Killer in the Hills (6 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Twenty minutes later I turn onto a residential street in Hollywood, between Fountain and Santa Monica. I drive past a run-down little bungalow, then park where there are no streetlights and turn the engine off. I adjust the mirrors so I can see the bungalow behind us, then sit back and wait.

“What are we doing here?” Karen says.

“Waiting for someone,” I say.

“Who?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“Why not?” she says. “Why are you doing this?”

“If I can, I’m going to try and help you, but I’m not going to tell you anything because if we get separated I don’t want anyone to know where I am or what I’m doing.”

“Why do you give a shit?” she says.

I look at her.

“Why do you care about me, or how I talk, or anything?”

Good question
. I think about what Nicki had said.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “Helping you just seems like the right thing to do at the moment. I don’t see anyone else doing it. As far as the language goes, it has to do with respect.”

“Because you’re my dad?”

“No,” I say. “I wouldn’t let any fifteen year-old kid talk to me like that. So knock it off.”

She makes another derisive little snort and twirls her hair and looks out the window.

“Alright, look,” I say. “It’s possible I’m your father—maybe even likely—but even if I’m not, you’re a kid who’s in a lot of trouble and there’s at least one thing I can do to help you before I turn you over to the cops, which is not going to go well for you. The only other choice I have is to turn you loose and eventually those creeps you call your friends will pick you up, and that won’t go well for you, either.”

“You don’t know anything about them. You don’t know anything about
me
.”

“I know they set you up with that sex site,” I say. “You’re old enough to know how to use the internet, but you’re not old enough to sign the lease for the apartment on Sawtelle.”

“It wasn’t a sex site,” she says. “I didn’t
do
anything on it. I just talked.”

“About what?”

“I just talked,” she says.

“To whom?”

She shrugs. “Random old pervs who wanted to talk about sex…not
do
it. I would never do that.”

“Two bucks a minute just to talk,” I say.

She is quiet for a moment. Then she gives an exaggerated sigh.

“If I kept them online for ten minutes I sometimes took my top off,” she says, then looks away. “That’s it.”

“And who came up with that rule?” I say. “The ten-minute rule.”

She stares out the window and doesn’t say anything.

“Was it Leukatov?” I say.

She stops twirling her hair and sits still.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.

I look in the mirror. The bungalow is dark and the street is quiet.

“When was the last time you saw your mother?” I say.

She shrugs. “While ago,” she says.

“Did you live with her? When did you see her?”

“I don’t know. Few days ago.”

“Was she with anybody?”

She shrugs, looks away.

“She have a boyfriend?”

She stares out the window and says nothing.

“Was she having trouble with anybody? Anybody mad at her about anything?”

No answer.

“Do you have any idea who might have killed her?”

She ignores me. I wait as she stares out the window, braiding and un-braiding her hair. I ask her a few more questions but she won’t say another word. We sit in silence for about fifteen minutes, then she starts to squirm.

“How long are we gonna just sit here?”

I look at my watch. It’s a little after midnight.

“Not much longer, probably,” I say. “There’s somebody I want to talk to, and after that I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”

“Where?” she says.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“You haven’t
decided
yet? You mean you don’t
know.”

“Nope,” I say. “I don’t. I’m making this up as I go along.”

She gives another dramatic sigh, then slumps and starts braiding her hair again.

“Great,” she says.

We sit in silence and I go over my options. I could call Melvin and turn her in right now. Melvin would be as discreet as possible, but he wouldn’t hesitate to take her into custody. And after that no one could control what followed. She would be shuffled through the system and vivisected by jackals before they could even finish questioning her. And if she’s charged and eventually tried, there wouldn’t be a single juror who hadn’t heard all about the gun, the prints, the website, the drug arrest, and God knows what else. I have no idea what other evidence they may have besides the gun—for that matter, I only have her word that she’s innocent. Even so,
somebody
killed her mother, and they would have a compelling interest in keeping her quiet if she knows anything about it. I think of her “friends” from the airport, and of nail guns.

