Lena stopped reading and began listening to the house again. Weighing the silence.
The file didn’t belong here because it was the motive for Denny Ramira’s murder. She kept her body still and let her eyes wander off the desk, then drift to the right where a large photograph hung on the wall. It didn’t take very long to spot the flaw in the reflection. The nuance in the silence that went with the file she held in her hand.
Ken Klinger was hiding behind the closet door. And he was armed.
Lena took the shock, but dug down deep and didn’t flinch or move. She could see him staring at her, the glass over the photograph as clear as any mirror. His forehead was bandaged and it looked like he had a black eye. But even worse, he was cornered and appeared extremely nervous. Lena had interrupted his search, yet she sensed that he wanted to remain hidden. That he had been watching her ever since the porch lights snapped on. That he may have even overheard her on the phone and understood that Rhodes was on his way.
When she saw him lower the gun to his side, she walked out with the file and stepped into the bathroom. Locking the door, she switched on the lights and dropped the toilet seat down as if she intended to use it. Then she slipped through the open window, bolted around the house, and shuddered as she spotted Rhodes pulling down the street.
“What happened?” he said, rolling the window down. “What is it?”
Lena jumped in and opened her cell. “Ramira’s dead. We need to drive out to Fontaine’s place.”
“I tried to reach him today. He didn’t show up at work. And Greta Deitrich’s missing. No one’s heard from her in two days.”
She gave him a troubled look, then worked the keypad on her phone. “We need to drive out anyway, but let’s just sit here for a while. Turn off your lights.”
“What are you doing? Who are you calling?”
“I’m blocking my caller ID, and calling nine-one-one.”
Lena brought the phone to her ear, keeping her eyes on Ramira’s house.
“What the hell is going on, Lena?”
She shook her head as the 911 operator picked up. “Shots fired,” she said into the phone. “There’s a dead body on the kitchen floor. Denny Ramira, the reporter from The Times. He’s been murdered in his home.”
The operator asked for her name. Lena gave the woman Ramira’s address instead, then repeated it and ended the call.
“If Ramira’s been murdered,” Rhodes said, “then why go through nine-one-one. Why not just call it in?”
“We can’t call it in. Everything’s different now. Keep your eyes on the house.”
“You mean the guy’s still in there?”
“We can talk on the way out to Fontaine’s. Just keep watching the house.”
She could hear the sirens just beginning to bleed through the night. As she sat back and waited, she tried to imagine what Klinger was doing right now. He wanted the file she had taken, but his need to remained hidden seemed to outweigh that. She wondered if he had second thoughts. Wondered if he was waiting for her outside the bathroom in the hall with Ramira’s dead dog, Freddie. Wondered if he could hear the sirens approaching.
They were getting louder. They couldn’t have been more than half a mile away now. And the answers came quick.
Rhodes pointed at the house. A shadow was leaping off the front porch into the yard and breaking through the bushes. As the figure sprinted down the sidewalk on the other side of street, the headlights from an approaching car washed over his face. Rhodes glanced at Lena, who turned and watched Klinger vanish into the darkness. The chief’s adjutant had made it. He didn’t get the file, but he was still hidden. Still free.
40
The drive out to Fontaine’s place on South Mapleton Drive went quickly. By the time they reached the front gate, Lena had managed to give Rhodes a detailed picture of where they stood and what they were probably about to face.
Like Ramira’s house, Fontaine’s mansion was the only one on the block with its lights out.
“I’m going over the wall,” he said. “When the gate opens, bring the car through.”
He took her flashlight, then hoisted himself up and over the other side. After a few minutes the gate opened, and Lena pulled the Crown Vic onto the property. Then they followed the drive up the hill to the back of the house.
Fontaine’s Mercedes was parked in front of the garage. She traded looks with Rhodes and caught the grim expression on his face. The only light she could see was coming from the hot tub on the terrace at the far end of the house. The only sound she heard came from the water bubbling and fizzing in the night.
Lena gazed at the mansion silhouetted against the clouds in the sky. The moon was trying to break through, but couldn’t. The air was raw and ice-cold. As they approached the back door, Rhodes switched the flashlight back on, shined the beam through the glass, and found the alarm on the inside wall.
“It’s not armed,” he said.
“Did you think it would be?”
He tried the doorknob. When it turned, he shook his head at her and gave the door a push. They were inside the house now. And Lena picked up on the silence again. The kind that went with a corpse. Rhodes hit the light switch on the wall.
“I guess it was just hope,” he said. “I thought he hired bodyguards.”
“Let’s go find him.”
It only took ten minutes to clear the first floor and work their way upstairs. Once they reached the landing, all they needed to do was follow the harsh odor down the hall into the study.
Lena switched on the desk lamp. From the condition of the body, it was obvious that Fontaine had been dead for at least twenty-four hours. He was slumped over the side of the chair and appeared to be melting into the arm. A.38 revolver lay on the floor to his right. On the desk she spotted two auto-injectors and read the labels.
Morphine. The Greek god of dreams.
Rhodes stepped over to the computer, eyed the screen saver, and gave the mouse a tap. When the computer woke up, a word processor was running that seemed to contain Joseph Fontaine’s last words. Lena joined Rhodes by the monitor and read the note.
“If they think we’re gonna buy this as a suicide,” he said, “they’re crazy.”
“It would’ve worked if we didn’t know who Jennifer Bloom really was.”
“It still might, Lena. If we’re out of the mix. What did Justin Tremell say to you in the interrogation room?”
She turned back to Fontaine and gazed at his corpse. “Jennifer McBride had met someone who wanted to help her. A client she called her personal patron. Someone from Beverly Hills who liked it kinky and made her dress up in a nurse’s costume.”
“A costume they bought and planted on their own,” he said. “It’s all there. They set Fontaine up and did everything except give you his name.”
Lena agreed. There was no doubt about the play or what Dean Tremell wanted them to think. Fontaine was their fall guy. Someone who talked to Ramira. Someone Dean Tremell wanted to get rid of just as much as Jennifer Bloom. And if they could turn her into a whore, then making Fontaine look like her client and victim was easy. The one who sent her the fifty thousand dollars and hired a hit man to take her out. A doctor with a guilty conscience who took his own life six days before Christmas.
“Let’s check the rest of the house,” Lena said.
“You think Greta Deitrich’s here?”
“Where else could she be?”
They searched the rooms on the second floor, then made a sweep through the third floor bedrooms and attic. The exercise proved fruitless and burned up almost half an hour. Returning to the kitchen, Rhodes located the door to the basement and they headed downstairs. The footprint seemed to mirror the exterior of the house and had been divided into separate rooms. They found a wood shop that didn’t look like it had been used in a long time. Three more rooms that probably once served as a home office, but which, like the wood shop, no one used anymore. Beside the utility room, a small greenhouse opened to the side of the house where the hill had been carved out. As they reached the end, they came to a storage room and found shelves packed with oversized items bought at Costco.