Part 14 (1/2)

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Henry and Rasmussen rode in silence all the way to Pasadena. Since the moment they'd left the dweeb's office, Rasmussen had spoken only twice-once to confirm that Arnold Svaco was indeed Ellen's cousin, her sole relative, and once to accuse Henry of violating every principle he'd taught Rasmussen to live by. Henry tried to retort that a policeman couldn't hope to get by with just the information he'd learned in junior high school, but one look at the pout on the officer's face told him not to bother.

Instead he spent the drive thinking through the case. He had no doubt that Ellen Svaco was the emotional force behind the Fluffy Foundation. The cat box, food, and toys in her house were all for a pet who'd been dead for half a decade; they must have const.i.tuted a shrine or a monument to his memory. But it was her cousin Arnold who was footing the bills. Why? And more important, how?

It wasn't that Arnold was rich. He made even less than Ellen had, under thirty thousand dollars a year working as a janitor for a contractor that cleaned government offices. Yet somehow in the last five years he'd managed to donate ten times his gross salary to Fluffy's memory.

So who was behind these donations-and why? Since the charity was actually paying out to pet owners, it didn't seem to be a money-laundering operation, or at least not a particularly efficient one.

And then there was the big question-why was Ellen Svaco killed? It couldn't have been for the money, because it appeared that she never had possession of it. Nothing about this case was making sense. Least of all Henry's temporary partner.

Henry pulled the car up outside a decaying bungalow in Northwest Pasadena. Its s.h.i.+ngles were cracked, rain gutters sagging, and the lawn in front was a patch of dirt.

Rasmussen looked up from his hands for the first time since they'd left Santa Barbara. ”This isn't the Pasadena Police Station,” he said.

”Can't fault you on your observational skills,” Henry said. ”Arnold Svaco lives here.”

”We need to check in with the locals,” Rasmussen said. ”We don't have jurisdiction.”

”I don't have jurisdiction anywhere,” Henry said. ”I'm not on the Santa Barbara force. I'm just a private citizen stopping by the home of another private citizen to ask a few discreet questions. There's no law against that, is there?”

Rasmussen stared as if Henry had suggested executing Arnold Svaco, then dragging his body through the neighborhood behind the car. ”If police don't treat each other with respect, then why should anyone else?” he said. ”You taught me-”

”I know,” Henry said. ”But you were eleven years old at the time.”

”Truth is truth, no matter what age you are,” Rasmussen said.

”There are levels of complication that make sense only as you get older,” Henry said. ”It's like when you were little and your parents told you about where children come from. It was true, but there was a lot they didn't explain at the time.”

Rasmussen crossed his arms across his chest angrily. ”I didn't have parents,” he said. ”I grew up in foster care. I never had any kind of role model at all-until I met Officer Friendly. I thought he was honest.”

In another circ.u.mstance Henry might have felt bad about disillusioning this kid. But he wasn't a little boy anymore; he carried a badge and a gun. He needed to toughen himself up, and fast.

”I'm going to knock on that door,” Henry said. ”You can come with me or you can drive away and visit the Pasadena Police Department alone. Up to you.”

Henry left the car and went up the cracked concrete walkway. The white picket gate nearly came off in his hands when he opened it, and the porch stairs sagged alarmingly under his feet. The only architectural element on the house that seemed functional at all was the set of iron bars on all the windows. Henry rapped sharply on the warped door and called out, ”Arnold! Hey, it's me!”

Henry ducked behind the doorframe just in case Arnold Svaco's answer came in the form of a gunshot. But the only sound was a creak as the door swung open under his touch.

Henry's senses went on full alert. No one installs iron bars on his windows and then leaves the door open. He waved urgently for Rasmussen to join him, but the officer looked away and pretended not to see.

Heart pounding and hand reaching for a gun that hadn't been on his hip for years, Henry pushed the door open.

Arnold Svaco's possessions didn't have a lot in common with his cousin's. Where she had almost nothing, Arnold seemed to own everything he'd ever seen in any store. There were flat-screen TVs and an elaborate stereo; there were statues in marble and bronze; there were fish tanks that looked like they'd come from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There were four leather couches and two armchairs; past the living room Henry could see a dining room table and eight matching chairs that must have cost half of Arnold's gross yearly salary.

But there was one way in which the two Svaco households were identical. Because everything Arnold owned was smashed and scattered around the floor.

And Arnold lay in the middle of it all, dead.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Gus' fingernails dug into the soft leather of his armchair. His muscles were screaming with pain, but he would not relax his hands. Not until the chopper lifted off again and took him out of this h.e.l.lhole.

”That's a good grip you've got there,” Shawn said. ”If you apply a little more pressure, maybe your flesh will bond with the leather of the seat and you'll become one with the chopper. Then they'll never get you out.”

”If that's what it takes,” Gus said.

”But if you're going to expend all this energy to stay on board, you might as well wait until you actually need to,” Shawn said. ”Like when the door is open.”

Gus lifted his eyes from their firm fix on the floor and saw that the door hadn't slid open yet. None of the lawyers had gotten out of their seats. In fact, they were all still jabbing away at their miniature keyboards.

Gus forced his fingers to relax and felt a wave of relief run up both arms. ”They don't seem worried that they're about to be dumped out in the wilderness.”

”Which is a sign that we shouldn't be, either,” Shawn said. ”They know Rushton a lot better than we do. He probably plays this kind of prank on them all the time. We'll sit here for a few minutes, and then once everyone has had a chance to panic, we'll lift off and head to our real destination.”

Gus nodded. That made sense. It was the only thing that made sense. Because the other lawyers were just sitting there working away, as if they knew enough not to be alarmed. He loosened his death grip on the armrest a little more and felt the blood tingling painfully back into his fingers.

Until there was a thump from outside and the helicopter rocked on its skids. ”What was that?” he demanded.

Shawn glanced over Gus and out the window. ”Nothing.”

”That wasn't nothing,” Gus said. ”I know what nothing feels like. It feels like nothing. That felt like something. Which means it couldn't be nothing.”

”It's just the pilot,” Shawn said, checking the view out the window again.

”He's leaving?” Gus said. His breath was coming in short gasps now. ”The pilot is abandoning his helicopter? How can we get out of here? Does anyone know how to fly a chopper?”

”Relax,” Shawn said. ”He's not leaving. He's just . . .”

”Just what?”

”Unpacking.”

Gus forced himself to turn his chair so that he was facing the window. The pilot had opened a cargo door at the back of the chopper and was pulling out a series of large backpacks.

”What are those for?” Gus said, not wanting to hear the answer from Shawn any more than he would accept it from his own brain.

”I believe they're called backpacks,” Shawn said. ”You strap them on your back and carry things in them.”

”Maybe you do,” Gus said, his fingers reflexively clutching the armrest again. He risked another glance out the window. The pilot was closing the cargo door. At his feet was a line of eight backpacks: seven made of beige nylon stretched over metal frames, the last in blindingly bright green.