The Lost Witness

by Robert Ellis

  She lowered her voice. “You need to be careful, Doctor. You’re speaking to two police officers. And you’ve got a lot to lose.”

  “I know who I’m talking to.”

  “We have phone records,” she said. “I never asked if you knew Jennifer McBride because we already knew that you did. All I asked was how you knew her.”

  “Maybe you should think about who you’re talking to,” he said. “You’ve made a mistake, Detective. Your records are wrong. I never called her because I didn’t know her.”

  Lena met the doctor’s eyes. “Then how did you know that she was dead?”

  A beat went by. Thirty seconds of empty air billowing into the room. He glanced at his assistant without answering the question. Lena kept her eyes on the man.

  “You called her three times on the day she was murdered, Doctor.”

  The strong man with the athletic body wilted in his chair, still staring at Greta Dietrich for help.

  “Where were you two nights ago?” Lena asked.

  He looked confused, anxious. When he didn’t respond, Dietrich cut in.

  “He was at the Biltmore,” she said. “A reception and dinner. The invitation’s still on my desk.”

  “Dinners like that are usually over by nine or ten. What time did it end?”

  The doctor turned back to her. His eyes were hollow now, his anxiety evolving into anger fully realized. He flashed a mean grin.

  “You know what?” he said. “We’re through here. Call my attorney, Greta, and show these good people the fucking door.”

  11

  He’s doing her,” Rhodes said.

  Lena nodded. It had been obvious the moment Dietrich followed Fontaine around his desk, the moment she spotted the matching tans. Dietrich wasn’t supporting her boss. She was standing beside her man. Even after hearing about McBride.

  Rhodes held up his hand and Lena tossed him the keys. As she climbed into the passenger seat, she understood how difficult it would be to interpret Fontaine’s shaky behavior. She didn’t buy anything he said. Fontaine knew the murder victim, looked them in the eye and lied. But he had a lot of reasons besides Dietrich to want to keep hidden his relationship with a young prostitute. He was a doctor who worked with children. McBride wasn’t much more than a girl. Even worse, she looked young for her age. Innocent.

  The possibilities, the secrets, suddenly appeared more than grim.

  Rhodes pulled out of the lot into a sea of cars inching their way down Wilshire Boulevard. She looked out the window at all the brake lights. The twelve-mile trip downtown would probably take a couple of hours. When her cell phone vibrated, she checked the video screen, saw Lieutenant Barrera’s name and flipped it open.

  “Where are you guys at?” he said.

  She turned on the speaker so Rhodes could listen, then gave Barrera an update in broad strokes, what they had found at McBride’s apartment and who they had met in Beverly Hills.

  “This is L.A.,” he said. “Sounds like a start.”

  She tried to smile, but couldn’t. “What’s going on with the video?”

  “SID’s working on it, but it’s still hard to see his face. We checked everything for prints. McBride’s license and the USB drive—not even a smudge. Everything had been wiped down.”

  “What about the envelope?”

  “Another strikeout,” Barrera said. “And we’re having trouble locating the messenger service. Sanchez got out of court early and made some calls. There’s no record of the delivery anywhere in town. And the guys behind the front desk didn’t get a receipt.”

  “What about the messenger?” Rhodes asked.

  “A kid in a leather jacket wearing a Dodger cap. That’s all they remember. He didn’t ask them to sign anything. But here’s the deal. I ran McBride through the system, Lena. No priors. Nothing that stands out at all. Her only living relative is her mother, Pamela McBride.”

  “You get an address?”

  “She lives in Van Nuys,” he said. “Odessa Avenue. Just north of the airport and east of Northridge Military Academy.”

  “We’ll need to talk to her tonight,” Lena said. “I don’t want her to hear about this on the news.”

  “I agree,” Barrera said. “And don’t worry about the chief. I straightened everything out.”

  “What about Klinger?”

  “I don’t give a shit about Klinger. Do whatever you have to do. Just do it right.”

