Bannerman's Law

by John R. Maxim

  “And, apparently, he didn't.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Who do you think did? I mean, if you were investigating Lisa's death, where would you start looking?”

  Lesko hesitated. “The kid was straight, right? She wasn't anything like Carla.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then I'd look at boyfriends. Neighbors. Most murder victims knew their killer. This sounds like one guy did it and someone else tried to cover it up but he also tried to help her. Me, I'd look for that second guy to crack sooner or later.” A thoughtful pause. “Let the LA cops handle this, Bannerman.”

  “Just asking.”

  “You going out there?”

  “I'll fly out for the service. Actually, most of our people want to go. I said I'd think about it.”

  “You know who's already out there? Your KGB pal from Bern.”

  “Leo Belkin?” Bannerman blinked. “What's he doing in California?”

  “He's with this group from Mosfilm. They're like Russia's Hollywood. The story is they're studying special effects. Belkin's probably along to keep them from going over the hill.”

  Bannerman doubted it. That's a goon's job. “Do you know where he's staying?”

  Lesko riffed through several pages. “Century Plaza,” he answered. “Anyway, if you do go, leave Susan home, okay?”

  “Um . . . actually, she's one of those who asked.”

  “Bannerman

  He winced, bracing himself. But a click on the line interrupted a likely review of Bannerman’ s unhappy travel history with his daughter. “Hold it,” Lesko growled. “This might be Elena.”

  Bannerman drummed his fingers. Then he began counting on them. There was Billy McHugh and Janet Herzog. They wanted to go. Anton Zivic felt that he, at the very least, should represent the rest. Five or six more felt badly about having given Carla a wide berth and didn't want to add insult to injury.

  That was probably too many. On the other hand, it was hard to argue that Westport would be left poorly defended. Their numbers had more than doubled right after Marbella and other old friends kept turning up every few months as word got around Europe that they would be safe here. The State Department had not interfered. Barton Fuller was keeping his distance, save for an occasional peace feeler. The CIA, surely at Fuller's urging, had not pressed its claim for the return of the money and property he and his people had seized. But the detente would not last forever. The other shoe would eventually drop.

  Bannerman glanced at his watch. He'd been on hold for three minutes. Lesko, he imagined, would be talking to Elena, telling her about the latest imperilment of his daughter and threatening to break his legs if he ...

  “Guess what?” Lesko clicked back on. “That wasn't Elena. It was Irwin again.”

  The voice sounded oddly pleasant. Almost gleeful.

  “How long did you say Carla's been in California?”

  Bannerman closed one eye. “She got in late last night. Why?”

  “So that's what? Maybe four hours, not counting sleep?”

  “Lesko. What has she done?”

  “How does decking two FBI guys sound? How about if one of them was Jack Scholl, the agent in charge? How about if she also went at him with a kitchen knife?”

  Bannerman felt a headache coming on. “Was she arrested?” he asked.

  “Andy Huff was there. He squared it. But that was because he thought Scholl was a schmuck and Carla was just some poor bereaved sister.”

  “But now he knows better.”

  “What he knows is that he now has two professional assassins prowling his town looking for a . . .”

  “Intelligence operatives,” Bannerman said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Operatives. Not assassins.” ■

  “Hey! This is me, remember? I could count seven bodies from the first month I knew them.”

  And two more of your own, Bannerman thought, but he chose not to argue. He took a breath. “I'd better get out there,” he said.

  “But no Susan, right? Now especially.”

  “I'll talk to her.”

  “You don't talk to her. You tell her. Where is she now?”

  “Down at Mario's. Waiting for me.”

  “Give me the damned number. I'll tell her myself.”

  Good luck, thought Bannerman.

  He broke the connection, then punched out the number of the Beverly Hills Hotel. No answer in the bungalow. He left a message.

  He started for the door, then hesitated. He returned to his desk and reached for a copy of the hotel guide on the shelf behind it. He found the number of the Century Plaza Hotel.

  15

  A massive young man in a T-shirt and shorts, clearly a weight lifter, answered the door when Molly Farrell rang. He stood, blocking it, his expression uninviting, as she asked for DiDi Fenerty.

  She's not seeing anyone, he said. Not today. He began to close the door when he reacted to a touch behind him. A young woman appeared, easing him slightly to one side. Her eyes, swollen, haunted, passed quickly over Molly and settled on the smaller of the two visitors.

  “You're Carla,” she said. The eyes became moist again.

  She offered them coffee, seating them in the high-ceilinged living room as she went to the kitchen for it. Molly looked around the room. The carpet, the furnishings, seemed expensive for a student residence. Well used, although not shabby. A large-screen television sat at one end. Movie memorabilia on the walls. Unlike Lisa's, these posters were originals and had been carefully framed and mounted. Two other young women, housemates probably, had excused themselves when she and Carla entered. The young man who had answered the door was now sitting, arms folded, on the bench outside.

  DiDi Fenerty returned, holding a tray. She was a big girl, large boned, with a friendly open face that reminded Molly of an Aer Lingus commercial. She was dressed, unlike the others, as if for church or business. She wore a dark green suit, white blouse, no jewelry but for a gold crucifix at her throat and a Rolex on her wrist. She could not keep her eyes off Carla.

