“There’s more, Zack. I was checking out his car, that Chevy of his. This was shortly after I left your place. It was unlocked, and down there between the seats, I find all these snapshots of Angie. He’d been taking pictures of her, making a collection. And I grabbed those, nearly lost my hand to the fucking dog when I did it, too. He was dozing in the backseat, woke up quick.”
“Jesus,” I said. That cold feeling had turned into a shiver. And I thought back to a few nights earlier, when I’d been riding behind Trevor’s Chevy, on the way out to Oakwood, and he’d become distracted by something between the seats. That must have been when he’d discovered the pictures were missing.
“But here’s the really creepy thing. I put those photos in a folder, with the other stuff I’d found, in my study, and I sent Kent—you met Kent, right?”
“Sure. That night, at the hospital. Nice guy.”
“Yeah, he’s really been there for me these last few days. Him, and my sister Letitia, who’s heading back to Denver tomorrow. Anyway, I sent Kent back to my place to get this stuff, so I could give you more details over the phone, but he couldn’t find the folder anyplace.”
“Go on,” I said slowly.
“The place had been totally torn apart, and the folder was gone, and the pics along with it.”
“But that was Bullock and his crew,” I said. “I saw your office that night. It was a complete mess. They were tearing apart your place, trying to find anything that would tell them what happened to the Virtue. They found the check I wrote you, for the same amount you’d paid the people at the auction, and that’s what led them to me.”
“They didn’t have to tear apart my place to find that check,” Lawrence said. “It was sitting right on the counter, in the kitchen, on top of some mail. I’d left it there so I’d remember to deposit it. They couldn’t miss it. It would have been the first thing they found.”
“Then why would they tear apart your office?” I asked. “And why would they want your folder on Trevor Wylie?”
But even as I said it, I knew Bullock and his crew would have had no use for the folder on Trevor Wylie.
But Trevor might have been interested in it.
And if Trevor knew that Lawrence Jones was investigating him, and had gone to get any incriminating evidence himself . . . After he’d turned back early on that drive out to Oakwood, he’d have had time to go to Lawrence’s before the detective and I were supposed to meet at Brentwood’s. . . .
I looked at the cake and noticed that the carving knife I’d been using to cut slices was not there.
“Lawrence,” I said, “could Trevor have known that you were asking around about him?”
“I might have fucked up,” he said. “As I was walking away from the car, he was coming the other way, saw me. And then, if he noticed at some point the pictures were missing, well, he might have put it together.”
“And he knew where you lived,” I said. “Remember you gave him your card, told him to shove it up his ass when we found him in my backyard.”
“Yeah, that was mature.”
“Jesus, Lawrence, do you think it’s possible it wasn’t Bullock who tried to kill you that night in your apartment? I mean, Bullock said he didn’t do it, but at the time I didn’t think a denial from him meant much, but he wasn’t afraid to admit killing Stan, or . . .”
“Or what?” Lawrence said.
And I thought: Angie’s with him. She’s with him right now. She’s with the guy who attacked Lawrence and left him for dead.
“He tells me, if he’s not with me, he won’t ever be with anyone. It was like he wanted to add I wouldn’t ever be with anyone else either.”
39
I DROPPED THE PHONE and flew out the front door and down the steps of the porch. Sarah and Paul were standing in the driveway, the last of our guests gone, Paul making some derisive comments about the Virtue.
I must have appeared pretty alarmed, because Sarah, at the sight of me, looked horrified. “What?” she said.
“Which way did Angie and Trevor go?”
Paul pointed south. “That way,” he said. “What’s going on?”
I was running. Both Sarah and Paul were starting after me, and I shouted back to Sarah, “Call the police!” Sarah, bless her, didn’t ask questions, but ran straight into the house as Paul hung in with me.
We went past Trevor’s black Chevy, parked at the curb, Morpheus’s snout sticking out the half-rolled-down window. He jammed his entire head out, slobber dripping from his jowls, the sudden commotion of us running by sending him into a barking fit. He snapped at me and Paul as we ran by, scratched frantically at the windows with his long-nailed paws.
My eyes followed the sidewalk all the way down to the busy cross street, and there was no sign of either of them. I hadn’t gone all that far before I started feeling winded, but I wasn’t slowing down. Paul was keeping pace, and could easily have outrun me, but he didn’t know what, exactly, the mission was.
“What is it, Dad?” he asked.
“It’s Trevor,” I said, my arms and legs pumping.
“What about him?”
“It’s him. He’s the one who tried to kill Lawrence Jones.”