It was a long shot, but Mary was feeling lucky. She dialed the number of Dr. Paulette Blevins, her client, and waited for voicemail.
“Doctor, this is Mary Cooper. I wanted to run a name past you. Valerie Barnes. She was recently murdered and I’m calling to see if you have ever heard of her, especially with regard to Craig Locher. Please call me back when you get a chance.”
Mary thanked the woman and hung up, then went into her office and fired up her computer.
She fed the name Valerie Barnes into the various person locator programs she had on her desktop. Some were legal, some weren’t. One of the best programs now had a slightly outdated database because its creator, one of Mary’s former clients, had once again fallen off the grid. He was a hacker and lived life in the shadows. When he reappeared, if he ever did, Mary would see about an update. She was guessing it wouldn’t be high on his list of priorities.
The collective programs spit out a lot of information on a variety of women named Valerie Barnes. It was something private investigators knew all too welclass="underline" no matter how unusual a name might sound, and Valerie Barnes wasn’t all that unusual, there was always more than expected.
In this case, seventeen names alone in the greater Los Angeles area.
Mary collated them into a spreadsheet with all of the pertinent details and began editing.
She cast a wide net with ages. For one thing, it wasn’t always easy to tell exactly how old a person was, especially in Los Angeles. Secondly, the woman had been cut up pretty thoroughly. Nonetheless, Mary was fairly confident in placing the age of the victim between twenty-five and forty. Forty seemed a little on the high side, but again, this was Los Angeles. Botox, surgery, crazy-ass diets, and health food. She’d met some women who were fifty that looked no older than thirty-five.
With that age frame in mind, Mary was able to throw out eleven of the seventeen names.
That left her with six.
Next, she checked ethnicity. Her Valerie Barnes was definitely Caucasian. She was able to eliminate two African-American Valerie Barneses.
Down to four.
One Valerie Barnes was currently incarcerated in a minimum security prison near San Bernadino.
Three.
Mary studied the details.
Two had DUIs.
She threw out the one that didn’t.
That left two.
Mary printed out the names and addresses. She would run them down first thing tomorrow morning.
Now, it was almost midnight. Mary poured herself a small glass of white wine and went out to her balcony. Across the street, the Pacific Ocean moved with a quiet rhythm that soothed her.
She sat in one of her patio chairs and put her feet up on an empty flowerpot that she’d been meaning to fill with some colorful plant for the past few years.
Mary was starting to get a bad feeling about this case. Most of the time, victims of crime were chosen because of some type of vulnerability. Maybe they’re old, or young, weak, or distracted.
The thing that Craig Locher and Valerie Barnes had in common might be the vulnerability of mental illness. How sick they’d been was the question. If it was garden-variety psychological problems, well, that would be half of Los Angeles.
If, however, their mental problems were more severe, that would make them better targets for a predator.
The question was, what was the killer after? The thrill of murder? Or something else?
Mary finished off her glass of wine, went inside, and locked the sliding glass door.
As always, she was tempted to sleep with the window open.
And, like every night, she would decide against it and lock up before she went to bed.
There were a lot of crazies out there.
Chapter Fifteen
Lately, Mary had been favoring coffee from Del Monde, made with chicory. She had had a fitful night’s sleep and needed a shot of something strong to wake her up.
The coffee was thick and a touch bitter, which was exactly what she needed.
Mary drank her coffee, made a quick breakfast of toast and a hardboiled egg, then showered, dressed, and went out to her car.
Her vehicle of choice was now a gray Honda Accord, albeit with a souped-up V-6 and a stiffer suspension coupled with thick performance tires.
She wasn’t exactly an auto enthusiast, but there had been moments in her life when she’d gunned it after some low life and had wished for more power, better handling, and armor plating. Kind of a James Bond fantasy.
Instead, Mary had bought the Accord new, then taken it to a mechanic who modified cars for the Hollywood big shots and had him give it the once over. So while it wasn’t going to win the Indy 500 anytime soon, the car was a lot faster than it looked.
Which is all that mattered to Mary.
That, and the customization that had gone into the car was all tax deductible as it was her work car.
Always had to think about the tax man.
Mary double-checked the first address, the closest, on Bristol Avenue in Brentwood.
By the time she got there, the morning rush was over and the sun was warming the tree-lined streets.
It was a beautiful area with wide landscaped lots, gates and thick foliate out front, providing only partial views of the impressive homes.
Mary supposed that a partner in an accounting firm, if the firm was big enough, probably made some serious coin.
And if Valerie Barnes lived here alone, in one of these homes, she would have to be pulling down some major bucks.
Mary found the right address, pulled into the driveway, rolled down her window, and pressed the button on the intercom.
There was no answer.
The gate remained closed.
Mary looked up and down the street.
No sign of anyone, other than a small blue pickup truck with paint splatters all over it and a ladder sticking out the back.
Mary rang the bell again.
And waited.
This was not the kind of neighborhood where neighbors kept close tabs on each other. The lots were too big, the homes too spacious, the landscaping too dense. She couldn’t even knock on doors because of the gates.
Mary rang the bell one more time.
She waited another fifteen minutes, sitting in the driveway, before she put the car in reverse and headed to the second address.
Chapter Sixteen
There were no gates in front of the homes of Studio City. The houses were smaller, the space between lots much tighter, and cars were parked on the street as opposed to palatial garages and circular driveways.
Mary double-checked the address and stopped her car in front of a humble Cape Cod with brick on the lower half of the house and white aluminum siding on the upper half.
A row of boxwoods in need of water ringed the front of the house, and the grass had small brown patches. Either some sort of grass disease or a dog with highly acidic urine.
Unlike the beatific quiet of Brentwood, this stretch of Studio City near Davana Terrace was loud. In fact, it was so loud that Mary quickly realized there was a fight going on in the very house she needed to approach.
Cops hated domestic disturbances and so did Mary.
She had a.38 in a holster tucked into the back of her jeans and she was reassured enough to park the Accord and approach the house.
The fighting was going strong. Mary heard the word ‘bastard’ used several times by a woman and the rejoinder ‘bitch’ employed by a male in matching numbers.