  ”I apologize for Kevin,” she said, tilting her head toward the porch. “He lives two doors down. He's been sort of watching over me since . . .”

  She stopped herself. She motioned toward the tray, urging her two visitors to help themselves. She watched as Carla sipped from her cup.

  “You're . . . very much like her,” she said. “She's talked about you a hundred times. Until now, I almost didn't believe you were real.”

  Molly was watching her, listening. Her sorrow, her own sense of loss, was profound and genuine. There was no question that she and Lisa had been close. She was saying now that they had been friends since high school. That she knew Carla's father. She said this almost apologetically, clearly aware that he and Carla had been estranged. She was about to go out and visit him. It was why she was dressed. Kevin was going to drive her.

  Carla was listening, responding, putting her at ease. It was necessary to do so because, with all the other emotions DiDi Fenerty was displaying, there was also an unmistakable sense of awe. Molly could only imagine the sort of stories Lisa had told her. But Lisa would have heard them from her father, not from Carla.

  ”I . . . have some of her things here,” the young woman was saying. “Just a Hermes scarf she lent me. A few videotapes. And those Majorca pearls you sent her from Spain last year. The police wanted everything but I wouldn't let them touch them.”

  ”Um . . .” Molly leaned forward. “What police?”

  “An FBI agent called yesterday morning. It was just after we heard about Lisa on the news. I don't know how much sense I made. And then a detective came by yesterday afternoon.”

  “Just one? By himself?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was he looking for?”

  DiDi Fenerty turned, meeting Carla's eyes as if to ask if she really wanted to hear all this. Carla nodded encouragement.

  “They both wanted pretty much the same thing,” she answe
red. ' ‘The one who called asked if I could help them reconstruct her movements over the past week or so. How much had I seen of her and what did we talk about. Did I notice anything unusual in her behavior. Especially, did she say where she was going on Sunday. The detective asked basically the same questions and he wanted to see anything I had that belonged to her.”

  “What did you give him?”

  “Nothing. He was a sleaze. I didn't want him touching her things. Kevin told him to go get a warrant. He said he would.”

  “That FBI agent who called,” Molly asked, “what did you tell him?”

  The young woman eyed Molly curiously but answered as best she could recall. They'd attended classes all week as usual. Both were going for the same master's degree. Film and television. They'd talked, but not about anything special. Mostly about Hollywood during the silent era. The last time she saw Lisa was at noon on Saturday. Lisa stopped by after their morning class to borrow her warm-up suit. Then she left for work. Lisa worked Friday and Saturday nights for a catering firm in Westwood, making hors d'oeuvres at parties, sometimes tending bar. DiDi went to Malibu for the weekend, to her parents' house there. She returned Sunday night at about ten.

  “Wasn't there a . . .” Molly interrupted herself. “She borrowed your running suit?”

  The young woman glanced down at her own body, acknowledging its size. ”I know,” she said. ”I asked her why. She said she'd tell me later.”

  Molly returned to her train of thought, tossing her head toward the large-screen television. “Wasn't there a movie being shown here Sunday at nine? Flesh and the Devil?”

  DiDi blinked, then realized how Molly must have known that. “Kevin,” she nodded toward the porch, “brought some friends over. They use my TV because it's the biggest one around. He told me he invited Lisa. He said he left word on her machine but she never ... I mean, by that time . . .” She didn't finish.

  Molly shifted gears. “Do you have a word processor, DiDi? With a hard disk?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you have backup software for it?”

  “Sure. FastBack Plus.”

  “Did Lisa?”

  “Lisa copied mine. We'd each do full backups once a week and swap the backup disks after our Saturday morning class.”

  Molly almost smiled. She'd guessed correctly. The DF/ FB she'd found scratched on a box in Lisa's desk was shorthand for DiDi Fenerty/FastBack. Backup software was expensive. The student who owned it, and DiDi seemed to have more money than most, would share it with others. The makers of backup software usually recommended that copies of hard disk files be stored at a different location, ideally a safe deposit box, to guard against loss due to fire or theft.

  Carla put down her cup. “Does that mean you have a copy of everything that was on Lisa's computer through Saturday morning?”

  DiDi nodded. “And she has everything that was on mine.”

  Molly shook her head. “I'm afraid yours were damaged. Someone was careless with them.”

  The younger woman looked at her, oddly again, then shrugged. The loss was not important to her. She could quickly run another set. But now she was wondering how a full box of disks could have been ruined accidentally. And what could be on Lisa's disks that could possibly shed any light on her murder. The newspapers said she was a random victim. Same as the other six.

  “This detective who came,” Molly asked, “did he know that you had copies of Lisa's files?”

  “He didn't seem to. He asked for notebooks, diaries, things like that. I didn't mention her computer files because her personal correspondence, maybe letters to you”—she looked at Carla—“is probably on them.”

  “Thank you,” Molly said to her. “And this detective never asked for them?”

  “No.”

  “What was his name, by the way?”

  “He didn't say. He waved a badge and an ID card but I couldn't read it.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Medium height, stocky, maybe forty, needed a haircut. A slob.”

