The Lost Witness (30 page)

“Lena,” Barrera said. “You’ve got company.”

She glanced at Rhodes. “Yeah, we spoke ten minutes ago.”

“Not Rhodes,” Barrera said. “Justin Tremell.”

A moment passed, both men studying her.

“He’s been waiting for more than an hour,” Barrera said. “He won’t talk to anyone but you. When I saw Rhodes, I brought him in. The kid shook his head and said just
you. What’s going on that I don’t know about?”

Lena hesitated. She didn’t want to mention her meeting with Dean Tremell because the data was still raw and she hadn’t come to any conclusions yet.

“You want to call upstairs and record this?” she asked.

Barrera slipped his hands in his pockets and checked the empty floor. “Tapes already rolling and he’s been read his rights. I talked to Lamar. He’s got the monitors shut down
so no one upstairs will know that the kid’s here. You heard what the chief said yesterday. If anyone upstairs finds out that you’re in an interrogation room with Justin Tremell, your
world turns to shit and so does mine.”

She glanced at Rhodes. He had been away for three days and didn’t know about her run-in with the chief. She could see him trying to put it together.

She turned back to her supervisor. “Let’s see what he wants.”

“Do it quickly,” Barrera said. “We’ll figure out how we’re gonna get him out of the building later. I’ll update Rhodes. We’ll be in the captain’s
office.”

Lena’s briefcase was on the empty desk beside her. As Rhodes reached for the murder book, he looked at the papers Dean Tremell had faxed over.

“What about these?” he said.

Lena picked the papers up and stuffed them in her briefcase. She didn’t want them to be part of the record. And she didn’t want to take the chance that her inquiry about the
legitimacy of Tremell’s grandson might be made public.

“They’re irrelevant,” she said. “A dead end not worth talking about.”

Lena pushed open the door and found Justin Tremell sitting in the far chair staring at the ceiling. When he saw who she was, he jumped to his feet and shook her hand. He was
being gracious and polite. And as Lena measured him, she immediately recognized that he was nervous. The sullen face that she had seen when they first met on Saturday was no longer sullen. And
those steady hands weren’t so steady anymore. Tremell looked wasted. Like all of a sudden, the tall, lean kid with rich-kid problems was dealing with a real-life crisis.

Lena watched him sit down and took a chair on the other side of the table. The room was cramped, the bright florescent lights buzzing overhead.

“I just spoke with your father,” she said.

“I know. That’s why I came.”

“If you wanted to talk, why didn’t you ask Lt. Barrera to call me?”

“I knew that you were with my father. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Lena kept her eyes on him. He seemed sincere.

“Do you want an attorney?” she asked.

“No. I’m fine, thanks.”

“Do you need an attorney?”

Tremell met her eyes and lowered his voice. “I don’t think so.”

She settled back in her chair, everything quieting down.

“So tell me why you’re here, Justin. What do you want to talk about?”

Tremell didn’t respond, shifting his weight and wrestling with his thoughts. He took a deep breath and exhaled. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t much more than a whisper.

“I knew her,” he said.

A long moment passed—everything in the small room becoming perfectly still.

“I was there that night,” he said. “I didn’t say anything on Saturday because my father was in the room. I’m sorry if I caused you any trouble. But I knew what he
would think, and I didn’t want to let him down. I didn’t want him to know what I’d done.”

Lena let the thought settle, the silence in the room becoming truly silent again. Just those lights buzzing overhead.

“What did you do that you didn’t want your father to know about?”

Tremell sighed. “Jennifer was my friend.”

“Your friend?”

“My wife was pregnant. It was a tough pregnancy—the last three months spent in bed—and I couldn’t handle it. I needed an outlet. I found Jennifer’s ad in the
LA.
Weekly.
It started out as a massage, then became something else. I liked her and she was nice to me. I don’t expect you to understand this because I don’t understand it myself.
I’m still very much in love with my wife, but I fell for Jennifer. If my father finds out, he’ll have a shit fit.”

“Did she know who you were?”

“Sure, but she didn’t care about things like that.”

“She didn’t ask you for any money.”

