Private #1 Suspect, Page 2

  “It’s Colleen. She’s dead. Some bastard killed her.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I OPENED THE front door and Justine swept in like a soft breeze. She was a first-class psychologist, a profiler, smart—hell, brilliant. Thank God she was here.

  She put her hand on my cheek, searched my eyes, said, “Jack. Where is she?”

  I pointed to the bedroom. Justine went in and I followed her, standing numb in the doorway as she walked to the bed. She moaned, “Oh, no,” and clasped her hands under her chin.

  Even as I stood witness to this heartbreaking tableau, Colleen was still alive in my mind.

  I pictured her in the little house she had rented in Los Feliz, a love nest you could almost hold in cupped hands. I thought about her twitching her hips in skimpy lingerie, big fuzzy slippers on her feet, sprinkling her thick brogue with her granny’s auld Irish sayings: “There’ll be caps on the green and no one to fetch ’em.”

  “What does that mean, Molloy?” I’d asked her.

  “Trouble.”

  And now here she was on my bed. Well beyond trouble.

  Justine was pale when she came back to me. She put her arms around me and held me. “I’m so sorry, Jack. So very sorry.”

  I held her tight—and then, abruptly, Justine jerked away. She pinned me with her dark eyes and said, “Why is your hair wet?”

  “My hair?”

  “Did you take a shower?”

  “Yes, I did. When I came home, I went straight to the bathroom. I was trying to wake myself up.”

  “Well, this is no dream, Jack. This is as real as real can be. When you showered, had you seen Colleen?”

  “I had no idea she was here.”

  “You hadn’t told her to come over?”

  “No, Justine, I didn’t. No.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE ARRIVAL OF Dr. Sci and Mo-bot improved the odds of figuring out what had happened in my house by 200 percent.

  Dr. Sci, real name Seymour Kloppenberg, was Private’s chief forensic scientist. He had a long string of degrees behind his name, starting with a PhD in physics from MIT when he was nineteen—and that was only ten years ago.

  Mo-bot was Maureen Roth, a fifty-something computer geek and jack-of-all-tech. She specialized in computer crime and was also Private’s resident mom.

  Mo had brought her camera and her wisdom. Sci had his scene kit packed with evidence-collection equipment of the cutting-edge kind.

  We went to my room and the four of us stood around Colleen’s dead body as night turned the windows black.

  We had all loved Colleen. Every one of us.

  “We don’t have much time,” Justine said, breaking the silence, at work now as an investigator on a homicide. “Jack, I have to ask you, did you have anything to do with this? Because if you did, we can make it all disappear.”

  “I found Colleen like this when I got home,” I said.

  “Okay. Just the same,” said Justine, “every passing minute makes you more and more the guy who did it. You’ve got to call it in, Jack. So let’s go over everything, fast and carefully. Start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”

  As Mo and Sci snapped on latex gloves, Justine turned on a digital recorder and motioned to me to start talking. I told her that after I got off the plane, Aldo had met me at British Airways arrivals, 5:30 sharp.

  I told her about showering, then finding Colleen’s body. I said that my gun was missing as well as the hard drive from my security system.

  I said again that I had no idea why Colleen was here or why she’d been killed. “I didn’t do it, Justine.”

  “I know that, Jack.”

  We both knew that when the cops got here, I would be suspect number one, and although I had cop friends, I couldn’t rely on any of them to find Colleen’s killer when I was so darned handy.

  I had been intimately involved with the deceased.

  There was no forced entry into my house.

  The victim was on my bed.

  It was what law enforcement liked to call an open-and-shut case. Open and shut on me.

  CHAPTER 5

  IF YOU’RE NOT the cops on official business, processing an active crime scene is a felony. It’s not just contaminating evidence and destroying the prosecution’s ability to bring the accused to trial, it’s accessory to the crime.

  If we were caught working the scene, I would lose my license, and all four of us could go to jail.

  That said, if there was ever a time to break the law, this was it.

