The Lost Witness

by Robert Ellis

  Lena spotted the neon rooster on the roof as she swept around the exit ramp. After getting an update from his partner, Rhodes closed his cell phone and leaned against the passenger door.

  “Tito just left Fontaine’s house. The doctor refused to talk.”

  “Did he see him?”

  Rhodes shook his head. “Fontaine wouldn’t let him on the property. He didn’t get past the front gate.”

  “How did he think Fontaine sounded?”

  “He couldn’t get a read. Fontaine’s neighbors told him that they used to be friends, but something happened a couple years back. He got weird and dumped everybody. The wife next door remembers walking into the kitchen at a party. Fontaine was having a full-blown conversation with himself. Tito says she used the words, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

  “Then everybody in the neighborhood thinks he’s crazy.”

  “Sounds like it,” Rhodes said. “Have you thought about what could happen when Klinger releases that photo of our witness and the TV stations pick it up?”

  He didn’t need to ask. It had been on her mind ever since they left Parker Center and she still felt uneasy about it. They were giving the killer a heads-up. Once the photograph of the witness was made public, the kid’s life would be in jeopardy. It was unintentional, of course. The only real way of locating him unless they got lucky and either caught him using the ATM card again or driving the victim’s car, which remained unaccounted for.

  “He’s not coming in on his own,” she said.

  “No, he’s not. There’s too much money in that bank account.”

  She could hear the worry in Rhodes’s voice, but tried to ignore it. They were passing the Cock-a-doodle-do on the other side of the street. She drove down to the end of the lane divider, then made a U-turn and floored it back up the block. The property was hidden away from the world, nestled in between Prairie Avenue and the 105 Freeway. As she pulled into the entrance and glided down the hill, the place seemed more like a family restaurant than a brothel. It wasn’t until she pulled forward and noticed a second building behind the restaurant that she realized Klinger had been right. It looked like a low-end motel without a triple-A rating. And the girl leading a man into a room on the second floor wearing stiletto heels and a sheer top didn’t appear to have luggage or a maid cart.

  “The best chicken pieces in LA.,” Rhodes whispered.

  He wasn’t watching the couple enter the room. He was reading the words on the neon sign over the restaurant. But she caught the smile and laughed, guessing that he was trying to make her feel better. Then she turned and spotted the Dumpster underneath the trees at the rear of the parking lot. Her file was on the seat between them, and she pulled a copy of the still photograph taken from the witness’s video clip. Glancing at the image, she measured the angle and passed it to Rhodes as they got out.

  The lot was nearly empty. The air, cool and breezy. She looked up into the sky and saw a jet trying to find its balance in the wind. Its wheels were down, the airport just a few miles west. As she moved around the car and gazed back at the buildings, she had all the verification she needed.

  This was the site of the abduction. All the pieces were in the right place. Everything was in focus now.

  Rhodes passed the photograph back, reaching for his cell phone. “Looks like we need SID.”

  She didn’t say anything. While he made the call, she walked over to the Dumpster. The lids were open, the container empty. Taking a step back, she calculated the approximate location of Jane Doe’s body. She knelt down and examined the broken asphalt, the patches of weeds and dead grass. The trash had probably been picked up every day since the abduction and murder, but the ground could still yield enough trace evidence to confirm that the crime started here.

  “They’re on their way,” Rhodes said.

  She looked up and saw the detective standing in the sunlight.

  “Klinger was right,” she said quietly.

  “I guess everybody gets it right once in a while.”

  The door to the restaurant opened. When they turned, a young waitress was staring at them from the top of the steps and appeared concerned.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” she said. “There’s no loitering here, and we’re not really open yet. This is private property.”

  “This is a crime scene,” Lena said.

  “It’s a what?”

  She stood up and called out, “A crime scene. We need to talk to you.”

  The waitress’s face changed. Even from across the lot, Lena could see her body freeze up. Returning to the car for her file, she slipped the photograph inside and joined Rhodes and the girl at the top of the steps.

  “I’m only a waitress,” she said in a shaky voice. “That’s all I do. Just wait on tables.”

  Rhodes glanced at Lena, then back at the girl, everything nice and easy.

  “Relax,” he said. “We’re not here for that. Let’s go inside and talk.”

  The girl searched their faces. Lena wondered if she didn’t see a sense of expectation in her blue-green eyes. A certain reach as if she already understood why they were here and always knew that they would come.

  “What’s your name?” Lena said.

  “Natalie Wells.”

  “Let’s talk inside.”

  Rhodes swung the door open. As they entered the restaurant, they were met with a rush of warm, fragrant air. Lena could smell the chickens roasting from the pit behind the counter. To the right she noted a wood-burning fireplace, already lighted as they prepared for lunch, and dinner, and whatever came after that. A row of booths lined the far wall. Another two waitresses were setting the tables in the center of the room.

