Private: #1 Suspect (17 page)

BUGS CIRCLED JUSTINE’S dying beam. She whacked her flashlight with her palm, and the light flared briefly, then dimmed again.

Damn it.

Justine was pissed at herself for taking Danny’s Mayday call seriously. He’d gotten her and Rick out of bed at four a.m., and now where was Danny?

Run off again with Piper.

Justine was wearing espadrilles, the wrong shoes to be hiking up this obstacle course of a path that started at the back of the cabin and led to only God knew where.

Add that to Danny’s management team: Schuster, Barstow, and Koulos were following her single file, murmuring too softly for her to make out what they were saying to one another. Except that she’d heard her name a couple of times, so she knew they were talking about her.

Blaming her for Danny Whitman’s escapade.

The unbelievable nerve.

The Whitman job was not worth what Private was being paid, not even close, and she was going to do something about that when she got hold of Jack.

Her cell phone rang, an incongruous bar of upbeat music. It had to be Rick saying that he’d found Danny. She hoped that whatever the problem was, it was minor or solved or both.

She dug in her jacket pocket and got her phone in hand just as the path emptied into a clearing. The faint circle of her flashlight beam revealed a heap on the ground.

It was
Danny
.

He was half naked, barefoot, sitting with his arms locked around his knees, rocking and keening.

What was this now? Was Danny having a tantrum or was he actually in trouble?

Schuster broke past her and ran to Danny, calling his name.

Barstow barked, “Can I have that?”

He snatched her flashlight out of her hand and jogged over to where Schuster had pulled Danny into his arms and was crooning to him, “What’s wrong, buddy? Where does it hurt?”

Justine’s phone was ringing again. She turned her back on the group and put the phone to her ear.

Del Rio was panting and his voice was ragged.

“The girl is dead. I’m coming up the canyon right now. Don’t let Danny leave.”

“What girl? You mean, Piper? Rick?
Are you there?
”

Del Rio had clicked off.

JUSTINE SENSED MOVEMENT behind her and she whipped around. Merv Koulos was right
there,
standing so close she could smell Tic Tac on his breath.

The producer’s homely face was crumpled like a paper bag and he was shouting at her, “Do you see this, Dr. Smith? Danny is having a breakdown. We hired you people to watch him, and now I’ve got a mental case on my hands. My crew is showing up on set tomorrow, and you think Danny’s going to be up for that? Every day that we don’t shoot is three hundred grand right down the—”

“We’ve got a bigger problem, Mr. Koulos. Much bigger.”

“You’re telling me? I’m going to sue you for criminal negligence. I’m going to sue you
personally
.”

Justine saw Rick’s light bobbing as he reached the top of the incline. She left Koulos in midrant and went to Rick.

He was winded, trying to catch his breath. He gasped, “Looks like Piper was killed by a blow to the head. Could have happened as she fell down the cliff. I can’t tell if she was pushed or what.”

Danny pulled away from his agent and lurched over to Del Rio.

“Pushed? She wasn’t
pushed,
” Danny wailed. “We were sleeping. I woke up and she was gone. I went looking for her. She was supposed to be
asleep
…”

Barstow’s face showed shock. His voice was high, bordering on hysteria when he said to Danny, “I know, Danny, I know. Come back to the house with me. We’ll get some clothes on you. I’ve got Xanax. We’ll take care of this. Come on, Danny.”

Justine stood still, blinking in the dark, trying to absorb Rick’s terrible news.

Piper Winnick was dead in this remote place, and no one had been with her but Danny.

Justine didn’t know Piper, had never met her, but she’d met Danny. And she had contracted for Private to keep him at close range.

He’d ditched them. That was a deal breaker, and she thought that was defensible in court—but what was terrifying her now was the possibility that Danny was capable of violence, and she hadn’t seen that.

Had her ego gotten the best of her? Had she missed a signal that had cost a girl her life?

Schuster and Barstow were trying to move Danny back up the trail, but Danny was resisting, shouting at them that he didn’t want to leave Piper alone.

Koulos was back in Justine’s face. He raged, “And now, because he got away from you, Piper is dead. My movie is dead too. I’m ruined. Ruined.”

