Guilt

CHAPTER 53

We came upon Morry Burns and Prema leaving the big house. Burns walked ahead of her, wheeling his dolly, now piled high with boxes. When he saw us, he picked up speed. Prema stopped, stood there for a second, walked back through her front door.

When Burns reached us, Milo said, “You’re really starstruck, Morry.”

Burns said, “Huh?”

“What’d you learn?”

“Her system stinks.” Burns cocked a head at the mansion. “All that dough, the kids have rooms like a Broadway production, and she cheaps out on crap hardware. I could get technical but it wouldn’t mean anything to you, so leave it at crap. Nothing’s linked, real pain to go through each machine.”

“Same question.”

“Huh?”

“Learn anything?”

Burns tapped a metal case. “Nah. But I took her hard drive, will dig deeper. Also drives from other machines they use-get this-to buy groceries. Or-gah-nic arugula. No need to encrypt that.”

“What about the kids’ computers?”

“Two desktops for four of them.” Burns cackled. “Maybe they’re learning how to share. She’s got them on every parental lock known to mankind, they’re lucky to get the weather. Maybe that’s why they hardly ever go online.”

I said, “Could be they like to read.”

Burns stared at me as if I’d talked in tongues. To Milo: “We through here?”

“Not even close.”

O’Shea and Burns took a lunch break near the pool. Take-out Mexican Milo had brought along.

We found Prema in her cavernous kitchen, sitting at a granite-topped counter drinking tea. No maid in sight. The CCTV screens remained inert.

Milo said, “Do you have those real estate documents?”

“You need to actually see them?”

“We do.”

She left, returned a few minutes later. “Here’s the trust deed on the entire property.”

Milo read carefully, per Deputy D.A. John Nguyen’s instructions.

“As you can see, I’m the sole owner,” she said. “I bought it before I knew him.”

A divorce lawyer would laugh at that but for Milo’s purposes, the deed was sufficient.

He produced a form of his own: Prema’s consent to search the entire property. She scrawled her name without reading.

“Okay?” she said, drumming granite.

“You’re sure he’s over there.”

“He drove in late, like one thirty in the morning, hasn’t left since. I saw it right there.” Pointing to the bank of screens.

“It records twenty-four-seven?”

“It sure does. Everything feeds into a computer and before you got here, I scrolled through. He has not left.”

“Does Detective Burns have the hard drive for that computer?”

Prema’s perfect mouth formed an O. “Sorry, forgot to tell him about it. But all it does is record feed from the security system and most of that’s blank.”

“Where’s the computer?”

She slid open a drawer beneath the screens, pulled out a small laptop.

“How far back do you keep recordings?”

“Hmm. I really don’t know.”

Burns’s grumpiness turned to outright hostility. “I told you to give me everything. You didn’t think to mention this?”

Prema said, “I-it slipped my mind.”

He began pushing buttons, muttered, “ ’Nother piece of crap.”

Prema looked to me for support. I gave her a who-knows? smile. She returned to her tea as Burns fiddled with the laptop.

“What date do you want, Lieutenant?”

Milo told him.

“Hmmph. Here you go.”

Nothing the night of the murders until one thirty-three a.m., when a vehicle passed through Donny Rader’s gate.

Big, dark SUV.

“No front plate,” said Burns. “Tough luck for you, Lieutenant, the camera angle could pick it up.”

From across the kitchen, Prema said, “That’s got to be his. He’s piled up a bunch of tickets for not putting on a front plate.”

Burns mumbled, “Ooh, major scofflaw.”

Blocking Prema’s view with his own bulk, Milo placed his hand on Burns’s shoulder. Burns looked up at Milo. Milo’s wolf-grin lowered his head. A naughty child finally disciplined.

Milo pulled out the pages he’d received from DMV: regs on Donny Rader’s sixteen vehicles. Four Ferraris, three Porsches, a Lamborghini, a Maserati, a Stryker, a pair of Mercedeses, an Aston Martin Rapide, a vintage Jaguar E-type.

Two SUVs, both black: a Range Rover and Ford Explorer. “Go back, let’s see if we can figure out which it is.”

Three rewinds later, the bet was on the Explorer.

Milo said, “Now go forward.”

“Sure, Lieutenant.”

We didn’t need to wait long.

Forty-nine seconds after the first SUV had exited, an identical set of wheels rolled through Rader’s gate.

Front plates on this one. Milo said, “Freeze that,” and checked the tags against his notes. “Yup, Wedd’s.”

Prema said, “Mel was there?”

“Any reason he would be?”

She shook her head. Rested her chin in her hand and stared at nothing.

Milo said, “Why don’t you relax somewhere, Ms. Moon.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got nowhere to go.”

Low, morose tone. Burns looked at her as if for the first time. Bland curiosity, no sympathy.

Milo prodded Burns’s shoulder with a fingertip. “Keep going.”

Twenty-nine seconds after Wedd’s exit, a third vehicle, smaller, shaped like a car, zipped through Prema’s gate.

Pinpointing the make and registration was easy: brand-new Hyundai Accent, Banner Rental. It took several calls but Milo finally reached a supervisor at the company’s corporate headquarters in Lodi and obtained the details.

Adriana Betts had rented the car three days prior from the Banner office on Santa Monica Boulevard in West L.A. Taking advantage of special weeklong rates.

Poor deluded woman playing amateur detective.

Milo took the laptop from Burns, fast-forwarded through another ten minutes. Twenty. Nothing. He handed the machine back to Burns, said, “Let’s go.”

Prema said, “It’s happening?”

“In a bit, Ms. Moon.”

“Why the delay?”

“We’re organizing, ma’am. Now I suggest you go and find a place where you can-”

“Just as long as you do it before the tribe returns. I can’t have them exposed to bad things.”

I thought: If it were only that simple.