Chapter 15

Saturday, November 1, 1997 – Los Angeles, Parker Center

When Inez and Thompson got to the office, Angela Kim was pouring over a map with Mike Radakovich, highlighting the areas already searched by grids. Cam Morales and Raffi Espinosa were on their phones. Gail Ivers was working on background checks Thompson had requested.

When he spotted them, Captain Mallory came out of his office, a crisply folded white shirt tucked under his arm. He was still wearing the Hawaiian shirt he'd donned for the family weekend at the beach bungalow. No one took any notice. Other than Angela, who had been on duty this morning when she got the call from Inez, everyone else was dressed in 'left whatever they were doing on their Saturday off' casual.

"Okay, what do we know so far?" Mallory asked, hoisting himself onto an empty corner of Thompson's desk. "Kim?"

"Starting at LAX, Uniforms have questioned every store and gas station owner on either side of Century Boulevard going east and then north on La Cienega parallel to the 405. Then they'll work past where it veers northwest until turning toward Baldwin Hills. No positive results so far. We're due for another report in about fifteen."

Momentarily distracted by Cam leaving the briefing to take a phone call at her desk, Inez asked, "Anything on the sketch from Kay's description of the man in the shadows at E's apartment?"

"So far, no one from the apartment building or the surrounding businesses has been able to ID the guy," Mike said. "Got no hits from the other departments we sent it to. Might take 'til Monday to get anything back on it."

"What about the ME? We have any results from Flores?"

Raffi shook his head. "I'll check in with her when we finish here."

Mallory said, "That's a lot of what we don't know. What do we think we know? Theories?"

Raffi shuffled through the papers on his desk and unearthed a legal pad. "Conjecture mostly, possibilities that would apply to most of us. The usual. Robbery, random, crazies, junkies. Recent cases that stand out are the stabbing of Karima Al-Fasi and the trafficking raid. Over the years, the man's made more than a few pimps pretty pissed off at him, so I would add that likelihood to complete the trifecta."

"I'm leaning on the side of the traffickers," said Inez. "And that means organized crime...He may still be a target, as well as Thompson."

Thompson didn't offer up any disagreement. He and Inez had discussed it on the way from the hospital. Though it might fuel the media machine's conspiracy theory factories, it was the most logical motive. The only crimp in the theory was that E had managed to walk away not only alive but with comparatively minimal damage. If a cartel or a Russian mob hit, they'd likely be planning a funeral. It didn't add up – unless it was personal. And the ramifications it portended could not be ignored.

Cam returned to the group. "We found the crime scene."

Saturday, November 1, 1997 – Los Angeles, Cedars-Sinai

The sun had set by 5:00 pm, and the last sliver of light faded by 5:15.

On the streets of Los Angeles, traffic was still at the ever amusingly termed 'rush hour' in a slow-moving cacophony of horn-honking, police sirens, ambulances, and pedestrian chatter. Tour buses passed from one sight-to-see to another on Beverly Boulevard.

None of it could be heard in the hospital room at Cedars-Sinai, situated unobtrusively away from regular hospital traffic, where Detective Enos Strate was sleeping. Under their lids, his eyes were nearly still, his breathing and pulse slow and steady.

Down the hall, the small waiting room suite had been equally as quiet all afternoon. Soonie and Daisy had been waiting there, in limbo, with the pachyderm that arrived with them eight hours earlier. Mrs. Huang had been there the last three and a half hours, keeping it from reaching unmanageable proportions.

While both Soonie and Daisy alternately paced the room, perused magazines without reading them, and repeated both activities several times, Mrs. Huang had sat there – silently, patiently – steadfast. Leaving her chair only twice to use the bathroom across the corridor: once when Angela Kim came in to check if they needed anything, the second when the Family Services representative was in the room. For an elderly woman, she had stamina.

Perhaps it was living so close to the 38th Parallel most of her life that caused Soonie to imagine Mrs. Huang was maintaining a demilitarized zone between her and Daisy, and silently blessed her for it.

