by Robert Ellis
Lena didn’t say anything.
“We share the same goal, Detective. You’re looking for a witness. The one who sent you those pictures. The only one we know with certainty who was there, saw the abduction and shot the video to corroborate the facts. A young man who knows exactly what happened and what the murderer looks like. A young man who might be able to clear my son’s name. Finding that witness is more important to me than it is to you.”
“I understand, but—”
“But nothing, Detective. I’m offering you my resources. I’m offering you everything I have. I’m offering you free access to the well.”
30
She didn’t see the traffic backup on the 110 Freeway until she reached the top of the ramp and there was no way out. No way but forward, one or two feet at a time.
She didn’t mind. She was still trying to process what Dean Tremell had said to her at lunch.
Her cell started vibrating, but she couldn’t dig it out of her pocket in time. As she tossed it on the passenger seat, the phone triggered a memory maybe ten years old. An interview that she had heard on either KPCC or KCRW—two NPR affiliates that crisscrossed the city from Pasadena to Santa Monica. It was an interview with the CEO from one of the country’s biggest engineering firms, a company that made everything from dishwashers to jet engines. The man had been known as an innovator, was on the verge of retiring and had written a book. When he was asked how he came up with so many great ideas, his answer was something Lena never forgot. He said that his best ideas usually came while performing mundane tasks. Cooking, gardening, cleaning up his desk. But his biggest breakthroughs came while driving his car. There was something about the act of driving to and from the office, being alone with himself, letting his mind wander. He said that when the cell phone came out he knew that ingenuity would take a measurable hit. No one would be on the road by themselves anymore. No one would have the quiet time to think about what they were doing and where they wanted to go. Instead, everyone would be on autopilot, jabbering away about nothing.
Lena remembered the interview because she agreed with the man and respected him. But as the traffic started moving, her mind appeared stuck in neutral. It would take a longer road—a lot more miles—to come to terms with what Dean Tremell had said to her.
She hadn’t expected him to ask her for help. She didn’t foresee the setup or realize that this had been his purpose all along.
Lena bailed out at the first exit, then cut across town to Parker Center. Pulling into the dilapidated garage, she hoped that it wouldn’t fall down until she found a place to park. As she ran across the street, her cell lit up again and she flipped it open. Innovation might have taken a hit, but at least she knew that the caller was a friend.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Watching you cross the street from the third floor,” Rhodes said. “I just got back.”
She looked up and found him in the window. “How’s your sister?”
“Doing great. Her doctor thinks she’s out of the woods.”
Lena could tell that Rhodes was still worried. She could hear it in his voice.
“I’m glad she’s okay,” she said. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Me, too,” he said. “I can’t find Barrera, and no one’s around. I need to catch up.”
“I’ll be there in ten. I’ve gotta drop something off first.”
She slipped the phone into her pocket and shouldered her briefcase, wondering if Rhodes could hear the worry in her voice. Whether or not he knew her as well as she knew him. Entering the building, she rode the elevator up to the fourth floor and walked down the hall to the Questioned Documents Unit. Irving Sample ran the unit, but wasn’t in. Fishing through her briefcase, she found the forms Jennifer McBride had filled out at her doctor’s office, along with her application for the apartment on Navy Street. Then she wrote a note that included her cell number and left everything on his desk. Sample had examined McBride’s driver’s license and was already familiar with the case.
Deciding against the elevator, she took the stairwell down to the third floor and entered the alcove outside the captain’s office from the rear. None of the administrative assistants were here, and she didn’t see Lieutenant Barrera through the plate glass window. When she glanced at the bureau floor, she didn’t see Rhodes or anyone else at their desks. She checked her mail slot and found a manila envelope. The papers inside were still warm from the fax machine. As she glanced at the cover sheet, she realized that they had come from Dean Tremell’s office.
Her cell started vibrating again. She flipped it open thinking that it was Rhodes. Instead, Irving Sample was back at his desk.
“I just read your note,” he said. “What am I looking for?”
“I left two sets of forms with you. The first is a single-page application the victim filled out for an apartment. The second is a two-pager from her doctor’s office.”
“I can see that,” he said. “If you want to know if they were written by the same person, it’s an immediate yes.”
“I understand,” Lena said. “But it’s that two-pager from the doctor’s office that bothers me. It’s probably nothing. It’s just that it looks like she rushed through the first page, then slowed down to fill out the last. If I hadn’t seen her application for the apartment, I wouldn’t have noticed.”
Sample didn’t respond. She could hear papers rustling in the background.
“I see what you mean,” he said finally. “There’s a difference. It’s subtle, but I see it. They handed her these forms at the doctor’s office and she ripped through the first page writing as fast as she could. But what are you getting at?”
Lena lowered her briefcase to the floor and gazed out the window. “Why would she start fast and end slow? Most people in a hurry pick up their pace at the end, right? Most people see the clock ticking and rush to the finish line. When I saw them side by side, I thought that it might be worth checking out. You think it’s ridiculous?”
