Killer Ambition

4

The next morning, Bailey and I planned to get out to Russell’s house in the hills bright and early. It was only seven thirty a.m., too early to reach my boss, Eric Northrup, at the office, so I called him on his cell phone.

“Hey, Eric, it’s me.”

“Not at this hour it isn’t.”

I have been forced to admit, repeatedly, that I am not morning’s freshest flower. I come in as late as I can get away with. But in all fairness, I also stay later than anyone else. Since deputy district attorneys are public lawyers, we get paid a flat rate regardless of the hours we put in. So more work does not mean more pay. Toni once totaled up my hours and figured out that my actual rate of pay was about a buck seventy-five an hour. Before taxes.

“That’s very funny, Eric. So funny you probably won’t care about a possible new case Bailey picked up last night. And you’ll be laughing so hard you probably won’t mind that Vanderhorn will hear about it before you-”

“Okay, okay. Shoot.”

The threat of getting holy hell from District Attorney William Vanderhorn for not bringing him up to speed on a big media case predictably got Eric’s attention. I filled him in on the night’s events.

“I’ll call Vanderhorn and make it official for now,” he said. “But if this turns into a fileable case, he’ll be all over it. You might want to rethink taking on this one, Rachel.”

District Attorney Vanderhorn and I got along…well, in truth, we hated each other. He liked his deputies subservient, fawning, and ubiquitous. I liked my bosses smart, trusting, and hands-off. So it was a perfect storm of disappointment for both of us. To top it off, Vanderhorn was in love with Hollywood, not just because it was a big source of campaign support, which it was. But also because he loved rubbing elbows with the stars, and the sheer glitz factor. This meant that Hayley’s kidnapping case would be a chance for Vanderhorn to ingratiate himself with all the right people. So Eric was warning me ahead of time that I’d be in for a nightmarish tour of duty with Vanderhorn riding me like a Preakness pony.

“Thanks, Eric. I’ll keep it in mind.”

If we never found a suspect, I wouldn’t have to make any decisions. But for now, I couldn’t let go. I wanted to find Hayley, even if we never nailed the kidnapper.

I headed downstairs to the lobby and found Bailey sitting in her detective-mobile in the circular drive. Angel, the doorman, was talking to her through the passenger window. I walked out of the air-conditioned hotel into a wall of heat. Only eight o’clock in the morning and it already was eighty degrees and felt like it was about ninety.

“Hey, Angel, they ever going to let you get a summer uniform?” I asked. He wore the same wool slacks and gold-braided jacket all year long. It pained me to look at him.

“Sure, Rachel. Didn’t you see the memo? Starting tomorrow, we all get to wear Speedos. I can’t wait.” He pointedly looked down at his size-forty slacks as he opened the passenger door for me.

Angel shut the door and patted the roof, and Bailey took us out to Fifth Street and northbound on the 101 freeway. Southbound traffic was virtually at a standstill, but the northbound side was blissfully wide open. I almost felt guilty as we sailed down the freeway in full view of those poor slobs mired in commuter quicksand.

“You got your buddy working on the cell site locations?” I asked.

“Yep. With a little bit of luck, she’ll be able to triangulate the source of that first text message sent from Hayley’s phone. And we’re pulling all of Russell’s and Hayley’s cell phone records.”

“But that’s only going to help with the first message. The actual ransom demand was an e-mail.” Which meant it didn’t necessarily come from a cell. There hadn’t been any standard sign-off like “Sent from my iPhone,” so we couldn’t yet tell what device it had come from.

Bailey gripped the steering wheel. “I know.”

I shifted in my seat and tried to control my agitation. I could feel time passing, the seconds turning into minutes, minutes into hours, the hours into days. Although it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since the ransom note was sent, Hayley’s peril increased exponentially with each passing moment. The tightness in Bailey’s voice told me she was feeling it too.

