Kane (42 page)

“Thanks, Bill, but I’m a married man.  Glad to see you finally busted out of the closet, though.”

“You’ve always got something smart to say, don’t you?”

“It’s a gift.”

Snead glared.  “I’ve got a gift too, hotshot.  I can predict the future, and I predict that one of these days your luck is going to run out.  And when it does, I’m going to be there, sitting in the front row.”

35

F
ortunately, traffic had been light.  Staying within the speed limit, Carns made it back to Orange County without incident, arriving at his Mission Viejo storage garage in under ninety minutes.

He still couldn’t believe he had escaped.  Obviously, the house had been under surveillance.  They’d suckered him, played him for a chump with that phony broadcast.

Kane? he wondered once more.

He remembered the first time he had seen Kane on the news.  “We’ll get this maggot,” he’d said.  Insulting right from the beginning.  But there had been something besides anger in his eyes, something calculating.  It had been Lauren Van Owen who had interviewed him then, too.

Could Kane have been using the media for his own purposes as far back as then?

As he stepped from his car, Carns again recalled the surreptitious meeting he had witnessed at the health club.  The blond reporter may have mouthed the lies that inspired his monumental blunder, but Carns knew her source.

Working quickly, he opened the door of the rental garage, drove the Toyota inside beside the van, and shut the door.  Wearing gloves as always, he switched plates on the blue import, replacing the ones he’d stolen in Arcadia with the originals that had come with the car.  The pilfered plates went into a plastic trash bag, along with the magnetic signs he’d purchased years before in Colorado.  His knapsack and its contents went into a second bag; his jacket, baseball cap, and tennis shoes into a third.  As a precaution, he wiped everything including the bags themselves, making sure there was no chance of a stray print.

He kept the camera and tape recorder, deciding they couldn’t be traced.  Otherwise, everything went.  In a few months, when things settled down, he would get rid of the cars as well.

Carns stopped on his way home, making deposits in several local Dumpsters.  Two hours from the time he’d escaped the trap in Sherman Oaks, everything that could place him at any of the recent murder sites ceased to exist.  Almost.  There was still the garment he had taken from Julie Welsh’s hamper
. 
And what about the rest, his precious mementos?  Would everything have to go?

In the end he resisted the temptation to dispose of it all—slides, tapes, clothes, clippings, videos, digital recordings—reasoning that if the police knew his identity, they would already have come.  There would be time enough to get rid of his souvenirs later, but only if necessary.
 
And with attention to detail, that day would never come.  His carelessness had been a fluke, a onetime mistake.  He had grown overconfident and allowed himself to be tricked.

It wouldn’t happen again.

Still, the incident disturbed Carns more than he wanted to admit.  In all the years he had been playing the game, no one had ever come this close.  No one.

After returning home, Carns showered and taped his swollen ankle.  Favoring his injured leg, he limped downstairs.  In the living room he poured himself three fingers of Scotch, downing the drink in one shuddering gulp.  After refilling his glass, he retired to his office.  There he sat at his research station and booted up his Lexis-Nexis software.  Once the familiar blue screen appeared, he entered his seven-digit PIN and hit transmit, tapping his fingers impatiently as the computer logged on.

Accessing thousands of databases, the Nexis international information service was a vital information source that was essential to Carns’s work.  The inquiry he currently planned, however, did not involve business.  A moment later the research display popped up.  Carns selected the Nexis news library, major papers file, and typed in his search request:  “Kane, Daniel.”  Seconds later a response came back:  1,964 hits.

Carns focused his inquiry by adding the letters “LAPD.”  This time the total proved considerably smaller:  nineteen.  Still, a healthy number for a homicide detective.  Kane had been a busy boy.

Carns downloaded the files, then spent several minutes perusing Kane’s career as chronicled in the
Los Angeles Times,
The Orange County Register,
the Long Beach
Press-Telegram,
and various other news services.  The results were disturbing.  In every article Kane came across as a dangerous adversary:  five shootings (three fatal), heated but unresolved scrapes with LAPD Internal Affairs, and an unparalleled reputation for closing cases.  A maverick, and an unpredictable one as well.  Studying the articles, Carns recognized something in Kane’s persona that struck a familiar chord.  Although Carns hadn’t been able to pinpoint it earlier, he had sensed it from the beginning.  Now he realized what it was:  Kane was willing to play outside the rules.

Carns hit the print button.  As copies of the documents began dropping into the tray, he switched to the Lexis public records library.  Selecting the CAPROP assets file, he again typed “Kane, Daniel,” searching for California real estate owned by anyone with that name.  Nine hits this time.  A manageable number.  Carns scrolled through.

Four of the California real estate parcels belonging to individuals named Daniel Kane were located in the San Francisco area, two in San Diego, another in San Bernadino.  These Carns rejected, leaving a twelve-unit apartment building in Pasadena (unlikely on a policeman’s salary) and an owner occupied, single-family residence in Malibu.

Seconds later Carns had Daniel Thomas Kane’s street address, the annual property tax, lot size, number of rooms, assessed value, parcel number, square footage, and current mortgage.  He also discovered a second individual listed as an owner:  Catheryn Ellen Kane.

Kane’s married?

On a whim, after downloading the CAPROP information, Carns scrolled back to the Nexis library and hunted for articles on “Catheryn Kane,” “Catheryn E. Kane,” or “Catheryn Ellen Kane.”  By progressively limiting his search, he pared the number of hits to two:  mention of a cellist in a string quartet that had performed at Pepperdine University three years ago, and an article on a longtime Malibu resident who had recently become the associate principal cellist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  The latter, a short bio that had appeared in the
Los Angeles Times,
mentioned a photograph not available through Nexis.

