As he rode back to the Bonaventure, Reggie checked for messages from Nigel. But there was nothing. Not on his mobile, not at the Bonaventure, and not at the office. Not a word from him.
Reggie called the jail and learned that Nigel’s bail from the night before had been posted—in cash—by the law firm of O’Malley and Associates.
“You’re telling me someone sent a lawyer with one million in cash to post my brother’s bail?”
“If you want to put it that way,” she said. “That’s what it says.”
Reggie got out of the taxi at the Bonaventure. On his way through the lobby, he called O’Malley and Associates and used his barrister’s credentials to talk his way through to the senior partner. He demanded the name of the client responsible for Nigel’s bail.
O’Malley pushed back with a lecture about attorney-client confidentiality, told Reggie nothing, and then hung up the phone.
But that was to be expected. Reggie got in the lift and, despite the hour in London, rang Ms. Brinks at her home. She didn’t pick up, but he left a message for her to find out everything she could about the O’Malley and Associates client list. Confidentiality notwithstanding, many law firms liked to brag about their biggest names in advertisements and, especially, on Internet sites. Something about the novelty of the Web—or perhaps the implicit sense that it was in fact no more real than television—seemed to get their guard down. Reggie guessed an L.A. law firm should not be an exception.
And at the last moment, he added that she should do a search on Lord Robert Buxton while she was at it.
Now, finally, Reggie was back in his room. He checked his hotel phone again. There was one message, a short one from Wembley, asking that Reggie call him back.
Reggie decided to ignore that.
He rang Laura. He got an answering machine.
Some days you just can’t reach anybody. Reggie hated days like that. He called room service. Thank God, they, at least, answered; he was hungry. He ordered prime rib and mashed potatoes.
Then the phone rang as soon as he put it down.
It might be Laura; he picked up.
It was Wembley.
“I have some news,” said Wembley.
“You’re working late, Wembley. Not on my account, I hope.”
“Common sentiment,” said Wembley, “among the people I investigate. But I have some good news, and I wanted to tell you directly. Forensics is back on the blow that killed Ocher. They think your brother is not a good fit for that.”
“Glad you’re coming around,” Reggie said.
“From the relatively upward angle, and the position we think the perpetrator had to be standing, we think it was most likely a woman.”
Reggie waited. “Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for the call.”
“Before you go—I’ve been trying to reach Miss Rankin.”
Reggie hesitated. “Because . . . ?”
“I’d guess her to be about five seven, correct?”
“About. Why?”
“That would be the right height,” said Wembley, who then paused, apparently to let it sink in.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Reggie said after it did.
“The forensics—”
“Screw the forensics. How do you know it wasn’t just a short man, or even a taller one crouching a bit to throw you off?”
“So you’re saying your brother could have done it after all?”
“Of course not. But—”
“In any case, no one would have the foresight to perform such a ruse, especially in a crime of passion.”
“Passion?” Reggie said incredulously. “Ocher and Laura?”
“Not that kind of passion. Her motive was anger at Ocher, on behalf of Nigel, because of the way she knew Ocher treated him.”
“That’s absurd,” said Reggie.
“So she didn’t hate him for that?”
Reggie hesitated. True, Laura had never liked Ocher. But if she had not so deliberately drawn attention to that fact in the first interview with Wembley in chambers, Wembley would not have gotten onto this tack at all. But Reggie could hardly tell Wembley now that Laura had simply been trying then to steer suspicion away from Nigel.
“You’re a bloody idiot,” he said, for lack of anything better.
“Anyway,” said Wembley, “we found her fingerprints on the murder weapon.”
“She picked it up after,” said Reggie. “I was there.”
“But you initially told the investigating officers that nothing had been touched.”
“That was their misunderstanding. I said it was as we found it. It did not occur to me to immediately point out that Laura gently removed an object from Ocher’s skull after the fact. Make obstruction of that if you can.”
“Well, of course she could have done that to cover prints she knew she had left earlier.”
“This is nonsense, and you’re interrupting my meal.”
“Fine,” said Wembley. “But do let me speak with Miss Rankin. I presume she is with you?”
