Cut to the Quick (17 page)

Their eyes locked.

She repeated, “It’s a lie.”

After an intense moment, he gave her a broad smile. “I know what you need.”

She was sniveling, but managed to fire back the obvious sarcastic response. “I bet you do.”

He grinned. “Well, baby, in my humble opinion, I bet your life could use some improvement in that department.” He gave her shoulders a shake. “But the next best thing is a fast ride on a Fat Boy.”

On their way to the Rock Store, Hale had touched Crowley, just enough to not fall off. On the second stretch that would take them to the ocean, she snuggled close with her legs tightly squeezing his thighs.

She’d called Mark before they’d left the restaurant. He didn’t seem to care where she was or what she was doing. She simply said she was out and would be back before the kids got home. She guessed he was happy that she wasn’t around to interrupt his excursion into his bleary world, yet would be back in time so he wouldn’t have to deal with the kids.

Hale wrapped her arms around Crowley’s broad, lean torso, soaking in the scent of hot asphalt, exhaust, and perspiration. They rounded a curve and all of a sudden, the air was cool and moist, and they could see the ocean. It was lost again around a curve. Then the long stretch of coastline from Santa Monica to Point Dume came into view. Land’s end. The sight always cheered her.

When they finally stopped at a street light at the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, he said over his shoulder to her, “The producer who bought the movie rights to my book is at his ranch in Montana. His Malibu Colony house is empty. Wanna check it out?”

“You have the keys?”

“Yeah.”

“Heh, heh, heh.…”

“I’ve never seen it before. Honest.” The light changed and he took off, not waiting for her response.

Her knee-jerk reaction was to be miffed by his presumptuousness but another part of her found his decisiveness appealing, even though the caveman style had never been her cup of tea. The only things Mark was decisive about anymore, it seemed, were drinking and gambling. She couldn’t keep him away from either vice, no matter what she tried. She of all people should know she didn’t have the power to change an addict.

She still beat herself up for not being firmer when Mark had said he wanted to join his father in running the billboard business. All-controlling Ludlow, while not the source of emotionally fragile Mark’s addictions, had fueled the flames. Still, the move promised to provide the financial security that relentlessly eluded them. Mark’s restaurant had been floundering. As for her, the rug could be pulled out from under her financially the next time her contract was up.

The freedom she felt on this impromptu day with Crowley brought home a truth that had been swirling beneath the surface of her life. It was there, like a drowning victim submerged in a murky pond, but she darted away whenever the angle of the sun changed, revealing it. She didn’t love Mark anymore, but she cared about him. At first, it tore her heart out to see Mark spiraling down, suffering. But when he gave up the fight and allowed himself to float away on the high tide of his addictions, her empathy turned to pity and then disgust.

She was prepared to stay in a loveless marriage to avoid disrupting the children—Dahlia, who had already been through too much, and Luddy, who was pure sweetness and light. She didn’t want to be the first to dim that light.
Problem was, the edifice of their lives was crumbling, as if the moldering bricks of the old man’s smothering mansion were tumbling onto their heads.

Later, she might feel differently and be racked with guilt and regret. Right now, she was prepared to follow Crowley anywhere. She fully expected to never see him again, or, at best, she’d spot him with his latest arm candy at a Hollywood cocktail party. It would be a nonchalant moment for him and awkward for her. So what? She was tired of living in every world except the present. Yet some little part of her, some tiny, long-silenced internal voice whispered:
Could he be my future?

She didn’t notice much about the house beyond the vast windows overlooking the sparkling, calm ocean.

Crowley opened doors that led to a deck and they escaped the stuffy house. They paid brief, appropriate attention to the view before a single glance into each other’s eyes led to a passionate kiss from which there was no turning back.

Standing on the deck, they tore at each other’s clothing. The deck was in shadows, but still in view of scattered people along the nearly inaccessible beach. She didn’t care. It felt good to stand nude in the cool air, free of her sweaty, binding clothing, possessed instead by his strong hands and artful tongue.

