“C.J.”-his arms outstretched, hands open-“you don’t understand. I need you. I’ll fall apart without you.”
He looked so wan and forlorn in the dim lamplight. She turned away, refusing to meet his gaze.
“You won’t fall apart, Adam. You always manage to keep it together so you can look after your number one priority-yourself.”
“That’s not fair.”
She looked at him then, and whatever was in her eyes made him shrink from her. “Now I’m the one not being fair? Funny, I thought that would be you. Was it fair to take Ashley to bed behind my back?”
“It only happened once.”
He said it with complete sincerity, but she knew it was untrue. She had already tracked down Ashley on the UCLA campus and asked her how long the affair had lasted. The girl had been too startled and intimidated to lie. “Four months,” she had blurted.
“Only once,” she echoed, watching Adam’s face for any trace of shame. She saw nothing but guileless candor, and the thought flashed in her mind that her husband-soon to be ex-husband-was an awfully skilled liar, better than she’d ever known.
She didn’t speak again, merely turned away from him in disgust and walked out the door. His plaintive voice pursued her down the hallway of the apartment building, then down the graffiti-scarred stairwell to the lobby.
“Don’t do this, C.J. Please, you can’t do this to me.”
She noticed the irony of his utter self-absorption. He thought she had wronged him.
And of course he still thought so. She had walked out of his life. She had reduced him to the humiliating posture of a beggar-and worse, she had not even listened to his pleas. She was the villain. She had taken his manhood, his dignity.
So now he intended to get even-by taking her life.
She had succeeded in puncturing the tape three or four more times. But when she tested it, it felt as strong as ever. How much time had passed? A half hour already? Adam might be talking with a detective even now. If he wasn’t a suspect, the interview would be brief. Then he would be back for that last dance.
Not gonna happen, she promised herself. You’ll get out of this, Killer.
Bet your life you will.
34
“Dead end.”
Cellini shook her head slowly as she switched off her cell phone. Walsh, standing in C.J. Osborn’s kitchen, lifted a quizzical eyebrow.
“The stuff in the garage,” she explained, sounding weary. “I thought for sure it would be a breakthrough. But this is one clever son of a bitch we’re up against.”
“The computer couldn’t be traced?”
“He filed off the serial number.”
“How about the cell phone? Couldn’t you track down the account?”
“Oh, I tracked it down, all right.” She gave a bitter laugh. “It’s registered to Pacific Bell. They’re paying the bills.”
Walsh looked at her blankly.
“Don’t you get it, Morrie? It’s a hacker’s joke. He tapped into the PacBell system and put the account in their name. He’s got the phone company paying his phone bill for him.”
“So,” Walsh said, “we’re no closer to ID’ing him than we were before.”
“That’s what ‘dead end’ means,” Cellini snapped, then apologized. “I’m sort of wrung out. I really thought we had him.”
“Maybe Sotheby’s gotten somewhere with the receipts.”
But he hadn’t, as he explained when Walsh and Cellini joined him in the laundry room, where C.J. Osborn kept her bank books, canceled checks, and receipts. “I’ve looked through everything,” he said. “She hasn’t had any work done on her house in the past six months-or if she has, she paid cash for it. No plumbers, no electricians. And no computer repair guys. Nothing.”
Gary Boyle stuck his head in the doorway. “I’m skeptical about the computer-repair angle anyway.”
“Why?” Cellini asked. It had been her idea. “It makes sense. He’s obviously into computers.”
“Yeah, but Nikki Carter didn’t own one. I just checked the inventory of her possessions to be sure. No computer on the list.”
“How about Martha Eversol?” Walsh asked.
“She owned a PC.”
“See if there’s any record of her getting it serviced-especially at-home service. What’s it called again?”
“On-site,” Cellini answered.
“Right. Check that out.”
Boyle disappeared from the doorway. Sotheby stared after him. “Even if she did get her computer repaired,” Sotheby said, “it won’t prove much.”
“Think positive,” Walsh told him, though his own thinking was pretty negative at the moment.
He left the laundry room and returned to the front of the house, where Boyle was flipping through the case file. Walsh saw his lips moving as he scanned the pages. A mouth reader.
“Okay, here’s something,” Boyle said.
Walsh looked over his shoulder. Boyle stabbed at an entry with a ragged fingernail.
“Eversol got a house call from an on-site computer repair service on November twenty-second, about five weeks before her abduction, and about one week before her image went online. The guy could’ve planted the camera when he fixed her PC.”
“We must have checked out the repairman,” Walsh said.
“We did. He’s William Bowden. Married, two kids. Lives in Reseda. West Valley interviewed him, said he seemed okay.”
“But that was before we knew about the Webcam,” Cellini pointed out.
Walsh nodded. “Donna, I want you to talk to Bowden. Call him, see if he’s home. Don’t identify yourself as a cop. Act like you’re selling something or soliciting for charity. Don’t spook him. If he’s there, you and Sotheby go see him with at least two West Valley patrol cops as backup. Ride him hard. I don’t know why, but I’ve got a feeling about this guy. I don’t trust these computer people.”
Cellini smiled. “You don’t trust any technology invented after the Eisenhower administration.”
“Just do it.”
“Shit, Morrie, you’re starting to sound like a TV commercial.” She jotted down Bowden’s phone number, listed in the case file, then pulled out her cell phone again.
Walsh told Boyle to search the LAPD’s database for other homicides and abductions with an Internet connection. “Get Lopez to help.”
“Local crimes only?” Boyle asked.
“No, statewide. Within the past five years. And-”
“Detective?” a voice interrupted.
Walsh glanced behind him and saw a uniformed cop standing there. “Yeah?”
“Watch commander at Wilshire says there’s a guy waiting for you at the station.”
“Name?” For a crazy moment Walsh imagined the patrol cop saying, William Bowden-he’s waiting to make a full confession.
But he answered, “Adam Nolan. I think he’s the victim’s ex-husband.”
“Hell.” Walsh had forgotten all about the man. “All right, I’ll head on over.”
He sketched a wave to Cellini, who was on the phone and barely acknowledged him.
The drive to Wilshire Station was short, but it gave Walsh sufficient time to consider his plan of attack. When interrogating a suspect, there must always be a plan of attack.
He decided to do his Peter Falk impression. That usually got results.
Most cops didn’t watch police shows, but Walsh liked them, and his favorite of all time was Columbo. Oh, sure, the show was totally unrealistic, but Walsh didn’t care about technical accuracy. He loved the show because Columbo was middle-aged and rumpled and eccentric, not unlike Walsh himself. Neither of them would ever be mistaken for Clint Eastwood. They both owned clunky old cars, although Columbo drove his when on-duty in contravention of LAPD policy, which required the use of a department-issue Caprice or Crown Victoria. They both came across as relics of an earlier, pretechnological age. They both loved their work and had little else in their lives.
At night Columbo went home to his invisible and presumably dowdy wife, and Walsh went home to a house that had been empty since his wife left him, to a phone that never rang because his three grown kids were always too busy to call, to bowls of microwaved chili and reruns of Columbo on cable TV.