  Barrera gave her Pamela McBride’s address, and she wrote it down. As Rhodes made a U-turn, heading north toward the Valley, she slipped the phone into her pocket and fought off an anxious yawn. She was beginning to feel the weight of a long day that had begun with an autopsy at the morgue and hadn’t included much food. A day that would end with the difficult task of a next-of-kin notification. Telling Jennifer McBride’s mother that her only child was dead.

  She thought about Fontaine and the front he had created for himself, wondering if his assistant meant anything more to him than a prop. She thought about appearances and perversion, and about the man’s guilt that she could feel creeping into her bones. And she thought about those cigarettes Rhodes kept in his glove compartment. She thought about them two or three times over the next hour until they finally reached Odessa Avenue.

  It was a small California bungalow standing in the middle of the block. The kind you could have bought out of a Sears Catalog in the early 1900s and had a local carpenter assemble. The design was an offshoot of the Arts and Crafts movement and so popular it swept across the entire nation. Clean and simple and easy on the eyes with gardens on both sides of the stoop.

  Rhodes pulled to the curb and they gazed at the windows. Lena could see a TV flickering through the linen curtains. McBride’s mother was home.

  “Let’s get this over with,” she said.

  “You want me to tell her?”

  “I’ll do it,” she said.

  They glanced at each other and got out, watching a private jet brush the treetops overhead on its approach to the regional airport one block south. As they climbed the steps, Lena noted the empty rocker on the porch. When she knocked on the front door, she took a deep breath and thought about that pack of cigarettes again.

  A beat went by, and then the door finally opened. Lena met the woman’s eyes, recognized the pain, and knew in an instant that Pamela McBride had been expecting them.

  “Please,” the woman said. “It’s cold outside. Come in.”

  Lena hadn’t been aware of the temperature until she stepped inside and felt the warmth of the house. Although the light was off in the kitchen, she could smell the remnants of dinner in the air, a rich tomato sauce that had probably been simmering on the stove for most of the afternoon.

  She turned back to the living room. McBride’s mother was offering them seats and asking if they would like something hot to drink. Lena thanked her, but shook her head, spotting the candle over the fireplace as she sat down.

  “I’ve been lighting it every night,” the woman said. “Hoping things would be okay again and Jennifer might come home.”

  She sat on the couch, picked up the remote, and switched off the TV. As Lena studied her face, she guessed that the age she was wearing came from fatigue and despair, not the passage of time. McBride’s mother couldn’t have been more than forty-five years old, but she looked closer to sixty. She was a small-boned woman with delicate features. She wore a pair of corduroy slacks with a black V-neck sweater.

  “You were close?” Lena asked.

  The woman offered a weary smile, her mind drifting into the past. “We used to be. We sure did. Things used to be real good.”

  “When did they change?”

  “I guess when she was about fifteen. That’s when she started looking more like a woman than my little girl.”

  Lena concentrated on her breathing and tried to relax. She could tell that Pamela McBride sensed why they were here. But the woman appeared willing to talk, and Lena wanted to find out as much about her daugh
ter as she could before she gave her the bad news. She knew that she would lose the mother at that point. And any background information they might learn before that moment might prove invaluable to solving the case.

  “What about your husband?” she asked.

  “I raised Jennifer on my own. Her father walked out before she was even five. I don’t think she had any memories of him. Just what I told her. I didn’t know much myself, so I tried to keep it positive. For her benefit as well as mine.”

  “Did you ever reconcile with her?”

  The woman leaned forward with a sense of expectation and appeared visibly nervous now. “When she moved out things got a little better. She found a good job, but things were never really the same. I always felt like I wasn’t getting the real story. Like she was keeping secrets. You know how kids are.”

  Lena tried not to think about what Jennifer McBride had done for a living. Tried not to think about what they found in her duffel bag, or the men waiting for her in their hotel rooms. Still, she had to ask the question. It was part of the job.

  “What did your daughter do for a living?”