Justine was still holding her phone, but her hand was shaking.

“You making the call?” Rick asked her.

She nodded and dialed 911.

JUSTINE HAD JUST opened her front door when her phone rang. She hit the light switch in the foyer. Rocky barked, ran to her, and threw himself against her thighs.

She tousled his ears, tossed the car keys onto the console, and checked the caller ID on her phone. It was Danny’s manager, Larry Schuster.

What did he want now? Was this another threat to sue?

She was still shaking from the sickening events of the past few hours: the dead teenage movie star, the threats from Mervin Koulos, and the pitiful arrest of Danny Whitman, who’d kicked and screamed until three cops managed to stuff him into the cruiser.

Justine said hello into the phone.

“Do you still work for us?” Schuster asked.

“You’re kidding, Larry. Danny broke our contract when he drove away from the set—”

“He drove away from the set, but he’s innocent of everything else.”

“Larry, I’m sorry for Danny and sorry for you, but we’re out of this. It’s time you got lawyers involved.”

“Just talk to him. Let him tell you what’s going on.”

“Larry, he’s told me. He feels like someone else is running his life, but as I understand it, no one told him to run off with Piper Winnick this morning—and now she’s dead.”

“They’re seeing each other. They’re
involved
. They went to sleep and when he woke up, she was gone. He didn’t push her off that cliff. He went looking for her and he found her down there.”

“Maybe the studio’s lawyers are good enough to settle the rape case, Larry, but if Danny were my client, I’d get the best criminal-defense attorney in California. There should be a dozen five-star cannons who would love to defend Danny Whitman. Geragos, Tacopina—”

“I’m at the medical services building at Twin Towers,” Schuster said. “The police left Danny alone for a minute and he took a head-first run at the wall in the interrogation room.”

“Are you
kidding?
How badly is he hurt?”

“It’s a pretty good concussion. He’s depressed. He was in love with Piper. Do you understand?”

“I
don’t
understand, Larry. What do you want from me?”

“You’re a shrink. And Danny trusts you. He asked me to get you, and I said I would try.”

“I’m a shrink, but I’m not
Danny’s
shrink.”

“I told the cops that you
are
so that I could get you in to see him. Will you just talk to him? Maybe you can make some sense of this, Dr. Smith, because I know Danny very well. I’ve seen him every day for the last four years, and I’m telling you, Danny didn’t kill anybody.”

Justine was exhausted, stressed out, sleep deprived, and now she was conflicted too.

Should she go see Danny because he was still her client and he had asked for her?

Or should she wait until she’d spoken to Jack and Private’s lawyer, Eric Caine?

Nefertiti rubbed against her.

Justine bent to pet her cat.

Everything about Danny Whitman was bothering her. Was he a psychopath? Was that why neither she nor Larry Schuster had seen Danny’s potential for violence? Or was he a lamb, as innocent as Schuster said?

For her own peace of mind, she had to know.

“Dr. Smith?” Schuster said.

“I’m here.”

It was an hour’s drive to Twin Towers in traffic. Getting past the bureaucracy at TTCF could take all day, and she still might not get to see Danny.

“I’m being paged,” said Schuster. “I’ve left your name at the main gate.”

IN THE FOUR hours since Justine had last seen Danny Whitman, he’d been transferred from Lost Hills, the best jail in the state, to TTCF.

He was now in the Twin Towers medical services building, which was packed to the walls with prisoners, many of them mentally unbalanced.

She’d worked in places like this one. They were never good.

After being patted down again and sent through a metal detector again, Justine stood in the doorway and looked around.

The rectangular room had armed guards on both sides of the door, bars in the small high windows, fresh industrial-green paint on the walls, and a pervasive, almost punishing odor of disinfectant.

She located Danny in one of the hospital beds, two down from the glass-enclosed nursing station. He had two black eyes, wore a paper robe and a gauze turban, and he was handcuffed to the bed rails.

Justine had been told that she had fifteen minutes with Danny, no physical contact permitted, and that if she broke that rule, her meeting with Danny would be terminated immediately.

