Private: #1 Suspect (11 page)

CHAPTER
50

DEL RIO’S OFFICE smelled of pepperoni pizza.

It was after nine, and he and Cruz had been working on the Beverly Hills Sun murder all day and now well into the night, comparing and contrasting the five murders that had been committed in California hotels in the past year and a half.

The first two killings had been six months and a hundred miles apart, so no one thought they were linked.

Victim number one, Saul Cappricio, was found strangled in Jinx Poole’s San Diego hotel. Victim number two, Arthur Valentine, was discovered decomposing at the Seaview, a third-rate hotel in LA.

By the time the third victim, Conrad Morton, had been found garroted in the San Francisco Constellation, also a Poole hotel, the cops were looking for a connection—but even with several police departments involved, or maybe
because
three departments were involved, no viable suspect had turned up.

To date, five businessmen, including Maurice Bingham, ages thirty-five to fifty-one, had been strangled with various types of ligatures in their hotel rooms. The men had not worked for the same companies; all had different occupations, lived in different cities. Three were married and two were not.

Right now, Del Rio was at one computer cross-checking phone logs. Cruz was at a second computer, examining credit card charges.

Cruz said, “Bingham used the same escort service as Valentine, who also charged up six hundred bucks for two hours of patty-cake.”

Del Rio leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “All of them used hookers. Not the same service, though. Is that a lead or is that just what road warriors do?”

“I feel a business trip coming on,” said Cruz.

“Crap. Me too.”

“It’s a lead,” Cruz said. “The escort services are a lead, not a coincidence. Maybe a hooker with a thrill for the kill is moving from one place to the other.”

Del Rio could see how the next few days were going to go: interviewing prostitutes and johns and widows. He turned off his computer and threw the pizza box into the trash. He put on his jacket.

A list of escort service names and numbers chugged out into the printer tray.

Del Rio said, “Get the lights, will you, Emilio? I’ll meet you here tomorrow morning at eight. We’ll stop first for coffee.”

CHAPTER
51

MITCH TANDY WAS poking around the side of the house, looking for anything out of place. He wanted to find something tangible that could link Jack Morgan to the Molloy murder.

He thought about the glove in the O. J. Simpson investigation, found near Simpson’s property line. The glove was conclusive evidence, but through a freak of prosecutorial incompetence, it had ended up helping the defense.

If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.

The Simpson investigation had been the shame of the LAPD.

Never mind. This was today.

Ten guys from the crime unit were out on the beach. Divers were doing their thing in the shallows, looking for metal. Inside, CSIs were going over the house again.

Jack Morgan was smart, but he wasn’t perfect. And if he’d overlooked anything in his cleanup of the crime scene, Tandy was sure something that could indict him would be found.

Tandy heard Ziegler call out to him.

“I’m over here,” he answered.

Ziegler joined Tandy where he stood inside the stucco fence that separated Jack Morgan’s house from the raging river that was the Pacific Coast Highway.

Tandy asked, “Find anything?”

“No.”

Tandy said, “He leaves his spunk in her. Doesn’t even use a rubber. That’s risky behavior. Like suicidal.”

“Or it’s his brother’s spooge.”

They’d been over this before. The complication of twin brothers with identical DNA. The kind of thing that could introduce “reasonable doubt” into a jury deliberation. When they’d interviewed Tommy, he’d had an alibi for the time of the murder. His wife said he was home. Swore it. Unshakably.

Still, she could have been lying.

“Tommy or Jack. It was one of them. And only Jack has a motive.”

Ziegler said, “What’s that over there?”

“What?”

Ziegler pointed at a disturbance in the mulch at the base of a bougainvillea vine, hidden in the shade of the fence.

Tandy used his foot to push away the pine bark.

For a long moment, they both stared.

“I’ll get the camera,” Ziegler said.

Tandy nodded, stooped down, and continued to stare. This was the evidence they needed. The rush was indescribable. It was why, with all the endless footwork, dead ends, and bureaucratic hassles, he just loved being a cop.

Moments like this one.

The idiot had left the smoking gun behind.

CHAPTER
52

I HEADED INTO my office at eight the next morning, still with a headache pounding like a jackhammer into a spot directly behind my right eye.

Cody was on the phone, but when I passed his desk, he held up his hand, signaling me to wait. He said into his headset mic, “Yes, sir. I’ll see if he’s in.”

