Chasing Venus (47 page)

Annie could easily
imagine Simpson’s thinking.
 
If I get Gardner, it won’t take long to get
Rowell.
 
She won’t be able to stay
underground as well on her own.
 
And
I bet I can get Gardner to tell me where she is.
 
After all, he’s fool enough to believe
the serial killer has her in his sights.

Or …

She spun in panic.

Reid might unwittingly
lead Simpson and company back to the motel.
 
Law enforcement might simply follow him
when he got back into his pickup, crestfallen, forced to conclude that the tip
was a bust, that yet again he’d come up empty, that the security guard wasn’t
Bigelow after all.

They’d expect Reid to
return to Annette Rowell, their primary prey.
 
And they’d be right.

She had to call
him.
 
She had to warn him this could
be a trap.
 
That was her only chance
of turning him around.

She grabbed the
pre-paid cell phone Reid had gotten her—a better method of communicating
than the coded messages they’d traded on the
Crimewatch
boards—and called his pre-paid cell.
 
She was acutely aware that she might
fail to make her case.
 
When it came
to Bigelow, when it came to anything having to do with Donna’s murder, it was
as if a veil came down over Reid’s eyes and he couldn’t see straight.
 
The normally logical, analytical Reid Gardner.

In seconds she flung
the cell phone onto the bed.
 
“Dammit!”
 
He wasn’t picking
up.
 
He probably didn’t have
coverage.
 
There were stretches of
the route between Santa Barbara and the San Fernando Valley where that was
likely.

She couldn’t leave him
a voicemail, either.
 
If she was
right, and the cops were setting him up, they would be sure to listen to the
messages on his pre-paid cell phone if they got their hands on him.
 
She would have handed law enforcement
proof positive that Reid had been aiding and abetting a fugitive.

She’d try him again in
a few minutes.
 
But it was likely
she was again on her own.
 
She would
have to save herself.

She paced the small
motel room and willed herself to think strategically.
 
One conclusion seemed inescapable, the
same conclusion to which she’d been forced on other recent nights when she’d
been alone and panic-stricken and her imagination conjured a killer in every
footfall outside the door, every gust of wind against the window.

She couldn’t evade
capture on her own.
 
She needed
help.
 
Especially if she decided to
act on the escape plan that was hatching in her mind.

In her debut mystery, a
character wrongfully accused fled to Mexico.
 
That country’s extradition treaty
protected individuals charged with serious crimes, particularly those who might
face the death penalty.
 
It was a
grim truth that Annie found herself in that camp.

Of course the border
patrol would be hyper alert to that possibility.
 
She would need assistance, not to
mention a bold plan, to get past them.
 
Who in the world could she call upon to help her?

She halted and stared
down at the industrial-strength carpet beneath her bare feet.
 
It was a silver-gray shade whose chief
attraction was its ability to mask dirt.
 
It was the very color of prison bars.

Focus.
 
Who would help you?

It had to be someone
the FBI wouldn’t expect her to contact, because all of those people would be
under surveillance.
 
In addition, it
had to be someone who would believe in her innocence, someone she could trust
not to turn her in.

Given those parameters,
the field was very narrow.

In fact, she could come
up with only one name.

Kevin
Zeering
.
 
Now
that she’d dismissed the possibility that he was the killer, she knew he would
be on her side.
 
And he wouldn’t
show up in her address book or her cell phone, so the FBI would be unlikely to
be watching him.
 
Yet it was also
possible that he’d been such a loud champion on her behalf that he’d drawn
their attention.

Plus he was a good 350
miles away, all the way up north in Marin County.
 
He would come to her if she called him,
but that would take time.
 
She
didn’t have time.

Was she adding a new
parameter?
 
Did she need her help to
come from somebody close by?
 
She
didn’t know anybody close by.

Actually, she realized
after a moment’s reflection, she did.
 
Someone she didn’t know well, but who had voiced his support after she’d
been accused.

Maggie Boswell’s
husband.
 
Charles
Waring
.
 
She’d
seen him on TV saying flat out that he believed the police were wrong, that no
way could Annette Rowell have committed the murders.
 
It was part of the report about the
protest her mom and stepdad had organized in San Francisco.
 
He’d written the same thing on her
Facebook page.

He was nearby.
 
Very much so.
 
Annie had stayed at this hotel for Maggie’s
signing party precisely because of its proximity to the Boswell/
Waring
home.

Annie sank onto the bed
as she turned this unlikely scheme over in her mind.
 
How bizarre would it be for her to
contact Charles
Waring
?
 
It was the last thing in the world the
man expected.
 
They barely knew one
another.
 
They’d conversed a time or
two at a conference, and of course at Maggie’s party, but they hadn’t exchanged
even a single word at the funeral.
 
Their acquaintance was extremely limited.
 
On top of that, the poor man was
recently bereaved.
 
He was mired in
grief.
 
Could Annie really ask him
to take on the risk of aiding her, a wanted fugitive?
 
Could she really ask this man who hardly
knew her to break the law by helping her escape to Mexico?

A pair of headlights
raked the lone front window of the motel room.
 
Annie rose abruptly.
 
However preposterous Charles
Waring
might find her request for help, the worst he could
do was say no.
 
He believed in her
innocence; he’d publicly said as much, more than once.
 
He wouldn’t turn her in.

She grabbed her
pre-paid phone and tried Reid one more time.
 