  Mo said, “Jack, please get out of the frame.”

  I stepped into the hallway and Mo’s Nikon flashed.

  She took shots from every angle, wide, close-up, extreme close-ups of the wounds in Colleen’s chest.

  Sci took Colleen’s and my fingerprints with an electronic reader while Mo-bot ran a latent-print reader over hard surfaces in the room. No fingerprint powder required.

  Justine asked, “When did you last see Colleen alive?”

  I told her that I’d had lunch with her last Wednesday, before I left for the airport.

  “Just lunch?”

  “Yes. We just had lunch.”

  A shadow crossed Justine’s eyes, like clouds rolling in before a thunderstorm. She didn’t believe me. And I didn’t have the energy to persuade her. I was overtired, scared, heartsick, and nauseated. I wanted to wake up. Find myself still on the plane.

  Sci was talking to Mo. He took scrapings from under Colleen’s nails, and Mo sealed the bags. When Sci lifted Colleen’s skirt, swab in hand, I turned away.

  I talked to Justine, told her where Colleen and I had eaten lunch on Wednesday, that Colleen had been in good spirits.

  “She said she had a boyfriend in Dublin. She said she was falling in love.”

  I had a new thought. I spun around and shouted, “Anyone see her purse?”

  “No purse, Jack.”

  “She was brought here,” I said to Justine. “Someone had her gate key.”

  Justine said, “Good thought. Any reason or anyone you can think of who could have done this?”

  “Someone hated her. Or hated me. Or hated us both.”

  Justine nodded. “Sci? Mo? We have to get out of here. Will you be all right, Jack?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “You’re in shock. We all are. Just tell the cops what you know,” she said as Sci and Mo packed up their kits.

  “Say you took a very long shower,” Sci said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Make that a long bath and then a shower. That should soak up some of the timeline.”

  “Okay.”

  “The only prints I found were yours,” said Mo-bot.

  “It’s my house.”

  “I know that, Jack. There were no prints other than yours. Check the entry card reader,” she said. “I would do it, but we should leave.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Mo.”

  Justine squeezed my hand, said she’d call me later, and then, as if I had dreamed them up, they were gone and I was alone with Colleen.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE BEVERLY HILLS Sun was one of three exclusive hotels in the chain of Poole Hotels. Located on South Santa Monica Boulevard, a mile from Rodeo Drive, the Sun was five stories of glamour, each room with a name and an individual look.

  The Olympic-sized eternity pool on the rooftop was flanked with white canvas cabanas, upholstered seating, and ergonomic lounge chairs—and then there was the open-air bar.

  Hot and cool young people in the entertainment business were drawn like gazelles to this oasis, one of the best settings under and above the Sun.

  At nine that evening, Jared Knowles, the Sun’s night manager, was standing in front of the Bergman Suite on the fifth floor with one of the housekeepers.

  He said to her, “I’ve got it, Maria. Thank you.”

  When Maria had rounded the corner with the bedding in her arms, Knowles knocked loudly on the door, calling the gues
t’s name—but there was no answer. He put his ear to the door, hoping that he would hear the shower or the TV turned on high—but he heard nothing.

  The guest, Maurice Bingham, an executive from New York, had stayed three times before at the Sun and never caused any trouble.

  Knowles used his mobile phone to call Bingham’s room. He let it ring five times, hearing the ringing phone echo through the door and in his ear at the same time. He knocked again, louder this time, and still there was no answer.

  The young manager prepared himself for best- and worst-case scenarios, then slipped his master key card into the slot and removed it. The light on the door turned green, and Knowles pushed down the handle and stepped into the suite.

  It smelled like shit.

  Knowles’s heart rate sped up, and he had to force himself to go through the foyer and into the sitting room.

  Lying on the floor by the desk was Mr. Bingham, his fingers frozen in claws at his throat.

  A wire was embedded in his neck.

  Knowles put his hands to the sides of his face and screamed.

