Kill Fee (23 page)

I
f Roy O’Connell knew anything about Killswitch, he wasn’t talking.

Windermere and MacLean found the director at his Malibu beach house, doing laps in his infinity pool. Windermere stood at the end of the pool. Waited until he’d finished a lap. Until he looked up, breathing heavy, squinting in the light.

“Killswitch,” she said.

O’Connell frowned. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Is this some kind of hidden-camera trick?”

“No trick,” said Windermere. “No cameras. I just want to know what you thought of Benjamin Arnaud.”

O’Connell’s face clouded. He looked at Windermere again, then at MacLean behind her. “I get the feeling I should be calling my lawyer.”

Windermere tossed him a towel. “Suit yourself.”

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER,
O’Connell sat, fully dressed, in his expansive living room, a postcard view of the ocean behind him and a bulldog lawyer in a five-thousand-dollar suit in front.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Agent Windermere,” the director told her. “I didn’t like Arnaud. Of course I didn’t. My daughter was barely
eighteen when he . . .” He shook his head. “Anyway. I didn’t like the man. Maybe I was happy to hear he’d got what was coming to him—”

The lawyer stiffened.
“Roy.”

O’Connell shrugged. “I didn’t kill him, Jerry. I was at a function that night. A hundred people saw me.”

“Sure they did,” said Windermere. “For the purposes of my case, though, where you were at the time of the killing doesn’t matter. What do you know about Killswitch?”

“Killswitch.” O’Connell frowned. “It was a movie, right? Steven Seagal.”

Windermere didn’t say anything. Waited, hoping her silence would convince the director to keep talking. After a moment, he shook his head.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t know any Killswitch. I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you’re alleging I killed Benjy Arnaud, you’re wrong. I’m a goddamn movie director.”

“You’re a father,” said Windermere. “Maybe you didn’t like the thought of Arnaud’s hands on your daughter. Maybe you decided to do something about it.”

“I did do something about it. I severed all ties with Arnaud’s production company. I told him I’d never do business with him again, and if I saw him in public I’d probably punch him out. I didn’t kill him, though. That’s a fact.”

Windermere looked around. “You’d be willing to show me your computers, your phone records, here and at your office? Your financial records, all of that?”

“Not without a warrant,” the lawyer said.

“Relax, Jerry.” O’Connell smiled at Windermere. “Whatever you need, Agent. I have nothing to hide.”

E
ight hours of fruitless searching later, Windermere was forced to conclude that either Roy O’Connell was a very good liar or he really did have nothing to hide.

She’d managed to talk her way into a glorified broom closet down the hall from the Criminal Investigative Division at the FBI’s West L.A. offices, had commandeered a couple of Bureau techs to comb through O’Connell’s hard drives, and in the meantime had plugged away at a fossilized computer and a labyrinthine phone system, looking for someone or something that would point the finger at Benjamin Arnaud’s killer.

MacLean hung around until early evening, talking her through his own investigative process, pointing her toward questions he’d been unable to answer the first time around. For all of his Hollywood pretense, Windermere decided, the detective was a pretty good cop. Windermere wasn’t finding many holes as she reviewed his work, and after Roy O’Connell’s records came back clean, the FBI agent was forced to conclude that she didn’t have the slightest clue who’d paid for Benjamin Arnaud’s murder. Killswitch, in this case, had been remarkably fastidious.

How many others?
Windermere thought.
How many more murders has Killswitch committed, murders we just don’t know about because the guy’s too goddamn good?

MacLean begged off around the time the sun finally set. He’d made a play at her, had run one hand through his perfect hair and fixed her with a movie star smile. “Feel like a drink, Agent Windermere? Sometimes it takes a bit of social lubrication to make the pieces fall into place.”

Horrible line notwithstanding, Windermere had been tempted.
MacLean was a decent-looking guy, and after that debacle with Stevens, she could use some distraction. In the end, though, she couldn’t do it. She shook MacLean’s hand and told him she’d probably see him tomorrow, watched him walk off and then settled back into her work.

Now, with darkness settled in outside, she sat back from her ancient computer and surveyed the tiny workspace.
My own office.
Hardly all it’s cracked up to be.

She thought about Stevens and wondered if he and Mathers were making any progress. Wished she hadn’t bolted on Stevens so quickly. She wondered what he’d thought when he found Mathers waiting for him in the hotel lobby that morning. Whether he’d been surprised or upset. If he’d missed her.