It was getting late in the day and likely time for a woman her age not to be sitting in a hospital waiting room. Afraid of being left alone with Daisy and the elephant, she did not want Mrs. Huang to go. She was worried if they were left alone for any length of time, she would not be able to say what she meant. Or she would say something she did not mean that would hurt Enos. Or say too much and alienate him.

Daisy seemed demonstrative and forthright. Soonie was not. At least, not to the extent she thought she would be a match for Daisy, and definitely not today. After the emotional roller coaster ride life had sent her on over the last three and a half days, she was drained. Her confidence was shaky. As much as she had promised herself that Daisy would have to fight to get him back, she was terrified that she would end up only being a paper tiger in her present state.

Was it something Mrs. Huang had picked up on?

Buried so deep for most of her life under layers of archaic tradition, she had salvaged her self-confidence only by leaving the country of her birth. It had taken more courage than she imagined she possessed at the time. When she traveled back to Seoul for Jae-Sung's wedding to that foul, wretched woman, her father had avoided her. He was the patriarch of the family in a patriarchal culture. It was 'tradition.' In the last years before the twenty-first century began, the old ways were still widely accepted.

If not for the encouragement of her modern and forward-thinking Uncle Sang-jun, she might not have been able to file for divorce from an arranged marriage to a man she could never love and walk away from the father who had shunned her since. And she'd left behind a younger half-brother who she loved dearly. Jae-sung had been her father's pride, his life, and his legacy. Now he was much as she loved her native country, she had vowed not to return.

It was not Mrs. Huang's fault they were in this situation.

"Mrs. Huang," she said, "you must be tired. Would you like someone to take you home?"

"Thank you, young one. I am comfortable enough at the moment. I will stay for a while if it is permitted."

"Of course," Soonie said. "However, I think you would be more comfortable in one of those chairs." She pointed to the recliners on the other side of the room.

"Perhaps you are right," she admitted and rose with little effort to make her way quietly to the recliner.

Soonie suddenly realized Mrs. Huang had not mentioned Daniel once since she had been there.

While Soonie had been contemplating what kind of colossal disaster might occur if she and Daisy were left alone together for any length of time, Daisy was working on figuring out who Kay was...to Enos.

Despite her earlier reaction, she wasn't ready to accept a scenario that allowed Enos to have feelings for another woman. Ten years he had waited. Make that thirty-two. Had he been seeing other women all this time? Was that part of what wasn't in the letters?Nothing in their phone calls had suggested it. Or was she simply not hearing it?

Suddenly, she was hit with the image of a painfully forced smile and a broken-hearted wave as he walked, no flew, from Hazzard - and from her - as fast as a jet plane could take him.

The 'what-if's and the 'can't-be's had been hitting her from every direction off and on for hours. Things seemed so much clearer when she got on the plane in North Carolina yesterday morning.

Had she driven him into the arms of another woman before she could find out if he truly was what she wanted? She'd dangled the carrot in front of him all those years and assumed he would always be there. Did she have the right to call anyone the 'other' woman?

No. It didn't make sense, and everything she'd heard so far suggested otherwise; the reason she had asked if Enos and this Kay person worked together…like, undercover or something. She had not been able to get back to that question since. One of the most useful skills her graduate studies had taught her was how to organize and support a hypothesis.

She wasn't ready to accept Enos having a relationship with another woman, and there was credible support for her argument against it.

Mrs. Huang appeared to be acquainted with Kay. Yet, she had said nothing about her while prattling on about all things Enos and Daniel. Maybe she was like their neighbor, Granny Bunch, lucid one minute and fruity as a nutcake the next.

Detective De Pina had asked Kay about some investigation of missing children and referenced Ukrainian clients. Then there was this isolated part of the hospital with security and De Pina telling her it was not a good idea to venture out.

