Chapter 9
"Don't move on Shane Booker yet," Pham says. "You pull him now and Stein disappears." She lets that sit.
I got to the parking garage on Del Norte Boulevard early out of habit. It smells like oil and cold concrete and I'm backed into the corner slot so I can see both ramp entrances.
Pham and two members of the arson unit are standing at the hood of my car with the printed logs and the Shane Booker probate filing spread between us.
It's Delgado, who I know, and a younger analyst whose name I haven't caught. I pass Pham a copy of what I recorded at the gala last night, a small drive from my pocket, and she tucks it into her pocket without comment. The word Kellerman sits in my sternum the way it always does.
Pham was right before I drove here and she's still right now.
Their Tahoe pulls out first and I stand in the garage until I can't hear the engine, then get in my car and sit with the recording device still in my jacket pocket and the quiet that isn't empty.
Danny Ruiz died at thirty-one, Cora Mbeki at twenty-four.
I was the same age when the warehouse floor gave way beneath me and the ceiling came down in orange-lit pieces.
I've given Pham months of covert cooperation because Danny and Cora are still in an unsolved file and the needle has to move somewhere.
The PCH takes almost half an hour in afternoon traffic and I spend most of it the same way I spent the time in the garage, not thinking about what I can't do yet. I pull into the Harbor Walk lot at 2:30 and park next to her car.
Her car is in the corner spot closest to the entrance, which is where it always is when she's been here long enough to stop thinking about where she parked. I don't rehearse anything on the walk in.
The store is quiet this Tuesday midafternoon. There's one customer in the armchairs. Pancake arranges herself across a chair near the window with the occupational authority of a dog who's decided the question of ownership is settled.
Avery is at the front counter with printed pages spread in front of her with handwritten corrections in two ink colors, the kind of pages a person brings out when they're serious about what they're doing.
She looks up when I come in and something in her face shifts, like a quiet recognition that she was expecting me.
She slides several pages across the counter. "I'm doing a read-through of my upcoming book."
I let my hand hover over the pages a moment before I take them and read.
The story is about a man who fixes what he can reach with his hands. He shows up, fixes the thing, and leaves it unnamed while the woman who loves him watches, clear-eyed about what he won’t say.
I set the pages down and look at her.
"It's not about you," she says.
"Thank you for showing me," I say.
She looks at me for a moment with something that's not quite amusement and not quite surrender, then she picks up her red pen.
I take the couch across the room and open my laptop. For two hours I get some work done with my real estate business as well as run through the Stein property acquisition files.
Avery works through her manuscript corrections and Pancake redistributes her weight periodically to optimize warmth.
A customer comes in mid-afternoon, makes eye contact with the chair Pancake is occupying, and stops. Pancake closes one eye. The look she produces isn't aggressive.
The customer looks at me. I mouth sorry, because Pancake is where she is and that's the situation and they find another chair.
I feel Avery look from across the room but I keep my eyes on the screen.
The afternoon moves, slower than it should.
Avery makes several sales and has a fifteen-minute conversation with a regular about whether a particular novel's ending is earned or lazy.
She talks it through with the precision of someone who's thought about it and the ease of someone who already considered the other point of view.
They end up landing in different places that make the book feel bigger instead of smaller.
Another customer drifts up to the register with two paperbacks balanced against their chest.
"Which one first?" she asks.
Avery studies the covers for all of two seconds. "Do you want emotional damage or optimism?"
The customer laughs. "Dealer's choice."
"Emotional damage first," she says, sliding one of the books back across the counter. "Hope hits harder afterward."
The customer accepts this as perfectly reasonable advice and leaves five minutes later with both books.
Around 5:30 she starts consolidating the pages back into order and I close my laptop.
"Your book," I say. "Did the man eventually fix things."
She looks at me. "That's a very confident interpretation for someone who skipped the first three hundred pages."
"I read the important part."
Her eyes narrow. "That's offensive."
