Living with the Dead

FINN



FINN LOST ADAMS AND MARSTEN. He’d followed them to their hotel, waited, waited some more, then flashed his badge to the desk, and gotten a room number. He’d sent Damon up. He returned to say they weren’t there.

Finn had been tempted to go up himself and verify this. But Damon was right: it wouldn’t take more than a toe over the line for Marsten to scream harassment. If they were in their room, they obviously weren’t meeting up with Peltier, which is why he’d followed them. If they’d snuck out again, then he’d lost them.



BACK AT THE STATION, they looked at Peltier’s cell phone. Her schedule was entirely business-related. Remembering that barren apartment, Finn wasn’t surprised.

Robyn Peltier seemed to be all business these days. Finn knew what that was like. He’d been in L.A. six years and still didn’t have what anyone would call a social life. He’d come here to start a new job, then built his life around it. Even the last woman he’d dated was a paramedic, and she’d asked him out. He wasn’t ashamed of this. It was just that kind of job. If you wanted, you could make it your life. He had.

So Peltier’s schedule revealed nothing. Same with her contact list. Every L.A. number had a business connection, neatly typed, no shorthand or code. Those that looked like friends and family were non-California area codes, most from Pennsylvania.

Hope Adams’s cell phone number was there, and matched three entries on the log of calls received, all made Friday morning. Exactly as she’d said.

Before that, the last call Peltier received had been Thursday from Portia. Around midnight she’d placed the call to 911. Nothing after that until Adams the next morning. The next outgoing calls were long, four of them on Friday morning.

“I’ll bet they’re from the guy who found the phone,” Damon said. “Calling everyone he knew out-of-state, getting a little added value before pawning it.”

Finn suspected he was right.

“There should be a notes section.” Damon settled onto the desk. “Bobby always keeps notes. I’d check the text message log, but you won’t find much. She doesn’t like texting.”

There were notes, but all business, like the schedule. And she’d only used text messaging to reply to messages from Kane. He skimmed those. Some were business. Others more ambiguous, Kane wanting Peltier’s opinion about this or that, like she was asking an older sister. Peltier’s responses were diplomatic but personable, gently guiding Kane to make better choices.

The final text message, sent Thursday afternoon, read “Wait til tabs see this!!!” and had a photo attached. Finn opened it, but with the tiny screen, he could only make out a woman in a dress.

“Mail it to yourself,” Damon said.

“Hmmm?”

“Forward it to your e-mail account and open it on your computer. That’s what Robyn did.” He pointed at the screen. “See that symbol? It means she forwarded it.”

Finn nodded and did that, his thick fingers clumsy on the keys. How the hell did kids these days do this? They must all have the dexterity of spider monkeys—

Had he really just thought “kids these days”? He sounded like one of the old men in his apartment building who were always stopping him to complain about the college girls on the fourth floor. Some days it was hard to remember he was only thirty-four, especially when he hung around someone like Damon, so easy with a laugh, quick on his feet, full of . . .

Full of life? A cruel slip of the tongue. Dead at twenty-nine—the same age Finn had been when he’d come to L.A., when he’d felt like he was just starting his life, leaving home and heading out to the big city. What if, on that trip, he’d seen someone pulled to the side of the road? He would have stopped, like Damon. That was how he’d been raised. What might a woman like Damon’s killer have thought, seeing a guy Finn’s size bearing down on her on a dark, empty road?

“It should be there now.”

“What?”

Damon pointed at the computer. “The file should have arrived by now.”

“Right.”

He spoke too loudly both times and the other detectives in the room—Vanderveer and Scala—looked over, then shared an eye roll.

“You okay, Finn?” called Vanderveer, a burly detective approaching retirement, his pitch-black hair screaming dye job.

“Yeah. Just trying to open a photo Portia Kane sent Robyn Peltier. Computers aren’t my thing.”

“The Kane murder?” Scala was around Finn’s age, recently transferred from vice at the insistence of his third wife.

Both detectives rose from their desks. Neither was any more computer literate than Finn, but his task sounded more interesting than the paperwork they’d been trudging through.

“Holy Mother of God,” Vanderveer said as Finn opened the photo. “Is that one of those altered pictures or did that girl’s parents actually let her out of the house dressed like that?”

“That girl does what she wants, when she wants,” Scala said. “And she can do it at my place anytime.”

“You know her?” Finn asked.

“I wish. I’d give my right nut to enjoy what that girl’s got.”

Vanderveer shook his head. “Well, you can see it all in that picture.”

“I meant her more liquid assets.” He rubbed his fingers together.

“She’s rich?”

“Wouldn’t know it from that outfit. I’ve seen twenty-dollar whores with better fashion sense. But that’s Jasmine Wills, your vic’s frenemy.”

“Her what?”

“They pretend to be friends but really they can’t stand each other. Frenemy, get it?”

“No,” Vanderveer said. “We don’t. But we don’t read the tabs.”

“You just chat with their reporters, huh, Finn? So how’d that go? Did that True News chick promise you an exclusive? Hell, if she’d promise me an exclusive, I’d put on fangs and go bite a neck. Preferably hers. She was one sweet little—”

Vanderveer waved the younger detective to silence. “So what’s Portia Kane doing with that picture?”

“She wanted her PR rep to send it to the tabloids.”

“Seems the tabs are right—that frenemy thing had slid into full-blown enemy.” Scala slapped Finn on the shoulder. “Well, the good news is we just solved your case. Jasmine Wills killed Kane to keep that photo out of the papers. I know I would.” He started back to his desk, then stopped. “Oh, could you pass a copy my way? For safekeeping?”

“Sounds nuts, but maybe what started as a simple catfight turned lethal,” Damon said as Vanderveer returned to his paperwork. “If people carry guns, it becomes too easy to use them. I know all about that.”

Before Finn could respond, the phone rang.

“Detective Findlay?” a man’s voice said. “This is, uh, Officer Alec Weston. My, uh, sergeant wanted me to, call you. I’m sure it’s nothing, but he, uh, insisted . . .”

A recent recruit. Finn could tell by the hesitation. Still new enough to view the homicide squad the way freshmen did the senior class. Finn encouraged him with an “um-hmm.”

“I think I might have, uh, seen that woman you’re looking for. From the Kane case. Robyn Peltier.”

Finn’s gaze shot to Damon. “You saw—”

“I’m probably wrong,” Weston hurried on. “But my sergeant insisted I call.”

“Where’d you see her?”

“Well, that’s the thing that doesn’t make sense, sir. She was in the coffee shop across from our station.”