Death On the Dlist (2010) (24 page)

“No fat lip this time?”

Hailey thought for a few moments.

“I can’t promise anything right now. Let’s just see who Jonathon Kent turns out to be. There may be another fat lip on the way, depending on who Jonathon Kent really is.”

“Okay. At least this time, I’ve been warned.”

THE BUSBOY LOOKED TWICE. THE NIGHT AIR WAS COOL FOR NORTH HOLLYWOOD
and the alley behind San Pietro’s Italian restaurant was pretty dark this time of night.

There was once a streetlight illuminating the area surrounding the restaurant’s back door, but it had burned out long ago and was never replaced. Didn’t really need it though; the only reason he came out the restaurant’s back door this late was to toss garbage into the alley for pickup the next morning. He dropped a cardboard box full of trash from the kitchen, then shoved it closer to the metal Dumpster with his foot.

Billy Ryan was addicted to cars. His bedroom at home at his mom and dad’s house was cluttered with stacks and stacks of
Motor Trend, Car and Driver, Automobile,
and
Road & Track.
As long as he worked and stayed in school part-time, his mom didn’t mind.

Looking out and down the alley, he spotted what he believed to be the car of his dreams, still sitting where he’d seen it earlier that evening. He glanced down at his watch. The car had been there since around 8 p.m., he was pretty sure, and now it was nearly midnight. He couldn’t see the driver’s side; it was next to the alley’s other wall, but earlier, a guy had been sitting in the passenger seat, so Billy didn’t want to get too close.

San Pietro’s closed that night as usual at 11 p.m. on the dot. Why anybody would want to eat dinner that late was beyond him, but whatever. The Hollywood types ate at all hours of the day and night.

Anyway, the car.

She was a dream. It was one of the brand-new Mercedes CLS550s. It was one of the most expensive cars in the world. He’d only read about them in magazines. It was the new color too, Alpine Rain Metallic. This baby was
tricked out
. . . somebody had taste.

But who would leave a car like this alone in an alleyway? It was just begging to be stolen! The rims alone were worth a couple of thousand. They were definitely specialty rims. He was at a distance, but if his eyes didn’t fail him, he was spotting four Revolver Chrome Wheel Rims. Wait . . . were they the Hyper Silvers or the ADR Emotions? Either way, they were worth thousands.

He wanted a closer look.

He was dying to check out the car. Instinctively looking both ways first, he stepped out and walked across and down the alley. The car shone in the moonlight and Billy Ryan was thrilled. That is, until he got a little closer.

Less than a foot away from the car, Billy doubled over and began vomiting violently. When he managed to stand up straight again, it didn’t last. Waves of nausea swept over him and the smell of his own puke hit his nostrils. He couldn’t stop retching.

Stumbling back from the car, he wiped his hands on the sides of his pants, leaving streaks of vomit on his pants legs. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his cell phone and punched in the digits.

A female voice answered on the other end.

“You gotta hurry. There’s a woman, she’s dead. Her face is shot off.”

Billy Ryan managed to give 911 Dispatch his location just before another bout of retching began. Rescue arrived within about fifteen minutes, and LAPD was right on their heels.

The senior cops jumped from the squad car and hurried across the alleyway to the dead body, the car now opened by the rescue team. One of them went straight to Ryan, who was now sitting in the alley, his legs sprawled out in front of him, his back leaned up against the restaurant’s rear brick wall beside the trash cans. He was still puking, but much less violently. The cop didn’t seem to care about Billy puking.

“You the kid that found the body? What did the passenger look like?”

“I don’t know . . . All I seen was dark hair, maybe brown or black. I couldn’t really make it out.” Billy wiped vomit from his chin.

“What did the man look like? You had to see something . . . white, black, tall, short, mustache, beard?”

“All I saw was he had black hair. I think he might have been white, I don’t know. I saw his head from behind. I didn’t want to get too close, you know how rich people are about their cars . . .”

The cop looked disgusted. No help at all. He glanced down the alley at the others.

There was no use trying to resuscitate her. Half her head was gone. Blood lay in a congealed pool in the car seat and there was a spray of blood on the driver’s side front window. Whoever shot her had either reached in the passenger side door or . . . had been sitting in the car with her.

The rookie stayed in the squad car and ran the tag plate to the Mercedes. He should have known the dead girl was Cassie Lake. The tag was custom.

It read “
I SING
.”

IT WAS 6:30 P.M. HAILEY WOULD SOON PACK HER THINGS, LOCK UP HER
little office overlooking the gingkos in the brownstone’s back courtyard, and catch the Number 6 train uptown to her apartment. If she was lucky, the wind would let up in time for a jog along the East River.

There had been a nineteen-year-old with an eating disorder who binged and purged nearly every day. She obsessively took notes on each bite she put into her mouth and, late at night while her parents were sleeping, she’d gorge herself on anything she could find. Whole cakes, an entire rotisserie chicken, large meat-lover’s pizzas called in to be delivered while the girl waited at the curb in front of her folks’ house, dressed in nothing but her robe and pajamas.

