eyes drifting off over her shoulder as he watched the crime-scene techs begin to go over the shot-up porch with a fine-toothed comb. I studied the techs for a minute but couldn’t see what had Bobby so entranced. For all I knew, he was planning dinner and taking a mental inventory of what he had in his freezer.
“You about finished up there? I’ve got some questions for him,” O’Byrne growled at the EMT. “Assuming he’s got any brains left, because I wouldn’t be surprised if they slithered out of that hole in the back of his head.”
“You know, if I wanted to be abused like this, I’d be sitting at my desk, letting my office manager take shots at me,” I grumbled back. The medical tech laid one last Band-Aid down and declared me fit to drive home. “At least there I get pie.”
The wall was covered with the same stucco that was wrapped around the house’s exterior, minus the bullet holes. It was wide enough to straddle, but it had to be done carefully because one of the Brinkerhoffs really liked succulents, planting more of the prickly beasts on the inside of the wall. I’d tossed my ruined jacket into the Rover’s back seat, and the EMT plucked a few short thorns out of my flesh before moving on to the glass bits. I didn’t know where the bullets went, but a quick inspection of my SUV reassured me it hadn’t been hit. I couldn’t say the same for a gleaming black sports car parked in front of the Brinkerhoffs’ house. It took the brunt of the shoot-out with two shattered windows and a deep crease across its roof. It didn’t look like the kind of car Arthur Brinkerhoff would drive, but California was a car-mad state, and oftentimes people drove the most unexpected things.
Since Arthur had married Adele with her odd proclivities, maybe he was really into unexpected things. Hopefully I would have the chance to ask.
“Did they give you a prognosis on Brinkerhoff?” I asked O’Byrne. “Guy was beaten up pretty badly. What kind of asshole beats up an old man?”
“You were a cop. You should know what assholes can do,” she replied, standing on the lawn but avoiding the bristle of cacti starting along the wall about six inches behind my foot. I had to twist to clearly see her expression. Then, after a warning twinge from the scar tissue along my ribs, I pulled my leg over the wall and sat facing her. “And Dawson is your best friend. That’s like having a ringside seat to the Asshole Circus.”
If my brother Mike hadn’t already married his wife, Mad Dog, I could have seen him with O’Byrne. She was the kind of woman who could haul in a hundred-pound tuna during a deep-sea fishing trip, then after a quick shower, slide into a copper sheath dress for an elegant night on the town. If I liked girls—and I wasn’t scared to death of her ripping my head off like a praying mantis—I would’ve asked her out. I probably wouldn’t have survived the experience, but I’d have given it my best shot. Because it would’ve been a good way to die.
We were almost friends. At the very least, colleagues who respected each other at some level. I’d been helpful to her in the past as a consultant, and she’d eased my way through a couple of cases with some pertinent information. But I was pretty sure she was tired of seeing me in the middle of her investigations, especially since I seem to show up without her asking me to be there.
“Give me the rundown on the old man,” she said, her eyes resting momentarily on my face as she angled her body, moving to allow the crime-scene techs a bit more space to walk by and giving her the opportunity to watch them work. “You said he called you?”
“Yeah. I got the impression he didn’t have a lot of faith in the LAPD solving his wife’s murder.” I shrugged at her fierce glare. “Don’t look at me. I’m just telling you what happened. I told you last night I felt some kind of obligation to them. It’s not like I expected to get shot at when I arrived.”
“Was there any warning at all? From the shooter?”
I had to stop and think about what happened, slowing the incident down in my mind and sifting through the stuttering fragments of memory. The brain does funny things when hyped