Grave of Angels

by Michael Prescott

  “Why don’t you just tell me who this man is and where to find him?”

  “Because I’d rather keep you busy tracking him down while Mrs. Brewer makes certain arrangements.”

  “What sort of arrangements?”

  “Not to sound crass, but after all I’ve done for Chelsea, I’m hopeful that my services will be rewarded.”

  “So you do want a ransom.”

  “Not a ransom. A reward. For saving your client and returning her unharmed. I’m a Good Samaritan, just like in the Bible. But even Good Samaritans deserve to get paid.”

  “How much?”

  “I’ll send you the details via e-mail. All I need is your private e-mail address.”

  She gave him the address of a Gmail account she used for personal business.

  “Good enough. You’ll have the details a minute after I hang up. I’ll call back in two hours to make final arrangements. That’ll be at four a.m. Have the items ready by then. If you could pack them in a valise for easy transport, I’d appreciate it.”

  She noted his surreal civility. Sam had told her Swann was polite. “We’ll do everything you ask. It’s the least we can do, considering your services rendered.”

  “Nice of you to say so. I knew we’d get along, Sister Kate. I did some background research on you. I could tell you were someone who’d be sensible. Though I still can’t factor in the whole God thing. You strike me as too intelligent to fall for that airy-fairy stuff.”

  “Maybe I’m not as smart as you think.”

  “Or maybe you really don’t believe. Could that be it?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  He clucked his tongue. “There you go, lying to me again. You have an obvious tell. Your breathing slows down. I heard it just now, when you told me you believe in God.”

  “I’ll have to watch that.”

  “So when did you lose your faith? Or did you never have any?”

  “I’d rather not go into that.”

  “Fair enough. Though I’d like to hear the story someday. You interest me, and I…wait a minute.” His voice changed, hardened. “What is this? What the fuck is this?”

  She gripped the phone. “What’s wrong, Jack?”

  “You bitch. You lying bitch.”

  “What’s the matter? What’s happened? Talk to me.”

  “I told you, God damn it, no police.”

  “There aren’t any—” But even as she said it, her peripheral vision registered a flicker beyond the living room windows. She turned in that direction and saw the pulsating glow of a squad car’s light bar beating against the glass.

  “Call the police, and Chelsea will suffer.” His voice was ragged over the tattoo of his footsteps. He was in motion, the sound quality deteriorating. “You heard me say that. And you called them anyway. You disobeyed. After all I’ve done for her, you disobeyed!”

  A crest of fear broke in her, fear of what he was about to do. “Listen to me, Jack. I didn’t call them. I didn’t do anything. I wouldn’t be that stupid. It’s some kind of mistake, but we can fix it. We can work it out—”

  “Fuck you. Nothing to work out. We had a deal. You blew it.”

  She heard a rattling sound. A chain? A padlock?

  “You fucked up and Chelsea pays the price!”

  “Jack, for God’s sake—”

  “You wanted to hear from Chelsea? You can hear her now.”

  Sounds of a scuffle, then a scream.

  “You hear her, Kate?”

  Chelsea, screaming.

  “You hear her?”

  A sudden percussive roar, and the phone went silent.

  “Jack!” Kate shouted, but no one was there. The call was over.

  And the last sound she’d heard had been a gunshot.

  KATE snapped the phone shut. Her hand was shaking.

  “What happened?” Victoria stared at her. “What went wrong?”

  “The police…he is watching the house. He saw the car pull up…”

  “What about Chelsea?”

  Kate drew a breath. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what did you hear? What happened?”

  “I don’t know!” She threw Victoria a furious glare. “Why the hell is there a police car in your driveway? We agreed not to call the police.”

  Victoria’s hands fluttered. “I…I didn’t.”

  “Someone called them. Who else could it be?”

  “I didn’t do it! I was never out of your sight!”

  That was true, of course. Kate would have realized it, if she’d taken a moment to think. But she was rattled. She kept hearing the girl’s scream and the gun’s report.

