Gathering Dark, Candice Fox [inspirational books for students .TXT] 📗

“I know you’re just trying to make me feel better about the footage of my arrest.” The day was stingingly bright. Two officers were already unloading a van full of gang members scooped up from the streets into the side entrance. “Is it across the department yet?”

“I was forwarded it by email.” He had his head down, watching the road pass beneath his feet. “So was my colleague. So you can assume if it’s reached the forensics office…”

She nodded.

“Jessica,” Diggy said as they slid into his immaculate car together. “Erotic practices that involve BDSM are surprisingly common, and in the current socio-sexual climate—”

“Don’t.” She held a hand up.

“Okay.”

They drove for a while in silence. Jessica smelled her armpit, grimaced. The jailhouse had stunk of the bodies of sweating, sobering women, herself included.

“Tell me where you are on the Harbour investigation,” she said.

Diggy straightened in his seat. A pair of young actors were crossing the street before them at the traffic lights, their noses buried in scripts, gesticulating wildly to each other. Jessica looked at her phone and saw that there were five missed calls from Captain Whitton and eight from female colleagues she had known across her career. One of the women, she knew, worked out in Glendora. The video was spreading like a wildfire from cop to cop, embers carried across the country, heading east.

“The bush in question outside the Orlov house is a Baby Bear manzanita, or a species of Arctostaphylos, for the connoisseur. That much I worked out for myself. Then I consulted a botanist. Not just any botanist—the botanist. Dr. Ramona Bulle. President of the Botanical Society of America. She’s taken the inquiry seriously. Extremely seriously. It appears to me as though she’s spent every waking moment on the case study since I presented it to her. I’m receiving reports on the hour.” As if on cue, Jessica heard Diggy’s phone ping. “She’s currently analyzing vehicle smog patterns in the area at the time to try to determine their effect on the growth of our particular species.”

“Jesus,” Jessica said.

“Yeah.” Diggy glanced at her. “There are scientists and then there are obsessives. Frankenstein types who fall down into deep investigative wells and go mad.”

“Can you tell anything from what she’s provided so far?”

Diggy paused. “I hate to draw conclusions based on incomplete—”

“Diggy.”

“It could have grown that high.” He looked at her. “Yes. I’m calling it. The bush could indeed have grown high enough in three weeks to cover up the view of the first-floor laundry window.”

Jessica was silent.

“So it’s possible you were wrong about the bush. And you were indeed wrong about the cheese sandwich,” Diggy said. “My mentor got back to me. It’s definitely a male bite mark. But Jessica, these things are—”

“I get it. They’re just pieces of a puzzle.”

“Should we get breakfast?”

“No, I’m going to freshen up, get changed, and start looking for Kristi Zea. I want to hear the story again from her mouth.” Jessica sighed. “But first, just drop me at the Bluestone house. I want to make sure Wallert calling the Wilshire cops on me wasn’t act one in a longer, grander performance.”

They drove through Brentwood, silent, watching teams of gardeners unloading equipment from their trucks onto immaculate lawns, dog walkers in bright vans carrying precious furry bundles. Jessica sat up in her seat when she spied the private security car two driveways down from the Beauvoir house. There was a man in the front seat using his radio, watching the porch with binoculars. Three ladies were there, waiting. Jessica recognized Ada Maverick leaning against the front window, tapping cigarette ash into a pot plant. Blair Harbour was sitting on the steps, nursing a battered and bloodied face. Jessica didn’t know the third woman, who was pacing the porch, talking to herself.

“What the…” Diggy let the car roll to a stop outside the house. “Who are … Is that…?”

“Thanks for the ride, Diggs,” Jessica said as she opened the door.

“Is that Harbour?”

Jessica shut the car door on Diggy and walked toward the house.

BLAIR

Jessica Sanchez walked past me as I rose unsteadily on the porch. She unlocked the front door of the house and went inside before I could offer an explanation. Sneak followed her without even looking at me. We gathered in the kitchen, Ada taking her time, wandering over to the huge windows, one taped with paper where the glass had been blown out and swept into a pile on the porch. When I had called Sneak at daybreak, I knew it was a mistake instantly. She was still high now, rolling her tongue across her front teeth beneath her dry lips, her eyes restless, strings of muttered words escaping her that I barely caught in the huge room.

“Really, really nice house. Expensive. Too expensive for … I’m talking millions. Millions and millions. But who knows? Who … Who knows something like that? It could be—”

“What the hell happened to you?” Jessica asked. She looked exhausted. Her long black hair was out and tangled. I’d expected another snarl of abuse about turning up unannounced on her doorstep only hours after I’d done it the first time, this time with the backup of two other criminals. I looked at Ada and Sneak, and wondered how to begin defending myself.

“I was attacked in my apartment,” I said. “I escaped and didn’t know where else to go. I called the others just to tell them where I was headed, that I was alive. I didn’t tell them to come here, but—”

“Blair says you can help finding Dayly,” Ada said. “I’m here to find out how.”

There was a blistering silence, broken only by Sneak’s pacing footsteps. Jessica watched Sneak for a while, squinting at her missing earlobe.

“Jessica,” I said hesitantly, gesturing to Ada. “This is—”

“I know who Ada Maverick is,” Jessica snapped.

“Everybody knows.” Ada gave an icy smile.

“Have you guys…” I began.

“Last time I saw Detective Sanchez, she was part of a squad trying to pin me with possession of some guns,”