Lost Dog (A Gideon and Sirius Novel Book 3) (27 page)

“Thanks for calling back, Art,” I said.

“No problem,” he said. “I finally got something for you, or at least I think I do.”

I’d asked him to see if he could find out why Walker was late for our dinner, what “fires” he’d had to put out.

“Shoot,” I said.

“There were at least two people who stayed behind to talk to Langston at the last club meeting,” he said. “One of them was LaToya Gibson. If I understand it right, there’s this feud the Gibson family has with another family. It’s like the Hatfield–McCoy feud. Anyway, that other family killed one of Gibson’s sons, and apparently they’re now threatening another one of her sons.”

“Who was it that overheard this conversation?” I asked.

“Catalina Ceballos,” he said. “She was putting away chairs, like she usually does after the meetings.”

“And who was the second person who stayed behind?”

“James Rhodes,” he said. “Catalina said Langston had asked him to stay after the meeting so that they could talk. She said it seemed like an intense conversation.”

“Intense as in loud?”

“I don’t think she meant it that way, but more that both of them seemed intent on what was being said.”

“When I spoke at the meeting, Catalina and James seemed friendly. Are they an item?”

“I think so far they’re just friends. I know for a fact James is interested in Catalina, but she’s made it clear she’s not ready for a relationship.”

“How do you know that?”

“Over the past year I’ve gotten to know James pretty well. In fact, he was the first call I made on your behalf. It’s a funny thing. James mentioned Detective Walker’s talking with LaToya, but didn’t mention their talk.”

“And yet Catalina said it sounded intense.”

“That’s probably because James never realizes how intense he comes off. He could talk about the Dodgers and make it sound as if it was a life-and-death situation.”

I thought back to my first encounter with James Rhodes at the 187 Club meeting. He had come across as an intense sort, although at the time I thought he was being protective of Catalina.

“What kind of work does James do?”

“He teaches calculus and physics at a JC.”

“His wife was the bicyclist killed in a hit-and-run, wasn’t she?”

“She was,” Epstein said. “I’m always reminding Joel to be careful because of Andrea Rhodes. I don’t let him go out riding without a helmet and pads, and still worry. Even a helmet didn’t save Andrea.”

The death of Andrea Rhodes was one of Detective Walker’s 187 Club cases that I hadn’t yet begun to work.

I thanked Art for his help, and within moments of hanging up, I began reading about the life and death of Andrea Rhodes.

CHAPTER 37

JUST A SHOT AWAY

“Promise you won’t kill me?”

Lisbet laughed. “Okay, I promise, even though I’m already regretting that promise since I’m sensing you’re about to cancel on me for the second day in a row.”

“I’m not canceling. I intend to keep my promise of nibbling your ears. But I’m hoping you can accommodate my schedule.”

“Which means what?”

“Can we hold off eating until around eight?”

“That does mean no later than nine, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“You raised your voice when you said ‘does.’ That means there’s an unresolved ‘but.’”

“I thought
I
was supposed to be the detective.”

“I’m learning through osmosis.”

“I have to pick up Angie from the vet’s clinic before eight o’clock tonight,” I said, “and prior to that, I need to check out a crime scene that relates to a case I’m working on. So I hope it’s not asking too much for you to pick up dinner and that we eat at my place. And, yes, I know I’ll owe you big-time.”

“You know that when I agreed to not kill you, I didn’t say anything about not committing grievous bodily harm.”

“Talk mayhem to me,” I said, breathing heavily.

“I’ll talk food instead. What’s your order?”

“What do you think about going with the papaya salad and the spring rolls as appetizers?”

“I concur.”

“And please check to make sure they don’t forget the peanut sauce.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I’ll have my pho with the flank steak on the side.”

“Got it. The only thing we haven’t worked out is my delivery charge.”

“I will make sure matters are worked out to your satisfaction, madam.”

It was dark by the time Sirius and I set out for Central L.A., and the sky made it look even later than it was. A rare April storm was threatening to descend upon Los Angeles. I programmed the address into the GPS, and we began our drive. For once I didn’t have a tune in my head, so I checked what was playing on L.A.’s classic rock stations. I passed on an Aerosmith song, but then stopped my search when I heard the familiar tremolo of a rhythm guitar that was the opening for the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.”

Mick’s singing seemed to be a commentary on the darkening sky: a storm was on its way.

And then the voice of Merry Clayton did its best to make the little hairs on my neck rise. In her powerhouse emoting, her words were electrically charged; cracking with emotion she screamed of rape and murder.

And everything, all the madness, was just a shot away. It was close, too close. I could feel it.

I was on my way to a site where a woman had died, but my thoughts weren’t only on Andrea Rhodes. Heather Moreland was also in my thoughts. Andrea Rhodes had been dead for years; I hoped Heather was still alive. I hoped she had found shelter.

We headed into the storm.

Even though it seems as if there are a lot of bicycle riders on L.A. streets, the city isn’t very bicycle friendly. Among Langston’s paperwork I had found maps of Los Angeles, and among that paperwork he had made the notation of a “comfortable street.” I wondered if I’d arrived at the location of that comfortable street and the spot of the circled
X
on his map. When I’d originally looked at the maps, I’d never considered that they’d been designed for the city’s bicyclists. The colored lines showed existing bikeway systems, proposed pathways, interconnections that were needed, and potential study corridors.

As L.A. streets go, Dalton Avenue was a quiet residential road east of Culver City. Because it wasn’t a main thoroughfare and didn’t directly lead to any major streets, it was less congested than most. There are lots of streets around L.A. that qualify as death traps for cyclists, but this wasn’t one of them. The bicycle lane was well marked and roomy. Still, this was the street where a hit-and-run driver had taken Andrea Rhodes’s life.

