The Executioner (20 page)

Her excellent grades gave her a wide choice of universities. She picked Idaho State University in Boise simply because she liked being close to home. Hailey was home, but the big city became her playpen, the place where she first experienced drugs and decided they weren’t for her. The place where she lost her virginity to someone she only saw twice. And the place where she decided she didn’t want to be overweight anymore. With irrefutable determination, she changed her eating habits and jogged herself down to a hundred and eighteen pounds. Her transformation was astounding, and she went from ‘unpopular’ to the girl everyone wanted to sleep with.

Upon graduating top of her class, Claire was offered a job with the
Idaho Statesman
, the highest-circulation newspaper in Boise. Through the paper she met Noah Jones, a freelance reporter from Los Angeles, who told her he could put in a good word for her with some of his friends at the
LA Times
. She had to sleep with him for that, but Claire considered it a small price to pay to join one of the biggest newspapers in the USA.

Claire sat perched on the edge of Matt Pasquier’s desk. Pasquier was a legend when it came to crime reporting in Los Angeles. He was old school, condescending, a heavy drinker and thought nothing of journalism degrees, but he was very smart and he liked Claire Anderson. She had something he hadn’t seen in years – raw ambition to be a good reporter. She wasn’t doing it for the money.

‘OK, what’s the problem?’ Pasquier let go of his cup of coffee and leaned back in his chair.

‘I’m doing something wrong,’ she said in a half-defeated voice. ‘I can’t get an angle on this story and now the TVs are getting involved.’

‘I take it you met Robert Hunter. I mean, properly met him.’

Claire nodded. ‘He blew me off.’

Pasquier let out an animated but strange laugh. ‘You tried to seduce him? Oh Claire. Robert certainly saw you coming a mile away. He doesn’t fall for those tricks.’

‘I could’ve used that information a few days ago,’ she replied, looking around the newsroom. Everyone looked busy staring at computer screens or talking on telephones.

‘I’ll tell you what, let’s go talk someplace else,’ Pasquier said, rolling his chair away from his desk and standing up. He scowled sadly at the large room. ‘This place depresses me. It’s full of university geeks who know shit about journalism.’

‘Hey.’ Claire tried to look offended. ‘I’m a university geek.’

‘Yeah, but you’re
hot
.’ He winked at her.

The cafeteria was in the mezzanine floor of the building. The food was by any standard crap, typical slop under heat lamps. A wall of vending machines offered just about anything, from apples to slightly bruised bananas, pie slices, yogurts, salads, candy bars and, obviously, triangular sandwiches.

‘Can I buy you anything?’ Pasquier offered, nodding at the machines.

‘I’ll have a coffee.’

Pasquier bought a pastrami and cheese sandwich from one of the machines and ordered two coffees at the counter. The food was so bad the place was almost deserted, and they easily found a vacant beige Formica table. He took a large bite of his sandwich and used a paper napkin to wipe some mayonnaise off his chin.

‘What do you have?’ he asked.

Claire had a sip of her coffee and met Pasquier’s gaze. ‘No one’s talking, but I know that what we’re dealing with is a serial killer, maybe a ritualistic one. Savage in a way we’ve never seen before. This guy is different.’

‘If no one’s talking, how can you know that?’ He dropped four sugars in his coffee.

‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head and looked away. ‘Intuition, maybe. A gut feeling.’

‘I see.’ He had another bite of his sandwich and spoke with his mouth full. ‘You said you think this killer is different – different how?’

‘Just look at the facts, Matt. What sort of killer decapitates a priest inside his own church and shoves a mutt’s head down the corpse’s body? What sort of killer takes almost two days cooking his victim alive in front of a fireplace?’ Claire tucked her hair behind her ears using both hands. Pasquier liked when she did that. He thought it very charming. ‘They are keeping the bodies under strict lock and key. I can’t get a picture, but I heard the killer melted Amanda Reilly’s face.’

Pasquier queried with his eyes.

