Killer in the Hills Read online

  “How come there are no numbers on the buttons?” I ask the cop. He gives a small shrug.

  “Security,” he says.

  Melvin and I exchange a glance.

  “I feel safer already,” I say. No one responds. Somewhere, a lonely cricket chirps.

  Eventually, we are deposited on the unknown but secure floor, and the cop holds the door for us as we exit the elevator.

  “Down the hall to the right, corner office,” the cop says.

  “Corner office,” I say, impressed. The cop looks at me.

  “Yeah,” the cop says with a half-smile. “And it’s Lieutenant Marsh now.” Then the elevator doors close and Melvin and I are alone, unescorted and unarmed, except for our piercing wit.

  “Maybe we should find the men’s room so I can stop and freshen up. Look my best for the Lieutenant,” I say.

  Melvin gives me a quick once-over.

  “Lipstick on a pig,” he says, and we walk to the corner office and knock on the door.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I want you to understand, you are not considered a suspect,” Lieutenant Detective Marsh says to me. He is sitting behind a long, sleek reproduction of a mid-century Stow Davis desk, his back to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking City Hall.

  I haven’t seen Marsh in years, but he looks exactly the same, aging at the glacial pace of a California redwood—forties, fit, prematurely gray hair cut trim; smooth, tanned skin, and dressed as neat as a pin, in a crisp white shirt and navy necktie. When he stood up to greet us I noticed his gray slacks didn’t have a single wrinkle or crease. He tilts his chair back and assesses me with his small gray eyes.

  “When we took the missing persons report we discovered you were married to Ms. Fletcher fifteen years ago, so naturally we wanted to talk to you,” he says.

  “Fletcher,” I say. “How many last names did she have?”

  “Four and counting,” Marsh says. “Stage name, screen name, aliases…” Marsh lifts his hand in a vague motion. “But Fletcher is the name on her birth records and what little other records we could find on her—other than the marriage certificate, where she had given her name as Rhodes. She had one arrest, for prostitution and possession, a few years ago.” He leans forward and rests his arms on his desk and waits for me to say something.

  “I’m sorry, Detective, but I have virtually no memory of her,” I say. “You may recall that I pretty much blacked out for that period of my life.”

  Marsh nods. He remembers.

  “Nothing at all?” he says, after a moment. “You don’t remember how you met her? Who she hung out with…?”

  “Nope,” I say. “It was fifteen years ago and I was dead drunk every day for months.”

  “You say you have virtually no memory,” he says. “What, if anything, do you remember?”

  “She was a brunette then,” I say. “I remember hanging out in her apartment, drinking. I doubt that I was with her more than a few days—maybe a week or so at the most. I think I’d remember more if I was with her longer than that.”

  “Do you remember marrying her?” he says.

  “All I remember is the jacket I was wearing at the ceremony was too hot for summer in Las Vegas. It was wool and it was scratchy and it made me sweat. That’s it.”

  Marsh lets the silence play out for a while, his eyes not leaving mine. It is in the nature of all policemen to be suspicious, and Marsh is nothing if not a policeman. He probably sleeps in LAPD pajamas. The walls of his office are lined with photographs of him receiving various citations, including the LAPD Medal of Valor, in the center of the wall of pictures, illuminated with a small spotlight in the ceiling.

  “Well, anything you can tell us would be helpful,” he says. He glances at Melvin. “I called Agent Beauchamp to give him a heads-up on your, ah, connection with Ms. Fletcher. Aside from your relationship with Mr. Beauchamp there’s really no reason to involve the Feds. This is a local matter,” Marsh says, and looks at Melvin.

  In other words, what the hell are you doing in my office, G-man?

  I look at Melvin, who sits still, relaxed, his eyes steadily on Marsh.

  “I’m here in an amicus capacity,” Melvin says. Marsh just looks at him, deadpan.

  “That’s Latin,” I say. “It means ‘friend.’”

  Marsh turns his flat gaze on me for a few moments. No one says anything.

