Cold Springs(79)

Chadwick took a step toward the detective, but Damarodas' fingers closed around his arm like owl talons. “Right this way, Mr. Chadwick. Easy to get lost in a house this big.”

Damarodas steered him past the evidence techs in the living room, into the front yard, past the police vehicles and the news vans to Chadwick's rental car, where Kindra Jones was sitting on the hood.

When she'd returned his page, Kindra had been waiting for him in a Montgomery Street coffeehouse, pissed off and impatient after three cups of house blend. Her mood hadn't improved when he'd told her the situation, and that she'd either need to wait for him there indefinitely or find a taxi to Marin. “I'm charging the cab to Hunter,” she'd said. “And you're explaining it to him. Goddamn, Chad, I said talk to the man.”

As Damarodas and he neared the car, she slid to her feet. “This joker arresting you?”

“This joker is not,” Damarodas said. “Miss—”

Chadwick made the introductions, then suggested that Kindra start the car.

“No. Uh-uh. I've been waiting for you all night. Somebody's going to tell me what the hell is going on.”

Chadwick filled her in the best he could. “Just so I know,” he told her, “what exactly did you say to the police?”

“What did I say—” Kindra's eyes narrowed. “Oh, wait—they did not sucker you with that, did they? I didn't tell anybody jack shit, Chadwick. Police will f**k with your mind every time.”

“That's a gross overgeneralization,” Damarodas commented.

“Fuck you,” Kindra told him. “Fuck you, Sergeant, sir. Now if you'll excuse me, the car's starting to sound better.”

She slammed the driver's side door behind her.

Damarodas took out a cigarillo, poked it in his mouth, and slumped against the side of Chadwick's car. “Your timing, Mr. Chadwick—remarkable.”

“The blood. Is it John's?”

“It's fresh,” Damarodas said. “Within the last few hours. Past that—they'll run DNA, toxicology. This was Oakland, I'd say a week or two for results. But Marin County? They're not exactly backlogged with cases. Maybe twenty-four hours, they'll know. Doesn't mean I'll find out, unless somebody decides to tell me something.”

Chadwick felt the cool force of his eyes. He realized Damarodas probably got a lot of confessions.

“John Zedman was an old friend,” Chadwick said. “I would never hurt him.”

“Yeah, well . . . we won't get into the fact that the majority of murders are between old friends. Why did you call me?”

The lights of the police cars raced red and blue circles across the windows of the cul-de-sac. The news van people were packing up shop, the cameraman looking disappointed he hadn't gotten any shots of a gurney being wheeled out.

“Someone left that movie playing for me,” Chadwick told Damarodas. “The same video that was playing the night my daughter died. Someone left Katherine's necklace near Talia Montrose's body. Someone's trying to pry up sanity with a crowbar, Sergeant, and I don't know what to do about it.”

Damarodas lit his cigarillo.

“Let me give you a scenario, Chadwick. Just because, well, I'm thinking if I was a suck-up ass**le like Prost—sorry, did I say that aloud?—but a halfway decent homicide investigator, too, and I knew what I know about you, and I read the newspaper about this school you used to work at Laurel Heights going down in a scandal—here's what I might think: I'd think Ann Zedman is having financial difficulties. She plans a scheme to embezzle from her own school. Except things start going wrong. Maybe her daughter knows about the plan, tells her boyfriend, Race. Race tells his mom, Talia, and Talia decides to grab a piece of the action. Mrs. Zedman decides the safest thing is to shut Talia up permanently.”

“Ann Zedman is headmistress of a school. You saw her. You figure her for a knife-murderer?”

“For the sake of argument, let's say Mrs. Z doesn't do it herself. She calls somebody she trusts, somebody who's already got a beef against the Montrose family. You savvy?”

Chadwick looked out at the fog, at the lamppost like a hanging tree in front of the empty Zedman house. “Go on.”

“Mrs. Z continues with her plan. She's waiting for the whole thirty mill to be collected before she makes the transfer, but her friend Norma Reyes finds out what's going on. The kid Race tells Norma, 'cause after all, it's his mom that got killed. So Mrs. Z plays scared and innocent, asks Norma to please wait just a couple of days. That gives Mrs. Z time to cover her tracks. Reyes doesn't want to turn in her best friend, but somehow the ex-husband, John Zedman, finds out, and he doesn't share Norma's qualms about making trouble. Maybe he's even got some kind of evidence that could tie his ex-wife to the embezzlement. You're Mrs. Zedman's accomplice. You come over and try to make him see reason. But he's angry and he's stubborn. So you come back later and kill him.”

“And then call the police?”

Damarodas shrugged. “Smart cover. That's what I'd think, if I were Prost. Now here's the rub: A young fellow Laramie from the FBI Financial Crimes Section talked to me today. SFPD's already given the embezzlement investigation over to him. Hell, half the City Council sends their kids to Ann Zedman's school. The locals don't want anything to do with that mess. So Laramie's already working on following an international transfer of stolen funds. He's smelling a career-starter case against Ann Zedman, maybe with a murder or two thrown in. He comes to me on the Talia Montrose homicide, reminds me that it's going nowhere by itself—nobody really gives a damn about a poor strung-out black woman from Oakland. He asks for my cooperation. Then John Zedman, who Laramie wanted to interview, disappears in a little red grease spot. You know Laramie will be talking to Prost, if he hasn't already. If you leave the state now, Mr. Chadwick, how long do you think it'll be before you're the focus of a federal investigation?”