by Robert Ellis
Rhodes pushed the gift bag toward the two interns. “We didn’t come for the focus group. We’d like to speak with Justin Tremell. Is he here?”
She nodded and offered another gracious smile. “I’m his personal assistant, Ann. They’re just getting started. I couldn’t possibly interrupt him right now. Would you like to make an appointment for next week?”
Lena watched Rhodes pull out his badge, saw the two interns take a nervous step back, caught the brunette’s eyes lighting up, and felt the air being sucked out of the lobby as if it had suddenly become a vacuum in one smooth motion. Rhodes didn’t look like a man willing to wait until next week.
The brunette stammered. “I can’t interrupt him. It would ruin everything.”
“I appreciate that you’re caught in the middle,” Rhodes said. “But this isn’t a social visit. We’re investigating a homicide. Either you pull him out of that room, or I do.”
If there had been any air left in the lobby, Lena figured that it was gone now. Just a lot of preppie wheels turning. Three sets of glassy eyes darting back and forth like flies trying to poke through a window.
“I need to speak with someone,” she said, reaching for the phone.
Rhodes shook his head. “Not on the phone.”
“Okay, then I’ll be back in a minute.”
He shook his head again. “We’re going with you.”
All of a sudden the brunette looked like she was having a really bad day. She grabbed her keys and trudged down the hall in her high heels, then stopped at the first door on the left where a sign read observation room. Releasing the lock, she pushed the door open revealing a private lounge. The furnishings were luxurious—everything modern and high-end. There was an entertainment center built into the far wall. Beside the couch on the right a caterer had set up a buffet table that appeared untouched. Lena eyed the variety of fruits and cheeses laid out on a silver tray, the coffee and teapots that stood in waiting beside several unopened bottles of Pellegrino water. Down the short hall to the right she could see a private bathroom that included a hot tub.
She watched Rhodes take it all in, wondering if the space didn’t double as some sort of executive fuck pad for Tremell. Letting the thought go, she turned back to his assistant slogging her way across the lounge in those heels. She was headed toward the door on the far left. A red light mounted on the wall above the molding flashed in warning. Curiously, the woman stopped and took a deep breath with her head turned. Then she tapped lightly on the door and yanked it open.
Lena stepped aside for a better view. The observation booth was dark, but not dark enough to hide the white-haired man in the leather chair turning toward the intrusion with a harsh scowl on his face. Tremell’s assistant didn’t enter the room, but leaned into the shadows while holding the door open. Her voice wasn’t much more than a shaky whisper. And nothing she said seemed to change the look on the man’s face. He didn’t understand why she was interrupting him. Even with two homicide detectives standing behind her, he appeared confused and incensed by the intrusion.
When the brunette finally ran out of words, he let out a sigh and waved everyone into the booth. Lena glanced at Rhodes and caught the look in his eyes. No doubt about it, the man in the leather chair was Tremell’s father. The man who wrote the checks.
“Let me see your ID,” he said.
Rhodes handed over his badge. Dean Tremell snapped on a low wattage lamp and slipped on a pair of reading glasses. As he examined Rhodes’s ID and photo in the dim light, Lena glanced at the suit he was wearing, his handmade shirt and silk tie, measuring the quality of the fabrics. In spite of his age, Tremell’s father looked strong and vigorous and was built something like an overgroomed bull. His face was pockmarked, and weatherbeaten, and ruined from too much time spent in the sun. His thick white mane had been meticulously styled, his fingernails buffed and polished. But when he passed the badge back, Lena was struck by his easy gaze—the intelligence in his gray eyes—and the gentle sound of his voice. He wasn’t angry anymore. Far from it. He seemed curious and surprised.
“Homicide,” he said. “What’s this about?”
“We came to speak with your son,” Rhodes said. “We believe that he may have witnessed a crime.”
Lena kept her game face on, trying not to reveal anything as Tremell turned and gave her a long look. Rhodes had called his son a possible witness instead of a probable suspect. A very real person of interest. He had played it just right, and it looked like Dean Tremell was buying it.
“Do I know you?” he asked her.
“I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
“That story in the paper,” he said. “I remember it now. If my son witnessed a murder, he would have said something about it.”
“He may not have had enough information to know what he was seeing,” she said. “That’s why we’re here.”
Tremell thought it over, his eyes still on her, not Rhodes. “Is there any way we could put this off until the end of the day?”
“If you’ve read the newspaper,” she said, “then you know that the crime was egregious. We believe that your son can help us. It’s already past three. Time is of the essence.”
He held the look with something churning behind his eyes. Lena imagined that he was probably chewing over the short list of good reasons to pick up the telephone mounted on the wall and dial his attorney’s worn-out number from memory. Oddly enough, he didn’t. Instead, he broke the long gaze and searched for his son’s assistant waiting in the gloom behind them.
“Ann,” he said. “Get Justin.”
“Yes, sir.”
The brunette scurried out of the booth. As the door closed, Lena noticed the monitors and speakers and realized that the room on the other side of the one-way mirror was wired for video and sound. The space was set up like a classroom, the microphones and cameras hidden. Thirty people were seated at desks with pads and pens as a soft-spoken man dressed in a sweater and slacks stood before the blackboard. If the article in the newspaper was correct, the man directing the session was Justin Tremell’s business partner.
