The Cinderella Murder

73

Richard Hathaway stepped out of his SUV. He could not believe his good luck.

He had dashed from the restaurant after Madison mentioned the hidden cameras at the Bel Air house. Two years ago, Dwight had installed the same technology at the REACH offices and his Palo Alto home. Now it turned out that he’d also wired his parents’ house in L.A. Had he gone so far as to wire his boats?

Yes, Hathaway thought, it would be exactly like Dwight to order the job for all his property at once, and he cared about his boats at least as much as that empty house in Bel Air.

And if the boat Dwight had used last night was equipped with hidden cameras, had they been on when Hathaway stepped onto the cruiser for his scheduled dive with Dwight? Had the cameras recorded Dwight as he angrily accused Hathaway of killing Susan, insisting nonsensically that he’d figured it out by watching “the video”? Had they filmed Hathaway as he smothered Dwight with a life vest and then staged his body to appear in the water as a scuba accident? Had the police found the footage yet?

These were the questions that had swirled through his head as he drove from the restaurant, circling aimlessly through Hollywood, too panicked to go home or even to REACH’s jet in case the police were waiting for him.

Instead, he’d gone to the storage unit he’d been renting for two decades to grab his “go bag,” containing false identification, fifty thousand dollars, and a gun. He had identical bags in separate storage facilities in five different California cities, waiting in the event this day ever came.

But now that the moment he had been dreading was actually here, he realized he did not want to run. He had enjoyed the success of the last twenty years, and it was all about to improve further, as he was poised to become the new CEO of REACH. If he had even a shred of a chance to stay in this life, he was going to seize it.

At least he now understood Dwight’s reference to a video. Something Dwight saw on the surveillance footage of that stupid TV production had alerted him to Hathaway’s role in Susan’s death.

He had to figure out what Laurie Moran knew and then silence her-and anyone else necessary-for good.

Parked on the street outside the Bel Air house, he saw an older man, a little boy, and the woman named Grace pile into a car. It was simple enough to follow them.

Once in the parking garage outside the hospital, Hathaway watched as Laurie and Alex pulled in a few minutes later in a black Land Cruiser. Since then, he’d been waiting, planning his next move.

Now Hathaway had caught two lucky breaks. The first was when Laurie’s father, an ex-cop who was probably armed, had driven away from the hospital alone. At the sight of his leaving, Hathaway had experienced the same sense of relief he’d felt the moment Susan strapped on her seat belt on the night she died.

It had been May 7, a Saturday. Hathaway had asked Dwight to meet him in the lab because no one else would be there that night.

He wanted to talk to Dwight alone about REACH. Hathaway had created a search technology with the potential to revolutionize the way people found information on the Internet. It was worth thirty times more than a professor could make in a lifetime of teaching. But technically, even though Hathaway had invented REACH, the idea didn’t belong to him. He was owned by UCLA, which in turn owned anything he created during his employment there.

But students were in a different position. Students, unlike faculty who were paid a salary, owned their own intellectual property. And given Dwight Cook’s invaluable assistance with the code, who was to say that REACH wasn’t the sole invention of the young genius?

Hathaway had been so focused on making his pitch to Dwight-convincing him that this technology could change the world and that it would be wasted in the hands of UCLA-that he almost didn’t notice Susan watching them in his peripheral vision. But then he turned to see her standing by her desk near the door, looking as he’d never seen her before-her hair and makeup perfect, in a yellow halter dress. He had known immediately from the way she was rushing out of the lab that she had overheard their conversation.

Why had she been there on a Saturday? Why did she have to walk in unexpectedly at that very moment?

Hathaway knew he needed to stop her. He needed to provide a context for what she’d overheard. He said, “Dwight, stay here where it’s quiet and think about it. I’ll call you later.” Hathaway then ran after Susan, catching up to her as she was walking toward Bruin Plaza.

“Susan, can I have a word with you?”

When she turned, she had a necklace in her hand. “I have an audition. I have to go.”

“Please, I just want to explain. You don’t understand.”

“Of course I do. Everyone I know is disappointing me today. It’s like I don’t really know anyone. I can’t deal with this now. I have to be in the Hollywood Hills in an hour. And my jinx of a car is back at the dorm and probably won’t even start.”

“Let me drive you. Please. We can talk on the ride there. Or not. Whatever you want.”

“How will I even get home?”

“I’ll wait. Or you can call a cab. Whatever you’d like.”

He thought back to that two-second pause as she pondered her options. He just needed her to get in the car, and he was certain he could convince her that what he was doing was the right thing.

“Okay,” she agreed. “We can talk. And honestly, I just need a ride.”

When Susan strapped on her seat belt and began putting on her necklace, he was certain he’d avoided a potential crisis.

But that moment of relief had been fleeting. Once he started to drive, he laid out the same argument for her that he’d offered to Dwight Cook. The bureaucrats in the UCLA administration could never begin to understand the potential of this technology. It would be tied up for years awaiting layers of approval, while competitors in the private sector worked at a rapid-fire pace. Besides, crediting Dwight with the technology was only a thin stretch of the truth, given how much programming work he’d put into the project.

He was certain Susan would go along, either out of dedication to technological development or to support Dwight. If worst came to worst, he would offer her a cut of the action. But Susan was too principled and, more important, too smart. Her father was an intellectual property lawyer. She knew from his work how important the creator of technology was to its development. In her eyes, Hathaway’s plan was not only stealing from the university but from potential investors.

“With dot-coms,” she had argued, “the face of the company is half of the product. You’re leading people to think that a creative genius like Dwight-someone who doesn’t care in the least about money, someone who looks at the world and sees only the best-was the seed for all this. That he’ll be calling the shots. That’s fundamentally a different company from one run by you. It’s fraud.”

He began to slow at the curves, buying time to build his case. “But a company run by me would be worth more,” he had insisted. “I have more experience. I’m a tenured professor. I don’t have Dwight’s personality quirks.”

“The tech market loves quirks,” she had said. “Besides, it’s not simply a matter of dollar value. It’s just dishonest. Aren’t we getting close now? Why are you slowing down?”

When they were half a mile from her audition, he pulled the car to the side of the road. “Susan, you can’t tell anyone what you heard. It will ruin my career.”

“Then you shouldn’t have done it. You offered to drive me to my audition. I’ve heard you out. Now I need to get to my appointment.”

“Not until you understand-”

Just like that, she was out of the car, determined to make the rest of the trip on foot. He had to go after her. She ran faster in those heels than he would have thought possible. By the time he caught up with her in the park, one of her shoes had fallen off.

His first move had been to grab her by the arm. “You’re being naive.” He was still trying to persuade her. Why couldn’t she be as gullible as Dwight?

And before he knew it, she was beneath him, hitting him, kicking at him. Sometimes he even convinced himself he couldn’t remember what happened afterward.

But of course he did.

Once it was over, he made a quick decision that his best option was to leave her body. All her friends knew she was coming up here for an audition, so hopefully that would distract the investigation.

He called Dwight immediately, not long past seven o’clock, asking him to meet at Hamburger Haven to explore his suggestion further. If anyone ever asked, Dwight could vouch for his whereabouts for all but this short window of time.

Just as he hoped, the investigation had focused on Frank Parker, with Susan’s boyfriend, Keith, the alternative suspect. For twenty years, he was convinced he’d gotten away with it, until he arrived at Dwight’s boat last night. Now here he was, wondering how much Laurie Moran knew.

And that was the second piece of good luck to come in Hathaway’s direction. First, the ex-cop had driven away. And now here was Laurie Moran, keys in hand, all by herself.