  The woman took a deep breath and shuddered when she exhaled. “She said it had something to do with advertising. I knew that she was making money because I saw how much she was paying for rent. There wasn’t much left for anything else. But she seemed to like her job, that’s all I cared about. She seemed happy.”

  “Did you see her very often?”

  “About once a week. Usually for Sunday dinner.”

  “Did she ever come with a friend?”

  “A boyfriend?”

  Lena nodded.

  “No. She never did. I always thought it was odd. A girl with her looks. There should’ve been a line around the block, but there never was.”

  The woman’s voice died off and the room became so quiet that Lena thought she could hear the sound of the candle burning on the mantel. She looked at Rhodes staring back at her and caught the gentle nod. This was the right time to tell her. The right moment. She tried to put the words together in her head. Find some way of saying it that wouldn’t feel like a knockout punch. In the end she realized that it was hopeless, that she couldn’t protect the woman from what she was about to learn.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” she said. “But your daughter Jennifer has been murdered. She’s dead.”

  The woman didn’t move or say anything for a long time. Instead, she stared at Lena, studying her face. After a while a tear dripped down her cheek. Then another.

  “If there’s anything we can do,” Lena said. “Anything at all.”

  McBride’s mother finally turned away. “It must be some kind of mistake,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry. There’s no mistake. It happened Wednesday night. Her ID was missing. It took us this long to find you.”

  Another long moment passed. Lena could see the woman struggling to put it together.

  “But I’ve known she was dead for two years,” the woman said.

  Lena’s eyes snapped across the room to Rhodes, then rocked back.

  “What do you mean you’ve known for two years?”

  The woman began to tremble, her voice barely audible. “There was a bank robbery in North Hollywood two years ago. Three men wearing ski masks. Jennifer was at the bank. I thought you came here tonight to tell me that you finally caught them. The three men who shot Jennifer.”

  12

  If fuck-ups could be measured, if records were kept on a fuck-up’s size and weight and the number of people ruined or lost, this was the mother load.

  Lena and Rhodes legged it around the corner onto the bureau floor at Parker Center. It was a Friday night in mid-December and no one was here. She spotted Barrera’s jacket on his desk chair. Rhodes pointed to the captain’s office, the overhead lights still burning. When they reached the door, they found Barrera at the conference table with an open three-ring binder and a can of Diet Pepsi. He looked up as they entered. Lena could see the worry in his eyes.

  “That background check was good,” he said. “It may have been total bullshit, but everything about it was good.”

  He turned around the binder and pushed it across the table, then got up from his chair like he had just been served rotten food. Lena didn’t say anything, her eyes zeroing in on the binder. It was a murder book. They had made the call to their lieutenant as they sped back into town. Barrera had been able to pull the files on the bank robbery in North Hollywood—the case so grisly that it had been bumped up to RHD a long time ago. She scanned through the case summary, but already knew the details because Pamela McBride had shown them press clippings from her scrapbook. Her daughter had been twenty-three when the robbery went down. Making a deposit while on a lunch break from her job at a local ad agency. She had been shot in the back as she tried to run away. Even though the three men wore ski masks and couldn’t be identified, the bank manager and two tellers were led into the vault and murdered as well. One shot each with a .38 revolver to the back of the head.

  “Where’s Tito?” Rhodes said.

  Barrera loosened his tie and opened his shirt collar. “Upstairs working with SID. We have a decision to make. If we release the video the witness sent us in the next thirty minutes, the stations have agreed to run the story on the eleven o’clock news.”

  Lena glanced at her watch. It was 9:00 p.m.

  “How are they making out?”

  “I checked an hour ago,” Barrera said. “I don’t think it’s going very well.”

  “Are they trying to enhance the entire video or a single frame?”

  “They’ve pulled a frame, but it’s still blurry. I wouldn’t be able to ID the son of a bitch if he was my brother.”

  “What about the driver’s license,” Rhodes said.

