She tried to remember the last time God had answered her prayers.
A full three blocks later, she came to her senses. She wouldn’t think about Bud Traynor watching her with Witt. No, no, no, she wouldn’t. Not now, not ever. She’d pretend it never happened. She’d think about helping Julia. Yes, helping Julia to get help. Maybe her lawyer could claim temporary insanity as a defense. The first step, call Witt and tell him about the video, about Julia being the murderer. What was it he’d told her before? If a regular citizen reports something suspicious in a person’s house, that could sometimes be enough for the police to get a search warrant. Okay, so she hadn’t seen any smoking guns in Traynor’s place, but that video was evidence. It had to be. It proved Julia knew Angela, the woman her husband was having an affair with.
They’d both been having an affair with her. And Julia hadn’t known until that night. Had she known Angela was paid, a working girl, a prostitute? Probably not at first, but it would have come out when Julia confronted Lance. The knowledge that Angela had been paid to seduce her was surely what drove Julia over the edge.
Max pulled over and reached into the glove compartment where she kept the cell phone Witt had given her. She hesitated before turning the damn thing on. It wasn’t his case. He couldn’t do a thing. So what? He’d know how to tell the cops in charge of the case. She dialed, pushed send and got that horrible message, “The cellular customer you’re trying to reach—”
Double damn. She slammed the phone back into its hidey-hole. He always had his phone on. Like Scully and Mulder on the X-Files, it practically grew out of his ear. If he’d turned his phone off, he was doing something awfully important. Or he’d traveled out of the service area. Or he was ignoring her because she’d pissed him off. God, what were his parting words last night? He’d said he couldn’t protect her. Not wouldn’t. Can’t. Not won’t. What did it mean? Well, that sure as hell didn’t matter now.
Witt had left her. Cameron hadn’t returned, even though she’d left Bud’s house.
Max was on her own.
The rain picked up, obscuring the view through her windshield and pelting the vinyl roof of the convertible. Down the street, a crossing guard in a yellow rain slicker guided children through an intersection. She realized now that a steady row of cars flowed past her. She sat near a school in a pretty little neighborhood with a pretty little schoolyard where pretty little children played and a monster lived in their midst. The parents certainly didn’t know. No one knew. Except her.
The age-old question hit her in a way she’d never thought of before. If a person had known during Hitler’s rise to power what he would turn out to be, would it have been morally right to kill him?
Was it her moral obligation to blow Bud Traynor’s brains out, to stop the evil that he spread around him like a slow-growing, choking vine?
She didn’t know. She only knew she had three choices concerning Lance’s wife: call the cops, confront Julia—and possibly get herself killed—or call Angela to warn her. Yesterday in her office, Julia had gone on about betrayal, and in the end, it was Angela who had been the betrayer, not Lance.
Max chose Angela, the next most likely victim. Angela didn’t answer her cell phone. Max texted her, keying in the cell phone number, ending it with 911. It was, after all, an emergency.
She waited five minutes, ten, fifteen. The stream of cars ended. School had started. Angela was probably still asleep.
Max started the engine. She had no idea where Angela lived, but, after the day of their memorable shopping trip through San Francisco, she did know the garage in which Angela parked her car. Max would have to stake it out.
Halfway to the City, another thought stabbed through her consciousness. Julia had gone into the hotel last night. Angela was not answering her phone today. Oh my God, was Angela dead already? Max swore at the bunched-up, tail-end commute traffic, made worse by an accident ahead, and pounded on the steering wheel.
An hour later, she pulled into Angela’s garage. The first two levels were public, a couple of cars circling in front of her. The upper levels were long term. She couldn’t get her car up there without a special card. Parking on the second level by a set of stairs, in what seemed to be the only remaining open spot, Max moved to the ledge closest to the street so she could try the cell phone again.