The 5th Horseman - James Patterson [89]
He greeted me with a “Hey, Lindsay” and a flip of his hand. A second later, I heard him say “bloody hell” as Jacobi came out of the garage and crossed the lawn toward me.
“Garza has two cars,” Jacobi said. “His SUV is in the garage, but his Mercedes is missing. There’s another car parked next to the SUV. It’s a black BMW sedan, with vanity plates. Spells out redhead.”
Chapter 127
A DOZEN MOBILE UNITS and the crime scene van had walled off Garza’s house from the main road. Yellow tape flapped in the breeze and was tangled on the railing going up the front stairs.
I stood under glaring sunlight, blinking at Jacobi as my hypothetical reconstruction of the homicide totally blew apart. Why was O’Mara’s car at Garza’s house?
Had she killed Garza? Could she have maneuvered his body into that Mercedes Roadster? Or was it the other way around?
Had O’Mara clipped Garza with that crystal vase, and he’d retaliated with killing force?
Either way, we had no body, a missing car, O’Mara’s car in the garage, and one of the bloodiest crime scenes I’d ever seen.
“Okay,” I said to Jacobi. “So where is O’Mara? Where is Redhead?”
While inspectors and uniforms canvassed Garza’s neighbors, Jacobi and I used our squad car as an office. He got out a BOLO on Garza’s Mercedes while I called O’Mara’s office and got her assistant, Kathy, on the line.
I imagined her sharp blade of a face, her big hair, as O’Mara’s assistant talked and ate her lunch in my ear.
“Maureen’s taking a week off. She needed a vacation,” Kathy said. “She’s earned it.”
“I’m sure. Where’d she go?” I asked, hearing the edge in my voice. Repressed panic.
“What’s the problem, Lieutenant?”
“It’s police business, Kathy.”
“Maureen didn’t say where she was going, but I can give you all her numbers.”
“That would be a big help.”
I dialed O’Mara’s cell phone, got her mailbox. I left my number on her pager. Called her house and got a busy signal, again and again.
Jacobi punched out O’Mara’s name on the console computer, and got data from the DMV.
He read it out loud. “Maureen Siobhan O’Mara; Caucasian; single; date of birth eight, fifteen, seventy-three; height five nine; weight one fifty-two. She’s a big girl,” Jacobi mused.
He turned the screen so I could see O’Mara’s photo and her address.
“We can be there in fifteen minutes,” he said.
“Let’s try for ten.”
Jacobi backed the car away from the curb and, with tires scraping the concrete, cut around the scene-mobile and into the traffic lane.
I flipped on the grille lights and the siren as we shot up Leavenworth toward O’Mara’s house in the tony enclave of Sea Cliff.
Chapter 128
NUMBER 68 SEAVIEW TERRACE was a mango-colored Mediterranean-style villa with an unobstructed view of the bay, the bridge, Sausalito, and maybe Honolulu for all I knew.
Birds chirped in the shrubbery.
Jacobi and I mounted the porch, my mind seething with vivid images of the carnage at Garza’s house and the cyclone of questions whirling in my mind.
Come on, Maureen. Please be home.
I pressed the doorbell, and a no-nonsense buzzer blatted loudly at my touch. I heard no answering voice, though, no footfalls coming toward the door.
I shouted, “Police,” pressed the buzzer again, stood back as Jacobi stepped in and banged the door with his fist.
No answer. Nothing at all. C’mon, Redhead.
That creepy feeling came over me again—the horrors of death playing my vertebrae like a xylophone.
O’Mara was missing, and her secretary didn’t know where she was. We’d already played fast and loose with exigent circumstances once today. I was going to chance it again.
“I smell gas,” I lied.
“Take it easy, Boxer. I’m too old to walk a beat.”
“Garza’s place looks like a slaughterhouse, Warren, and O’Mara’s car is there. It’s my ass if we screw up.”
I wrenched the doorknob, and it turned in my hand. I let the door swing open slowly, as if a breeze had given it a tap.
We took out our guns. Again.
“This is the police. We’re coming in.”
The entranceway opened into a bright, many-windowed living room with tropical printed furnishings