  “How was she killed?” I ask.

  “Twenty-five caliber automatic, up close, behind her left ear,” Marsh says.

  “There was no blood on the bed,” I say.

  “We think she was killed somewhere else, and then moved,” he says.

  “Be a little awkward, carrying a dead body in through the lobby of the Chateau Marmont,” I say. “Usually they’re carrying them out.”

  Marsh’s face doesn’t move at all. If he has a sense of humor, it is locked away in a safe somewhere. Maybe behind the framed Medal of Valor. Maybe humor isn’t a prerequisite in individuals of true valor.

  “Our investigation is widening,” he says. I hear a soft sound from Melvin. He and I both know what Marsh really means: they have no clue where she was murdered.

  “Do you have any suspects?” I say. “Persons of interest? Hotel security video?”

  “We’re working on several leads,” Marsh says.

  “But I’m not one of them.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” I say. “I was her husband, apparently. Don’t police always look at the husband when a wife is killed? That’s what they say on TV, anyway.”

  “Don’t assume we haven’t,” Marsh says.

  “You talked to Nicki,” I say, realizing what he means.

  “I spoke with her half an hour ago,” Marsh says. “She vouched for you, said you’ve been with her most every night recently, certainly long before Ms. Fletcher’s disappearance.”

  Smart. Marsh had waited to call Nicki until the last minute, so she wouldn’t have time to warn me. I had my cell with me but I had turned it off when I went to the crime scene with Melvin, and forgotten to turn it back on. Not that it mattered. I had assumed I would be a suspect when I got the phone call from Melvin in New York. That’s why I decided to come out to LA on my own—to beat LAPD to the punch, just in case I was a suspect. I could do without the publicity and coming forward right away is not something a guilty man would likely do.

  We sit there and let the rain backfill the silence. Then, abruptly, Marsh stands up.

  “Well,” he says. “Thanks for coming out.” He takes a card from a neat pile in a small box on his desk and hands it to me. “If you think of anything, or remember anything that could possibly help, call me directly. At the office or my cell, 24/7.”

  “Will do,” I say, and pocket the card and Melvin and I get up and turn to leave.

  “One other thing,” Marsh says. Melvin and I turn back to him.

  “According to hospital records, Ms. Fletcher gave birth to a baby girl eight months after you were married,” Marsh says. “She’d be fifteen now. We haven’t been able to locate her. Your name is recorded as the father on the birth certificate, and the girl’s name is recorded as Karen Penelope Rhodes.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Amicus capacity?” I say to Melvin in the elevator as we ride down from Marsh’s office.

  “Thought he could handle a little Latin,” Melvin says. “’Specially since he’s surrounded by such tasteful opulence.”

  “He’s not a bad guy,” I say. “Just born without a personality.”

  The elevator stops and we get out and head back down the long corridor toward the parking garage. We leave the building and get in the Town Car and ride in silence in the backseat for a few minutes, until the car merges with the never-ending flow of traffic on the Hollywood freeway. When the tires on the wet freeway make enough noise to cover our conversation, Melvin speaks in a low tone, without looking at me.

  “The business about the daughter,” he says.

  “No memory of i
t,” I say. I look at Melvin. “I think I would remember something like that.”

  “Mm-hm,” Melvin says.

  Melvin’s tone tells me he’s not convinced that the girl isn’t my daughter, and as we drive though the rain I wonder how convinced I am. I spend the rest of the ride trying to remember anything about her, but memories don’t always obey, and there are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “What are you wearing?” I say into my cell phone.

  I am dried out from the rain and stretched out on my bed in my lavish 9 x 12-foot room at the Best Western Hollywood, looking out my window at the view, which consists of an unlighted parking lot, where a skinny young man is attempting to hold a jacket over his head to shield him from the downpour as he urinates behind a dumpster. The city where dreams are made.

  “It’s 12 degrees here,” Nicki says in my ear, from her cozy three-bedroom apartment far above Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

  “That wasn’t the question, counselor,” I say.