Sample didn’t say anything for a while. When he finally spoke, she heard the hesitation in his voice.
“This girl wasn’t like most people, was she.”
“No,” Lena said. “I don’t think she was.”
“Let me see what I can do,” he said. “I’ll let you know either way.”
She closed her phone, feeling embarrassed as she imagined Irving Sample shaking his head at her from the fourth floor. She was grabbing at straws and he was being polite. Her request, an obvious lack of ingenuity due to too much time spent on a cell …
She shrugged it off and sat down at her desk. She noticed that Rhodes had hung his jacket on his chair and wondered where he went. After a moment, she settled down and reviewed the papers Dean Tremell’s office had faxed over. A copy of the child’s birth certificate was here, along with his daughter-in-law’s release from the hospital. A copy of the bill was also included with all personal and financial information blacked out. Just the length of stay and what it cost. Still, Dean Tremell had made the call to his office just as he promised. And he had saved her some time. There could be no doubt that his daughter-in-law gave birth to a son. In all probability, the woman living as Jennifer McBride did exactly what her doctor guessed that she had done. Her pregnancy ended with a miscarriage or an abortion. Either way, there was no child.
Lena heard someone and turned around to find Barrera exiting one of the interrogation rooms. Rhodes was behind him, closing the door. Both looked concerned as they spotted her on the floor and approached.
“Lena,” Barrera said. “You’ve got company.”
She glanced at Rhodes. “Yeah, we spoke ten minutes ago.”
“Not Rhodes,” Barrera said. “Justin Tremell.”
A moment passed, both men studying her.
“He’s been waiting for more than an hour,” Barrera said. “He won’t talk to anyone but you. When I saw Rhodes, I brought him in. The kid shook his head and said just you. What’s going on that I don’t
know about?”
Lena hesitated. She didn’t want to mention her meeting with Dean Tremell because the data was still raw and she hadn’t come to any conclusions yet.
“You want to call upstairs and record this?” she asked.
Barrera slipped his hands in his pockets and checked the empty floor. “Tapes already rolling and he’s been read his rights. I talked to Lamar. He’s got the monitors shut down so no one upstairs will know that the kid’s here. You heard what the chief said yesterday. If anyone upstairs finds out that you’re in an interrogation room with Justin Tremell, your world turns to shit and so does mine.”
She glanced at Rhodes. He had been away for three days and didn’t know about her run-in with the chief. She could see him trying to put it together.
She turned back to her supervisor. “Let’s see what he wants.”
“Do it quickly,” Barrera said. “We’ll figure out how we’re gonna get him out of the building later. I’ll update Rhodes. We’ll be in the captain’s office.”
Lena’s briefcase was on the empty desk beside her. As Rhodes reached for the murder book, he looked at the papers Dean Tremell had faxed over.
“What about these?” he said.
Lena picked the papers up and stuffed them in her briefcase. She didn’t want them to be part of the record. And she didn’t want to take the chance that her inquiry about the legitimacy of Tremell’s grandson might be made public.
“They’re irrelevant,” she said. “A dead end not worth talking about.”
Lena pushed open the door and found Justin Tremell sitting in the far chair staring at the ceiling. When he saw who she was, he jumped to his feet and shook her hand. He was being gracious and polite. And as Lena measured him, she immediately recognized that he was nervous. The sullen face that she had seen when they first met on Saturday was no longer sullen. And those steady hands weren’t so steady anymore. Tremell looked wasted. Like all of a sudden, the tall, lean kid with rich-kid problems was dealing with a real-life crisis.
Lena watched him sit down and took a chair on the other side of the table. The room was cramped, the bright florescent lights buzzing overhead.
“I just spoke with your father,” she said.
“I know. That’s why I came.”
“If you wanted to talk, why didn’t you ask Lt. Barrera to call me?”
“I knew that you were with my father. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Lena kept her eyes on him. He seemed sincere.
“Do you want an attorney?” she asked.
“No. I’m fine, thanks.”
“Do you need an attorney?”
Tremell met her eyes and lowered his voice. “I don’t think so.”
She settled back in her chair, everything quieting down.
“So tell me why you’re here, Justin. What do you want to talk about?”
Tremell didn’t respond, shifting his weight and wrestling with his thoughts. He took a deep breath and exhaled. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t much more than a whisper.
“I knew her,” he said.
A long moment passed—everything in the small room becoming perfectly still.
“I was there that night,” he said. “I didn’t say anything on Saturday because my father was in the room. I’m sorry if I caused you any trouble. But I knew what he would think, and I didn’t want to let him down. I didn’t want him to know what I’d done.”
Lena let the thought settle, the silence in the room becoming truly silent again. Just those lights buzzing overhead.
“What did you do that you didn’t want your father to know about?”
Tremell sighed. “Jennifer was my friend.”
“Your friend?”