After logging off Lexis-Nexis, Carns connected to Times Link, an archival program provided by the
Times.
  Following a short search, a black-and-white image materialized on Carns’s screen.  The picture showed an extremely attractive woman sitting on a stool, a cello between her knees, an out-of-focus curtain behind her.  The woman on the screen had confident eyes, a delicate neck, and a generous mouth that hinted at passions below the surface.

Carns leaned closer.  Although the woman had her hair pinned back, he could tell it was long.  Dark blond or auburn.  Either would be satisfactory, he thought, picturing how it would look down, imagining it running through his fingers.

Sensing a familiar stirring, Carns studied the screen.  The longer he looked, the more he liked what he saw.  No doubt about it, the woman was stunningly beautiful, although not quite as movie-star gorgeous as some he’d had.  The last two, for example, had been exquisite.  Vapid, but flawless.

Still, all in all, there was definitely something about Catheryn Ellen Kane that Carns found … interesting.

36

C
atheryn Kane, please.”  I had my feet propped up on the kitchen table at home, phone in one hand, files from work in the other.  Thanks to Snead I had unexpectedly drawn weekend task force duty, and I’d be unable to pick up Catheryn at the airport on Sunday—at least if she arrived as originally scheduled.  Although I needed to let her know, I resolved to keep our conversation short, hoping to avoid another hurtful, long distance exchange.

The switchboard connection was bad.  Earlier I’d tried Catheryn’s cell phone without success.  I assumed she probably had it turned off.  Next I had called her hotel in Amsterdam.  Laden with static, a woman’s voice finally came back, her accent a blend of Dutch and German.  “Yes, sir,” she said.  “Please hold.  I’ll transfer your call to her room.”

Exhausted and depressed, I glanced at my watch:  11:15 PM.  Eight hours time difference to Amsterdam would make it, what—a quarter after seven in the morning there?  Or was the time difference only seven hours?  I shrugged.  Either way, Catheryn was an early riser and sure to be up.

As I waited for my call to be transferred, my thoughts traveled back to the disaster at the Bakers’ house.  It had proved a profound embarrassment to every member of the task force, and things hadn’t improved since then.  Although the killer’s recent attack had elicited several new wrinkles—confirmation of the attorney-DMV connection and the door-opener angle, for example—I held little hope of apprehending a suspect anytime soon.  Our best chance had been to grab the guy in Sherman Oaks, and we’d blown it.  Making things worse, an officer had been killed, a tragedy that should have been avoided.

The problem now was that the investigation had begun to show signs of complete stagnation, with task force members increasingly revisiting stale ground already covered.  Most avenues of inquiry—analyzing paint scrapes from Julie Welsh’s damaged fender, locating the source of the magnetic signs, finding common connections between various victims, forensic examination of latent prints, found hairs, and so forth—had turned into complete dead ends.  The high point of the day had been the chromatography analysis from Standard Oil confirming that the radiator coolant and oil drips found near the Bakers’ house matched those discovered in the Larsons’ garage.  Great …
if
we located the Toyota.  Otherwise, useless.  Given the situation, I had begun to suspect that Berns was right.  If we ever did find the killer, luck would undoubtedly play a part.

At last Catheryn’s phone began ringing.  A sleepy male voice answered.  “Hello?”

“Sorry,” I said.  “Must have the wrong room.”

“Speak up.  I can’t hear you.  Whom are you calling?”

The connection had grown worse.  I raised my voice.  “Catheryn Kane.”

“You have the correct room.  She can’t talk right now.  Please call back.”

“What’s wrong?  Is she okay?”

“Of course she’s all right,” the man answered, his muffled response barely audible.  “She’s in the shower.  Do you want to leave a—”

“Who is this?”

“A friend, if it’s any of your business,” the man responded testily.  Despite the hissing on the line, his voice sounded familiar.

Arthur West?

“Listen,
friend,
” I said,
“I want to speak to Catheryn.  Put her on.”

“No need to be boorish.  As I told you, she can’t talk right now.  She just got up and is in the shower.”

Definitely Arthur West.  What was he doing in Catheryn’s room that early in the morning?

“Is there a message?” the man asked curtly.

“No.”

I slammed down the receiver, a nauseous feeling of betrayal churning in my stomach.  I couldn’t believe it.  Sure, things with Kate had been strained.  But an affair?  With Arthur West?

It wasn’t possible.

On the other hand, I knew what I’d heard.  Slowly, a tarantula of suspicion began poisoning my thoughts with images of Catheryn and Arthur in each other’s arms.

How could things have come to this?

Minutes later I redialed the Amsterdam hotel and left a message at the desk for Catheryn, informing her that I’d be working on Sunday and wouldn’t be able to meet her at the airport.

After hanging up, I pulled on a jacket and descended to the beach.  A biting wind had picked up.  I lowered my head against a peppering of stinging sand and made my way to the water’s edge.  Numbly, I shoved my hands into my pockets and started toward the lights of Santa Monica, wintry gusts plucking at my clothes, heart-wrenching thoughts of Catheryn coiling in my mind.

*       *       *

Barefoot and dripping, Catheryn stepped from the bathroom, a robe cinched at her waist, hair wrapped in a towel.  “What are you doing here, Arthur?”

From his perch on the edge of Catheryn’s bed, Arthur West smiled apologetically.  “Sorry if I surprised you.”  He glanced at his watch.  “The airport bus leaves in twenty minutes.  When you didn’t meet me for coffee as planned, I rang your room.  You didn’t answer, so I came up.  You’re always so punctual.  I thought something might have happened.”

“How’d you get in?”

Arthur feigned hurt.  “The maid was in the hall.  I had her open the door.  When I heard you in the shower, I decided to wait.  I hope you don’t mind.”

“I’m just surprised.  Now, shoo.  I have to get dressed.”