Private (Private 1)

Del Rio’s bruises were still dark and plentiful. He looked like a pit bull who’d been matched with an equal—and won.

“I don’t pay women,” Del Rio said. “What kind of guy does that, I wonder.”

“Rick,” I said, “wait for me in the car, please.”

But he didn’t listen to me. He grabbed Martin by the shirt and pulled the collar tight at his throat. The bike went over, folded in on itself.

“We don’t want any of your bullshit,” Del Rio said into Martin’s face. “Tell us about Shelby or after I beat your brains in, I’ll personally tell your unfortunate wife about your unfortunate visits to the spa.”

“Hey! What’s with you?” Martin squealed.

I heard the bleeping of a security cart coming up the roadway in our direction.

Martin was going red in the face as Del Rio wrung the next few words out of him. “Shelby was in love with some guy. Not her husband, okay?”

“Rick,” I said, grabbing him from behind, “let him go.”

“Who was this guy she loved?” Del Rio said, shaking the director.

“I don’t know. It was a rumor with a few of the other girls. Shelby never mentioned it herself.”

I wrenched Rick off Zev Martin and apologized as Rick stalked off toward the car.

“Are you okay?” I asked Martin.

“Fuck no,” he said, running his hand around his throat.

“Del Rio is a vet,” I said, leaving out that he was also an ex-con. “He’s suffering from PTSD. I’m very sorry.”

“I should have him charged with assault,” Martin said, as the studio cop cart parked at the curb.

“I could be wrong, but I don’t think you want any more attention drawn to this situation,” I said.

I avoided looking at the security cop and walked back to my car. I got in and slammed the door.

“It better not be that Shelby was in love with you, Jack,” Del Rio muttered. “ ‘Close friends,’ I think you called it.”

I started up the car and said to Rick, “What the hell is wrong with you? Did you take yourself off your meds?”

He was curled up against the passenger door. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Have you ever sleepwalked?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“I wake up, I’m behind the couch, or in the closet, or outside on the lawn. I have no idea how it happened. I have nightmares, bad ones.”

“Take the rest of the day off, Rick. Go home and get some slee

p before you get us killed.”

Chapter 57

JUSTINE SIPPED room-temperature coffee from a cardboard cup.

The cop she’d tracked down, Lieutenant Mark Bruno, was sitting behind his desk in an office overlooking the homicide division bullpen. Bruno was somewhere around forty years old, stocky, thoughtful. Five years ago, he’d been one of the detectives working the Wendy Borman murder case in East LA.

“Wendy had been dead a day when she was found in that alley,” Bruno was saying. “It had rained. That just added to the tragedy. Whatever trace might have been left on her body was washed right down the tubes.”

“What’s your theory of the case?” Justine asked.