The Dark Halo, page 3
“Watch it, man!”
The man glanced at Coombes’ belt and the items attached to it. Gun, ammo, badge. This was the wrong street corner to be assaulting anyone in a suit. The snarl disappeared and one of his hands flared open in a calming gesture.
“Sorry.”
Coombes glared at him and said nothing. This is how it was now, all the time. Anger bubbled under the surface wherever people met. It felt like the city was ready to explode and he couldn’t say if it was just L.A., or if the tension spread out across the whole of America. Either it was getting worse, or he was getting old. Neither option gave him any comfort. The veterinarian might not want to run off to the woods and hide, but he sure did.
It’s what any good coyote would do.
4
When he got back to his desk, he saw that Sato was fully immersed in the photographs he’d sent her. He placed a coffee on the desk next to her mouse and she nodded her thanks. She was in the zone and didn’t want to be interrupted so he sat down and flipped through his notebook to where he’d written the number for the hotel. He should have done this earlier in person, and the only reason he hadn’t was because of his play with Sato and the security footage. The Metro Grand was eight blocks away, a straight shot down the 110. He debated whether it was worth the drive, but not for long. Coombes called and asked to be connected to whoever dealt with security. There was a click and a man’s voice answered immediately.
“Lawson, security office.”
“This is Detective Coombes, LAPD. I have a couple of questions regarding the death of one of your guests this morning and about how you run things at the hotel.”
“Like what?”
The man filled both words with hostility, a whole second-long gap between the words. Like a lot of hotel security, Lawson was probably a washout from the Police Academy with a chip on his shoulder. Coombes pretended not to notice.
“Eric Lyle, one of your porters, had a keycard that he said could open any door. I want to know if he was meant to have that, and how many keycards like that exist.”
“Oh, sure.” Lawson said, his voice relaxing. “All those guys have one of those. Otherwise, they’d have to keep coming down to the front desk to get a specific keycard which would be a huge waste of time. What was the other question?”
“How many of them are there?”
“Right. Current or archived?”
“What’s an archived card?”
“One that’s been reported lost or that we didn’t get back from someone before they left the hotel. Both guests and employees do it. I think some people keep them like a memento.”
“Can an archived card be used to open doors?”
“Nah. Guest keys expire automatically; staff ones are deactivated from my office.”
Coombes sighed inwardly. The guy was wasting his time.
“The current cards then, how many?”
“Twenty-two.”
“What stops an employee from using one of these cards to steal from guests?”
“Common sense. Each card has a unique code that identifies the owner. If they opened a door and stole some jewels or whatever, then we’d see their name in the door access logs. They’d get busted straight away. This is made very clear to all new employees in order to remove any temptation and to make them look after their cards.”
This was the first he was hearing about door access logs.
“Can you bring up the log for room 1208?”
“Sure. Hang tight.”
He heard some keys being pressed.
“Okay, Maria Torres prepared the room at 5:40, the guests enter at 9:21 and at 9:35, then we have Eric Lyle at 10:02 and I guess you guys showed up after that.”
Coombes wrote this in his notebook, then frowned.
“Wait, the guest entered the room twice?”
“Different key. A guest gets two keys. Usually one for a husband, one for a wife.”
Coombes ran his hand back through his hair. The killer must’ve used the second key, but why would Vandenberg give the killer his second key? It made no sense, not unless he knew his killer. Trusted him. He thought of the items tagged in the hotel room. No keycards.
Some people keep them like a memento.
“The guest in 1208, Mr. Milton Vandenberg, was a regular guest. Are you able to pull up previous door access logs for whatever rooms he stayed in?”
“Uh. Give me a minute.”
There was the sound of slow keystrokes and Lawson humming to himself. A one-fingered typer. He pictured big hands, the same blunt finger stabbing down on a cheap keyboard, probably a crime-scene of food around the edges of all the keys. Coombes took a sip of coffee and looked at Sato working on her computer. She was now wearing huge headphones on her head, they completely dwarfed her.
“I have those dates onscreen, what d’you need?”
