The Lost Witness (35 page)

She backed away from the window, digging her cell phone out and hoping she wouldn’t remember what she had just seen. Rhodes picked up before she heard a ring.

“Where are you?” she asked.

He must have sensed something from her voice. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Give me the address.”

“Ramira’s house. You remember. We were here last spring.”

“See you in twenty minutes.”

“Don’t say anything, Stan. Everything’s different now.”

He paused a beat. “See you in twenty minutes,” he repeated.

She closed the phone, then tried the front door. When she found it locked, she moved around the house looking for a breach. There was no sign of a break-in. Every window and door appeared
undisturbed. She glanced at her watch, then returned to the backyard. She had noticed a small window the first time around and seemed to remember that it opened to a powder room. Removing her
jacket, she wrapped it around her arm and drew her gun. Then she punched out the glass with her .45, reached inside for the lock and raised the window.

She climbed in and froze, listening to the silence and getting a feel for the house. She could hear the fan from the heater running. The ice maker filling with water. As her eyes adjusted to the
darkness, she saw Ramira’s dog hanging from the stairs and felt the chills hit the back of her neck again and coil around her spine. Below the dead dog she could see blood pooling on the
floor.

She shook it off and stepped into the hall. Moving silently past the dog, she checked the living room but didn’t see anything. Same with the dining room. When she entered the kitchen, she
noticed the long shadows on the floor and switched on her flashlight.

Ramira’s body was here, lying beside a fallen bag of groceries. Her heart fluttered in her chest as she ran toward him. His eyes were pinned to the ceiling in a thousand-yard stare, his
mouth, still open as well. As Lena struggled to hold the light steady, it seemed obvious from the wounds on his face that the reporter had been beaten to death with a blunt instrument. That the end
had been painful and difficult. She panned the light across his body. When she spotted the meat thermometer buried in his chest, the chills got worse and she shuddered.

She tried to pull herself together. Tried to picture Jennifer Bloom’s mysterious journey and courage. Tried to draw on her reserves even though it felt like she didn’t have anything
left.

No matter what the reason may have been for Ramira holding back on her, he had been a good man. It had been Denny Ramira who wrote the story about her brother’s murder, forcing the brass
on the sixth floor at Parker Center to walk a straight line and tell the truth. It had been Ramira who stepped forward when she needed him. As the memories rose to the surface, she wondered why he
hadn’t called 911 this morning. She hoped that he hadn’t been waiting for her. Counting on her.

She knelt down beside him, pushing her thoughts away. She could take it, she repeated to herself. She could handle this.

She looked back at the meat thermometer that had penetrated Ramira’s heart, noted the lack of blood, and realized that it had been an afterthought. He was dead before the stabbing, so she
ignored it and pressed forward.

Lena understood from her work with Art Madina that there was no way to tell the time of death by studying the core temperature of a dead body. That probing the liver with an instant read
thermometer much like the one in Ramira’s heart looked good on TV, but was essentially ridiculous. There were too many variables. How much clothing was Ramira wearing? How much body fat? What
was the temperature of the room? Or, Ramira’s body temperature when he was beaten to death? Was he feeling well or was he ill with a temperature of more than 100 degrees?

She knew that she had talked to Ramira early this morning, so the murder went down sometime within the last eight hours. Digging the receipt out of the grocery bag, she tilted it into the light
and found the date/time stamp. Ramira had checked out his groceries three and a half hours ago at one-thirty-seven this afternoon. Although the market was only five minutes away, that didn’t
mean that he had come straight home.

She moved back to the body. Ramira’s left fist was clenched in a death grip. She noted the defensive wounds on his knuckles, the cuts and scratches, then tried to pry his fingers open but
couldn’t. She knew full well that this was a chemical reaction and not a result of rigor mortis. That when rigor mortis finally came and went, his hand would relax. Still, she needed a better
sense of timing.

She smoothed her gloved hands over his wrists and arms. They were still loose and free. Moving up his body to his shoulders and neck, she could feel the tightness beginning to set in. When she
tried working his jaw, the muscles were frozen in place.

