Cold Springs(63)

“You're telling me somebody who lives here”—she lifted her hand toward the apartment building—“forced your rich friend in Marin to steal twenty-seven million from his ex-wife's posh school? Do I have that right?”

“There's a connection between the money and the Montroses. Race knows what it is. That's all I'm saying.”

“This boy is black.”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Hunter—he knows you're doing all this on company time?”

“He knows.”

“So he figures something doesn't add up. He's afraid this Race kid is going to end up in jail for murder and your friend Zedman is going to skate. He's trying to decide whether or not he wants to protect Mallory.”

“Something like that.”

Jones blew a bubble and bit it. “Day I interviewed? Hunter showed me that girl. She was exhibit A for how to use a straitjacket.”

“He showed her to you?”

“He was touring me around and shit. Your old partner—tall, blond crewcut—what's her name—”

“Olsen.”

“She was there, going down to counsel the girl. Should've seen the way Mallory blew up at her. Those two have a history?”

He remembered Olsen and Mallory on the Big Lodge porch, Mallory's spittle gleaming on Olsen's shoulder. “No history.”

Kindra frowned. “The police looking for a murder suspect in the juvenile category, I know who I'd nominate.”

A biplane droned overhead, dragging a yellow banner for a local microbrewery. Chadwick thought about the days when he could look up at a small plane and not wonder if it was some kind of threat, some lunatic with a canister of nerve gas. That kind of simplicity seemed as distant as Katherine's life, as the days he could come to Oakland and not think dark thoughts about the Montrose clan and the part they played in Katherine's death.

“I'm not saying Mallory's an innocent victim.”

“But you've got a stake in saving her,” Kindra said, “because of your daughter, right? And you've got no reason to help the Montroses.”

“I'll ask Race for the truth, encourage him to talk to the police.”

“And if he doesn't, there's always the plastic cuffs.”

Chadwick was silent.

“Hunter won't let you turn him in?”

“That's not why.”

“You promised Mallory?”

“No.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Don't tell me it's because you don't trust the police to be fair. I hear that from a white man, my whole world image is going to shatter.”

“If I turned Race in, I'd be doing it for the wrong reasons.”

The biplane hummed and tilted and arced away over Lake Merritt.

Jones opened the car door. Her anger stiffened her movements like chain mail, but she gave him a punch in the leg that might almost have been an apology. “You're starting to interest me, Chad. Let's go.”

The building's doorway was filled with a smelly green mound of blankets that might have contained a human being. Chadwick and Jones stepped over it and began climbing the dark stairwell.

“How do you know where we're going?” Kindra asked.

“Mallory said fifth floor.”

“The cops so hot to find this kid, how come they're not staking this place out?”

Chadwick had wondered about that. As shorthanded as all police departments were, especially when it came to tracking juvenile offenders, he had half expected to see some surveillance on the street. Maybe they were too late. Maybe Sergeant Damarodas had already apprehended the boy.

Out every broken window on the fifth-floor hallway was a million-dollar view—afternoon light on the water, patina hills rimming the horizon, wind sweeping white sails across the Bay. Inside, the scene was twenty-first-century dungeon—peeling wallpaper and crumbling brick, carpet worn down to fungus patches on an otherwise bare concrete floor.

They walked to the only visible door—a cheap sheet of particleboard, Motown music seeping from the uneven crack at the bottom.

Chadwick knocked. Then again, more loudly.

A black woman in her sixties opened up. She was short and pudgy, but she had Race Montrose's luminous eyes, his delicate mouth. Her hair was permed and gelled into a ginger-colored hydra, pieces of aluminum foil stuck in the curls. In her grimy pink sweat suit, she looked like she'd just run from a burning beauty salon.

“Mrs. Ella Montrose?” Chadwick asked.

“You that man,” she said.

“Ma'am?”

“One with the stick. Big stick.” She showed him the length of the imaginary implement with her hands, glared at him like she was making the most reasonable accusation in the world.

Then the smell hit him—rum fumes rippling off the old woman as thick as gas station air.

“My name's Chadwick,” he said. “This is Ms. Jones. We're looking for Race.”

The old woman jabbed a fat knuckle at Kindra. “You that girl, too. What you mean, bringing a big pet like this inside, where people live? Ain't I tole you before?”

Jones pointed at Chadwick. “This pet here? Yes, ma'am—he's mostly housebroken. You know where Race is at?”