  The horror was in the present and in the past. He had seen a dead body almost identical to this one when he had worked at the San Francisco Constellation. He had transferred here because he couldn’t stand thinking about it.

  That night, five months ago, the police had grilled him and criticized him for touching the body before they let him go. He’d heard that there had been other killings, strangulations with a wire garrote; in fact, there had been several of them.

  That meant a serial killer had been in this hotel, standing right where he was standing now.

  So Jared Knowles didn’t touch the body. He used his cell phone to call the hotel’s owner, Amelia Poole. Let her fucking tell him what he should do.

  CHAPTER 7

  AMELIA POOLE WAS just getting home when she got the phone call from Jared Knowles, her night manager at the Sun. She asked him to hang on until she got out of the garage, closed the door, and stood in her yard overlooking Laurel Canyon.

  “It happened again,” Jared said. He was speaking in a hoarse whisper, and she could hardly make out what he was saying.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It happened again. A guest in the Bergman Suite. His name is Maurice Bingham. He’s dead. He’s been killed. Just like—I can’t remember his name, but you know who I mean. At the Constellation. I’m scared because I’m a link, Ms. Poole. The police are going to think I could have done it.”

  “Did you?”

  “Hell, no, Ms. Poole. Believe me. I would never.”

  “How do you know Mr. Bingham is dead?”

  “His face is blue. His tongue is out. There’s still a wire around his neck. He’s not breathing. Anything I’ve forgotten? Because I didn’t learn anything in hotel management school that covered things like this.”

  He was screeching now.

  And Amelia Poole was suitably frightened.

  This killing made five—and it was the third in one of her hotels. The cops had come up with nothing. She hadn’t heard from them in weeks. And this murder struck her as personal. Maybe some kind of warning. Any of her guests could be killed. It was too sick.

  “Jared. Listen to me,” she said. “I’ll try to keep you out of it. Flip on the ‘Do Not Disturb’ light. Can you do that? Use your elbow, not your fingers.”

  “Housekeeping called me to say that Mr. Bingham had ordered an extra blanket and pillows. That he didn’t open the door.”

  “Did you bring bedding into the room?”

  “No.”

  “Did you touch anything?”

  “No.” Jared was crying now. This was too much.

  “Jared. Flip on the light and go back down to the desk.”

  “Isn’t that breaking the law?”

  “I’ll take responsibility, Jared. Just go down to the desk. Do not call the cops. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “If you can’t do your job, say you’re getting sick and take the night off. Ask Waleed to take over.”

  “Okay, Ms. Poole.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Amelia Poole disconnected the line and thought again about a private investigation agency she’d heard about. The head guy was Jack Morgan, former CIA and US Marines. His agency promised “maximum force and maximum discretion.” It was called Private.

  It was late, but she’d call Private anyway. Leave a message for Jack Morgan to call her as soon as possible.

  CHAPTER 8

  I CALLED MY friend chief of police Mickey Fescoe at home. He got on the line, said, “My dinner is on the table. Make this good, Jack.”

  “I can’t make it good, Mick. Colleen Molloy, my ex-girlfriend—she was killed in my house. I didn’t do it.”

  I was looking at Colleen’s body as I answered Mickey’s questions in monosyllables. He said he would send someone over, and after hanging up I sat down in a chair at an angle to the bed, keeping Colleen company as I waited for the cops to arrive.

  I thought about how close Colleen and I had been, that I had loved her but not enough.

  With a jolt, I remembered what Mo-bot had told me to do before she left the house. I went to the living room, booted up my computer, and drummed my fingers as the key entry program loaded.

  A long list of times, dates, and names appeared on the screen, and I scrolled to the last entries. Colleen’s key had been used thirty minutes before I had walked in the front door.

  I was starting to get a piece of the picture. That this whole ugly deal had gone down as I was on my way home from the airport meant that someone was keeping tabs on me, knew my schedule to the minute. But dozens of people knew my movements—coworkers, clients, friends. Anyone with a computer would have known when my plane was landing.

