Private jm-1 Page 3

  Whoever my caller was, he reached me from pay phones. That’s right. Pay phones. They’re still in hotel lobbies and train stations and on just about every block in every city. Each year or so, I’d change my phone number, but I couldn’t keep my cell phone number a secret. My staff, my friends, my clients at Private, all had to be able to reach me. Especially the clients. I was always there for them.

  I wondered again who my death threat caller was.

  Did I know him? Was he in my inner circle? Or was he one of the crooks or deadbeats I’d brought down in my career as a PI?

  I wondered if the threat was even real.

  Was he watching me, tailing me, planning to kill me someday? Or was he just laughing his ass off at my expense?

  Of course I had called the cops, but they’d lost interest years ago. After all, I’d never been physically attacked, never even seen my tormentor.

  And then my thoughts went to Shelby Cushman again.

  I imagined the horror of her last moments and pressed my palms to my eyes. I wanted to remember Shelby alive. I’d once dated her. I used to spend late nights in grungy little improv theaters where she did stand-up, then leave with Shelby by the back door. We broke up because I was me-and Shelby was getting closer to forty. She wanted a family and kids. And so did Andy. To hear them tell it, they were in love from their first date.

  Now Shelby was dead and Andy was bereft and alone, and soon to be a murder suspect in the eyes of the LAPD.

  I sat up in bed. What the hell was this? Where was I?

  The sheets were flowered; there was a fluffy rug beside the bed, and the walls were painted a leafy green. Okay, I got it. I was fine.

  I was at Colleen Molloy’s house.

  It was a good place to be.

  Chapter 10

  I walked out of the bedroom. Colleen was sitting at the kitchen table, her back to me, her head bent over her laptop, studying for her citizenship exam. She’d already drained her mug of tea down to the dregs. Yep, this was a good place to be.

  I moved her long, dark, very lovely braid aside and kissed the nape of her neck. She turned, closed her morning glory blue eyes, and lifted her face. I kissed her again. I loved kissing Colleen Molloy, never tired of it.

  But did I love Colleen? Truly love her? Sometimes I was sure that I did. But then I wondered if I could love anyone, really love them. Or was I too self-centered, too bruised and battered by my father?

  She said, “You could get another hour’s beauty sleep, boy-o.”

  I took in the Irish lilt in her voice, the black Irish coloring, and how she smelled of rosewater.

  “I’m going to be late for my power coffee with Chief Fescoe.” I gave Colleen another kiss and took her mug to the sink. I rinsed it out with hot water and poured her a fresh “cuppa” from the teapot. I hadn’t completely put the murder out of my mind. But I needed to.

  “Watch that someone doesn’t knock seven kinds of lightning out of you,” she said.

  “And why would they do that?”

  “Because a’ you standing there as naked as a miley goat, telling me you’re leaving to go to work, work, work.”

  I laughed, and Colleen finally came into my arms, put her small hands on my ass. I wanted to try and go with it.

  “I’m going to bar the door,” she said, giving my cheeks a squeeze. “Seriously, Jack.”

  She’d gotten to me already. How did she do that? Zero to rock hard in five seconds.

  “You’re a witch,” I said, pulling her robe down from her shoulders. I hoisted her into my arms so that her legs wrapped around my waist, and I pressed her back against the refrigerator door. She squealed at the touch of the cold metal.

  Colleen had once told me a joke: “What’s Irish foreplay?”

  I gave her the punch line now. “Brace yourself, darlin’.”

  She sucked in her breath, the two of us panting as the limited contents of the refrigerator rattled and danced to our beat.

  “Sorry I made you late,” she said when we were done. Her sweet, toothy grin said she wasn’t sorry at all.

  I smacked her bottom. “As long as I didn’t make you late.”

  I left her standing under a hot shower, rosy cheeked and humming an old rock song she loved, “Come on, Eileen.”

  I set her burglar alarm, locked the door behind me, and ran down the stairs. Getting seven kinds of lightning knocked out of me hadn’t felt too bad, actually. But now I needed to work, work, work.