“No.”
“We tried the number she left in New York. It forwarded to a hotel in Beverly Hills.” Wembley paused, in his annoying way, for effect. “A man picked up. Would he be in a position to know?”
Reggie didn’t answer; he slammed down the phone.
God, was he ever slipping. If he ever made it back to London, he’d be mincemeat in court.
A few moments later room service arrived, mercifully, and Reggie started in on the prime rib and mash.
Then the phone rang again.
It was Professor Rogers.
Rogers apologized for the brevity of their previous meeting. He’d had a very full calendar, and just hadn’t been able to focus fully on what Reggie presented to him. He thought he should take a second look. Reggie should bring the document, it might be important, but Rogers had a limiting schedule, and they would need to meet halfway. He had a place in mind. At the lake. At the Hollywood Reservoir. Did Reggie know it?
Reggie said he could find it. But why there?
Rogers said something about his usual jog.
They agreed to meet—at five, at the south gate, over the dam.
Reggie picked up his raincoat, which might be a bit much for the weather, but he had no light windbreaker, and he was inclined to keep the map pages out of sight. He tucked them into the inside pocket.
Several minutes before five, Reggie got out of a taxi at the reservoir gate. It was still open; with probably an hour or so of daylight remaining.
The Lake Hollywood reservoir—situated just above the band of dirty amber haze that marked the city’s smog level, with a public access road that ran around the perimeter and across the dam—was like a Scottish loch plunked down in the heart of a desert. Trees lined the edges of the road and the shoreline, the cobalt blue water shimmered in its angle from the setting sun, and the early evening air raised scents of sagebrush and pine.
A sign at the gate marked the reservoir road as a public trail, and it was clearly popular with the locals. Young women ran by in shorts and halter tops. Cyclists whirred past. The place was a match for Hyde Park on a spring day.
Reggie walked out onto the road that spanned the concrete dam. The dam was some 250 hundred yards in length and perhaps 20 feet across; the road across it was flanked on either side by a waist-high cement wall. On one side of that was the deep blue water of the reservoir. On the other was a rocky canyon.
Reggie leaned against the wall on the water side to wait for Rogers. Two middle-aged women jogged past, one of them eyeing Reggie and his raincoat suspiciously.
A cyclist passed from the opposite direction. Then a teenage girl being pulled by a red setter on a leash. A tanned, svelte woman in spandex shorts and halter top, gliding comfortably on in-line skates, diverted Reggie’s attention for a moment. Then her boyfriend glided up beside her.
Nearly twenty minutes had passed. Reggie began to wonder if Rogers would show. He turned and looked back toward the gate to see if anyone else was arriving.
Suddenly there was impact. Reggie was thrown back against the wall—the spandex skater was in his arms, pressed full front against him, her arms encircling his waist. She apologized profusely and charmingly and disentangled herself amid considerable sweat and heat, and it would not have been an unpleasant collision—but as soon as she had disengaged fully, Reggie realized that she was clutching something that was his.
She had the map.
Reggie reached toward her, but at the same moment the lady’s companion swooped in from the opposite direction and took the sheets from her outstretched hand without breaking stride.
The two were on skates, breaking in opposite directions, and Reggie was off balance; they would surely get away with it.
But no one had informed the red setter of the plan. The dog saw a game in progress and gamboled forward, turning its leash into a taut three-foot hurdle. The skater had no time to prepare. He stumbled and had to use one hand to catch himself, and although it wasn’t much of an interruption, it was enough. Reggie closed the gap in an instant; before the skater could reestablish his momentum, Reggie had him by the arm.
He pulled the skater back and grabbed for the map. They struggled up against the low wall—and Reggie would have controlled the situation, or so he believed—but then there was an impact again, and this time in earnest: The female skater had returned, putting her full momentum into it, striking Reggie high in the chest with a surprisingly hard shoulder.
There was no chance to brace for it. Reggie fell backward over the wall behind him. He had the map pages in his hand, and he stuffed them into his raincoat pocket just as he fell.
The free fall was just long enough for him to realize the stupidity of that effort—for what good was the paper if he was on the hard side of the dam?
