Guilt (41 page)

I said, “Agreed. Had to be a two-person job. Donny and Wedd. That way there’d be no need to schlep Adriana across the park. Wedd was Prema’s guy by day, but Donny’s pimp and paymaster and who-knows-what-else by night. The maids knew about it, everyone knew about it except Prema. Wedd was a wannabe actor, wanted to emulate the star—drove the same kind of car as the star. He wasn’t ridiculing Donny when he imitated him over the phone. He was pretending to
be
him.”

“Hell, Alex, maybe it was more than that: What if Wedd had a crush on Donny? So when Donny asks him to take care of nasty business, he’s fine with it. Unfortunately, Donny grew uncomfortable with his knowing too much and took care of
him
.”

I said, “Nighttime drive, weed and a bong. Sure, it fits. Wedd probably figured he’d be partying with his idol.”

“Power of celebrity,” he said.

“It even got the best of a wily, manipulative woman like Qeesha. If her head had been clear, she’d have known from the way Donny shut out four kids that he wouldn’t take well to fatherhood. To being pressured.”

“Playing her usual game,” he said. “But out of her league.”

Footsteps at the mouth of the corridor made us turn.

Tyler O’Shea held a tired-looking Sally at the end of a slack leash.

Milo said, “Anything?”

O’Shea gave a thumbs-down. “Only dead thing in that forest was a really gross, rotting squirrel way at the back, that’s what was attracting her. Sorry, El Tee.”

“No big deal,” said Milo.

“You knew already?”

“I never know, kid. That’s what makes the job fun.”

“Oh. Okay. So we’re finished?”

“Not even close.”

W
e came upon Morry Burns and Prema leaving the big house. Burns walked ahead of her, wheeling his dolly, now piled high with boxes. When he saw us, he picked up speed. Prema stopped, stood there for a second, walked back through her front door.

When Burns reached us, Milo said, “You’re really starstruck, Morry.”

Burns said, “Huh?”

“What’d you learn?”

“Her system stinks.” Burns cocked a head at the mansion. “All that dough, the kids have rooms like a Broadway production, and she cheaps out on crap hardware. I could get technical but it wouldn’t mean anything to you, so leave it at crap. Nothing’s linked, real pain to go through each machine.”

“Same question.”

“Huh?”

“Learn anything?”

Burns tapped a metal case. “Nah. But I took her hard drive, will dig
deeper. Also drives from other machines they use—get this—to buy groceries. Or-gah-nic arugula. No need to encrypt that.”

“What about the kids’ computers?”

“Two desktops for four of them.” Burns cackled. “Maybe they’re learning how to share. She’s got them on every parental lock known to mankind, they’re lucky to get the weather. Maybe that’s why they hardly ever go online.”

I said, “Could be they like to read.”

Burns stared at me as if I’d talked in tongues. To Milo: “We through here?”

“Not even close.”

O’Shea and Burns took a lunch break near the pool. Take-out Mexican Milo had brought along.

We found Prema in her cavernous kitchen, sitting at a granite-topped counter drinking tea. No maid in sight. The CCTV screens remained inert.

Milo said, “Do you have those real estate documents?”

“You need to actually see them?”

“We do.”

She left, returned a few minutes later. “Here’s the trust deed on the entire property.”

Milo read carefully, per Deputy D.A. John Nguyen’s instructions.

“As you can see, I’m the sole owner,” she said. “I bought it before I knew him.”

A divorce lawyer would laugh at that but for Milo’s purposes, the deed was sufficient.

He produced a form of his own: Prema’s consent to search the entire property. She scrawled her name without reading.

“Okay?” she said, drumming granite.

“You’re sure he’s over there.”

“He drove in late, like one thirty in the morning, hasn’t left since. I saw it right there.” Pointing to the bank of screens.

“It records twenty-four-seven?”

“It sure does. Everything feeds into a computer and before you got here, I scrolled through. He has
not
left.”

“Does Detective Burns have the hard drive for that computer?”

Prema’s perfect mouth formed an O. “Sorry, forgot to tell him about it. But all it does is record feed from the security system and most of that’s blank.”