I drove along Dalton in search of the exact spot where Andrea had died. Even though she’d gone up and over a curb onto the sidewalk to try and escape being hit by the drunk driver, neither the sidewalk nor curb had stopped the vehicle. Supposedly the car was going close to fifty miles an hour, twice the residential street’s speed limit, when it struck her bicycle. Although Andrea was wearing a helmet, her headgear wasn’t enough to spare her. She was thrown into the air some thirty feet, and didn’t survive the impact.

In the darkness I saw a white glow, and pulled over to the side of the road. Chained to a streetlamp was a whitewashed bicycle that gave off a spectral look.

Sirius and I jumped out of the car and walked over to the bicycle. Even the lock that was binding it to the streetlamp had been spray-painted white. The bicycle wasn’t operational; it had no chain, seat, or gears. But it wasn’t ornamental either. The bicycle was there for a purpose. Atop its crossbar a black Sharpie had been used to write the message, “RIP Andrea,” along with the date of her death.

I took some pictures of the bicycle, and then I sat there staring at it. Near the front wheel I could see the remains of dried-out flowers. The white bicycle was a shrine.

Sirius and I went back to the car. I’d brought along my laptop and hot spot, and used them to call up a search engine. After typing in the words “white bikes in L.A.,” I found myself staring at the first hit that came up: ghost bikes. My mouth fell open, and opened some more when I started scanning the other hits. I saw such entries as “Los Angeles ghost bikes, ghost bikes in L.A., ghost bikes memorialize cyclists killed on streets,” and “ghost Bikes of L.A. art exhibit.”

And then there was the search engine hit that said, “These photos of L.A. ghost bikes will haunt you.”

They had already haunted me without my even knowing it. I was sure I’d found Langston Walker’s ghost. And I became that much more certain when I clicked on a website showing the locations of L.A.’s ghost bikes. The map correlated with the
X
s I’d seen on Walker’s map. At each spot, ghost bikes had been left to memorialize those bicyclists killed by hit-and-run drivers.

“
X
marks the spot,” I told Sirius. “I should have seen it. I should have known.”

X
was where Andrea Rhodes had died. She’d been killed on a street where she should have been safe. Andrea Rhodes had been targeted for death.

My oracle had told me. I had seen Langston Walker in a mirror, or through a mirror. It was better than Alice through the looking glass. He had held up a sign. The answer had been before my eyes. But what I had seen was 0 8 4. The mirror had reversed the numbers. The LAPD police code for a felony hit-and-run that has caused great bodily injury or death is 480. Walker had noted the number in his paperwork, and my subconscious must have picked up on it.

I heard an engine start up, but my adrenaline was pumping too hard for me to take any notice of it. Langston had reopened the Andrea Rhodes homicide. The RHD detective who’d worked the case had arrested Donald Warren. It was Warren’s car that had struck and killed Andrea Rhodes. But the suspect had died before the trial. Something had made Walker rethink that investigation. Doubts had surfaced. Maybe it was that Hamlet line he referenced, where he wrote about someone who was “protesting” too much. James Rhodes?

I suspected Andrea’s husband had joined the 187 Club so as to appear an appropriately grieving spouse. In the normal course of most homicide investigations, if a wife is murdered, the husband is invariably the prime suspect. Rhodes would have done his best to keep up the fiction of pining for his wife. But something had made Walker suspicious. He’d gone so far as to talk with Rhodes on the night I spoke to the 187 Club. I suspected Walker hadn’t been sure of his findings, but he’d probably told Rhodes he was reopening the case. Rhodes had known about Walker’s Cactus to Clouds trek. Everyone in the 187 Club did. Walker’s suspicions had likely gotten him killed.

The squeal of tires made me look up. A pickup truck, driving without lights, was flying toward my parked car. I had only a split second to react. I kicked off from the floorboard, propelling myself to the backseat. I tried to throw myself over Sirius. I was trying to save myself; I was trying to save my partner.

And then there was impact, and I was a car-crash dummy. Because the ignition was off, the airbags didn’t deploy, and I pinballed from one side of the car to the other.

Tilt. Game over.

I couldn’t move. I wasn’t even semiconscious. Thoughts didn’t enter my head so much as sensations. Speech was beyond me; I couldn’t form words. There was this din in my head, this static. I couldn’t tune in to the station that was my brain. My eyes were open and my ears were functional, but it was almost like they belonged to another. I felt like a spectator watching from above, dispassionate and unmoving.

I heard footsteps running up to my car. A shadow moved outside, working its way from the truck to my vehicle. In some part of my brain, I could hear the tinkle of liquid. Then, through the broken glass, a head showed itself. A hand holding what looked like a baster extended its way toward me.
Why does someone have a baster?
I wondered. It wasn’t Thanksgiving. The body in the car, the body that was mine, couldn’t respond.

A snarl broke through my static. I could hear it even in my wilderness. I was lost, but it grounded me. It kept me from leaving, but I still couldn’t move.

From above I watched the show, my reception improving. After the snarl came a scream, and the hand that had been advancing toward me was now trying to retreat through the window, but my partner wasn’t letting it go. He was shaking it from side to side like he would have a poisonous snake. The body attached to the arm screamed, and screamed some more. There was more savaging of the arm, but I was only semiconscious. It was only the screaming that kept me from completely going under.

At some point Sirius must have let go of the arm. While I drifted in and out of consciousness, my protector stood over me. He barked with deadly purpose, warning the world to stay their distance. His mouth foamed as he raged at the night. I remember waking once and seeing the blood on his fur, and hoping it belonged to James Rhodes, the man who’d tried to kill me.

I tried to say, “Good boy,” but I’m not sure if I was able to utter the words before blacking out again.