Knock it off, dummy. Who cares if he missed you?

Windermere stared out of her tiny office to the dark sky in the windows beyond. Thought about Stevens some more, and then pushed the BCA agent from her mind. Turned back to her computer and brought up a gossip website, figuring maybe a spurned movie star would dish on Roy O’Connell.

She waded through tripe for an hour, got nothing but paparazzi pictures and pregnancy rumors. Felt her eyelids getting heavy and stood and walked out to search for the coffee machine. Then she felt her phone buzzing. Stevens’s number.

She answered. “Stevens?”

“Mathers.” A pause. “I borrowed his phone.”

Windermere swallowed. “Oh,” she said. “Okay, Mathers. What’s up?”

“Doing the New York thing.” Mathers sounded tired, but cheerful. “Anyway, we figured we should tell you: We got ourselves a guy here. Says he paid Killswitch to murder Maria Nadeau.”

H
e wasn’t supposed to die, I swear.”

Stevens leaned forward and studied the man across the table. It had been a long night, and he hadn’t slept any. Now, as morning broke over Manhattan, he found himself crowded into a 24th Precinct interview room with Mathers and Detective Erin Nordin—and this man, one Sebastian Morgan, a plump, aging socialite who’d spent most of the last hour in tears.

They’d found Morgan at his West End Avenue townhouse, had roused him out of bed around five in the morning. It had been a long night already by that point; Stevens, Mathers, and Nordin had turned Manhattan upside down looking for the money behind Johnny Thorsson’s loft, leaving Stevens exhausted and half-deaf from a succession of nightclubs and loft parties and drugged-up friends of Thorsson’s, one of whom had finally pointed the finger at Morgan.

Morgan knew the score as soon as he opened the door. He stared out at Nordin, then Mathers and Stevens, and he sighed, his eyes welling with tears. “Let me get dressed,” he told them. “Then I’ll talk.”

Now the big man sat across from Stevens and struggled to keep his composure as he told the story. “He wasn’t supposed to die,” he said. “I swear.”

Stevens leaned forward. “Johnny, you mean.”

Morgan nodded. “He didn’t even like that woman. He was with her for the money. Everyone knew.”

“He liked you, though.”

“Liked me?” Morgan shook his head. “We were in love. I told him I
could take care of him. He didn’t need to sleep with that slut anymore. He didn’t listen.”

Stevens sat back. “So you killed her. And Johnny, too.”

“He wasn’t supposed to die,” Morgan said. “I didn’t think the killer would shoot him, too. I just wanted to scare him. Show him he needed me.”

Mathers stepped forward. “Did you pay him?”

Morgan nodded.

“After the killing, I mean.” Mathers looked at Stevens. “You said they paid in installments, right? So did you pay the second installment, or what?”

Morgan looked down at the table. He didn’t say anything. Stevens leaned forward again. “Mr. Morgan, we’ll be looking at your bank statements,” he said. “We’re going to find out, one way or the other.”

Morgan still didn’t answer. He didn’t look up, just sat there in silence, his breath growing ragged, more labored. Finally, he looked up, his eyes wet with tears. “Why couldn’t he have loved me?” he said, stifling a sob. “We could have been so happy together.”

AN HOUR LATER,
Stevens stood in an observation room adjoining Sebastian Morgan’s little corner of hell. He drank strong precinct coffee and ate a breakfast sandwich and stared in through the two-way mirror at Morgan as Derek Mathers pressed him for information.

Morgan was guilty. He’d waived the right to an attorney and signed a full confession. Had admitted, tearfully, that he’d paid for both murders. That he’d wanted to punish Johnny Thorsson for spurning him.

He’d found Killswitch, he said, through a musician friend, though everyone knew about it. He had seen Thorsson with Nadeau at a party one night, had tried, one more time, to seduce the young tennis pro. Thorsson had rebuffed him. That night, drunk on champagne and high on cocaine, he’d filed an application with Killswitch. A few weeks later, Johnny Thorsson and Maria Nadeau were dead.

Morgan was guilty. He’d confessed to it all. But he didn’t know a damn thing about Killswitch. He’d found the website easy, had filed the application and transferred the payments, provided Killswitch with the details of Johnny Thorsson’s hotel reservation, but for all of that, he knew less about the program than Comm had, and Comm didn’t know much. In essence, he was no help at all.