“Where’s the computer?”

She slid open a drawer beneath the screens, pulled out a small laptop.

“How far back do you keep recordings?”

“Hmm. I really don’t know.”

Burns’s grumpiness turned to outright hostility. “I told you to give me everything. You didn’t think to mention this?”

Prema said, “I—it slipped my mind.”

He began pushing buttons, muttered, “ ’Nother piece of crap.”

Prema looked to me for support. I gave her a
who-knows?
smile. She returned to her tea as Burns fiddled with the laptop.

“What date do you want, Lieutenant?”

Milo told him.

“Hmmph. Here you go.”

Nothing the night of the murders until one thirty-three a.m., when a vehicle passed through Donny Rader’s gate.

Big, dark SUV.

“No front plate,” said Burns. “Tough luck for you, Lieutenant, the camera angle could pick it up.”

From across the kitchen, Prema said, “That’s got to be his. He’s piled up a bunch of tickets for not putting on a front plate.”

Burns mumbled, “Ooh, major scofflaw.”

Blocking Prema’s view with his own bulk, Milo placed his hand on Burns’s shoulder. Burns looked up at Milo. Milo’s wolf-grin lowered his head. A naughty child finally disciplined.

Milo pulled out the pages he’d received from DMV: regs on Donny
Rader’s sixteen vehicles. Four Ferraris, three Porsches, a Lamborghini, a Maserati, a Stryker, a pair of Mercedeses, an Aston Martin Rapide, a vintage Jaguar E-type.

Two SUVs, both black: a Range Rover and Ford Explorer. “Go back, let’s see if we can figure out which it is.”

Three rewinds later, the bet was on the Explorer.

Milo said, “Now go forward.”

“Sure, Lieutenant.”

We didn’t need to wait long.

Forty-nine seconds after the first SUV had exited, an identical set of wheels rolled through Rader’s gate.

Front plates on this one. Milo said, “Freeze that,” and checked the tags against his notes. “Yup, Wedd’s.”

Prema said, “Mel was there?”

“Any reason he would be?”

She shook her head. Rested her chin in her hand and stared at nothing.

Milo said, “Why don’t you relax somewhere, Ms. Moon.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got nowhere to go.”

Low, morose tone. Burns looked at her as if for the first time. Bland curiosity, no sympathy.

Milo prodded Burns’s shoulder with a fingertip. “Keep going.”

Twenty-nine seconds after Wedd’s exit, a third vehicle, smaller, shaped like a car, zipped through Prema’s gate.

Pinpointing the make and registration was easy: brand-new Hyundai Accent, Banner Rental. It took several calls but Milo finally reached a supervisor at the company’s corporate headquarters in Lodi and obtained the details.

Adriana Betts had rented the car three days prior from the Banner office on Santa Monica Boulevard in West L.A. Taking advantage of special weeklong rates.

Poor deluded woman playing amateur detective.

Milo took the laptop from Burns, fast-forwarded through another
ten minutes. Twenty. Nothing. He handed the machine back to Burns, said, “Let’s go.”

Prema said, “It’s happening?”

“In a bit, Ms. Moon.”

“Why the delay?”

“We’re organizing, ma’am. Now I suggest you go and find a place where you can—”

“Just as long as you do it before the tribe returns. I can’t have them exposed to bad things.”

I thought:
If it were only that simple
.

W
e headed for Prema’s acre of parking lot. Burns said, “Fresh air. Finally.”

I said, “You don’t like actors.”

“Don’t try to shrink me, Doc.”

Milo said, “It’s a reasonable question, Morry. Whatever your bullshit is, it came close to obstructing.”

Burns turned pale. “I—”

“It’s still a good question, Morry.”

“Whatever,” said Burns. He began to walk ahead of us, thought better of it, stopped, threw his hands up. “My sister was an actor. Did some crap off-Broadway, nothing serious. She killed herself five years ago. Completely ruined my parents’ lives.”

“Sorry,” I said. “The business was too much for her?”