And the kicker was that Enos had told her things were going on she shouldn't be involved in, and it wasn't a good time for her to be there right now, and she needed to get on a plane and go back to Hazzard.

There wasn't much to go on from the encounter in the hallway last night. Her memory of it was like one would interpret a dream, with the benefit of a slightly more objective viewpoint and the new information overload.

Friday evening, when Mrs. Huang had heard something in the hallway, she smiled and said, "He's home a little earlier than I expected."

When she and the sweet old lady both went into the hallway, they caught some woman in a skin-tight, eggplant-colored, strapless evening dress (split up the side exposing her leg to mid-thigh) opening the door to Enos's apartment.

"What are you doing?" Daisy demanded. She had never been one to hold back. Her first instinct was to jump into the fray, sometimes to her own detriment.

The woman was speechless and stared at them like a deer in the headlights.

Then, Mrs. Huang asked ever so softly, as if she knew the woman, "Where's Enos?"

"He...is downstairs. He should be up in a few minutes."

The woman hesitated as if trying to decide what to do. Then, reaching into the room and turning on the light, said, "Perhaps it would be better if we waited for him inside."

Daisy looked at Mrs. Huang for some guidance.

"I believe it will be alright," she told her. "Ms. Mun is known to me."

Usually, Daisy would have been suspicious to the point of refusing to go inside until Enos showed up, but he had written about how sweet and kind Mrs. Huang was. Daisy had no reason not to trust her.

While the woman in the sexy purple dress held the door open, Mrs. Huang encouraged her, "It might be better for you to wait in there."

Total disbelief had robbed Daisy temporarily of her usual swagger. She walked past the woman with a skeptical glance and cautiously stepped inside. If Enos didn't show up to explain things in five minutes, she was going to swagger all over her.

The woman didn't follow right away. Once Daisy was inside, she closed the door until there was only a long sliver of light visible and stayed outside in the hallway. She could hear low, muffled female voices, but nothing of what was being said.

Then, the woman opened the door, came into the apartment, and closed the door all the way. She seemed distracted when she asked, "If you would care to sit, I am sure he will be here soon."

After Daisy sat on the sofa, Ms. Mun sat in an armchair to her right, one with a view of the door. Daisy was struck with a sudden inability to know what to say or do next. She should ask her who the hell she was. It took another minute of excruciating silence before the door opened again, and Enos walked in.

Mrs. Huang was right. He did look handsome all gussied up in a tux. Make that tall, tanned, and handsome.

The woman shot up from the chair like someone had lit a firecracker under it. Daisy couldn't begin to interpret the look which passed between them. It seemed strange at the time. Still seemed weird because they looked a little too much like Boris and Natasha, with him in a James Bond tuxedo and her in her slinky purple dress. 18

Before Enos could say anything, the woman she now knew as Kay, but who also might be known as Soonie, said, "I must be going."

She glided past Enos in her three-inch heels without looking at him and made a beeline for the open door and was in the hallway by the time Enos turned back to Daisy and said, "Daisy, stay here," when Daisy looked as if she was going to say something.

He'd said it so forcefully and authoritatively (like she'd heard him speak to Rosco on the phone) that she complied without protest. He rushed into the hall, closing the door behind him.

She was left alone in his apartment, an apartment which she had never been in before, in the silence, staring in disbelief at the closed door.

Simultaneously, Soonie was thinking of Halloween night as well. Encountering Daisy in the hallway had been the last thing she or Enos had expected. Enos believed Daisy didn't love him, at least, not that way, and maybe never had. In his own roundabout, sometimes awkward way, he had said as much. She couldn't get too far away from the question she couldn't ignore. Why had Daisy shown up in L.A. without any warning? And now she knew Daisy had the engagement ring with her.