  I got to my feet as a siren screamed up the highway. I hit the button that opened the gates, stood in the doorway, and shielded my eyes against the headlights pulling into my drive.

  Two cops got out of a squad car. I focused on the closest one: Lieutenant Mitchell Tandy.

  Mickey Fescoe hadn’t done me any favors. Tandy was a smart-enough cop, but he had a crappy take-no-prisoners attitude.

  Tandy had arrested my father, who had owned Private before me. Dad was tried and convicted of extortion and murder. He had been doing his lifetime stretch at Corcoran when he was shanked in the showers five years ago.

  Tandy didn’t like me because I was Tom Morgan’s son. Guilt by association. He didn’t like me because Private closed a higher percentage of cases than the LAPD. It wasn’t even close.

  And then there was the most obvious irritant of all. I made a lot of money.

  I watched and waited as the two cops came up the walk.

  CHAPTER 9

  TANDY WAS FORTY, tanned, a gym rat. His shoulder holster bulged under the tight fit of his shiny blue jacket.

  Tandy said, “You know Detective Ziegler.”

  “We’ve met,” I said.

  Ziegler had a swimmer’s build: broad shoulders, a long torso. He wore a copper bracelet on his right wrist. Gun on his hip. I remembered him now. We’d mixed it up once when he was harassing one of my clients. I’d won. His hair had gone gray since I’d seen him last.

  Tandy said, “Where’s the victim?”

  I told him and he told me to stay where I was.

  Ziegler smiled, said, “Sit tight, Jack.”

  I stared out the windows toward the beach. All I could see was foam on the dark waves. My head pounded and I wanted to be sick, but I held everything down as Tandy and Ziegler went to my bedroom.

  I heard Tandy’s voice on the phone but not what he said. And then he and Ziegler were back.

  Tandy said, “I called the ME and the lab. Why don’t you tell us what happened while we wait for them to come?”

  We all sat down, and I told Tandy that I didn’t know who could have killed Colleen or why.

  “I haven’t slept in more than twenty-four hours,” I said. “I
was a zombie. I started taking off my clothes the minute I walked in. I used the hallway entrance to the bathroom.”

  I told him about walking into my bedroom after my shower, expecting to fall into bed. Finding Colleen.

  “Very convenient, you taking a shower,” Tandy said. “I suppose you did a load of wash too.”

  “My jacket is on that chair. My shirt is on the hallway floor. I threw my pants over the door. My shorts are outside the stall.”

  I gave Ziegler the names of Colleen’s next of kin in Dublin and told the cops that the entry log showed that Colleen’s code had been used a half hour before I came home.

  “Colleen had the access key to the gate. But it’s not here,” I said. “Someone had to have coerced her, used her key, pressed her finger to the pad at the front door.”

  Ziegler said, “Uh-huh,” then asked me to talk about my relationship with Colleen.

  “We used to go out,” I said. “And Colleen worked for me. I was very fond of her. After we broke up, she went home to Ireland. She came back a couple of weeks ago to visit friends in LA. I don’t know who. I had lunch with her last Wednesday.”

  Tandy didn’t read me my rights and I didn’t ask for a lawyer. I hoped he would have a breakthrough, find something I had missed, but when he asked me to tell him if Colleen and I had had a fight, I excused myself, went to the bathroom, and threw up.

  I washed my face and returned to my interrogation.

  Tandy asked again, “You have a fight with the girl, Jack?”

  “No.”

  “You shouldn’t have taken a goddamn shower. That was either insulting or a mistake. We will take your clothes and we will take your drains apart. We’ll check the airport surveillance tapes and dump your phones. That’s just tonight. Tomorrow we’ll do background on the victim. I’m thinking her body will tell us something interesting.”

  “Do your best, Tandy. But even you and Ziegler have to know that I wouldn’t kill my ex-girlfriend in my house and then call the cops. It’s a setup.”