prove anything to me,” Harrison said.

“Standing on that sidewalk I felt a hand close on my mouth. . . . I think it's possible I was my father's first victim.”

I felt Harrison's chest rise against my back as he took a breath.

“He denied hurting you.”

“He said he loved his daughter; that's not the same thing.”

I started to turn to look at Harrison but I couldn't.

“And if he did something to his own daughter, is it such a leap for him to have murdered three women?”

A gust of warm wind blowing out toward the ocean swept across us. For a brief second the air held the scent of jasmine, but it didn't last.

“You should get some sleep,” Harrison said.

“How?” I whispered.

I reached for Harrison's hand but it had already slipped from my shoulder.

20

The sound of gunshots jarred me out of sleep. It had been the same all night long. Four quick pops in succession, again and again and again. There was nothing else to the dream. Not Lopez's face, no muzzle flashes, no circles of blood on his shirt.

I was lying on the daybed wrapped in the blanket Harrison had placed over my shoulders. The light of dawn was just breaking in the east. I realized the sound I had thought was another gunshot was the ringing of my cell phone in the pocket of my jacket. I pulled the blanket around me and answered.

“This is Frank Cross,” a man said. “You came to my office.”

It took a moment to connect the voice with the investigator on the edge of the high desert.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Have you looked at the tape?”

“Yes.”

“It's not the whole story. There's more, much more. Can you meet me?”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Yes, I can meet you.”

“How far are you from the beach?”

“I'm in Santa Monica.”

“At the bottom of Sunset there's beach parking. Park there and start walking south on the sand. When I see that you're alone, I'll meet you.”

I started to ask a question but he was gone. I gathered my things and walked into Harrison's bedroom. In the half-light I could just make out the contours of his body under the white sheet. I started to take a step toward the bed to tell him that I was leaving, but stopped and left him to sleep.

It was just past five-thirty when I pulled into the parking lot at PCH and Sunset. A marine layer of clouds had shrouded the ocean in thick fog. There were half a dozen cars parked in the lot. Joggers were moving up and down the running path next to the beach.

I stepped out and walked to the edge of the lot overlooking the water. The air was heavy with the scent of brine and decaying matter. To the north the beach looked deserted, covered in places by a layer of drying kelp and tiny orange crustaceans that had been caught on the beach by the tide. To the south a few figures either walked or jogged along the expanse of dark gray water. I stepped over the parking barrier, slipped off my shoes, and began walking south.

I walked for ten minutes, stopping every few to look around, but there was no sign of Cross. I tried to replay Cross's words in my head, thinking I might have missed something, but each time I did I drifted instead to the night before, the touch of Harrison's hands on my shoulders, the beating of his heart against my back.

By the time I had followed him back inside he was asleep in bed. I sat and watched him—the rise and fall of his chest, the line of his leg under the sheet, the bend of his wrist and the curve of his fingers. Half a dozen times I stood up from the chair to slip into bed next to him, and each time I stopped myself, a voice in my ear whispering, “Don't go there.” So I just watched him a little longer, telling myself that was enough. And each time I knew it wasn't.

Half a mile down the beach several figures were standing in a tight group staring at the water's edge. I picked up my pace, and as I drew closer I saw they were looking at something lying in the surf. Fifty yards out I could see a figure being rolled by a small wave.

As I reached the group, one of them turned to me.

“It's dead,” the woman said.

It was the remains of a large seal partly wrapped in kelp. A large open wound was visible on its back where a shark had struck. One of its big dark eyes stared ahead like a piece of glass.

I glanced at the other faces looking at the seal but Cross wasn't there. Farther down the sand the beach was deserted. To the north I saw a lone woman jogger. The others looking at the seal began to drift away and I waited for a few more minutes for any sign that Cross would appear. At six o'clock I started walking the mile back, trying to guess what he wanted to talk about on a deserted beach at dawn, and why he hadn't come.

I reached the parking lot and brushed the sand off my feet. There were a few more cars in the lot than when I had arrived. A surfer stood looking at the water as if he knew something the rest of us didn't.

I got in my car and sat looking at the gray water disappearing into the fog offshore. I had never understood people who found peace looking at the ocean. It always made me nervous—a repository of secrets. Not unlike the body of a homicide victim. You can understand how they died. You can do all the work of a cop and know the precise angle of entry, the caliber of the round, why the blood splatter had this pattern as opposed to another, or which blow, or stab wound, caused the fatal injury. But you can never know what they saw, or how fast they were breathing in panic, or what or who they thought about the moment before their death.