  “How about the one who called? Could it have been the same man?”

  “No. The FBI agent was polite, well-spoken. His name was Harris. He said there was an outside chance that Lisa might have known her killer and that's why it was so important that they know every place she might have been, who she talked to, during the past week.”

  Molly nodded, thoughtfully. “Do you know where these parties were? The ones Lisa worked?”

  DiDi's shrug said it was just a job. Probably not worth mentioning.

  Molly tended to agree, although there was always the chance that she met her killer at one of them. “What's the name of the catering firm?’'

  ”Um . . .” The young woman tried to think. “Let me look in the yellow pages. I'd recognize it if I saw it.”

  Molly raised an eyebrow. “The FBI agent didn't ask? Or the detective?”

  ”I don't think so. No.”

  Molly resisted a glance at Carla. “Can you boot up Lisa's disks for me?” she asked.

  The young woman hesitated. She looked at Carla as if for permission. Carla gave it. Still, she waited. “Could I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “What's going on here?”

  “We don't know,” Molly answered. “Someone got into Lisa's apartment and took some things. We think he also destroyed her computer files. It's possible that the FBI agent was right.”

  “That she knew the Campus Killer?”

  “It's possible.”

  ”I don't think so.”

  “Why?” Molly asked.

  “Just from the way she was acting all week. She was on to something and excited about it but it had to do with her master's thesis and it wasn't anything scary. Besides, anything on those disks was probably already there before she went to work Friday evening.”

  “She never told you what she was on to?”

  “I'm not sure she knew, exactly. She wanted everything I had on a silent film star named Nellie Dameon and someone named D'Arconte. Him, I never heard of. If I had to guess, I'd say she learned something about Nellie that's never been published. If that's true, it would have helped her grade.”

  DiDi Fenerty heard her own use of the past tense. She fell silent for a long moment.

  “Molly? Are you . . .” She paused, searching for the proper words. ”I don't know exactly what I'm asking but are you . . . like the CIA? Like Carla here?”

  “We're not CIA.”

  ”I meant, sort of.”

  “Not even a little.”

  The young woman sipped from a cup gone cold. “Let me ask in another way,” she said, her voice at the edge of choking. “If you were to find the piece of shit who killed Lisa, would you hand him over to the police?”

  Molly would rather have not answered that question. An answer would amount to a promise that, in all likelihood, she would be unable to keep. And which, otherwise, might one day be incriminating. Still . . .

  “Eventually,” she said at last. “We'd hand him over eventually.”

  Joseph Hickey, formerly of the LAPD, badly needed to relieve himself. There was always the curb. College kids did it all the time. The problem was that kid sitting on the porch, showing off his muscles. That kid, he thought darkly, was becoming a pain in the ass.

  First he says no, you can't come in, go get a warrant. “I'll give you a warrant,” he muttered. “Size twelve, right in your balls.”

  Yesterday, for two hours, Hickey had waited up the street for the weight lifter to leave so he could give it one more shot. Lean on the Fenerty girl. Threaten to bust her for interfering with an investigation. But the big kid stayed there. So did half the kids in this neighborhood at one time or another. Coming in groups. Bringing food. Half of them crying. With that crowd there was no chance of going in through a window either. But if he did, then what? What does he look for? Even Dunville couldn't tell him.

  All Dunville knew, from the calendar on the dead girl's wall, was that they we
re friends. Tennis with DiDi. Party at DiDi's. DiDi's birthday. Fenertys' thirtieth anniversary. “These aren't just friends,” Dunville had said. “These are best friends and best friends talk, especially when they're both into movies. Find out what she knows. Earn your money.''

  “I've earned my fucking money,” Hickey said aloud. “And you're going to be paying it for fucking ever.”

  The Fenerty girl didn't know shit. He was sure of that even before he rang her bell because he'd listened in when Dunville called her, pretending he was FBI. After the call, Dunville gets real pleased with himself until he's reminded that the real FBI will probably drop around sooner or later once they hear her name on the answering machine, not because they think it means anything but because it's something to do. When that happens, Hickey said to Dunville, don't you think they'll get curious about who this Agent Harris was? You don't think they'll wonder why anyone would care what Lisa Benedict was doing for the whole week before a serial killer was supposed to have picked her out, totally spur of the moment?

  Go talk to her, Dunville says. See what she knows, Dunville says. And he did. And she didn't know shit. Then Dunville says make sure.

  Hickey knew what he meant. But he wasn't about to do it. It probably would be next weekend, if then, before he could catch her without a crowd around her anyway.

  He had started out for Sur La Mer that morning, to meet with Dunville, to try to make him see that enough was enough, when he picked up the police call on his radio, Federal agents need assistance, giving the Benedict girl's address, which he knew because he'd just cleaned it out two nights before. He sees two women, one in handcuffs ... she could be the dead girl's sister . . . still dumping all over the two federal agents. This now looks interesting. Now maybe he has something to tell Dunville after all. He follows them and, sure as shit, they make a beeline for the Fenerty girl's house. He'd better stay with them. See who they are, where they're going.