Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark Page 3

  Before his father or anyone could stop him, he darted into the building. The heat hit him like a punch. Black smoke filled his lungs. It was like inhaling razor blades. Jibril fell to his knees, blinded, utterly disoriented. I have to get up. I have to find her. Help me, Allah.

  And God did help him. In later years, Jibril described the feeling as some unseen person taking him by the hand and physically pulling him toward the stone stairwell. He had no idea how, in that hell, he fought his way to Miriam, how he lifted her in his arms like a rag doll and carried her downstairs through the flames and into the street. It was a miracle. There was no other word for it. Allah saved us because He wills us to be together. It is our destiny.

  When Miriam opened her eyes, and looked into the eyes of her rescuer, Jibril’s prayers were answered.

  She loved him. He was a brother no more.

  WHEN SULAIMAN RETURNED HOME TO HIS gutted riad, his only thought was for his beloved Miriam and how close he had come to losing her. He summoned Jibril to his study.

  “My boy, I owe you my life. Tell me how I can repay you. What gift can I give in gratitude for your heroism? Money? Jewels? A house of your own? Name it. Name it and it is yours.”

  “I want no money from you, sir,” said Jibril humbly. “I ask only for your blessing. I intend to marry your niece.”

  He smiled, and Sulaiman could see the love light up his eyes. Poor boy.

  “I’m sorry, Jibril. Truly, I am. But that is not possible.”

  Jibril’s smile crumpled. “Why not?”

  “Miriam is of noble birth,” Sulaiman explained kindly. “When her father entrusted her to my care, it was on the understanding that she would one day make an alliance befitting her class and status in life. I have already chosen the gentleman. He’s older than Miriam, but he is well respected, kind—”

  “NO!” Jibril couldn’t contain himself. “You can’t! Miriam loves me. She…she won’t do it.”

  Sulaiman’s expression hardened. “Miriam will do as I ask her.”

  Jibril looked so forlorn that the old man relented. “Look. I said I am sorry, and I meant it. These are the ways of the world, Jibril. We are all prisoners, in our different ways. But you must forget about my niece. Ask me for something else. Anything.”

  Jibril did not ask. How could he? There was nothing else he wanted. He tried to tell himself that he still had time to persuade Sulaiman. The older man might change his mind. Miriam might indeed refuse to wed the man to whom she had been unknowingly betrothed, though he knew in his heart that this was a vain hope. Miriam loved Sulaiman like a father, and would never bring dishonor on herself or her family by disobeying him, especially not in so grave a matter as marriage.

  Not even Jibril’s own father could help him.

  “You must forget the girl, son. Trust me, there will be scores of others. You have a bright future ahead of you, backed by Sulaiman’s money, if only you’d take it. You’ll be able to afford a house full of wives!”

  Jibril thought darkly, Nobody understands. And though Miriam tried to comfort him, assuring him that she would always love him no matter whom she married, it was cold comfort for the boy, who burned for her body with all the fiery intensity of a volcano.

  At last the day came when all Jibril’s hopes died. Miriam was married to a sheikh, Mahmoud Basta, a paunchy, bald man old enough to be her father. If she was distraught, she hid it well, maintaining a serene grace throughout the ceremony, and afterward, when she bid good-bye to her second, much beloved home.

  The newlyweds lived close to the city, in the Basta family palace at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, and Miriam was able to visit her uncle Sulaiman’s house often. On these visits, she would sometimes see the hollow-eyed Jibril staring at her from across a room, pain etched on his face like a mask. At these times she felt pity and great sorrow. But the emotions were for Jibril, not for herself. Mahmoud was a kind husband, loving, indulgent and decent. When Miriam gave him a son at the end of their first year of marriage, he wept for joy. Over the next five years, she gave him three more boys and a girl, Leila. Over time, Miriam’s children came to fill the void that had been left by her doomed love for Jibril. Watching them play while their doting father looked on, she sometimes felt guilty that she was so happy, while Jibril, she knew, remained broken and lost. She had heard through friends that he drank heavily, and spent his days in the hookah bars and whorehouses of the souk, squandering all the money her uncle had given him.