We got off at Highland and took Sunset Boulevard west. Prosaic strip malls, dry cleaners, and thrift shops gave way to giant billboards touting the latest movies, television series, and vodka, and chic little shops selling belts that cost more than a month’s salary. Bailey turned north and we headed through narrow winding streets into the Hollywood Hills. High atop one of those hills sat Russell Antonovich’s “party” house: a low-slung Spanish-style with tiled roof and arched wooden door. As was the case with so many of the homes perched on hills like this, the house looked tiny from the street. But I knew from past experience that most of it stretched backward, propped up on stilts, cantilevered out over the hillside. One of the gardeners was blowing leaves and grass cuttings off the neighbor’s sloped driveway. We would’ve gotten a windshield full of it, but Bailey stopped short and honked. The gardener waved and aimed his wind gun elsewhere.

A uniformed officer standing guard in front of the door was talking to a Hispanic woman who looked upset. We introduced ourselves and asked the officer what was going on.

“She’s the maid. Guess they forgot to tell her we sealed the place.”

I held out my hand to her and introduced myself and Bailey.

“My name is Maria Sosa,” she said in heavily accented English, giving my hand a tentative shake. “What happened?”

“I really can’t say at the moment, I’m sor-”

“Is it Hayley? Did something happen to her?”

“We…don’t know just yet.” I shouldn’t have said that much, but Maria’s concern for Hayley was so sincere, I couldn’t completely shut her out with a non-answer. “How long have you been working here?”

“Three years. Ay, it would be terrible if something happened to Hayley. You must help her,” Maria said, her eyes filling with tears. “She’s a good girl, you know? A little wild sometimes, but always nice. She try to help me learn English…” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

I gave her a moment to collect herself. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Thursday.”

“Was that the last time you were here?”

“Sí. I work Monday to Thursday.”

“Was anyone else here with her?”

Maria nodded. “Her friend, Mackenzie. The little sad one.”

“Why do you say she’s sad? Did something happen?”

Maria shrugged. “I don’ know anything really. She jus’ seem like that to me.”

Interesting. “Was anyone else here?”

“No.”

I took her full name and phone number and told her she wouldn’t be able to clean the house for a little while and that I’d tell Russell she’d been there. I hoped he’d pay her until we released the house. After all, it wasn’t her fault she couldn’t get in to work.

“Any idea when the criminalist is coming?” the uniformed officer asked.

Bailey looked at her watch. “Within the hour.”

“You get Dorian?” I asked. Dorian Struck was the best criminalist in the business. In her twenty-odd years she’d seen it all and tested most of it. But she was a notoriously tough old bird who was a tyrant when it came to preserving her scenes. If she caught us stepping into the house before she’d processed it, she’d have our heads on spikes.

“I think so.”

Dorian was always in demand, so she wasn’t always available. But a high-profile case like this could put the whole crime lab under a microscope. Pun intended. I was willing to bet big money her boss would make sure she got here. Dorian herself never cared one way or another. High-profile, low-profile, it was all the same to her. All she cared about was the evidence.

Bailey turned to the officer. “We just want to take a quick look. We won’t go inside.”

The officer gave her an incredulous stare, then shook his head. “If Dorian catches you, you’re on your own. They don’t pay me enough.” The officer opened the door and stepped aside.

We stood on the threshold and leaned in as far as we could without falling. The tiled foyer led to a sunken living room that had a panoramic view of the city, as well as a swimming pool that ran from the middle of the room, under the glass wall, and out to the edge of the backyard. I’d have loved its sheer craziness if I didn’t know how well rats could swim. I supposed Russell kept an exterminator on permanent retainer. I couldn’t help but wonder whether that was a metaphor for his life in general. I recognized the iron fence surrounding the perimeter of the property as the one Hayley had been standing in front of in the photograph. I made a mental note to check whether there was enough background in the video to tell whether she was still here when it was recorded.

“What the hell do you two think you’re doing?”

“Shit,” I whispered.

Bailey rolled her eyes and we jumped back, away from the threshold. Dorian had arrived.