by Torre, A. R.
Gone.
Gabe had disappeared on a Wednesday. He’d left school around four, according to the CCTV feed by the exit gate of his expensive private school. The camera had captured video of his classic 1969 Mustang, which had pulled left without a turn signal and dropped out of view. The next sighting of the lean soccer star had been at an In-N-Out drive-through, where he’d ordered a Double-Double combo with a large 7UP.
At that point, it was unclear where he went. His Mustang was found in a back parking lot of the Beverly Center mall, in an area not covered by cameras. Its interior was useless, covered in prints from hundreds of different individuals. It was, as one detective noted, probably easier to figure out who hadn’t been in his car than who had. There was no blood inside the Mustang, and the keys were left under the front seat.
Cell triangulations bounced all over the map, and his phone was finally discovered in the back of a stranger’s pickup truck, the driver unaware of its presence.
Gabe had—like five teenage boys before him—just vanished into the city.
I settled back in my chair and pulled out my center drawer, retrieving the bag of gummy bears I kept there. I pulled a green one away from the others.
I didn’t know a lot about Gabe’s disappearance. While I had read practically every news article posted, by that point, the media was starting to tire of the deaths. They were all so similar. Good-looking, smart, athletic, and rich. And, one after another, they were dead. By the time Gabe vanished, Los Angelenos had all become a little calloused at what they knew would inevitably turn up: a naked and mutilated body.
As a city, they stopped caring because they were emotionally exhausted from the mourning. They started to look the other way, grew blind to missing-person posters and bored with the huge rewards and tearful pleas from the families.
I sucked on a red gummy bear. The city and media may have grown bored, but I never had. I’d devoured everything about the murders.
Settling back in my chair, I turned the page, surprised to find that its focus was on Gabe’s family. His mother had died seven years earlier, and I hunched forward, ignoring the chime of the coffee maker. In watching the news reports, I had missed his motherless status. I thought of Robert, sans wedding ring, mentions of his late wife fleeting and detail-free. This felt like a major fact to skip over, especially given her cause of death. Gunshot wound. I stared at the words on the police report, blinking at it just in case my eyes were lying.
Well, that was interesting.
CHAPTER 14
I sat at my round breakfast table and watched Clementine stretch out on the surface, her tail curling atop a spread of photos. Digging a spoon into a large jar of peanut butter, I withdrew a heap of the creamy mixture and reviewed the report on Natasha Kavin’s death.
Some family fates were cursed, others were orchestrated. The chances of Robert Kavin losing both a son and a wife reeked of suspicion, and I could see the evidence of it in these pages. Page after page of detailed notes from the detectives. Multiple interviews with Robert. A transfer of the wife’s file out of cold case and back into active.
Natasha Kavin had been pretty. Hot, actually. That’s how a man would describe her. Thin and blonde, with big, perky boobs that had to be fake, but who cared when they looked that good. My own fairly large breasts did a better job of making me look heavy than they did of arousing anyone.
I stuck the spoon back in the jar and set it to one side. Granted, Robert had seemed to enjoy them. I looked down and squeezed my elbows together, watching as my breasts plumped together nicely with a deep line of cleavage visible below the V-neck of my sweater.
Clem yawned and extended a paw, knocking a page to the floor. I reached down and retrieved it, then looked back at the file. Natasha Kavin had been shot in their home while Robert was out of town and Gabe was upstairs, sleeping. One gunshot wound at close range, in the chest. A maid had found the body the next morning. Ten-year-old Gabe was still in his room, the door locked from the outside.
The door locked from the outside. Someone had underlined that sentence twice and put the words Question Kavin beside it.
Valid, I thought. Who had a lock on the outside of a child’s room?
I leaned back against the wall and thought through it all. It was hard to connect the man in this file—mourning father and widower—to the one who had slid into my booth at the bar. Delivered jokes with a bashful smile. Pressed a kiss into my neck in the taxi. Pinned down my wrists and groaned into my ear when he moved on top of me. Snooped through my personal client files while cooking me breakfast. Brought me flowers and an apology and left a perfect gentleman.