Lena scanned the classroom, but didn’t see Tremell. When the door off the lobby opened and his assistant hurried to the back of the classroom, she spotted him leaning against the rear wall. Whether by choice or happenstance, Justin Tremell had claimed perhaps the only spot in the entire room that was out of his father’s line of vision.
She found this curious, watching his assistant deliver the news that his father wanted to see him. She kept her attention focused on his reaction. He was a tall, lean kid with long dark hair and a sullen face. Although he shared his father’s gray eyes, there was something different about them. Something lost or missing. Still, he took the news with a decisive nod and headed for the door with his assistant in tow.
While they waited, Lena tried to follow what was going on in the classroom but found it difficult to listen to. Even disturbing. She turned and looked at Dean Tremell’s face. By all appearances he was concentrating on the focus group, trying to recapture his place in the session before they interrupted him. All the same, he could have just as easily been plotting his next move. There had to be a reason why he didn’t kick them out. Lena figured that he wanted more information—wanted to know how deep a hole his son had fallen into—and felt more than confident that he could pull the plug whenever he wanted to. This was a fishing expedition. Both parties were seasoning the water with chum and running out line.
“What is it you’re trying to do here?” she said.
“I should be asking you the same question, Detective. But if you really want to know, we’re preparing to launch a new drug.”
“What’s it called?” Rhodes asked.
“We’re not that far along yet. That’s why these people are here. We’re hoping they’ll point us in the right direction. The release of a new medication is more art than science these days.”
The symptoms were listed on the blackboard and Lena could hear Justin Tr
emell’s partner running the session over the speakers. He was asking the audience if they ever walked out of the house and couldn’t remember if they turned off the coffeepot or locked the front door. If they ever ran into an acquaintance and couldn’t remember his or her name. If they ever woke up in the morning and felt like they needed another hour of sleep. Questions everyone in the room could answer yes to because they were something everyone experienced in life.
She turned back to Dean Tremell. “These are symptoms?”
The man shrugged. “We think they are. We think we can improve people’s quality of life.”
“What are you calling the disease?”
He sensed the irony in her voice and seemed amused. “We don’t really use that word anymore because of the negative connotations. Medical issue is a far more positive form of expression.”
“What are you calling it?”
“Cognitive Lapse Disorder is the working title. We like the acronym CLD, but we’re concerned that the name may sound too negative. We’re testing a new word that we hope will replace the word disorder. People are generally unwilling to talk about or admit that they have a disorder. But if it’s a syndrome, they’re more likely to ask their doctor about it.”
“And that means more sales,” she said. “You don’t try to reach the doctor anymore. It’s all about hooking the end user.”
He looked her over and grinned a little. “That’s the way it works, yes.”
“So why don’t you just change the name to Cognitive Lapse Syndrome? Why go through all this?”
That quizzical look was still in his eyes. “Because of the acronym,” he said. “If you told someone that you had CLS, they might ask if you’re going to die.”
His grin widened and he seemed pleased with himself. Pleased with the demonstration of his intelligence and knowledge. Lena glanced at Rhodes, wondering why Tremell’s son was taking so long to get here. For some reason she thought about a weekend seminar she had attended on drug intervention sponsored by the FBI. Before reaching the homicide table in Hollywood, Lena had spent her first two years as an investigator working narcotics. The event was held in Nashville, and offered a complete view of drug use worldwide that proved invaluable. But equally fascinating was the historical data the FBI provided. Although morphine had a very real medical purpose in pain management that continued to this day, there was a time in the mid-1800s when the drug had been marketed and prescribed as a cure for alcoholism. In 1898, a major pharmaceutical company introduced heroin as a cough medicine. For $1.50 you could order a bottle out of a department store catalog and have it delivered to your door. When reality sank in, when the party was finally over, the miracle of cocaine hit the world and was mixed in countless foods and drinks.
It was the miracle of the snake-oil salesman. The miracle of one concoction after the next brought to the marketplace with good intentions. The miracle of fruit rotting on the vine. The miracle that ended in a trail of misery.
It seemed clear enough that the list of symptoms requiring any of these drugs matched the symptoms listed on the blackboard for the focus group. As Lena thought it over, what Tremell was talking about smacked of disease mongering. The fact that he wanted to market his drug directly to patients and sell them on the idea seemed a mile or two beyond dangerous. Nothing had changed in more than a hundred and fifty years. Except for her mood, which had suddenly turned very grim.
The door finally opened, and Justin Tremell stepped into the darkness. He was alone, staring at his father. The man who writes the checks.
“Is there a problem?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Have a seat,” his father said. “These detectives would like to talk to you. They’ve said they believe you witnessed a crime, but I suspect that it’s more than that.”
The room went silent. Justin Tremell turned to them, but remained on his feet. Although he glanced at Lena, his attention was focused on Rhodes.
“Witnessed what?” he said.
Rhodes turned to his father. “Is there anyway we could speak with him alone?”
