“So, when you get a new client, how do you give him the key?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you have a new client, do you interview them out here, then give them a key while they watch? Or do you prepare the key ahead of time?”
“Hmmmm. I see what you’re getting at. I never made their keys in front of them. I usually made a key ahead of a first full session. This would happen after an initial interview and discussion of how we would work together. After the completion of a successful session, I would reward them with a key programmed for their use.”
“So they never watched you make their keys?”
“No.”
“How many card keys do you have issued to yourself?” Ivy asked.
Hunter stiffened and hesitated before answering. “I only have one.”
“Are you sure?” Court asked.
“Yes. I’m certain. I have only one card key. Why?”
“And, who all had access to the coder box?” he asked.
She walked around the desk. She opened the door to a shelf and waved at the empty space. “It was here. Any of my clients could have come in and used it if I was busy in my dressing room—if they had the time and my passwords to my computer. You can’t make a new card without the password. They all left before me, except for Berkeley when he spent the night.” She lowered herself into the chair and stared at the shelf. “He would be alone here for hours. I suppose he could have made a copy, but … I have to log into the computer and I never gave him my passwords. I don’t know how he could have done it.”
Court didn’t tell her that every one of her clients was a suspect. But, if Drummond had the most access, it was reasonable to assume he could have made the second key and given it to someone. But who? Audrey Drummond had said she didn’t want anything to do with the dominatrix her husband was seeing. She claimed to have compartmentalized his relationship with the domme and put it on ignore. Maybe Drummond had a mistress who would join him after Hunter had left. That could explain the second key being used after Drummond’s sessions on Wednesday nights, but not the other entries when he wasn’t around.
“Your clients come from a variety of professions, don’t they? Any computer programmers in the mix?”
Hunter leaned back against the chair, her eyes slightly unfocused. “Yes. Several. But, I can’t imagine any of my clients betraying me.” She shook her head. “You have all their information if you’ve gone through my iPad. They’re all there.”
Ashena would have a list for them soon, but some of those numbers were bound to get them nowhere. “You’ve got everyone coded. Can you help us out and give us the legal names to go with the flowers?”
“Sure.” She opened her eyes wide. “I’ll hand over my whole confidential list and expect all my guys to be fine with it. Right.”
“You do sarcasm well, Ms. Hunter,” he said.
“Thank you, Detective.”
He let it go for now. If Ashena couldn’t back-trace all the numbers, he’d get the warrant. “How often do you review the system or how the keys were actually being used?”
Hunter shook her head slowly. “I don’t. I figured, since everyone shows up on time, the keys are working the way they are supposed to.”
“So, you’re telling us you don’t pull up the report and check it out from time to time?” Ivy asked.
“No. I suppose I should, but, I didn’t see a reason to.”
“Tell us about the reboot of the system eight weeks ago,” Court said.
Hunter’s head jerked up and her eyebrows angled toward the center of her forehead. “Oh … the break-in.” She shook her head from side to side as if clearing it. “Yeah, I had forgotten all about that. The reader box was smashed off the wall, and I had Haubek out to replace it. They wiped the system and told me to issue new cards to everyone. So, I did.”
“Did you file a police report?” Court asked.
“No. They didn’t take anything other than a little statue worth maybe fifty bucks. They left my computer. All the equipment in the other room.”
“Did you ask yourself why someone would break in and not take anything?” Ivy asked.
“It turns out all the other offices were broken into the same night, but it was the psychologist down the hall who was the real target. Someone had taken several files from his office and broken the locks on the other offices as a cover. Little knickknacks were taken from everyone, but nothing of value.”
The reports by the other tenants would be on file, and it would be easy to verify her story when they got back to the station. “Why didn’t you file a report? You need a police report to file with your insurance,” Ivy said.
“Insurance? I don’t carry renter’s insurance anymore. Weren’t you listening earlier? I don’t call the police because … they are the police. Look, four years ago, I was broken into, back at my old place, and I had ten thousand dollars' worth of costumes and equipment stolen. The police did nothing but make off-color sarcastic jokes about what I did for living. They told me I was lucky they didn’t arrest me for soliciting. One actually felt me up.”
Court bristled. There were bad cops everywhere, power junkies who got off on intimidating other people. He kept his distance from them. “Okay, you don’t trust the police to take care of you. I don’t think you’re being fair. Most of us are good people. But, it explains why you didn’t file the report.”
Ivy opened the report Ashena had given them, placing it flat on the empty desk. “This is a printout of your card key report. There are two with your name assigned to them. Those highlighted in blue show your original key. The yellows are from a duplicate key assigned to you, but only in use for the last six weeks.”
Hunter flipped back and forth between the pages. Her face drained of color. “I only have one key. And, the yellow lines show someone coming in when I wasn’t around.” She poked at two times stamps for 2:00 a.m. “I’ve never been here that late. Ever. Someone has been sneaking in and out of here for six weeks? Without me knowing it?” She slammed her clenched fist against the desk. “What the hell? Do I have a stalker?”
“We’re thinking someone discovered your connection to Drummond, then planned a very meticulous murder,” Ivy said.