There were certainly two sides to him. That of the single, romantic, and sexual male, and that of the hardened litigator—the one who stood in my office and wanted confidentiality, the one who opened John Abbott’s private file without hesitation, the one who had his son’s death details within easy reach.
Two sides didn’t mean he was manic. I had two sides—my home and my work. Most people do.
Clem purred for attention, and I ran my fingers across her exposed belly, parting the dark-black fur.
The file had a lengthy list of potential suspects in Natasha’s murder. Attorneys weren’t exactly the most popular kids at the lunch table, and a criminal defense lawyer caught heat on both sides. Suspects included criminals Robert hadn’t represented properly and those he’d argued against. I flipped through two pages of potential killers, most of whom had been vetted and discarded, but there were a few . . . My finger paused halfway down a list.
James Whittle. Talk about a blast from the past. James had been one of my first clients, back when I was in residency and working pro bono. He’d been a farm boy from . . . I closed my eyes, trying to remember fifteen years back. South Dakota? I couldn’t remember. I wasn’t advanced enough to have a specialty back then, and James had come in on court orders to work on his anger management. He hadn’t been an easy client, and I had been timid and unconfident—a horrible combination that had led to another more experienced staff member taking over.
Even now, my cheeks burned at how he had rested his hands on top of his bald head and smirked at me, his lips curling upward beneath a wild red beard. He’d ignored half my questions as he had reclined back in the plastic chair, his eyes journeying over me in a lewd way that I hadn’t needed a degree to understand.
I moved my finger to uncover the words next to his name. No alibi. Have not been able to verify current whereabouts.
It didn’t mean anything. Half the names on this list had similar notes. I kept going, pushing the memory of James out of my head and scanning down the rest of the list. No other names were familiar.
On the night his wife died, Robert was in San Francisco. There was a hotel bill in his name, along with a credit card receipt showing a dinner charge at a steak house. One bone-in filet. One bottle of wine. Chocolate mousse. Pricey. He was also an exact twenty-percent tipper, down to the penny.
There was also a handful of phone records and interview logs, all citing file numbers and names that weren’t included. I flipped to the end of the folder and sighed, setting it to the side and picking the jar of peanut butter back up.
So, Robert Kavin meets Natasha. Graduates from law school. Practices criminal law for three years. She gets pregnant. Has a child—Gabe. When Gabe is ten, Natasha is murdered. Case goes unsolved. Seven years pass, and Gabe is kidnapped, then killed. Nine months pass, and Robert sleeps with me, then shows up in my home, asking me to do a psychological profile on his son’s killer.
I took another spoonful of peanut butter and let my mind float over the timeline. Before me was the rest of the file, the thick wedge dedicated to Gabe Kavin’s kidnapping and death. I didn’t have the mental fortitude to go through it tonight. I needed junk television and a long soak in a scalding-hot bath, with an extra scoop of Epsom salts dropped in.
Pushing to my feet, I twisted the lid onto the jar and returned it to the cabinet. Clem went for
my sticky spoon, and I batted her away. “Stop it. Back to the floor.” I took the spoon to the sink and was washing it off when I heard the faint chime of my cell phone. Returning to the table, I opened the text message from Jacob. The receptionist rarely contacted me outside office hours, so I steeled myself, expecting a note that he wouldn’t be able to work in the morning.
Did u see this?
The note was followed by a link to a news article. I tapped on it, opening the page.
BLOODY HEART SUSPECT LAWYERS UP
Randall Thompson’s legal woes have been solved, and the source may surprise you. The man arrested for six murders in the Los Angeles area is now represented by Robert Kavin, criminal litigator and . . . wait for it . . . the father of the Bloody Heart Killer’s sixth victim, Gabe Kavin.
