The Lost Witness

by Robert Ellis

  Fontaine was involved. She just couldn’t see it yet. Couldn’t put it together.

  She checked her watch and looked up. Ramira was walking through the front door. Actually, it was more of a breeze than a walk. And as he spotted her and approached the table, she knew in an instant that her drive downtown would bear little fruit. Forty-five minutes ago, the crime beat reporter had sounded panic stricken. All that appeared gone now.

  “What do you have to say, Denny? Why are we here?”

  “Let me order a cup of coffee.”

  He was stalling. Trying to come up with an excuse and save himself. She didn’t know who was worse, Ramira or Klinger. Both were chewing up time she couldn’t afford to lose.

  “You can have mine,” she said.

  “It looks cold.”

  She shook her head in disappointment. “You said you were in trouble. It’s a Sunday night, and it’s been a real long day. Tell me what happened. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Ramira’s face reddened and he finally sat down. “I’m sorry, Lena. I didn’t mean it to sound like that.”

  She gave him a long look. “You said we needed to talk. You said that you had information about the murder. You were specific. That’s why I came.”

  “I didn’t say anything over the phone. All I said was that I wanted to meet.”

  “That’s right. And you were talking about the victim. The woman in the trash. This is a murder investigation, Denny. It’s more important than your next story. If you’re holding something back, then you’re committing—”

  “I’m a reporter, for Christ’s sake. Back off, Lena.”

  “I don’t care who you are. If you’re holding out and you print the story, I’ll bust you.”

  “I don’t know anything,” he said.

  She pushed her coffee across the table. He stared at it for a while, thinking something over. Something that appeared deep and troubling enough to cloud his eyes.

  “You’re fucking up, Denny.”

  “When I called I thought that I knew something. But since then I found out that I don’t.”

  “Knew what?” she said.

  “Nothing. I was on the wrong track.”

  “About what?”

  He paused a moment—the clouds back in his eyes.

  “About what?” she repeated.

  “Who she was,” he said. “I thought I knew, but I didn’t.”

  “Who did you talk to? Who said you were wrong? Who knew enough about it to say that you were wrong?”

  He shook his head and remained silent.

  “Does this have anything to do with that book you’re working on? Who’s feeding you information? Is it Klinger? What about Senator West on the commission?”

  Ramira seemed surprised. “What about him?”

  “Is he your source?”

  “Source for what? West gets along with the chief about as well as you do. You should know that better than anyone over there. Listen to me: I made a mistake and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I brought you out tonight.”

  He pulled the cup of coffee closer and took a long swig as if he needed it. As if the brew was strong enough to bring the sun out in the dark of night. Lena watched him lower the cup, then remove his glasses and wipe the lenses with a napkin.

  “You said your life was in the balance,” she whispered.

  He shot a blind gaze her way before slipping his glasses back on. He looked tired. Road weary. After another hit of coffee, he reached into his pocket for his pad and pen.

  “I was wrong,” he said. “But as long as we’re here, is there anything you can tell me about what happened today on Barton Avenue? Anything on the record I can use? We saw that piece of plywood come out of the garage. Paladino won’t let anyone get near his clients. He took them away and said they don’t live there anymore.”

  She bit her lip, staring at the man. “This is about more than who the victim was,” she said. “More than thinking you know something and finding out that you don’t. How did you put it on the phone, Denny? I’m in trouble, you said. Big trouble. I’m trying to save my life. I’ve got information about that body you found in Hollywood. Only now you don’t have the information. Now you’re making excuses and hoping I won’t see through your smoke.”

  Ramira lowered his pen. Lena checked her watch and got up from the table.

  “You gave me your word,” she said.

  “I swear I’ll make it up to you.”

  “But I won’t be there, Denny. Never again.”

  She walked out, bristling with anger and disappointment and thinking about the clouds she had seen in the reporter’s eyes. Something had happened. Something Ramira now wanted to hide.

  As she drove home, she couldn’t help thinking that Ramira was just as pressed for time as she was. The reporter was too smart to call her out for a meeting this late unless he had a good reason. Too smart not to cancel if his reason dried up. Too smart to jeopardize his relationship with her and burn everything down over a hunch, a guess, or even a maybe that wasn’t pinned down. By the time she reached Hollywood Hills she became convinced that Ramira had been telling her the truth over the phone. He knew something about the murder. And he was in trouble.

  She pulled into her drive and spotted a silver 911 Carrera parked in front of her brother’s recording studio. Skidding to a stop, she ripped open the door and saw Bobby Rathbone walk out from the porch behind the house.

  “What’s got you so lit up?” he said.

  She shrugged off the question, the two of them standing in the rain. “Thanks for coming on short notice.”

  “No problem,” he said. “What do I need to know before we get started?”

  “They left a couple of hours ago. They would have had all day to do whatever they’ve done.”

  “Pros?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not the Special Investigation Section. These guys are from Internal Affairs.”

  “What’s with the music?”

  She paused a beat, the sound bleeding through the house. She recognized the song by Megadeth and hoped Klinger was enjoying it.

