Fatal Pose

by Barna William Donovan

  “So, will there be anything specific I’m going to be looking for in all this information you need collected?” Monty asked and swirled the brandy around in his snifter.

  “No,” Laura said and helped herself to some vodka. “It’s just like the WBBF offices. Just set up the listening devices, and I’ll do all the rest.”

  “Oh?”

  Damned right, Laura thought and licked the drink in her glass. No matter what Monty said about his professional ethics, there was a difference between making gold-diggers go away and murder. There was no way she was going to allow Montgomery to take Holt’s place knowing information like that about her.

  “There’s a small-time Venice Beach P. I. who’s looking at the WBBF as some sort of a meal ticket. He’s trying to dig dirt on Brad Holt’s death—you know, the deadly scourge of steroids, drugs, all that—so he can have a sensational story to tell the media and make a major career for himself.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Oh no,” Laura said. “He’s been hired by someone to turn Holt’s death into something more than it was.”

  “Bottom-feeding prick,” Montgomery said and swilled some brandy. “I could have a couple of words with him, you know.”

  “Are you crazy?” Laura snapped. “And really get the cops all over me? Just relax, okay? I just want to know what he has. What he’s doing. What he’s up to. That way, I can control him. Tell him what he wants to hear.”

  Monty studied her.

  Laura hated the feeling his probing eyes, boring into her own, trying to evaluate her nonverbal signals, gave her.

  Monty shrugged. “Just a routine question.”

  “How can you make it happen?”

  Montgomery emptied his snifter and went back for some more. “I can start with his office. Give me his address, and I can get a couple of bugs in there in…two days tops. Anything he’s doing in there, anything he’s discussing over the phone, will be transmitted to a receiver station I can set up anywhere you want. I can put it right here in your house if you want.”

  Exactly what she wanted. “Let’s do it,” Laura said.

  CHAPTER 42

  Gunnar wondered if the closer Holt’s residences came to the greater L.A. area, the more likely they were to reflect his true personality. He met Diane in Brad’s Simi Valley apartment, a place looking like an instructional mockup for what the rich “player’s” bachelor pad was supposed to look like. Too many mirrors, too many designer products too prominently displayed, décor that was too trendy, electronics too numerous, an overall statement of the place being a wealthy high roller’s den of pleasure too loudly made. It actually surprised Gunnar, knowing how long Brad Holt had been rich. This place looked more like the vulgar display of materialism set up by a newly minted rock star just one day out of a trailer park or a rapper fresh out of the ‘hood; someone who still needed to show off what he had just recently acquired.

  “Do you think there might be anything important in there?” Diane asked as Gunnar looked through Holt’s gym bag.

  Although they had earlier talked about Gunnar updating Diane on the case, they started by glancing through the gym bag Diane had gotten back from the hospital after she had arrived in L.A.

  The duffel bag held the things Holt lugged around from his hotel room to backstage, just like all the other contestants. Rummaging through the bag, he came up with Holt’s warm-up suit, gym shoes, three small towels, two T-shirts, a pair of lifting gloves, a mirror, a comb, a plastic bottle of hair gel, two tubes of skin-tanning dye, a plastic water bottle, an extra pair of posing trunks, and a cell phone.

  “And we’ve got some major work ahead of us,” Gunnar mumbled to himself and snatched up the phone. “We’re going to need to hack this somehow.”

  “What’s that?” he heard Diane asking over his shoulder.

  “Brad’s phone. I just want to check something out because I remembered something from the contest. Too bad I need to contact a buddy of mine in CID to try and access it.” He turned on the phone.

  “Hack it?” Diane asked as the cell announced its activation with a fluttering, chiming little noise. “No, you don’t. Just give it to me.” After Gunnar handed it over, she tapped in its access code and handed it back to him with a clever grin. “So, you were saying.”

  “Very nice,” Gunnar said with a chuckle. “Saves us a lot of time. But it’s something I heard.” He started scrolling through the phone’s functions, looking for its log of calls. He needed to see who the last people were who called Holt. Who was the caller that demanded his attention during his meeting with Gunnar, Kelly, and Frank Jankowski?

  “You overheard him saying something at the contest?” Diane asked.

  Gunnar nodded. Then he told her of their meeting in the hotel lobby following the preliminaries, Holt’s phone call, and the way he retreated back to his room to take the call.

  “Can you tell who called him?” Diane asked over Gunnar’s shoulder again as his fingers slid over the phone’s screen.

  “The last two calls were from Mitzy Starr,” Gunnar said. “Looks like one call might have been at some point later that evening, and the other one the following day.”

  “Who’s she?” Diane asked.

  Gunnar told her.

  The third call, on the other hand, came from Laura Preston. Although Gunnar always had to strain his memory cells trying to recall precise times, dates, and numerical information, the time of the call looked like it might have been made been during that intermission. Fascinating, Gunnar thought.

