The Fallen
- Автор: Паркер Т. Джефферсон
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 978-0-06-056238-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Fallen». Краткое содержание книги:
Harris was plainly unsure how to behave around McKenzie and me. Cops can do that to people. He treated us with a formality that was gracious but forced, especially with McKenzie. I could see by the way he looked at her that he had been captured. Interesting what you can see in a man’s eyes. But it wasn’t like he could put his arm around her or hold her hand, though he did whisper something in her ear.
McKenzie was taken too. She kept it hidden much better than Harris did, but I could tell. Her entire posture was different and her complexion looked better. It was nice to see two people strongly drawn to each other.
I thought of Gina with the kind of hunger that knows it can’t be fed.
I want you to remember me like I was last night.
I was beginning to think that I had nothing to offer her that would be enough to bring her back.
April was lovely and seemed older than her eighteen years. She looked wholesome and innocent and I saw again the value of what Squeaky Clean had tried to buy from April but Garrett had allowed her to keep. I wondered why the world was so eager to consume wholesomeness and innocence. When April paid her respects, I wondered if Stella knew of April’s living arrangement in her husband’s secret apartment. I made a note to find out. Garrett’s women, I thought. He had an eye for beauty.
By the end of the service, Stella was looking slightly better than on the day we had told her of Garrett’s death. There was a trace of resolve on her face. For a few minutes she was surrounded by a group of women her age, and they talked and touched each other comfortably. I thought they looked familiar and then it struck me why — the Pan Am Games synchronized swimming champions of 1983.
As I watched Councilman Rood and aide Stiles talking with Sarvonola and his group, I wondered again if Stiles had the cojones to take out Garrett, then toss Jordan’s earring into the Explorer just to mislead us. There was something aggressive about him, his bullish physique and gelled-back hair and fashionable ultralight sunglasses. I’d made some inquiries with another councilmanic aide I know and trust, and she told me that Stiles was ambitious to hold public office and was in fact a school board member in his daughter’s district. She said that Rood had his eyes on a California state assembly seat, and Stiles had his on the Ninth District council chair his boss would vacate. Convenient, I thought. I reminded myself that Stiles — out of all the men captured on Garrett’s video — most likely knew before Garrett’s murder that he’d been recorded. He’d certainly been confronted by Garrett. All his public ambitions could be shattered by that one thin disc, or that one deposition from Carrie Ann Martier. But what good would a murder have done Stiles at that point? Garrett had sprung the trap on him weeks earlier. Stiles had apologized and paid handsomely for his crimes. I could imagine Stiles’s fury and helplessness as he was caught in his own web, but I still couldn’t imagine him behind the trigger of Carl Herbert’s Model 39.
McKenzie left with Harris. April Holly stood with me for a while then walked behind a row of graves to say good-bye to Stella. She drove off alone in a nifty gold coupe made possible by Garrett Asplundh.
I leaned against the tree and saw John Van Flyke leaning against his own tree on the other side of the grave. He was gazing out over the mourners just as I was. He looked tired. Kaven had long since gone.
I was about to leave myself when a trim young man walked across the grass toward me. He was dark-haired, wore dark sunglasses, and was dressed in a suit that must have been made for him. He had come to the service alone and I had seen him glancing at me and McKenzie several times. He stopped in front of me, took off the glasses, and looked me directly in the eye.
“I am Sanji Moussaraf.”
“With the red Ferrari.”
“My car was disabled on the freeway the night Mr. Asplundh was killed. I called the police. Are you Detective Brownlaw?”
“Yes.”
“I recognize you from the burning hotel,” he said. “I saw the article in the newspaper about Mr. Asplundh and decided I should come here to find you.”
“Sooner would have been better.”
“I didn’t have the courage.”
He was very young — nineteen or twenty. I saw sincerity in his eyes, and a spark of fear.
“Take a walk with me, Mr. Moussaraf. Tell me what you saw.”
In his accented and slightly formal English, Sanji Moussaraf told me that his car had suddenly stalled on the southbound 163, and he’d guided it over to the side of the highway. He said it was like running out of gas, though he’d just filled up the tank that morning. He’d had trouble with the fuel filter once before and the car had stalled just like this. It was approximately 8:40 at night. It was raining. He called the Auto Club on his cell phone. They said a truck would be there within thirty minutes. He got out and raised the hood of his car but couldn’t see much.
No colored shapes came from Sanji’s mouth.
We walked along the narrow, winding road that led through the cemetery. The grass-cutting crew was removing flowers from the graves, which was too bad, because many of them looked fresh. I wondered if they ever kept a particularly nice arrangement as a gift for a loved one.
“So I got back in the car to wait for the Automobile Club,” said Moussaraf. “And when I was sitting there I saw a vehicle come down the embankment from above. It was a black sport utility vehicle. It moved slowly. When it came to level ground, the driver turned off the lights and the engine. The vehicle was approximately one hundred and fifty feet from me. There were trees with dangling branches that made my vision difficult. Five minutes later another vehicle came down the embankment. It moved slowly also and it pulled up next to the black SUV. This vehicle was a white Hummer. It looked new. The chrome was very shiny. There was no license plate on the front. I thought I saw a temporary registration taped to the windshield but it could have been something else. The headlights then were turned off.”
My heart sank a little. I’d had a fond hope that this alert young man had come up with at least a partial plate number. A temporary registration taped inside the windshield didn’t help much, though San Diego — area Hummer dealers could shed some light on recent sales.
“I sat for a few minutes,” said Moussaraf. “The rain increased. It was loud against the roof of my car. I looked at the two vehicles parked together in the grass. Because they were slightly behind me, I had to turn to see them. The trees still were between us. I saw an orange flash of light inside the first SUV. It was very bright and immediate. It was over instantly. It was thin and long like a comet. It appeared to be horizontal. My first thought was, someone had just fired a gun.”
As I looked at Sanji, yellow triangles floated into the space between us. They come from fear. Which is what most of us would feel upon remembering the sound of a gunshot.
“Did you see the shooter?”
“A moment later I saw the shape of a man move between the vehicles. He wore dark clothing. He was very difficult to see.”
“You’re sure it was a man?”
Sanji nodded. “I am almost sure.”
“Where did he shoot from?”
Sanji looked at me and frowned. “I cannot say for certain. The flash came from the passenger’s side. Maybe the shooter was sitting there. Maybe he was outside the vehicle, but leaning in. I believed the flash was moving from the passenger side to the driver side, but this could have been an illusion. It was instant and brief.”
“Did you hear a report?” I asked.
“The traffic on the highway was very loud. And the rain on the roof of my car. But I thought I heard something from the direction of the parked vehicles. A muffled pop.”