He shook his head. “I paid for the first few massages. But when things changed, all that stopped and I’d give her things instead.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Flowers. Dinner. Books. Things you’d give a friend or lover.”

“So she wasn’t blackmailing you? She didn’t tell you that she was pregnant?”

Tremell sat back in his chair and looked at her like someone who was hearing something for the first time. Everything about his behavior appeared true and authentic.

“Jennifer wasn’t pregnant,” he said. “At least not when I knew her. She was menstruating. She’d get headaches, and cramps, and everything else.”

“Maybe she called it a loan,” Lena said. “Maybe she asked you to help her out.”

“If she had, I would have given it to her, no questions asked. But she didn’t. She never asked for anything.”

Lena took a moment to think it over. She had been moving slowly. Making Tremell feel comfortable and at ease. She didn’t see any reason to change course.

“Why were you at the Cock-a-doodle-do on Wednesday night? If Jennifer was your friend, why meet her there?”

Tremell pushed his seat away from the table, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking up at her. She had been wrong about his eyes as well. They were the same color gray as his father’s
and just as vibrant.

“You guys keep records,” he said. “I’m sure you know more about me that even I do. The speeding tickets, the DUIs and bar fights, some of the women I went out with in the
old days who spent most of their time trying to get noticed and get picked up by those crappy entertainment shows on TV. It wasn’t the fake trips to rehab that saved me. And it wasn’t
the warnings from the judges I faced, or the embarrassment you might expect that I felt when I woke up in the morning. I didn’t feel embarrassed. I was too high. What saved me was meeting my
wife. She was the one who opened the door to the possibility that I might step out of my father’s shadow and become something on my own. I got a late start. And I’m not all the way
there yet. But she was the one who opened the door.”

“How’s she get along with your father?”

Tremell grinned. “Not very well. But he knows what she’s done for me, so I guess that’s good enough. He tolerates her, and she tries to be nice to him.”

Lena gave Tremell a long look, studying his face and relaxed posture. He didn’t know. He didn’t know what his father was doing behind his back. When it clicked, she let the thought
go and moved on.

“Okay,” she said. “So, why were you meeting Jennifer?”

“I needed to end it, but I didn’t know how. I was planning to tell her that night. My wife had given me a son. She was feeling better. There was no reason to keep seeing Jennifer
except that I still liked her. And that’s not really good enough.”

“Why there?” Lena said. “Why take the risk that someone might recognize you?”

He laughed. “That’s probably the one place in this city where no one would. And even if they did, they’d keep quiet about it because someone might ask them why they were
there.”

She could see his point. If the murder hadn’t taken place, there was a good chance no one would have mentioned it.

“That place isn’t exactly what it looks like,” he said. “Especially if you like music. The food’s good and the woman who owns it isn’t a phony. We met there
because Jennifer had an appointment in Torrance. We met halfway.”

“How did she react when you gave her the news?”

“I never did. I couldn’t get the courage. And she had to leave for another appointment. I stayed for a while. When the band finished their set, I split.”

Lena sifted through her memory of the interview she and Rhodes conducted with Natalie Wells. Everything Tremell was saying seemed to match what the waitress said.

“What about her job?” Lena said. “You obviously knew what Jennifer did for a living. Were you ever jealous?”

Tremell’s face reddened, his voice, quieter now. “You’re a woman, so this is kind of hard.”

“Believe me. There’s nothing you could say that I haven’t heard before.”

He spent a few moments tossing it over, then sat up and shrugged. “The truth is that I kind of liked it. It turned me on. That probably means I’m still fucked up, but that’s
the way it was. And Jennifer didn’t talk about it that much. It was just kind of there in the background. It wasn’t like she was gonna do it forever. She told me she met someone who
wanted to help her out.”

“Who?”

Tremell shook his head. “She didn’t say, but I could tell that he was a client. She called him her personal patron.”

“And you still weren’t jealous.”

“Maybe a little,” he said. “But I think I was secretly hoping that it might be an easy way out of all this. If she ended it, then I wouldn’t have to.”

