“San Diego. You didn’t answer my question.”
I stuck my hand out. “Carter Blake.”
“Dick Boden,” he said, taking my hand and shaking it briefly.
“I have a professional interest. My line of work is finding people who don’t necessarily want to be found. It strikes me that this is a person who needs to be found.”
“You don’t look like a bounty hunter either.”
“That’s because I’m not. I’m more of a . . . locating consultant.”
Boden gave it some thought. “An expensive one, I guess. If you’re good.”
“Depends on the job.”
“And who’s paying you to do this job?”
No reason to lie, and in any case, I had the feeling that Boden would know BS when he smelled it. “Nobody,” I answered simply.
Boden raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything. He looked away from me, down at the holes in the ground below us again, and his hands balled into fists. “The motherfucker dumped her like trash when he was done with her.”
I said nothing. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and I could see him mentally struggling to get some objective distance, to put the professional part of his brain to work on this most personal of crises. “And what do you think so far, Blake?”
I took my time before responding, because I couldn’t share everything here. I couldn’t talk about the fact I knew the killer’s name.
“I think this guy has killed before—before any of these three, I mean—so we might be able to do something by backtracking, tagging open and unsolved cases to him. I think he’s done it in the past and he’ll do it in the future, so that means he needs to be stopped by any means possible.”
Boden’s eyes flicked up to me at that last remark, but he didn’t comment. The personal fighting back against the professional, maybe.
I continued. “The disposal site indicates planning, preparation, and local knowledge. He’s a practiced, professional operator who knows the hills.”
“Anything else?”
I hesitated. “Yeah. I think he’s taking them on these roads. I think he’s forcing them to stop and then taking them someplace else.”
Although I wasn’t looking directly at the men with the cameras, I sensed that our conversation had started to draw their interest. Boden’s eyes glanced at them, then he looked at me again, coming to a decision. “You have somewhere to be right now, Blake?”
“Nothing I can’t do later.”
“Okay.” He gestured at a silver SUV parked fifty yards down the road. “Follow me back to my place. It’s not far.”
Mazzucco was dead tired. A late night and broken sleep didn’t make for the greatest morning feeling.
After dropping Allen at her apartment the previous evening, he’d doubled back and driven back out to Santa Monica. He dropped in on Sloan’s, the bar Sarah Dutton had mentioned, and asked them a couple of follow-up questions. The answers were consistent with those they’d already given him over the phone. One of the bartenders vaguely remembered the group but couldn’t say when they’d left or whether they’d left together. He was pretty sure they were gone by eleven thirty. No, they didn’t have any video. There was a cam over the bar, but that was it. It hadn’t covered the area of the bar where the party had been sitting.
After that, he’d driven a couple of different routes from the bar to Walter Dutton’s place and turned up four separate gas stations in the vicinity that Kelly could have used. He stopped at each and asked a few questions. In three out of the four, he drew a blank immediately. Nobody remembered serving a girl in a silver Porsche between eleven and midnight. Regardless, he asked for, and got, copies of the security tapes, just in case. He could go through them on fast-wind in the morning. It wouldn’t take long, since he knew exactly what he was looking for.
The fourth gas station was inconclusive. The guy who worked Saturday night was on day shift Monday, so they asked him to come back. The boss would be able to email him a digital file containing the security camera footage for the relevant time when he got in. Mazzucco hadn’t been optimistic. He decided he’d give them a call back in the morning but that it probably wasn’t worth a return trip.
After that, he’d driven back home. Julia had been waiting up for him, against his advice when he’d called. They’d had the usual argument.
“Why the hell are you working so late?”
She knew why he was working so late.
“Were you with her?”
Her
. She never used Allen’s name if she could avoid it. Before he’d partnered up with Jessica Allen, it would never have occurred to Mazzucco to describe his wife as the jealous type. But then all of his partners until now had been male, overweight, and approaching retirement. Nothing like Allen.
