The Fifth Witness - Michael Connelly [152]
I took a step to the side. We waited but nobody answered even though it was before ten on a Sunday morning. Cisco looked at me and raised his eyes as if to ask What do you want to do?
I didn’t answer. I turned to the railing and looked down at the parking lot in front. I saw some empty spaces and they were numbered. I pointed.
“Let’s find twenty-four and see if his car is here.”
“You go,” Cisco said. “I’ll check around up here.”
“What?”
I didn’t see anything to check around for. We were on a five-foot-wide walkway that ran in front of every second-floor apartment. No furniture, no bikes, just concrete.
“Just go check the parking lot.”
I headed back downstairs. After ducking to look under the front of three cars to get the number painted on the curb, I realized that the parking slot numbers did not correspond to the apartment numbers. It was a twelve-unit building, apartments 1 through 6 on the bottom and 21 through 26 up top. But the parking lot spaces were numbered 1 through 16. I took a guess that under that number scheme Driscoll had number 10 if each apartment got one space, which stood to reason since there were only sixteen spots and I saw that two were labeled as guest parking and two were marked for handicapped parking.
I was in the middle of turning these numbers in my head and looking at the ten-year-old BMW parked in slot 10 when Cisco called my name from the walkway above. I looked and he waved me up.
When I got back up there he was standing in the open door of apartment 24. He waved me in.
“He was asleep but he finally answered.”
I walked in and saw a disheveled man sitting on a couch in a sparsely furnished living room. His hair was sticking up in frozen curls and knots on the right side. He huddled with a blanket around his shoulders. Even so, I could tell he matched a photo Cisco had pulled off Donald Driscoll’s own Facebook account.
“That’s a lie,” he said. “I didn’t invite him in. He broke in.”
“No, you invited me,” Cisco said. “I have a witness.”
He pointed to me. The bleary-eyed man followed the finger and looked at me for the first time. I could see recognition in his eyes. I knew then that it was Driscoll and that we were on to something here.
“Hey, look, I don’t know what this—”
“Are you Donald Driscoll?” I asked.
“I’m not telling you shit, man. You can’t just break—”
“Hey!” Cisco yelled loudly.
The man jumped in his seat. Even I startled, not having expected Cisco’s new interviewing tactic.
“Just answer the question,” Cisco continued in a calmer voice. “Are you Donald Driscoll?”
“Who wants to know?”
“You know who wants to know,” I said. “You recognized me the moment you looked at me. And you know why we’re here, Donald, don’t you?”
I walked across the room, pulling the subpoena out of my windbreaker. Driscoll was tall but slightly built and vampire white, which was strange for a guy living a block from the beach. I dropped the folded document in his lap.
“What is this?” he said, slapping it onto the floor without even unfolding it.
“It’s a subpoena and you can throw it on the floor and choose not to read it but that doesn’t matter. You’ve been served, Donald. I have a witness and I am an officer of the court. You don’t show up tomorrow at nine to testify and you’ll be in jail on a charge of contempt by lunchtime.”
Driscoll reached down and grabbed the subpoena.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re going to get me killed.”
I glanced over at Cisco. We were definitely on to something.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about that I can’t testify! If I come anywhere near that courthouse they’ll kill me. They’re probably watching this place right fucking now!”
I looked again at Cisco and then back down at the man on the couch.
“Who is going to kill you, Donald?”
“I’m not saying. Who the fuck do you think?”
He threw the subpoena at me and it bounced off my chest and fluttered to the ground. He jumped from the couch and started to break for the open door. The blanket fell and I saw he was wearing only gym shorts and a T-shirt. Before he made it three strides Cisco