Lucidity Page 23

  Fremmer took his phone out his pocket and started swiping through the images in his photo library. “How ’bout this guy?” he asked, turning the phone over to Chu.

  “Who’s he?”

  “He’s an associate or former associate of Isabelle’s. They used to clean fish tanks together and occasionally rob people. Isabelle Hruska is her full name. His name is Zander Bell. Nowadays he specializes in a different kind of rip-off—psychic readings from his apartment. I have an appointment to get a reading from him tomorrow afternoon. He look familiar to you at all?”

  Chu looked at the phone and shook his head.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Well, you need to look for him in the video. And you need to ask Isabelle about him. My investigator put the screws into her a little bit last night and she got uncomfortable, which is saying a lot for a woman who’s as put together as she is. Trust me. You need to run some checks on both of them.”

  He stopped talking and wrote their names on a piece of paper for Chu, just as the owner of the aquarium shop had done for him. Then he told Chu to hold on, he had something else for him.

  Fremmer left the kitchen and went to the little alcove he used as his home office. He retrieved one of the USB thumb drives with Candace’s hard drive stored on it. He’d made multiple copies and given a thumb drive to Morton to pass on to his investigator.

  “You guys never took her computer,” Fremmer said, handing him the thumb drive. “You got her phone but you never took her laptop. This is a copy of what was on her hard drive.”

  “Her whole computer fit on that?” Chu said, taking it from him. “Yeah, it’s a 128GB drive. Normally I’d bill you the forty dollars it cost me. But this one’s on me.”

  Chu sighed. It was another thing to do. More paperwork.

  “I’ll have my guy take a look,” he said.

  “Look, I know the situation,” Fremmer responded. “You think you’ve got an open and shut case. But it’s more complicated than you think. I have some information I can’t disclose right now that would change the way you think about everything if I told you what it was. You gave me a warning. Well, now I’m giving you a warning.”

  Chu looked him in the eyes. Fremmer looked right back. They held each other’s gaze for a good five seconds.

  “You’re bluffing, bro,” Chu declared after the stare down.

  “Not about this.”

  “Then give me the information. Make me believe you.”

  “I can’t,” Fremmer said. “Not yet.”

  “Well, when you’re ready, we’ll talk. You know how to reach me.”

  “And you know where to find me.”

  31/ Dumb Luck

  IN THE DREAM MADDEN WAS WALKING UP THE HILL TO THE DISH. HIS gait was remarkably smooth, he was hardly limping, and he reached the top more quickly than he thought. He felt good. A nice breeze was blowing. He wasn’t perspiring. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

  He gazed out at the view. There were a few clouds in the sky, but the air was crisp and clean, the way it was after a big storm passed through, scrubbing everything.

  Someone was standing next to him. He looked over and there was Frank Marcus, holding a drone.

  “This is the latest thing,” he said to Madden. “We put you on the drone and fly you over the property.”

  “So, you wear a headset?” Madden asked.

  “No headset. It’s in your own brain. The ultimate VR.”

  “I know,” Madden said.

  He was an expert now. He knew all about it. He told Marcus he’d been to the Center, met the founder.

  “Well, I don’t have to show you how then,” Marcus said. He flipped a switch and the quadcopter turned on, its propellers humming to life. He handed the drone to Madden.

  It didn’t look big enough to carry his weight. But this isn’t real, he thought. This is a dream. It’ll work.

  He extended his hand up, like he was hailing a cab, and held the quadcopter above him, careful not to let the propellers catch on his sleeve. He felt it pull him up gently until his feet lifted off the ground. He hovered there a moment, a foot from the Earth. Then two feet. Then three. More comfortable, he went higher and let himself be carried forward.

  Soon he was over the Valley. It was incredible. The most incredible thing he’d ever felt. Why hadn’t he done this before? And then he looked down and noticed that all the houses and cars had disappeared. He couldn’t remember if things had been in color before, but they weren’t anymore. Everything was in black and white: He was looking at the nineteenth-century Valley. Haciendas. Horses. The dusty, dirt road that was the El Camino.

  He guided the drone lower to get a closer look. The towns were barely towns. There was a house here and there. And there it was in all its magnificence: The Sharon Estate.

  My God, he thought, if this is the future it’s a future I want to experience. He descended a little more, wondering whether he should attempt to talk to one of the locals. Or was he better off staying aloft?

  As he was trying to decide, something hit him. Not hard. But he felt a little jolt on his shoulder. A bird?

  “Sir, can you raise your seat back, please?”

  He opened his eyes and looked up to see a flight attendant. She had one hand on his shoulder, the other on the top of his seat.

  “We’re landing in a minute,” she said.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  He pushed the button on his armrest and the seat jerked forward, its new position satisfying the flight attendant. After she’d moved down the aisle in search of other offenders, he looked to his left, past the two people seated next to him, and glanced out the window. He was almost at the same altitude as he’d been on his drone ride. They were over the Bay—somewhere near Redwood City or Belmont, he thought. He could see cars moving along the 101 Freeway. The traffic on the southbound side—the reverse commuters from the city—was thick but had some viscosity, which meant it was still early.