‘Amanda Reilly was the second victim.’ Her forehead creased. ‘Do you read our paper?’

‘Not lately. No good reporters to read.’

‘Oh, very funny.’

‘You see, the difference between you and most of the other deadbeat reporters on this paper is that you still have that
intuition
you just talked about. That
gut
feeling.’ He smiled and Claire pointed out that he had a piece of lettuce stuck to one of his teeth. He used his little finger to scrape it off. ‘And that’s probably because you’re a nice country girl. You didn’t grow up in a metropolis where money talks and bullshit runs the marathon.’ He did his best to forge a country accent. ‘Us folks here in the big cities have forgotten all about intuition, guts and what it is to do somet’ing just ’cos we loves doing it.’

‘Aw damn, mister, intuition and them guts on its own don’t help me none.’ In contrast, Claire’s country accent was perfect.

Pasquier laughed and swallowed the rest of his food down. ‘You won’t get a peep out of Robert Hunter. He’s a city folk with a country man’s heart. The only cop I know who actually likes his job. And he certainly doesn’t like reporters.’

Claire played with her hair again. ‘Well, I’m open to suggestions. There’s no way I’m giving up on this.’

A wicked smile spread across Pasquier’s face. ‘I was hoping you’d say that. OK, here’s what you’ve got to do . . .’

Downtown LA’s financial district is just south of Bunker Hill and north of South Park – this is where LA’s instantly recognizable skyline resides. The area concentrates around Fifth, Sixth, South Flower and Figueroa Streets and remains the southland’s most influential financial and business center. Tyler Financial Services had their office on the seventeenth floor of number 542 South Flower Street.

Dan Tyler sat in the elegant leather chair behind his mahogany desk. He was a kind-looking man in his forties. His brown hair, graying at the temples, was neatly combed back, and the strong lines that shaped his strangely attractive face indicated strength, experience, self-confidence and a degree of suffering. He wore an elegant dark suit and a pale blue shirt complemented by a gray striped tie. His dark brown eyes sat behind thin-rimmed glasses. His office bore the trappings of his profession – expensive-looking furniture, an impressive bar at the corner, several framed photographs on the walls and three interlinked computer monitors on his desk that were constantly displaying the stock market flow. His secretary announced the arrival of the two detectives, and he stood up to greet them by the door.

Dan Tyler showed them inside, indicating the two armchairs in front of his desk and offering both detectives a drink – they declined.

‘I know this is an awkward situation, Mr. Tyler,’ Hunter began. ‘We’ll try to get through it as fast as we can.’

‘Call me Dan, please,’ Tyler said, taking his seat behind his desk. His voice was serene and pleasant, like a storyteller’s.

Hunter quickly explained that it would still be a few days before the house in Malibu was released by forensics.

Tyler nodded. He knew that putting the house back on the market now wasn’t a clever idea.

‘The house didn’t look like an investment property,’ Hunter said. ‘Did you used to live there?’

‘Yes. For many years.’

Hunter noticed a distinct tone in Tyler’s voice and allowed a few silent seconds to go by before nodding towards a silver-framed photograph on Tyler’s desk. An attractive woman with windswept hair and an infectious smile standing by a swimming pool. A beautiful black dog was asleep by her feet. ‘Was that taken at the house?’ he asked, recognizing the pool.

Tyler looked at the photograph. ‘Yes,’ he said with a mixture of pride and sadness.

Hunter intuited the woman in the picture was the source of the sadness. ‘Is that your wife?’

Tyler looked back at him. ‘Kate. Yes.’ A pause. ‘She passed away.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Hunter said and sensed that Tyler’s emotional wound was still raw. ‘Recently?’

‘Twelve months ago.’ He pressed his lips together. ‘It feels recent to me.’

‘I understand.’

Tyler took a deep breath. ‘A lot of people say that, but surviving the woman you love—’ he gave Hunter a quick head shake ‘—I guess it’s something you have to live through to really understand. We were married twenty years.’ Tyler’s eyes were back on the picture.

