by Thomas Perry
Detective Miguel Fuentes watched the image appear on his computer screen. “There it is,” he said. “Here are all the LPR hits on Ballantine’s Lexus’s license plate in the year before his murder.”
“How many hits?” Sid said.
“Twenty-six. The database now has an average of twenty-two hits for every one of the seven million cars registered in Los Angeles County. Of course the information is still random. The readers on the patrol cars are on all the time, recording new plates while they scan for plates on the hot list, but there are plates that get lots of sightings, and some that get none.”
“His ex-wife says she sold his car after he died,” said Ronnie. “Do you know what sort of examination Detective Kapp gave it before he released it?”
“I haven’t seen a record of the search,” said Fuentes. “It wasn’t found at a crime scene or anything, and if something had turned up we’d know, but Kapp wasn’t a beginner. I’m sure he had the forensics people go to work on it before he let her sell it.”
Sid and Ronnie exchanged a glance. “Do you know who owns it now?”
“I’ll use the VIN number to track it.”
A moment later he said, “It’s in Nevada. Clark County.”
“A breakthrough,” said Ronnie. “When we die our cars go to Las Vegas for the afterlife.”
Sid said, “Can you print the new owner’s name and address and then go back to the Los Angeles map?”
“Sure,” said Fuentes. He printed the Nevada registration, and then the Los Angeles map reappeared on his screen.
“Did you see something?” Ronnie asked.
Sid said, “Can you print that too?”
Fuentes clicked Print and Sid reached to the tray and picked up the two printed pages. He handed Ronnie the map of Los Angeles County and pointed at a spot in the northern end of the San Fernando Valley.
“What is it?” asked Fuentes.
“A license plate reader picked up the Lexus about a block from one of the housing developments last March, shortly before Ballantine died,” said Ronnie.
“What does that tell you?”
“Nothing conclusive,” Sid said. “But I think it strengthens our theory as to where the crime scene might be.”
Ronnie said, “It’s an opening in the ground that’s been gone for a year and paved over.”
“Thanks, Miguel,” said Sid. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Where are you going?” Fuentes asked.
“I think we’d like to take a look at some of the other places where license plate readers spotted Ballantine’s car.”
When they were outside, Ronnie said, “Are we really going to do that?”
“Not me,” said Sid. “But there’s no reason to tell him that the only lead we have right now is what he just gave us.”
20
It was morning. Nicole knew that much. She lay in the hotel room with the opaque curtains pulled shut where they met in the center of the big window and were pressed against the wall by two chairs so that no sliver of sunlight would penetrate their dark room.
Nicole heard the sound of the maid’s cart being pushed along the carpeted hallway, and then a loud rap on the door of a room not far enough from theirs. “Housekeeping,” the maid called. “Housekeeping.” It was the third time Nicole had heard the cart rattling along, and then the voice. She thought dark, angry thoughts about people who didn’t bother to hang DO NOT DISTURB signs on their doors. Then she realized that she and Ed could easily be the only ones still in a room. Maybe the doors didn’t have signs up because the people had checked out. She devoted a few seconds to hating them anyway, and then rolled over and closed her eyes again.
She lay there on her side for three or four minutes. She heard the sound of the cart rattling again, another door opening, and then a couple of sets of heavy footsteps and the rumble of two wheeled suitcases going down the hallway. There was the mumbled conversation of two men. Untroubled, unthinking men. That was a reassuring sound.
Nicole opened an eye to see the hotel’s alarm clock on the bedside table. The red digits said 10:43. It was late, but she hadn’t had enough sleep. She and Ed had been up all night.
Nicole had once worked as a hotel maid, and she had hated it. She didn’t want to pick on this woman, who was living through the hard, irritating, and occasionally humiliating experience that she’d had to endure. She was tempted to swing open the door and get a look at her, but she wouldn’t.
She looked over at Ed. He was a big animal lying there sleeping through the sounds because they meant nothing to his brain. The noises didn’t include a sound of another animal trying to do him serious harm, so his brain discounted them.
Nicole rolled onto her back and faced the rough white ceiling, but she could see nothing except the red eye of the smoke detector. By now the gang of men who had attacked her house would know that the three who had stayed to search the house were dead. Would they be afraid? No. They were not the kind to be afraid, but they had terrified her. When she’d picked up the guns the three dead men carried, she had seen they were identical Czech Scorpion submachine guns. Who carried those?
They had been weirdly disciplined and interchangeable, as though they had no selves. Insects were like that. People tended to act together in a mob that would fall apart as soon as the numbers weren’t needed anymore. These men had arrived and taken their positions as though they’d assaulted similar houses a hundred times before. And when they had determined that the Hoyts weren’t in the house waiting for them, they had moved off together without making a noise or drawing any attention to themselves. The last three had already entered the house and taken a look around, so the most efficient way of searching the house was to leave them and let them finish the search while the others did what—returned to the hive?
“How come you’re awake?” asked Ed.
“Nerves.”
