The Samaritan (5 page)

“So he knows they’re doing something they shouldn’t be, and they don’t want him to tell anybody. What’s their desired output?”

“Desired output? Jesus, you sound like one of them.”

“Gotta match the terminology to the client, Coop.”

“They want you to find him and bring him to them. Location to follow.”

I shook my head. “They mean they want me to find him and bring him to a storage unit where they can have somebody beat him up. Or worse.”

Coop shrugged. “It’s a good offer . . .”

“I don’t work for bad guys, Coop.”

“Bullshit,” he said immediately.

“Okay,” I agreed. “But I don’t help bad guys do bad things. It’s a rule.”

“You got a lot of rules, Blake. Anyone ever tell you, you might be OCD?”

“Yeah. But only you.”

He smiled as though he’d half expected me to turn this one down. He slid the document wallet back into the briefcase.

“Nothing else?” I asked.

“Nothing that would meet your stringent criteria, anyway.”

“I probably don’t want to know.”

Coop didn’t respond to that. He turned away from me and signaled the waitress, who strolled over and took his order. Iced tea.

“So what now?” he asked once she’d gone. “Some downtime, catch some Florida rays? You could use some sun, you know.”

“I don’t like to stick around too long after a job,” I said. “But downtime sounds good. I’ll stay tonight. Tomorrow I’ll probably rent a car, head back home the slow way.”

“And where’s home?”

“Better you don’t know.”

Coop smiled again and turned his head to look out the window at the harbor and the calm expanse of the Atlantic. Another soul song kicked in on the diner’s playlist: Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me.” That song always reminds me of Carol, and I thought about our half-joking, inexpert waltz to that song, in a hotel room as the rain poured down outside. The night before the last time I ever saw her.

After a long moment, Coop spoke again. “It’s funny, Blake, isn’t it? How easy it is for two personable guys like you and me to maintain the illusion.”

“What illusion’s that?”

“The illusion that we actually know each other.”

“I don’t agree,” I said after a second.

“You don’t?”

I shook my head. “We don’t know anything
about
each other. That’s not the same thing. Where I live, where I came from . . . does any of that really matter? We know everything we need to know.”

Coop looked back at me, a thoughtful, serious expression on his face. Eventually, he nodded in agreement. “I guess so.” He looked back out at the sun and the sand and the Atlantic. “It’s colder than here, though, right?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Home. Wherever you’re from is colder than here.”

I smiled and changed the subject. We talked for another twenty minutes and another coffee for me and another ice tea for Coop, but the conversation never became as contemplative or as strangely personal as that again. We talked about Florida, about music, about the election next year. About everything but ourselves.

After Coop had gone, no doubt to call somebody else about the off-white job in New York, I stayed awhile, watching the customers as the diner began to fill up for lunchtime. When I’d had enough of people, I turned back to the water and thought about the different places I’d called home. I thought about Carol.

I thought a little about Winterlong, too. About how I’d come from somewhere colder.

8

LOS ANGELES

Walter Dutton’s Mulholland Drive mansion was perhaps only a couple of miles or so from the makeshift grave across country, but more than half an hour by road. Maybe it was due to the fresh air, more likely it was just having something to focus on, but Allen’s headache had cleared, meaning this trip was more pleasant. At least, as pleasant as a trip to interview a man whose daughter was probably dead could ever be.

Allen had seen homes like Dutton’s before, but only on television. Like many of the palatial residences that lined the route, it sat a respectable distance back from the road, behind eight-foot-high stucco walls. She wondered if it really was Brando’s old house. She’d caught the last half of
The Godfather
on TCM a couple of nights ago, but in truth she liked him better in his early roles:
On the Waterfront
,
The Wild One
—the pictures he made when he was still young and beautiful.

There was a security gate between sandstone pillars. The gate was wood veneer, probably over a steel frame. There was a keypad and intercom set into the pillar on the driver’s side. Mazzucco pulled the nose of the Ford within six inches of the gate and then got out. He pushed the call button on the intercom and waited ten seconds before there was a burst of static and a crackly hello.

