Private: #1 Suspect (20 page)

CHAPTER
94

JUSTINE WAS BACK at the Topanga Canyon cabin, this time in sunlight, standing with Dr. Sci and Nora Cronin a few yards from the flower bed where fresh tire tracks had been pressed into the earth.

A car had parked among the flowers recently, just as Danny had said. And Danny had also said that whoever killed Piper had to have been driving that car.

The LAPD’s tire track specialist aimed his Minolta at the tread marks and fired off a few shots. He put a scale down next to the impressions and fired off another few rounds.

“Thanks, Stan. We’re good for now,” said Nora.

Dr. Sci was as excited as a kid on his birthday. “This is a beautiful thing, Justine. What a great tread mark.”

The LAPD had two big Leica scanners back at the lab.

Sci was using Private’s state-of-the art, handheld ZScanner 700 CX, which captured images in three dimensions, in full color, with self-positioning in real time. There was no scanner anywhere that could top it.

Nora said, “I don’t care if you show off, Sci. But gloating is just uncool.”

Sci laughed. “Just sayin’, you’re going to thank Jack for spending the fifty grand on this.”

“If we catch the dirtbag because of your scanner, I’ll kiss Jack on the mouth, okay?”

Sci grinned. “If it’s okay with Jack, it’s okay with me.”

The 3-D scanner looked something like two hairdryer heads fused onto one handgrip. Sci laid down a net of small positioning markers in the tire track, then passed the scanner above the track in one continuous motion. As he did so, the image transferred to the laptop Justine had set up on a nearby tree stump. Every ridge, wave, and detail of the tread mark appeared right on her screen.

Nora came over to watch as Justine ran the image through the software that compared the image to six thousand distinct patterns in the TreadMate database.

Justine held her breath as the computer stopped at a tread mark identical to the image Sci had scanned. The word
match
flashed onscreen.

“We have a hit,” she said.

Sci joined Nora in looking over Justine’s shoulder.

“An N-spec,” Sci said. “That’s a Porsche standard tire. Justine, may I?”

Sci tapped the laptop keys and found what he was looking for.

“The N-spec tires have a special tread design. Yep, it’s got a thin groove around the outboard shoulder. I’m gonna say it’s the tire of choice on the Porsche 911.

“Hey-hey. Look at this,” Sci continued. He pointed to a flat mark near the image that wasn’t part of the tire track. “This is a partial shoe print. Part of the toe. The guy stepped in the dirt when he got out of the car. Too bad he backed over the rest of the prints on his way out.”

“Can you run that?” Justine asked.

“Even if we could identify the type of shoe, it’s not enough to give us a size or idiosyncratic wear patterns.”

Justine was thinking back to way early yesterday morning.

She had started down the trail behind Danny’s cabin in the direction of his cries. Del Rio had caught up to her, and then they’d heard car doors slamming behind them.

Del Rio had gone on ahead while Justine had gone back to the cabin. When she got there, she spoke with each of the men who’d arrived to help Danny: Schuster, Barstow, Koulos.

She hadn’t been looking at cars, couldn’t make a positive ID on any vehicle she’d glimpsed at four a.m. in the dark.

Still, she thought one of those cars had been a Porsche.

What model? Who had been driving it?

She couldn’t say. But all the cars had parked in the gravel driveway. If one of those three men had arrived earlier, while Danny was sleeping, if he had been in a hurry and parked his Porsche beside the Ferrari, not behind it, in the flower bed…

Justine said, “We can get a match the old-fashioned way.”

“Justine, there’s no way,” Nora shouted at her, right there in front of Sci and Stan and every other tech within earshot. “I can’t get a warrant based on a tire track that could match any of six jillion Porsches in LA.”

Justine stood speechless, not used to having a rule book, not used to be shouted at either. Of course Nora was right. But there were other ways.

“Can you look at traffic cam footage, Nora? Can you do that without a warrant?”

CHAPTER
95

IT HAD TAKEN Justine two minutes on the DMV database to learn which of Danny’s handlers owned a Porsche 911. After that, she and Del Rio had gone looking for the car in logical places and hadn’t found it.

Now Del Rio parked the fleet car in the circular drive of a six-million-dollar, ten-thousand-square-foot Mediterranean-style house in Bel Air.

He took his gun out of the glove box, slipped it into his shoulder holster, and said, “Justine, there’s no point in getting worked up. As my old cell mate used to say, ‘If you can’t find what you’re looking for on the street, go into someone’s house and take it.’”