He scribbled on the back of an envelope, “Chf Fescoe.”

“I’ll take it,” I said.

I went to my desk, snatched the phone off the hook, and said, “Mick?”

“Jack. This is a heads-up. Call your lawyer.”

“What happened?”

“Tandy and Ziegler found your gun.”

His words were like a fastball to the gut. I felt sick. I lost focus. My mind skipped over the events of the past three days as I tried to make sense of what he was saying.

Words came out of my mouth. “Found it where?”

“In your front yard. Buried under a vine.”

“
Planted,
you mean. I reported it missing the night Colleen was killed.”

“I understand that, Jack. Fact is, it’s your gun, a custom Kimber, registered to you. Your prints are on it.”

“Only my prints?”

“Yes.”

I sat down. Cody brought in my Red Bull, set it down on a coaster that he positioned just so. It took him a little too long to leave. I stared at him until he exited and closed the door behind him.

“Jack?”

“I’m still here, Mickey. Say again. Where exactly did they find the gun?”

“Under some mulch, just inside your gate. Your Kimber is a .45, same caliber as the slugs that killed Colleen Molloy.”

“The killer used gloves,” I said. “That’s why only my prints are on the gun. He left it where the cops would find it.”

“I hear you. Ballistics is running a comparison now,” said my friend the police chief, not committing himself. I pictured him: a big man, six-four, wide smile, me standing with him and Justine six months ago, cameras flashing and Mickey Fescoe thanking us for catching a killer.

He’d certainly trusted me then.

Fescoe’s voice softened. “Are the slugs taken from the victim a match to your gun, Jack?”

“Maybe. Probably. I still didn’t kill her. If I wanted to get rid of my gun, would I actually be that dumb? Mick. I’m asking you. Would I really bury the murder weapon outside my front door?”

“Call your guy Caine. Do what he tells you.”

“Thanks for calling, Mick.”

“No problem. Don’t leave town.”

“I’m staying at a nice hotel. Got everything I want right there.”

“Are you okay?”

“What? Sure. I’m okay for a guy who is being set up to take the rap for a murder I didn’t commit. I’m absolutely fine.”

“I’ll take you out to dinner when this is all over,” Fescoe said.

I told him it was going to be a pricey meal.

Cody came in again as I hung up. He said, “Sorry,” went behind me, turned on my computer, and called up my schedule.

I stared at it blindly.

Cody said, “We’re all set up in the conference room, Jack. Meeting starts in fifteen minutes.”

CHAPTER
53

A CHASM OPENED between my thoughts and my perceptions. Everything outside myself—people walking past me in the hallways, my phone ringing in my pocket, laughter coming up from the stairwell—all of that seemed far, far away, having no relationship to me at all.

I crossed the floor, opened the conference room door, saw a circle of twenty-five men and women seated around the table, all partners in Private Investigations Worldwide, all here for our biannual operations meeting.

I knew every one of the people sitting at the table. Had been to some of their weddings, stayed in some of their homes.

They expected me to reveal plans. Make decisions. They expected me to
lead
.

But I wanted to be anywhere but here. Nearly all of the twenty-five had been in the military, the law, or law enforcement before they’d joined Private. I knew that when the shock burned off, I wasn’t going to be able to hide my rising panic from these first-class private cops.

Cody took a chair behind mine, and Mo-bot, who is fluent in several languages, sat next to Cody.

All conversation stopped as I pulled out my chair and sat down. There were some greetings, smiles, twenty-five pairs of eyes locking in on my face.

The unspoken question floated overhead in twenty-five thought balloons.

Did you kill Colleen Molloy?

Are you a murderer?

I had imagined Colleen’s death so many times at this point that it felt as though I
had
been standing by the bed when bullets from my gun drilled into her chest.

Fescoe’s call ten minutes ago had turned my mental imagery into something immediate and real. The cops had found my gun. They were running the ballistics now. And I knew with near certainty that sometime soon I would be charged with murder in the second degree.

I said, “Good morning,” squared the printout of the agenda in front of me, tapped the table with my pen.

I brought my colleagues up to date on the investigation into Colleen’s death and said, “The person who killed Colleen is a pro. That person is trying to incriminate me—and doing a good job of it too. He did his research. He knew Colleen was in Los Angeles, knew her movements and mine. He got into my house, killed her, and left without making any obvious mistakes. The police felt they didn’t have to look further than me. Why would they? The killing happened to my friend, in my bed, and she was killed with my gun.