“Detectives Mazzucco and Allen, LAPD Homicide. We’d like to speak to Mr. Dutton.”

There was a long pause. Allen started to wonder if Mazzucco would have to buzz again, but at length a response came. Sitting in the car, Allen couldn’t hear it clearly over the static, but it sounded like “
Jesus
.”

The static clicked off, and a sharp clunk heralded the disengaging of a heavy lock. The gates began to swing inward, painfully slowly. Mazzucco got back in the car and steered it through the gap as soon as it was wide enough.

There was a long, gravel driveway that snaked through well-tended gardens. Allen took in the verdant surroundings as they crawled up the drive and thought about the purloined water of Los Angeles that made these gardens possible, deciding that William Mulholland had probably earned his name on this prime piece of real estate.

There was a man waiting for them at the front door. Early fifties, dressed in gray slacks and a navy tennis shirt. He stood at the stop of the steps leading up to the door, one hand braced against a pillar supporting the porch roof. He looked as though he was debating whether he could trust his legs to carry him safely down the steps. Mazzucco parked and they got out, both detectives instinctively removing their sunglasses.

“Walter Dutton?” Allen asked.

The man nodded reluctantly. “What happened to her?”

Allen held up her badge. “I’m Detective Jessica Allen; this is Detective Jon Mazzucco.” She nodded at the open door behind Dutton. “Could we go inside, please?”

Dutton released his grip on the pillar and motioned for the two detectives to step inside.

Mazzucco went in first. When Allen stepped across the threshold, she had to restrain herself from whistling. You couldn’t just have fitted her whole apartment into Dutton’s entrance foyer; you could just about have fitted her whole apartment
building
. It was a double-height space, with a marble-tiled floor stretching out for a couple hundred square feet. Black and white tiles, like a chessboard. There was a working fountain in the dead center, just before you got to the foot of two marble staircases curving languidly up in mirror images of each other. The staircases met at a landing that overlooked the entrance, at the level of a big crystal chandelier. Allen made brief eye contact with Mazzucco, and a telepathic message passed between them.
Wow
. Mazzucco might have been an LA native, but from the look on his face, this environment was as alien to him as it was to Allen. She composed herself before turning back to face Dutton, who was closing the door behind them.

“Let’s get this over with, Detectives.”

“Mr. Dutton,” Mazzucco said quietly, “I think we ought to sit down before we—”

“My daughter is dead, isn’t she?” Dutton snapped, some steel coming back into his voice in sharp contrast to his previous, almost whispered sentences. “What goddamn difference does it make if I’m sitting down when you tell me?”

“That’s not confirmed yet,” Allen said. “We need to—”

“
Yet
. Oh my God.”

Allen decided to switch tack. Perhaps getting Dutton to do something was a better approach than trying to put him at ease. How could you expect to put someone at ease in a situation like this, anyway? “Mr. Dutton, do you have a recent picture of your daughter?”

He opened his mouth, as though about to rebuke her, and then sighed. “Wait a minute.”

He walked across the cavernous foyer and through a twelve-foot archway that gave onto another vast room. Allen glanced at Mazzucco. He stared back, the look on his face saying,
Be careful
. Allen didn’t know whether he was warning her to take care not to upset an emotional relative, or to take care not to piss off a rich and influential businessman. Probably both.

Dutton returned carrying a framed eight-by-ten photograph. He bypassed Allen without looking at her, handed it to Mazzucco. Mazzucco studied it, holding it in both hands. Keeping his eyes on the picture, he moved to Allen’s side, so she could examine it, too. The frame was silver in color, probably
real
silver, and the photograph showed a confident, pretty young brunette wearing a gown and a square academic cap. She had blue eyes and was displaying two perfect rows of teeth. She looked a lot like the body they’d viewed an hour before. But then she also looked like a lot of other girls that age. Allen raised her eyes from the photograph to meet Mazzucco’s, conscious of Dutton’s expectant gaze on the two of them.

He didn’t look sure, either.

Dutton cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice was almost steady. Almost but not quite. “Tell me.”