“Great. We’re taking advice from a convict.”

“And you’re taking advice from my cell mate too.”

Justine laughed. “No offense, Rick. I don’t think of you as a jailbird.”

“I’m honored. You ready to risk your life and reputation?”

“Maybe. I mean, let’s go.”

A young Hispanic housekeeper came to the door under the portico, smiled pleasantly, said, “I’m sorry. No one is home.”

Del Rio held up his badge, opened his jacket to show the woman his nine. He said, “It’s okay, miss, we’re authorized to do a quick search and seizure.”

“We’re painting the great room,” the young woman wailed.

Justine said, “Don’t worry. We’ll be careful not to step in anything. Where is the master bedroom?”

Some other day, Justine would have enjoyed the house tour of the first-class chef’s kitchen, the loggia and pool, the screening room, the master bedroom that looked like a set from a James Bond film and was equipped with more high-def, high-tech gizmos than the Situation Room at the White House.

Justine expected a tidy closet in the master suite, but this one was a mess. Expensive clothes were hung haphazardly and draped over hooks. Heaps of shoes were under the racks, all types, in no particular order.

While Rick stood in the bedroom doorway, Justine used gloved hands to pick through the shoes. She was looking for a rubberlike sole that could match the three inches of usable shoe print Sci had found next to the tire tread.

Justine paused, trying to sort the shoes in her mind before diving in, and then she saw what she was looking for, a pair of ASICS GEL-Kayanos, the current trend in men’s conspicuous casual footwear.

She plucked the left shoe off the heap and turned it over. She called to Rick, and when he came to the closet, she showed him the bottom of the shoe.

“The good thing about transfer is it works both ways. The shoe makes an impression on the soil. And the soil—see it?”

“I see a dark crumb of something.”

“I see a happy day for Dr. Sci.”

Justine sealed the shoe in an evidence bag, starting as she saw that the housekeeper was now standing behind Rick at the entrance to the closet.

“You get me in trouble,” she said.

“No, no,” said Rick, using his very patient, even fatherly voice. “You don’t tell anyone that we were here. This is a top-secret investigation, covered by the California Seal of Silence. Understand?”

They were leaving North Bentley Avenue when Justine’s phone rang. It was Nora.

“You have something?” Justine asked. She put Nora on speaker for Rick’s benefit.

“We’ve got the Porsche at six stoplights from two to two-thirty this morning, traveling from Bel Air to Topanga Canyon. He was driving fast and leaning over the wheel, so we got close-ups of his mug.”

“This is good, Nora. And I think we have a cherry on top for you.”

CHAPTER
96

I WAS DRESSED in my best, had on the nice aftershave Justine had given me, and was driving the Lambo at a pretty good clip from the office toward Beverly Hills. Justine was sitting beside me and urging me to go faster.

She was edgy, and she was talking to me like I was hired by the hour.

I got onto the 110. Although it was largely ignored, the posted speed limit was fifty-five. I nudged the accelerator until I was going a shade over sixty, and still Justine was applying the whip.

“If we get pulled over,” she said, “don’t worry. I’ve got a friend in the LAPD.”

“I’m the one who’s out on bail, Justine. Bail can be revoked. Let’s not push my luck, all right?”

Justine said, “Uh-huh,” looked at her watch, then stared through the windshield. I knew she wasn’t seeing anything on the freeway. She was inside her head, thinking back, projecting forward.

“Justine. Hello. It’s me. Jack. I’m right here.”

“I’m running it all through my mind again,” she said, her voice heavy with exasperation.

“Okay.”

“Danny could have finished the film, but he’s so messed up, it would have been a joke. It would have been panned. And a bomb at the box office meant certain bankruptcy.”

“Piper’s death killed the film.”

“Yeah. Who would’ve guessed that could be a good thing?”

I left Justine to her thoughts, dwelling on other fights we’d had, how I hated them, how much I wanted things to be all right with us. Christ, I missed her. I wished she missed me.

After a one-minute mile on the freeway I got off and took a route through the streets of Beverly Hills that saved us a couple of minutes, finally taking a right onto North Crescent Drive, which brought us to the entrance of the famous pink-stucco, five-star Beverly Hills Hotel.

As I handed my keys to the valet, Justine called to Nora Cronin, who was getting out of her own car. Unmarked police cars pulled up to the hotel entrance, and I heard Nora telling the valets to leave the cop cars right where they were.