“It was a beautiful setup. I don’t know who killed Colleen, but I have some ideas, and we’re going to bring him down. Please see me if you have any thoughts or if you can give me any help. Tell your staff and your clients that I’m innocent, and you can take my word for that because you all know me and I’m telling you the truth.”

“Jack, excuse me. What are these ideas you have?” asked Pierre Bonet, our director from France.

“I’m not going to discuss them until I have something solid.”

I asked if there were any other questions, and then I looked down at the agenda.

“Ian, you’re up first. You want to talk about expanding the London office into Glasgow…”

I set my expression to “listen,” although I could actually make no sense of what Ian was saying. He was reading from a chart projected on a screen when the door swung open and Tandy came in, Ziegler right behind him.

I felt sudden, pure terror, as if thugs had just broken in firing automatic weapons. Fescoe had given me no time to call my lawyer, no time to even clear the room.

“Excuse me, Ian. Mitch, let’s take this outside,” I said to Tandy.

“That won’t be necessary,” Tandy said. “Please stand up, Mr. Morgan. Turn around and face the wall.”

There was no way out. Nowhere to go. I told Cody to find Caine and Justine, and I followed Tandy’s orders.

Cuffs locked around my wrists. Tandy stuffed an arrest warrant inside my breast pocket and read me my rights, his voice the only sound in the otherwise stark silence of the conference room.

Tandy wanted to make sure he was humiliating me as much as possible.

I had time to say to my colleagues, “I’ll be talking to each of you very soon,” before Ziegler gave me a little shove and I was marched out of the room in the custody of two homicide dicks from the LAPD.

CHAPTER
54

TANDY GRABBED MY left elbow, Ziegler hooked my right, and they walked me down the winding staircase that opened into the reception areas on every floor. Clients and would-be clients, staffers moving between floors, all of them saw that I was under arrest.

Their faces mirrored my shock.

“We’ve got a car waiting,” Ziegler said. “It’s not your usual ride, Jack. But it has an engine. And wheels.”

“You didn’t have to do it this way,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure you know that.”

Tandy laughed. The son of a bitch was having a very good day. When we reached the ground floor, Ziegler held the front door open and we exited out onto Figueroa.

Clearly, the media had been alerted by the cops. The morning sun cast a flat bright light on the eager faces of the press surging toward me. Bystanders crowded in from the fringes.

Tandy cracked, “Hey, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, Jack. I read that in
Variety
.”

Cody was waiting for me at the curb. He was very close to tears.

“Justine and Mr. Caine are heading out to TTCF,” he said to me. “They’ll meet you there.”

The Twin Towers Correctional Facility was the supersized prison complex that had replaced the LA Hall of Justice after the quake of ’94. It was known as the busiest prison in the free world, consisting of an intake center and three jails on a ten-acre campus.

The horror stories of the brutality at TTCF were legendary. If you couldn’t make bail, you could lose your health, even your life while waiting months to see a judge. This was true whether or not you were guilty of anything.

“What should I say to people?” Cody was asking.

“Say that I’ve been falsely charged and that I’ll have a statement for the press as soon as I’m back in my office.”

“Don’t worry, Jack. Mr. Caine will get you out. He’s the best.”

Cody was trying to reassure me, and I wanted to reassure
him,
but I had nothing comforting to say.

I wished now that I hadn’t listened to Justine, that I had gotten to Tommy and beaten the crap out of him. He was a cagey bastard, but he couldn’t stand up to me. Not in a fair fight. He would have told me something.

Reporters called my name, shouted, “What’s your side of the story, Jack? What do you want people to know?”

Tandy pushed my head down and folded me into the backseat of the unmarked car. As I ducked under the doorframe, I turned my head and glanced up at our offices.

Mo-bot was on the second floor, leaning out an open window with a video camera.

She was filming everything.

She saw me look up at her and gave me a thumbs-up. I was filled with affection for Mo. I smiled at her for a second before Tandy slammed my door. He went around to the other side and got into the backseat next to me.

Up front, Ziegler started the engine.

He waited a good long minute or two for an opening in the traffic while reporters banged on the doors and windows. And then the car took off.

I didn’t see a crack of hope.

They had me, and if they could they would destroy me.