It was always like this when he had a particularly late night. Julia kept at him until her anger subsided, and eventually, they went to bed around two. She went to bed, at least. Mazzucco took the couch in the living room. And then Daisy woke up half an hour later and there was a change and a bottle feed and a minor reprise of the argument.
Back on the couch, and sleep had eluded him for at least another hour. He was too mad to sleep. Julia had no cause to be suspicious of his relationship with Allen. Did she? He turned his mind to less complex matters: the day’s triple murder.
He’d managed maybe a half hour of sleep and been woken again by Daisy sometime after five. After that, he’d left her sleeping with Julia and decided to get an early start on the day. Halfway to downtown, his cell had buzzed showing a number he did not recognize. He’d pulled over and taken the call. It was the fourth gas station. The guy from the Saturday-night shift had reported for work, and guess what? He did remember seeing a Porsche and a female driver. Mazzucco told him he’d be there in half an hour.
Twenty-eight minutes later, he was pulling into the gas station. Five minutes after that, he was in the back office with the Saturday-night guy, the manager, and a cup of shitty machine coffee. The manager was cycling through the security footage of the forecourt while Mazzucco talked to the nightshift attendant.
“Just after it started to rain,” Mazzucco repeated.
“That’s right, would have been just after eleven. News on the radio had just finished.”
“And she came into the store?”
“That’s right. She paid for ten bucks’ worth and went back outside to fill up.”
“Was there anybody with her? Anybody in the car, maybe?”
He looked unsure. “No one came in with her. I don’t
think
there was anybody in the Porsche, but . . .”
“Got it.”
It was the manager who’d spoken. Mazzucco looked away from the nightshift guy to the small black-and-white screen on the cluttered desk. The screen showed a paused image: a light-colored Porsche Carrera parked by the back pumps. The time stamp said 23:04. Mazzucco flipped back a couple of pages on his notes and compared the license plate to the one on the screen. It was Sarah Dutton’s car, all right.
He asked the manager to run the tape. They watched Kelly get out and lock the car with the key fob. They watched her come into the office. They watched her go back out again. They watched her fill up, unlock the car, and get back in the driver’s seat. They watched the car drive toward the camera and then turn and exit the frame.
Just like the nightshift guy said, right there in crisp, silent black-and-white. Except there was one detail that looked off.
“Run it again,” Mazzucco said.
The three of them watched the sequence again. Halfway through, Mazzucco worked out what was wrong with the picture.
It took us twenty minutes to drive to Boden’s place. He lived in a modest bungalow in Reseda. There were a few photographers loitering outside, but not enough to count as a mob. We ignored them and headed for the door. I kept my sunglasses on and my head down, but the focus was on Boden. He ignored a few yelled questions, not giving them so much as a glance. I noticed a tired edge to the questions: they’d get bored of being ignored soon, which meant Boden was handling them in exactly the right way. He opened the door and I followed him inside. He waved a hand at the living room.
“Get you a coffee or something? I’d offer you a beer, but I guess it’s early.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
The living room, like the rest of the house, was small and neatly kept. Two leather couches, a coffee table, a bookshelf, and a big-screen TV were the only items of furniture. There were framed pictures on top of the bookshelf. Some of them showed a thin, serious-looking woman in her late thirties, others a dark-haired girl I guessed was Kelly at various stages of her life. Boden caught me looking at them and nodded.
“That’s her.”
“Your wife’s not around anymore?” I asked.
“How do you know that?”
“Kelly’s a kid in all the pictures with her. And all the ones of her by herself look like they were taken on film, not digital.”
Boden smiled grimly. “You are good, Blake. Mary took off in 2000. Haven’t heard from her in ten years. I suppose you could find her, if you put your mind to it.”
“Would you want me to?”
“I guess I wouldn’t. Maybe she’ll get in touch anyway, if she hears about . . .” His voice cracked a little and he recovered. “About Kelly.”