There was a poster on an easel near the front door; a life-sized photo of Piper Winnick, draped in black crepe, the dates of her birth and death beneath her young and angelically beautiful face.

Justine and Nora spoke briefly under the porte cochere, then Justine broke away from Nora and said to me, “We’re late, Jack. But not too late.”

I gave her the crook of my arm and together we walked up the red carpet that ran between pairs of square columns and up three steps. Still on the carpet, we entered the dazzling hotel.

CHAPTER
97

JUSTINE TRIED TO see everything at once as she entered the Crystal Ballroom.

It was a sumptuous place, a grande dame of a room; round, pale, decorated in an art deco style, looking much as it had when the hotel was built in 1931.

Justine did a visual check of the exits, the walls of silk-draped windows, the tall French doors leading out to the Crystal Garden. And she checked out the tables under the magnificent chandelier.

There were celebrities at every place: movie stars both young and old, fashion designers, and talk show hosts. Piper’s parents were near the stage, and Danny’s people were at a table in the center of the room. Larry Schuster was there, and Alan Barstow, as well as Danny’s entourage and their dates and wives.

If she and Nora didn’t screw this up, Danny Whitman could be out of jail tonight.

Across the room was a large stage, the wall behind it forming a backdrop for a Piper Winnick slide show. Still shots from Piper’s films and endearing candid photos from her childhood flashed by. Four-foot-tall vases of white roses flanked the stage, and there were candles everywhere.

Mervin Koulos stood behind the podium at center stage.

He looked impressive today: a six-foot-tall, perfectly groomed Hollywood producer of a shattered picture with an untraditional, non-Hollywood ending.

One of his stars was dead. The other star was in jail. And he’d figured that this disaster would be his salvation.

Justine walked along the left-hand wall toward the steps to the stage. Nora Cronin advanced on the stage from the other side of the room.

Meanwhile, Merv Koulos was telling a story about Piper, and he was having a hard time getting his words out.

He said, “I’ll never forget when Piper was cast in the role of Gia in
Shades of Green.
She said to me, ‘Merv, it’s been a lifelong dream of mine to work with Danny Whitman.’

“Lifelong dream,” he choked, his voice cracking. “Imagine that. She was just sixteen.”

Justine and Nora had both reached the stage, but Koulos saw only Justine, who had walked right up to the podium and touched his arm.

Koulos started. He looked bewildered.

He put his hand over the microphone and said, “Dr. Smith. What is this?”

Justine said, “Merv, I want you to say this into the mic. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been called away. It’s an emergency.’”

Koulos kept his hand over the mic and whispered, “Whatever the hell you think you’re doing, it can wait. If you didn’t notice, I’m giving a
eulogy
.”

“Merv. Look to your left. See that woman in the blue blazer, waggling her fingers at you? That’s Lieutenant Cronin. Homicide. She needs to speak with you, urgently.”

Koulos scowled. The buzzing of conversation rose up from the tables. Koulos spoke into the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. and Mrs. Winnick, I’m very sorry for the interruption. This is some kind of prank, and it’s in very poor taste. Will someone please call security?”

Nora crossed the stage. She had her badge in her hand and three uniformed officers following her as she came toward Koulos. She said, “Mr. Koulos, please put your hands behind your back.”

“Are you crazy?” Koulos peered out into the audience. “I need help here. Alan? Give me a hand, will you?”

All conversation died—then Koulos panicked.

He broke away from the podium, knocking the microphone to the floor. He ran toward the stage door, but the cops were quicker and they brought him down, pulling back his arms for Nora, who clapped on the handcuffs.

The fallen microphone carried Koulos’s desperate cries for help and Nora Cronin’s response.

“Mervin Koulos, you’re under arrest for the murder of Piper Winnick.”

Now the audience panicked too. Women screamed. Chairs went over.

Koulos yelled at Nora over the recitation of the Miranda warnings. “So much hell is going to rain down on you. You’ll be a meter maid by the time I’m done with you. If you’re that lucky.”

Justine watched the cops drag Koulos to his feet. Then she turned away and walked down the stage steps, her job done.

As she moved toward the exit, she thought about greed: how Koulos had lived too large, had borrowed too much, had put every penny into this film starring Danny Whitman, a guy too damaged to bring it off.

But Koulos had an insurance policy on the film in the form of a completion bond worth a hundred million dollars.

He wouldn’t be collecting that money now.

Jack was waiting for her near the door. He put his hand to her waist and walked her out.

“Well played,” Jack said to Justine. “Well played and well done.”