Last night's Halloween Ball was a lavish, formal affair, and Enos had navigated it like he'd been doing it all his life. The event was held to raise funds for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a non-profit near and dear to him. He excelled at talking people into donating because he was passionate about rescuing victims of that particular brand of evil. And now, having been with him through his investigation into the death of fourteen-year-old Radmila Kozlova, it had become an important issue for her as well.

Completing Dvorak's Symphony 9 Largo theme, the last of her three solos of the evening, Soonie received the phone call from her uncle. She had tried to prepare herself for it. However, when Enos found her putting her violin in its case, tears were streaming down her face. 19

They left immediately after and had been in his truck when he reached over and squeezed her hand. "We were goin' to San Francisco in the mornin' anyway. Do you wanna go tonight instead? It's only a six-hour drive."

That was how they ended up in front of his apartment around 9:45 pm – Enos needed to pick up his bag and jacket. As soon as they had exited the truck, a man came out of the shadows. Enos pulled her behind him until he recognized the little man. Handing her his keys, he asked her to wait for him in the apartment. She was hesitant and uneasy at first, but he assured her it was alright.

As she turned the key, Mrs. Huang's door opened, and she was shaken to the core when she came face to face with Daisy Duke. If Mrs. Huang had not asked where Enos was, she was not sure what would have happened. It galvanized her, as much as it could, into action – anything other than the awkwardness she was afraid Enos would walk into any minute. Her mind went in a million different directions at once, but with Mrs. Huang's help, she got Daisy into the apartment and then went back into the hallway.

Soonie was not sure how to approach the subject, but all-seeing, all-hearing, all-knowing Mrs. Huang said, "She arrived at about 7:30. I had no idea you would be coming back here with him. You have never come back with him before. Not at night, I mean."

"It is not your fault," Soonie assured her, closing her eyes and opening them again. As much as she wanted to ask more, explain more, there was no time. Enos would get off the elevator any second. "I do not want him walking in without some sort of warning. I hate to ask you, but can you wait at the elevator and explain it to him?"

"I will take care of it," Mrs. Huang said, in her sweetest grandmotherly voice, as she patted Soonie's hand.

The next three or so minutes were like time suddenly stopped. Soonie furiously considered her options and tried to decide what she would do when Enos walked through the door. When he did, she left as quickly as she could. The elevator had not started its ascent in the shaft when Enos was next to her.

"Soonie. I don't know what to say. I didn't have any notion she was coming to L.A."

He hadn't lied to her before, and she had no reason to believe he ever would. Being close to him gave her more resolve.

"I know. But I cannot stay. You...you need to talk to Daisy alone. I cannot tell you what to say. You have to decide."

When the elevator door opened, she made a move toward it, but he caught her by her shoulders.

"Soonie, you can't go out there at this time of night alone. I won't let you. At least wait with Mrs. Huang until a taxi gets here."

She bent to the wisdom and followed him back into the hallway. When Mrs. Huang opened the door, Soonie turned to him, put her hand timorously on his chest, and said, in Spanish, "I am going to go on to San Francisco tonight. I love you. Call me when you have sorted it out."

Before he could stop her, she disappeared into Mrs. Huang's apartment. That was the last time she saw or talked to him.

By the time Inez arrived in the waiting room at six o'clock, the elephant had reached mammoth proportions.

Inez was dressed in jeans and a light blouse, a travel pillow tucked under her arm. Before reaching the waiting room, she dialed Thompson's number.

"De Pina, glad you called – was about to call you. We found Strate's wallet in some debris on the side of the convenience store. Doesn't look like anything was taken. Ring's still there, cash, receipts, like Ms. Duke said."

"Prints?"

"None but his, even partials. This is just a wild-ass guess but looks like it might have been cast off when he was hit and landed there. Possible only Strate can tell us."

"Okay, I'll let you know if anything develops here," she said and then caught him before he could hang up, "Do you have Kate Broussard's mobile number?"

"Yep. Think so. If not, it may be in Strate's phone. Why?"