“But, why?” Hunter gathered her hair away from her face and twisted it into a ponytail. “They would have no way of knowing when they could actually do something. My not being here Wednesday was a total fluke. I never miss sessions. It was the first time. Ever.”
Court tapped the yellow lines showing entries late on Wednesday nights. “Can you tell us if Drummond spent the night on any of these evenings?”
Hunter examined the dates. She compared her calendar to the list and pointed out three of the days. “These. Oh. God. Someone was sneaking in here while Berkeley was sleeping in the other room?” Her voice had dropped to a whisper as it sunk in.
Ivy marked the matching dates. “So, the killer was following Drummond, learned where he was going on Wednesday nights. Then, he figured out how to fake a card key, and spent the next few weeks working on a plan.”
“Maybe, he was going to wait until the next time Drummond spent the night. When you canceled, he took the opportunity to kill him instead of waiting any longer,” Court said.
“How would the killer know I had canceled?”
Court used a finger to trace along the last yellow line on the list: 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. “So, I’m the killer. I see you leave the building at four fifteen. I’ve been watching for weeks, so I know you don’t usually go away. I wait fifteen minutes before coming up.”
Court scanned the room again, trying to figure out what came next. “The desk. Your iPad was on the desk. You came back Friday to get it?”
She nodded and tapped the desk. “It was right here.”
“Do you have all your devices on cloud messaging?”
“Yes. If he came in here and saw my iPad, he could have seen my message to Berkeley telling him I would be late. It would have been on
the iPad, too.”
“Okay, so he was inside here, poking around. He saw you were going to be late, and decided to stay. You told Drummond to come at his regular time and wait because the card key would only let him in at his usual time. The killer knew this and figured he had about half an hour to do his thing.”
“But, why would Berkeley have shown up at all? I had canceled.”
Court flipped to the transcription of the texts and tapped on the last one. “Because, Drummond turned off his cell phone at six thirty when he got in the car to come over here. He never got your last message.”
17
Court scanned the street as they left Hunter’s building. The sun didn’t set until about six p.m. Someone sitting in a car on the street or standing around watching would have been able to see Hunter come out of the building. She would probably have come out of the private tenant parking, but the killer likely knew the make and model of her car and would have recognized her.
“Let’s make sure we look at the garage surveillance beginning at three Wednesday afternoon,” Court said.
Ivy checked her watch. “My husband and I have tickets to the ballet tonight. A babysitter and everything. I need to call him let him know what’s going on.”
Was she excited to have to cancel her plans? Maybe. It was her first official case. Ivy hadn’t said much about her family. It made most people uncomfortable to think about having their kids healthy and alive, knowing that his had died. He wasn’t anti-kid or anything. He had loved and lost a child once. That had been even more unbearable than Amanda killing herself. That had been a fuck-you move. Bailey’s death? It was every parent’s nightmare.
“Yeah. I have plans tonight, too.” They both pulled out their phones. Ivy walked a few feet away while Court used texts. Instead of canceling, though, he told his sister he’d be on the late end. The party for his twin niece and nephew started at five. There was no way he could make it by then. He wouldn’t tell her he wasn’t coming until he was absolutely sure there was no way of sneaking out for a couple of hours.
The teens across the street were in a single line, leaning against the mini-mart’s wall, taking advantage of the thin line of shade. Court stopped Ivy from heading to the garage and directed her toward the little café instead.
“Let’s talk to those kids over there before we leave. They might have seen something.” He pointed to the sandwiches in the front case of the café, holding up his fingers for six of them. He grabbed six bottles of juice from the cold case and handed them to Ivy, then stuck one of his cards in each of the sandwich bags as the clerk rang him up.
The teens eyed them warily as they crossed the street and approached them but didn’t budge. A girl with stringy hair and too much eyeliner eyed the bags with obvious interest.
“Afternoon, folks,” Court said. As he got close, he noticed plenty of gender-bending going on, guessing that saying “Afternoon, ladies” would have won him more hostility than anything. The leader took a step back as Court fished out his badge and introduced himself and Ivy. “I’ve got some sandwiches and juice here. Anyone interested?”
The oldest-looking one, the one who had earlier waved off the john in the car, stepped forward, clearly speaking for the group. “And what do you want in return?”
Court shrugged and passed out sandwiches, not waiting until a deal had been brokered. “Not much. I want to ask a few questions.”
Hands reached for the sandwiches. Ivy handed over the juices, but no one opened anything. Their leader crossed her arms, refusing the proffered bag of food, eyes narrowing into slits. “What kind of questions?”
Court indicated the building across the street. “There was a death there on Wednesday night. My partner and I are trying to figure out what happened. Seems like you hang around here enough to maybe have seen something. We have no interest in anything you all are doing here. There’s nothing wrong with hanging out, right? We need to know about anything or anyone you saw heading into or leaving from four p.m. onward on Wednesday.”
The girl relaxed a fraction, her eyes flicking toward a slowing car.