  He turned and stared at the tray table in front of him in its full upright position. How had he made it happen? How could he do it again? All he could think about was how it felt being outside the plane.

  • • •

  Madden decided not to go straight home when his flight landed in San Francisco. Instead he headed right to Petaluma to get a DNA sample from Cathleen Mileki, preferably with her permission. Once he had the sample he could contact his old friend Greg Lyons, the San Mateo County chief deputy coroner. Lyons was in charge of day-to-day operations at the San Mateo Sheriff’s Forensic Laboratory and Coroner’s Office. He could advise Madden on how to best process the samples—and how to do it as quickly as possible. The facility, in the foothills of southern San Mateo, wasn’t far from the airport. He’d actually pass it on his way back home from Petaluma.

  He and his one carry-on bag were off the plane at 7:35 AM, and in his car at long term parking by 8:00. Traffic on 101 was bad, but once he got over to the 280 freeway it moved well until he hit a bottleneck in San Francisco leading up to the entrance of the Golden Gate Bridge. It took him an hour and forty minutes to get to Petaluma—pretty good time considering he’d started at the height of rush hour.

  When he arrived at Mileki’s house nobody was there. Cathleen had probably taken her son to school and stayed out to run some errands or maybe go to the gym. At least that was what he hoped. He went back to the cafe he’d previously eaten at and ordered a croissant egg sandwich and coffee to go, then returned to the house, parking just up the street.

  Sitting in the car he dozed off, he wasn’t quite sure for how long, but when he woke up her car was in the driveway. Catching a fleeting look of her as she passed by the kitchen window, he felt his stomach tighten. He was suddenly nervous. He didn’t know for certain if Fremmer’s client was her mother, and he didn’t want to raise her hopes if she didn’t know about Candace. On the drive up he thought about the extremely delicate nature of the situation, but now that he was here, ready to go, that fragility seemed magnified. He
worried that he wouldn’t be at his best, maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to come right off a redeye. Fremmer’s go-go attitude had rubbed off on him, but that was now starting to wear away like a temporary tattoo.

  He finished his coffee, then opened the paternity kit he’d left sitting on the passenger seat, removed the items he needed, and put them in his jacket pocket with the Ziploc evidence bag Fremmer had given him before their encounter with Braden. He got out of the car and made his way to the front door, climbing the concrete steps deliberately, his leg and back aching more than usual.

  The door opened before his hand reached the doorbell. Cathleen, staring at him from the other side of her front door, appeared a little dazed. The dog started barking, but the barking wasn’t coming from inside the house; he must have been out in the backyard.

  “Really?” she said. “Today?”

  He didn’t know how to respond.

  “Really?” she said again.

  Cathleen looked like she was the one who’d just gotten off a redeye. Her hair looked off, like she’d slept on it the wrong way, and her eyes were puffy and watery, like she’d just cut onions.

  “Yes, sorry, me again,” he said.

  “Do you have a problem using the phone? You can’t just keep showing up like this,” she said, like he was a regular visitor. In fact, he’d only turned up once before. He counted his quick return to retrieve his phone as part of one visit. Maybe she saw it differently.

  “Hopefully, this will be the last time,” he said. “But I need something from you.”

  “Well, it’s really not a good time. I just found out that my best friend died in a car accident last night.”

  “Oh, wow,” he said reflexively. “Wow, I’m sorry.”

  A pained look crossed her face. She looked like she was about to cry.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Can I come in for a moment?” he said gently.

  “Just ask what you have to ask. I have a friend taking me out in a little while. I need to get myself together. I’m a mess.”

  “I really think you should be sitting down for what I’m about to tell you.”

  “I can’t deal with any more bad news right now.”

  Was it bad? Maybe. Maybe not. “It’s good,” he said. “It just might shock you.”

  “Well, I’m going to have another drink then. You want one?”

  That actually didn’t sound like a bad idea.

  “What are you drinking?” he asked, following her into the house.

  “Screwdriver. I don’t have any other mixers. If I drink, I usually drink wine. Too early for that, though.”

  A screwdriver sounded fine. She fixed him a drink, then refilled her glass with ice, vodka, and just a splash of orange juice. He watched her take a sip to check its potency, staring at her lips as they touched the rim of the glass. Maybe he wouldn’t have to ask her for a cheek swab after all, he thought.

  Just then he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He took it out to check the number. Fremmer. He clicked the volume button, sending the call to voicemail, and put the phone back in his pocket.

  He caught her looking at her watch. “I’m surprised you’re here,” she said, “I heard you weren’t working on the case anymore. You were frustrated by the sudden rush of publicity or something.”

  “I felt used,” Madden said. “Maybe even slightly betrayed.”

  “Or was it fear of failure?”

  “A little of that, too,” he conceded. Under normal circumstances he’d never admit that, but he didn’t mind admitting it to her. If there were ever a moment to curry some sympathy by showing his vulnerabilities, this was it.

  His cell phone buzzed again in his pocket. This time he only felt a single, longer buzz. He took his phone out and saw that he had a text message. Fremmer.

