The Lost Witness (13 page)

Someone had been hiding in the parking lot Wednesday night and had the balls to take that picture. The quality of the photograph ate shit and wasn’t worth worrying about. But someone had
been lurking in the shadows. Someone had been watching him. No matter how dark it may have been that night, odds were that the witness saw his face and probably knew the make and model of his car.
As he played back the night in his head, he had to admit that he’d been a little nervous, a bit rusty and not exactly up to par. He hadn’t expected her to be so young or pretty. And he
hadn’t expected her to smile. He had seen her do it through the window when he walked by. He could see the spark in her eyes.

Even worse, he wasn’t really sold on the reason he had been given to talk to the pretty girl and to take her life. It felt a lot like the reasons he had been given during his three tours
of duty. When he did the math, it never really added up. Especially the two additional years he had spent in Eastern Europe, where he had been given the nickname
Dr. Neat.
The truth was that
he considered himself a physician—not an information specialist who interviews people and delves into their past with the aid of special tools. Although he had followed orders, he hated the
nickname and the people who gave it to him. It felt more like a burden than anything else. A burden placed on him by people he couldn’t trust because he knew that they didn’t have souls
and were using him.

Cava needed reasons to do the things he did. The more personal, the better. And if he couldn’t be given a reason, he needed to find one on his own. Something with more resonance than
money. Something more real and less tarnished than
For God and Country.
Sometimes, he found the reason the moment he looked at a person. But usually it took a couple of days to smoke out and
feel true. It was part of the creative process. The thing that kept him sane in a world that had stopped spinning eight years ago. The thing that protected his core deep inside. The core no one
could get to, that no one could catch or reach or run a jetliner through.

His mind surfaced and he lowered the binoculars. A double-decker bus filled with smiling tourists pulled to a stop in front of the Playboy Mansion at the end of the block. After everyone got
their pictures, the bus would stop before the house they’d used to shoot the movie
Scarface.
Five mansions up the yellow brick road and they would make a third stop in front of
Humphrey Bogart’s old house. The place where Sam Spade hung his hat and played with Lauren Bacall’s tits in bed.

Cava knew the route because he’d taken the tour yesterday, shooting pictures like a dumb ass from the upper deck as he tried to get a better feel for the neighborhood. It had been worth
the hassle—a reconnaissance mission wearing light touristy clothes purchased directly from Tommy Bahama’s store at the Grove on Third Street earlier that morning. Despite freezing his
ass off, he seemed to fit in and managed to get a good first look at Fontaine’s house. The property may have been the smallest on South Mapleton Drive, but still included a pool, tennis
courts, a guest house, and a garage big enough to get lost in. But unlike his neighbors, Fontaine only had two cars. This surprised Cava—not ten cars, just a pair of Mercedes. And the
convertible looked a little old, like maybe the Beverly Hills doctor was living beyond his means, trying to hold on in a neighborhood where everyone else had enough cash to let go. Still, the house
was perfectly placed, the backyard opening like a gate to the Los Angeles Country Club. It seemed to meet Cava’s every need. Getting to Fontaine would be easy when the time came, especially
at night.

The tour bus lumbered by, spewing a thick blue cloud of diesel exhaust into air that already smelled like a truck stop. Cava recognized the driver from yesterday and lowered his head, thinking
about the growing list of potential witnesses and those two bodyguards.

He had followed Fontaine and his girlfriend home from the office last night. Kept an eye on them until midnight before driving across town to his apartment on Barham Boulevard overlooking
Universal Studios and the Warner Brothers lot. When he returned this morning, he noticed the Ford Explorer leading the way to a 7:00 a.m. breakfast at Nate’n Al’s in Beverly Hills.
Although he didn’t enter the deli, he glanced through the window in passing and saw Fontaine and the blonde seated with the two men. Probably working out terms and doing the deal.

Cava checked on the tour bus again, watching it wheeze slowly up the hill. Raising the binoculars, he took a last look at Fontaine’s house and wondered if the bodyguards were smart enough
to ask for their money up front.