"I wanted her to let her know about E before the media gets wind of it. I've left her three messages at her apartment since this morning. She hasn't called me back. Just tried her again…still no answer."

"If I come across it, I'll call you."

"Thanks."

After ending the call, Inez put her phone and pillow in her tote bag and walked into the waiting room to find Soonie and Daisy on opposite sides of the room and Mrs. Huang half asleep on one of the recliners.

"Mrs. Huang," she said, touching her arm gently so as not to startle her, "your nephew has come to take you home. He's waiting downstairs. Someone will go down with you."

"Thank you," she said. "I am a little tired. Have you come to stay?" She pointed to the pillow in the tote.

"Yes."

Mrs. Huang, her papery skin stretched over thin bones accentuating the purple veins underneath, lifted herself from the chair. When she reached the door where Inez was waiting, she turned toward Soonie and Daisy.

"Nothing is permanent in this world," she said, in her soft little seventy-eight-year old voice. "Everything can be taken away from you in an instant. Cherish what you have."

Inez held the door open for her and released her into the care of an orderly.

Mrs. Huang's words still hung in the air of the waiting room like a neon sign. The air conditioning felt like the thermostat was set on 'freeze your butt off' and Inez had only managed to fall into light sleep when the night duty nurse woke her.

"Detective Strate is awake and alert," she said.

"What time is it?" She was wiping the sleep from her eyes and couldn't make out the wall clock's hands clearly in the ambient light.

"A few minutes after nine."

Inez retreived the light blanket from the floor and shuddered again from the cold. She rubbed the goosebumps off her arms and checked to see if either Daisy or Kay had been roused. It appeared they had not. Today had been a long one for them as well.

"You said he was alert," she whispered. "How alert? Enough to answer some questions?"

"I believe so. He was full of questions himself."

"Thank you. Could you tell him I'll be right in? And don't wake them yet," she said, indicating Daisy and Soonie. Grabbing her tote and the light sweater she had forgotten to put on, she added, "I'll let them know after I talk to him."

When Inez walked into the room, Enos was sitting up in bed, eating room-temperature pudding, and drinking chocolate milk. Looked like he'd already finished his sandwich.

"What? They wouldn't bring you any buttermilk? I thought you had a standing order for it wherever you've been before."

"I asked um." He tried to smile but smiling required more upper facial muscles than eating pudding, and it made him grimace. "They said skim or chocolate," he said.

"You definitely look better than when you showed up at my door early this morning."

"I musta' been a real sight. I got a look at my face in the mirror. At first, I thought it was the accident with Thompson…but the doctor says I got cobblered last night. He wouldn't tell me anymore. I don't remember any of it."

"He explained you have a concussion. You know as well as I do what that means."

He nodded.

"So what do you remember?"

"I kinda remember you askin' me the same thing this mornin.' I think it was this mornin', or was it afternoon?" He stopped to mull it over again. "Anyway, I was tryin' to think of the last thing I can recollect clear before I woke up for a little bit. What day is it again?"

"It's Saturday night at," she looked at the wall clock and noted his accent was a little more Hazzard than usual, "Nine oh eight."

"An' I been here since when?"

"About 3:30, 3:45 this morning."

"Possum on a…," he muttered and laid his head back on the pillow. "I been thinkin' about it since the doctor left. I remember the raid and the accident and the fire. And Thompson's broken arm." He closed his eyes and spoke more slowly and deliberately. "And I remember Soonie was mad at me for not callin' her. And she was, umm, hollerin' at me in Korean." He opened his eyes again. "You ever been hollered at in Korean? S'not like English or Spanish, it's much more…like my granny when she'd catch me doin' somethin' stupid and dangerous…"

"E…" Inez said softly.

"Huh?"

"Do you remember anything after that?"

"I'm tryin' to, Inez. Every time I think it's comin' into view, it skedaddles."

If it hadn't been so serious, Inez would have smiled. She hadn't heard him say 'skedaddle' in a long time.

"E, do you need a minute?"

