The Crime Writer

I gestured at the manuscript pages in my lap, giving myself an extra beat so my voice wouldn't reveal the adrenaline pounding through my veins. "I came by to give it one more shot, see if you'd take a look at some pages for me. I was just reviewing "

He shifted, his arm moving, and I came within an instant of smashing his face with a Motorola-fortified fist. What swung into view, though, was not a weapon but a roll of silver electrical tape, which he spun absentmindedly around a finger.

"Drew, I'm just too overwhelmed right now. I can't help you. Or see you. This is a really bad time. An impossible time."

For all the heinousness of his actions, he was speaking the truth. He certainly looked overwhelmed, worn down by grief and dismay. As if his panic bell had been rung so often so he no longer registered the clangor inside his head. Like me he'd arrived here by desperation, choosing the less awful of two scenarios. From his face I'd say he'd had his share of second thoughts.

"Right. Okay. Sorry to bug you." I tugged the gearshift into drive. "See you later."

"See you, Drew," he said softly.

I pulled away, watching him in the rearview. He stood on the curb, staring after me, then started for the house, his shoulders stooped as though his thoughts were pulling him downward.

I turned the corner, pulled over, and dialed. "Detective Unger, please."

A few moments later, Cal picked up.

"It's Drew. I'm around the corner from Lloyd Wagner's house. I need you to get here now and bring the guns. Lloyd's got a Volvo with the right dent, repainted in brown. His wife has leukemia. There are only two matches for her marrow type in Los Angeles. One of them was Kasey Broach."

I heard wood creak as Cal sat down. "Was the other match Genevieve?"

"No," I said. "Some girl named Sissy Ballantine."

"Did you say Sissy Ballantine?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Cal's voice got tight. "An Amber Alert just hit my desk. Ballantine was snatched outside her house in Culver City a few hours ago. Neighbor saw a guy wrestle her into a white van."

I threw the Highlander into park, turned off the engine.

Cal said, "Stay put. Do not approach that house. We're on our way."

"Get over here."

"Stay out of the house. Promise me, Drew."

I snapped the phone shut, grabbed the tire iron from the trunk, and headed back down the street.

Chapter 43

As silently as possible, I approached through the neighboring hedges. The garage door had been lowered, and I could hear from behind it the screech of tape being stripped from a roll. Slowing my breathing, I eased up on the window at the side of the garage, wading through a scented hedge of juniper. A dusty set of venetians guarded the glass, but where the stiff blinds had been tweaked down, I could see into the dim interior.

Lloyd's waist and legs protruded from the back of the van. At his feet a heap of plastic drop cloth. He emerged, roll of tape in his mouth, X-acto knife in his hand. Judging from the unused material, he was on the tail end of the job.

I withdrew, peering over my shoulder at intervals. He'd left the kitchen door unlocked, and I slipped inside. Dirty dishes, crumbs, and empty jars had overtaken the counters I'd cleaned just days before, a half-eaten burrito resting atop the rubber guard of the garbage disposal Lloyd doing his best to keep doing.

Tire iron swinging at my side, I squared off with the dark hall and the seam of light under the bedroom door at the end. Beneath the nervous ticking of the kitchen clock and the grandfather's stately tocking from the living room, I could make out the wheeze of medical equipment. I started back, the photos of Lloyd and Janice hung at intervals providing a journey through their married lives. The wedding picture, the two of them beaming and clutching like prom dates. The bumper of their Gremlin, trailing toilet paper and tin cans, Best of Luck! frosted in cursive on the rear window. Poolside in Hawaii, paperbacks splayed on lounge chairs, fruit-bedecked cocktails raised. I was aware of my footfall on the slightly warped floorboards, my breath firing in my chest, that strip of light growing ever closer. Threads of gray had crept into Janice's hair by the time they were snapped before El Capitan in Yosemite. Jovial smile lines textured their faces as they held hands across a wrought-iron patio table in a Venetian piazza. Most of the pictures had caught them looking at each other rather than at the lens, as if they couldn't help themselves, as if they had a secret from the rest of the lonely world.

I reached the bedroom door and set my hand on the bulbous antique knob, the white-noise hum of the medical equipment beyond drowning out the clocks, my thoughts. In hackneyed narrative tradition, I couldn't help but recall standing outside another door, fearful of entering.

Before I lost my nerve, I pushed through into the room.