When again he didn’t pick up, she
glanced at his laptop.
 
She had a
task or two to complete before she left.
 
She began hurriedly to gather what she would need.
 
Whatever came of this desperate plot of
hers, she wouldn’t be back.

*

Lionel Simpson watched
Sam Trotter stare at the screen on his laptop.
 
The internet browser window was open to
the
Crimewatch
web site, where
Trotter was trolling through tips that had led to fugitive arrests.
 
Or takedowns, as the show liked to call
them.

“Damn,” Trotter
said.
 
“I’m good.”

Simpson couldn’t
argue.
 
Trotter had crafted a
cunning tip of his own.
 
Now, while
they waited for it to work its magic, Simpson sat in Trotter’s San Fernando
Valley apartment.
 
Along with Mark
Higuchi, he occupied half the chairs at Trotter’s dining-room table.
 
It was a pick-it-out-in-five-minutes
piece of furniture, and suited the rest of the unit.
 
Typical bachelor crib, down to the black
leather sofa in the living room and the elaborate stereo equipment.
 

Though outwardly
precious little was happening, Simpson believed himself finally to be gaining
traction.
 
True, his gambit of
arresting Sheila Banerjee on obstruction of justice charges hadn’t produced the
results he’d hoped for.
 
She hadn’t
caved and coughed up information.
 
Nor had the rapidly spreading news of her arrest routed out her boss.

But Simpson and his
team had built a very promising trap into which Reid Gardner well might
fall.
 
After which Simpson believed
he would have a real chance to nab Annette Rowell, since Gardner was so deluded
he believed he was the only thing standing between her and a serial killer.

“I bet
Gardner’ll
bite,” Higuchi said.
 
“I bet he’s on his way right now to
find—”
 
He flashed big
quotation marks in the air.
 
“—‘Larry Bigelow.’ ”

“I gotta hand it to
you, Lionel.”
 
That from
Trotter.
 
“You called it.
 
Gardner may be on the lam with Rowell
but damn if he doesn’t still keep an eye on those online tips.”

At least the ones
having to do with Larry “Eight Ball” Bigelow.

So maybe it was cynical
of Simpson to prey on Gardner’s Achilles heel.
 
That didn’t mean he felt bad about
it.
 
He had a job to do.

And though he felt no
need to justify his behavior, Simpson also believed he was doing Gardner a
favor.
 
Maybe even saving his
life.
 
Gardner had lost all
perspective when it came to Annette Rowell and Simpson had given up hope he’d
get it back any time soon.

At least not without
help.

*

By the time Annie
arrived at the Boswell/
Waring
home, on foot, it was
past 11 PM.
 
She had had no trouble
finding the place, although she had felt like the criminal she was accused of
being wandering the unlit oceanfront streets.
 
It was extremely odd to show up
unannounced as well, especially at this hour, but Annie had no choice.
 
She knew no phone number for Charles
Waring
, and of course, given Maggie Boswell’s celebrity,
the home number was unlisted.
   

The property was better
described as a compound than a home.
 
It comprised a trio of two-story white clapboard buildings that occupied
perhaps a hundred feet of prime beachfront.
 
Annie remembered Maggie Boswell
explaining during the book party that one of the smaller structures housed her
office and the other served as guest quarters.
 
As did all visitors, Annie approached
the property from a dead end street whose other showcase homes hid behind
towering
ficus
hedges or security walls.

On the walk over, Annie
realized she might well end up spending the night like a vagrant, catching a
few winks outside the perimeter near a sheltering shrub.
 
As undesirable as that would be,
especially given the chill in the air, it would hardly strengthen her case to
waken Charles late at night to declare that she, a fugitive wanted in a series
of murders, had chosen him above all others to spirit her past border patrol to
safety in Mexico.

Yet when she peered at
the main house through the iron gate that blocked the driveway, not every
window was dark.
 
Behind the
curtains of an upstairs room, presumably a bedroom, was the flickering light of
a television.

She screwed up her
courage and pressed the buzzer on the call box.
 
A minute passed while she imagined
herself under Charles’s surprised scrutiny.
 
She was pondering whether to try again
when she heard a static-y version of his voice emerge from the call box.
 
“Yes?
 
Who’s there?”

He sounded
frightened.
 
Annie could hardly
blame him.
 
“I’m so sorry to intrude
on you like this, Charles, and in the middle of the night, too.
 
It’s Annette Rowell.”

“Annette Rowell you
say?”
 
Now he sounded positively
astonished.

“Yes.
 
I wouldn’t have come except that I’m in
desperate circumstances and I really need your help.
 
I didn’t know where else to turn.
 
I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No, no.
 
But you’re at the gate?
 
The gate of my house?”

“Yes.
 
I walked over.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

A few seconds
passed.
 
Then, “Of course you must
come in.
 
Of course.
 
Just take the path up to the main house.
 
You remember it?
 
You can manage in the dark?”

That was the least of
her worries.
 
The hydraulic gates
swung inward and after a short walk up the driveway Annie found the narrow
flagstone path to the house.
 
Salty
air tickled her nostrils.
 
The
surf’s lulling rhythm reminded her how exhausted she was.
 
For a moment she allowed herself to
imagine Charles accepting an abbreviated explanation for her appearance and
graciously speeding her toward the luxurious guest house where, for a matter of
hours at least, nothing would be demanded of her but sleep.