Then came a young Wall Street executive dealing with the loss of his younger sister in a car crash. He was overcome with guilt that he had worked so many hours the last few years and never made much time for seeing his little sister other than on holidays, if then. Now he’d never have the chance.

Hailey ended the workday with a forty-year-old woman who’d just caught her live-in cheating, again. She was trying to rationalize that the entire thing was somehow her fault and find a way to stay in the four-year relationship, holding out for marriage.

“Lori, you have to confront what’s happening.” Hailey had tried her best to encourage her to face the fear of starting over.

“But I’m afraid I’ll end up old and alone! Aren’t you?”

Hailey knew better than to bring her own loneliness into the mix. She didn’t want the session to degenerate into a sob-fest. Years had passed since Will’s murder just before their wedding and still, Hailey had no interest in another relationship.

She’d dated plenty, but it never felt right, and she always ended up breaking it off and hurting someone’s feelings. She’d concluded that maybe it was better just to be alone, and was actually pretty happy with that. She’d just let down the dentist in the office downstairs, Adam Springhurst.

They’d had nearly two dozen dates, movies, dancing, dinners, Broadway, music . . . They were all great. But for Hailey, it just wasn’t going anywhere. After every date, even if it had been wonderful, she felt even lonelier for Will than she had before she went out. It just wasn’t worth it, and she felt something akin to relief when she opened up a tiny bit to Adam about why she wanted to call it off.
It truly wasn’t about him.

Adam took it well and was still friendly and upbeat when they bumped into each other around the neighborhood where they shared office space in the same renovated brownstone. Thank goodness.

Lori went on. “It’s been four years. I’ve been with Reggie
four
years.”

“
Lori, before you go down that road, let’s re-examine. You say you’ve had suspicions since year two. You’ve busted him twice before. There’s a pattern. Can’t you see it’s not about you? Do you really believe that somehow you can change him?”

“But, Hailey, don’t you know the likelihood of a woman my age getting married this late in life? It’s more likely I’ll be killed by a terrorist!” Lori dissolved into another fit of sobs.

Hailey came out of her chair and handed Lori another stack of Kleenex. “Lori, I’d love to get my hands on whoever started that saying. I’ve heard it so much, I’ve actually researched it. It is absolutely not true.”

Lori stopped sobbing, for a moment. Hailey seized the opportunity and kept talking in a low, calm voice. “It’s been thrown around as fact for so long, people actually
believe
it now. I think it came from some idiot at
Newsweek.
Probably a twenty-three-year-old man! It all springs from the theory that the more education a woman has, the longer she waits to marry. That’s it . . . the whole she-bang.”

“Hailey,
I have a master’s and a Ph.D.!
I’m definitely dying alone!”

Hailey wisely left out the stats that women born in the late 1950s and still single at thirty had only a 20 percent chance of marriage, and the numbers only got worse with age.

“No! Don’t say that! Haven’t you heard of self-fulfilling prophecy?” Even though the likelihood of terrorist murder was
much lower,
Hailey decided that any talk of death by terrorists was not a good move at that particular moment.

“No need to make a rash decision; it’s just that Reggie has a pattern, which suggests it
will happen again.
Come on, men are everywhere out there, especially for someone who’s smart and beautiful . . . and that would be
you.
”

Lori’s self-esteem had taken another beating. But for the moment, she seemed to be calming down a tiny bit. “Come into the kitchen and let’s make some coffee. You want regular or decaf?”

“Decaf. I’m too upset for caffeine.”

Hailey was busy at the coffee maker and had her back to Lori. Turning around with two cups of hot coffee, she glanced up at the tiny TV sitting centered on top of the fridge. She kept it on the news networks; right now, it was on GNE, the volume on mute.

Hailey froze. A giant red banner covered nearly the entire bottom third of the screen. America’s sweetheart, Cassie Lake, was found murdered in a North Hollywood alley behind an Italian restaurant. Gunshot wound to the head. Right now, the screen was showing close-up video of her rehearsing for one of her Vegas comeback concerts.

A chill went down Hailey’s spine. Could it be the same killer? No . . . no way. This guy only killed in and around Manhattan. Cassie was found dead in her car in Hollywood. But the similarities were striking. Cassie was a woman, like the other shooting victims. She was also a celebrity. She was beautiful, white, female, and as of recently, single, too. She was a D-Lister like the others, trying to make a comeback.

Lori carried her cup of coffee back into the den and set it down on a mosaic coaster on the edge of an armchair table between the sofa and Hailey’s worn, wing-backed chair, a floor lamp at its side. Lori reached over to gather her coat, hat, and scarf off the back of the sofa, where she’d laid them when she first came in.

Setting down her own mug, Hailey helped Lori with her coat and gave her a reassuring hug.

