City of Fire (52 page)

“She was a fan. She probably heard that Holt was back in town. That he had a new band.”

Rhodes nodded. “She went to see him playing somewhere and wore the necklace. I’ll bet she did it on purpose.”

Lena thought it over. When Holt saw the necklace, he would have been stunned. He’d found the girl when no one else could—the girl David Gamble had left with on the night he was murdered. He called Lena to tell her about it. He must have pursued Kristin and confronted her in some way. Somehow Novak found out and realized he needed to do something. Time was running out.

When Nikki Brant was murdered, Novak read the crime scene as a serial case and took a chance. He stole a sample of Martin Fellows’s semen, tossed it in the cooler with his Diet Cokes, and waited. When James Brant was cleared, he started planning his trip to that place where he could sleep
with both eyes closed. He bought the CD Lena would find in Holt’s bedroom.

But he was drinking again. Beside himself.

He drove out to Holt’s place. He found Molly McKenna waiting in bed and assumed she went with the furniture. He knew what he had to do and he did it as quickly as he could. He committed a brutal double homicide thinking he’d found a way out. When he took a deep breath and realized it didn’t add up, when Lena began to suspect Rhodes, Novak rolled with it. Improvising on the bottle she found in the fridge and grabbing at straws.

She looked at Rhodes, sitting on the couch adjusting his sling. The thought occurred to her that Novak’s next move would have been to take Rhodes out. Make it look like another suicide. As if Rhodes were involved just as Lena said and couldn’t handle it.

A memory surfaced. Her conversation with Molly McKenna’s brother that pointed directly to Rhodes.

“Why did you threaten McKenna’s brother?”

“The kid talked?”

She nodded. “Yeah. He told me everything.”

Rhodes flashed a grin. “Once Jane Doe was ID’d, I read it the same way you did. It was confirmation that the crime scene was a hoax. Holt wouldn’t take himself out over someone he didn’t know. I saw it, you saw it, the doer had to see it, too. Romeo couldn’t have been good for that crime scene. I was trying to buy a little time before you found out. I needed to keep you out of the mix. I even tried getting you thrown off the case. I knew it was impossible because of your brother. I knew you wouldn’t stop, but I had to try.”

“What about my brother’s murder book? Your statement’s missing.”

“What statement?”

“Bernhardt told me you were there.”

“Early. I met your brother for a beer and left before the place opened. I always felt guilty about it. I told Martin and Drabyak that I was there, but guess it wasn’t worth writing down. That’s what I wanted to tell you the night you ran
away from me in the garage. Bernhardt told me what you said, and I couldn’t live with that. I wanted to tell you what I’m telling you now.”

She was thinking about the cigarette butts she’d found in her planter. She was gazing at Rhodes’s face and witnessing the birth of yet another truth. Her mind clicked back to the night Martin Fellows attacked her. The look on his face when he saw Rhodes out by the pool. Fellows had been watching her house and knew something she didn’t. It hadn’t been Fellows sleeping on the chaise longue. Instead, it was Rhodes, working a twenty-four-hour day until his body wore out. Fellows knew he had his witness because Rhodes was trying to protect her.

A moment passed. The afterglow settling in.

Rhodes got up and crossed the room to the door. Lena followed him down the steps to the street. The sun had darkened, the neighborhood concealed in a blanket of clouds. In the distance she could hear the C-130s flying in slow and dirty, just above stall speed, dumping their loads of fire retardant in the hills and pulling out. When she turned, she found Rhodes staring at her. A lot like he had the other night. She knew in an instant that he wanted her, but the timing was off again. Whatever might happen wouldn’t happen today.

He got in his car and rolled the window down. He flashed a melancholy smile and gave her another look.

“Nobody’s gonna like the news,” he said. “The department’s about to give one of their own an official send-off. An RHD detective who died in the line of duty.”

“You think we can trust them with the evidence?”

“It’s not just you anymore,” he said. “It’s you and me.”

“I’ll make copies just in case, then head over to the lab.”

“And I’ll find Barrera and give him a heads-up. I’ll call you on your cell.”

He waved at her and drove off. She followed the car until it evaporated in the haze.

You and me.

She didn’t want to dwell on it because she knew that it would cost them something. Lena would be the messenger.
Rhodes would pay the same price for pushing Holt’s suicide through the system and making the new chief look like a fool at his press conference.

As she turned and looked back at Novak’s apartment, her brother’s murder began playing in her head. She could see Novak following his sixteen-year-old daughter to the house. Snapping as he watched David have his way with her in bed. Firing his gun in an emotional frenzy, then cleaning the place up and ditching the body like a piece of trash.

She could see her brother trying to hold on until the very end. Novak firing a second shot into the empty car and dressing the crime scene with gunshot residue.

She was thinking about blowback and partnerships and what the truth could do to a soul. She was staring into the abyss and realizing that at some level she made it. She closed the case and survived.