marked HOMICIDE. I knocked, waited a beat for a reply and then opened the door and stepped in when I didn’t get one.
Rachel was sitting behind one of the six desks in the room. The others were empty.
“Hello, Jack.”
I nodded. I wasn’t that surprised to see her.
“What are you doing here?”
“That should be obvious, since you’ve obviously been waiting for me. Where’s Thomas?”
“He’s safe.”
“Why all the lies?”
“What lies?”
“Thorson said Gladden was not a suspect. He said he was checked out and dropped. That’s why I came out. I thought he was either wrong or lying. Why didn’t you call me, Rachel? This whole thing—”
“Jack, I was busy with Thomas and I knew if I called anyway, I’d have to lie to you and I didn’t want to.”
“So, you just had Thorson do it. Great. Thanks. That makes it better.”
“Stop being a baby. I had more to worry about than your feelings. I’m sorry. Look, I’m here, aren’t I? Why do you think that is?”
I hiked my shoulders.
“I knew you’d come no matter what Gordon told you,” she said. “I know you, Jack. All I had to do was call the airlines. Once I knew your ETA, all I had to do was wait. I only hope that Gladden wasn’t out there watching the place. You were on TV with us. That means he probably thinks you are an agent. If he saw you come in here he’ll know we’re running a setup.”
“But if he was out there and close enough to see me, then you’d have him now, right? Because you’ve got a twenty-four-hour watch for him on the outside of this place.”
She smiled thinly. I had guessed right.
She picked a two-way radio up off the desk and called her command post. I recognized the voice that came back. It was Backus. She told him she was coming in with a visitor. She then ended the call and stood up.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“The command post. Not too far.”
Her voice was curt, clipped. It was cold toward me and I found it hard to believe that I had made love to this woman less than twenty-four hours earlier. It was as if I was a stranger to her now. I kept quiet as we walked through a back hallway of the station and to an employee parking lot in the rear where she had a car waiting.
“I’ve got a car out front,” I said.
“Well, you’ll have to leave it for now. Unless you want to stay on your own and keep doing the cowboy shit.”
“Look, Rachel, if I hadn’t been lied to this might not have happened. I might not even have come.”
“Sure.”
She got in and started the car and then unlocked my door. It always annoyed me when people did that to me but I didn’t say anything when I got in. She headed out of the lot and up toward Sunset Boulevard with a heavy foot on the gas. She didn’t speak until a red light forced her to stop the car.
“How did you know that name, Jack?” she asked.
“What name?” I replied, though I knew.
“Gladden, Jack. William Gladden.”
“I did my homework. How did you people come up with it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Rachel . . . Look, this is me, okay? We made, uh . . .” I couldn’t say it out loud for fear it would sound like a lie. “I thought there was something between us, Rachel. Now you’re acting like I’m some kind of leper or something. I don’t . . . Look, is it information you want? I’ll tell you all I know. I figured it out from the newspapers. Big story on this guy Gladden in the L.A. Times on Saturday. Okay? The story said he knew Horace the Hypnotist in Raiford. I just put two and two together. It wasn’t hard.”
“Okay, Jack.”
“Now you.”
Silence.
“Rachel?”
“Are we off the record?”
“You know you don’t have to ask me that.”
She hesitated a moment and then seemed to relent. She began.
“We arrived at Gladden through two separate leads that just happened to click at the same time. That gives us a high sense of reliability that he’s our man. First, the car. Automotive ID traced the stereo serial number to a car which, in turn, was traced to Hertz? You remember this?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Matuzak and Mize went down to the airport and traced the car. Some snowbirds from Chicago had already rerented it. They had to go up to Sedona to get it back. It’s been processed. Nothing usable from it. The