Greta Dietrich wasn’t here.
They headed back toward the steps. As they passed the laundry room, Lena noticed an alcove and paused. The shelves were lined with canned goods, bins of onions and potatoes, and bottles of olive oil. And that’s when she spotted the freezer in the corner. It wasn’t an upright. Instead, it opened like a chest and couldn’t have been more than a few years old.
She lifted the handle and pulled the door up, the frosty air rising into her face. As the mist cleared, she gazed into the ice box and tried to focus. She didn’t see what she expected to see. Not a single pizza was here. Not a frozen dinner or a bag of vegetables. The longer she stared at the contents, the more she thought she might be in a grocery store. There were at least a hundred small packages carefully stacked in three rows. Each package was approximately the same size and wrapped in plain white butcher’s paper. And each was labeled and dated by hand with a Sharpie.
No more than ten seconds had passed since she first opened the lid. It just felt longer because the realization was such a big step. Because she had to break through the uniformity of the packages to see the darkness and understand what she was really looking at.
Rhodes picked up a package and read the label. “Does this say what I think it does?”
Lena glanced at it. Greta Dietrich was here.
41
We need to talk,” Rhodes said. “Before anything else, we need to talk.”
They were sitting in the Crown Vic. Parked in Fontaine’s driveway. Passing a cigarette back and forth.
“They’re wrapping things up,” he said. “They’re killing everybody who knows.”
Lena nodded without speaking, took a deep pull on the smoke, and passed it over. It didn’t feel like there was enough nicotine in it.
“You said that it looked like Ramira had been dead for a couple of hours,” Rhodes said.
“Two hours. No more than that.”
“Do you think Klinger’s good for the murder? Did it look like he’d been inside the house for that long?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But Ramira’s knuckles were scratched. He fought back. And Klinger looked roughed up.”
“What do you mean, roughed up?”
“I saw his face. He had a black eye.”
Rhodes shook his head. “He didn’t get that from Ramira.”
“How could you know that?”
“After I dropped you off last night,” he whispered. “After you picked up your car, I drove over to his place.”
A moment passed in the darkness. Their eyes met.
“I thought you might be right,” he said. “I thought they might try to close the case and stamp Albert Poole’s name on it. I needed to take that off the table, so I did.”
Another moment passed. Longer than the first.
“Is Poole off the table?” she asked.
Rhodes looked at her again and nodded with assurance.
Lena reached for the cigarette. “Klinger’s hands are dirty, Stan. And so are Chief Logan’s. But there’s no proof that either one of them murdered Ramira. I didn’t see it happen. I only caught the aftermath. Klinger could have been there for a lot of reasons. He was searching the place. He found the file.”
“If that’s what you think, then why did he let you walk out with it?”
She shook her head. “It was his moment. His call. I can’t answer that.”
“What else?” Rhodes asked.
“There’s a theme to the murders.”
“What theme?”
“Bloom was found in the trash outside Tiny’s. In the garage on Barton Avenue we found a meat grinder. Ramira was stabbed with an instant read thermometer. And now we’ve got Greta Dietrich on ice.”
“So Ramira’s murder fits,” Rhodes said. “This guy we’re looking for did all of them.”
Lena shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Her voice faded. The car became quiet. She could see Rhodes thinking it over. Weighing the odds. After a few minutes, he broke the silence.
“When I was at the hospital last weekend, I met this guy in the waiting room. He was from L.A. and we started talking. After a while I asked him what he did and he told me that he was a professional seat filler.”
“What’s a seat filler?”
“I asked him the same thing. Do you ever watch those awards shows on TV?”
Lena shook her head.
“Me, either,” Rhodes said. “So he told me that when a celebrity goes out for a smoke or needs to use the bathroom, this guy takes their seat. When they come back, he gets up and leaves.”
“What’s the point?”
“He said that the TV producers don’t want to see empty seats when the cameras pan through the audience. They want the place to look full, so they hire professionals to fill the seats.”
“Okay,” she said. “So why do I need to know this?”
Rhodes took a drag on the smoke and passed it back. “He said that celebrities don’t like being looked at. It makes them feel uncomfortable, and they don’t like feeling uncomfortable. You have to trade places without making eye contact. If you can’t pull it off, you’re fired. He said it’s not as easy as it sounds.”
“So, this guy makes a living not looking at people.”
“I know,” Rhodes said. “He was an idiot. But the reason I mention it is because of Dean Tremell. That’s who he is. A guy who’s connected and doesn’t want anyone to make eye contact. A guy who’ll pay people whatever they want so that he can walk on air. How do we get to him? And other than Barrera, who can we trust?”
Two big questions without answers. Lena glanced out the window at Fontaine’s mansion. The windows were dark again. They had left the place exactly as they found it.
“What you’re saying is that we need to call this in.”
Rhodes’s eyes were on her. “And we both know what it looks like inside the house.”
“It looks exactly the way Tremell wants it to look.”
“Everybody’s dead, Lena. Everybody who knows. Except for me and you and the witness, everybody’s gone.”
“Avadar thinks that the witness bolted.”
“Then it’s just me and you.”
“There’s one more,” she said.
“Who?”
“A police commissioner. Senator Alan West.”
“You still got the ID blocker working on your cell?”
She nodded.
“Then maybe you better call nine-one-one.”
She could see the fear on his face as soon as the door opened. The two bodyguards standing beside the senator bristling with suspicion.
“Relax,” West said to the men. “They’re friends.”
The suspicion never left the bodyguards’ eyes, but they took a few steps back just the same. They were big men. Two heavyweights wearing dark suits and rough faces with no interest in hiding the fact that they were armed. As Lena entered with Rhodes, she looked around the house and wondered if two of these guys would be enough. The senator lived just north of the Strip in the hills off Hedges Place. The house was big and modern and designed to take advantage of the views.
And that was the problem. There were too many windows. And too many views.
West sent his bodyguards off and led them into the living room. The spark in his blue eyes was gone, and so was the smile she remembered when they met last week. He was dressed casually in a sweater and slacks and appeared distraught.
“I can’t reach Denny,” he was saying. “I’ve been trying all day, and I can’t reach him.”
Lena gave him a look as he sat down by the fireplace. “You’re not going to,” she said.
West became quiet after that and lowered his head.
“Tell us about the book you were helping him with,” she said. “Tell us about Formula D.”
West attempted to pull himself together, but not with much success.