“She never mentioned the guy’s name? She never told you anything about him?”

“No, but I got the feeling that he was older. Maybe even a little kinky. He bought her a nurse’s costume and made her wear it. That’s all she said about him. He liked nurses
and he was from Beverly Hills.”

It hung there. The two of them looking at each other. Then the door snapped open and Barrera rushed in.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But you’ll need to pick this up later. Lena, I need a word with you.”

She walked out and saw Rhodes waiting in the alcove. Barrera shut the door and lowered his voice.

“Something’s come up,” he said.

“Fontaine?”

Barrera seemed surprised. “No,” he said. “The guy who rented the garage on Barton Avenue. We’ve got his name and address.”

W
hat’s his real name?” Lena shouted.

Rhodes brought the Crown Vic up to speed, hit the Christmas lights, and rolled up his window. “Albert Poole. He’s renting an apartment in Hollywood. The building manager says
he’s home.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Someone recognized him from that sketch and called it in. Another doctor, I think.”

“So our guy got his training at USC.”

Rhodes shook his head. “The call came from the trauma center in Inglewood, less than a mile from the Cock-a-doodle-do. Poole got back six months ago and showed up looking for a job. He
spent four years in Iraq as a combat field surgeon, so it looked like a perfect fit. Only now Poole’s back and he’s got issues. He worked one weekend in Inglewood, then flaked
out.”

“What issues?”

“Sounds like a head case, but we’ll see when we get there. The manager’s a vet. He said they talk once in a while. Poole got shipped from Iraq to Germany and ended up at Walter
Reed.”

“As a doctor?”

“As an outpatient. From what the manager said, he got lost in the bureaucracy at Walter Reed. They spit him out before he was ready and never said thanks.”

“You talked to him yourself?”

Rhodes nodded, then picked up the file on the seat and handed it to her. Inside, Lena found the composite sketch they had worked up of the man calling himself Nathan Good. Underneath were copies
of Poole’s driver’s license and photo ID from the trauma center in Inglewood. The likeness was unmistakable, even in the dim afternoon light. Although his eyes were set wider apart in
the photographs, his hair less blond, and he wore a smile instead of a frown, she could see it.

She turned and looked out the window. The cars on the Hollywood Freeway appeared to be standing still. Frozen in time and somehow disconnected. When she glanced over at the speedometer, the dial
was pegged at ninety and Rhodes’s eyes were glued to the road.

“Barrera told me what happened,” he said.

Lena didn’t say anything. She wasn’t thinking about the chief anymore.

“What about Tremell?” he said. “Why did he come in?”

She gave him a summary of her day. Rhodes listened without interrupting. At one point he opened the glove compartment and reached for his emergency pack of cigarettes, then rejected the idea and
slammed the door shut.

“You think the kid would’ve agreed to a polygraph?” he asked.

“I needed more time,” she said. “I didn’t get the chance to ask, but that’s the direction things were going.”

“What about Fontaine? The chief said hands off. Is what Justin Tremell said enough to open the door?”

Lena thought it over. In a rational world, it was more than enough. In the chief’s world, up was down, left was right, and green lights meant stop. Nothing would be good enough because
strings were attached.

Rhodes gave her a look. “Are you okay?”

“The back and forth,” she said. “Something’s gotta give, Stan. And we still need to talk to Fontaine.”

Rhodes exited off the freeway at Beachwood Drive and made a left on Franklin. By the time they reached Poole’s apartment building and found a place to park, the winter sun had already slid
behind the hills, the streets bedded down in a dusky blue light.

Lena could feel the fresh charge of nervous energy in her chest and gazed at the building as she crossed the street. The modern design stood out from the rest. It was twelve stories high with
balconies on all four corners and a gated parking garage underneath. She guessed that it had been built within the last twenty-five years and that rents were high because the place was clean and
well maintained.

They reached the lobby and found the building manager waiting for them at the door. He seemed just as anxious as they were, only he was showing it. He introduced himself as Chess Washington.
Dressed in khakis, an oxford shirt, and a light down vest, Washington was a thin man in his late fifties with a dark complexion and bright green eyes.