  The last time Miriam saw Jibril was at her husband’s funeral. Mahmoud, who had never reined in his fondness for baklava and sweet Moroccan wine, died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-two. Miriam was forty, with a fan of fine lines around her eyes and a comfortable layer of fat around her hips, but she was still a beautiful woman. Jibril, on the other hand, had aged terribly. Shrunken and stooped, with the broken veins and yellow eyes of a heavy drinker, he looked twenty years older than he was, and was as sad and embittered as Mahmoud had been happy and generous-spirited.

  He staggered over to Miriam, who was standing with her eldest son, Rafik. She realized immediately that he was drunk.

  “So,” Jibril slurred, “the old bashtard’s gone at lasht, is he? When can I come to you, Miriam? Tell me. When?”

  Miriam blushed scarlet. She had never felt such shame. How could he do this? To me, and to himself? Today of all days.

  Rafik stepped forward. “My mother is grieving. We all are. You need to leave.”

  Jibril snarled. “Get out of my way!”

  “You’re drunk. Nobody wants you here.”

  “Your mother wants me. Your mother loves me. She’s always loved me. Tell him, Miriam.”

  Miriam turned to him and said sadly, “Today I have buried two of my loves. My husband. And the boy you once were. Good-bye, Jibril.”

  THAT NIGHT, JIBRIL HANGED HIMSELF FROM a tree in the Menara Gardens.

  He left a one-word note:

  Betrayed.

  THE YOUNG GIRL PUT THE BOOK down, tears welling in her eyes. She had read the story hundreds of times before, but she never grew tired of it and it never failed to move her. Sure, she lived in 1983, not 1892; and she was reading the book in a grim, freezing-cold children’s home in New York City, not some Moroccan palace. But Miriam and Jibril’s tragic love still spoke to her across the ages.

  The girl knew what it felt like to be powerless. To be abandoned by one’s mother. To be treated like an object by men, a prize to be won. To be shoved through life like a lamb to the slaughter, with no say whatsoever in her own destiny.

  “Are you okay, Sofia?”

  The boy put a protective, brotherly arm around her. He was the only one she’d told about the book, the only one who understood her. The other kids in the home didn’t understand. They mocked her and her old, dog-eared love story. But he didn’t.

  “They’re jealous,” he told her. “Because you have a family history and they don’t. You have royal blood in your veins, Sofia. That’s what makes you different. Special. They hate you for that.”

  It was true. Sofia identified with Miriam’s story on another level, too. A blood level. Miriam was Sofia’s great-grandmother. Somewhere inside of her, Miriam’s genes lived on. The book Sofia held in her hands, her most prized possession, was not some fairy tale. It was true. It was her history.

  “I’m fine,” she told the boy, hugging him back as she pulled the thin rayon blanket up over both of them. Even here, pressed against the radiator in the recreation room, it was bitterly cold.

  I am not nobody, she told herself, breathing in the warmth of her friend’s body. I am from a noble family with a romantic, tragic history. I am Sofia Basta.

  One day, far away from here, I will fulfill my destiny.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE PARKER CENTER IN DOWNTOWN L.A. had been the headquarters of the United States’ third-largest law enforcement agency since the mid-1950s. Made famous by the 1960s television show Dragnet, the drab, nondescript concrete-and-glass
building on 150 North Los Angeles Street housed, by 1996, some of the most expensive, state-of-the-art technology found in any police station in the nation, everything from retina recognition scanners to thermal imaging cameras. The Detective Bureau was particularly well equipped, with incident rooms lined with banks of computers and storerooms stocked with a veritable buffet of surveillance gadgetry.

  Unfortunately Detective Danny McGuire was too junior in rank for his investigation to be considered worthy of one of these rooms. Instead the six-man team that made up the Jakes homicide investigation had been stuffed like bad-tempered sardines into a windowless hole in the basement, with nothing but a whiteboard and a couple of leaky pens to fire their deductive instincts.

