and irony-chasing twentysomethings before nine, then giving way to business types grabbing a midnight bite after their morning calls to Beijing and Shanghai. The food was surprisingly good for what was essentially a theme bar, good enough that even Chinese expats were known to eat here, though maybe they came for the irony too.
She stayed low in the driver’s seat, eyeing Barbara’s car, the same one the detective had once shared with Jeff Howe.
Jeff. Even the name induced a pang of guilt. The very worst thing you can do, she knew, with a man like that was to offer false hope. In fact, that was not the very worst thing. The very worst thing was to give him false hope and somehow become obligated towards him. She had managed to do both.
She had been driving back from the Padilla house, still reeling from the discovery that Rosario belonged in that category the California bureaucrats called ‘white Hispanic’ – that she, like Abigail, was a blonde. It was hardly conclusive but, coupled with the fact that Rosario, like Abigail, had no history of intravenous drug use, it should at least be of interest to the police. It might be a lead. Maddy had covered enough homicides to know that the mere possibility that they were looking for a man who had killed a similar-looking woman in a similar way would be worth checking. At the very least she should telephone Detective Barbara Miller, pass on this nugget of information – which might or might not be of relevance – and then she could leave it to them. Only then did Maddy spell out to herself what that would mean: that her beloved baby sister was the victim of a serial killer.
She had pulled over at the next rest-stop, then dug into the pocket of her jeans to extract the already crumpled business card Miller had given her when they met. The conversation had been short, the bare minimum, Maddy suspected, that would allow Miller to check the box marked ‘family support’.
Shit.
The card was the standard one, giving the general number of the LAPD switchboard. But Miller had scribbled a number on the reverse. At the time, Maddy had assumed that this would be the detective’s personal cellphone number. Except now she looked and could see that Miller had simply written on the back the same switchboard number that was printed on the front.
Maddy wondered if that was generic unhelpfulness, designed to keep any outsider at bay, or whether this was bespoke bullshit, tailormade for her. Perhaps Miller feared journalistic meddling in her investigation, but she was denying Maddy the treatment all other victims of such a serious crime would regard as their right.
Madison had let her head fall into her hands. She was so unbearably tired that the interior of the car was revolving around her. But she had to pass this information on.
The LAPD switchboard was the twenty-first-century labyrinth of the ancients: no one got out of there alive. If she was to make contact with Miller, she would need her cell.
She got out of the car, so that she could pace around it. There on the cracked asphalt, standing by a tall weed that had grown through a crack, was a trucker, baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, taking a break. He nodded in her direction. She turned away, aware that a return nod could well be interpreted as a friendliness she did not mean and that could only delay her.
She realized what it looked like. The windows of her car open, Maddy pacing around in her skinny jeans and tight sweater, albeit one with a hole below the armpit. That was the trouble with being a woman her age and not physically repulsive: you had actively to signal your lack of interest and non-availability. Otherwise any activity that for a man would be regarded as normal, human behaviour – including taking a break from driving to get a breath of fresh air – would be read as a come-on.
The trucker was still smiling, refusing to take the cue and look away. Had this man appeared before or after she got here? Was it possible he had turned off the freeway when she had? Because she had? Had he been there the last twenty minutes, watching her make her phone calls, waiting for her?
Suddenly she was seized by a feeling she had not known before, a kind of vicarious fear. She was imagining the terror that must have grasped her sister in her final moments, the fright that must have shaken her as she understood that she was about to die. Had Abigail too been pursued by a man like this? Had he followed her home, chased her up the stairs and, just when she thought she was safe and that she had eluded him, had he caught up with her, jamming his hand in the door just before it was slammed shut, shoving it open and forcing his way inside her apartment? And then …
Maddy realized she was breathing too heavily. Audibly. She looked over towards the baseball cap and, to her relief, saw that he was back in his cab, about to set off. Clasping the top of the car door, she allowed herself three more deep breaths and resolved to get a grip.
And that’s when she turned to Jeff.
‘I need Barbara Miller’s cell,’ she said, her voice tight and short. Striving to give him no more misplaced encouragement, she sounded terse and somehow entitled instead. She took the number and could almost visualize the debt that was mounting between them.
He told her that Miller was clamming up, that she was nervous about him leaking any information on the investigation to a journalist. Madison needed to be very careful with whatever he told her, otherwise he would be exposed and compromised. It had to stay private, just between them.
Then he asked her to hold, returning sixty seconds later. That same hint of eagerness – of a man handing over the quid in expectation of the quo – in his voice.
‘I’ve just checked on the tracking system here. Barbara and Steve are at the Great Hall bar, downtown,’ he said.
‘I know that place. What are they doing there?’
‘It seems a girl matching Abigail’s description was seen there last night. With a young white male; possibly left with him. There’s a witness who says they heard an argument between them. There’s CCTV footage apparently. Miller and Agar are looking at it right now.’
So here she was, waiting in her car across the street. She worked through her options. Dash in, wade through the throng and find the security room, interrupting Barbara and Steve while they viewed the CCTV pictures? Disaster. They’d have her down as a stalker, shadowing their investigation, making it impossible to do their jobs. She could write the official complaint they would make herself. Besides, she would glean no information that way. They, and whoever was showing them the footage, would immediately clam up, demanding she tell them why and how the hell she had tracked them down there. Jeff would be disciplined – and would never tell her anything again.
And yet whatever it was they had just found out, she needed to know.
Waiting. Never her first instinct, but the only viable course for now. She would watch and wait.
Ten minutes went by, then another five and finally she could see movement by the door that suggested people coming out rather than in. Steve emerged first, talking into his cellphone. Barbara followed. Maddy sunk still lower into her seat, regretting that she was not wearing a top with a hood.
She watched the pair of detectives drive away, their vehicle unmarked, save for a white-on-black ‘W’ on the licence plate: the symbol that connoted permission to drive every day of the week. Maddy counted to ten, pressed the three digits that would keep her hidden from caller ID software, then dialled the number she had already searched and loaded onto her phone.
Three rings, then: ‘Great Hall of the People.’ The accent American, the voice male, young, bored.
Involuntarily, she closed her eyes, less to steel herself for