But what choice do I have? I don’t know what she knows and she won’t talk to me. We can’t just run, and she was right—I have no idea where I can take her. Even if I could think of a place, what then? I’ll have to call Melvin eventually, and the longer I wait the worse it will be. And she could bolt at any second.

Maybe Nicki was right—this is senseless, reckless. Maybe I’m only doing it for my own reasons. But so what if I am?

I look at Karen. She is staring out her window, her eyes darting back and forth, the way mine do when I am thinking deeply about something. Her left leg is bouncing rapidly to some urgent rhythm in her head. Just like mine.

If she is my daughter I will do whatever I have to do to help her. If she isn’t, why should I care about one of the multitude of orphaned, desperate kids loose in the world? If I knew right now she wasn’t my daughter—my own blood—would I just cut her loose? Throw her to the wolves and forget about her? How could I? Why should blood matter so much?

Finally, I decide to give myself 24 hours before I call Melvin and hand her over. In the meantime I have one card to play—one chance to find some evidence pointing away from the troubled girl sitting beside me who may well be my child.

I see a pair of headlights approach behind us. A black Mercedes pulls into the driveway that runs alongside the bungalow, toward a detached garage in back.

“Give me your right hand,” I say.

“What?” she says.

I take out the handcuffs from the sex shop and unlock them.

“Cuff your right hand to the armrest,” I say.

“Fuck you,” she says. “I’m not doing that.”

I take out my cell and press a button and Melvin’s FBI number appears on the screen. I hold the phone up for her to see.

“There’s a warrant for your arrest, for your mother’s murder,” I say. “Your prints were found on the murder weapon.”

Her eyes dance back and forth as she reads my face and the FBI ID on the phone.

“I’m committing a felony by harboring you, and another one for a bomb threat at the airport, and another for withholding evidence from the FBI,” I say. “That’s three strikes and that’s as far as I go. Now do what I tell you or I’m turning you in right now.” I hold my finger over the CALL button.

She stares at me long enough to tell that I’m serious, then she fumbles with the handcuffs and cuffs herself to the armrest, swearing under her breath.

“I’ll only be gone about ten minutes,” I say. “Don’t yell for help, don’t honk the horn, don’t do anything but sit here and wait.”

I open my door and get out and see her take out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. I lean back into the car and take them away.

“I can’t smoke?” she says. “Another one of your tightass rules?”

“If somebody sees the lighter or smells the smoke and sees a young girl handcuffed in a car they might do something about it. Just wait. I’ll be back in ten minutes.” I pull the cigarette lighter out of the dashboard and pocket it and close my door quietly and walk down the sidewalk toward the dirty little bungalow.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Fat Zach Wolorski has lived in the little bungalow between Fountain and Santa Monica for all of his fifty-some years. His mother was a minor B-movie actress—a wasp-waisted vixen who battled giant grasshoppers, ants, and other monsters in drive-in theatres all over America in the late fifties and early sixties. You wouldn’t know her name or her face, but you’ve probably heard her scream if you’ve ever fallen asleep with your TV tuned to a cheap movie channel that comes with any basic cable package.

Fat Zach lived with his mother in the bungalow until she died and he inherited the house, along with some cachet as the son of a retro scream-queen—the kind of thing that got you a tiny foothold in certain Hollywood circles—enough for Zach to begin his career following famous people around and digging up dirt.

I first met Zach at his bungalow when he interviewed me for
Slaughter on Sorority Row.
Zach was still doing small-time stories for horror magazines back then, and I remember how creepy it felt, sitting in his filthy little living room with furnishings that hadn’t been changed since the fifties. As I approach the bungalow, it looks like nothing has changed. The white paint is peeling off of the rotting wood siding of the little house; the roof sags in places and the front gutter is missing.

I move down the side of the bungalow, watching the red glow from the brake lights of the Mercedes on the cracked, wet concrete driveway. When the brake lights go off, I glance around the back corner of the house and see the late-model Mercedes sedan in a tiny, tumbledown garage. The door on the driver’s side of the car opens and I see Fat Zach grunt his way out from behind the wheel. He goes to the back of the car and clicks a button on a key fob and the trunk lid opens. He digs around, collecting his camera gear from within the deep trunk of the luxury sedan.