Allen opened her mouth, but Mazzucco tapped her on the forearm, indicating he wanted her to let him take the lead.

“We recovered the body of a young woman, not far from here,” he said.

“It’s her, isn’t it? What happened to her? You guys are Homicide, so that means some son of a bitch killed her, right? Was it that Josh kid? That little . . .”

Mazzucco was shaking his head. “Now, hold on. The body was . . . We did not find any identification on the deceased. What time did you last see your daughter?”

“Last night, must have been six . . . no five o’clock. She was headed down to Santa Monica. Some birthday party, I think. I was going out, too.”

“You mentioned a guy named Josh?”

“Her boyfriend, apparently. I’m sure he’d have been there.”

“We’ll want to speak to him,” Allen said. “What time did you expect her home last night?”

Dutton blinked and thought about it. “I got home around one thirty a.m. Her car wasn’t in the driveway or the garage. Her curfew is eleven thirty.”

“Her curfew?” Allen repeated, unable to keep her incredulity at bay.

Dutton’s eyes flared up. “That’s right, Detective. She has a curfew. While she lives in my house, she obeys my rules. Is that quite all right with you?”

“I’m sorry,” Allen said, though she wasn’t sure why she should be. Dutton’s daughter was twenty-two. Old enough to stay up past midnight.

“What kind of car does she drive?” Mazzucco asked quickly, as much to defuse the tension as because it was the natural follow-up question.

“A Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet. Silver. I bought it last December, for her birthday.”

Allen felt the vibration of her phone in her pocket. A repeated, sustained pulse, which meant it was a call. She ignored it.

Mazzucco nodded and noted the information on the car down. “We’re going to need the license plate.”

“Of course,” Dutton said, seeming to settle down again. “Your colleagues in the Missing Persons Unit already have it, but if it will help things along . . .” He looked down at the marble floor and seemed to gather himself. When he looked back at Mazzucco, his voice was steady. “I’ve been calling her all night. Straight to voicemail every time. You think it’s her, Detective?”

Allen remembered the tattoo. “Mr. Dutton, does your daughter have any identifying marks? Like piercings, or a tattoo, perhaps?”

He shrugged. “Sure. What kid doesn’t, these days? Some kind of Chinese symbol, on her left shoulder.” The way Walter Dutton said it, Allen could tell just how happy the old man was about that one. And then she processed what he had said and what it meant. She looked at Mazzucco, then back to Dutton. “She doesn’t have any others? Like a butterfly maybe?”

Dutton’s eyes narrowed. “Not that I know of.” Then they widened again as a thought occurred to him. “A butterfly? On the small of her back?”

Allen nodded.

“It’s not her,” Dutton said, a complicated look on his face. A look caught between relief and shock. “It’s not Sarah.”

Mazzucco and Allen exchanged glances as Dutton hurried back through the archway and returned with another photograph, this one showing two young women, bathed in different shades of neon. This was a more natural, candid image, taken in a bar or a club. Sarah Dutton was on the right, recognizable from the graduation photograph they’d just seen. The girl on the left was recognizable too. There was no doubt about it this time. Allen had been looking at her face less than an hour before.

“Kelly,” Dutton said. “Her name is Kelly Boden.”

Dutton talked quickly. Their initial victim was one of his daughter’s friends. Best friend, in fact. Like his own daughter, Sarah, Kelly was twenty-two years old, five six, slim build, with dark hair. He didn’t blame them for the mix-up given the circumstances. He said he’d mistaken one for the other more than once with their backs to him.

As she was listening, Allen’s phone buzzed again in her pocket. Just a single pulse this time. She took it out and read the three-word text message.

Two more bodies.

9

The second and third bodies had been in the earth longer than Kelly Boden, but neither for more than a week or two at most. The coroner investigator said he was fairly sure of that. Decomposition was more advanced in both bodies, but they were both still relatively fresh. There was a strong possibility that one of them was only a few days’ dead. On that one, they found a couple of small twine fibers on the insides of the wrists, indicating she’d been tied up.