  Killing Is My Business … and Business Is Good.

  “I thought I’d give them something to listen to,” she said.

  Rathbone laughed. They had met at her brother’s record company and known each other for almost a decade. Rathbone owned a counter surveillance business that dealt exclusively with the music industry. Sweeping a recording studio for bugs had become common practice as corporations bought smaller labels out, left the music behind, and sought an edge that might translate into higher returns for their stockholders. Rathbone was only thirty years old, but had earned a reputation as one of the best techs around. He worked in Los Angeles and Seattle. The last time she saw him he was opening a branch office in Nashville. Lena knew that he planted as many bugs as he found, and that this was part of the business, too. That he was living off the grid and making a fortune doing it.

  “Let’s get started,” he said.

  He walked over to the Carrera, disabled the alarm and pulled out a black aluminum attache case. She looked at his long dirty blond hair and blue eyes. His jeans and T-shirt and leather jacket. The scarf around his neck and his thin frame. No matter how shady his business, he brought back good memories and she was glad to see him.

  “Open up the house,” he said. “Keep the music on. I’ll meet you around back.”

  As Rathbone headed for the porch, Lena unlocked the front door, walked through the living room and threw the latch on the slider. By the time she got the door open, Rathbone was already strapping a small electronic device to his chest. He reached inside the attaché case for a pair of headphones. Slipping them over his head, he motioned her outside. Then he grabbed a screwdriver and a flashlight, and entered the house.

  He started in the kitchen. As he reached the telephone, she noticed the LEDs on the device blinking in sequence. Once he disassembled the handset, he glanced at the contents and moved on. He worked slowly and met
hodically, paying special attention to her audio equipment and the way the components were cabled. Every so often he would stop at an electrical outlet, remove the face plate, and examine the receptacle and box inside the wall. He made two passes through the living room before disappearing into her bedroom. She couldn’t see what he was doing from her position outside the slider. But after ten minutes he walked out and headed upstairs. Five minutes later he returned to the first floor and stepped outside onto the porch.

  He smiled at her, brought his mouth up to her ear, and whispered under the music. “I need to get something out of my car. Do me a favor and turn off all the lights on the first floor.”

  She watched him remove the device from his chest and run down the steps through the rain. Then she walked inside and switched off the lights. When she returned, Rathbone tossed another aluminum case on the chaise longue and flipped the locks to reveal several pairs of night vision goggles.

  He pulled a set out, switched on the power, and handed them to her.

  “You’ll want to see this,” he whispered. “We’ll talk after we come out, but this was done by a rat, Lena. Total garbage.”

  He helped her get the goggles on, adjusting the lenses in front of her eyes. Grabbing the second set, he slipped them over his head and led the way into her bedroom. They were walking in total darkness, yet the room had every appearance of being filled with light. An eerie green light. She could see Rathbone in front of her, vanishing around the corner as if a ghost, then reappearing in front of her closet. She could see him waving at her, working his way toward the bathroom. They stepped inside and her friend pointed to the electrical outlet by the sink. He unplugged her hair dryer, and used his screwdriver to remove the face plate. Waving her closer, he loosened the screws on the receptacle and pulled it away from the wall as far as the live wires would stretch. Then he pointed at a small black square set between the two receptacles. It was about the size of a thumbnail and exceedingly thin.

  Lena stared at it for a moment, her heart pounding as she finally picked out the microscopic lens.

  Rathbone met her goggled eyes and shook his head. Then he turned his back to the outlet and extended his arms out from his body like a film director. Her friend was giving her a rough idea of the view. Lena didn’t need to look, but watched just the same. The view from the camera hidden in her electrical outlet hit all the sweet spots. Her changing area. Her shower and bath.

  She followed him out of the house. But as he pulled the slider closed—as if on cue—the music stopped inside the house and the night suddenly turned all too quiet.

  They yanked their goggles off, Rathbone staring at her. “What just happened?”

  Lena didn’t reply, looking over the hill in amazement. The lights to the entire city were shutting down. One block after the next like a set of dominoes heading for the skyscrapers downtown. When the Library Tower went dark, she listened to the silence for a moment, then counted the seconds before the first siren broke into the night. The first burglar alarm running on auxiliary power in Hollywood.

  It was a rolling blackout, the second in as many weeks. According to the power company, the strain on the grid came down to Christmas lights. But the excuse was more lame than real because no one was using their air conditioners this time of year. The system overload was just another ruse. Another way of tapping people for more cash.

  Lena turned and watched Rathbone light a cigarette and look out over the basin. The only lights left in the city came from the cars on the roads. The life force of Los Angeles. And the result looked like eye candy. Red and white lights glittering in the blackness as they flowed through the streets and freeways like blood rolling through a human body.

  Rathbone tapped the ash of his smoke in the air, then sat on the wall by the chaise longue and looked at her. “We need to keep our voices down,” he said. “Half of what they’ve added to the house runs on batteries.”

  Lena understood and stepped closer.

  “You moved your brother’s stuff upstairs,” he said.

  “A while ago.”

