Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [60]
The photograph was not dissimilar to the composite, which showed short dark hair and a strong neck. Now you could see the power in the face came from the high forehead and big jaw, which conveyed a solid, all-American arrogance, like a college football player from the fifties. You expected him to be wearing a white crew sweater. The nose was pert and the mouth compressed as if he were biding his important time—I’ll stand here and let you take my picture—while the eyes half closed in drowsy contempt, as if this world were beneath consideration. Or maybe that was just the way the flash went off.
Ray Brennan fit the profile—husky, good-looking, overconfident. With longer hair and a softer attitude you understood how he could unhinge a girl like Juliana: a diamond blade slicing through a rooftop door, a knife through butter.
Instantly my range of contact expanded like a radar field to include State College, Pennsylvania, where, according to the records, Richard (Ray) Brennan was born. My working day was taken up with faxes and phone calls to Quantico and the Philadelphia field office, trying to figure out which of the cool businesslike voices I could trust with my baby, then working to get everybody on the same page with respect to the most efficient way of obtaining information. Another timeline was begun, a trail through time, that would detail the moves of Brennan’s life—lead us west to Tempe, Arizona, through the mirror maze of his psyche, to a bench on a Promenade three blocks from the Pacific Ocean, and finish at that trailer park or ratty little house in whatever mean and shabby sprawl, where we would, inevitably, take him down.
I just can’t sleep.”
“I know, Juliana.”
“What time does the sun rise?”
“Five-forty-four. But it sets at seven-ten. The days are getting longer. What are you doing?”
“Painting my nails.”
“What color?”
“Mango Ice.”
As the identity of the prime suspect came into focus, I felt myself emerging from the emotional commotion of the kidnap to the clarity of the hunt. Every day brought exhilarating twists you knew would slam into an unexpected climax—the shocking waterfall at the end of the ride. For example, we had the stats on every 1989 dark green Dodge van registered in Arizona and California. Eliminating the owners by gender and age, there were only a dozen under thirty-five and male. Improbable? You had to believe in your own logic. You had to choose a source of power, or become immobilized. That is why, when I was ready to cash out and close the books on Andrew, I chose the Boatyard Restaurant. The prosecution made it look like I went there only to humiliate him, but logic would say the opposite: after the incident on the Marina Freeway, wasn’t it a safer bet for both of us to meet in public?
He was at the bar, drinking with Barry Loomis and a couple of cronies from the department. It was a loud, bright, old-guard kind of joint that smelled of sawdust and beer-soaked timbers, where the steaks were overrated but it didn’t matter because the waitresses were slim as trapeze artists, spinning platters of creamed spinach and onion rings at an impossible pace. I think the place must have been there forty years. They say it really was Sal Mineo who carved his name into the table at the far booth.
Andrew was a regular. No wonder he liked the timeless atmosphere, since he was always bitching and moaning about how things changed. How the new recruits, who lived in far-flung developments sometimes an hour and a half away from Santa Monica, did not subscribe to drinking after shift. Hell, they even refused to work overtime, which the veterans considered to be free money. Their work ethic sucked—they wanted to go home and have fun! To them law enforcement was a two-year gig on the way to something else, no longer “a life”—while Andrew and his contemporaries had made one deliberate choice