But he wasn’t. He was on the water side.
It stung on impact and was shockingly cold. And he was much heavier in the water than he should have been. Reggie struggled out of his raincoat—what a brilliant precaution that had been—and got to the surface.
He broke out of the water with a gasp. Still breathing deep and fast, he got his bearings.
He looked up at the top of the dam. He saw passersby looking back at him over the wall—the girl with the setter, a tall, bald man whose sunglasses glinted down at Reggie—but he didn’t see either of the skaters.
The water was much too cold to hang about, and he began to swim—with difficulty, on his back mostly, using his legs and one arm for momentum and the other arm dragging the bloody raincoat as if he were rescuing it.
It was only fifty yards or so, and that was a good thing.
Reggie slogged ashore, stood, and tried to shake off the cold.
He was at the shoreline just before the dam. Above him was the access road from which he had just fallen. Next to him was a steep slope, thick with undergrowth.
He began to climb the slope, finding a path between the rocks, manzanita, and low-growth pine.
He stopped. A glimpse of bright clothing caught his eye. He paused to look.
Below and to his right, lying between patches of sagebrush near the base of the dam, was Anne.
Reggie began to scramble quickly back down the slope. His feet dislodged clumps of dry earth and small rocks, sending them tumbling down the slope ahead of him; he immediately adjusted the angle of his approach, afraid that the tumbling rocks would strike her and cause more injury.
But when he came closer and saw the angle of her body—and the stillness of her eyes—he knew the tumbling rocks did not matter.
She was already dead. He knew it even before he knelt beside her.
Her body was broken. The ground around her head was saturated. She had no pulse.
For an unbearable moment, there was nothing but silence. There was nothing and no one else around, there were no surroundings, there was just Reggie. Reggie and a young woman who was dead because—he was sure of it—she had done him a favor.
Now Reggie looked up. She could not have just fallen; the wall was too high for that.
The in-line skaters were nowhere in sight. And the onlookers who had watched Reggie swim to shore were gone now as well. But at the near end of the dam—standing at the beginning of the access road, behind a clump of scrub oak, as if he thought it provided concealment—was a smallish, white-haired man in a jogging suit.
Reggie stood up, staring.
The two middle-aged women joggers he had seen earlier were paused now as well, on the road above the slope, and they were looking down at Reggie—but he was reckless of what they might be thinking.
He was too focused on the white-haired man standing at the edge of the dam at the access road.
The not-quite-concealed man stared back. Reggie had forgotten to be subtle, and now the man knew he had been seen.
The man bolted suddenly, like a rabbit from a hedge, running across the access road toward the opposite end of the dam.
Reggie sprinted up the rough slope after. He had staggered before, but not now. His shock and grief, and his initial anger at himself, had found a better target, and the adrenaline of it pushed him up to the road in short order. He began running.
Rogers—if indeed it was Rogers—was only halfway across the dam; he had a lead of no more than 150 yards. That meant the result was not in doubt—the man was probably headed for the gate at the opposite end of the reservoir. That gate was more than a mile away. Reggie was capable of a six-minute mile, and the man was doing nowhere near that pace. He knew he would catch him.
But now there was a shout from behind Reggie.
“That’s him!”
It came from the two women.
But they weren’t pointing at the man getting away at the opposite end of the dam.
They were standing at the edge of the roadway, above the slope where Reggie had found the young woman—and they were pointing at Reggie.
Several male runners in USC tank tops came up alongside the women, paused, and looked.
“There!” screamed the women, still pointing at Reggie. “He’s over there!”
Reggie turned and looked back at them. He gestured to the women and the contingent from the USC track team and then pointed at Rogers—or the man who might be Rogers—but he could not make himself understood.
And now, the tall, bald man in sunglasses joined them, and he too was pointing at Reggie:
“That’s him!”
The USC runners took off toward Reggie in a heroic sprint.
At the same time, two counterclockwise runners, coming from the opposite direction, crossed paths with the white-haired man, who urged them on in Reggie’s direction.
And close on their heels were two private security guards on bicycles.