  “It went to Questioned Documents after it was dusted for prints. Irving Sample says it’s legit.”

  Irving Sample began his career as a document analyst for the Secret Service. When he took a job teaching at U.C. Berkeley, the department actively recruited him to move to Los Angeles and run the unit. Sample had played a key role in Lena’s last case. If he called the driver’s license legit, then there had to be some other explanation.

  “I’ve got some calls to make,” she said. “Can I take the murder book?”

  Barrera nodded and they broke up, Lena and Rhodes heading for their desks on the floor. Any closer look at Joseph Fontaine would have to wait until tomorrow. Tonight was about favors. Cashing in on past relationships because it was a Friday night. Rhodes knew someone at the DMV. Lena had only worked out of Bunco Forgery for six months while in Hollywood, but managed to make some friends.

  She opened her computer and switched it on. While she waited for the machine to boot up, she dug into her briefcase and pulled out the credit report and rental application the victim’s landlord had given them. The documents were one year old, but even at a glance Lena could tell that Jones had made a thorough sweep of his tenant in apartment 2B. All three credit agencies had issued reports. Jane Doe No. 99, aka Jennifer McBride, had a checking account and credit card over at Wells Fargo. A little less than ten thousand in cash. A little more than five hundred on the card.

  Lena flipped over the credit report. When she picked up the rental application, she noticed a blemish on the paper and tilted it into the light. The victim’s rent was two grand a month. She paid first-month, last-month when she signed a one-year lease. But it looked like she had also paid a one-month security deposit. While Lena and Rhodes were upstairs searching the victim’s apartment, her landlord had been working overtime with a bottle of Wite-Out making the security deposit disappear.

  Lena felt a tinge of anger flicker in her belly. She had seen it before and knew that she would see it again. Life sinking to its lowest mark. Life finding the drain. Jones wiped out the security deposit, hoping that no one would notice. The little man with the damaged eyes was two grand richer and feeding off the dead.

  Two grand ri
cher for a while.

  She took a breath and exhaled. Rhodes sat at his desk on the other side of the room, taking notes while speaking with someone on the phone. Pushing the papers aside, Lena checked her Internet connection and logged on to AutoTrackXP. She typed Jennifer McBride’s name into the search window, along with the address on Navy Street that appeared on her driver’s license. When she hit ENTER and the information rendered on the screen, she confirmed that Barrera’s background check had been righteous. But also, she could see what Jones missed with just a credit check—no matter how complete.

  Jane Doe hadn’t just borrowed Jennifer McBride’s name. She’d ripped her entire identity out of the record books and glued it on her back.

  Lena grabbed the murder book and opened it to Section 11, combing through the real Jennifer McBride’s background information. Then she checked it against the rental application and compared both with the search made on the Internet.

  The real Jennifer McBride opened her first and only checking account at a small independent bank in the Valley. The same bank she died in two years ago. She rented an apartment in Burbank. As Lena looked at the address she figured it was about a ten-minute drive to her mother’s home in Van Nuys. But after her death, everything went dark. Anyone looking at the data would have assumed that she moved back home. Then, one year later, another Jennifer McBride surfaced. A new account was opened at Wells Fargo. A new apartment rented in Venice. A new phone number and a new driver’s license issued for a new life that wouldn’t last very long.

  Lena turned back to the rental application in Venice. Jane Doe had used the same social security number. The same date of birth. The same place of birth. Even the same occupation.

  The stolen identity was so well executed that Lena wondered if Jane Doe might not be a phantom. Someone who borrows an identity for a few years, then drops it and moves on. But as the image of the victim’s face surfaced in her mind, it didn’t seem to fit.

  She pulled the murder book closer, leafing through the section dividers until she reached the crime scene photographs of the real Jennifer McBride. She was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, her eyes glazed over and lost in the stars. Her delicate features had come from her mother. She had probably inherited her light brown hair from her as well. Obviously, there was no resemblance between her and the victim left in the Dumpster two nights ago in Hollywood.