  He turned to Diane. “You mind if I hold on to this for now?”

  “No, go ahead. Anything else important there?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Gunnar said and pocketed the phone. “But let me look at some of this other stuff.” He lifted the water bottle out of the bag, noting the residue of what a few days ago might have been some red liquid inside.

  As she must have been noticing how gingerly he lifted the bottle, hoping not to corrupt any foreign fingerprints, Diane asked, “Do you think someone else handled that?”

  “Possibly. I think I should check this for any fingerprints.”

  “Oh, God!” Diane exclaimed suddenly.

  “What is it?”

  “This!” Diane said, jabbing an index finger toward the bottle, looking distressed. “Look, he had an electrolyte drink with him at the contest. Dear God, I wasn’t even thinking when I got this, but there was a little bit of the juice in it.”

  “You threw it out?”

  Diane nodded.

  At least it didn’t look like she washed the bottle or didn’t wash it thoroughly. “Did you rinse this out?”

  “No,” Diane said quickly, looking and sounding hopeful.

  “Maybe I can use it.”

  “God, I hope so. I’m so stupid.” After a heavy pause, she added, “Someone could have poisoned it, couldn’t they?”

  “Right.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Don’t worry about it for now. I can get a toxicology test done on it through a hospital.”

  “You think they can still find traces of a poison in there?”

  “Hopefully.”

  “But if there’s anything in there, do you have an idea who it might point to?”

  Before getting around to his suspicions, Gunnar thought they should address what appeared to be another problematic detail in the gym bag. “Listen, was there another bottle in there?”

  Diane also shifted gears with a quizzical look. “Another bottle?”

  “Yeah, like this one. Is this all the drink that Brad took to the contest?”

  “I don’t know. But I mean, yeah, this is all that was in the bag. The only bottle.”

  “It’s kind of small,” Gunnar said and looked for any indication of its volume. Finally, near the bottom edge, he found the inscription
that said it held thirty ounces.

  Diane cocked an eyebrow. “I suppose.”

  “Drinking at the contest wouldn’t have caused water retention fast enough to hurt his appearance. As dehydrated as he was, he would have taken two bottles at least.”

  “Why am I thinking that if there was poison in the water bottle, it would have been in the other bottle?”

  Because the poisoner would have been concerned with getting caught and eager to get rid of the evidence, Gunnar did not say out loud. He gave the bottle a light shake. “We’ll see for sure in a little while.”

  Diane looked him in the eye. “But if he was murdered, are there any clues pointing at someone definite yet? Do you think he was murdered?”

  Gunnar realized he couldn’t evade the issue much longer. “I think he could have been.”

  “You think?”

  “I think very strongly that he might have been murdered.”

  Diane smiled slightly now. “You keep qualifying that answer.”

  “I think I still have reason to qualify it,” Gunnar replied.

  “Well, in the case that he might have been, do you have an idea who it was?”

  “I have some…hunches I’m thinking about.”

  “What do you mean? Some hunches about his possible killers? Who are they?”

  Gunnar thought about the best way to pick his words. “Well…I’ve heard some things about people Brad’s been involved with who could have been capable of murder.”

  The question “who?” was in Diane’s eyes.

  Gunnar did not want to start off with Laura Preston. There was still too much about Brad he needed to know, and he needed to know how much of his “business” dealings Diane knew about. Or was involved with.

  Gunnar said, “I’ve had some fairly reliable information suggesting Brad could have had extensive business dealings with some underworld types.”

  “Reliable? How do you know?”

  That was an interesting response, Gunnar thought. What did it remind him of? It was almost…lawyerly. Sure, it was a logical reply, he conceded. He had just assailed her brother’s character, so she might have been reflexively protective. Nevertheless, it still felt too lawyerly for Gunnar. He couldn’t believe that Diane had no knowledge whatsoever of Brad’s true nature.

  There was, of course, the most straightforward way of making her believe. “Well, for one, I was just kidnapped and thrown into the ocean this morning.”

  “What?” Diane blurted out.

  “Good thing I had a change of dry clothes at my office.”

  Apparently, the levity didn’t quite work on Diane. She still looked agitated. “What happened?” she demanded.

  “Some goons working for a drug-runner name Quartello. Do you know anything about this?”

  “No!”

  “But did you know that Brad—?”

  “That Brad was involved with criminals?” Diane asked strongly. “The mob? Look, he did say he was afraid of someone. So I believe he could have been involved, sure. I mean, I was never really a part of most of Brad’s business dealings. In Miami, he helped me set up my store and everything, but I don’t know who his partners were or anything. I never heard of anyone named Quartello. So do you think he was behind it? Did he say anything? Threaten you away from the case?”

  “Oh, yeah, he threatened me away from the case all right, but the fact is that I’m not entirely sure he’s lying.”

  “You don’t think he killed Brad, you mean.” She sounded somewhat perplexed, incredulous. Much like Laura Preston had been.