Danny looked up when she came toward him. He appeared happier to see her than she had expected. She hardly knew him. What did he think she could do for him?

Justine pulled a plastic chair up to the side of the bed. “We don’t have much time, Danny. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Piper and I were in love, but we couldn’t tell anyone because of her age, and listen, the paparazzi—”

“I’m sorry, Danny. The short version, okay?”

Justine was assessing him. Did he comprehend? Was he lucid? Was he truthful? Was he living in this time and place or in a world of his own creation?

“Yesterday morning when we were setting up in the Ferrari, Piper said to me, ‘Too bad we can’t just get out of here,’ and I was thinking with my heart. We’d never spent the night together.…It was a great opportunity.…I drove to the cabin I bought last year under a fake name. Oh, God. If I’d used my brain, she’d still be alive.”

He was crying again.

“Danny. In twelve minutes, I’ll be thrown out of here, so please talk to me. Did you have a fight with Piper?”

“Oh, no. We had a wonderful day. We partied until we both passed out in bed. I woke up—maybe something woke me up. Piper wasn’t there.”

“Then what happened?”

Danny dried his face with the sleeve of his gown and went on.

“I went out to look for Piper. It was totally dark outside, but I saw a car parked next to the Ferrari. It was right in the flower bed. No car should have been there. Then I saw a flashlight moving through the trees, and I started walking up the trail and calling Piper.

“All of a sudden, the light disappeared. I heard the car start up behind me, and I thought maybe Piper was having regrets, that she had called for someone to pick her up. But then…I found her shoe at the edge of the drop. I thought, ‘No, she can’t be down there,’ but when I looked over the edge…I knew there was nothing I could do for her. I called you. I called everyone.”

The guard came toward Danny’s bed and said, “Time’s up.”

Danny looked directly into Justine’s eyes. “I swear to you, Dr. Smith, I didn’t do that to Piper. You have to believe me. Someone is doing something to me. I don’t know what it is and I don’t know who’s doing it. But that car I saw at my cabin? Whoever owns it is the one who killed Piper.”

CARMINE NOCCIA’S FATHER was a thug; so was mine. Carmine and I had both gone to Ivy League schools, we’d both served in the Corps, and both our fathers had given us the keys to the family business.

Beyond that, Carmine Noccia and I had nothing in common.

Carmine was a third-generation killer, never caught, never even charged. The FBI had him on their watch list, but they had no evidence to support their certain knowledge that he’d had three people murdered.

There’d been no fingerprints. No smoking guns. No surveillance tape.

Snitches had been killed before testifying.

Carmine’s father, the don, was ready to retire, and Carmine was rumored to be stepping into his job—and more. According to the stories, the Noccia family was expanding east in the coming year, from their Vegas hub to Chicago.

It was unprecedented in Mob history for a satellite organization to return to its roots, but Noccia had brass and his father had raised him to accomplish big things.

The hijacked van stuffed with thirty million in pharmaceuticals had been the first major move in Carmine’s expansion plan, and now that same van was standing in his way. And because six months ago I’d reached out to Carmine to protect my brother from a lesson he might not have lived to regret, I was in bed with a mobster. On a first-name basis.

Noccia called me at around three in the morning. He didn’t say hello. He said that his distributors, having paid for the drugs, were very
unhappy
.

He’d made this point to me before.

I said, “We’re on the job, Carmine. I didn’t need the wake-up call.”

“We don’t have clocks around here,” he said.

Another way of saying that my time was his time.

I brought Noccia up to date on the plan going forward, and he hung up without saying good-bye.

I fell back to sleep.

I was running after Colleen, trying to tell her that I was sorry, but she wouldn’t stop running away from me. The phone rang again.

This time my caller was my good friend Lieutenant Mitchell Tandy.

“I’m in the neighborhood, Jack. I’d be happy to stop by if there’s anything you’d like to tell me.”

“I told you, Mitch. I didn’t do it.”

Tandy laughed pleasantly and hung up.

By the time Justine phoned to report on Danny Whitman’s arrest on suspicion of murder, I was wide awake.