‘And the house in Malibu was your home?’ Hunter asked.

‘It was her pride and joy,’ Tyler said, nodding. ‘We built it from scratch. Kate was involved in every aspect of the architectural design. It was her dream house. She chose every piece of furniture, every curtain, every color, every detail. Kate’s in every inch of that house.’ Tyler paused and looked down at his clasped hands. ‘After she was gone, I just couldn’t live there anymore. I tried for a while but . . .’ His eyes drifted away. ‘Without realizing, I used to find myself talking to the walls, curtains, pictures . . .’ He smiled. ‘I don’t need the house or anything else to remind me of what Kate and I had.’

‘No children?’ Hunter asked, already guessing the answer, judging by the lack of any other family pictures in the office.

‘Unfortunately, no.’ A different sorrow coated Tyler’s words, and Hunter understood that having no children hadn’t been his choice. He allowed the awkward moment to subside before proceeding.

‘Did you know Amanda Reilly?’

‘We met a couple of times when I approached her company to handle the sale of the house,’ Tyler replied, glad to change the subject.

‘How long ago was that?’

Tyler tilted his head to one side and scratched his temple. ‘About eight months ago, when the house first went up for sale.’

‘Not since?’

‘There was no need. Her company was recommended to me. One of my clients had his house sold through Reilly’s. I didn’t wanna have anything to do with it. I wanted someone who could handle everything. She came across as a very genuine and trustworthy person, and her track record spoke for itself.’ Something changed on his computer screen and Tyler glared at it for a second. ‘We talked on the phone a few times. She’d call me every now and then to update me on any viewings.’

‘Did she call you last week about a viewing this past Saturday?’ Hunter asked, checking his black notebook.

Tyler nodded. ‘She called me on Friday.’ He pulled himself closer to his desk. ‘She sounded really excited. More excited than she did about any of the previous viewings. She said that the prospective buyer—’ Tyler reached for a stylish leather-bound diary on his desk and flipped back a few pages ‘—someone called Ryan Turner, was really eager to see the house.’ He paused and slowly lifted his eyes from the diary. ‘She said she had a good feeling about this guy.’

An unpleasant silence took over Dan Tyler’s office, and Hunter and Garcia looked at each other.

‘Do you have the names of everyone that requested a viewing of the house?’ Hunter asked, nodding at Tyler’s diary.

‘It’s a habit of mine. I don’t go into business with anyone I haven’t checked out. Even though I can’t bring myself to live there anymore, that house is still very dear to me and I wouldn’t sell it to someone who wouldn’t appreciate it. A property developer, for example. Someone who’d knock it down to build something else.’

‘I’m guessing you’d only run background checks on buyers if they’d actually made an offer?’

Tyler nodded halfheartedly. ‘There’s no point spending time and money on someone who’s only window-shopping.’ He shook his head as if he’d made a mistake. ‘I should’ve checked him anyway.’

‘He most certainly used a false name,’ Hunter said. ‘You probably wouldn’t have found anything on him.’

‘And that would’ve gotten every alarm bell in my head going.’ Tyler looked straight into Hunter’s eyes. ‘I deal with a lot of rich people, Detective Hunter. They’re all “proud” of what they’ve achieved and who they are. It’s a show-off game for most of them. Mine is bigger than yours kinda thing. A person going for a four-million-dollar house with a nonexistent past is a clear “be aware” sign to me.’

Hunter nodded his understanding. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like a copy of the list of names Miss Reilly has given you over these eight months.’

‘Sure.’ Tyler reached inside his top drawer and handed Hunter a printed list. Seven names in total. Hunter studied Tyler through the top of the list. His eyes questioning.

Tyler smiled thinly. ‘That’s how I make my money, detective. I have to be logical, practical and, above all, think ahead. It was only logical to deduct that you’d want that list of names.’

Hunter read the names in silence. None stood out.

‘None of them made an offer,’ Tyler continued. ‘I never requested a background check on any of them.’ He stood up and approached the bar. ‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’ he insisted.