Probably not.

He grinned a little as he kicked the idea around and watched someone lowering the blinds on the first floor. It was beginning to feel right. Beginning to feel true. But first he needed to get
rid of his car. He checked his watch. He wanted to hit the dealership before nine.

S
he was standing by the window
in the second-floor bedroom and could see the left front fender of the Caprice over the
crest of the hill. At some point during the night Klinger’s friends from Internal Affairs had moved their car farther down the road. They may have been anticipating daylight, but they were
still there. And when Lena checked the utility box this morning, the tap and wireless transmitter were still in place as well. They were listening, or at least trying to. After returning to the
house, Lena had programmed the phone to forward incoming calls to her cell. The tap on the outside lines would no longer be able to pick up a signal, just the initial ring before the phone
company’s computers rerouted the call. It would be a series of long, cold nights for both detectives from Internal Affairs, nights spent in futility and silence. She wished she could see
Klinger’s face when they called in their report.

Her cell phone vibrated and she glanced at the LCD screen. It was Steve Avadar from Wells Fargo Bank, calling at 8:30 a.m.

“Lena, when was the woman calling herself Jennifer McBride murdered?”

His voice was quiet. Maybe too quiet.

“Wednesday night,” she said. “Why?”

“Because the account’s still active. Her ATM card has been used every day since the murder to get cash.”

“How much has been taken?”

She could hear papers rustling in the background—Avadar cupping the phone and saying something to someone in his office. After a moment, he was back.

“Whoever’s using the card is pulling her daily limit. Five hundred a day. Two thousand so far. Someone used the card at seven-twenty-three this morning.”

Lena turned away from the window, thinking about the witness. She had received the victim’s driver’s license and the video clip of the abduction, but the witness had kept the
victim’s purse and everything inside it, including the ATM card.

“How much is in the account?” she asked.

“More than fifty thousand dollars.”

It hung there. The weight and breadth of the money. Along with the reason why the witness wanted to remain hidden.

“That’s serious money,” she said.

“You bet it’s serious.”

“Where was the withdrawal made this morning?”

“On Fourth Street in Santa Monica.”

“I know it’s Saturday,” she said, “but is there any chance we could meet there instead of downtown?”

“I’ve already made the arrangements. The ATM’s been shut down and we’re pulling the video.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Five minutes later she was easing her car out of the drive and checking the road to her right. The Caprice remained hidden around the bend. As she made a left and hit the accelerator, she rolled
down the windows and kept her eyes pinned to the rearview mirror. She could feel the cold air beating against her face, the heat in her blood, but the road behind remained empty.

The bank was at Fourth and Arizona, one block north of Santa Monica Boulevard. Lena entered the lobby and found Steve Avadar in the manager’s office combing through a stack of papers.

She tapped the door on her way in. Avadar was alone and grinned as he rose from the chair.

“We’re still working on the ATM video,” he said. “We’re pulling the first three withdrawals. They’re from local branches, so it should only take another ten
minutes.”

“Thanks for doing this, Steve. Let’s start with the victim’s account.”

“I’ve been going through her monthly statements,” he said. “I think we’ve got something.”

“Show me.”

Steve Avadar may have been a vice president directing fraud investigations and risk management for the bank, but today he looked anything but corporate. His dark brown hair was longer than she
remembered. And he’d left his suit behind for a pair of jeans and a fleece pullover. Although his appearance was young and athletic, casual and laid-back, she remembered his mind being tack
sharp. And when he quickly arranged the statements in chronological order, she could tell by the expression on his face that he wasn’t driven by worry. It was all about discovery now—a
certain fascination for what they might find underneath the next rock.

“Okay, Lena, it’s our lucky day. We’ve got thirteen statements. The woman calling herself Jennifer McBride opened a checking account thirteen months ago with ten thousand
dollars in cash. For the first month there was no activity. The money just sat there. When we get to month two, her address changes and money’s moving in and out.”