Joggers, cyclists, and runners of all shapes and sizes were now converging on Reggie from both directions of the road. For a brief moment, he wondered whether he should remain in place and just try to explain.
But the white-haired man had already rounded a bend and vanished from sight; there was no hope now of getting past the throng to catch him.
“There!” shouted the first two women, pointing at Reggie again. “He killed her!”
This would not work.
Reggie abandoned the dam and ran back down the road to the near gate with all the six-minute-mile speed he could muster. He approached the final bend in the road, the last one before the gate, and he looked over his shoulder.
Behind him, all the recreational enthusiasts from either side of the lake—runners, bikers, skaters, dog walkers, and combinations thereof—were in his hot pursuit.
Thank God; his taxi was still there, just outside the gate.
He climbed quickly through the gap in the chain-link fence. He knew he’d have just seconds before the posse appeared behind him, and if the cabdriver saw them, all bets were off.
Gasping, wheezing, and pouring sweat, Reggie jumped into the cab.
“You run in those shoes?” said the driver.
“My best time in a week,” said Reggie. “You should try it.”
“You’ll stink up my cab,” said the driver.
“Just drive, dammit,” said Reggie, pulling money out of his wallet. “The Pasadena Institute. I’ll buy you all the air fresheners you need.”
The driver turned the cab around and headed down the hill, just an instant ahead of the pursuit.
It was night when Reggie arrived at the campus. In the foyer outside Rogers’s office, the secretary was getting ready to lock up.
“Can I help you?”
“Rogers,” Reggie said tightly.
“I’m afraid he’s not in.”
“Where is he?” said Reggie, walking past her. “Out for his evening run?”
“Sir, you can’t—”
“Sorry,” said Reggie. He entered Rogers’s office and shut the door behind him.
She had told the truth: Rogers wasn’t there. Reggie heard her pound on the door, then quickly leave, undoubtedly to get security.
On the walls were Rogers’s many diplomas, and plaques of recognition, and photos of him accepting awards. One in particular caught Reggie’s eye.
It was a smallish photo in a modest frame, easy to overlook and forget among all the others—unless you were specifically looking for something that went back a few years.
This one went back a score or more, judging from the clothes and Rogers’s buoyant hair.
Reggie took a closer look. He saw Rogers and another man—who looked a lot like the man in the old photo in Mara’s flat—both smiling and standing in front of a car that bore the name and logo of a surveying firm.
Reggie went to Rogers’s desk and pushed papers about until he found one that had Rogers’s signature. He carefully pulled a wet sheet of the map out of his pocket, unfolded it, and compared the faded signature with Rogers’s.
It matched. At least to the extent visible.
Through the office window now, Reggie could see Rogers’s secretary hurrying up the steps of the building with a uniformed security guard.
Reggie left the office, found a side exit, and got to his cab.
There were flashing red lights and sirens on the ride back to Los Angeles, but they were headed in the direction of the reservoir, not following Reggie.
Not yet.
He rang Laura at her hotel; she did not pick up.
He needed shelter. The Bonaventure was out of the question. Only one alternative came to mind.
“Take me to the Roosevelt Arms,” Reggie told the driver.
It took a long drive through heavy traffic, but finally Reggie reached the Roosevelt Arms. The clerk in the lobby of the Roosevelt Arms took a moment to look Reggie over. He seemed pleased for some reason.
“Hard times?”
“Just give me a bloody room.”
“You know, you just missed him,” said the clerk, taking Reggie’s money for a day in advance.
“What? Who?”
“The other guy. From before.”
“Nigel?”
“I guess. That’s what she called him.”
“She who?”
“The girl he was with. Latina, very pretty.”
“When did they leave?”
“A little over an hour ago. Just before those two guys showed up looking for ’em.”
“What two guys?”
“I’m trying to remember.”
Reggie put two twenties on the counter.
“Hell, I dunno,” said the clerk, pocketing the money. “Looked like a couple suits on their casual day.”
“Suits as in police?”
“Naaw, too stylish. Police suits are more like those guys over there.”
The clerk was pointing one block up and across the street, where Mendoza and Reynolds were ordering at a take-away burger stand.
