Michael Connelly - Void Moon

Tears ran down her cheeks as she drove. What had happened at the dealership changed everything. Leo's death was awful and hurt her deeply. But Leo had been in the circle and knew the risks. Ray Morales and Connie Leto, the finance manager, were innocents. Their deaths signaled the lengths to which Karch was willing to go to recover the money. It meant there were no bounds anymore. To Karch, to her guilt, to anything.

KARCH watched through the window of the taxi as it went by the Porsche dealership. He didn't care about the assemblage of police and television news vehicles surrounding the glass walls of the showroom. His eyes scanned the numerous people standing on the sidewalks. He was hoping to see Cassie Black but knew he was too late. His cell phone had failed to get a signal up in the hills. He'd had to hike up to Mulholland and then over to the Hollywood overlook, where he'd remembered seeing a pay phone earlier. It took him nearly an hour to cover the ground. Then it was another twenty minutes waiting for the taxi he called for to show up.

The taxi driver said something in very bad English about what had happened at the dealership but Karch paid no attention. The taxi continued another few blocks and turned onto Wilcox. Karch had him stop in front of a Hollywood memorabilia store. He paid and got out. After the taxi took off and had turned back onto Sunset he crossed the street to his Lincoln, which was parked at the curb. On its bumpers were a set of fresh plates he had picked up that morning in a long-term lot at LAX.

Karch got in and fired the car up. But before pulling out of the space he looked up Selma in the map book. He saw he was in luck. He was less than five minutes away.

There were no cars parked in front or on the driveway of the bungalow on Selma where Cassie Black's driver's license said she lived. The house was on a dead end and Karch decided on a direct approach. He pulled right into the driveway and parked. Breaking and entering in daylight was not his idea of a wise move but he had to get into the house to see if Cassie Black had been there yet. He decided the safest way to go was straight in. He pulled into the drive, honked the Lincoln's horn twice and waited. Finally, he killed the engine, got out and went right up the front steps, spinning his key chain on his finger. When he got close to the door he bent over and raised his lock picks. He quickly went to work on the deadbolt, acting as though he were a man having trouble with his keys. He had no idea if he was being watched but he was putting on a good show.

He picked the lock in about forty seconds. He then turned the knob and walked in.

"Hey, Cassie?" he called loudly and for the benefit of any neighbor who might have been watching. "Come on, I'm waitin' out here!"

He closed the door, pulled out his gun and quickly attached the silencer. He began a quick room-to-room check of the house.

It was empty. He began a second and slower sweep, looking around to try to determine if Cassie Black had been to the house in the time since she had escaped from him up on the hill. The home, though sparely furnished, seemed to be in neat order. He became convinced that she had not been there yet. He sat down on the couch in the living room and thought about what this could mean. Did she already have the money or did she not have the money? Had it been at Leo Renfro's and he had somehow missed it during his all-night search? Worse yet was another possibility that poked through: that Renfro had been telling the truth when he claimed to have already given the money to his Chicago contacts.

Karch felt something lumpy beneath the spot where he was sitting. He moved down the couch and then pulled up the cushion. He picked up a clothes hanger with seven padlocks attached to it. It served to remind him of how formidable Cassidy Black had turned out to be. He decided in that moment that if he found out she had the money and was gone, he would chase her to the ends of the earth. Not for Grimaldi and definitely not for the faceless group that pulled strings from Miami. He would do it for himself.

He left the hanger on the coffee table and got up to start his third sweep of the house. This one would take the longest.

The bedroom was the logical place to start. Karch knew people liked to sleep with the things dear to them close by. The white-walled room was furnished with the basics, a four-poster bed, two bed tables, a bureau and a mirror. A framed poster of a beach scene from Tahiti was taped to a wall. He studied it for a moment and quickly realized it was a duplicate of the poster he had seen in Cassidy Black's office when he had stepped in while looking for her in the showroom. He had been looking at the poster when the manager had stuck his head in and asked if he could help.

Karch stepped over to the wall and studied the poster, wondering if it had any significance for his mission. The woman on the beach did not look like Cassidy Black. He finally decided he would have to worry about it later and turned to the nearby bed table and opened the top drawer.

The drawer contained a stack of Popular Mechanics magazines that looked as though they had been bought at a yard sale. They were all in poor condition and were several years old. Still, he flew the pages on every one of them in case there was a note or maybe a hidden address. He found nothing and dropped the last magazine back in the drawer and kicked it closed.

The bottom drawer of the table was empty except for a little net bundle containing cedarwood shavings and dried rosemary. He slammed that drawer closed and came around the bed to the other night table.

Before he opened the drawer he had a feeling he would have good luck here. This table had a lamp on it and the pillow on this side of the bed had an indentation from someone sleeping on it. He knew this was her side of the bed.

Karch sat down on the bed and put his gun down next to his thigh. With both hands he picked up the pillow and brought it to his face. He could smell her. Her hair. He wasn't good at identifying fragrances but he thought he could smell tea leaves, like when you first open a box of tea bags. He wasn't sure about it and put the pillow back down.

He opened the top drawer of the bed table and hit pay dirt. The drawer was crammed with personal items. There were books and hair bands and photograph albums. There was a still camera with a long lens and a video camera as well. Placed on top of everything was a small framed photograph. Karch picked it up and studied it. It showed Cassidy Black sitting on the lap of a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. She was holding a pinkish-orange drink with a paper umbrella in it. Karch almost didn't recognize her because the smile on her face was so wide and bright.

However, he easily recognized the man in the photo. His was a face Karch would never forget. Max Freeling, the man who had permanently altered Karch's entire life in one moment of time. Karch knew he wouldn't be where he now sat if it had not been for Max Freeling and the decision he had made at the top of that hotel six years before. All these years, he had been under Grimaldi's thumb because of what happened in that room with Max Freeling.

He turned the picture over and hit the frame's glass harshly on the corner of the bed table. He heard the glass crack. He noticed something written on the cardboard backing of the frame. It said, I looked up and saw the outline of Tahiti and I realized this was the place I had been looking for all my life.

– W. Somerset Maugham Karch turned the frame over and looked at the photo again. A spiderweb crack started on Cassidy Black's face and branched across the photograph. Karch tossed the frame into a wastebasket that was next to the bed table.

From the drawer he removed a thick photo album with a soft brown leather binding. As he opened it he expected to find more photos of Max Freeling but instead got a surprise. The album was full of photographs of a young girl. Almost all of them were taken from a distance – he glanced at the long-range camera in the drawer – and at the same location, a schoolyard.