Michael Connelly - Lost Light

Eleanor nodded like she understood. I pulled my ATM and American Express cards out of my wallet. I kept my Visa card for the car rental and anything else that might come up.

“I want you to take these cards and use them over the next couple of days. The ATM code is oh-six-thirteen. Should be easy enough to remember.”

It had been our wedding day.

“Funny,” she said. “You know, this year it falls on a Friday. I checked. That’s bad luck, Harry.”

Friday the thirteenth somehow seemed appropriate. For a moment I wondered what it meant that she was checking on when future anniversaries of a failed marriage landed on the calendar. I dropped it and came back to the present.

“So just use them over the next few days. You know, go have dinner or something. If I were here I’d probably buy you a present for letting me stay with you. So go to the ATM and get some money and buy something you like. The AmEx still has my full name on it. You shouldn’t have a problem.”

Most people don’t know what gender my given name Hieronymus is. When we had been married Eleanor regularly used my credit cards without a problem. The only difficulty that would arise now would occur if an ID was requested at point of purchase. This rarely happens in restaurants anywhere and especially not in Las Vegas, a place that takes your money first and asks questions later.

I handed her the cards but she didn’t take them.

“Harry, what is this? What’s going on with you?”

“I told you. I want some people to think I am over here in Vegas.”

“And these are people who can monitor credit-card purchases and ATM usage?”

“If they want to. I don’t know if they will. This is just a pre-”

“Then you’re talking about the cops or the bureau. Which is it?”

I laughed quietly.

“Well, it might be both. But as far as I know it’s the bureau that’s most interested.”

“Oh, Harry…”

She said it with a here-we-go-again tone in her voice. I thought about telling her that it involved Marty Gessler but decided I shouldn’t involve her any further than I already had.

“Look, it’s no big deal. I’m just working on one of my old cases and it’s got an agent’s nose out of joint. I want him to think he scared me off. For just a few days. Okay, Eleanor? Can you do this, please?”

I held the cards out again. After a long moment she reached up and took them without a word. We were on an airport road where all the rent-a-car complexes were lined up in a row. I wanted to say something else. Something about us and about how I wanted to come back over when all of this nastiness was finished. If she wanted me to. But she pulled into the Avis lot and put her window down to tell a security man that she was just there to drop me off.

The interruption ruined the flow of the conversation, if it even was a conversation. I lost my momentum and dropped any thought of saying anything further about us.

She pulled up to the Avis pickup office and it was time for me to get out. But I didn’t. I sat there and looked at her until she finally turned and looked at me.

“Thank you for doing this, Eleanor.”

“It’s not a problem. You’ll get the bill.”

I smiled.

“Do you ever go back to L.A.? You know, to the card rooms or anything?”

She shook her head.

“Not in a long time. I don’t like to travel anymore.”

I nodded. There didn’t seem like there was anything else to say. I leaned over and kissed her, this time just on the cheek.

“I’ll call you tomorrow or the next day, okay?”

“Okay, Harry. Be careful. Good-bye.”

“I will. Good-bye, Eleanor.”

I got out and watched her drive off. I wished I had been able to spend more time with her and wondered if she would have let me if I’d had the time. I then put those thoughts away and went inside. I showed my driver’s license and credit card and picked up the key to my rental. It was a Ford Taurus and I had to get used to being low to the ground again. On my way out of rent-a-car row I saw a sign with an arrow pointing the way to Paradise Road. I thought that everybody needed a sign like that. I wished that it was that easy.

Four hours and a nonstop drive across the desert later I was in the tech lab at Biggar amp; Biggar. I took the memory card from my pocket and handed it to Andre. He held it up and looked at it and then looked at me as though I had just put used gum in his hand.

“Where’s the case?”

“The case? You mean the clock? It’s still on the wall.”

I hadn’t figured out yet how to tell him that the clock was broken and probably the camera as well.

“No, the plastic case for the card. You put the spare card I gave you into the clock when you took this one out, right?”

I nodded.

“Right.”

“Well, you should have put this one into the spare card’s case. This is a delicate instrument. Carrying it around with your pocket change and lint is not the proper way of -”

“Andre,” Burnett Biggar interrupted, “let’s just see if it’s going to work. It was my mistake for not schooling Harry on the finer points of care and maintenance. I forgot he’s such a throwback.”

Andre shook his head and walked over to a workbench with a computer set up on it. I looked at Burnett and nodded my thanks for the rescue. He winked at me and we followed Andre.

The son used a pneumatic air gun that looked like it was from a dentist’s office to blast dust and debris off the memory card I had mishandled and then plugged it into a receptacle that was attached to the computer. He typed in a few commands and soon the images from Lawton Cross’s sitting room were playing on the computer screen.

“Remember,” Andre said, “we were using the motion sensor so it’s going to be a bit jerky. Watch the clock in the corner and you’ll be able to keep track.”

The first image on the screen was my own face. I was staring right at the camera as I adjusted the time on the clock. I then backed away, revealing Lawton Cross in his chair behind me.

“Oh, man,” Burnett said, seeing his former colleague’s condition and situation. “I don’t know if I want to see this.”

“It gets worse,” I said, confident in what I thought was ahead on the surveillance.

Cross’s voice croaked from the computer’s speakers.

“Harry?”

“What?” I heard myself ask.

“Did you bring me some?”

“A little.”

On the screen I flipped open the toolbox to get the flask.

In the lab I said, “Can you fast-forward this?”

Andre nodded and used the computer’s mouse to click a fast-forward button on the screen. The screen blinked black for a moment, indicating the camera had gone off for lack of movement. It then came back on as Danny Cross entered the room. Andre switched the playback to real time. I checked the time and saw this was just a few minutes after I had left the room. Danny stood with her arms crossed in front of her and stared at her invalid husband as though he was a misbehaving child. She started speaking and it was hard to hear because of the television noise.

“This is amateur hour here,” Andre said. “Why’d you put it next to the TV?”

He was right. I hadn’t thought about that. The camera’s microphone was picking up the voices from the television better than those in the room.

“Andre,” Burnett said, quieting his son’s complaint. “Just see if you can clean it up some.”

Andre used the mouse again to manipulate the sound. He backed the image up and played it again. The television noise was still intrusive but at least the conversation in the room was audible.

Danny Cross spoke with a sharp tone in her voice.