He pulled her onto a double chaise longue, its size and location clearly all about seduction. She laughed when he produced a condom from his wallet, then snatched it from him, rolled it on, and climbed on top. Their lovemaking was hard and fast, no more or less than each of them wanted. She dug her nails into his shoulders as she took his best effort and improved on it. She got there first, starting with a whimper and ending by throwing back her head and letting loose a wail that was as primal as dirt. Watching her brought him to the tipping point.
He struggled to keep his eyes open, not wanting to miss a thing.

Sweat-drenched and panting, they looked at each other.

He took in her now-rosy cheeks, the fine lines erased from her face, which was finally at ease. He craned his head to look at his shoulders, rubbing his hand across the welts she’d left there.

Her moment of feeling at one with the world was fleeting, leaving her feeling more fragile than before. “You’ll have a hard time explaining that to the next one,” she said.

“You have a low opinion of me, don’t you?”

She was embarrassed and realized that by diminishing him, she was able to minimize what had happened between them.

He took her face between his hands. “I’m going to work on changing that.”

She felt a fluttering inside her chest and inhaled sharply. He had taken her breath away. She hoped he didn’t see it.

They raided the refrigerator, snacking on coke, jarred food, condiments, and crackers. Sitting at the kitchen island, eating a stranger’s food in a stranger’s home, she enjoyed the vacation from her life and tried not to think about what happened next.

He carried her up the open staircase, draped in his arms. She clutched his shoulders like a child. They took a cool shower, after which he went to the bedside drawer and found more condoms. A lucky guess, he’d insisted when she’d teased him.

Later, she’d explored and asked him about the scar on his back—knife fight in high school—and one on his side—grazed by a bullet fired during a barroom brawl—
and one near his shoulder—stabbed by a shank-wielding inmate in Quentin.

She’d dropped off to sleep in the crook of his arm. A short time later, she’d awakened to see him dressed.

“I have a book signing tonight in Pasadena. Why don’t you come with me?”

She slowly blinked, considering it for a second. “I would love to, but it’s not a good idea.”

He took the freeway back to the studio, where her car was still parked in the lot.

“Call me later,” he said.

She nodded. Standing in the parking lot, they did not touch, already behaving like illicit lovers.

She watched him roar off on the Harley, looking like a vision from a thousand bad but irresistible movies. Before the exhaust had faded from the air, her mind was already going to all the bad places. She stopped it in its tracks. For now, just for now, she would savor the moment.

FIFTEEN

V
ining
and Kissick had stopped by the PPD’s forensics unit to check on their progress analyzing Nitro’s drawing book for fingerprints. The prints the tech found were consistent with Nitro’s.

Vining flipped through the drawing book. She had assumed the violent pictures of women were together in
the spiral-bound pad, but they were scattered among the images of animals, trees, and flowers. Somehow, that made it creepier.

Back upstairs, she picked up the photocopies of the drawings and put them in her briefcase.

They were at work on the double homicide in the Detectives’ Section conference room when Folke called to say that two officers were transporting Nitro to the Big G, where he’d be placed on a seventy-two-hour hold for psychiatric evaluation and treatment.

“He’s County’s problem now,” Kissick commented.

They pushed along on the Mercer/Richards homicide investigation.

Ruiz got his warrants signed for access to Somerset’s telephone, financial records, and his computer. When he and Caspers went to Somerset’s apartment above his parents’ garage in San Marino, Somerset’s mother told them he’d left to go backpacking in the Sierras.

Ruiz served the warrants on Somerset’s mother, a well-dressed woman with a zaftig figure who was nearly as tall as her son. Ruiz and Caspers both remarked later that her careful blond coiffure looked like a wig.

Ruiz notified the Inyo County Sheriff’s Department, which has jurisdiction over the area in the Sierras where Somerset usually backpacked, and asked the park service to keep an eye out for him. They didn’t have cause to arrest him yet, but they didn’t want him slipping into the wind.

Meanwhile, Kissick called his contact at Mark Scoville’s cell phone provider, who would get Scoville’s data on the Q.T.

As the afternoon quickly became evening and then night, Vining wondered why she hadn’t heard from Emily. She knew the finale of the gala family weekend at the Santa Barbara Four Seasons was dinner with Kaitlyn’s
parents at the hotel’s blue-ribbon restaurant. She and Em had bought a new outfit especially for that dinner. Emily was going to call when they were on the road home. Vining figured the dinner went late. She had not allowed herself to dwell on Em’s absence. Now that she was due to be home, though, Vining let herself feel how terribly she missed her. The feeling was scary in its intensity.