Their backs were turned. For the moment.
“Which room do you want?” said the clerk.
“Keep it,” said Reggie.
His taxi was still at the curb. Reggie exited the Roosevelt Arms, got into the cab, and ducked down low.
“Beverly Hilton,” he told the driver, and they pulled away just as the detectives turned with their sandwiches. In the mirror, it appeared that Mendoza gave the cab a second look, but it was hard to tell.
Reggie had the driver deliver him to the side entrance of the hotel; the lobby seemed a risk. He walked from there to the outdoor patio in back.
In places with weather like this, Laura preferred her evening meal outside. With luck, she was having a late dinner, and that would be why she was not answering the phone.
Reggie stood behind a palm tree next to the gate and looked in.
She was there, at a table just beyond the pool.
And, mercifully, she was alone.
Reggie came up behind her and put his hand lightly on her arm, and she turned.
“You don’t look well at all,” she said.
“I’m not. Is that coffee?”
“They say so.”
Reggie took two quick gulps of Laura’s coffee.
“The locals are looking for me; I need to get out of view.”
“All right,” she said.
“Sorry,” said Reggie, “not the lift. I don’t want to go through the lobby.”
“Certainly,” said Laura. “It’s only four flights.”
They found the stairs and Reggie told her about the lake as they climbed.
“I’m sorry,” said Laura as they entered her room. “It’s one thing when it’s an obnoxious clerk. Something else when it’s someone nice.”
“We should close the drapes,” said Reggie. “Anyone who has anything to do with that map is winding up dead. Nigel is at risk. So is Mara.”
“What do we need to do?” she said.
“Rogers can’t be in this alone. He had help at the dam. And someone behind this had enough resources to make Rogers want to sign that false report twenty years ago. And enough now to put up one million in cash to get Nigel out of jail and into the open.”
“Who are the candidates?”
“Someone who was rich then, rich now, and getting richer still from the Silver Line taking the route they chose.”
“That’s a rather broad range, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But there’s another criterion. To bail him out, someone had to know almost as soon as we did that Nigel was in jail. That means that someone is getting inside knowledge of our activities. And that narrows the list.”
“Considerably, I would think. Who is on it?”
Reggie hesitated. He knew what he was going to say next would get him in trouble.
But then his mobile rang.
“It’s not for me,” said Laura.
Reggie picked up.
The voice he heard on the phone was male, raspy, middle-aged plus, and weathered.
“You’re the British guy,” said the voice, “with the brother. Right?”
“Probably,” said Reggie.
“You want to clear him for killing that bastard under the freeway—you bring it to me.”
“Bring what?”
“The map, dammit. My map. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Bring it where?”
“Bring it to the North Lankershim dig. Right now. The station platform in Tunnel 110-Left. Don’t be seen.”
“How—”
“Stay away from the main gate, that’s where the security is. Go to the south gate, where they let the trucks in during the day. You’ll know what to do when you get there.”
“Who—”
“Just get there. Now.”
The man hung up.
Laura was standing as close as possible to Reggie to listen.
“Where?” she said.
“I want you to get on the next plane back to New York. Or better, London.”
“You can take Buxton with you if you like.”
“Not bloody likely, not while this is going on. In fact, I’m sticking to you like glue until we’re all out of here.”
“You don’t need to—”
“Of course I do. Nigel means as much to me as he does to you. Besides, clearly it’s not being with you that’s dangerous. It’s being discovered by you. So I’ll do the prudent thing. Where you go, I go.”
Reggie saw that it was a settled issue.
“As you wish,” he said.
“So where is the bloody thing?”
“In my coat pocket.”
Laura picked up Reggie’s coat. “I hope you don’t mean this pocket,” she said as she examined the coat.
“Why?”
Laura pulled out the contents of Reggie’s waterlogged coat pocket. She laid the wet sheets of vellum on the glass coffee table and pressed out as much water as she could. Then she folded them carefully between the pages of a thick weekly Variety magazine, placed all of it together in a paper bag, and gave the whole package back to Reggie.
“I hope they survive long enough for our purposes,” she said.
“I hope we do,” said Reggie.