Close Your Eyes: A Novel Part 36

Lynch strolled toward her from across the squad room. "That slam nearly tore that door off its hinges. Does that mean we have to work around Griffin?"

"Probably. I don't know." She moved toward the elevator. "He wouldn't commit." She gave a glowering glance back at the door. "He doesn't like wild cards."

Lynch chuckled. "I could have told you that. Why do you think I'm treated as a pariah around here?"

"That's different. I'm not undisciplined."

"Aren't you?" He tilted his head. "Why do you think that I came to you when I needed a little help? I knew I could work with you. You are definitely a wild card, Kendra."

"You're wrong. I take responsibility, I'm logical, and I'm rarely impulsive." Her thumb jabbed the elevator b.u.t.ton. "I just think people should listen to me when I know I'm right."

"I won't argue. Think about it." He stood aside to let her enter the elevator. "So there's a chance Griffin will go along?"

"There's a chance. We'll give him a little time to see if he comes through." She turned to him. "But we're not going to wait around twiddling our thumbs while we're doing that. You said that you had a few other leads that we could follow. Where do we go from here?"

"Our old friend, Bergen. We may be able to track that call he made. He gave me the number, and it was a prepaid cell phone, but we might be able to track the tower. We should have had the info a long time ago. I made a follow-up request while you were in with Griffin, and I'm expecting a call back."

"Bergen. I'd almost forgotten him." She shook her head in wonder. "How could I do that?"

"You were a little preoccupied with hara.s.sing Griffin. Just as well. He wouldn't have been a particularly pleasant memory." He took her elbow as the elevator door opened. "But now we have to deal with it. I'll check and see if I've had a return call as soon as we get to the car."

BUT WHEN THEY GOT TO THE car, Lynch didn't check his phone. He sat there for a moment, staring thoughtfully at the FBI building several yards away.

Kendra frowned. "What is it?"

"I was just wondering if this was the appropriate time to give you my present."

"Present?"

"Considering your combative mood, I believe it's exactly the right time." He reached under his seat and pulled out a metal lockbox. He opened it to expose a sleek, gray, nine-millimeter Beretta and a loaded ammo magazine. He took the gun out of the box and handed it to her. "Just a little token of my affection. Do you know how to use it?"

"Yes, Jeff taught me." She took the weapon gingerly. "But I don't like guns, and I'm not great with them."

"You should spend some time familiarizing yourself with it. You'll find it can become your best friend."

"Why are you giving this to me now?"

"I decided that you should have it while you were away from me with Olivia. You refused the guard Griffin offered you though you're clearly a target. I'd like to be with you twenty-four hours a day, but that's not happening. This little baby can take my place."

She gazed down at the gun. It looked lethal, but she doubted if it would be a tenth as dangerous as Lynch.

"Don't refuse it," Lynch said quietly.

"I have no intention of refusing it. I said I didn't like them; I didn't say they couldn't be useful." She pounded the ammo magazine into the gun. "And sometimes necessary."

Lynch smiled. "Practical, as always. I should have-" His phone rang and he answered. "Yes?" Kendra watched as he listened intently for the better part of a minute. "Good. Let me know when you get anything else." He cut the connection.

"What was that?"

"They finally got a fix on that number Bergen called a few days ago." He made a face. "It took them long enough."

"It was lucky that it wasn't an emergency."

"Your tax dollars at work. Pure bureaucracy. It went to an undoc.u.mented mobile phone, probably a disposable. But it pinged a tower on North Coronado Island."

"North Coronado? Are they sure?"

"Positive." He checked his phone. "They've already e-mailed me a map with the tower's exact location."

Kendra glanced at the map. "That's where the Navy base is."

Lynch nodded. "But there's also a country club and residences nearby. The call center will work up a more precise footprint of the area served by the tower."

"That will take them what, another two days?"

"Don't be sarcastic. It's not a matter of national security, so it might take them that long." He glanced at her. "Got anyplace you have to be?"

"Besides North Coronado Island?" She shook her head.

"Then we're on our way."

Within minutes, they were on Interstate 5, and five minutes after that, Lynch paid the toll and drove onto the ma.s.sive Coronado Bridge, a two-mile-long structure that swooped across San Diego Bay, in a graceful curve, to the island.

"You're very quiet." Lynch glanced sideways at her. "What are you thinking?"

"I was thinking about what Jamerson told you about Jeff's contacting them. Why would he do that? Can you trust this Jamerson to tell you the truth?"

"On occasion. Do I trust him?" He shook his head. "But, then, I'm sadly lacking in trust. It must have been left out of my DNA."

"I've noticed. You've said very little about Jamerson to me since this all began."

He shrugged. "It wasn't necessary. I told you I was doing a job for the Justice Department."

"And you didn't want to elaborate in case I might learn something about you that you didn't want me to know." She tilted her head and studied him. "I don't know much about you at all, Lynch. I think I'm beginning to resent that. There's a lack of balance. You know too d.a.m.n much about me."

He looked away from her. "What do you want to know?"

"I've never seen where you live. Do you have an apartment? A house?"

"A house."

