T Is For Trespass

I closed the door, turned the thumb lock, slid on the chain, and hurried into the downstairs bathroom. Through the window I could see a squared-off view of the street. I pressed my forehead against the glass, checking in both directions. There was no sign of her. I expected to hear a car start, but the quiet was unbroken. I sank down on the rim of the tub and rubbed my face with my hands.

Now that she was gone, I was more afraid than I’d been when she was there.

In the dark of the bathroom, I closed my eyes and projected myself into her head, seeing the situation as she must view it. First the tarantula, now this. What was she up to? If she wanted me dead-which she did without doubt-why hadn’t she acted while she had the chance?

Because she wanted to demonstrate her power over me. She was telling me she could walk through walls, that it would never be safe for me to close my eyes. Wherever I went and whatever I did, I’d be vulnerable. At work, at home, I was at her mercy, alive purely at her whim, but possibly not for long. What were the other messages embedded in the first?

Starting with the obvious, she wasn’t in Mexico. She’d left the car near the border so we’d assume she’d fled. Instead, she’d doubled back. By what means? I hadn’t heard a car start, but she could have parked two blocks away and made the rest of the trip to and from my bedside on foot. The problem from her perspective was that buying or renting a car required personal identification. Peggy Klein had snatched her driver’s license and without that she was screwed. She couldn’t be certain her face, her name, and her various aliases hadn’t been burning up the wires. For all she knew, the minute she tried to use her phony credit cards, she’d a

In the weeks she’d been gone, she probably hadn’t applied for work, which meant she was living on cash. Even if she found a way to bypass the issue of ID, buying or renting a car would eat up valuable resources. Once she killed me, she’d have to lie low, which meant she’d have to save her cash reserves to support herself until she found someone new to prey on. Those matters took patience and careful pla

By bus or by train. Traveling by bus was cheap and largely anonymous. Traveling by train would allow her to disembark a scant three blocks from where I lived.

First thing the next morning, I told Henry about my night visitor and my theory of how she’d gotten in. After that, I called a locksmith and had my locks changed. Henry and Gus had their locks changed as well. I also called Cheney and told him what had happened so he could put the word out on his end. I’d given him photographs of Solana so the officers on every shift would be familiar with her face.

Once again, my nerves were on edge. I pressed Lo

Wednesday morning when I returned from my run, there was a photograph taped to my front door. Solana again. What now? Frowning, I pulled it free. I let myself in, locked the door behind me, and turned on the desk lamp. I studied the image, knowing what it was. She’d snapped a picture of me the day before somewhere along my jogging route. I recognized the dark blue sweats I’d worn. It had been nippy out and I’d wrapped a lime green scarf around my neck, the first and only time. It must have been late in the run because my face was flushed and I was breathing through my mouth. In the background, I could see part of a building with a streetlamp in front. The angle was odd, but I couldn’t think what that meant. The message was clear enough. Even the run, which had been my salvation, was under siege. I sat down on the couch and put a hand over my mouth. My fingers were cold and I found myself shaking my head. I couldn’t live this way. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life on red alert. I stared at the photo and another thought occurred to me. She wanted me to find her. She was showing me where she was, but she wouldn’t make it easy. Being sly was her way of maintaining the upper hand. Wherever she was, all she had to do was wait while I was forced to do the legwork. The challenge was to see if I was smart enough to track her down. If not, she’d send me another clue. What I couldn’t “get” was her game plan. She had something in mind, but I couldn’t read her well enough to figure out what it was. It was an interesting display of power. I had more at stake than she did, but she had nothing to lose.

I showered and dressed in sweats and ru

I was torn between a natural desire to be thorough and a need to get to the point. I compromised by walking half the route. My hunch was that her location was on the beach side of the freeway. The buildings along the upper part of State had a very different look to them than the one in the photograph. I’d taken this route for weeks and it surprised me how different the streets looked when I traveled at a walking pace. Retail stores were still closed, but the popular sidewalk cafés were filled. People were heading off to the gym or returning to their cars, damp from their workouts.

At the intersection of Neil and State, I turned and retraced my steps. It helped that there weren’t that many lampposts-two to every block. I sca

I checked the window visible just above the marquee. It was a corner room, probably large because I could see a deep balcony that wrapped around both sides of the building at that point. Maybe the original hotel had had a restaurant up there, with French doors that opened onto the balcony so patrons could enjoy the morning air at breakfast and, later, the setting sun at the cocktail hour.

I went into the lobby through the front doors. The remodel had been done with an impeccable eye for detail. The architect had managed to capture the old glamour without sacrificing current standards of elegance. It looked like all the old brass fixtures were still in place, burnished to a high shine. I knew this to be untrue as the originals had been looted in the days just after the hotel closed. Murals in muted tones covered the walls, with scenes depicting the fashionable set in residence at the Paramount Hotel in the 1940s. The doorman was on hand, as well as numerous bellhops toting luggage for the patrons checking in. A party of rail-thin women in jaunty hats played a hand of bridge in one corner of the lobby. Two of the four had foxtail furs tossed over their suit jackets with the big shoulder pads. There was no hint that a war was going on except for the scarcity of men. The patio and pool area had been brushed in, the images lifted from old photographs. I could see six cabanas on the far side of the pool, which was flanked with ponytail palms and the larger, more graceful queen palms. What I hadn’t realized, peering at the construction through the barrier, was that the pool extended under a glass wall into the lobby itself. The lobby portion was largely decorative, but the overall effect was nice. In the mural there were vintage automobiles parked at the street and no hint of the various tourist-oriented businesses that now stretched along State. Just to the right, there was a wide carpeted stair in trompe l’oeil curving up to the mezzanine. I turned and saw the same stairway in reality.