I sat down on one of the couches and cast my eyes about the room, thinking that I didn’t really have a reason for taking Boden’s father up on his invitation. I was about as satisfied as I could be that Kelly hadn’t been personally targeted by her killer, so it was unlikely I’d learn anything important here. I had a good idea what he was going to ask me, and I knew I’d be turning him down. But then again, you never know exactly what’s going to be important.
Boden took his eyes from the photographs and turned to me. His eyes were glassy, the skin around them red.
“So tell me again, what’s your interest in this guy?”
“I think I can stop him.”
“You don’t think the police can handle it?”
I considered the loaded question carefully. “Normally, I think they could.”
“Normally?”
“I don’t think this guy is normal. I think he’ll kill again and then move on before the cops get close to him. If he disappears, we might not get another shot at him.”
Boden’s eyes narrowed and I wondered if I’d given too much away, let on that there was a personal element here. But he didn’t follow through on the suspicion, if he had one. “Maybe he’ll move on anyway, now that they found the bodies.”
I nodded. “It’s a risk. But I don’t think he’s done yet.”
“You say that as if it were a good thing,” Boden said, grimacing. “Blake, I have about twenty-two thousand dollars in a savings account.”
I started shaking my head, and he held a hand up.
“Now, I know that probably doesn’t sound like a lot to you, and I can’t pay you up front, but if you find this bastard, you can have it all.”
“No deal.”
His eyes narrowed again. “Not enough, huh?”
“That’s not it. This one is free.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. “And why would you work for free?”
“Call it community spirit.”
“Funny way for a consultant to operate.” Boden glanced at the pictures of his daughter again. “And what you do with him when you find him. Is that free?”
“I’m not a contract killer.”
“You’re not a lot of things, aren’t you? Not a cop, not a bounty hunter, not a hit man. I’ll ask again. What happens when you find him?”
“I guess I’ll know when I find him.”
“How long do you need?” the skinny twenty-something tech asked as he looked up from his twin monitors.
Allen considered the question and decided she had no idea. “How long can you give me?”
The tech sat back in his swivel chair and scratched the facial hair he was attempting to cultivate below his bottom lip. “I have a report I need to finish by three o’clock. I could go around the block for a cup of coffee. That usually takes fifteen minutes.”
“Could it take twenty?”
He grimaced and looked down at the Lakers tickets Allen had handed him, reading the seat details printed above the barcode. “Section 320. That sounds like the nosebleed section.”
Allen narrowed her eyes in irritation. The tickets had cost her two hundred bucks, and he was griping about twenty minutes? She leaned in closer. “I think we’re about to have a nosebleed section right here.”
Her phone buzzed once for a text message, and she took it out to see if it was Mazzucco. It was from Denny, probably looking to make up after last night. She deleted it unread and looked back at the tech expectantly.
He smirked and got up. “Okay, deal. But if anybody asks, you guessed my password.”
“What is your password?”
“Nice try.”
The tech disappeared with his Lakers tickets and went in search of caffeine. Allen sat down in the chair and adjusted it before turning her attention to the screen. The National Crime Information Center, the NCIC database for short, was the FBI’s key resource for identifying links between crimes committed across state lines. In other words, it was the ideal tool for the job currently in front of Allen. In the spirit of cooperation, the FBI provided mediated access to local law enforcement in all fifty states. Gaining access to the system wasn’t exactly restricted for cops, but there was generally a waiting period and a paper trail. The basketball tickets had removed those barriers, but Allen knew there was nothing she could do about the indelible electronic trail that would be left by her search, should anybody have cause to look for it. She knew the likelihood of Mr. Lakers covering for her was roughly equal to that of his team sweeping the playoffs, but she’d decided it was a risk worth taking. If she didn’t find evidence of the killer’s work during the gap years, her search would probably go unnoticed. One additional query in the hundreds of thousands run through the system each year from across the country.
If she found what she was expecting to, however, someone else would come looking for the same information, sooner or later. The realization was beginning to dawn on her that she’d need to talk to somebody about her suspicions, and if she wanted to hold on to any sort of involvement with the case, it would have to be soon.