She took a deep breath and exhaled as she thought it through. Ramira spent most of his time sitting in front of a computer, not working out at the gym. Rigor mortis was just beginning to set in.
Because of his physical condition, the murder had to have occurred sometime within the past hour or two. It was close. Real close.

The fan to the heater shut down. As the sound dissipated, the house began to take on that special kind of silence that only seemed to come when a dead body was around.

Lena picked up the flashlight and exited the kitchen. Moving down the back hall, she passed a spare bedroom and stopped in the doorway to Ramira’s study. She shined her light into the
darkness. The room had been trashed. Every drawer in his desk had been dumped on the floor. The closet was open, the shelves tossed.

She moved to the desk, sidestepping the debris. When she switched on the lamp, she noticed a file on the chair. Inside she found transcripts that Ramira had made from interviews he had recorded
for his book. But as she skimmed through them, she began to sense that something was wrong. This file shouldn’t have been here. The interviews were with the key players in the case. She saw
Senator Alan West’s name. Jennifer Bloom was here as well, identified as Jennifer McBride. When Lena found Joseph Fontaine’s interview, she realized that her hunch had been correct. The
Beverly Hills doctor was an expert in treating asthmatic children and had served as Ramira’s primary contact. It had been Fontaine who managed the clinical trials for Dean Tremell and Anders
Dahl Pharmaceuticals. At the time the drug’s name hadn’t been tested by focus groups and was simply known as Formula D.

Lena stopped reading and began listening to the house again. Weighing the silence.

The file didn’t belong here because it was the motive for Denny Ramira’s murder. She kept her body still and let her eyes wander off the desk, then drift to the right where a large
photograph hung on the wall. It didn’t take very long to spot the flaw in the reflection. The nuance in the silence that went with the file she held in her hand.

Ken Klinger was hiding behind the closet door. And he was armed.

Lena took the shock, but dug down deep and didn’t flinch or move. She could see him staring at her, the glass over the photograph as clear as any mirror. His forehead was bandaged and it
looked like he had a black eye. But even worse, he was cornered and appeared extremely nervous. Lena had interrupted his search, yet she sensed that he wanted to remain hidden. That he had been
watching her ever since the porch lights snapped on. That he may have even overheard her on the phone and understood that Rhodes was on his way.

When she saw him lower the gun to his side, she walked out with the file and stepped into the bathroom. Locking the door, she switched on the lights and dropped the toilet seat down as if she
intended to use it. Then she slipped through the open window, bolted around the house, and shuddered as she spotted Rhodes pulling down the street.

“What happened?” he said, rolling the window down. “What is it?”

Lena jumped in and opened her cell. “Ramira’s dead. We need to drive out to Fontaine’s place.”

“I tried to reach him today. He didn’t show up at work. And Greta Deitrich’s missing. No one’s heard from her in two days.”

She gave him a troubled look, then worked the keypad on her phone. “We need to drive out anyway, but let’s just sit here for a while. Turn off your lights.”

“What are you doing? Who are you calling?”

“I’m blocking my caller ID, and calling nine-one-one.”

Lena brought the phone to her ear, keeping her eyes on Ramira’s house.

“What the hell is going on, Lena?”

She shook her head as the 911 operator picked up. “Shots fired,” she said into the phone. “There’s a dead body on the kitchen floor. Denny Ramira, the reporter from
The Times.
He’s been murdered in his home.”

The operator asked for her name. Lena gave the woman Ramira’s address instead, then repeated it and ended the call.

“If Ramira’s been murdered,” Rhodes said, “then why go through nine-one-one. Why not just call it in?”

“We can’t call it in. Everything’s different now. Keep your eyes on the house.”

“You mean the guy’s still in there?”

“We can talk on the way out to Fontaine’s. Just keep watching the house.”

She could hear the sirens just beginning to bleed through the night. As she sat back and waited, she tried to imagine what Klinger was doing right now. He wanted the file she had taken, but his
need to remained hidden seemed to outweigh that. She wondered if he had second thoughts. Wondered if he was waiting for her outside the bathroom in the hall with Ramira’s dead dog, Freddie.
Wondered if he could hear the sirens approaching.

They were getting louder. They couldn’t have been more than half a mile away now. And the answers came quick.