  “Yep.”

  “You have other suspects.”

  “I have reasons to believe he had other criminal connections. And whatever problems he had must have been very bad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That even his properties around L.A. weren’t enough to cover his losses? Real estate around here’s worth a fortune. But I also have another angle I need to check out.”

  “Another?”

  “Just something I can’t eliminate yet, and something worth considering if we want to be thorough in the investigation.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you think Brad could have been blackmailing someone?” Gunnar said and looked closely for Diane’s reaction.

  Certainly, she looked surprised, he considered, but not shocked. Then again, she had easily admitted to the fact that Brad might have had criminal connections…ones she didn’t personally know.

  “Look, Gunnar,” Diane said at length, “I told you I wasn’t surprised that Brad might have been operating on the shady side…let me correct that. That I’m not surprised Brad might have been involved with people on the shady side. With the movies he made and some of his real estate deals, it can happen. He could come in contact with those people, but that’s not what Brad was about. He didn’t have to blackmail people. Like you said, he’s sitting on some prime L.A. property here.”

  Diane paused. Gunnar could feel it was to gauge his reaction. To see if he believed her or not. Instead of responding, he let her go on.

  “Why are you asking? Do you think the person he blackmailed killed him?”

  Gunnar nodded. “It would fit what you told me. What you told me he told you. That he was afraid of someone he had dangerous information about. That could be a very sketchy, very sneaky description of blackmail.”

  “The way he told me, it did not sound like he was a blackmailer going after someone. It was more like….”

  Diane paused, appearing to look for the right words. The most credible words?

  “I understand what you’re saying,” Gunnar said. “It sounded like they were coming after him, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe that was the impression he was creating. Do you think that could be the case?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could the real meaning behind what he told you have been that he had damaging information about someone powerful, someone rich, someone who had plenty of money to spend on keeping some information hidden? But someone who got out of his control.”

  “I don’t know,” Diane insisted.

  “Maybe Brad started out thinking he was in control, but the shakedown got out of hand.”

  Diane took a shallow, frustrated breath. “I don’t know! This was my brother. I don’t know who he was mixed up with, who he had information on, or what he was doing with that information. But it could have gotten him killed. And you believe it, don’t you? If he was murdered, does the blackmail matter? Don’t his killers deserve to be punished?”

  “Of course, they do. But knowing this could help point me in a more accurate direction.”

  Diane nodded now, her look softened. “I understand what you’re saying, Gunnar. But I don’t know if Brad was blackmailing anyone.”

  “All right,” Gunnar said and patted her shoulder.

  Diane looked up into his eyes. “But you will do everything you can to find the truth, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  Diane smiled now and took his hand. “Thank you. I know you will.”

  “But you need to help me with one more thing.”

  Diane’s eyebrows went up.

  “We need to eliminate the possibility that all of this was an accident,” Gunnar said. “That Brad just died of dehydration and malnourishment.”

  “How?”

  “You need to request the exhumation of Brad’s body and a full autopsy.”

  CHAPTER 43

  “Would it stand to reason that only the extraneous background shots are what you’re looking for?” Gib’s voice was strained by impatience. He and Lenore had thought of every possible way to log their protests of the intrusion, and none had paid off. There were six empty soft drink cans placed along the top of the main monitor, only to show how man
y Gib had gone through since their guest arrived. The volume of Lenore’s talk show had also gotten louder and louder.

  “Yeah. Yeah, uh…maybe you’re right,” Gunnar mumbled, staring at the fast-motion image of a muscular woman in blue posing trunks and top hopping around the Sun State Classic dais.

  Since the order to cooperate had come from Gib and Lenore’s client, Laura Preston herself, to cooperate with Gunnar, he really couldn’t understand the sort of peevish impatience they had been exhibiting so passive-aggressively.

  “Then you have five panning shots of the lobby,” Gib snapped, nervously fingering his thin goatee. “Four shots of the auditorium. Backstage you have—”

  “Hold it.” Gunnar sprang forward in his seat and grabbed for the control dial on the editing panel that controlled the forward and reverse play of the images being viewed and the speed at which the digitized images on the hard drive could be manipulated.

  “It’s right here.” Gib seized Gunnar’s wrist and slammed his hand on top of the dial. “It’s only been three and a half hours. You should be able to take this equipment apart and put it back together in your sleep.”

  “There. What’s that?” Gunnar pointed at the screen.

  The two Full Eclipse Productions editors had separated all the footage gathered at the Sun State into separate files of posing footage, scenes establishing shots of the crowds in the lobbies, backstage workout footage, and all the numerous interviews of the athletes. Although Gunnar had looked at all of the video several times, he was about to agree with Gib and reexamine only the crowd footage for a fifth time. If there was any suspicious activity to be spotted, it was fair to reason it wouldn’t be on the close-up shots of interviewees and the posing routines.