“How would I know about the business?” said Burns. “She ruined their lives by killing herself because she was a narcissistic drama queen, always had been.”

Milo said, “Morry, stay in the van, see if you can do anything else with the machines.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll get nothing but I’ll try.”

As Burns loaded his equipment, Tyler O’Shea emerged with Sally. He rubbed Sally’s scruff. The dog looked rejuvenated.

Milo said, “We’re a go, Ty, let’s do it on foot. I’m gonna start with the soft approach, nothing SWAT-ty, because this joker’s no genius, he has drug issues and a closetful of guns, I’m hoping the element of surprise will be enough.”

“Plus he’s famous,” said O’Shea.

“What does that have to do with it?”

“More of a surprise, El Tee. Probably no one ever bugs him.”

“Famous,” said Milo. “If everything works out, that’ll change to infamous.”

The walk from Prema’s property to Rader’s took six minutes. Sally would’ve preferred to run it in two. Milo had the gate code, courtesy Prema Moon: 10001.

“Had to keep it simple, Lieutenant, because he can’t remember anything.”

He pushed the buttons, the gate cooperated, we continued along asphalt in need of resurfacing. Longer, steeper access than to Prema’s estate, an easy quarter mile with nothing visible other than greenery. At some points the trees grew so thick that the sky disappeared and day turned to imposed dusk.

O’Shea said, “Man likes his privacy.”

Milo lengthened his stride. O’Shea took that as the
shut up
it was meant to be.

As we kept climbing, Sally’s fur rippled in the breeze. Soft but acute eyes analyzed the world at hand. Her posture was erect, her trot rich with pride. Work-dog heaven.

Then she stopped.

O’Shea said, “Would you look at that.”

The road ended abruptly at a mesa filled with cars. Enough parking space for a dozen vehicles positioned properly but I counted seventeen
sets of wheels stacked within inches of one another, some extending to the surrounding brown grass.

Donny Rader’s black Explorer was positioned nearest to the road, slightly apart from the automotive clog. Easy exit for the daily driver. Milo photographed the SUV from several angles, scribbled in his pad.

The other cars, exemplars of high-ticket Italian, German, and British coachwork, were caked with dust, splotched by bird-dirt, fuzzed by leaves. A few tilted on deflated tires.

Sixteen matches to the DMV list. The addition was a red convertible sandwiched in the center of the stack.

Milo squeezed his way over to the BMW, took more pictures, made more notes.

O’Shea said, “Can I ask why that one, El Tee?”

“Victim’s wheels.”

“He kept it? What an idiot.”

“Let’s hope he stays that way. Onward.”

The house was a low, long box that had been stylish in the fifties. My guess was an expat architect from Europe—Schindler or Neutra or someone trying to be Schindler or Neutra. The kind of site-conscious, minimalist design that ages well if it’s kept up.

This one hadn’t been. A roof meant to be flat sagged and dipped. Stress cracks wrinkled white stucco grimed to gray. Windows were pocked with birdshit. Rain streaks and pits blemished the flat façade. Like Prema’s property, Rader’s acreage was backed by forest. But everything else was hard-pack.

We approached the house. Internal shutters blocked off the view the architect had intended. The door was a slab of ash in need of varnish. Solid, though. Milo’s knock barely sounded.

He pushed the doorbell. No chime or buzzer that I could hear.

Louder knock.

The door opened on a girl-woman in a thong bikini. Her hair was a riot of white and black and flamingo-pink. Late teens or early twenties.

She stared at us with bleary, heavy-lidded eyes. White powder
smudged the space between her perfect nose and her perfect lips. The bikini was white, barely qualified as a garment with the bra not much more than pasties on a string and the bottom a nylon triangle not up to the job of pelvic protection. Breasts the size of grapefruits heaved a split second after the rest of her chest moved, the mammary equivalent of digital delay. Her feet were bare and grubby, her nails blood-red talons.

She rubbed her eyes. “Huh?”

“Police, ma’am. Is Mr. Rader here?”

She swiped at the white granules above her mouth.

Milo said, “Don’t worry about your breakfast, we just want to talk to Donny Rader.”