Rhodes pointed at the house. A shadow was leaping off the front porch into the yard and breaking through the bushes. As the figure sprinted down the sidewalk on the other side of street, the
headlights from an approaching car washed over his face. Rhodes glanced at Lena, who turned and watched Klinger vanish into the darkness. The chief’s adjutant had made it. He didn’t get
the file, but he was still hidden. Still free.

T
he drive out to Fontaine’s place on South Mapleton Drive
went quickly. By the time they reached the front gate,
Lena had managed to give Rhodes a detailed picture of where they stood and what they were probably about to face.

Like Ramira’s house, Fontaine’s mansion was the only one on the block with its lights out.

“I’m going over the wall,” he said. “When the gate opens, bring the car through.”

He took her flashlight, then hoisted himself up and over the other side. After a few minutes the gate opened, and Lena pulled the Crown Vic onto the property. Then they followed the drive up the
hill to the back of the house.

Fontaine’s Mercedes was parked in front of the garage. She traded looks with Rhodes and caught the grim expression on his face. The only light she could see was coming from the hot tub on
the terrace at the far end of the house. The only sound she heard came from the water bubbling and fizzing in the night.

Lena gazed at the mansion silhouetted against the clouds in the sky. The moon was trying to break through, but couldn’t. The air was raw and ice-cold. As they approached the back door,
Rhodes switched the flashlight back on, shined the beam through the glass, and found the alarm on the inside wall.

“It’s not armed,” he said.

“Did you think it would be?”

He tried the doorknob. When it turned, he shook his head at her and gave the door a push. They were inside the house now. And Lena picked up on the silence again. The kind that went with a
corpse. Rhodes hit the light switch on the wall.

“I guess it was just hope,” he said. “I thought he hired bodyguards.”

“Let’s go find him.”

It only took ten minutes to clear the first floor and work their way upstairs. Once they reached the landing, all they needed to do was follow the harsh odor down the hall into the study.

Lena switched on the desk lamp. From the condition of the body, it was obvious that Fontaine had been dead for at least twenty-four hours. He was slumped over the side of the chair and appeared
to be melting into the arm. A .38 revolver lay on the floor to his right. On the desk she spotted two auto-injectors and read the labels.

Morphine. The Greek god of dreams.

Rhodes stepped over to the computer, eyed the screen saver, and gave the mouse a tap. When the computer woke up, a word processor was running that seemed to contain Joseph Fontaine’s last
words. Lena joined Rhodes by the monitor and read the note.

“If they think we’re gonna buy this as a suicide,” he said, “they’re crazy.”

“It would’ve worked if we didn’t know who Jennifer Bloom really was.”

“It still might, Lena. If we’re out of the mix. What did Justin Tremell say to you in the interrogation room?”

She turned back to Fontaine and gazed at his corpse. “Jennifer McBride had met someone who wanted to help her. A client she called her personal patron. Someone from Beverly Hills who liked
it kinky and made her dress up in a nurse’s costume.”

“A costume they bought and planted on their own,” he said. “It’s all there. They set Fontaine up and did everything except give you his name.”

Lena agreed. There was no doubt about the play or what Dean Tremell wanted them to think. Fontaine was their fall guy. Someone who talked to Ramira. Someone Dean Tremell wanted to get rid of
just as much as Jennifer Bloom. And if they could turn her into a whore, then making Fontaine look like her client and victim was easy. The one who sent her the fifty thousand dollars and hired a
hit man to take her out. A doctor with a guilty conscience who took his own life six days before Christmas.

“Let’s check the rest of the house,” Lena said.

“You think Greta Deitrich’s here?”

“Where else could she be?”

They searched the rooms on the second floor, then made a sweep through the third floor bedrooms and attic. The exercise proved fruitless and burned up almost half an hour. Returning to the
kitchen, Rhodes located the door to the basement and they headed downstairs. The footprint seemed to mirror the exterior of the house and had been divided into separate rooms. They found a wood
shop that didn’t look like it had been used in a long time. Three more rooms that probably once served as a home office, but which, like the wood shop, no one used anymore. Beside the utility
room, a small greenhouse opened to the side of the house where the hill had been carved out. As they reached the end, they came to a storage room and found shelves packed with oversized items
bought at Costco.