  Standing in front of a chipped whiteboard, pen in hand, Danny scrawled a few key words: Jewels. Miniatures. Insurance. Alarm. Background/Enemies.

  “What have you got for me?”

  Detective Henning spoke first. “I talked to five jewelers, including the two in Koreatown you suggested, sir. All said the same thing. The Jakes pieces would’ve been broken up and the stones either reset into rings or sold loose. Chances of us recovering an intact necklace or pair of earrings are nil. Unless the job was done by some random junkie who doesn’t know any better.”

  “Which it wasn’t.”

  “Which it wasn’t,” Henning agreed.

  One of the few certainties they had established was that whoever broke into the Jakes mansion was a pro, familiar with the estate’s complex alarm system and able to disable it single-handedly. He’d also managed to subdue two victims, raping one and killing the other, with minimal disturbance and in a frighteningly short space of time. Angela Jakes was convinced she had never met her assailant before. He was masked, but she hadn’t recognized his voice or the way he moved. Nonetheless, Detective Danny McGuire was certain that the man they were looking for had inside knowledge of the family. This was no opportunistic burglary.

  “The art angle’s a little more promising,” said Detective Henning.

  Danny raised a hopeful eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Jakes was a dealer, as we know, so naturally enough the house was stuffed with valuable paintings, most of them contemporary.”

  “Wow,” another officer chipped in sarcastically. “I don’t know how you keep coming up with these insights, Henning. You’re like gold dust, man.”

  Everyone laughed. Henning’s status as McGuire’s teacher’s pet was a running joke.

  Henning ignored the interruption. “If the killer really knew his art, he’d have gone for the two Basquiats hanging in the study, or the Koons in one of the guest bedrooms.”

  Someone said, “Maybe they were too heavy? The guy was on his own.”

  “We’re quite sure about that, are we?” asked Danny.

  “Yes, sir,” said Detective Henning. “Forensics confirmed there were only one set of prints found in the house besides those of the family and staff. But in any case the paintings weren’t heavy. All three were small enough for one man to carry and they had a combined value of over thirty million dollars. But our guy chose the miniatures, just about the only antiques in Jakes’s collection.”

  “Were they valuable?” asked Danny.

  “It’s all relative. They were worth a couple hundred thousand each, so maybe a million bucks in total. They’re family portraits from the nineteenth century, mostly European. The market for them is pretty small, which makes them our best bet by far on the tracing-stolen-goods route. I got the name of a local expert. He lives in Venice Beach. I’m meeting him this afternoon.”

  “Good,” said Danny. “Anyone else?”

  The rest of the team reported their “progress,” such as it was. The climbing ropes used to bind the couple were a generic brand that could have been purchased at any camping or sporting-goods store. The knot the killer used to bind the couple together was complicated—a double half hitch—another sign, if they needed it, that they were looking for a professional criminal. But other than that there was precious little physical evidence of any worth. The blood and semen tests didn’t match any in the nationwide database.

  “What about Jakes’s background? Anything circumstantial that might help us?”

  The short answer to that was no. Andrew Jakes’s business dealings had been clean as a whistle. He was a prominent philanthropist, not to mention a significant donor to the LAPD’s Policemen’s Benevolent Association.

  Danny thought, I knew I’d heard the name somewhere. Strange a charitable guy like that left nothing to good causes in his will.

  The old man had no known enemies, and no family, close or otherwise, other than an ex-wife he’d divorced more than twenty-five years earlier who was now happily remarried and living in Fresno.

  The door opened suddenly. Officer John Bolt, a shy redhead and one of the most junior members of Danny’s team, burst into the room clutching a piece of paper. Everybody looked up.

  “Mrs. Jakes’s lawyer just released a statement.”

  The mention of Lyle Renalto made Danny’s shoulders tense. Detective Henning’s background search on Renalto had come up with nothing out of the ordinary, but Danny’s suspicions lingered.