“Oh.” He sat up in the bed and rubbed his eyes.
“Those guys last night knew who we were. They were sent to kill us.”
“I get that,” Ed said. “We were afraid all along that Boylan might have told the client who we were, and now we know he did. Feel like going back and killing him again?”
“I do,” said Nicole. “I wish we could. Or that we could undo it.”
“We’re better off than we were before, because we used the time we had to prepare for shooters. We didn’t just sit there in front of the TV hoping everything was going to be okay. We now know it isn’t, but we got out in time.”
“You call that better off?”
“We’re not dead,” he said. “That’s pretty good. And come to think of it, I didn’t bother to count, but just from eyeballing the money we stashed and put in our bugout kits, I think we got more money out of Boylan in one night than we ever would have gotten.”
“We stole that money,” said Nicole.
“So what? Where do you think the client got it? Milking cows?”
“I don’t mean I care about that. I just mean that we didn’t make a clever business deal. We committed a murder and robbery.”
“A self-defense and robbery,” said Ed. “Killing Boylan wasn’t even a murder.”
She said, “Legal details don’t matter. We’re in a very bad position. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t have my wily master plan just yet,” he said. “For the moment we try to make ourselves hard to find. Then we learn who the client is, so we can kill him.”
Nicole sat up and folded her arms while she thought. The more she thought about the two parts of Ed’s proposal, the less fault she could find with them. Of course they would try not to be found by the insect squad. That was practically a reflex, like ducking your head when you saw a rock flying your way. The other part, finding the client and killing him, was not inevitable. She had, until now, assumed that she and Ed would be leaving today on the first of a series of interstate highways. Ed’s plan would prevent them from running away just yet, but it did seem to promise a solution that wo
uld last.
“I guess that’s what we’ll do, then,” she said. She scooted off the bed and turned on a lamp beside it. “If you want to pee before I take my shower, now’s the time.”
He swept the covers off his legs. “Thanks. I’ll take you up on that.”
He went into the bathroom, and as he came out, she sidestepped into the doorway at the same time. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re such a badass,” she said. “I feel better now.”
“Me too,” he said. “I don’t have to take a piss anymore.”
She went inside and closed the door, and in a moment Ed heard the shower running. He opened his bag and started laying out his clothes. He would want something dark, with a loose shirt that would hide a gun.
21
“What are you looking up?” Sid asked.
“Girlfriends.” Ronnie didn’t look up from the computer screen on the table in their hotel room. “I’m chasing the money idea. I want to see if any of Ballantine’s girlfriends had enough money to buy him a house. I’m starting with Emily Prosser.”
He went to the desk and opened the other laptop. “I can see what building permits have been taken out with her name as the architect since the decorating job at Intercelleron.”
“Good,” said Ronnie. “I’m running a credit check on her. If anybody asks you, she applied for a loan from Abels agency.”
“I’ll also see if there’s any real estate in her name on the tax rolls.”
They were long practiced at using easily accessible information bases to find out about people, and they set the forces in motion quickly. There would be waiting time for some of the information, and Sid used the time to study the police license plate reader data on James Ballantine’s car. After Sid had plotted Ballantine’s route from his apartment to Intercelleron and his likely route to the nearest and most convenient supermarket, about half the sightings were explained. The rest appeared almost random at first. When Ronnie called him over to the table, he spread the maps and notes out on the bed and joined her.
“Here it is,” she said. “Emily Prosser’s stuff. Let’s start with the Building and Safety permits.” She opened the file.
Sid ran his eyes down the list. “Not much. I see the permit for the Intercelleron project. After that, all I see is two jobs, both remodeling of single-family homes, about a year apart. Let’s see her credit check.”
Ronnie closed the Building and Safety report, and opened the credit check. “Oops, not so good. Four credit cards canceled, two open. Lots of late payments, and one of the two open cards is the kind where you deposit money to lend back to yourself and repair your credit rating.”
“Let’s see if she owns any real estate.”
Ronnie opened the reply from the county clerk’s office. “None found. None in Orange County either.”
“So Emily wasn’t going to be the one to buy him his dream house,” said Sid. “I guess it was true love.”
Ronnie craned her neck to look at him. “That doesn’t deserve an answer. Go back to figuring out what the license plate sightings mean.”
Sid returned to the desk and looked at the maps again. After about twenty minutes, he looked up. “Veronica?”
“What?”
“Where is that list of girlfriends?”
“In the electronic device of your choice. I typed it into my notes on this case, and also sent the list to you in an e-mail. Sorry to hide it under your nose like that.”
“Did you include the addresses?”
“Yes.”
He went into his e-mail, found one from Ronnie, and opened it. Then he marked an address on the Los Angeles street map, and picked up the map of the license plate sightings.
“Mira Cepic.”
“Yes. I didn’t forget the name. She’s the last one on the list.”
“Mira Cepic lives really close to the place where Ballantine got stuffed into the sewer. About three blocks.”