  She flung down her cell phone and headed for the door, Victoria at her side. Sam had disappeared, absenting himself with a convict’s instinctive avoidance of the authorities.

  The driveway sloped below street level to form a little clearing ringed by eucalyptus trees. Kate glanced around, uneasily aware that Swann or an accomplice was watching right now. Somehow there were eyes on her. It reminded her of the wildness of these hills, the coyotes and bobcats that still roamed here. Predators with lean, sinewy bodies and iridescent eyes.

  In the driveway, two LAPD officers were getting out of their car. They seemed in no hurry. They approached, gun belts clanking, heavy with cuffs and PR-24 batons. The cherry lights on their squad car were still spinning. A dramatic ploy to intimidate the locals, probably. Kate saw none of the urgency of a genuine Code 2 call.

  “May I help you?” She scanned their nameplates. Mertone and Berlinski.

  “We’re looking for Chelsea Brewer,” Mertone said. He was the taller of the two, and the more forward.

  “She’s my daughter,” Victoria began, but Kate cut her off.

  “What is this about?”

  Mertone looked her over. “Are you a family member, ma’am?”

  “I’m Kate Malick. My firm provides the Brewers’ personal security.”

  “Then I guess you know what went down at Panic Room tonight. We understand the Brewers’ daughter was there. We’re interviewing all the witnesses, and since she left the scene before she could be questioned, we’re trying to track her down.”

  Kate made out the division number displayed on the trunk of the car. Number 6—Hollywood Division. The cops were out of their element.

  “It seems like a lot of trouble to go to,” she said, “just to get a witness statement.”

  “We try to be thorough.” That was the other cop, Berlinski. The smirk on his face irritated her.

  “Cut the crap. You don’t run all over town, outside your division, just to take a statement when you’ve already got a hundred witnesses on record.”

  Mertone answered. “The other witnesses all ran out as soon as the fireworks started. Chelsea Brewer and her bodyguard didn’t leave until two, three minutes later. And they took the front exit, when everyone else took the rear.”

  “So?”

  “So it raises a few questions, is all.”

  Victoria bristled. “Are you implying Chelsea is a suspect?”

  Mertone spread his hands. “We’re not implying anything, Mrs. Brewer. We’d just like to talk to her. She wasn’t at her home, and this residence is listed as an alternate address. Is she here?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “But she’s asleep. She’s had a traumatic night and she needs to rest.”

  “This won’t take long.”

  “I’m not waking her. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

  “That’s not your decision to make.”

  “Unless you have a warrant, it is.”

  Berlinski looked at Victoria, pointedly ignoring Kate. “Ma’am, may we see your daughter?”

  Kate was afraid Victoria would blow it, but the woman had done too many interviews to have any trouble lying. “Miss Malick is right. Chelsea does need her rest. In daytime she’ll be more than happy to speak with you.”

  “It won’t be us,” Mertone said with a hint of menace. “It’ll be detect
ives next time.”

  “Fine,” Victoria said implacably.

  Mertone took a step back, but Berlinski stood pat. Beats of blue and red lit his face from the side. “How about the bodyguard? He need his beauty rest, too?”

  “He’s in the hospital. He received some facial lacerations. I don’t want him disturbed, either.”

  “Detectives will be having a talk with him as well.” Berlinski glowered at her. “And maybe with you.”

  “Always happy to help out law enforcement.”

  She and Victoria watched as the squad car pulled away, the roof lights still strobing. They didn’t move until the car was out of sight. Then Victoria sagged, releasing a pent-up moan.

  “They bought it,” Kate said, wrapping an arm around her. “Let’s get back inside. Swann is sending me an e-mail with the ransom demand.”

  Victoria looked at her through a tangle of hair. “You think he’ll still send it? After hanging up on you?”

  “He’ll send it,” Kate said, willing it to be so.

  BUT for ten minutes, he didn’t.

