I glanced over at Wardwell. His suit was probably worth more than the car. “Are you even an attorney?”
He fished the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to me. “You’re driving.”
The car wasn’t locked.
I climbed into the driver’s seat. The tattered beige material was patched with duct tape.
Wardwell took out the gun, got in the passenger side, put his briefcase on his lap. The door squealed and closed with a thunk. Sweat trickled down his brow, the fast walk taking a toll on his large frame. “Go, damn it. Start the car!”
“Why are you doing this?”
He appeared puzzled. “This is what you paid me to do.”
A wetness slapped against my face before I registered the sound of the gunshot, heard the shattering of the passenger window. Wardwell jerked toward me, then fell forward, his eyes blank.
Chapter Eleven
Michael
I don’t know how long I sat there, my limbs paralyzed, my heart thudding wildly. The shot echoed off the concrete and faded away, replaced with the sound of rapidly retreating footsteps. Then the garage was quiet except for my breathing. My gasping, quick breaths.
Wardwell’s empty gaze seemed to focus on the gun in his own hand, still resting atop his briefcase, his finger less than an inch from the trigger.
I touched the side of my face. My fingers came away slick. Not with my blood, though. Wardwell’s.
The bullet had entered the front right side of his head and exited the back left. Owing to either a carefully placed shot or an extremely lucky accident, I was alive and unhurt.
I wiped my hand on the side of the filthy seat.
Instincts took over in that moment and I let them. If I thought about what I was doing, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do what needed to be done.
I twisted the key.
The engine sputtered, caught, and came to life with an aggravated groan.
I put the Ford into drive and followed the exit signs from the second level up to the first, toward daylight. Not one of the officers in the several police cars that passed me gave me a second glance.
Wardwell had left his parking ticket on the dash. I fished Wardwell’s wallet out of his jacket pocket and paid the twelve-dollar fee with his Visa card.
The name on the card was not Philip Wardwell.
An alarm went off as the arm went up, a wailing through the structure. I didn’t know if someone had heard the shot or found the officer down in the interview room, but I didn’t care. I made a left on North Main Street and didn’t look back.
Chapter Twelve
Michael
Roland Eads,” I said into the pay phone.
I had circled the block around the police station, then made a left onto Fourth toward Sanford. From there, I drove to the fish market. Nobody followed me.
I knew I couldn’t go back home. I couldn’t go to my truck—that was the first place they’d look.
The Los Angeles fish market officially opened at six in the morning, but the restaurant buyers, tourists, and locals lined up long before that.
What I needed was a crowd.
Someplace I could disappear.
Someplace I could dump the Ford.
I drove behind the old Edward Hotel and nestled the wreck between a Dumpster and a large pile of trash partially covered by a blue plastic tarp.
The engine sputtered a few times, then dropped off.
The dead man beside me was large. Too large for such a small car. He had shifted during the drive, but his slumped body remained wedged between the dashboard and the passenger seat. His ruined head lolled toward me.
I pulled the briefcase from his lap, careful not to touch the gun. Inside, along with the notepad and pen, I found a cassette tape. I must have stared at the handwritten label for at least a minute, my heart pounding at the sight of it, before finally shoving it into my pocket.
I kept his wallet.
I searched his pockets for a cell phone but found nothing.
With napkins from a discarded McDonald’s bag on the floor, I wiped my face, the steering wheel, the dashboard, my door, his briefcase, anything I remembered touching.
And I left him there.
I didn’t want to, but I had no idea what else to do. What else could I do?
The gas station on Fifth had a bathroom around back. I bolted across the parking lot, locked myself inside, fell to the ground beside the grimy toilet, and threw up into the bowl.
My hands were shaking.
My heart was pounding.
I couldn’t get enough air.
I threw up a second time, nothing but yellow bile. My stomach churned, wanting to get rid of more, but there was nothing left.
I rolled to the side and closed my eyes.
I had to calm down.
I forced my breathing to slow.
Deep breaths—in through my nose, out through my mouth, as Megan had taught me. The burn of adrenaline began to ebb. My heart slowed. When I finally managed to stand, my legs almost folded under the sudden weight. I stumbled over to the sink and got a good look at myself in the mirror. The eyes staring back at me were not my own but those of a much older, very tired man.
I pulled my stained sweatshirt off and scrubbed my face and hair to get rid of the red. The white and gray too—I tried not to think about that. The water swirling around the drain ran red, pink, and finally clear. I did my best to clean the sweatshirt. I tore off the tag and turned it inside out, then pulled it back over my head.
By the time I’d finished, twenty minutes had passed. I found a pay phone on Stanford and dialed Megan collect.
“I can barely hear you. Where are you?” Megan said. “Who did you say?”
“Roland Eads,” I repeated into the pay phone. I covered my other ear and tried to twist away from the people pushing past me on the sidewalk. “I’m at the fish market.”
“I didn’t call anyone,” Megan said. “I’ve been worried sick, calling you all night, but I didn’t talk to anyone else. Not about this.”
“So you didn’t tell Dr. Rose?”
“I’d never do that. At least, not unless you told me to. Christ, Michael. You’ve never met this girl? Are you sure?”
“I don’t know who’s doing this or how, but someone is setting me up.”
“But it was you? In the video?”
Two patrolmen walked by me. I turned away. “If you didn’t send this guy, somebody else did.”
“Why would someone frame you for murder?”
“I have no idea.”
I pulled out Roland Eads’s wallet and picked through the contents.
Ninety-three dollars in cash, the Visa card, and a driver’s license. Nothing else. The address on the license told me this man lived in Needles, California—a small town on the Nevada border nearly four hours away. I knew it from my route. I kept the driver’s license out and shoved the rest in my pocket. “Megan, I need you to do me a huge favor.”
“Of course, anything.”
“I need you to get into Dr. Bart’s office and see if his Joe DiMaggio baseball card is still there.”
Megan grew quiet.
“Meg.”
“I’m here.”
“Can you do that for me?”
After a moment, she said, “His office is locked, Michael. Dr. Rose has the key. Nobody has been in there since he died. She won’t even let Ms. Neace in there to clean.”