Finally, Emily called. In the background, Kaitlyn was babbling, trying to inject herself into the conversation. Vining guessed that Kaitlyn thought it added to the fun to toss out comments off-scene, but it was one of her traits that Vining found particularly aggravating.

“Hi, Sweet Pea. How was your fancy dinner?” she asked her daughter.

“Good.” Emily’s answer was clipped.

“What did you have?”

“Filet.”

“You can’t talk.”

“Right.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yep.”

“No, really.”

“Really. Dad and Kaitlyn are going to drive me home and then go to Calabasas.”

Great
, Vining thought. She didn’t want to see Kaitlyn. “But your dad has to drive through Calabasas to get to our house. The original plan was to drop Kaitlyn and the boys home because they’d be tired.”

“I know.”

“What happened?”

“You’ll see.”

“Em … I’m in no mood.”

“It’s fine.”

“All right. I’ll be up.”

“One last thing.” The girl said it like it was one word. “How’s the investigation going on the double homicide?”

Emily could have waited for the details after she’d returned home, but Vining suspected the girl had brought it up now to get Kaitlyn’s goat. She must have succeeded, because she heard something like a shriek go up from Kaitlyn in the background. Emily’s stepmother was not reticent about expressing her opinion that Vining’s occupation was a negative influence on the upbringing of a young lady. Kaitlyn’s tentacles around Emily had grown stickier since Emily had become a teenager. Maybe it reflected her lust for a daughter. She and Wes had five- and three-year-old boys, Kyle and Kelsey. Vining had heard through Emily that Wes didn’t want more children, while Kaitlyn wanted to try for a girl. Thus the push-pull over Emily, though trying to push Emily into something she didn’t want to do was like pushing a boulder.

“It was all over the news,” Emily enthused. “I saw Lieutenant Beltran’s press conference. Do you think it’s the boyfriend? Wait … Kaitlyn wants to say something.”

Vining rolled her eyes as the phone was passed.

“Hi, Nan. How are ya? Hey, I just want to let you know that I bought Emily a new outfit to wear to dinner with my parents.”

“Oh?”

“You’ll see it because she’s still wearing it. It’s by Marc Jacobs, and she just looks so cute in it.”

“Emily looks cute in anything, but what happened to the outfit she brought?”

“It’s adorable, but … I thought she should be dressier for the Four Seasons.” She lowered her voice when uttering the hotel’s name. “I didn’t want Em to feel out of place.”

“I see. May I speak with Emily, please?” When Em was back on the phone, Vining said, “So that’s what’s bothering you.”

“Yep.”

“All right. I’ll see you soon.”

The prealarm sounded when Vining opened the door. She didn’t reset it, not wanting to deactivate it when Wes was at the door, which would make her look paranoid.

“It’s by Marc Jacobs,” she muttered as she went about her routine of storing her two weapons with extra gusto. She cracked open her bedroom windows as far as the locks would allow. Pausing in the hallway, she clicked on the air conditioning. She hoped it wouldn’t take long to cool down the house. She could hear Wes now, walking into her hot house, “That’s Nan, won’t spend a dollar to turn on the air in a heat wave.”

Kaitlyn had been a nineteen-year-old assistant hairdresser at Supercuts when she had begun an affair with Wes, eight years her senior. Vining still didn’t know the real reason Wes had left her. She’d thought she knew Wes better than anyone. That assumption was probably correct, as Wes was like an iceberg, only making a small part of his psyche accessible. It had taken her years on the Job as a cop, wading through the worst of human nature, to figure that one out.

As Vining walked through the kitchen and TV room into the living room, she was still fuming over the outfit affair. The dress and jacket ensemble she and Em had bought was adorable.

She turned off the small lamp that automatically turned on at dusk. With the living room now dark, she pulled open the drapes over the sliding glass doors. She’d left the living-room drapes closed to keep out the heat, but that was only one reason. She also didn’t want to
give someone the opportunity to sit on the opposite ridge and use binoculars to peer inside her hillside home. Like someone who’d lost a limb, she’d made accommodations. It didn’t mean she liked it.