  Chapter 11

  I stopped at police headquarters on my way to Private. So far, there were no charges against Andy Cushman. I was already behind schedule, so I hurried to the office.

  The “war room” at Private is octagonal in shape and features a round ink-black lacquered table, the only item there that once belonged to my father and the old Private. Padded swivel chairs are clustered around the table and jumbo flat-screens are mounted wall to wall.

  Everyone was waiting for me when I walked in twenty minutes late. I was met with a stunned hush, pretty much what I expected.

  “Sorry about Shelby,” said Del Rio. “She was such a sweetheart. I just can’t fucking believe it, Jack. None of us can.”

  Condolences were echoed by the others at the table as Colleen Molloy came in with a Red Bull for me and my call sheet. I’m not sure what it says about me, but apart from Andy, the people I cared about most in the world were all there. They included half a dozen of my investigators, plus our criminalist, Sci, and a fiftyish computer genius, Maureen Roth, whom everybody called Mo-bot.

  “Need me for anything else?” Colleen asked. She’d been my assistant for two years, which was how we met, and then it got more complicated than that, a lot more complicated.

  “No, thanks, Molloy. I’m good.”

  I scanned the call sheet and saw that Andy had phoned twice since I’d left LAPD headquarters a half hour ago. Andy was worried, and for good reason. The cops had only one suspect, and he was it.

  I booted up my laptop and punched in the photos I’d taken of the Cushman crime scene. They filled the screens wrapping around the conference room. “I took these last night.”

  There were extreme close-ups of the splintered door frame, the trashed bedroom, Shelby’s wounds, and even a shot of Andy sobbing into his bloody hands that was worthy of a newspaper front page.

  “I’ve got to tell you all something,” I said to the group. “Shelby and I were once close. This was before she and Andy met. So, whatever you hear out there, Shelby was my friend, a good one.”

  The room stayed very somber and silent. Justine stared at me and through me. I knew she was trying to fit Shelby into the time sequence of my checkered past. She had good reason to.

  “Take a look at these photos,” I went on. “I’ve studied the images myself, but I’m not seeing much but the obvious so far.”

  Justine spoke up. “I assume not, but was anything taken from the house?”

  “Only Shelby ’s life.”

  “Were either of them dealing?” Del Rio asked. “Sorry, Jack. The questions have to be asked. You know that.”

  I told him no. The Cushmans didn’t use drugs and they certainly didn’t sell. I knew that Andy made enough money as a hedge fund manager to keep him and Shelby very comfortable. I was certain of that much. Andy ran some of my money, and his investing had helped me open offices all around the world, including New York and, most recently, our shop in San Diego.

  “Okay, assuming Shelby’s jewelry is real, the room was trashed for effect,” Justine said. “The shot to the breasts would appear to be the mark of a sexual sadist. The other shot says ‘execution.’ So why was Shelby a target?”

  “Maybe the whole point was to set Andy up as the killer,” Emilio Cruz said.

  I nodded. “If that’s what the killer was trying to do, it worked.”

  I told the group what Chief Fescoe had told me. The LAPD’s working theory was that Shelby’s death was a crime of passion, that Andy shot her and then called me as a cov
er story-a pretty good one, I had to admit.

  “You’re sure he didn’t do it?” Emilio asked.

  “I’m sure. I know some of you have no sympathy for Andy, but he was in love with Shelby. And now he’s our client. LAPD says there’s no match to the slugs the ME removed from Shelby’s body, and before the killer left the premises he polished the surfaces to a high shine.”

  I asked Sci to reach out to the LAPD crime lab and report back on anything he could get out of them. I told Cruz to take another investigator with him to the Cushman house, canvass the neighbors, see if anything had been overlooked by the police. We were a lot better than they were, and we didn’t have to follow their procedures and rules. Plus, I could put more people on the case.