  What struck Lena most about the place was that it didn’t meet her expectations in any way. Large black-and-white photographs of the city from the 1950s lined the freshly painted white walls. The floor was planked hardwood, buffed and finished to match the fireplace mantel and the molding around the doors and windows. And the tablecloths and napkins the waitresses had set down weren’t made of paper. They were linen. As she took a step to her right, she spotted a Hammond B-3 organ, a set of drums, and three mike stands. By any standard the Cock-a-doodle-do wasn’t a dive. The place was clean and inviting and they played jazz here.

  A door opened from the kitchen and a middle-aged woman stepped out in black slacks and a white blouse. She appeared well groomed and well kept. Although her features were fine, even delicate, Lena could tell from the expression on her face that she made them for cops even before the door rocked back and closed. As she approached, her gaze shifted to the waitress.

  “What is it, Natalie? Is there a problem?”

  “We’re from Robbery-Homicide,” Rhodes said. “Are you the manager?”

  The woman turned to him. “Catherine Valero,” she said. “I own the restaurant. How can I help you?”

  Lena opened the file, displaying their photograph of the victim. “Last Wednesday night this woman was abducted from your parking lot. You may have seen it on the news. Her body was found in Hollywood.”

  Valero studied the picture and appeared concerned. “I take Wednesdays off, but Natalie was here.”

  Lena turned to the waitress. Her arms were crossed over her chest, her body, even tighter than before. And that reach was still burning in her eyes.

  “I waited on her,” she whispered.

  Lena traded a quick look with Rhodes, feeling the adrenalin kick through her bloodstream. Then Rhodes turned to Valero.

  “We can talk later,” he said. “Would you mind if we spoke with Natalie alone?”

  “Of course not. Sit down and relax. Would you like something to drink?”

  “We’re fine,” he said. “Thanks.”

  Valero walked back through the kitchen door. Rhodes glanced at the other two waitresses and pointed to a table out of earshot by the fireplace. As they sat down, Lena opened her file to the photograph and noticed that Natalie Wells was trembling. She couldn’t have bee
n more than twenty. Her body was small and curvy. Her hair, the kind of brown that lightened in the summer. Sizing her up, Lena couldn’t help but notice that there was something soft and exceedingly gentle about the girl.

  “Why are you so frightened?” she asked.

  “I’m not.”

  “Did you know her?”

  Wells shook her head, lowering her gaze with her arms still shielding her breasts. “I just waited on her.”

  “This is more than a restaurant, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” she whispered.

  “Was she a regular?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. She seems familiar, but I don’t think so.”

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “A couple of months.”

  “Just in the restaurant?”

  Wells paused, her eyes dancing over the place setting before her. “No,” she said finally. “Not just in the restaurant.”

  The words hung there for a moment, along with the image of that second building off the parking lot and what went on there.

  “Okay,” Lena said. “You were working on Wednesday night. You were waiting tables.”

  Wells’s eyes finally rose up from the place setting. “She ordered a cup of coffee.”

  “She was by herself?”

  Wells shook her head. “She came in alone. Then some guy sat down with her. When I brought the coffee over, he ordered a glass of ice water with lemon. He called her Jennifer.”

  “Did she use his name?”

  “No. But I got the feeling that they knew each other and had been together before. That happens a lot. Guys wanting the same girl.”

  “Did you overhear anything they were saying?”

  “Just small talk.”

  “Were they here for very long?”

  “Maybe half an hour. They got up like they were ready to leave, but then he changed his mind and said he wanted to finish his ice water. She walked out and he stayed for a while. It looked like he enjoyed making her wait.”

  Lena glanced at Rhodes. He was sitting back in the chair, quietly taking notes. A ray of muted sunlight from the window brushed against his face and she could see a certain degree of emotion in his eyes.

  She turned back to her file and found the DMV photo of Fontaine that Rhodes had added to the stack before they left Parker Center.

  “That’s not him,” Wells said. “He was younger. Better looking.”

  Lena flipped the photograph over to the shot of their witness stealing money from the ATM. Wells paused for a moment, her mind going.

  “I’ve seen that face before,” she said. “But that’s not him.”

  “We think he was here that night,” Lena said.

  Wells glanced back at the photo. “Like I said, we were busy.”

  Lena pushed it aside for later review and pulled out the six-pack Rollins had created on his computer. “What about any of these?”

  The girl’s eyes drifted over the six faces. “They look familiar, too. But I can’t place them.”

  “All of them look familiar?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Lots of people come through here. None of these look like the guy she was with.”

  Lena set the six-pack beside the shot from the ATM. Remaining quiet, she let the din of the room take over and gave Wells a long look. The girl was still nervous. Too nervous. After ten minutes any embarrassment over what she did for a living should have subsided. Yet her arms were still wrapped tight around her chest. Her body remained stiff and locked up.

  “You’re holding something back,” Lena said finally. “You’re not telling us the truth. When you walked outside ten minutes ago, you knew who we were and why we were here.”

  Wells stared back at her in silence.

  “Are you afraid you’ll lose your job?” Lena asked. “Did you see the abduction? Is someone pressuring you?”

  “No,” she said. “I saw the story on TV, but didn’t call in.”

  “Okay, so you feel guilty. But this is more than that. A lot more. You’re holding something back. Something that you know is important.”

