Brady braked the car and looked up the hill. He could just make out a lean-to with a corrugated tin roof, camouflaged by weeds and overgrown with kudzu.
Brady said to Yuki, “You’re not going to be able to walk around here in those shoes.”
“Give me a second,” she said.
She opened the door, took off first one shoe and then the other, and beat them against the lower part of the door frame until the heels popped off.
She put on her newly flat shoes.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Brady reached over, pulled her toward him, kissed her. They looked at each other for a few moments, both of them smiling, then they set out, wading through the weeds.
The car was under the lean-to, covered with a tarp. Brady pulled on the cloth, let it drop to the ground.
Yuki said, “Oh, my God. Black is dark.”
It was the Lexus that Keith Herman’s neighbor Graham Durden had seen parked at the curb outside Herman’s house. Durden had witnessed Keith bringing Lily Herman’s lifeless body out of the house and putting her in the backseat.
Lily hadn’t been lifeless. She’d been drugged.
“It was Keith who brought Lily here,” Yuki said to Brady. “It’s going to be hard to call it kidnapping.”
“Hang on. I’ll be right back.”
Yuki walked around the car and was still peering into the windows when Brady came back. He had a Slim Jim in his gloved hand. He slid the tool down into the window of the driver’s-side door and unlocked it.
“Here we go,” he said to Yuki.
Brady opened the car door, reached down, tugged on the latch release, and the trunk popped open. Together, he and Yuki went around to the back of the car. Brady held the flashlight. They peered in.
“You see that?” Yuki said, pointing to the spare tire. She brought her light in close.
“Human hair,” he said. “Bloodstained carpeting. And right here?” He moved a section of plastic and felt from the side of the trunk. “This looks like a Beretta P×4 Storm.”
Chapter 89
BRADY PARKED ON Sotelo, then walked up the street to the corner of Lopez Avenue. It was about eight in the morning and the nice upscale neighborhood of Forest Hill was just waking up.
Brady had called ahead, said he needed to clear up a few things, and Keith Herman had said, “Sure. Why don’t you meet me at my office?”
And Brady had said, “I’m on the way to work. I just need three minutes of your time. It would be a big help to me.”
Herman had just enough curiosity, or fear, to tip the balance from “no” to “yes.”
Brady looked at his watch. He was early, which was all to the good. He ascended the front steps of the white colonial house with the pediment and black shutters, rang the door-bell, waited a moment, and then Keith Herman opened the door. Brady introduced himself and followed Herman into a study facing the street.
Herman offered Brady an armchair and he took a matching chair beside it. Herman leaned back and clasped his hands together, elbows resting on the arms of the chair.
“What can I help you with, Lieutenant?”
Lily Herman came into the room. She was wearing jeans and a striped shirt, a blue cardigan. She asked her father if she could get some juice from the refrigerator. He said that she could. To be careful. And to hurry. That the nanny would be coming soon to take her to school. He followed her with his eyes as she left him.
Herman apologized for the interruption, told Brady to go ahead with his questions.
Brady knew that Herman had been a practicing down-and-dirty lawyer for twenty years and had a foundation of twenty years of street smarts before that. He opened his coat so that his shoulder holster was exposed and said, “Mr. Herman, I came here alone because I want to have a private chat with you, see if we can get somewhere, just the two of us.”
Herman’s eyes narrowed. Brady saw from the lawyer’s expression that he suddenly understood that this meeting wasn’t going to be quick or easy. Maybe he suspected a shakedown.