“My wife was pregnant. It was a tough pregnancy—the last three months spent in bed—and I couldn’t handle it. I needed an outlet. I found Jennifer’s ad in the LA. Weekly. It started out as a massage, then became something else. I liked her and she was nice to me. I don’t expect you to understand this because I don’t understand it myself. I’m still very much in love with my wife, but I fell for Jennifer. If my father finds out, he’ll have a shit fit.”
“Did she know who you were?”
“Sure, but she didn’t care about things like that.”
“She didn’t ask you for any money.”
He shook his head. “I paid for the first few massages. But when things changed, all that stopped and I’d give her things instead.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Flowers. Dinner. Books. Things you’d give a friend or lover.”
“So she wasn’t blackmailing you? She didn’t tell you that she was pregnant?”
Tremell sat back in his chair and looked at her like someone who was hearing something for the first time. Everything about his behavior appeared true and authentic.
“Jennifer wasn’t pregnant,” he said. “At least not when I knew her. She was menstruating. She’d get headaches, and cramps, and everything else.”
“Maybe she called it a loan,” Lena said. “Maybe she asked you to help her out.”
“If she had, I would have given it to her, no questions asked. But she didn’t. She never asked for anything.”
Lena took a moment to think it over. She had been moving slowly. Making Tremell feel comfortable and at ease. She didn’t see any reason to change course.
“Why were you at the Cock-a-doodle-do on Wednesday night? If Jennifer was your friend, why meet her there?”
Tremell pushed his seat away from the table, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking up at her. She had been wrong about his eyes as well. They were the same color gray as his father’s and just as vibrant.
“You guys keep records,” he said. “I’m sure you know more about me that even I do. The speeding tickets, the DUIs and bar fights, some of the women I went out with in the old days who spent most of their time trying to get noticed and get picked up by those crappy entertainment shows on TV. It wasn’t the fake trips to rehab that saved me. And it wasn’t the warnings from the judges I faced, or the embarrassment you might expect that I felt when I woke up in the morning. I didn’t feel embarrassed. I was too high. What saved me was meeting my wife. She was the one who opened the door to the possibility that I might step out of my father’s shadow and become something on my own. I got a late start. And I’m not all the way there yet. But she was the one who opened the door.”
“How’s she get along with your father?”
Tremell grinned. “Not very well. But he knows what she’s done for me, so I guess that’s good enough. He tolerates her, and she tries to be nice to him.”
Lena gave Tremell a long look, studying his face and relaxed posture. He didn’t know. He didn’t know what his father was doing behind his back. When it clicked, she let the thought go and moved on.
“Okay,” she said. “So, why were you meeting Jennifer?”
“I needed to end it, but I didn’t know how. I was planning to tell her that night. My wife had given me a son. She was feeling better. There was no reason to keep seeing Jennifer except that I still liked her. And that’s not really good enough.”
“Why there?” Lena said. “Why take the risk that someone might recognize you?”
He laughed. “That’s probably the one place in this city where no one would. And even if they did, they’d keep quiet about it because someone might ask them why they were there.”
She could see his point. If the murder hadn’t taken place, there was a good chance no one would have mentioned it.
“That place isn’t exactly what it looks like,” he said. “Especially if you like music. The food’s good and the woman who owns it isn’t a phony. We met there because Jennifer had an appointment in Torrance. We met halfway.”
“How did she react when you gave her the news?”
“I never did. I couldn’t get the courage. And she had to leave for another appointment. I stayed for a while. When the band finished their set, I split.”
> Lena sifted through her memory of the interview she and Rhodes conducted with Natalie Wells. Everything Tremell was saying seemed to match what the waitress said.
“What about her job?” Lena said. “You obviously knew what Jennifer did for a living. Were you ever jealous?”
Tremell’s face reddened, his voice, quieter now. “You’re a woman, so this is kind of hard.”
“Believe me. There’s nothing you could say that I haven’t heard before.”
He spent a few moments tossing it over, then sat up and shrugged. “The truth is that I kind of liked it. It turned me on. That probably means I’m still fucked up, but that’s the way it was. And Jennifer didn’t talk about it that much. It was just kind of there in the background. It wasn’t like she was gonna do it forever. She told me she met someone who wanted to help her out.”
“Who?”
Tremell shook his head. “She didn’t say, but I could tell that he was a client. She called him her personal patron.”
“And you still weren’t jealous.”
“Maybe a little,” he said. “But I think I was secretly hoping that it might be an easy way out of all this. If she ended it, then I wouldn’t have to.”
“She never mentioned the guy’s name? She never told you anything about him?”
“No, but I got the feeling that he was older. Maybe even a little kinky. He bought her a nurse’s costume and made her wear it. That’s all she said about him. He liked nurses and he was from Beverly Hills.”
It hung there. The two of them looking at each other. Then the door snapped open and Barrera rushed in.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But you’ll need to pick this up later. Lena, I need a word with you.”
She walked out and saw Rhodes waiting in the alcove. Barrera shut the door and lowered his voice.