Stevens stared through the window. Mathers sat at the table across from Morgan. Detective Nordin stood in a corner, barely able to contain her excitement. She’d close her homicide case; she had reason to be thrilled. For Stevens and Mathers, though, Sebastian Morgan was just another dead end.

Stevens watched Mathers. He hadn’t hated working with the kid. In fact, he’d kind of enjoyed it. The kid was a smart-ass, but sharp. Had a good sense of humor and could talk basketball all day. Didn’t even seem to hold a grudge after the whole Miami fiasco. The kid was a Bulls fan, but nobody was perfect.

Still, though, he wondered about Windermere. She’d spoken to Mathers this morning from Los Angeles, and from what Mathers was saying, she wasn’t having any luck, either. Mathers seemed to think they’d be heading back to Philadelphia pretty quick, joining up with the state cops and canvassing the countryside for Richard O’Brien. Working the phone book. Chasing needles in haystacks.

Philadelphia. Stevens couldn’t help feeling like a third wheel now that Mathers and Windermere were going to be back working together. Certainly they wouldn’t need his help running the manhunt, and with the Pyatt family pretty much removed from the equation, Stevens figured Tim Lesley would want him back on BCA turf. Besides, Nancy was getting impatient back home. She was swamped with work, had been stuck by herself with the kids for nearly a week now. And who knew how Windermere would react when she saw him; he’d pretty much alienated her the last time they’d spoken. Maybe it was time to go home.

Hell,
Stevens thought,
give Mathers and Windermere a chance to get to know each other. They don’t need me hanging around.

In the interview room, Sebastian Morgan was crying again. Stevens stared through the window and watched the man sob, thinking about Windermere and Killswitch and home.

T
he phone rang in the morning. That evening, Lind drove to the airport.

It was Friday. So the man told him, when he gave Lind his flight information. When he outlined his instructions for the job.

Friday. Lind was surprised, though he didn’t know why. The girl had come over on Sunday. Since then, he’d been alone in his apartment.

Sunday to Friday. Five days.

Lind locked up his apartment and drove to the airport. Left his car in the overnight lot and walked into the terminal. Stopped before he reached the Delta counter and surveyed the long row of desks.

She was there. Caity Sherman. She was working at the priority counter. Lind smiled a little. He started toward her. Then he stopped.

The identification in his pocket said Andrew Kessler. Caity Sherman thought his name was Richard O’Brien. She would want to know why his ID said different. She would ask questions that he wouldn’t be able to answer.

Lind turned and walked to the other end of the Delta counter and checked in on a computer screen. He kept his back to the priority lane and didn’t look back at Caity Sherman. The machine spat out his ticket
and he took it and walked toward security. Was nearly at the entrance when she called out behind him. “Richard.”

Lind turned around. She’d left the Delta counter and was standing in the middle of the terminal. “You didn’t like my cooking,” she said, grinning. “Is that it?”

Lind hesitated a moment. Then he walked back toward her, keeping the Andrew Kessler ticket hidden. “I liked your cooking,” he said.

She pretended to pout. “You just didn’t want to talk to me? I’m all alone at the frequent-flier desk.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Uh-huh.” She paused. Then she grinned again. “I’m just teasing. Where are you headed?”

“I’m headed . . .” He couldn’t think. He knew the man would expect him to lie. “I don’t know.”

She frowned. “You don’t know where you’re going? Let’s see your ticket.”

“No.”
He snatched it away from her. Glanced quickly at the departures screen above her head. “Houston,” he said. “I’m going to Houston.”

“Houston.” She studied his face. Then she shrugged. “Well, you’d better hurry. They’re about to board.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She shook her head and turned back to the counter. “Don’t mention it.”

Lind watched her go. He’d extricated himself. He’d lied and she’d believed him, and now she was leaving. Disaster averted. He’d won.

“Hey,” he called out. Felt a sudden spasm of panic when she turned around. He looked down at the ground and tried to steady his breathing. “It was . . . it was good to see you.”

She snorted. “I bet.”

Lind watched her walk back to the ticket counter. He still felt the panic. Hell, he was terrified, shaking. He knew the man wouldn’t approve. Still, he wanted to see her again. To hell with the man.