As I put the key in the ignition, a hand reached in the open window and took hold of the wheel. Cross was dressed in sweat clothes, the hood of a sweatshirt pulled over his head. His eyes, or rather the look in them, didn't appear to belong to the same person I had met in his office. There was panic in his eyes, maybe even fear. He walked over and sat on the guardrail overlooking the ocean and I followed.

I sat on the railing and waited for him to tell me why we were there. For nearly a minute he just stared out at the water.

“I knew Victoria Fisher,” he said. “She worked in my office.”

I wasn't certain whether he had forgotten that I knew this, or if there was more he was hinting at.

“I know that,” I said.

Cross turned and looked at me from under the hood of his sweatshirt. He looked as if he hadn't slept in days.

“You have to understand the risk I'm taking, how you could be putting yourself, your career, at risk.”

“You said on the phone that the tape wasn't the entire story.”

He nodded and waited for a jogger to pass before he continued. “What do you know about me?”

“You were a cop, then a prosecutor, and now you're working as an investigator for the DA.”

“On the edge of oblivion,” he said. “Does that seem like an odd career path to you?”

I nodded. “I did wonder.”

“I was a rising star in the office. There was talk that I might be the next DA of Los Angeles. That's a long way from Palmdale.”

“And then a law clerk in your office was murdered by the River Killer.”

“So goes the official account.”

“What's the unofficial?” I asked.

“Two days before she died, Victoria Fisher was putting some court briefs together. Part of that day she spent in records. I think she found something that was a great threat to some very powerful people and she was killed for it, and it was made to look like the work of the River Killer.”

“How do you know she found something?”

“She told me about it the day of her death.”

“What did she find?”

Cross shook his head. “She was going to meet me the next day before work. She was killed that night.”

“And you have no idea what it was she found?”

“California is the fifth largest economy in the world, Los Angeles its center, City Hall the keeper of its secrets. I've come close. For eighteen years I've been looking, and every time I sensed the truth was near, I was pushed away, my career in shambles.”

“You have any proof of this?”

He shook his head. “Not a single document, no witnesses. Just the silence of a dead law student. Perfect in its conception.”

“And difficult to believe,” I said.

Cross looked at me and nodded. “When I was in uniform my patrol partner was Len Hazzard.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Why did Hazzard go on to become an elite detective in Robbery Homicide while I ended up chasing down bail skips and lizards in the high desert?”

“There could be any number of reasons,” I said.

“True enough.”

“If this is as complete a conspiracy as you say, how do you know I'm not a part of it?” I said.

“You're not LAPD.”

“There are other agencies you could talk to. Why trust me?”

“Because someone in another agency isn't the daughter of the only suspect ever questioned in the murder.”

The intricate circles and intersecting orbits of Danny Fisher's madness seemed for a moment like the simple lines of a road map, drawn with perfect clarity.

“You know who I am?”

“I was a good cop, an even better lawyer. We both want the same thing, Lieutenant. The truth.”

“Do you know about Danny Fisher?”

Cross pulled back the hood of his sweatshirt and nodded.

“He's been missing for four days,” I said.

“He's a mixed-up kid. It's not the first time he's run off; that could be about anything.”

“Do you believe my father killed Victoria Fisher?” He shook his head. “You tell me.”

“I don't know,” I said.

Twenty yards offshore a pod of dolphins broke the surface with their dorsal fins, chasing a school of small fish that began leaping out of the water, trying to escape their attack. Cross watched them intently for a moment in silence.

“They can leap into the air where they can't breathe, or they can stay and be eaten. Not much of a choice.”

I wondered if he was talking about the fish, or himself, or even my father. Cross pulled the hood of his sweatshirt back over his head and stood up.

“Help me,” I said.

Cross just stared out at the gray water. “I can't even help myself, Lieutenant.”

He started down toward the beach.

“Danny Fisher told his grandmother that he was getting messages from someone about his mother's death. He called that person his ‘dark angel,'” I said.

Cross stopped and looked back at me.

“Danny makes things up. Be smart, Lieutenant. Walk away from it, as fast as you can.”

I turned at the sound of screeching tires and a blaring car horn on PCH. When I looked back, Cross was down on the beach, running south along the water, disappearing into the fog.