  I turned to Rick Del Rio, my blood brother. After he came back from Afghanistan, Rick had made some bad decisions. He paid for them with four years at Chino-which made him very valuable to Private. While doing his stretch, Del Rio had become a student of criminal law, first to help himself, but then he became a jailhouse lawyer, made friends in low places.

  “Tap your sources,” I said. “I’m pretty sure the shooter knew the Cushmans’ habits. For one thing, he kicked in the door knowing that Shelby never set the alarm. He probably knew when Andy was due home too. And he wiped that place clean.

  “As of right now, finding Shelby Cushman’s killer is our most important case,” I said. “Everyone’s on it. That’s all I’ve got at the moment.”

  I stood up and closed the lid on my laptop.

  “Hang on, Jack,” Justine said. “I’ve got news on Schoolgirl.”

  Chapter 12

  Justine knows me better than anyone, including Del Rio and even my brother. She and I lived together for two years, and after we broke up, we stayed close. Confidants, best friends. I’ve told Justine about my daily hate calls. She’s the only one who knows. You’re dead, Jack.

  Now she reached under her chair, pulled out a blue knapsack, and put it on the conference table.

  I asked, “Is that Connie Yu’s bag?”

  Justine nodded and said, “I’m handing it over to LAPD as soon as we’re done with it here. We can do more with it than they can. We don’t know if the killer made a mistake or if he’s baiting us.”

  Then she described the young victim and the crime scene in excruciating detail, getting more worked up with every word. She stopped speaking as her throat tightened. She shook her head and swallowed hard, apologized before going on.

  But on she went.

  It killed me to see how much this case hurt her, and for that reason alone, I wanted to nail the killer almost as badly as she did. We all did.

  “Jack, to repeat, whoever this psycho-killer is, he’s not the first to use ‘different means,’ but it’s rare. Most killers of this type have a pattern and stick with it. The pattern describes the killer’s mood and maybe their personality too. These murders are all different. That’s wacked out, and it’s something I haven’t seen before.

  “Shooting someone is remote. Setting fire is a sexual crime. Strangling is personal. We’ve got those three methods and more.

  “I don’t see this killer evolving, and I still can’t picture him. He doesn’t fit any profile I know. The only good news,” she continued, “is that Cruz found this sad little bag.”

  “It was lying on the riverbank in the shadows under the bridge,” said Cruz. “Maybe the killer panicked for some reason and threw it away. Maybe there’s a witness we haven’t heard about yet.”

  Dr. Sci picked up where Cruz left off. He was wearing a red Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops, one of his standard outfits.

  “I printed every fricking item in the girl’s bag,” Sci said. “There were smudges on Connie’s wallet and a clear partial print, but it didn’t ring any bells in the database. That print could belong to anyone, a friend of Connie’s or her killer, but whoever left it for us has never been arrested, or taught school, or been in law enforcement or the military.”

  “Too bad,” said Cruz. “I was hoping for something better than that.”

  Sci went on. “All is not lost. The cell phone is the jackpot, my friends. Mo-bot came in at four a.m.,” he said, “and she pulled the data.”

  “Mo, you found something?” Justine asked.

  “There were a slew of text messages,” said Maureen Roth, aka Mo-bot, computer geek extraordinaire, self-appointed mom to the Private family. She was fifty-something but didn’t look it, with her tattoos, ultrahip clothes, spiky hair-and then there were the bifocals, which looked like they ought to belong to somebody’s grandmother in Boca Raton, Florida.

  “I found hundreds of messages, all traceable to IP addresses and cell phones except for the last one, which came from a prepaid phone. I know. What a shock. But still, you’ll all want to see this.”

  Mo-bot inserted a flash drive into a laptop and poked some keys. Messages scrolled up on the center wall screen.

  I read the text message at the top of the list, time dated yesterday afternoon.

  connie, it’s linda. my mom took away my cell. i’m in massive trouble and i have to talk to you. meet me behind the taco bell? pleeeeze. don’t tell anyone!

  Mo said, “Let’s assume that Connie gets the message that her friend Linda is in trouble. She has no reason to be cautious so far. She goes to meet Linda. Just like that, the trap is sprung.”