I look at the stack of pages. "You handed me the ending."
She holds my look for a second too long before she says, quieter this time, "That's not what the book's about."
"You still made a choice for him," I say.
She looks at me for a second. "You say that like it means something."
I look back at her. "You wrote it."
She stacks the pages, sets them face-down, and doesn't look up immediately. When she does, it's with the expression of a person who's handed something over, isn't certain they wanted to, and has decided not to take it back regardless.
I don't say anything else for a second, then I look at her. "What are you doing tonight?"
She looks at me. "Are you asking me out?"
"I was seeing if you had an opening before I invented one."
Her mouth shifts like she regrets it immediately. "That sounds suspiciously premeditated."
"You say that like planning is illegal."
She reaches for the stack. "I have plans. With Cordelia. We already committed to overanalyzing strangers and drinking wine."
"That sounds productive," I say.
She nods once. "We take community seriously."
I nod like that was always the answer. "Tomorrow then."
I find myself looking forward to tomorrow before I've even reached the door.
Neither of us adds anything else and I take Pancake and go.
I drive over to Surfside Drive to what’s left of the warehouse at the end of the road that I've driven by many times without stopping.
I park at the edge of the lot and sit with the case file photographs on my laptop.
The accelerant patterns, the structural damage report, and the boot print photograph pulled from the soft soil near the rear foundation on the third pass.
It's a small heel profile with distinct tread.
I pull up the security still on my phone, the one Pham shared from the cable tie installation at Avery's building, and hold them next to each other. Consistent tread. Same heel offset.
I'm still looking at them when my phone buzzes with a secondary alert, the motion notification from the bookstore's existing security system, the original one installed before the new panel, the one I tied into my account when I put in a temporary system under Reyes's plan review and never told her about.
The timestamp reads 9:47 p.m. and no one's supposed to be there.
Shane Booker is in the frame.
He isn't rushing. That's the first thing, the complete absence of urgency, the calm of a person who's done this before and expects to finish without interruption.
He moves from the front to the back wall in a straight line, not browsing, not performing anything for a camera he doesn't know is running.
He stops at the panel housing in the rear corridor, the grey metal box, the one I photographed the cable tie beside three days ago, and opens it, running his hands along the interior conduit with the unhurried attention of a man confirming a measurement.
Then he closes the panel and steps back, taking out his phone and photographing the panel cover, then the corridor width, then the rear exit door, and finally the sight line from the exit door back to the front. All of it in sequence and the same order with no backtracking.
He moves like someone following instructions he'd already been given.
He lets himself out the front, the exit light catching his profile for two seconds. Easy jaw, warm eyes, the face Avery trusts to lock up, and then the door closes.
If I told Avery where this footage came from, she'd have more questions than answers.
I call Pham and send the clip before the call connects.
When she picks up I say, "Shane Booker was in the original bookstore tonight. We're out of time."
She tells me to hold the line while she pulls the clip. I watch the access road and wait. When she comes back on she tells me she's flagging the clip, escalating the timeline, and that I should stay away from the store.
"I understand."
She says it again in a different arrangement of words, which is what Pham does when she wants confirmation I heard her and not just the sound of her voice.
I say I understand again and we hang up.
At home, I feed Pancake and she eats without looking up, which is the only uncomplicated thing that has happened all evening.
I open the Stein file on my laptop, sit, then close it again without reading and set it harder than I mean to on the coffee table. I check my phone, no message from Pham, check it again, then set it face up within reach.
Pancake finishes her dinner, turns two circles, and settles against my leg while I watch the screen like it owes me an answer.
My phone is in my other hand before I decide anything, Pham's name at the top.
Eventually, I decide I'm done waiting.
Pham told me to stay away from the store and the pop-up, so I don't go near either. Pancake and I head back toward Port Hueneme anyway and turn onto Avery's street instead.
Pham wants patience. Avery’s three miles away.
I press the accelerator and don't call Pham first.