“Sounds like Park was telling the truth in one respect,” she observed. “Jill’s gun would have slipped past their background check. No registration, no paper trail.” She put away the report on the gun. “You got anything else for me?”
“Don’t I always?” He reached under his jacket and pulled out a handheld digital recorder. “Jill gave us permission to lift those threatening phone calls off her voice mail. Phone records confirm that she got the last one a few hours before her job interview.” He held up the gadget and clicked it on. “Get an earful.”
A harsh, whispery voice, with a distinctly Southern twang, emanated from the recorder:
“Listen to me, you bitch! You better watch your back, ‘cause I’m coming for you. Just when you least expect it, you’re going to get what’s coming to you . . . and then some! Don’t even think you can get away from me. I’m going nuclear on you, baby. You’re going to die screaming. . . .”
Brass clicked off the recorder. “That’s just a sample. There’s plenty more where that came from.”
The temperature in the office seemed to have dropped several degrees. Catherine had been on the receiving end of her fair share of threats, but the vicious message still gave her a chill. If that really was Craig Gonch on the tape, she understood why Jill would want a restraining order—and a gun. “Well. I can’t imagine why anyone would be jumpy after getting a call like that.”
“Unless this has all been staged for our benefit,” Brass speculated. “To make a premeditated murder look like a misunderstanding.”
Catherine had thought of that, too. “But why would she want to kill Novak? As far as we know, they’d never met before.”
“Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”
She took the recorder from Brass. She turned it over in her hands, wondering what Archie might be able to do with it.
“It would help if we knew for sure whose voice is on that tape.”
Heather Gilroy’s address led Sara to a low-budget apartment building across the street from a Choozy’s Chicken franchise. She and Vartann compared notes on the case as they took the stairs to the fifth floor. The run-down building reminded Sara of her first apartment in San Francisco, right after college. Sadly, there was no elevator.
“This is my second time here,” Vartann said. “We’ve been trying to get hold of Gilroy since yesterday, but so far she’s in the wind.” A long corridor, painted an institutional shade of beige, ran down the middle of two facing rows of apartments. Muffled noises escaped the thin walls. They counted down the doors to the right address. No light escaped the peephole. Sara didn’t hear a TV or stereo blaring inside. Vartann knocked on the door. “Let’s hope she’s home this time.”
Sara had come along to take Heather’s fingerprints, as well any other evidence that might present itself. Before she could determine whether there were any suspicious prints on the vivarium, she had to be able to eliminate the masseuse’s prints, which meant getting exemplars from Heather.
If we can find her, she thought.
As she let Vartann take point, she couldn’t resist checking him out on the sly. Not for herself, but because she had gotten inklings that something might be developing between Vartann and Catherine, an impression that the other woman had cagily neither confirmed nor denied. Sara had worked with the laconic detective before, of course, but now she evaluated him from a different perspective.
Not bad, she concluded. Beneath his conservative dark suit, Vartann appeared to be in good shape. His lean, somewhat severe features had a certain appeal, if you liked tough guys. Catherine could, and had, done worse, especially if she was going to date a cop.
Vartann rapped harder on the door. He raised his voice. “LVPD. Open up.”
No one came to the door. Sara listened closely, but did not hear anyone stirring inside. It was pushing eight p.m., a few hours before her next shift officially started, but sometimes you had to fudge the hours if you wanted to catch people at a sane hour. It was a weeknight, so hopefully Heather wouldn’t be out tonight. Then again, Sara recalled, the runaway masseuse didn’t have a job anymore.
A minute or two passed.
“Looks like we struck out again,” Sara said.
“Yeah.” Vartann took a break from knocking. “Sorry to waste your time dragging you out here.”
“No problem.” She wondered if Vartann was disappointed to be paired with her instead of Catherine. Or was it easier to concentrate on the case without any distracting sexual chemistry involved? Workplace romances could be tricky, as she knew better than most. On the other hand, she and Gil had worked out eventually. Maybe Catherine and Vartann had a shot, too.
Or was she getting ahead of herself?
Probably.
“If I didn’t know better,” Sara observed, “I’d think Heather Gilroy was avoiding us.”
