The Cinderella Murder

48

At nine o’clock, Leo turned off the light in Timmy’s room. Timmy had taken the next volume of the Harry Potter books with him to bed, but as Leo had expected, he had fallen asleep on the first page after their long and strenuous day.

He made his way to the hall, leaving the door cracked open in case Timmy cried out in the night.

If there was any sliver of light to be found in the brutal assault on Laurie’s colleague, it was that she was finally willing to concede that someone might be targeting people connected to her show. After all, the murder of Rosemary Dempsey’s neighbor had been Leo’s primary reason for coming to California.

Still, Leo was not happy about Laurie’s decision to stay at the Bel Air house. Detective Reilly had cleared them for reentry after the crime-scene unit had finished its work, but the bigger question was whether they’d be safe. “It’s obvious the guy was after one thing,” Reilly had said, “your computer and research on the show. You say there was nothing pertaining to the show that he didn’t take. So presumably he got what he wanted and won’t be coming back.”

Leo didn’t agree with Reilly’s logic, but the fact was that they were a large group, and the police planned to drive past the house every twenty minutes to be safe. And, Leo thought, my gun is at the ready in a worst-case scenario.

The police hadn’t located any witnesses yet in their neighborhood canvass. Some of the homes had surveillance cameras, but detectives still needed to wade through the footage. If they were extremely lucky, they might be able to locate images of cars or people coming and going from the street.

In his bedroom, he shut the door and pulled up a recently dialed phone number on his cell. It was the number for Detective O’Brien at the Alameda County sheriff’s department.

“Detective, it’s Leo Farley. We spoke earlier this week about your investigation into the murder of Lydia Levitt.”

“Of course I remember. In fact, I happened to touch base yesterday with one of my friends in the NYPD. Name of J. J. Rogan.”

“Talk about a blast from the past. I was his lieutenant when he first moved to detective squad.”

“That’s what he told me. He confirms you’re ‘good people,’ in his words.”

In light of what Leo was about to ask of Detective O’Brien, he was grateful for the recommendation on his behalf.

“You mentioned that you had some camera footage from the roads going in and out of Castle Crossings.”

“We do, but it’s a major thoroughfare. A whole mess of cars that could be heading in any direction. We’ve got no clear idea who exactly went into the gated community. I’ve got an officer capturing stills of license plates, matching each car up to a driver, but we’re talking about a lot of people to track down. I’ve been prioritizing the burglary angle, working my sources, but if this was a botched break-in, the person who did it hasn’t spoken a word of it on the street.”

Leo told O’Brien about the assault on Jerry and his belief that both that attack and Lydia Levitt’s murder could be connected to Under Suspicion.

“We’ll certainly pursue that theory,” O’Brien said. “We’re looking at every possible lead.”

“The gated community doesn’t have cameras right at the entry?” Leo asked.

“You’d think, but those places really don’t have any major crime. The walls themselves act as their own kind of deterrent, and the guards at the gate have a dog and pony show, but they also wave a lot of people through if they seem to belong.”

Leo had been hoping that O’Brien would have gotten further in his investigation since they last spoke, but he knew how slowly things could move when no clear suspects have emerged. “So what you’re saying is that your footage from the road outside could be a search for a needle in a haystack.”

“You got it.”

“Any chance you could use the assistance of a retired cop from New York to wade through that list of drivers?”

“Could I use it? I’ll pay you back in whiskey at the first opportunity.”

“Sounds like a deal.”

After a quick discussion that Leo didn’t entirely understand involving digitization, file size, and data compression, Detective O’Brien estimated that he could get everything to him by e-mail tomorrow morning.

“I’ll probably have to get my grandson to help me open them,” he said before hanging up.

Sifting through images of cars on a busy street would indeed be searching for a needle in a haystack, but if Leo happened to find the same needle in two different haystacks on opposite ends of the state, he might just have himself a lead.