"No, I'm okay. Just takin' me a bit longer to put it all together s'all," he said and took a deep, cleansing breath. Then he wished he hadn't because it made his nose hurt. "I remember filin' paperwork about the raid and checkin' on how the girls were doin.' Did I set in on a couple-three interrogations?"

"Four, but who's counting? You're doing okay. Keep going at your own pace."

He squeezed his eyes shut hard, or as hard as he could with one side of his face still red and swollen. "I got nothin' else. I can't remember anythin' after that until I woke up the first time. And, I don't remember it very well."

"That's more than ten hours ago. When I asked you this morning what you remembered, you didn't remember anything after the accident – the Wednesday accident. You're making progress. You were conscious when you got to my house, at least according to the medical definition, and you still don't' remember? Or how your face ended up…like this?"

He shook his head slowly to keep from getting dizzy. Then stopped. "I remember…did I go to Soonie's apartment?" He was speaking in his L.A. voice again.

"I don't know. Did you?"

"I did. It was Wednesday night." He frowned. "I broke her mother's pearl necklace."

Inez resisted asking how. She'd read the 'don't ask what you don't want to know' look on Kay's face when she asked about the necklace.

"What about Thursday?" Inez asked.

"Uh-uh. What time did you say it was again?"

"Around 9:15 now. E, I need to show you a sketch of a man you spoke to outside your apartment on Friday night." She pulled a copy of the sketch out of her tote and showed it to him. "Do you remember talking to him?"

E shook his head. "No…but he looks like somebody I used to…wait…he's a guy Turk and I knew. Informant. Got him out of some hot water way back. Haven't seen him in years…"

E was less Hazzard now, although starting to drift off-subject again, and Inez steered him back on topic.

"Name?"

"I should remember, but I can't call up his name. Turk would know."

"Okay. We'll check with him. At least we're starting to get somewhere."

"Does Soonie know I'm here?" he asked. "Her brother…He's missing. I need to call her."

"I know, E. And you don't have to call her. She's been here all day," Inez said. She pictured Kay "trudging" through a median.

"Can I see her?"

"I doubt I could stop her with anything less than a 9 mil."

Both Soonie and Daisy were awake and eager for word when Inez returned from Enos's room. No matter what Inez thought about what she had done, it wasn't easy for her to face Daisy with the news. Firstly, E did not remember her being in LA, and secondly, he had asked to see Kay. That pretty much sank Daisy's 'Boris and Natasha undercover-at-a-fancy-ball' theory. The other skill she had learned in graduate studies was recognizing confirmation bias, and she'd been indulging in that with reckless abandon.

Her second wake-up call. Two in one year had to be a record. She even saw a sympathetic look on Kay's face. What was worse is she had heard the nurse say to Inez on their way out of the waiting room he had woken up calling for 'Soonie.'

That was the punch that counted.

After an acknowledging nod to the uniformed officer still on-duty outside Enos's door and before gingerly opening it, Soonie slipped the scrunchy off the tail of hair at the nape of her neck and let it fall down over her shoulders.

"Soonie." Enos said it with such a sigh of relief, it took her breath away. "Have you heard anything? Did they find the plane?"

"We can talk about that later," she said and moved closer to the bed. As hard as she tried, she couldn't stem the one tear duct that refused to be stopped. A stream of salty fluid ran down over her cheek and onto her chin. "You look," she sniffled in staccato breaths, "better than...I imagined."

"You're not gonna' yell at me again, are you?"

"Of course not."

He had taken her hand and was massaging the back of it with his thumb. She wondered if he knew what it did to her.

"I'm sorry I made you worry. Seems like that's all I do lately."

He rubbed a few strands of her hair between his fingers, appreciating the sleekness of it, then reached up to wipe the wet off her cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned her face into his palm.