  “So the text message was a fake? A lure?”

  “Exactly. Anyone could have known the name of one of Connie’s friends, bought a no-name phone, and lured her to her death. But twelve girls have been killed now. They went to different schools, and none of the victims knew one another. That’s why I find it probable, even a certainty, that each dead girl was tricked by a fake text. It’s simple, even ingenious.”

  Justine said, “So a hacker gets into the girl’s phone, figures out who she trusts, and takes on a friend’s identity by texting from a no-name phone.”

  Sci said, “That’s what I’m thinking. A ghost in the machine. But that still doesn’t lead us to the killer. We hit a wall after that.”

  Chapter 13

  Justine got to her feet, quickly changed places with Mo-bot, and put her fingers on the computer keyboard. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said. “If the Schoolgirl psycho walks and breathes, he’s got fingerprints and hair and skin cells. The more times he kills, the more likely he is to make a mistake.”

  She hit a couple of keys and projected a summary of the Schoolgirl case up on the flat-screens.

  The time line placed the murders at roughly every two months for the past two years, except that recently the pace was accelerating. Next to the time line was a map of East LA with electronic flags representing the victims’ locations.

  The faces of the victims took up another screen.

  The girls were of all descriptions. Light. Dark. Some pretty. Some fairly plain. Scholars. Athletes. Some thin. Some not. All high school girls. All unreasonably, tragically dead.

  “We should put out the word about these no-name phone calls,” said Mo. “Talk to the school principals again. Do a TV campaign about fake text messages with personal info.”

  “Saying we’re right about this,” Justine countered, “as soon as we broadcast a warning about texts from unlisted phones, the killer is going to change his pattern. And then we’ll be nowhere again. He might even accelerate the murders further. We know he likes publicity.”

  “About what you said, Justine,” Sci said in his usual nasal monotone. “The different profiles. How could a man who would set a girl on fire do it only once? How could that same person shoot someone from fifty yards away?”

  “What are you thinking, Sci?”

  “What if it’s more than one piece of shit? What if it’s more than one killer?”

  Chapter 14

  Rudolph Crocker was hiding out in a toilet stall in the eighth-floor men’s room at Wilshire Pacific Partners, a private equity firm, when his cell phone vibrated. He had been fantasizing ab
out a new temp, Carmen Rodriguez, who had a perfect rack, beautiful brown eyes, and was practically brain-dead. He was thinking about asking her out on a date, preferably an all-nighter.

  He fished the phone out of his jacket pocket, saw that the call was being forwarded from his direct line. It was Franklin Dale, senior partner, one of “the ancients.” Crocker answered, and Dale invited him to have a drink after work.

  Crocker had been an equities analyst for over a year. He’d done his work diligently while at the same time keeping his head down. His concept was to be one of those bright young men with a huge future in number crunching, a dull and steady sort of worker who kept the portfolio safe, the profits flowing, and his light hidden safely under a bushel.

  Now he had to have a drink with pesky Franklin Dale.

  At seven p.m., Crocker locked his office door and met Dale at the elevator bank. They took the car downstairs together, and Crocker wondered if maybe the old fuck was gay and going to make a move on him.

  Two drinks and a bowl of cashews later, Crocker had been told that he was doing extremely well, and that dinosaur Franklin Dale was highly impressed with his work. Dale said that he thought Crocker was an outlier, a guy with hidden talents who would be rewarded the longer he stayed at this fine old firm.

  As if that would bake his fucking cake. As if he cared what Franklin Dale thought about him or his work.

  By the time Crocker got home, it was half past nine. The rest of the night was his, and this was going to be great.

  He dressed for his run, and ten minutes later he was jogging around the Marina del Rey, his mind on the recent outing when his group had taken Connie Yu down for the count.

  Sweating and panting, Crocker slowed outside one of the slips in the marina. He put his hands on his knees and caught his breath.

  When he was sure he was alone, he took a pint-sized ziplock bag out of his pocket and began to bury it under a heavy coil of rope.