Robert Kavin’s courtroom record is impressive, as are his legal fees. So, how is this high school teacher able to afford his $400 hourly rate? He can’t, which is why Robert Kavin is representing him pro bono.
If you’re scratching your head over this arrangement, you aren’t alone. We tracked down the high-powered attorney to get some answers.
“I’m representing Randall because I believe in his innocence,” Kavin said. “Trust me when I say that I want justice for my son’s death. Justice will not be served if an innocent man serves time for this crime.”
What in all holy . . . I scrolled back up to the top of the article and read it again, then opened a fresh browser window and did a search for Randall Thompson’s attorney, hoping the first article was a spoof.
It wasn’t. There were dozens of articles, all posted within the last couple of hours. Robert was representing Thompson. My psychological profile . . . it would be used by the defense, not the prosecution.
I turned the information over, examining it from all sides. There was no logical reason for Robert to protect the man who’d killed his son. Not to mention, this would turn into a giant legal tangle with mistrial and appeal stamped all over it.
I looked at the file, the open folder mocking me from its innocent place on the table, Gabe Kavin’s grisly details in reach.
What was his father’s game, and why was he pulling me into it?
CHAPTER 15
Robert’s first meeting with Randall Thompson was supervised by four guards and lasted less than ten minutes. An offer of representation was extended, paperwork was signed, and the men parted ways. Robert dipped into his Mercedes, headed toward Beverly Hills. Randall shuffled back to his private cell, his ankle shackles clanking as he moved down the wide hall.
Now, with the appropriate permissions and protections in place, Robert returned to the Men’s Central Jail. He moved through security and intake and waited for Randall Thompson in one of the private meeting rooms, his seat separated from Randall’s by two-inch-thick glass. Seated at a small card table, he used the valuable time to fix the date on his watch.
Randall was considered a high-risk inmate and would be housed in solitary confinement until his trial. Solitary confinement was a blessing for someone like him. The general population welcomed violent pedophiles with a unique brand of gusto.
The door opened, and two uniforms ushered in Randall, who took the lone seat with a heavy sigh.
“When you’re done, just bang on the door,” the guard said.
“This room is private?” Robert confirmed.
“We’ll be watching you through the glass, but there’s no cameras or mikes.”
Robert nodded. “Thank you.”
“You’ve got an hour.” The guard shut the door behind him with a firm click.
The science teacher, who was looking at a minimum of three life terms, surveyed Robert with distrust. “You again?”
“Me again.” He unlocked his tablet. “We need to go over the initial details of your case.”
Randall leaned forward and ran his hands over his white beard. “I’d like to get out of here and go home. I have a dog. I need someone to check on him.”
“The local pet rescue has your dog. They’ll keep it there until you are sentenced or released. If you’re sentenced, they’ll put it up for adoption. If there’s someone you know who will take it, I can arrange that.”
Randall rubbed his index fingers across the bushy white hair above his upper lip. “And you’re doing that for free? That’s what you said.”
“Yes. Completely free.”
“Doesn’t seem right,” the man muttered. He coughed, and something wet rattled in his throat.
“My office takes on a fair amount of pro bono cases.”
“Right, sure,” the man snapped. “But I’m talking about your son. He was killed by this guy, right?”
Robert removed the tablet’s stylus from its holder. “Yes, he was. I disclosed that to you in our first meeting.”
“Well, I was a little distracted then. But since then, I’ve had time to think.” The man inched his chair closer to the glass and lowered his voice. “How do you know I didn’t do it?”
“You don’t have to whisper. No one can hear us.”
His knee jiggled against the bottom of the table. “Your son—what was his name?”
“Gabe.”
The man drummed his thick fingers against the top of the table. “I never had any kids, but I have a nephew I’m close to. It’s, uh . . . I can’t imagine how you feel.”
No, he couldn’t. No one could. And it wasn’t a feeling you’d wish upon anyone else. The only blessing of Natasha’s death was that she didn’t have to experience it alongside him.