  “Don’t keep us in suspense, Bolt. What does she say?”

  “She’s giving away all the money she inherits from her husband’s estate to children’s charities.”

  Danny said, “Not all of it, surely?”

  Bolt handed Danny the paper. “Every penny, sir. Over four hundred million dollars.”

  Reading the statement, Danny felt a strange sense of elation.

  I knew she wasn’t a gold digger. I just sensed it. I gotta learn to trust my instincts more.

  AN HOUR LATER, DANNY PULLED UP outside the gates of a large, neo-Tudor mansion in Beverly Hills. Twenty-twenty Canon Drive was the address Angela Jakes gave when she was released from the hospital. It belonged to a friend.

  “I can’t go back to Loma Vista, Detective,” she’d explained to Danny. “It’s too painful. I’ll stay with a friend until the estate is sold.”

  A uniformed maid showed Danny through to a warm, sunny sitting room filled with overstuffed couches and big vases of heavily scented freesias and lilies. It was a feminine room, and Angela Jakes looked quite at home in it, walking over to greet Danny in bare feet and jeans. It was now two weeks since the attack and the bruises to her face had mellowed to a soft apricot yellow. For the first time Danny could see the color of her eyes: a rich, liquid brown, like melted chocolate. No woman had a right to be that beautiful.

  “Detective.” She shook his hand, smiling. Danny felt his mouth go dry. “Is there any news? Have you found him yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  A flicker of disappointment crossed her face and Danny felt disproportionately upset. Angela Jakes was the last woman on earth he wanted to disappoint.

  “We’re still in the early stages of our investigation, Mrs. Jakes,” he assured her. “We’ll find him.”

  Angela sat down on one of the couches and gestured for Danny to do the same. “Please, call me Angela. Can I get you anything? Some tea perhaps.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” Danny loosened his tie. Is it me, or is it hot in here? “I wanted to ask you a couple more questions if I may. About your marriage.”

  Angela looked perplexed. “My marriage?”

  “The better the picture we can build up of your life together, the easier it’ll be for us to figure out who might have done this. And why.”

  She considered this, nodding thoughtfully. “All right. Well, what would you like to know?”

  “Let’s begin at the beginning. How did the two of you meet?”

  “At an art class at UCLA.”

  Her eyes lit up at the memory and Danny thought, My God, she really did love him.

  “It wasn’t a regular degree course or anything. Just a night class I was taking. I used to enjoy art when I was in high school. Not that I was ever very good at it.” It astonished Danny how such a gorgeous
woman could have so little self-confidence, but Angela Jakes always seemed to be putting herself down.

  “Where did you go to high school?” he asked idly.

  “Beverly Hills High. Why?”

  “No reason. Just curious. It’s a bad habit we detectives have.”

  “Of course.” She smiled again. Danny’s stomach flipped like a pancake. “Anyway, Andrew came to UCLA to give a talk about the art business. How to get a gallery to look at your work, that sort of thing. What attracts collectors. He was so smart and funny. We just clicked right away.”

  Danny tried to picture Old Man Jakes and an even younger version of Angela “just clicking.” It wasn’t easy.

  “Did your husband have any enemies that you were aware of?”

  “None.” Her tone was firm, almost defiant.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Quite sure. Andrew was a sweetheart. Everybody loved him.”

  Not everybody. Danny tried another tack. “On the night of the murder, I don’t know if you remember this, but you kept saying something.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. You repeated the same words over and over.”

  She looked at him blankly.

  “‘I have no life.’ That was the phrase you used. Can you think why you might have said that?”

  She hesitated. “Not really. Only that when I met Andrew, he gave me a life. He rescued me. So perhaps I said ‘I have no life’ because I knew it was the end.”

  “The end?”

  “The end of the peace and happiness I had known with Andrew. But I don’t remember saying those words, Detective. I don’t remember anything except Andrew and the blood. And you.”

  “You say your husband rescued you? From what?” asked Danny.

  Angela stared awkwardly into her lap. “An unhappy situation.”