“You are going to know when the time is right to make a change in your life. You’re already thinking it over, you’ll see.” After another tight hug, Hailey closed the door gently behind Lori and heard her light steps going down the stairway.

Hailey immediately reached into the pocket of the soft, amber-colored sweater she was wearing that day to pull out her BlackBerry. She would not allow herself to even glance at it when she was with a client, and was very rarely tempted to do so. She saw its red light blinking, indicating messages or calls. One quick glance said it all . . . three calls from Kolker. It could only mean one thing.

The bullet matched.

Hailey instinctively went to the window and dialed Kolker’s cell, staring out at the tops of the gingko trees waving in the chilly wind there in the back courtyard.

He picked up. “Have you heard?”

“Just saw it on TV. Does the bullet match?”

“Oh, yeah. It matches. We sent shots of the markings by e-mail and they’ve already confirmed out in LA. It’s him. He followed her all the way from New York to California just to put a bullet in her head. Why didn’t he do it while she was here? Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Hailey, I hardly know where to go next with this thing.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Hailey tried to sound confident.

“I’m out of time. We’ve got a monster on our hands and I’m no closer to an arrest than I was last week. Can’t find the ex-husband. Her kids are just finding out now. The grandparents are telling them. Man, I’d sure hate to be in that house right now. Can you imagine?”

Hailey didn’t bother to point out that yes, she could imagine the grief and pain and shock of losing someone you love dearly. Kolker had to feel the same way about his sister, Susannah.

“Kolker, it’s going to be awful, and it won’t end today. Those children have a lifetime of having to cope with this ahead of them. I hate it too, so much.”

“I feel sick in my gut. If I’d already cracked this thing, Cassie would be alive right now . . . home with her kids.” Hailey heard his voice break. “But this time, Hailey, he screwed up. He got messy. He finally got spotted. The busboy says it was a man with dark hair, and by the dimensions of the car seat, about five-ten to six feet tall.”

“Get the LA CSI stat. They’ve got to get a hair sample. It may be the only way to place the passenger, who’s likely the killer. You said she was shot from the passenger’s side, right? Not through the driver’s-side window, like Prentiss Love?”

“Right, from the passenger’s side.”

“Stippling on the skin?”

“Correct. Stippling.”

Upon firing the bullet, hot gases from exploding gunpowder, and microscopic metal fragments from the bullet and the gun barrel themselves propel out of the muzzle. In contact range wounds, hot gases and particulate matter blast into the skin along with the bullet, charring the skin and depositing along the wound track or on the skin itself, leaving a lacerated appearance.

“Well then, if there’s stippling, it had to be somebody in the car. Gunshot residue only shows up when the shooter’s less than three feet, usually, that is. And stippling says it’s a contact wound, gun to skin. But anyway, we gotta get the hair. If there’s a nucleus, a root, we can get full-on DNA. Even if there’s just a shaft, we can go for mitochondrial DNA. They have to comb that passenger side of the car.”

“I’ll put in a call when we hang up.”

“Oh, and have you thought about sending the ME out? That young guy with the long ponytail . . . Emory what’s-his-name? Wouldn’t hurt to have a little consistency on all of the post-mortems. He can just assist if the local LA coroner objects . . .”

“I thought of that. As luck would have it, he’s actually already in LA, sightseeing or something. Now there’s a coincidence.”

“That
is
great timing on his part. You know, Kolker, the DNA off the hair, if it’s there, could make the case. Although we’ve gotta have somebody to
match it to
. . .”

“I know, it’s a great lead, but if I could have only moved a little faster . . . we could’ve saved Cassie Lake . . . those kids of hers . . .”

“Kolker, stop. You can’t do this. A lot is riding on your shoulders right now. You’re not responsible for this, the killer is. Look, come get me. I’m at the office. You can get me faster in a squad car than it would take a cab to get me uptown to you. Wait, no, I’ll grab the subway. I’ll meet you at Lex and Fifty-first in twenty minutes. Okay?”

“I’m on my way, Hailey.”

“Wait! Don’t hang up . . . Where’s Anderson . . . Scott Anderson? He’s definitely got dark hair.”

“We can’t find him.” A knot formed at the pit of Hailey’s stomach.

“What about his car?” Her mind was ticking through all the possibilites.

“Still looking. Tried home, work, last known girlfriend’s place . . . nothing yet.”

“Have you thought of LaGuardia?”

“Patrol cars on the way right now.”

“JFK and Newark?”

“Done.” His voice was clipped.

“What about the Westchester County Airport? He lives a lot closer to that one . . . Right?”

“You got me. I’ll send somebody up there right now.”

“Okay. See you in twenty. Same car?”

“Right. Unmarked.”

They both clicked off without the unneeded pleasantries of formal goodbyes. Hailey felt a sense of urgency as she grabbed her coat out of the closet situated in the foyer of her little office suite. She locked the door behind her and, holding her hat and scarf in her hand, took off down the stairs, not even pausing to wrap the scarf around her neck against the wind.