Killer Ambition

8

Bailey joined us in the hallway, a worried look on her face. Without preamble, she tersely ordered the unis to stand guard on Brian’s apartment until our criminalist got there, then headed for the car. I trotted to catch up and jumped in as she gunned the engine.

I quickly brought her up to speed on what I’d learned, aware that whatever she’d just heard on her phone call wasn’t good, because she was taking it out on the gas pedal. Bailey listened to my report without comment as she whipped down Hollywood Boulevard. I wrapped up my assessment of Iris Stavros and asked, “Want to tell me why we’re traveling at warp speed, Captain Kirk?”

“The news release paid off, sort of. We got a tip from a guy at a cybercafé in Silver Lake. Claims he ‘sniffed’ someone sending a ransom note.”

“Sniffing,” the hacker’s term for spying on someone’s Internet mailings, is incredibly easy to do in a cybercafé. Don’t ask me how they do it, I’m a computer Luddite. I only know about it because Graden is a computer whizbang, and he’d told me stories from some of the hacking cases he’d handled.

“That’s all? I mean, that’s great, but…” The call had taken a lot longer than it should have for just that.

“Brian, or whatever his real name is, had a lot of jobs before he landed the gig in the Sherman Oaks Galleria. The first sign of him in L.A. was about a year ago. He was a busboy at the Pinot Gris. Three months later, he turned up as a waiter at the Hungry Pig. Two months after that, he applied for a security job at a Bank of America a few blocks away from the Hungry Pig. He hung on to that job for four months, and then he landed his job as a jewelry store manager in the Galleria.”

The progression was unremarkable. They were the typical low-level jobs young adults took to make ends meet until they figured out a career goal. And the move from security guard to jewelry store manager made perfect sense to me. I shrugged. “Doesn’t seem all that unusual.” But Bailey’s expression looked ominous.

“Not until you factor in the locations. Except for the Galleria, every single one of those jobs was within walking distance of Russell’s studio. And the Galleria? That was just a stone’s throw from Hayley’s school.”

I tried to make the pieces fit, but no matter how I turned them around in my mind, they refused to fall into place. “I would’ve said that sounded like Brian had been stalking Hayley for the past year, but he spent most of his time circling Russell’s studio.”

“Right. And we can check with the parents, but I doubt Hayley hung out at daddy’s studio much.”

“No.” Not at this age. She had her own world. And so did daddy.

Bailey pulled up to the cybercafé, charmingly named Head of Steam. It looked like any Coffee Bean, just with more tables. As we searched the room for our tipster, I got a strange and unappealing glimpse into the future: everyone there was transfixed by a computer screen, and most wore headphones. Though there were signs of life as we know it around the cash register, the rest of the café was eerily quiet; the primary sound was the clicking of laptop keys, the conversations virtual, not verbal. Was this where we were headed? Eye contact traded for Skype, personal discourse traded for e-mails or, worse, blogs? Thankfully, further depressing predictions were curtailed when our tipster spotted us and waved us over.

Pierced nose and lower lip, greasy black hair combed up in back and into long spikes at the sides of his face, skinny jeans that had room to bag on even skinnier legs, and black high-top sneakers. It came as no surprise to me that his name was Legs Roscoe. With the preliminary introductions completed, we got right down to business.

“I was just hanging out-”

“Sorry to stop you, but do you remember what day it was?” I asked.

“Yeah, it was Monday. Had to be well after five o’clock.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because my last class ends at four and traffic’s a bitch that time of day. So I couldn’t have gotten here much before that.” Legs dipped his head. “I, uh, didn’t mean to ‘sniff’ anyone, it was just an inadvertent thing. I don’t usually run into any-”

I held up my hand. “Don’t sweat it. We’re not here to bust you.”

This seemed to calm Legs down considerably. He nodded vigorously, practically bowing at the waist in his seat. “Cool. Thanks. Cool. Well, so I catch the drift that this dude was saying he had this girl and not to call the cops-”

“Did you catch anything about money?” Bailey asked.

Legs sniffed and used a paper napkin to wipe his nose. I wondered whether the nose ring got in the way when he had a cold. I decided not to ponder that question.

“Nah, I guess I just caught the tail end of it. Reason I noticed, though, was the girl. You know, the one whose picture was just on the news? She came into the café while he was typing. Real pretty. Dude seemed pissed that she was there.”

“What made him seem pissed?” Bailey asked. “Did he grab her? Yell at her?”

“No, nothing like that. He just seemed, I don’t know…annoyed? He didn’t let her sit down. Soon as she showed up, he packed up his laptop and they left.”

“Did he hold on to her arm? Push her?” I asked.

Legs looked off to the left. “Not that I remember. And tell you the truth, I didn’t think much of the whole deal. Seemed like a goof. The only reason I called you guys was because of the news flash about the girl.”

“So she didn’t look scared or upset?” I asked.

“Not to me. I mean, she wasn’t laughing her ass off or anything. But she didn’t look freaked.”

“Do you think you’d recognize the guy if I showed you a photo?” Bailey asked.

Legs shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt to try.”

Bailey pulled up Brian’s photo on her cell and held it in front of Legs.

He gave the photo a hard look, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s the dude. No question.”

“Thank you, Legs,” I said. Bailey took his contact information and we stood to leave.

“So I assume the girl’s been kidnapped,” he said.

“Not necessarily,” I semi-lied.

“But you’d appreciate it if I didn’t say anything about this conversation, wouldn’t you?”

The abrupt shift caught me off guard. I looked at him for a long moment. This was pretty savvy for any civilian, let alone the pierced counterculture specimen in front of me. “I can’t stop you from talking, but yeah, it wouldn’t hurt if you’d keep it to yourself.”

“Got it.”

We started to leave, but I turned back, too curious to let it go. “You said you had a class on Monday that got out at four o’clock. What class was that?”

“Not a class exactly. More like a weekly consultation. I’m finishing my Ph.D. in neuroscience.”

“So it’ll be Dr. Legs Roscoe soon.”

“Actually, Dr. Lawrence Roscoe. But yeah. Hopefully.”

At times like this I love my job.