Lost Light

having done little long-distance driving in the past months, being re-immersed in the routine was an annoying and frustrating exercise. When I’d finally hit my limit, I got off the 101 at the Topanga Canyon exit and worked my way on surface streets the rest of the way. I was careful not to try to make up for lost time by speeding through the mostly residential districts. In my inside coat pocket was a flask. If I got pulled over, it could be a problem.
    In fifteen minutes I got to the house on Melba Avenue. I pulled my car in behind the van and got out. I walked up the wooden ramp that started next to the van’s side door and had been built over the front steps of the house.
    At the door I was met by Danielle Cross, who beckoned me in silently.
    “How’s he doing today, Danny?”
    “Same as always.”
    “Yeah.”
    I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t imagine what her view of the world was, how it had changed from one set of hopes and anticipations to something completely different overnight. I knew she couldn’t be much older than her husband. Early forties. But it was impossible to tell. She had old eyes and a mouth that seemed permanently tight and turned down at the corners.
    I knew my way and she let me go. Through the living room and down the hallway to the last room on the left. I walked in and saw Lawton Cross in his chair-the one bought along with the van after the fund-raiser run by the police union. He was watching CNN on a television mounted on a bracket hanging from the ceiling in the corner. Another report on the Mideast situation.
    His eyes moved toward me but his face didn’t. A strap crossed above his eyebrows and held his head to the cushion behind it. A network of tubes connected his right arm to a bag of clear fluid that hung from a utility tree attached to the back of his chair. His skin was sallow, he weighed no more than 125 pounds, his collarbones jutted out like shards of broken pottery. His lips were dry and cracked, his hair was an uncombed nest. I had been shocked by his appearance when I’d come by after his call to me. I tried not to show it again.
    “Hey, Law, how are you doing?”
    It was a question I hated to ask but felt I owed it to him to ask.
    “About what you’d expect, Harry.”
    “Yeah.”
    His voice was a harsh whisper, like a college football coach’s who has spent forty years screaming from the sidelines.
    “Listen,” I said. “I’m sorry to come back so soon but there were a few other things.”
    “Did you go see the producer?”
    “Yeah, I started with him yesterday. He gave me twenty minutes.”
    There was a low hissing sound in the room that I had noticed when I came by earlier in the week. I think it was the ventilator, pumping air through the network of clear tubes that ran under Cross’s shirt and out of his collar and up either side of his face before plugging into his nose.
    “Anything?”
    “He gave me some names. Everybody from Eidolon Productions who supposedly knew about the money. I haven’t had a chance to run them down yet.”
    “Did you ever ask him what Eidolon means?”
    “No, I never thought to ask. What is it, like a family name or something?”
    “No, it means phantom. That’s one of the things that’s come back to me. Just sort of popped into my head while I’ve been thinking about the case. I asked him once. He said it came from a poem. Something about a phantom sitting on a throne in the dark. I guess he figures that’s him.”
    “Strange.”
    “Yeah. Hey, Harry, you can turn off the monitor. So we don’t have to bother Danny.”
    He had asked me to do the same thing on the first visit. I moved around his chair to a nearby bureau. On the top of it was a small plastic device with a small green light glowing on its face. It was an audio monitor manufactured for parents to listen in on their sleeping babies. It helped Cross call to his wife when he needed to change the channel or wanted anything else. I switched it off so we could speak privately and came back around to the front of the chair.
    “Good,” Cross said. “Why don’t you close the door now.”
    I did as instructed. I knew what this was leading to.
    “Did you bring me something this time?” Cross said. “Like I asked?”
    “Uh, yeah, I did.”
    “Good. Let’s start with that. Go into the bathroom behind you and see if she left my bottle in there.”
    In the bathroom the counter surrounding the sink was crowded with all manner of medicines