  “Flannel pajama bottoms…” she begins, then pauses. I detect a slight tease in the way she pauses, although it could be my overactive imagination.

  “The green flannel bottoms with the fluffy sheep print?” I say.

  “Yes,” she says, warming to the subject. “And a long-sleeved thermal top and thick wool socks, and I’m under three blankets, including the electric one, and I’m still freezing.”

  “Wish I were there,” I say. “I could help you stay warm.”

  “I wish you were, too,” she says. “But you’re out in sunny L.A.”

  “Right,” I say, and watch the young man in the parking lot zip up his pants and rejoin his girlfriend, who is standing under an awning, holding his cigarette. Love beareth all things.

  I had called Nicki as soon as I took off my wet coat, shoes and socks, and dried my hair with a towel that had BEST WESTERN HOLLYWOOD embroidered in shimmering gold thread along the edges. I told Nicki about the crime scene, and about the interview with Marsh. I left out the part about Penelope’s daughter, for now. I would be back in New York tomorrow, and it seemed like a subject best raised after she’d had a glass of pinot and a good dinner and a warm homecoming. I have decided that the girl isn’t my daughter—purely as an act of will, not because I really believe it—so there was no reason to mention it over the phone just as Nicki was about to go to sleep. What would be the point?

  “You said it was a missing persons case when you left,” she says. “When did they find the body?”

  “Early this morning,” I say. “About the time Melvin and I were over the Rockies, I’d guess.”

  “Been a long day for you,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “How was your day?”

  “One long deposition,” she says, through a yawn. “Securities fraud. I would have fallen asleep if it weren’t so damned cold in that conference room.”

  “I’ll tell Joel to turn up the thermostat when I get back tomorrow,” I say.

  The phone on the nightstand rings. I lean over and see the ID: BEST WESTERN 1002. Melvin’s room.

  “Hang on a second,” I say to Nicki, then put the cell on my pillow beside me and pick up the phone on the nightstand.

  “What’s up,” I say

  “Your TV on?” Melvin says.

  “No.”

  “Turn it on.”

  “Which channel?” I say, reaching for the remote on the nightstand.

  “All of ‘em,” he says.

  I switch the TV to a local channel and see video of Melvin and me running the press gauntlet from the Chateau Marmont to the Town Car.

  “I’ve already seen this show,” I say to Melvin. “I’m talking to Nicki, I’ll call you later.” I start to turn the TV off.

  “Keep watching,” Melvin says.

  I watch for a moment, the sound muted. The screen switches to my picture—the mug shot from my murder arrest years ago. I look worse than I did in the Lucky ‘N Love wedding photo.

  “I’m gonna have to get myself arrested again,” I say to Melvin. “That picture sucks.”

  Then my picture slides to the side, and the screen is split between my mug shot and a webcam video of a girl, around fifteen years old. I turn up the sound, but the girl’s voice is drowned out by the voiceover of the TV news anchorman.

  “…internet video of Karen Penelope Rhodes, who is the daughter of murder victim Penelope Rhodes and bestselling author Jack Rhodes,” the anchorman says. “Police consider the girl as a person of interest in the murder of Penelope Rhodes, and ask anyone who may have information regarding the whereabouts of Karen Rhodes to call them at the number at the bottom of your screen…”

  “Shit,” I say.

  “What’s wrong?” I hear Nicki say from the cell phone, on the pillow by my head. I pick it up.

  “Guess I won’t be coming back to New York tomorrow,” I say.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I hang up with Melvin, after making quick plans for the morning, then return to talk with Nicki, and our call is interrupted by a blocked number. I answer it.

  “Jack,” says a wheezy, nasal voice. “Fat Zach. Where’s your daughter?”

  I cut off the call without responding, and return to my conversation with Nicki. The phone on the nightstand rings. The ID says CHANNEL 7 NEWS. Call-waiting beeps again on my cell. I tell Nicki I’ll call her first thing in the morning. She is not happy. Then I turn off my cell and ring the front desk and tell them to hold my calls.