Lena checked the address printed on the first two statements. Although the town and zip code bordered Santa Monica and Venice, the block number at Lincoln and Ocean Park wasn’t
residential. It was a major intersection in a part of town she had driven through many times. When she remembered that a Mail Boxes Etc was located on the same block, it made perfect sense. Jane
Doe was in the process of stealing an identity and becoming Jennifer McBride. She needed a mailing address to get started—a safe address where she could receive mail until she rented the
apartment within walking distance over on Navy Street.

Avadar pointed at the statements. “I’ve gone through the checks she wrote and nothing stands out,” he said. “Rent and utilities, cable TV, telephone bills for the house
and a cell—it’s all routine stuff. Same with her credit card. Just gas, groceries, and restaurants. Did you guys recover her checkbook?”

Lena shook her head and gave him an overview of what they thought had been in the victim’s purse at the time of her murder.

Avadar thought it over. “So maybe she kept an address book or memo pad with her. Maybe she wrote down her password.”

“I think she wrote down a lot of things. She was living two lives and juggling the details for an entire year. She couldn’t trust it to memory. She was too smart.”

“But not smart enough to not get killed.”

A moment passed as Avadar’s words settled into the room. Then he cleared his throat and continued in a quieter voice.

“Whoever’s using the ATM card knew the password from the very beginning, Lena. On the first withdrawal, there were no mistakes. No second or third tries. They inserted the card,
punched in the magic number, and, took the cash.”

“Let’s get to the deposits,” Lena said.

“Do you know what she did for a living?”

Lena hesitated a moment, deciding not to answer the question unless it became necessary. “Why?” she asked.

“I’m just curious. She’s not depositing a payroll check. Look at the third statement. Six deposits. Four or five hundred bucks each. All of it’s cash.”

“How does this add up to fifty thousand dollars?”

“It doesn’t. Every statement here is exactly the same. Small cash deposits amounting to about twenty-five hundred dollars a month. Just enough to pay her bills. The fifty grand came
in last Friday, six days before she was murdered. The deposit won’t appear on her statement until next month. It came in as a single chunk.”

“Cash?”

Avadar shook his head. “We would have noticed that,” he said. “It was a check from Western Union. I’m gonna make a wild guess that whoever sent it didn’t want to
leave a paper trail.”

“And that the fifty thousand started out as cash.”

“All they needed to do was show an ID and fill out a form, Lena.”

“Then Western Union cuts a check at this end and the victim deposits it into her account.”

“Right,” he said. “Let me see how they’re making out with the video.”

Lena watched him exit the room and sat down in the chair. This was what she had hoped to find, what she thought she would find, but had held back from Rhodes last night on the phone because she
wasn’t sure. This was the only thing that made sense and explained why a Beverly Hills doctor like Joseph Fontaine could be involved. Why he knew the victim and lied about it to detectives
investigating a murder case.

She turned back to the bank statements, reviewing the small cash deposits made at the end of each week.

The best Lena could figure, Jane Doe would have had three good reasons to steal McBride’s identity. First, she grew up in Los Angeles and wanted to hide the fact that she was placing sex
ads in a city paper and had become a prostitute. Second, she really could have been a
phantom
—someone who lights up a stolen identity and moves on after the candle has burned out. The
fact that everything in her apartment was downsized and portable seemed to support this. And then the jackpot: the possibility that both were true and she was blackmailing Fontaine. Threatening to
expose the Beverly Hills pediatrician with their relationship unless he paid up. Rather than risk losing his career as a doctor who worked with children, Fontaine probably bought time with a small
first payment before deciding to lash out. Either he paid someone to murder the woman or he killed her himself.

Avadar walked into the room holding four unlabeled DVDs. “I’ve got them,” he said. “I’ll burn you a single disc after we take a look.”

He copied the video files from each disc onto the computer’s hard drive. When he finished, Lena moved around the desk for a better look. The four files were on the monitor, each labeled by
the date of the withdrawal. Avadar highlighted the group and hit play, running the clips back-to-back without interruption. Although the images were degraded, it was obvious that the same person
had accessed the ATMs and stolen the cash at five hundred dollars a shot.