Dean Tremell laughed. “Not on your life. I own the place.”
“I thought your son did.”
“I’m staying,” the man fired back. “I’m his father.”
Lena pointed to a chair and Justin finally sat down. “We’re interested in your relationship with a woman calling herself Jennifer McBride.”
“What relationship? I’m married.”
Lena pulled the victim’s picture from her file and handed it to him.
“You don’t know this woman?” she asked.
He made a cursory glance at the photo, checked in with his father, then looked back and shook his head. All things being equal, Lena regarded his performance as the ignorant bystander unworthy of an award, and guessed that he may have picked up his poor technique from some of the lowlife actresses he’d fucked or beaten up in his so-called former life. She noticed his hands as he held the picture. They were unusually soft. So soft and unlined that they could have been a woman’s. Even more telling, they were rock steady. He wasn’t nervous and he should have been. As she looked him over, she wondered why she thought of him as a kid. Justin Tremell was at least two years older than her, yet his demeanor appeared frozen in time. Almost as if he was locked into his teens and unable to move forward. After a second look, she began to wonder if it wasn’t an act. That just maybe Justin Tremell was a better actor than she first thought. He wasn’t playing the ignorant bystander. He was playing the good son.
Rhodes snatched the photograph away from him and held it in front of his face. “You’ve never seen this woman before in your life? Is that what you’re saying?”
Justin Tremell shrugged. “I don’t know her.”
“I didn’t ask that. I asked if you had ever seen this face.”
He looked at Rhodes like he was bored. “This is getting pretty technical, isn’t it?”
“It’s a simple question,” Rhodes said. “Have you seen her or not? Yes or no?”
The kid smiled at him. “Uh-uh.”
Rhodes stepped back, the veins in his neck throbbing. When Lena turned to check on the father, she caught him staring at her. His eyes were roaming up her thighs and hips and lingering on her breasts. As she moved to her right and broke his line of vision, he looked back at her face without any sign of embarrassment.
She shook it off because she knew that she had to and turned to his son.
“Where were you Wednesday night?” she said in an even voice.
“Home,” he said. “Where the heart is.”
“A woman was murdered, Justin. Do you think this is funny?”
“Not at all.”
“So where were you Wednesday night?”
The kid shrugged. “Home.”
Lena rolled a chair over and sat down in front of him. “You know something, Justin. I wish that I could believe you. I even want to believe you. It looks like you’ve got it made. Like you’re living the perfect life. But we’ve got a problem. Actually, it’s your problem, too, because we just left a handful of witnesses who said that you were at the Cock-a-doodle-do last Wednesday night. Even better, they said that you were sharing a table with Jennifer McBride. Talking and drinking with a woman you just claimed you don’t know and have never even seen. A young woman who ended up dead a couple of miles down the road.”
“Witnesses?” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Then they must be mistaken, because I was at home.”
His father cleared his throat. “What the hell is a Cock-a-doodle-do?”
Lena turned and looked at him. The curiosity had left his eyes and he no longer appeared to be undressing her in his mind.
“It’s a whorehouse,” Rhodes said.
“A what?”
“A whorehouse by the airport.”
“You mean that you’re here asking questions about a prostitute?”
“That’s right,” Lena said. “Your son was one of the l
ast people to see her alive on Wednesday night.”
The man who wrote the checks suddenly appeared dumbfounded. Lena realized that she had crossed the line and shown her anger. The truth was that she didn’t care. They were an inch away from being thrown out and her suspicions had already been confirmed. Justin Tremell would continue to lie, using his father as a shield. And the motive for the murder remained in play. She didn’t know how the pieces fit, but this was still about blackmail. As she tried to get a read on the kid, his face didn’t reveal concern, remorse, or any emotion at all. His expression was completely blank, like he didn’t have a worry in the world.
Dean Tremell leaned forward in the leather chair, the overgroomed bull pointing a steady finger at her. “Let me tell you something about my son,” he said in an exceedingly soft and slithery voice. “Justin’s a happily married man. A new father with a newborn son, Dean Jr. It may have taken a while, but he’s a responsible member of society now. I don’t know who your witnesses may or may not be, but I’ve got a good idea where they came from. And I’m not going to sit by while you take the word of a lowlife—ruin my son’s reputation or possibly even mine—then make some weak apology when you realize that it was all a mistake. Believe me when I say that you need to proceed with great care. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Lena glanced at Rhodes. Dean Tremell finally reached for the phone.
“Then get out,” he said.
20
Her eyes snapped open. She caught a glimpse of the empty wine glass standing beside the murder book on the coffee table, then the shelves on the far wall filled with hundreds of vinyl records and CDs.
She could hear music—Buddy Guy’s live version of “Sweet Little Angel” playing softly in the background. Not from her CD player, but from the computer wired into her audio system. As her mind began to clear, she remembered logging onto 88.1’s Web site and listening to the station out of Long Beach over the Internet. The winds had been strong last night. Too strong to pull the FM signal out of the cold air sweeping through Hollywood Hills.
The Santa Anas were back. The Devil Winds.