Zach was rumored to be worth around two or three million bucks. He had been sued for libel by furious celebrities several times, and each time he had countersued and won large settlements, which usually included non-disclosure agreements. Fat Zach may be a cockroach but he knows that truth is a defense in libel, and Fat Zach always got his facts right. He made most of his tidy fortune when he outted a famous leading man who had countercharged that Zach was a pedophile, and Zach sued him for a healthy sum. Thus, Fat Zach looks like a slug and lives like a pig and is probably a child molester but he pulls up to every premier, every award show, every party, and every perp-walk in a ninety thousand dollar car. And, since there is a party or premier or perp-walk or award show most every night in Hollywood, I had figured he would be coming home late, and I had figured right.

I watch as he waddles to the back door of his house and fumbles with his keys in the lock. I grab my roll of nickels in a tight fist and walk toward him. Just as he opens the door, I raise my fistful of nickels and rabbit-punch him at the base of his skull and shove him into his little kitchen, where he sprawls out, face-down on the filthy floor, stunned. I put my knee in his back and press the roll of nickels against the back of his head.

“Do exactly what I tell you or I’ll blow your head off,” I say.

“Alright, alright,” he says.

I shove the camera gear away and stand over him.

“Get up,” I say. “Keep your back turned to me, put your hands behind your head.”

He gets up, with considerable effort, glancing back at me as he puts his hands behind his head.

“Rhodes?”

“Shut up,” I say. I pick up his camera bag and dump out the contents, then jam the roll of nickels into his back. “Your office. Go.”

He stumbles over thousands of dollars worth of camera gear with two dollars worth of nickels in his back, and I follow him down a dim hallway to a tiny office. The place reeks from decades of cigarette smoke, greasy food, bad plumbing, and God knows what else. I try not to breathe too deeply.

“Sit down,” I shove him into his cracked Naugahyde desk chair. “Turn on the computer.”

“Computer’s never off,” he says.

“Just do it.”

He moves a wireless mouse on the cluttered desk, which is scarred with cigarette burns. The large laptop screen comes to life.

“Go to the file directory,” I say.

“I don’t know what you want, but you’re making a—”

I ram the nickels against the back of his head so hard that he bumps his nose against the computer screen.

“Do it,” I say.

He opens the file directory.

“Type in Karen Penelope Rhodes,” I say.

He enters the name and the screen fills with dozens of files.

“Which one is the hotel security video?” I say.

“The what?” he says. I whack him in the ear with my nickel roll.

“Ah! Goddamnit—!” he says, cupping his ear with a pasty, surprisingly thin little hand.

The coins are starting to come loose in their tight paper roll. A few of them slide out and scatter on top of the desk in front of Zach.
No more whacking with the nickels
, I think to myself. I’ll have to hit him with my fists from this point, but I don’t want to touch him. I think for a second about picking up a hand-sanitizer at the Hollywood Rite Aid after I leave.

“Don’t make me mad, Zach,” I say. “I know you have it. And if you don’t show it to me right now I’m gonna take this computer with me and bring it to the FBI and let them look for little boys or whatever else you’ve got on here.”

He hesitates, then scrolls down the list of files with his right hand on the mouse. I notice him slide his left hand off of the desk. I grab his wrist and spin him around and reach under the desk and feel the steel grip of a pistol. I kneel down and see a holster stuck to the underside of the desktop with brown packing tape. I pull out the pistol—a Nazi-era Luger. I check the magazine, which is loaded. I pocket the roll of nickels and hold the gun at Zach’s head. The gun is dusty and corroded and I doubt that it will fire but Zach isn’t worth shooting, anyway.

“Is there anything in this place that isn’t at least fifty years old and nasty?” I say.

“Computer,” Zach mumbles, with an odd note of pride.

“Probably more dangerous than the gun, in your hands,” I say. “The video.”

