Michael Connelly - Void Moon

He leafed through the book and found one picture of the girl dribbling a basketball. Painted on the wall of a building behind the playing area was the name Wonderland School.

He closed the album and pulled out another. It contained more photos of the girl, though these were not taken at the school. They depicted the girl playing in a yard in front of a house. In some she was pulling a wagon or kicking a ball, in others she was going down a sliding board or laughing on a swing. A grouping of photos in the back of the book but not yet placed in plastic windows showed the girl on a trip to Disneyland. One of the shots, again taken from afar, showed her embracing Mickey Mouse.

Karch realized something and reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out the two passports and opened the top one to the ID photo. It was the same girl from the photos in the albums. Jodie Davis, the name said.

Karch put the passports back in his pocket and let the photo album drop to the floor. He was having an epiphany, a moment when seemingly disparate memories and new pieces of information coalesced into a new truth. He now understood something that had tortured him for six years.

An idea started coming together, a plan for getting the money and Cassie Black, all at the same time. He closed the top drawer and opened the bottom. This one was less crowded. There was an electric hair dryer that didn't look as though it was ever used and a few old pieces of mail from inmates at High Desert Correctional Institution for Women. Karch opened one of the letters and saw it was just a howyadoin' from a former cellmate named Letitia Granville. Karch also threw these into the wastebasket and reached back into the drawer and underneath the hair dryer for a manila envelope that was address side down.

He turned it over and saw that it was addressed to Cassidy Black at High Desert Correctional. Whatever was in the envelope was something she had taken with her from prison. He ran his thumb under the return address and saw the preprinted envelope had been sent from Renaissance Investigations of Paradise Road, Las Vegas. Karch was familiar with the agency. It was mid-size, five or six investigators and an equal number of supposed specialties. He competed with them for the referrals from the Metro missing persons unit. Karch opened the envelope and pulled out a well-thumbed investigation summary. He was about to start reading the particulars when he was jarred by the screaming voice of someone in the doorway behind him.

"FREEZEITUPFUCKHEAD!"

Karch dropped the report and held his hands out in front of him. He slowly started to turn his head. What he saw further shocked him. Just inside the doorway of the bedroom was an enormous black woman. She stood in the classic Weaver stance taught at every law enforcement academy in the country. Feet spread, weight equally distributed, both hands up holding and bracing the gun, elbows slightly bent and pointed outward. Around her neck was a chain with a badge on it. She looked like no cop Karch had ever seen, but the 9 mm Beretta pointed at him won the debate.

"Take it easy now," he said calmly. "I'm on your side."

SINCE getting the news at the dealership Cassie Black had felt as though she were underwater, in some kind of surrealistic otherworld that had no bearing on her life. Deep down she knew it was an instinctive defense mechanism. It allowed her to continue, to move and do what needed to be done.

She now stood in the backyard of Leo's house staring at the dried blood streaking the jagged piece of glass standing in the bottom frame of the sliding door. Just seeing the glass confirmed what Karch had told her. She knew now that Leo was dead. If she went into the house she would find his body. And whatever way she found it would constitute an image she would never be able to remove from her memory.

She looked down into the pool at the vacuum standing motionless at the bottom. But almost immediately her eyes were drawn back to the door with the jagged glass. She knew she had to go in. Finally, she nodded once to herself and walked up to the door. And immediately she could see his body on the floor of the office. An eighteen-wheeler going by on the freeway behind the property drowned out the awful sighing sound that came involuntarily from her throat. She stepped over the glass and into the house.

Leo's body was sprawled face up to the side of the door. Blood seemed to be everywhere. Despite the horrible tableau the scene created, her eyes were drawn to what unmistakably appeared to be, if not a smile on his face, a look of satisfaction. Cassie crouched next to him and touched his cold cheek.

"Oh, Leo," she said. "What did I do?"

The tears started coming again. She tried to pinch them off by tightly closing her eyes and balling her fists.

Finally, when she opened her eyes again, she tried to study the body and the surroundings as maybe a detective would. She wanted to know what had happened. The fact that Karch had come to her and demanded the money meant Leo had stood up. She looked at the bloody drag marks on the tile floor and put it together. Leo had done it. He had gone to the glass. He had done it for her.

"Leo…"

She closed her eyes again and leaned her head down to his silent chest.

"I knew we should've run."

She straightened back up with a new resolve. She would get away. She knew it was a selfish choice but she also knew that if she failed that Leo's noble death would be for nothing. That was Leo's hope in the end. His last prayer. That was what put the smile on his face. She would honor that.

She stood up and looked around the office. It had been completely destroyed by Karch's search. But he had been looking for two-and-a-half million dollars, not for what she looked for now. She stepped over the body to the overturned desk and looked at the debris on the floor. Leo's astrology books and papers and notebooks were scattered about. The contents of the desk drawers had been dumped. Amidst the clutter she saw two envelopes on the floor, both addressed to Leo and with the same odd return address, just the numbers 773. She stooped down and picked them up. Both were empty. One was postmarked two days before in Chicago and then she knew. Karch had found the passports. He had them.

Cassie abruptly stood up and her head hit the red I-Ching coins that dangled from the ceiling and would have been directly over the upright desk. She looked up at them for a moment and then grabbed the desk chair and moved it over. She climbed up on the chair and unhooked the string of coins. She wanted something of Leo's to take with her. If not for luck, then just to remember him by.

As she got down she knew there was no point in going through the rest of the house. Karch had the passports and there was nothing else inside that she had wanted. She walked over to Leo's body and once more looked down on him. She thought of the song she had listened to so many times on the way to Vegas. She hoped there had been an angel to whisper in his ear.

"Good-bye, Leo," she said.

She carefully stepped over the glass and through the broken slider out to the backyard. She walked to the pool's edge and looked down at the vacuum. Tracing its hose to a coupling in the wall, she walked around to the other side and then got down on her knees and reached into the water. She grabbed the hose and started pulling it up and out onto the pool's concrete skirt. It was heavy work and twice she almost toppled into the water. Eventually, the vacuum head and debris bag came to the surface and she wrestled it onto the concrete.

Water turned the white concrete dark and soaked the knees of her black jeans. She didn't care. She struggled with the collar of the debris bag but then saw the zipper running alongside the bag. She quickly zipped the bag open and spread it. Inside the bag was another bag, a heavy-duty white plastic bag with its mouth tied in a knot. She carefully lifted it out of the vacuum bag and then worked her fingers into the knot. It was too tight and she didn't have the fingernails for the job. She reached into her back pocket for the Swiss Army knife and used it to cut the knot off the bag.