  Kate turned on the desktop PC in the den, logged in to her Gmail account—and waited. A sick feeling grew in the pit of her belly, and she thought of Swann saying, Chelsea pays the price.

  But it couldn’t be over. Not this way. Not because of a stupid misunderstanding.

  As she stared at the screen, a new message appeared in her inbox. The subject line read, From Swann.

  Her fingers trembled as she moused over the screen and opened the e-mail. The message consisted of three words:

  One more chance.

  She had to assume Chelsea was alive. In Swann’s next call she would insist on hearing the girl’s voice. For now, she would go ahead as agreed. And she would try—try—to have faith.

  As promised, there was an attachment. She opened it, revealing a bitmap file—a scanned document. She magnified it to fill the screen. It was an itemized list headed with the name Victoria Brewer and a policy number.

  An insurance list. Kate scrolled through it.

  Van Cleef and Arpels white gold necklace with baguette diamonds, $160,000.

  Dentelle earrings, white gold and diamonds, $42,000.

  A. Lange & Söhne Soiree wristwatch with mother of pearl and eighteen karat white gold, $47,000.

  Bulgari sapphire necklace with emeralds and rubies, $78,000.

  Cartier diamond pendant, $27,000.

  Jeremy Hoye tanzanite ring, $19,000.

  Cellini bangle with 18 karat rose diamonds…

  Jewelry. At the bottom, the total value was recorded: $2,127,000.

  Victoria leaned over her shoulder, studying the screen. “How could he get this?” she whispered.

  “Do you recognize this list?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s on file with my insurance agent, Gregory Niles.”

  “You’ll need to have a talk with him.” Kate pressed print, then swiveled in the desk chair to face Victoria. “Where do you keep this stuff? In the house?”

  “Some of the items are here. But most of them are in my safety deposit box in Beverly Hills.”

  “We’ll have to get them to open up the bank for us.”

  “But why would he want jewels? Why not cash? Don’t they always want cash?”

  “It’s hard to come up with a lot of cash on short notice, even for someone in your tax bracket. And there’s always a risk the bills will be marked, or the serial numbers recorded.”

  The document printed out, a clean sheet of paper whirring through the inkjet’s rollers.

  “You’re saying it’s easier to dispose of jewelry?”

  “With the right connections, it can be. Swann can recut the stones, melt down the metals—fence them or even unload some to legitimate dealers. You do still own all these pieces, don’t you?”

  “The list is up to date.”

  “Then let’s get started.” Kate pulled the printout from the tray. “Get hold of the bank manager and have him open the vault.”

  “I still don’t understand how Swann got the list. How could he even know who handles my insurance?”

  “So far, there’s not a lot he doesn’t know.”

  ——

  Alan arrived ten minutes after the e-mail came through. He had the Asterisk box, but when he looked at the caller ID information, he said the equipment would do no good. “It was a voice-over-Internet call. That one-two-three numeric string is an identifier for Internet telephony.”

  “So he’s calling from a computer? Is that why I heard drop-offs in volume?”

  “Yeah, probably. Data sent over the net is broken up into packets, and some packets get dropped along the way.”

  “Why would he use a computer to place the call if he has a cell phone with an untraceable card?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m guessing he’s a little paranoid about cell phones. The signal can be intercepted if you have the right gear. A lot of people don’t like giving out sensitive information over a cell. Does he seem like a control freak to you?”

  “Definitely.”

  “That’s probably it, then. He feels more comfortable using VoIP. Probably, he’s hiding behind a firewall and has other security precautions in place. He thinks his message is less likely to be picked up by eavesdroppers, and it’s impossible to trace.”

  “Is he right—about tracing it?”

  “As far as I know, there’s no way to backtrack an Internet call. Maybe a super-expert could come up with a plan, if you have one of those available.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  She called Di Milo at the Westwood house. He put Skip Slater on the phone.