“How long ago . . .” His fingers stilled and he looked back up, meeting Robert’s eyes. “Did he, um—was he taken?”
The man’s ignorance of the BH Killer’s history was embarrassing. Then again, if Randall were an expert on the deaths, Robert wouldn’t be representing him.
“He died nine months ago.”
Randall nodded. “So, uh—”
“We need to go over the evidence against you.”
“Well, I don’t even understand how they have evidence.”
He was frustratingly obtuse. Either unwilling or unable to comprehend the fact that he was facing a lifetime behind bars. A year ago, under the prior legislation, he’d have been a candidate for lethal injection.
“Well, there are two things we have to overcome. First, Scott Harden identified you as the person who kidnapped and held him prisoner for seven weeks.”
“He’s lying,” the man said flatly, crossing his arms over his barrel chest. “I told the detectives that.”
“Any reason for him to lie about you? You ever have him as a student? Give him a failing grade? Confront him in the hall over something?”
The man sniffed, then wiped at his nose with the sleeve of his uniform. “He wasn’t one of my students. Was I aware of him? Sure. He’s one of those kids . . . you know the type.” He met Robert’s eyes through the scratched glass. “Thinks he’s untouchable. Always late. Has the school sweetheart hanging on his arm. They get attention.”
He may have been describing Scott, but it was a mirror to Gabe. The boyish, unapologetic smile that softened every action. The confidence that seeped from him. The gaggle of surrounding girls who called every hour, texted during dinner, and commented on every social media post.
“But . . .” Randall scratched the back of his head. “Even though I knew who the kid was, I never . . . Well, I don’t think I ever interacted with him. I don’t know. Maybe I yelled at him to get to class, or not to run in the halls—something like that. Maybe.”
Maybe? Juries hated maybes. For now, Robert let it slide.
“The cops asked about your alibi on the night each victim was taken and when their bodies were dumped. You said, and this is a quote from your questioning, ‘I don’t know. I was most likely at home.’” Robert looked up at him. “We’re going to have to do better than that.”
Randall shifted in the hard plastic seat, and his ankle chains clanked together. “I live alone. I read at night and grade tests. I’m
not sure what to tell you. Unless you can get my dog to vouch for me, they’re just gonna have to believe me.”
“It’s hard to do that, considering the box they found.” On the tablet, Robert pulled up the photo, the one that made his anger rise in almost uncontrollable ways. It was a close-up of a small wooden box filled with a brutal assortment of souvenirs. A driver’s license for victim number one. The lobe of one ear. A slice of skin with a tattoo, carved out of a bicep. A watch, the inside engraved with a graduation date. A Polaroid photo of a boy, his face bruised, lip split, eyes swollen shut. Gabe.
“Yeah.” Randall barely glanced at the photo. “They said they found that in my house.”
“Underneath your bed. How’d it get there?”
The teacher raised his hands. “Who knows? I don’t make a habit of looking under my bed, not unless my glasses fall under there. Do you? Anybody could have stuck it there.”
“How would they get in the house?”
He shook his head in frustration. “Whose side are you on?”
“I’m playing devil’s advocate. You’re going to be asked all these questions during the trial.”
“Look, I DIDN’T TAKE OR HURT ANYONE,” Randall thundered, and if he did it just like that, there was a good chance someone on the jury would believe him. All they needed was one.
“Again, how would someone get in?”
“Someone could open the door and walk in,” he said defiantly. “It’s not like I own anything of value. No one’s robbing me. I lock the doors some of the time, but a lot of times I don’t. If the weather is nice, I open a window. So sue me.”
He didn’t need to be sued. Civil litigation was a moot concern when someone was behind bars for six murders. Six murders and seven kidnappings with aggravated and premeditated assault.
His life, whether he knew it or not, whether Robert got him off or not, was over.
CHAPTER 16
Nita Harden stood at Scott’s door and put her ear to the wood, straining to hear what her son was saying.