“All right. I want to know if the same patterns held true on previous occasions. He checks in, he opens his door, then a short time later the second keycard is used. A couple of hours after that, he checks out.”
There was a pause, followed by small laugh.
“That’s it exactly. You’re good.”
Vandenberg was a well-known figure, not just in Hollywood, but around the world. He checks into the hotel and goes up to his room alone, then after a discrete interval, a woman follows. The veterinarian. He gave her the second key then waited for her in his room. Giving her the keycard eliminated all risk of them being seen together. A young attractive woman standing at his door knocking would draw the attention of any other guest in the hallway. The old man answering the door with a smile, the whole gig would be up.
Therefore, the keycard. The carefully timed entry.
“All right, sir, that’s all.”
“Glad to help. Anything else, give me a call.”
Lawson was ok once he warmed up, Coombes thought. Once he realized he wasn’t being accused of something. It didn’t sound like the earlier subterfuge with the security tapes had been discovered yet.
“Thanks.”
Coombes hung up. The access logs backed Eric Lyle’s story of when he’d been in the room. It remained a possibility that Vandenberg let him in. Lyle would know that the keycard would give him an alibi, but that thinking only tracked if he was the killer instead of a thief, and Lyle did not fit that profile in the slightest.
He took a couple of mouthfuls of coffee.
That only left the veterinarian as a loose end. Coombes opened his browser and went to Facebook. Typed in Kelly Taylor Los Angeles and hit enter. A long scrolling list of profiles appeared, both male and female. The list additionally included some Taylor Kellys and variations with other names.
He found the one he wanted in less than thirty seconds.
She was using the same picture on Facebook as she was using on her website. It was a professional photograph that had cost her money, so it made sense that she’d used it on both pages. He clicked on it and looked at her feed. Her last post was from the night before, a picture of a sad-looking dog with a cone on its head and a shaved patch on its front leg. Two likes, no comments. Nothing from her today, however a friend had posted asking her to message her privately.
Someone that knows about her affair, he thought.
Coombes didn’t wonder why the person hadn’t messaged Kelly privately to make contact. Applying logic like that to social media users got you nowhere. He scrolled down to the Friends section and saw a woman listed as her mother, a Susan Taylor of Glendale, California.
Susan Taylor was in the system. Four outstanding parking tickets all from a street in Highland Park. Likely on the street in front of her daughter’s home address. Her license plate gave him her contact details and he punched the numbers into his phone.
“Hello?”
The voice was small, frightened. He glanced at the clock on his screen. After 10 p.m. Late for some people, not for others.
“Mrs. Taylor? I’m Detective Coombes with the Los Angeles Police Department. I need to speak to your daughter.”
There was a brief pause, maybe a second.
“She’s not here.”
Even over the phone, he could tell when someone was lying.
”I know she’s there, Susan. She’s not in trouble, I just need to speak to her.”
“Okay.”
Jumping to first-name terms always unsettled the public. He heard her walking on a wooden floor, bare feet, not shoes. He’d prefer to do this in person, but it had been a long day and he hadn’t been certain she was actually there.
“Can I help you?”
Kelly’s voice sounded younger than he was expecting. Perhaps from crying all day, and pretending there was nothing to hide.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, and she immediately began to sob. She wasn’t Vandenberg’s wife but she loved him anyway, therefore he felt sorry for her. Since she wasn’t hanging out a dumpster in some dark alleyway, he found his interest in her begin to wane. She was safe, she was unlikely to be the killer, therefore she was just using up his time.
“He didn’t do it. He wouldn’t.”
The mother was standing close by, he could sense it. Listening in to the conversation, ready to close it down if necessary. Her presence was holding back Kelly and he needed to speak to her alone, he needed the nitty-gritty.
“Kelly, can you ask your mother to step away please, we need to talk in private.”
There was a shuffling noise right in his ear, followed by muffled voices. He couldn’t hear what was said, her hand was over the mouthpiece.
“I’m alone.”
