Expert Witness by Rebecca Forster

Author:Rebecca Forster [Forster, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-12-15T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:

Xavier Hernandez’s Place, Los Angeles

They drove the last five miles down the Harbor Freeway in silence broken only by the crackling of Liz’s radio. Archer prepared himself for evidence that Josie was dead, Liz tried to tamp down the sense that she was nearing detective glory, and Daniel? Who knew what Daniel was thinking? Archer checked the rearview mirror. He could see a sliver of Daniel Young’s face and what he saw told him nothing. More than likely, the vibes Archer felt from the guy were worry. He had to be wondering when it was his turn to be the target.

Archer’s phone vibrated. He checked it and saw a text from Hannah. Peter Siddon had called again. He texted her back: Ignore him.

Archer already had planned to track him down the next day, but tomorrow’s court date might change that. Then again, this trek might change everything. Instead of chasing a guy down in the high desert, he might be bringing Josie home and they would both see Hernandez behind bars again.

He pocketed the phone just as Liz exited on to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and they were dumped into a part of Los Angeles few beach people knew existed. Archer had seen it before, though. All those years with the LAPD had sent him into every nook and cranny of this sprawling city. The nooks off the freeway weren’t worth a second thought. Not because it was the poor and the illegal who lived behind barred doors and windows, but because nothing could protect them. It was fate, bad luck that the people who ended up here were born ignorant and forgotten. Best thing was to get in, take what you came for, and get out. Today, they came for Xavier Hernandez or Josie and Erik Gardener – not necessarily in that order.

“Here we go, boys,” Liz muttered.

She swung her vehicle down Rose Street, and then took a hard left onto an unpaved, unmarked road. It led to a duplex squashed between a triplex in front and the rise of the Harbor Freeway in back. An LAPD black and white, a van and an unmarked unit were already there. Liz pulled up behind the Crown Vic and set the parking brake, stopping in what was technically a front yard but was in reality a junkyard that happened to have a duplex built smack in the middle of it.

The ignition went off. Seat belts clicked. The heat sucker punched them the minute the door opened. Liz hitched her pants, touched the rolled up sleeves of her button down oxford, and then the badge and gun at her waist. Today she wore brown cowboy boots instead of her preferred biker footwear. She looked, as always, formidable for such a compact woman. Archer planted his feet and looked hard at the landscape: the duplex, the building in front, and the one on his left.

Windows were open and curtains drawn back to catch any bit of breeze. But cool air seldom

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