He scrolls down to a file and opens it.

We watch in silence as the dark, grainy security video from the Chateau Marmont plays: Penelope walks down the hall with a man wearing sunglasses, a bulky cargo jacket, and a baseball cap, his head low. He is average height and weight, white, and other than that I can’t tell anything more. They enter the room and the video rolls on uneventfully for a minute.

“How’d you get this?” I say.

“Guy I know at the Marmont,” he says.

“Fast forward.”

Zach hits a key and the video scans forward until the man exits the suite.

“Pause it.”

Zach pauses it and I look carefully at the man, but I can’t see anything more than I could before.

“Do you have any idea who that is?” I say.

“No idea,” Fat Zach shakes his head. “It’s too dark, too far away.”

“Roll it.”

Zach rolls the video again and the man walks away.

“That’s it,” Fat Zach says. “No one else shows up until housekeeping, about six hours later, when they found her.”

I scan down the list of the other files on the screen and notice some files with different extensions.

“What are those files?” I say.

Fat Zach doesn’t say anything, so I grab the long gray hairs on the back of his head and pull.

“People who went to the girl’s website,” he grunts. “BabyKare.”

“Who are they?” I say.

“Nobodies—nobody I know, anyway,” Fat Zach says. “This is my property. I paid for it and you can’t—” he says, and I slap the back of his head.

“Bullshit,” I say. “You know everybody. Give me a name.”

Fat Zach hesitates. His skinny little T-Rex arms flail around and then he grips the desk so he doesn’t fall over if I hit him again.

“I swear, I don’t know any of them,” he says. He opens a few files and I see names and credit card numbers. “Most of them probably aren’t the cardholders’ real names, anyway.”

“These are people who paid to visit Karen’s website?” I say.

“Yes.”

“You know how to find out who they are,” I say. “Don’t tell me you haven’t tried.”

“I
have
tried, but I just got this stuff today,” he says. “I need more time…”

I grab the back of his neck and push him over, chair and all. He flops around on the floor like a beached manatee as I shut down the laptop and unplug it from the wall. I stuff the power cord into the camera bag and turn the laptop back on. The screen comes to life and prompts me for a password.

“Password,” I say.

Zach says nothing. I kick him in the leg and point the Luger at him.

“Give it to me, Zach.”

“You won’t shoot me,” he says.

“You’re right,” I say, and pull the chair off him and kick him in the groin as hard as I can. He shrieks and curls up in a fat ball, his face twisted in pain. Tears squeeze out of his eyes and run down his face.

“Password.”

I wait as he cries for a moment, then I rear back with my foot again like a placekicker—

“Evelyn,” he says.

I type it in and the computer comes to life. From nowhere I remember Evelyn was his mother’s name. Touching.

I kneel underneath the desk, where there is a rack of backup hard drives blinking. I unplug them all and dump them into the camera bag, then get up and stand over Fat Zach and show him the computer.

“I know all about you, Zach, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got enough here to put you in Pelican Bay where they’ll trade you for cigarettes. At the very least I’ve got you for withholding evidence in a first degree murder investigation. I’m gonna take it all and if you ever tell anyone I was here, or if you or anybody else reports anything about my visit I’m turning all of this stuff over to the FBI and the LAPD.”

I can tell from the ashen look on Fat Zach’s face that I have said the magic words. I close the computer and put it in the camera bag.

“Lie there and don’t make a sound for twenty minutes,” I say. I heft the bag with the computer and the backup drives over my shoulder. I turn to leave the cramped, smelly little office.

“That’s all my work!” Fat Zach sputters from the floor. “You can’t do this!”

“Well I just did, and you’re smart enough to know there’s nothing you can do about it,” I say. “Even if you do exactly what I’m telling you I may turn you over anyway, just because you’re a pig and your house stinks and I don’t like you.”

I turn and walk out, down the dim hallway and out the back door.

When I walk outside I take a deep breath of the cold, rain-cleansed night air and head back to the car where I have a fifteen year-old girl handcuffed inside my rental car.