Jan Burke - Nine

“Sedgewick!”

“You know it?”

Every member of the sheriff’s department who had ever worked in the Malibu area knew about Sedgewick-the brats of billionaires, the Hollywood hell-born. “Aren’t most of the kids who end up there kind of troubled?”

Chase laughed. “Yeah, troubled. That’s one way to say it. It’s where fucked-up rich kids go to fuck each other up even more.”

Alex wasn’t so sure he was wrong, but he said, “You talk that way around Uncle John?”

Chase looked away from him. “No, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“One extreme or the other, I see.”

Chase didn’t answer.

“I take it you’d rather not go to Sedgewick.”

“Hell-heck, no. I hate the kids who go there. They’re meaner than-they’re really mean.”

“What about your mom?” he made himself ask. “Does she want you to go there?”

“That-”

Whatever word it was going to be, he bit it off. “I take that to be a yes,” Alex said.

“It was her idea. She knows the owner of the school. Really well.”

Alex let it pass. The last thing he could afford to do was to get into some conversation with this kid about his mother’s virtue. He made the turn onto Pacific Coast Highway, heading north. “You tell John about this plan to send you to Sedgewick?”

“No. I don’t want him to be-you know, ashamed of me.”

“So you steal cars?”

Chase went back to brooding in silence.

“Talk to John about it. He has more influence with your father than I do.”

As they came nearer to the house, Alex felt a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. He hadn’t seen the place in years-from the day he heard that Miles had bought their childhood home, he had avoided this road. Chase gave him the code for the new security gate. He punched it into the keypad, and the gate swung open. At the end of the long private drive, the mansion loomed before him, many of the lights on. He felt some sense of recognition, but not of homecoming. Miles had changed it.

The front door opened, and a woman peered out.

“Looks as if your mother waited up for you,” Alex said.

Chase wasn’t looking at her, though.

“Uncle Alex? Thanks. I’m-I’m almost glad I got in trouble. I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time.”

Stay safe or leap into the abyss? He leapt. After all, the kid had jumped first. “I’m glad I met you, too, Chase. But next time, just call. It will be easier on all of us.”

“I don’t have your number.”

Alex pulled out a card and gave it to him. “Pager number’s on there, too.”

Chase quickly tucked it away, now watching his mother coming down the steps.

One leap was enough for an evening, though. “Do me a favor, Chase,” Alex said, as the moonlight caught Clarissa’s features. “Don’t force me to make small talk with your mom.”

“Sure.” He quickly got out of the car and waved.

Alex waved back and turned the car around.

He looked in the rearview mirror and saw Clarissa staring after the car.

Miles had changed her, too, Alex thought. Time and Miles.

Just not enough.

Manhattan Beach, California

Monday, May 19, 7:02 A.M.

He answered the phone with the practiced motions of a man who is more often awakened by it than an alarm clock. Half-roused from a brief, deep sleep, he mumbled, “Brandon.”

“Alex? It’s Dan. We’ve got trouble.”

He rubbed a hand over his eyes and looked at the clock. “Trouble?”

“I need for you to get in touch with Morton and head on over to Avalon as soon as possible,” Lieutenant Dan Hogan said. “I’ve got a helicopter waiting for you at the Aero Bureau.”

“Avalon?” he repeated, still not fully awake. “On Catalina?”

“Yes. I know you got in late, but we’ve got two more bodies in connection with the case you worked on last night.”

The sense of dread he had felt the night before returned. “Someone found Adrianos’s bodyguards on the island?”

“Maybe you can tell me that. Did he have any female bodyguards?”

“No. The victims are females this time?”

“One male, one female.”

“So maybe a bodyguard and his companion.”

“All I know is that we’ve got two more bodies hanging upside down over a bathtub, and I want to make sure nobody calls me up to say there are three more of them somewhere else in this county before the day is out. Get there before the media gets wind of this, Alex. Murder cases are rare on Catalina, so you know the press will make the most of a double homicide.”

The sense of urgency that Alex felt with any new case increased tenfold. It wasn’t a matter of the potential for negative publicity-handling that was Hogan’s problem. What bothered him more was the knowledge that the killers were setting the pace, and a fast one. They had also chosen two sites within LASD jurisdiction to display bodies in a way that was bound to grab attention. He wondered, uneasily, whose attention they wanted and why.

Forty-five minutes later, Alex and Ciara were on a sheriff’s department helicopter, taking off from the department’s Aero Bureau at the Long Beach Airport.

“You don’t know anything more than that?” Ciara asked him.

“No,” he said. “Just that we’re supposed to meet a Deputy Black there.”

She made a sound that was almost a growl. She didn’t look as if she’d had much sleep, either.

Soon they were flying over the Long Beach Harbor, above the Queen Mary. From this perspective, the size of the ship was more evident than from the nearby dock-the Queen Mary dwarfed every other vessel in the harbor. He watched the white sails of pleasure boats, the larger ferries, the barges and freighters making their way past the breakwater.

The winds of the past few days had died down but not before they had managed to clear away the smog and haze. It would build up again, but for now, the view from the helicopter was breathtaking.

The journey to Santa Catalina Island would take about fifteen minutes. Alex decided that it might be the last pleasant fifteen minutes of the day and became determined to enjoy it. He had already seen the skylines of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the backdrop of the mountains with the last of their winter snow, and now the harbor and curving coastline. If he could have stayed up here, with this sort of visibility, he might have thought about loving the L.A. area again. But he knew days like these were a come-on for a different bargain, and he didn’t let himself be taken in.

The island, its green and brown peaks rising above the sea, was only twenty-two miles from the mainland. Far too soon, the helicopter was landing.

Due to local laws, most of the vehicles used on Catalina were golf carts. The sheriff’s department carts were painted to look like cruisers, with department insignia. For the short drive from the Avalon Substation to the crime scene, Alex and Ciara rode in the back of one of the carts. He kept waiting for Ciara to make a crack, but she was quiet.

They soon rolled up to the front of a small vacation rental home. The smell hit them before the cart came to a stop.

The day’s best fifteen minutes were definitely over.

Deputy Evan Black met them outside. He was a tall man with short blond hair, and green eyes that held a look of lingering amusement, as if he were a man who had just heard a good joke. His skin was deeply tanned. Alex guessed him to be in his early thirties.

The deputy who had driven them over introduced them to Black but made the common error with Ciara’s name. “It’s pronounced ‘Keer-ah,’ not Sarah,” she corrected. “But you can pronounce it ‘Detective Morton.’”

“I’m sure no one will forget that now,” said Black, smiling. Ciara gave him a hard look, but he didn’t seem to see it. “You made good time. Crime lab folks haven’t arrived yet.”