"You've gone through my condo. May I come over to your place?"

"Sometime maybe."

"You don't want me to come."

"Not until I decide how much I want to reveal to you."

"You never let acquaintances or coworkers see your home?"

"Sure I do. I'm really not all that secretive."

Kendra gave him a skeptical look.

"Well, at least as far as my own personal s.p.a.ce goes," he clarified. "When I invite most people into my house, they may get a sense of my hobbies, maybe a few of my interests, and that's it. With you, I suspect it would be like throwing the doors open wide to my soul." He grimaced. "G.o.d, that sounded melodramatic. It just came out that way."

"Sickeningly melodramatic. Not like you at all. Why?"

"Because it's not entirely inaccurate. It took hours to figure out how I felt when you sized me up on our first meeting. It was a definite mixture. First and foremost, I was impressed. And, I don't know why exactly, but part of me was even flattered."

"Flattered?"

"I guess we all like it when someone pays attention to us. And no one pays attention like you do, Kendra. We've gotten used to people becoming less and less connected with each other, so it's nice to run across someone who is the exact opposite of that." He drove in silence for a moment longer. "Anyway, as I was grappling with those emotions, part of me also felt ... violated."

"I didn't say anything that a lot of other people didn't already know about you."

"I know that. The difference was that I hadn't made the choice to share those things with you."

She lifted her chin with a hint of defiance. "It sounds like someone has control issues."

"You're correct as usual." He looked into her eyes. "But I have an idea you've run into this before, haven't you? How many people have closed you out because they can't stand the thought of invasion?"

She didn't speak for a moment. "Enough. But I thought you'd have the confidence to make the adjustment."

"Give me a little time. I'll get there. But you can see why I'm not so anxious for you to come over and laser-scan my home."

She could understand it, but it was still causing a slight feeling of the usual alienation. "It's not as if it's important to me. Besides, you're being silly. I've ridden in your car. Do you want to hear what your car has told me about you? First of all, that you're-"

"I don't want to hear it."

"I just want to show you that discovery isn't necessarily connected with-" She stopped as she saw his expression. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. Why don't we concentrate on the case right now? I believe we've both revealed a little more than we're comfortable with."

"I'm perfectly comfortable with-" But she wasn't going to lie. She thought she had become accustomed to all the emotional side effects of being the oddity everyone considered her to be. But for some reason, Lynch had managed to jump over the barriers she had erected. "That's a good idea." Kendra watched an oil tanker leaving port. "But it's a little difficult concentrating on anything with all this b.u.mping on this bridge. It's a real-"

Suddenly she tensed and leaned forward in her seat.

"Are you okay?" Lynch asked.

She nodded. "That sound..."

"The ship?"

"No." Kendra leaned forward even more.

Close your eyes.

Listen to what the car is telling you.

Clack-clack ... Brrrump.

Clack-clack ... Brrrump.

Her eyes opened. "Hear that? The sound that the tires are making on the roadway."

Clack-clack ... Brrrump.

Lynch nodded. "What about it?"

She pointed ahead. "What are those metal plates stretching across the road? They almost look like teeth."

Clack-clack ... Clack clack ...

"Expansion joints. They allow the bridge to give a little in high winds, earthquakes, whatever."

"And there are places between those where the road looks rough, like the pavement is uneven."

Brrrump ... Brrrump ...

"Some kind of construction project. Maybe a resurfacing." He watched as she focused on the road ahead. "Does this mean something to you?"

"Yes. Pull over as soon as you can."

At the end of the bridge, Lynch drove to a U-shaped lot at the edge of Tidelands Park, which offered a spectacular view of the bay they had just crossed.

Kendra had already begun searching her phone's directory of audio files, furiously swiping her finger across the touch screen. She selected one and used the scrubber to skip through one of Jeff's dictations. She held up the phone between her and Lynch. There, faint in the background, was that familiar sound: Clack-clack ... Brrrump.

Clack-clack ... Brrrump.

Lynch looked up. "He came here."

"And not just once. I'm pretty sure I heard this in several of the recordings." Kendra lowered the phone. "Did he have any official reason to come here?"

"No reason that I know about. We can check the case files, but I don't think any of the victims or their friends or families lived over here. And I know he didn't mention Coronado in any of his daily logs."

"And he didn't mention it in his recordings even while he was driving across that bridge. Jeff was coming here in those last few days, and for some reason, he wanted to keep it quiet."

She raised the phone and listened for another moment. "Okay, here's where he left the bridge. You can hear where the sound of the pavement changes." She touched the ten-second-replay b.u.t.ton and played it for him again, this time turning up the volume so that he could clearly hear the sounds above Jeff's dictation.

Lynch glanced up as the slight, airy whistle of tires on the bridge suddenly gave way to a lower-pitched droning. "I hear it. That's what it sounded like back there?"

"Exactly. Let's get back on that main road and see where this takes us."

As Lynch drove back to Pomona Avenue and transitioned to Third, Kendra tried to focus on the audio recording's background sounds. After less than two minutes, her hand tightened on the recorder. "He stopped! And he turned somewhere near here. I can hear his blinker."