chapter twenty-one

Hills in the distance were etched in indigo against a red-orange dawn as I left the morgue. By the time I unlocked the door to my motel room, the robo-maid had come and gone, leaving a stale mint on the pillow and a trail of dust in its wake. But sleep wasn’t an option.

I started to sort through the box of Frank’s effects, jettisoning things that were scorched or bloodied beyond repair. No point in having Ruth see all that. Frank had his case file for Lee on flash-dot, the fingernail-sized portable memory chip. I kept that for a detailed read later when I was less exhausted.

It took me three attempts to open Frank’s phone. On the third try I entered the year of his anniversary as a password. Bingo. Flipping through the photos, I spotted lots of current family shots and a few old pictures, including one of Frank, Ruth and their daughter Susie at Disneyland. Frank’s unlined face looked so happy—and young. Of course, I knew Frank hadn’t sprung from the womb at age fifty. But in my head, he was always gruff and middle-aged. I never pictured him as a guy my age.

Shit-shit-shit. I carefully tucked the phone back in the box and tidied up the package for delivery to Ruth later that day.

I turned on the local news at 7:30. Crimecast was already running the story.

“Detective Edward Piedmont,” the news reader said, “known to many for his starring role in apprehending the Sphinx Serial Killer who terrorized the city of L.A. and Ventura County five years ago . . .”

The media had already released my name. Protestors would be doxing me soon. Or worse. I changed the channel. And the hits kept coming.

“. . . Piedmont, put on administrative duty for shooting middle school honor student Paco Ramirez two weeks ago, was involved in a hair-raising auto accident that took the lives of two people earlier today.”

“Shit.”

“The other surviving driver in the accident,” said the newscaster, “is reality T.V. star Jordan Huang from the show Xe.

Jordan Huang turned out to be the texting driver of the BMW. Great. Celebrity involvement meant even more scrutiny. A different face spoke, but it was the same story on the next channel. Then they cut to aerial video footage of the drive along PCH just prior to the accident.

“How the hell?” I blinked at the footage. I didn’t remember any traffic cams on that part of PCH.

The ugly face of Ira Natterman popped on screen next. “Detective Piedmont was suspended for reckless behavior in the Ramirez case,” the civil rights attorney said. “And not two weeks later he’s involved in this crash? Why is this murderous officer still on the force and not behind bars?”

Murderous. As usual Natterman had his facts wrong, but it didn’t matter. I was responsible—for Frank.

I couldn’t listen anymore. Picking up my jacket, I drove back to the crash site.

The acrid smell of burnt brush hung in the air, and the skid marks and oily residue still painted the tarmac like some crazy Jackson Pollack.

With my car parked on the shoulder of PCH, I verified what memory’d told me. Unlike virtually every corner of L.A. and the more crowded areas of Oxnard, there were no traffic-cams installed on this thinly populated stretch of PCH north of the city.

I scrambled up the hillside. Perched high over the Pacific Coast Highway, I had a good view of the whole area. But there was no way anyone standing anywhere here had the bird’s eye view that matched the news clip. It had to have been taken by a drone or chopper-cam.

I checked messages. Jo had left two. She picked up on the second ring.

“I’m flying up north,” she said. Jo gave me her ETA.

“What about your partnership?” I said. “Don’t risk your promotion.”

“I can multi-task,” Jo said. “I’m hiring you a PR firm.”

“The department already has one.”

“They have their own agenda too. We need to get ahead of this.”

Jo had a point. While Captain Tatum’s recent reopening of the Devonshire death was reassuring, the release of my name in the Ramirez shooting was not.

“Tell him Nokia PD is already wall to wall cameras.” The male voice in the background was only too familiar.

“Put Craig on,” I said.

The image in Jo’s glove-phone shifted and a sleek, well-preserved fifty-something businessman in an impeccable dove gray suit and lavender shirt appeared. Craig Sloan always looked like the biggest challenge he had was rectifying an accounting error at the country club.

Like his younger sister Jo, Craig had good genes, but the silver in his blond hair reminded me of the age difference between them. They shared the same father, but Jo’s mother had been the second wife.

“Somehow, Eddie,” Craig said in his superior drawl, “trouble always seems to find you.”

Craig had Jo’s straight nose, full lips and blond hair. It was odd how the same features differently arranged created an entirely different effect in the faces of the two siblings. Where Jo radiated refined sensuality, Craig looked like Caligula all cleaned up after one of his orgies.

I was looking down on the crash site from the hilltop. “Take a look at this.” I angled my phone to show the road. “No traffic-cams on this part of PCH. So how did the news get footage before the crash?”

“Right,” Craig replied. “PCH is part of Titan’s police contract.”

Titan was Craig’s high-end security firm that handled a lot of government contracts.

“But we haven’t installed cameras that far north yet,” he continued. “Besides, the footage isn’t a typical traffic cam.”

I nodded. “Any idea who would tail me or Dr. Lee?”

“Who even knew you were there?”

“Besides Frank and Jo, nobody I told,” I said. “But somebody knew.” I remembered how spooked Dr. Lee had been. Somebody’d been after him besides me.

Craig paused before speaking. “Lie low for a couple days,” he said. “Maybe I can find a way to spin it in our favor.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Call me paranoid, but this feels more like an ambush than an accident.”

Craig had dropped his snarky tone. “Watch yourself, Eddie.”