  “The upstairs is clean, Lena. The bedroom. The bath. There’s nothing there. You can talk all you want with the door closed and they’ll never hear you.”

  “Thanks for doing this, Bobby. What about downstairs?”

  He took another drag on his smoke. “They may not be pros, but they’re using good equipment. All high-frequency stuff. Everything well over the FM band. The only loser is the one in your telephone. If you made your own sweep, that’s the one you’d find.”

  “I already did,” she whispered. “That’s why I called.”

  “I’m glad you did because they’ve made some additions. Your phone’s plugged into an outlet over the counter, and you’ve got a three-way adapter feeding the lamp and your cell charger. There’s a bug in the outlet, Lena. And there’s another one in the three-way adapter. Both are good enough to cover anything anyone says in the kitchen or living room. Even out here if the slider was open.”

  Lena slipped her hands inside her jacket pockets, feeling the bite in the moist night air. Perhaps because of the late hour, perhaps because of the way she had spent her day, her emotions remained in check. It was enough to know what Klinger had actually done. Enough to have someone she trusted like Rathbone gather the information for her. The why would come later.

  “You okay?” he whispered.

  “I’m good,” she said. “Keep going.”

  “They covered the other side of the living room the same way. Your audio gear and computer are plugged into a surge protector.”

  “There’s a bug inside.”

  He nodded. “And in the outlet as well. The same thing’s going on in your bedroom. There’s an outlet behind the dresser and another one by your bed where the clock radio’s plugged in.”

  “So, I should assume they can hear everything.”

  “It’s not an assumption, Lena. It’s as true as a straight line. They can hear everything you say or do on the first floor. A pin could drop and they’d know which side of the room it fell on.”

  “What about the bathroom?”

  He paused a moment and gave her a look. “You saw the camera. It’s a TVC-X9 with a transmitter onboard. Full color. The signal’s strong enough to cut through ceilings and walls up to five hundred feet. Fifteen hundred if they had a clear shot. It’s the only camera in the house. And it’s working on a private frequency. That’s why I called whoever did this a rat. The camera’s not there for business. It’s there because one of your friends is a perv. Probably watching on his laptop while he beats the fuck off.”

  It hung there. An image of Klinger watching her and beating off.

  When she turned away from the house, the image finally began to dissipate. The city below Hollywood Hills was still cloaked in darkness. She could see the headlights and brake lights congealing into rivers and streams and flowing all the way to the horizon. All the way into the black.

  “Why are they doing this to you?” Rathbone whispered.

  She glanced back at her friend and caught the worry in his eyes. The questions were all there. She just didn’t have the answers yet.

  23

  Nathan G. Cava pulled in behind the Ford Explorer at the red light on Beverly Glen. Fontaine had just made a left on Wilshire Boulevard, stranding his bodyguards at the corner. Cava could see the Beverly Hills doctor looking back at his escorts like he didn’t know what the fuck to do. After shouting something through the glass no one could hear, Fontaine gave up with an angry shrug and continued down the street toward his office alone.

  Either the two parties had never discussed how to stay together through an intersection, or the doctor was a complete doofus. Cava suspected both possibilities were true.

  The light changed. Cava followed the Explorer onto Wilshire, found the right lane, and let the SUV speed ahead. All he really wanted out of the early morning trip was confirmation that the doctor was going to work. Confirmation that his i-Mansion on South M
apleton Drive would be empty for a few hours. He could do this and keep his distance.

  Besides, he was still dealing with his anger. New waves of worry and self-doubt.

  Yesterday had been a bad day on almost every front. The garage in Hollywood had been found. Not that it mattered much—he hadn’t left anything important behind. But the cops had talked to those poor old people he rented it from and worked up a sketch of his face. He had seen it on the news. Although the artist got his nose wrong—his eyes looked too narrow and he rarely walked around with a scowl—the overall likeness appeared too close for comfort. Anyone with a decent imagination might put it together and say bingo.

  But even that wasn’t really the issue.

  In the end everything came back to the girl. The pretty one with the brown eyes who had smiled at him last Wednesday night. Part one of his three-part Hollywood deal. Finding his operating room—what they were calling the crime scene on TV—had kicked off a new round of stories. More questions about the victim and who she really was. Cava watched interview after interview with her neighbors. Then a fresh batch with waitresses and bartenders at restaurants in Venice where Jennifer McBride was known as a regular. Every interview went exactly the same way, and none of them added up.

  It didn’t sound like the girl had been killed for the greater good. Nor was her death being seen as a contribution to a better world, as he had been told it would. Instead, it was beginning to smell like personal gain. Like the players were playing with the facts and maybe even playing with him.

  Cava tried to let it go, but couldn’t.

  After watching two local news broadcasts back to back, he’d worked himself into a frenzy—bought his ticket on the guilt train—and required medication in order to chill. The last thing he remembered was popping a sleeping pill and getting in bed. But when he woke up at 3:00 a.m., he found himself sitting behind the wheel in a long-term parking lot at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. He was dressed in his pajamas and had apparently eaten an entire box of Lucky Charms, waking up only after he had opened the toy at the bottom of the box.