  “Call me,” it said. “C died this AM. In shock. Not sure what 2 do. Need 2 speak 2 U.”

  Madden looked at the message, stunned. “C” had to be Candace.

  His eyes went from his phone screen to Mileki. As soon as their eyes met he knew that she knew her mother was dead.

  “Everything OK?” she asked innocently.

  “You know,” he said.

  “Know what?”

  “It’s not your friend that died, is it?”

  She looked at him, trying to meet his stare and hold herself together. But then her lip started quivering and she turned away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I truly am. I just found out. That was someone calling me from New York. I came here to tell you I thought I’d found her. I wanted to get a DNA sample from you to confirm it. I didn’t know whether you knew she was alive.”

  “Well, now she’s dead again,” she said angrily, practically spitting the words at him. “It’s your fault. And that asshole Shelby.”

  What was she talking about? All his fault? How was he to blame?

  Suddenly he felt a little woozy. He put his phone back in his pocket and leaned up against the kitchen counter. For a second he thought she’d put something in his drink. But then he realized he hadn’t touched his glass yet. He felt faint. He could hear his heart pounding.

  He tried to control his breathing. Inhaling and exhaling slowly through his nose, he ran through a mental checklist of heart-attack symptoms. His arms felt OK. No chest pain. He just couldn’t breathe.

  “Do you have an aspirin?” he managed to say.

  She looked at him with some concern.

  “Are you OK?” she asked. “You’re white. Are you having a heart attack?”

  “I don’t think so. I just feel a little nauseous. I just got off a redeye.”

  He took a few more deep breaths and felt the nausea subside a little. It took another minute or so, but the wave that knocked him over retreated back out to sea, leaving him sprawled out on the beach. At least he didn’t feel like he was drowning anymore.

  Taking his arm, she led him into the living room and sat him in one of the club chairs. “I’ll get you a glass of water,” she said as she walked back into the kitchen. While she was in there he heard her phone chime, twice. She was texting someone.

  She returned to the living room with the glass of water and a new demeanor. She seemed calmer. “Your blood pressure probably dropped,” she said. “I used to have a problem with that. I fainted a couple of times.”

  Her voice was flat and unemotional, but her tone felt a little too friendly. She’s overcompensating. Who had she been communicating with?

  “Did you mean that?” he asked.

  “Mean what?”

  “That it was my fault? Did my investigation trigger something?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead she turned away and sat herself down on the couch across from him.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” she said. “I made a mistake. How did you find her?”

  “Dumb luck. She said something to someone in the hospital. She thought she was at Stanford Hospital. And then she mentioned something about her husband Ross choking her. She didn’t remember her new identity. And then someone contacted me, a guy who wants half the money Shelby’s supposed to pay me if I find her. You know this only happened because that tech blogger wrote that article I was upset about. How’s that for irony?”

  “She woke up?”

  “For a little bit,” he said. “Then they put her back in a coma so her brain could heal. But I guess something happened this morning.”

  “She was having another surgery and she went into cardiac arrest, the news report said.” Mileki stared straight ahead as she spoke. She seemed lost in her thoughts.

  “Cathleen?” Madden said.

  “What?”

  “What happened to your father? What happened to Ross?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do,” he said. “You knew about your mother. You knew the whole time, didn’t you?”

  She didn’t answer, so he continued talking.

  “This probably isn’t the best time t
o bring this up, but I think you should be aware that you’re an accessory to a crime. I’m not quite sure what that crime is yet. But you’re going to have to come clean now, you understand? You’re going to have to tell the world what happened. You can make a deal. You can stay out of jail.”

  A tear streamed down her face, then another. He watched them drop onto the rug.

  “You have no proof of anything,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter what I have,” he said. “When the police find out this woman in New York was your mother, all hell is going to break loose. They’re going to find out if you had any contact with her. If you did, they’ll prosecute you. And either way the press will make your life a living hell.”

  She didn’t react. She just sat there staring at the coffee table. “Why?” he asked. “Just answer that. What made her go to New York in the first place? Is your father still alive? Is his name now Victor Braden?”

  That got her attention. Only her reaction wasn’t what he expected. She looked up and let out a little laugh.

  “You know who that is?”

  She smiled. “The one-armed dream guy.”

  “Yeah, the dream guy.”

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m asking you.”

  She glanced at her watch again. Was it really her friend or was someone else coming? Her husband? Or maybe the person she called paw-paw on the recording he’d made.

  “Who’d you text earlier?” he asked.

  “My friend. I know her from Eli’s school.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You want to know why?” she asked.

  “I want to know who you were really talking to earlier,” he said. They seemed to be having parallel conversations. “I want you to know that my associate in New York knows exactly where I am. If anything happens to me, he’ll pass the information on to the police.”

  “After that doctor did what he did to you, how did you feel?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “After he put his dick back in his pants, how did you feel?”

  He looked at her. Why the blunt language? If she was trying to get under his skin, she was doing a good job of it. He stopped himself from lashing back at her, decided to play along and not get defensive.