“Me, too.” He scowled at the door. “Makes me wonder what she’s got to hide.”
A final emphatic knock proved equally futile. Alas, they did not have probable cause to force their way in, and Sara doubted they could get a warrant unless it could be proven categorically that Rita Segura had been bitten on purpose. They didn’t even have grounds enough to put out a BOLO alert on Heather. All they had her on was fleeing the scene of a snakebite, which probably wasn’t illegal. Sara prayed that Heather had not left town to avoid the heat.
Stymied for now, they turned back toward the stairs. Sara wasn’t looking forward to lugging her gear back down five flights of stairs.
“Excuse me, are you looking for Heather?”
An unexpected voice, coming from the apartment across the hall, called them back. Sara turned around to see a curious neighbor standing in a doorway. The speaker was an overweight Caucasian woman, maybe retirement age, wearing a bright red Snuggie. The ridiculous garment made her look like she had her bathrobe on backward. It was not a good look—for anybody.
“Yes, we are.” Sara felt a surge of hope. Maybe they had caught a lucky break. “Have you seen her lately?”
“Not since yesterday,” the woman volunteered. “Which I admit has been something of a blessed relief.”
Sara sensed the woman had something she wanted to get off her chest. “And why is that?”
“For the first time in weeks, I haven’t had to endure that yappy little dog of hers. Usually, it’s barking its head off all the time, enough to drive you absolutely crazy.” She directed her grievance at Vartann. “You’re with the police, you said? Surely that kind of disturbance can’t be legal. Having a noisy dog like that when your neighbors are trying to sleep?”
“You have my sympathy,” Vartann said in a noncommittal manner. He was clearly in no hurry to get sucked into a routine nuisance complaint. “And you are?”
“Camille Bozian,” she answered. “5-D.”
Sara realized that she was referring to her apartment number. Heather Gilroy lived in 5-E. “Do you have any idea where we might be able to find her?”
“Not in the slightest,” Bozian said. “But wherever she is, she obviously took that irritating mutt with her. He always barks worst when she’s not at home. Usually during the afternoon when I’m trying to get my beauty rest.”
“When was the last time you saw her?” Vartann asked.
“Yesterday morning, I think.” Bozian paused to replay the encounter in her mind. “I tried to catch her as she was rushing out to work, to speak to her about the dog again, but she said she was running late.” The older woman clucked indignantly. “Five minutes later, the dog started yapping again. . . .”
First the dog, then the snakes. It sounded like Heather was having all sorts of animal control issues yesterday. Sara wondered where she might have taken refuge after the alarming incident at The Nile. “Do you know if she has a boyfriend?”
“Not that I know of,” Bozian said. “Unless you count Jonas.”
That sounds promising, Sara thought. “Who is Jonas?”
Bozian rolled her eyes. “The damn do
g, who else?”
The audio/visual lab was one door down from Catherine’s office. As usual, it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. Archie Johnson liked to keep the lights low to avoid any glare on the multiple screens and monitors crammed into the lab. The distinctive aroma of microwave popcorn, lingering in the air, gave the lab the feel of a one-man multiplex. The A/V center was one of the few labs in the complex where food was allowed, since there was no DNA or trace evidence to be contaminated, just pixels and electrons. Most of the lab rats had to confine their late-night snacks to the break room at the end of the hall.
Just as long as they keep the munchies away from Toxicology, Catherine thought.
His back to the door, Archie sat in front of an expensive array of high-tech computer monitors. An even larger plasma screen was halfway up the rear wall of the lab, directly facing the young gadget guru’s workstation. Archie could transfer any image to the large screen with just a few strokes on his keyboard. Headphones were clapped over his ear, cutting him off from the everyday buzz of the lab. A glowing computer monitor displayed a spectrographic analysis of an audio recording. The timing, frequency, amplitude, and resonance of the sound were charted as fuzzy bands along an x–y axis, providing a permanent visual representation. A good analyst employed both his eyes and his ears.
She tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. He took off the headphones and turned around to greet her. A slim young Asian man in a Hawaiian shirt, he was better-looking and less nerdy than most of his fellow lab rats. His athletic prowess and trim physique had recently earned him a cover shot on a professional surfing magazine. “Hi, boss. Didn’t hear you come in.”
“Sorry to interrupt.” She nodded at the pulsating images on the screen. “That Jill Wooten’s scary phone call?”
“In all its spectrographic glory,” he confirmed. “Somebody sure didn’t like her.”
“And somebody else may have gotten shot because of it,” Catherine said. “You think you can get anything out of that?”
“Maybe,” he hedged. “The fact that the caller is using a creepy whisper is going to make a concrete identification tricky, but we might be able to establish a strong probability as to the identity of the caller, especially after I clean the recording up some more. And, of course, I’m still going to need an audio exemplar to compare it against.”
“We’re working on that,” she promised him. “What about the source of the call? Any luck there?”
“Not really.” Archie put away his headphones. “Phone records indicate that it came from a disposable cell phone.”
Catherine was afraid of that. Disposable phones were now the medium of choice for obscene phone callers, career criminals, and the occasional terrorist. Finding the phone was going to be a real long shot. Chances were, the mystery caller had already trashed it.
Especially now that Novak was history.
12
SARA HAD NOT given up on finding Heather Gilroy yet. As she and Detective Vartann drove away from the apartment building, she called The Nile on her cell phone. At first nobody picked up and she feared that maybe the staff at the spa had called it a day, but, after several rings, she finally got a response.
“The Nile Spa and Salon,” a male voice answered. “How may I assist you?”
“Mr. Yun?” Sara had met Brian Yun, the spa’s assistant manager the other day, when she had provided him with a receipt for the snakes she had confiscated. “This is Sara Sidle from the crime lab. I’m glad I caught you.”
A weary sigh was audible even over the phone. “Madame has me working late redoing our calendar. I’m afraid we’ve had several cancellations, after what happened to Ms. Segura.” He sounded tired and under stress.
Sara wouldn’t also be surprised to hear that The Nile was receding and business wouldn’t be coming back. Although the ill-fated snake massage had not yet attracted the sort of media frenzy that Catherine’s Shock Treatment case was getting, Sara imagined the story was already spreading rapidly through Rita Segura’s gossipy social circle. It was the kind of bizarre occurrence people couldn’t resist talking about.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she said, “but I was hoping you could help us out. I don’t suppose Heather Gilroy showed up for work today? We’re still trying to track her down.”
“I’m afraid not,” Yun said. “In fact, Madame has already instructed me to mail Heather’s final paycheck to her home address, along with a notice of termination, to discourage her from ever showing her face here again. Alas, poor Heather has been banished from The Nile.”
“But you still have her personnel file, right?” Sara had another idea. “Can you tell me who is listed as her emergency contact?”
Yun hesitated. “I’m not sure. Isn’t that information supposed to be confidential? It’s only meant to be used in the event of a genuine emergency.”
“Heather is missing,” Sara pointed out, “and a key witness in what might be an attempted homicide. That sounds like an emergency to me.”
“Homicide?” He reacted with shock. “But I thought this was just an accident.”
Sara saw no need to update him on their investigation. “Homicide. Manslaughter. Negligence. Right now we can’t rule anything out. And Heather Gilroy might be the only person who can help us clear things up.”
“Oh,” Yun relented. “I guess when you put it that way . . . hang on.” He tapped away at his keyboard. “All right. I have that information for you now.”
Sara gave Vartann a thumbs-up. She took out a notebook. “Thanks a lot. I really appreciate this.” She copied down the address Yun read to her. “Trust me,” she assured him, “you’re doing the right thing.”
“I hope so,” he said glumly, sounding unconvinced. “For everyone’s sake.”
“Again?”
Greg groaned at the prospect of watching Matt Novak die one more time. He and Nick had already viewed the Shock Treatment footage at least a dozen times, twice for each angle. By now they knew every beat and nuance of the doomed actor’s final moments.
Or did they?
Nick thought that maybe they were missing something. All of this footage, fortuitously dropped into their laps . . . there had to be a clue there that would shed some light on the proceedings. Maybe right in front of them.