"Stop. Just…stop apologizing," she said, sniffling in deeply to make the stream stop. "I know you think you have to be responsible for everything. And strong for everyone. But you do not. I cannot help the tears. They come on their own but not because I am afraid of losing you. I am afraid of not making the most of whatever time–"

"Te amo," he said, caressing her face in his hand. Now his face was wet too. "I love you."

Inez had known the disappointment of missed chances and recognized it in Daisy. Not like being punched in the gut; more like becoming immaterial. Even to Inez, the long waiting seemed like being locked out rather than being locked in, and it was likely not making the situation any easier for her. And now they would need to find a place for her to stay.

When Kay walked back into the room, she spoke to Daisy. "I told him you were here. He wants to see you."

Soonie gave her the room number and told her which direction to take and then went back to the waiting room to find Inez waiting, her face a question mark.

"He was going to find out anyway. There was no reason to keep it from him, and every reason to tell him as soon as possible."

Inez sighed in agreement and remembered what she told Kate about E being able to read guilt…

"Shit!" she said, standing up suddenly, alarming Soonie.

Inez dug her phone out of the tote and dialed the office. When Cam answered, she demanded to speak to Thompson, no matter what he was doing.

"What's up? Morales said you sounded tense," Thompson asked with an 'it's never good when you call after dark' tone.

"Did you find Kate's cell number?"

"Haven't really had the time..."

"Find it. Now! And don't wait to call me back. Call it and let her know what happened. Then call me back." Inez was still hoping she was wrong. She hit the wall with the palm of her hand and swore again anyway.

Darting out the door, she knew Kay was close on her heels but didn't try to stop her. When they got to E's room, she gave it a quick knock, hard enough to announce herself, yet soft enough not to awaken the two other occupants of that section of hallway.

Inez didn't wait for the niceties of comforting words or patient waiting for E to remember. She needed answers.

"E."

"Inez, what...?"

"Do you remember anything…anything at all, about your conversation with the man outside your apartment? Or why you took La Cienega instead of the 405?"

"No...I don't remember anything. Inez, what's–"

Inez already had her phone to her ear and had speed-dialed the office.

"C'mon, c'mon...answer dammit-Angie, I need you to get a unit over to 131 North Hamilton, it's off Wilshire, Apartment B. I'm leaving in a few minutes. Should be there about the same time."

As soon as Inez said the address, Enos became agitated to the point Soonie had to restrain him. Daisy moved in to assist, but he fought off their attempts and tried to pull out the IV needle.

"Inez? Why do you need to go to Kate's?"

"E," Inez said. The dread on her face would have confirmed it even if she hadn't said another word. "You were on La Cienega when you were attacked near Ladera Heights...before the split. Kate's apartment is a straight shot north on La Cienega. You weren't headed for my place…You were headed for hers."

It took only half a second for the information to kick in. Other than Enos and Inez, only Soonie understood the significance.

"I left three messages on her answer machine, and she hasn't returned any of them."

"Call her mobile." Enos was still trying to process it. The hand that Soonie was holding began to tremble, and she tightened her hold on him.

Inez dialed the numbers into her phone as quickly as he gave them to her in rapid-fire.

"No answer," she said, holding the phone away from her ear, "Just goes to voicemail."

Saturday, November 1, 1997 – San Francisco – 10:45 pm

Illuminated by lights from the overhead crane system, a copper-brown container marked tex TGUH 759933 0 45G1 was loaded onto a cargo ship docked at Pier 80. Amidst shouted signals and the crane's mechanized thrum, the container disappeared into the mass of stacked boxes of generally the same color.

References:

(18) Pottsylvanian spy duo Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale featured often on The Rocky and Bullwinkle show 1959-1964 (animated cartoon) - Wikipedia

(19) Dvorak's Symphony 9. Largo theme was adapted in the spiritual-like song "Goin' Home" (often mistakenly considered a folk song or traditional spiritual) by Dvorak's pupil William Arms Fisher, who wrote the lyrics in 1922 - Wikipedia