Ronnie went to look over his shoulder at the street map, and he pointed at the mark he’d made for Mira Cepic’s address. “She lives on Wintergarden.” Then he pointed at a mark three blocks north of there. “And here’s Clovermeadow Lane.”
She walked back toward the table where she’d left her laptop. “Let’s get some background before we get into this. I’ll run a credit check on her too. You do the search for assets in Mira Cepic’s name.”
“I’ll make it anybody with the same surname. It might turn up a husband or a parent, if she’s got one.”
“Good. In fact, I think we should buy complete background checks from the skip-trace company.”
“Might as well get some use out of the fee we pay just to be on their client list.”
They were silent as they set more forces into motion. After a few minutes of work, Sid said, “I’m getting the sense that Mira Cepic wasn’t born here. I’m not seeing anything about schools, or the names of employers.”
“Why don’t we jerk the government around a little?”
“Okay. I’m adding a request for a criminal background check on her through the skip-trace company. The criminal ones usually come back with a Social Security number.”
“Good,” said Ronnie. “If we get the number, I’ll be Mira for a while and fill out a request for my immigration status with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.”
“It could take a day or so. Just make sure our lawyer is on speed dial.”
“Always,” she said.
Ed Hoyt had placed the three cell phones in a row. He turned them all on and pressed the little picture of a telephone on the display of the first one, the second, the third. He looked from one to the next.
“Ready.” Nicole had the hotel room’s pen and note pad.
“I see a couple of numbers all three Russians had calls from.” He read them off with the dates, and Nicole wrote them down.
Ed studied the phone lists and found six more numbers that had called or been called on all three phones. He found twelve that were on two phones. Then he turned off the three phones. “Might as well save the batteries,” he muttered.
Nicole looked at her list and pointed. “All three of these guys got calls from this number on the day they came to get us at our house. The others all seem to be a bit more random. One or two of them called in a day, and then the other a week later or something.”
“Okay. Then the number that called them all could be the head of the group,” said Ed. “He must have been organizing these guys to go bother us.”
“You know what else is interesting?” said Nicole. “These three don’t seem to have called each other. Hardly ever, anyway.”
“What do you think that means?”
“That they talked without phones,” she said. “I’ll bet they were roommates.”
“Could be.”
“So what do you want to do?” Nicole asked.
“Let’s start by getting the billing addresses connected with all these numbers. I’ll call Ron at the phone sales service and tell him to get started on it.”
He took out his own cell phone and dialed the number of his friend Ron at the telemarketing company.
Sid and Ronnie Abel drove east from their hotel to Ventura Boulevard and north on Laurel Canyon, then to Victory Boulevard, and made their way to a rental lot at Burbank airport, where they rented a new car, and transferred the equipment they had brought to the back of it. They drove north and west toward the group of housing developments they visited when they had taken the James Ballantine case.
They headed directly to the streets of new houses surrounding the building site where the person in the car had shot out their windshield.
Ronnie said, “It’s different in the daylight.”
Sid said, “Everything looks different in the daylight.”
“I know. But when we were here before, it seemed desolate, empty. It looked as though there were no people and there never would be any.”
“Not for much longer. Look at the construction si
te now. They put those houses up fast.”
When they reached the intersection with the gravel road Sid slowed down and looked. The few skeletal frames of houses had all grown taller, and now they were clad in sheets of plywood. Roofing material sat in stacks on roofs, and two more foundations had been poured in the past few days.
They passed the spot along Renfrew Street where the dark sedan had been parked on the night when the driver saw the Abels and took off at high speed. Today Sid followed the route he had taken that night when he went in pursuit of the dark sedan. He made the right turn onto Clovermeadow Lane, the residential street where there had been an open storm sewer when Ballantine was killed. He let the car coast along. Then his eyes moved to the houses.
“Interesting,” Sid said. “The place must have sold out quickly.”
Every house appeared to be occupied. There were children, their mothers sitting on porches and patios to watch them, a young man jogging on the street.
“Those are big houses, too,” said Ronnie. “They must be pretty expensive.”
“Seen enough?”
“Yes.”
Sid stopped and completed a three-point turn, and then drove back the way he came. He turned right at the corner.
Ronnie looked at her phone. “The address is 9-7-6-5 Wintergarden Way. The third street.”
They went past two streets that were nearly identical to Clovermeadow, all two-story houses that were identical except for cosmetic variations. Wintergarden was a bit older, and slightly more varied, as though most of the lots had been occupied by houses before the contractor with the pattern took over.
They turned onto the street and drove along slowly, reading the house numbers until they found 9765. It looked like the others in the area, with two floors and an attached two-car garage, a tiny green lawn, and a flowerbed in front. Ronnie used her cell phone to take photographs of the house, and then of the whole block.
The Abels continued to the end of Wintergarden Way and then turned onto the next street, which was called Callalily Street. They cruised up the street, studying the houses that backed up to Mira Cepic’s house. “It doesn’t look as though there’s an easy way from this side to get a look into her house,” Ronnie said.