  “There could be a way to trace it,” he said thoughtfully. “Here’s the thing. The caller ID display only tells us the call was made with VoIP technology. It doesn’t tell us which service was used. But there are only a few major providers. So let’s say I start with Skype, the biggest name in the business, and assume Swann used that one. Okay? Now these services provide confidentiality but not anonymity. That’s something most users don’t understand. There’s a log of the calls and IP addresses on the company servers. Technically, we can’t get that info without a court order. But…well, you remember how I traced the bet.”

  “You hacked into the server.”

  “Right. Went through a back door. Maybe I can do it again, with the VoIP provider. Find the call on their log, get the IP addy, run a traceroute—”

  “Sounds good. Get to work.”

  “You understand it’s a long shot? He may not have used one of the top providers. Even if he did, I may not be able to gain access—”

  “Never know till you try, will you?”

  “Right. I’ll let Vincent bring you up to speed on the situation here.”

  “You find out something?” she asked Di Milo when he came back on.

  Di Milo wasn’t a big talker. He had a way of speaking in sentence fragments to convey maximum information with minimal verbiage. “Checked the cameras. Hooked to a DVR but disabled. Disk erased. No video. Slater checked the PC. Videos on the hard drive. Not current. Surveillance of previous visitors. Sexual encounters. Slater found billing records on the PC. Call girls.”

  He stopped, as if the data he provided were self-explanatory. Kate took a moment to draw the necessary inference. “It’s some kind of corporate lodging, is that right? They let out-of-town guests stay there. Clients. And supply them with party girls—video them surreptitiously for potential blackmail.”

  “Right.”

  “Do we know what corporation we’re dealing with?”

  “House is owned by a shell corporation in the Caymans. Slater couldn’t trace it further. But I found brochures, booklets. Corporate propaganda. All for one company. Pulsarix.”

  The name was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “What’s that?”

  “Manufacturer of private jets. Headquartered in Burbank.”

  “Do the brochures list the executives?”

  “Sure.�
�� She heard a riffling of pages. “The CEO is Daniel Farris. The CFO—”

  “Wait. You said Farris?”

  “Daniel Farris, yeah.”

  Kate closed her eyes. She thought of the man with the gun, leading her down the cellar stairs. His voice in her ear: A man can do things he never dreamed of when his family is involved…

  “Kate? Does that mean something?”

  “It means everything,” she said.

  IT was all about family. In the end, family was all that mattered. Family was all there was.

  Daniel Farris sat in his parked Mercedes across the street from the church where Swann was holding Chelsea Brewer. He lifted his handgun, feeling its weight and solidity. In the Westwood house he’d fired three shots, but there were still eleven rounds in the magazine, more than enough for the job he was about to do.

  He should have used the gun on Kate Malick, of course. Should have killed her immediately. He’d recognized her on the surveillance monitors long before she’d entered the room. But he’d been worried about the noise.

  And not only the noise. He could admit it to himself.

  He had been afraid when he’d put the gun to Malick’s head. He had been afraid when he’d led her down the cellar stairs. He had been afraid of how it would feel to pull the trigger and shatter her skull into fragments.

  He had never killed anyone. He had ordered it done, this one time, but never had he done it himself, not up close and personal, by his own hand. He knew he was capable of it—he was capable of anything in circumstances like these—but still he was afraid.

  And his fear had given her an opportunity, and now she was alive and he was fucked.

  But really, it didn’t matter. Malick had probably told the truth about having had help finding the house. Which meant other people knew about it, and killing her would have bought him only a little time.

  Besides, Malick wasn’t the one who was supposed to die tonight.

  He felt it coming on again, the urge to scream, but he forced it down. Blind rage would solve nothing. Only action would make a difference, and action was what he knew best. He had built Pulsarix into a major global player. He’d pummeled the competition, knocking them down and never letting them up again. His philosophy was simple. Hurt your enemy. Show no mercy. Always bring a gun to a knife fight.