Court followed her gaze. He stepped in a little closer and whispered. “There are a lot of guys around here needing directions, eh?” He wanted it to be perfectly clear there was going to be no repercussions on their other activities—not from him, and not at the moment anyway. He’d need to make a call to CPS later. He had at least three of them figured for under fifteen.
She nodded and reached for the last sandwich.
“Were any of you hanging out here on Wednesday evening?” Ivy asked, passing the last juice to the girl in charge.
“We were all here. Plus about, like, four others. But, you know. We’re staying at this shelter. And like, we have to be back there like by seven thirty for dinner. They feed us and lock us in, like prisoners, but, it’s a place to sleep.”
“If you were here until close to seven thirty, maybe you can try remembering anything you saw starting at four?”
The others opened their sandwiches, taking tentative bites. He saw two of them notice his card, flash him a look and stick it in their pockets. One looked at him, held the card up between a couple of fingers, and let it drift to the sidewalk.
“There were only, like, regular people walking around. Nothing unusual. Like, for around here anyway.”
Ivy pointed to the spot where Drummond’s car had been parked. “Remember seeing a green Audi parked there?”
As a group they all turned to look at their leader. There was no mistaking the sense of recognition these kids had for the Audi.
The leader’s face softened, her eyes narrowing in concern. “You mean Mr. Drummond?”
They knew him by name? “Tell me about Mr. Drummond.” Court was more than a little interested in what this group had to say about him. His late-night internet search had shown Drummond had a softness for homeless youth. Did they know about his foundation? Or, given how the one girl was checking out every car passing by, was there another, darker side to Berkeley Drummond?
The leader paused, sucked in her lower lip, gnawing at it for a few seconds before answering. “He’s been parking there and going inside the building like forever. Every Wednesday. Like clockwork, ya know?”
The other kids gathered close, a supportive gesture, but Court could see the curiosity on their faces.
A blonde girl stepped up even with the leader. “Did he do something wrong? Is he okay?”
“Actually, we’re investigating his death.”
The leader of the group looked down, letting her sandwich slide back into her bag. Others stopped mid-bite. “He was here. He parked as usual and came over to say hello.” Others nodded as if to confirm what she’d said, but no one else stepped forward to speak. “So, like, he came over, gave us each like twenty bucks, like normal. Asked us the usual. Went inside.”
“What do you mean by usual? Did he do this every week?”
The girl glanced up at Court, her eyes glistening with pooling tears. She was having a hard time holding it together.
“Once, he brought us all some jackets. He makes them, you know? Jackets and pillows and shit. He said he was going to make sure we get new sleeping bags like next week.”
According to its website, Colchuck Down made several products filled with high-quality goose down, most of it imported from China. The ever-increasing links between Northwest companies and China could not be coincidence. He would visit the company on Monday when it was open. Manufacturing or not, it was closed all weekend, and getting in touch with anyone from the company had proved futile.
“Okay. So, he comes over, gives you some cash and heads back over to the building. Then what?”
Leader-girl shrugged. “He disappeared inside. I’ve never, like, been inside that place. It’s not teen friendly.”
Someone behind her let out a derisive laugh. “Not street-teen-friendly anyway.” It was interesting that the kid used the term “street-teen,” not “homeless youth.” Court would
have to remember that one.
Drummond was kind to this group. They appeared willing, almost eager to help. “You never saw Mr. Drummond come back outside?”
The kids looked at each other, their heads shaking and shoulders shrugging. “Like I said earlier. We have to be back at the shelter before lockdown. We never saw him leave. His car is sometimes still here in the morning, like, maybe once a month? I figured he has, like, some sort of girlfriend in one of the apartments above.”
“Can you all concentrate on Wednesday night? Close your eyes for a second and picture anyone coming or going from the building Wednesday evening. Anyone you’ve never seen before? Anyone unusual?”
One kid at the back had his eyes pointedly trained on his sandwich, but he didn’t say anything. The others were unable to add anything new.
Ivy reached down to pick up a fly away napkin and stuffed it into her pocket. “Thanks, guys. If you can think of anything. If you remember anything new. Give us a call.”
Court kept his eyes on the kid in the back who continued to studiously avoid making eye contact with him or Ivy. He was uneasy about something, but Court didn’t think pointing it out in front of the gang would go over very well. The kid had his card.
Back in the garage, Court and Ivy agreed that Hunter was not a strong suspect. She had been obviously weirded out when she learned about the second key and its use. If she was involved, it was most likely via an accomplice. There was the fact Hunter was also a pretty convincing actress to take into account. The likelihood she would murder someone she considered her biggest client was pretty low, too. There was always the possibility she’d been hired by another client to make it happen. Maybe Ashena would have her client list all sussed out by now. It didn’t sound reasonable, but then again, what was reasonable about killing someone?
Court leaned against the car after Ivy had climbed inside, lost in his thoughts. He wanted to take all the kids to a shelter, or put them up in a hotel for the night. The nights were getting cooler, and they would soon be fighting off winter. Court’s stomach always flipped and churned when he encountered homeless youth—no, street teens. Most were on their own because living at home was impossible for them. Some had mental-health issues; others were gay or queer. Some were runaways, but most were kicked out by parents who couldn’t accept them.
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