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“I’ll take you there,” he says at last. He glances at the clock. “After.”
They get showered and dressed. Brush their teeth side by side at the sink, an awkward domesticity they’re not used to. She’s almost glad when they leave, climbing into the old Land Rover.
A question flickers into her mind as they drive.
“Griffin, who’s Alan?” she asks. “The guy at the Manson house?”
He glances away from the road for a second.
“He’s a crime scene manager,” he says.
“And why was he helping you?”
Griffin snorts. “He’s not doing it willingly. He mishandled some evidence on one of the early murders. A fingerprint went missing—the actual sample and everything associated with it. He begged me not to tell anyone and I agreed. But when I got suspended, I realized it could work in my favor.”
“You’re blackmailing him?”
Griffin frowns. “Essentially. Yes. He lets me know about anything else of interest—and gives me access to the crime scene—and I keep quiet.” He looks over his shoulder and makes a right turn in front of a block of apartments. “We’re here.”
The parking lot is crawling with patrol cars and white vans. Jess wonders how sensible it is for her to be here.
“Stay in the car,” Griffin says. “Keep your head down.”
She watches as he strides over to the door of the apartments and talks to the uniform waiting there. For a moment he chats with a crime scene tech, then goes inside.
As she waits, Jess ponders how often Griffin works at the edges of what’s acceptable, how easily he lies. She’s not sure what she thinks about his distinctly gray attitude to the law, but she knows it’s worked in her favor so far.
She continues to watch the bustle until she sees Griffin’s familiar figure emerge from the door. He has a large cardboard box in his hands and awkwardly rests it on his knee as he opens the trunk. He places it inside, shuts the trunk, then stands up and straightens his back out, scowling.
“What’s in the box?” she asks as he gets in the car.
“Notebooks, videotapes.”
“All belonging to him?”
“Hmm.”
“And you’re going to watch them?”
Griffin starts the engine. “Part of the job.”
“But should it be your job?”
He doesn’t answer, and Jess stays quiet. They drive, the Land Rover rattling its way through the busy streets. She still hasn’t mentioned the photograph of his wife she’d found. She wants to ask him about it, but should she?
And then she notices where they are.
* * *
Jess can’t believe it possible, but it looks worse in the daytime. There is no way to hide the devastation. The fire has ripped through the house: walls are blackened, windows smashed, the garden a swamp of mud where multiple boots have trampled through. She is expecting to see an army of fire investigators, maybe someone guarding the crime scene, but the place seems deserted.
“Where are they, Griffin?” she asks.
“I guess they found what they were looking for,” he replies grimly. Evidence to incriminate her, or simply nothing at all? She can’t imagine anything has survived in there.
She climbs out of the car and walks up the drive. Debris litters the tarmac: small pieces of wood, nails, pieces of glass. The front door is boarded up, but she ignores the “No Entry” sign and pushes it open. It’s not locked. What is there to steal, after all?
The house is dark inside. The wall is wet where the remainder of the roof has failed to provide any sort of shelter. She reaches out with a hand and touches it. It’s black with soot.