  Without a word Wells got up from the table and crossed the room. Her purse sat on the counter beside a cup of tea, a paperback, and a newspaper that had been read and folded in half. Retrieving the paper, she returned to the table, found the business section and opened it. Lena gave Rhodes a quick look, then watched as Wells set the paper down in front of them and pointed to a photograph.

  “That’s who she was with,” she said. “Him.”

  19

  Lena sat in the passenger seat gazing at the photograph in the paper as Rhodes wheeled the Crown Vic toward West Hollywood. According to the article, I-Marketing Institute was conducting an open focus group at their offices on Melrose Avenue this afternoon. The first thirty people to survive the screening process would pocket $350 at the end of the day.

  Justin Tremell owned IMI, Inc., and would be directing the marketing session with his business partner.

  She turned and looked out the window at the city racing by. While SID combed through the parking lot collecting trace evidence that yielded hair, fiber, and a stain on the asphalt that one criminalist believed was blood, she and Rhodes had interviewed the entire staff at the restaurant. Of the fifteen people they spoke with, two busboys and another waitress had been working on Wednesday night. All three identified Tremell and said that they remembered seeing him with the victim. And all three seemed as nervous about it as Natalie Wells.

  Lena understood their concern. Justin Tremell was a rich kid with rich-kid problems. Speeding tickets, DUIs, bar fights, celebrity girlfriends, a sex video with an actress on her way to nowhere that had made the rounds on the Internet, dramatic breakups with rumors of violence, time spent in rehab relaxing by the pool on Xanax and mineral water over ice, pretending to fend off the paparazzi even though he needed them and wanted them because it meant regular appearances on the Hollywood rag shows, a father ten to twenty fortunes beyond rich only too willing to bail out his troubled son.

  She understood their concern because she felt the same way And when she turned and gazed at Rhodes’s face, she could tell that he was feeling it, too.

  “This could get tricky,” he said.

  “Tricky?”

  “How much do you know about Justin Tremell?”

  “Just the things you can’t help hearing on news radio and what’s in this article. It says that he got married a couple years ago. It says he’s changed.”

  Rhodes shrugged, making a right turn on Melrose at the Pacific Design Center, then slowing down as Tremell’s office came into view. It was a three-story building on the right with its own parking lot in back.

  “But do you know why he’s changed?” Rhodes said.

  “No idea.”

  “No one does because it didn’t go through the courts. His father hired a judge and the trial was handled privately behind closed doors. You know what I’m talking about, right?”

  She nodded. It was the same reason why no one heard about Michael Jackson’s custody battle with his ex-wife after his trial and acquittal for child molestation. Private trials held in upscale conference rooms were the wave of the future for the rich and famous.

  “You were still in Hollywood,” Rhodes said. “I didn’t work it, but because of who Tremell is, the case ended up downtown. He beat some girl up. Wrecked her face and put her in the hospital. She wanted to press charges for the assault. A week later she changed her mind and the assault suddenly turned into a dispute. A week after that Tremell’s father bought a judge and everything evaporated into thin air. You get the picture?”

  “Got it,” she said. “That’s my boy.”

  Rhodes grinned at her, then pulled the battered Crown Vic into the narrow drive between the buildings. The lot was full, a limo with tinted glass idling before the building’s rear entrance. Lena could see the driver—an old man with gray hair and dark wrinkled skin—wearing a cap and uniform behind the
wheel. He was keeping an eye on them as they circled the lot, and appeared a little worried when Rhodes decided to park the unpainted car right beside him in front of the doors.

  Lena gave him a look as they got out. He was a small man, easily past sixty. His uniform seemed out of date, even odd. But his gaze quieted some when he looked her over and spotted the badge clipped to her belt.

  “Who are you driving for?” she said.

  “Mr. Dean.”

  “You’re his personal driver?”

  “For the last thirty years. Yes, ma’am, I expect so.”

  “Who’s Mr. Dean?”

  The driver smiled. “The man who writes the checks.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Have a nice day,” he said. “And God bless.”

  She glanced at the driver as they entered the building, then turned back to Rhodes. “Who’s writing the checks?”

  “Dean Tremell,” Rhodes said. “The kid’s father. Anders Dahl Pharmaceuticals. That’s what I meant by tricky. The minute he sees us, ten lawyers clock in, the kid walks, and you and me are history.”

  They were standing before a rear staircase, the lobby at the other end of the hall. An attractive brunette sat behind the reception desk talking to two young guys in suits and ties who looked preppie and were probably interns. When the brunette noticed them, she beckoned them down the hall with a friendly smile and a wave of the hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as they reached the lobby. “We’ve already made our selection. But here’s a personal gift for taking the time to come down on a Saturday.”

  Her voice was just above a whisper, her demeanor more than pleasant. As she set a gift bag on the counter, she glanced across the lobby. Lena followed her gaze to the set of double doors and could hear someone talking on the other side—probably Justin Tremell or his business partner running the focus group. Turning back, she sized the woman up and guessed that they were about the same age. Her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows and she didn’t have the look or feel of a receptionist.

  “Sorry,” the woman repeated when their eyes met.