  I get up and go to my bag on the floor of the closet and take out my MacBook and turn it on. I Google “Karen Penelope Rhodes” and find her website at the top of the list of results: “BabyKare.com.” I hesitate for a second, then click on the link and watch the webcam video of the girl.

  She is pretty, with her mother’s wide blue eyes and small mouth. Her short blonde hair is pulled back in a tiny, curled ponytail. She is wearing a white midriff top with a little pink bow at the center of the low neckline, and white panties. She speaks directly into the camera, her wide eyes projecting innocence and sexuality at the same time, as she talks for two minutes about how much she is attracted to older men. She is whispering, pretending that she has to be quiet or her parents will hear her. She is suggestive but not graphic. I pause it halfway through and look with longing at the minibar key on the nightstand. I take a deep breath and continue watching. She ends the video with a sales pitch for a “private webcam experience” for $1.95 a minute. A counter in a small window at the bottom of the site’s homepage claims over a million views. I snap the MacBook shut and pick up the minibar key. I sit on the edge of the bed, the small key in my tight fist, staring at the little refrigerator across the room, four steps away.

  I get up, walk across the room, go to the window, open it, and throw the little key out into the rain. Then I take off my clothes and get in the shower and stand under the hot water for a long time.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A few hours later I’m sitting in a booth in the back corner of the 101 Coffee Shop, just off the lobby of the Best Western, waiting for Melvin. Quick access to the Hollywood Freeway is not the only reason I chose to stay here. Melvin preferred the Beverly Wilshire, especially since I was picking up the tab, but there’s no way the Beverly Wilshire could compete with breakfast at the 101.

  I was the first and only customer when I arrived. It was too early for the hipsters and the rockers and the Hollywood crowd, and the wannabe Hollywood crowd, and the once-was Hollywood crowd, and the never-were-and-never-will-be Hollywood crowd. I had arrived before the coffee shop opened, starved for food and desperate for coffee. I had barely slept, even after four Benadryls and a thousand fluffy white sheep, jumping over fields of Nicki’s green flannel pajamas. When the restaurant opened I took a booth in the back and spent my time waiting for Melvin draining a pot of coffee and studying the menu.

  I had spoken with Nicki briefly, while I was waiting for the restaurant to open and she was on her wa
y to work. I was standing outside, on Franklin Avenue. The rain had stopped, but everything was wet and the sky threatened with low clouds. The cold, clean air felt good, and I was glad to be out of my room and talking to Nicki, but Nicki was still not happy. She had seen the news about Karen Penelope Rhodes.

  “What do you expect to accomplish by staying there?” she had asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, what are you going to do next?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “When do you plan to come home?” she said.

  “Have to wait and see.”

  She made a sound, a kind of exasperated sigh.

  “First of all, there’s a high probability the LAPD is going to want me to stick around,” I said. “Why go back home when they’ll probably call me in a couple of days and tell me to come back here?”

  “Because I care about you, and you have no business getting involved in any of this,” she said. “You need to get Joel on it. He’s your lawyer and you need to let him handle it and get out of the way.”

  Her point was arguable, but her point wasn’t the point.

  “Are you speaking as an attorney now?” I said.

  “I’m not your attorney anymore,” she said. “I’m the person who loves you and knows you well enough to worry that you’ll get yourself into trouble. Again.”

  “The trouble came to me,” I said. “I didn’t go looking for it.”

  “Stop talking like a character from one of your books,” she said. “I miss you and I worry about you.”

  “I miss you too, and I’ll be back as soon as possible,” I said.

  “And you have no idea when that will be,” she said.

  “No.”

  Another sigh.

  “I’m only going to ask this once, because I know you’ll tell me the truth,” she said. “Is the girl your daughter?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s possible she is.”

  She didn’t make a sound for half a minute. I began to wonder if the connection was dropped.