Last Breath

49

Adam Nolan resided in a two-bedroom condo in Brentwood, not far from the infamous spot where two of the most famous homicides in LA history had occurred a few years earlier. As the whole world knew, it was a neighborhood where, even after dark, people liked to go out for a stroll or walk their dogs.

Tonight, however, Brentwood seemed empty. There were no pedestrians on Nolan’s side street. No dogs barked. No traffic passed by.

Walsh found the stillness spooky. He glanced at Donna Cellini, riding beside him in his department-issue sedan, and wondered if she felt the same way.

Probably not. Cellini was remarkably levelheaded about most things. More levelheaded than Walsh himself. But then, she was young. She hadn’t seen as much.

He parked at the curb, making no effort to conceal the car, even though it screamed police with its boxy contours, its DARE bumper sticker, its outsized antenna protruding from the trunk.

There was no need for stealth. Nolan wasn’t home. The garage reserved for his unit had already been checked by two West LA cops, who found it empty. The same cops then buzzed Nolan’s condo for five minutes, getting no reply.

He was someplace else. And so, no doubt, was C.J. Osborn.

Another woman as the victim of an obsessed ex-husband. What the hell was it about this part of town?

“So how’d Nolan strike you in the interview?” Cellini asked as they got out.

“Very fucking sincere.”

“Good liar, then.”

“The best.”

“You do your Columbo impression?” Cellini knew his methods.

“Yeah.” Walsh grunted. “Thought I was so slick, and all the time he was playing me. The bastard.”

“He’s a lawyer,” Cellini said, as if that explained something-his slickness or his being a bastard. Maybe both.

Another unmarked car pulled up, and Boyle and Lopez got out. “This the place?” Boyle asked unnecessarily. Nobody answered.

A minute later a patrol car parked behind the two unmarked vehicles, and a pair of West LA officers emerged. Walsh asked if they were the ones who checked out the garage and buzzed the intercom.

“Yes, sir,” answered one cop, whose nametag read “JOHNSON.”

“Where the hell did you go? Doughnut run?” Sarcasm was unusual for Walsh, but he was peeved at having to wait.

Johnson was unruffled. “No, sir. Saw a BMW cruise past and thought it might be the suspect’s car. Followed it up to San Vicente and got a look at the tag. False alarm.”

“Lotta BMWs in this neighborhood,” his partner added pointlessly.

Walsh accepted the explanation. He wasn’t really angry at the patrol cops anyway, or even at Adam Nolan. He was angry at himself. He’d been in the same room with the son of a bitch and, good liar or not, the guy should not have been able to fool him.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s go in.”

“Wait.” Cellini held up her hand. “There’s one more in our party.”

Another sedan, clearly official, pulled up behind the patrol car. Its markings were obscured behind the glare of its headlights.

“I didn’t contact anybody else,” Walsh said.

Cellini looked away. “I did.”

The headlights switched off, and Walsh saw that the car was a Sheriff’s cruiser, and the man stepping out was Deputy Tanner.

“I called him at the hospital,” Cellini said. “He was looking after his men. I told him we had a lead. A chance to save her.”

Walsh didn’t like it. “This is LAPD jurisdiction.”

“He’s her friend, Morrie. He deserves to be part of this.”

“You should’ve cleared it with me.”

“You were busy. Besides, I knew you’d say yes.”

She was right, but Walsh didn’t say so. He glanced at Tanner, jogging up to the group, and snapped, “Fall in, Deputy. We’re entering unit four-nineteen.”

The two local cops had a master key to the building, which got them through the security gate and the lobby door. In the elevator Lopez asked about a warrant.

“Telephonic approval from Judge Lederer,” Walsh said. Lederer was known to be a soft touch for warrants, and once or twice Walsh had actually gone bowling-bowling!-with the man to cement their friendship.

Tanner spoke up. “You seem pretty sure Nolan is our guy.”

Walsh remembered the distraught young man cradling his head while he fretted about his ex-wife. “We’re sure,” he said curtly. “How’s your SWAT team doing?”

“Multiple bites, a lot of venom in their systems. Pain, swelling, fever-but they’ll live.”

“You okay?” Cellini asked.

“Not a scratch. Any word on Treat?”

“He’s disappeared,” Walsh said. “Like smoke.”

Then they were on the fourth floor and there was no more conversation, only a quick march down the hall to the door marked 419.

Officer Johnson and his partner paused outside the door, listening. “Don’t hear anything,” Johnson said after a moment.

Walsh rang the bell, then rapped on the door and yelled, “ Police!” When there was no response, he looked at the patrol cops. “Open it.”

Johnson used the master key. The door to 419 swung wide.

The patrolmen entered first, followed by Tanner. Walsh and the other task force members took up the rear.

The living room lights had been left on. Adam Nolan’s condo was small but neatly kept, with a view of the Indian laurel trees lining the sidewalk below. Abstract paintings hung on the walls. Chrome appliances were arrayed in a tidy kitchen-toaster, waffle iron, electric grill, coffeemaker-looking like a line of demo models in a store display. Only the coffeemaker appeared to have been used.

“Hard to believe anybody lives here,” Cellini said.

Walsh had been thinking the same thing. The place had the blandness, the absence of personality, that he associated with motel rooms and other way stations.

Tanner and the other two uniformed cops had already checked out the rest of the condo. “All clear,” Tanner reported.

“We’ll have to call in SID,” Cellini said. “Maybe they can find some clue to where he took her.”

“Maybe.” Walsh was thinking hard. “Get Boyle in here.”

The detective entered the kitchen a moment later, hands spread in mock apology. “What’d I do now?”

“You called Nolan to set up the interview, right?”

“Sure.”

“Called his home number?”

“Only number I had.”

“But he couldn’t have been here. Not if he was with her.”

Cellini saw where Walsh was going. “You think he had the call forwarded?”

“That’s possible, right?”

“Absolutely. The phone company offers residential call forwarding for a monthly fee. Once you’ve signed up for the service, you can activate it anytime by entering a two-digit code on the keypad.”

“Let’s find his phone bills,” Tanner said.

Adam Nolan was as meticulous in his record keeping as in the other aspects of his domestic life. The bills were in a folder labeled “telephone” in a file cabinet in the den.

“Last month he paid three dollars and twenty-three cents for call forwarding,” Tanner said.

Walsh studied the bill. “No way to know the number he’s forwarding the calls to?”

“Probably his cell phone,” Cellini said. “That’s how it usually works. You want your calls forwarded to your mobile number.”

Tanner leafed through the folder and found Nolan’s cellular phone bills. “Here’s his account number. We can find out if there was any activity on his cell account when Detective Boyle made the call.”

“If there was,” Cellini said, “it’ll give us the cell phone tower that transmitted the signal. The tower closest to Nolan’s location at the time.”

Tanner nodded. “And if he was with C.J. when he took the call-”

“Then we’ll have some idea where he’s hidden her,” Cellini finished. “Trouble is, the cell site will narrow down the search area only so much. We could still be looking at an area anywhere from a couple square blocks to several square miles.”

“There’s another problem,” Walsh said. “We’ll need a court order to pull Nolan’s records. It’s not as straightforward as getting permission to enter his residence. It takes time.”

Cellini frowned. “There might be a better way. Those Baltimore feds we’ve been working with-they’re in the computer crime squad, right?”

“I think so, yeah. So what?”

“You know how they say it takes a thief to catch one? That’s true of cybercrime too. To catch a hacker, you’ve got to be a hacker.”

Walsh took this in.

“Rawls isn’t going to like it,” he said softly. “He won’t like it at all.”