“Okay. Assuming that you’re right, did Milton ever speak to you about being threatened by someone, anything like that?”
“If he did, he never told me.”
It was what he expected. They had limited time together when they met so Vandenberg wouldn’t want to waste any of that time talking about some nutcase who sent him an angry letter or email. There were probably hundreds of threats every year.
He made a note in his notebook: movie studio - threats?
“I need to know how it worked with the keycard.”
“There’s a flat rail in the elevator. After he checked in, he would stick the key around the back of the rail with a sticky pad. Same place every time, on the right-hand side. The control panel is on the other side so anyone getting on at the same time would go left. One of the studio’s spy movies had used the same trick. It was perfectly safe; the cards have no room number on them. He’d send me a message with the number. I had to wait for the text, I wouldn’t know what floor to get off at otherwise.”
Somebody knew.
“You tell anyone about the keycard? A friend? Your mom?”
“No, never.”
“Are you sure? Take a moment to think about it.”
“I don’t have to think about it. The only person I told was you.”
“All right, tell me about this morning. Where were you?”
Kelly Taylor started sobbing again. She was falling apart.
“I was late. The night before I had to operate on a dog that got hit by a car. It was a long procedure and I was very tired by the time I got home. Usually, I turn in early and I ended up sleeping in. When I checked my cell, I saw no messages from Milton. None saying the room number, none asking where I was. I thought maybe something had come up at the studio or he’d forgotten it was our day, but I went to the hotel anyway. It felt wrong. He’d never forgotten like that before, no matter what was happening at work. When I arrived all the news trucks were there. I knew something had happened.” She paused. “I knew he was gone.”
The crying started again, louder than before. He knew there was little he could say that would ease her pain and the raw emotion in her sobs was heart-breaking. Coombes had never got used to the pain he encountered on the job. He thought if he ever did then it was probably time to call it a day. He took a deep breath and let it slowly out.
He’d take a dead body over live grief any day.
“I’m very sorry, we’re nearly done.”
He heard her blowing her nose.
“How was Milton, the last time you saw him?”
“He was happy. He said I made him happy.”
Coombes said nothing. There had to be a 50-year age gap between them.
“It’s not what you think. I hated all the sneaking around, it felt weird.”
“Weird?”
“He didn’t want our relationship to get out. His wife would divorce him, take half his money. I didn’t want that. All I wanted was to spend time together, is that so much to ask?”
“You’re hardly the first to have an affair, Miss Taylor.”
“You don’t understand. He’s my father.”
A long monotonous tone poured into his ear. She’d hung up on him. He sighed and did the same. Sato was looking at him, eyebrow raised, headphones off one ear.
“She’s alive.”
“I heard. I’m glad, you know. I hate the dumpster cases.”
“She’s his daughter.”
“Ah.” She frowned. “You don’t think…”
“I really hope not.”
Sato turned back to her screen and moved the headphone back over her ear with the index finger of her left hand. Back in the zone, returning to the suicide pictures. Where did that leave him? Back at the beginning? His two loose ends were tied off for now.
The two missing keycards were his only lead. Both had been used, one by Vandenberg, the other by the killer. If Kelly Taylor hadn’t told anyone about the card drop in the elevator, and he couldn’t imagine the boss of a movie studio telling his golf buddies about it, then the obvious take-away was that someone had witnessed the card being put into position.
The old man wasn’t as smooth as he thought he was. But the kill had been thought out, it wasn’t a crime of opportunity. The killer had a fatal dose of diazepam with him and he knew he wasn’t going to be interrupted.
If the key had no number on it, the killer was either close enough to Vandenberg during check-in to hear what the number was, or else he got off the elevator with his victim and simply observed what room he’d gone into. Next to him, Sato sat back and looked away off over the top of her monitor, into infinity.
“You done?”
“Yeah, I’m done.”
It had taken her one and a half hours to process the 143 crime scene pictures and the task seemed to take a lot out of her. She looked physically and emotionally shattered.
Running an investigation when you were exhausted was a waste of time, it was too easy to miss something important, and the danger was that once you’d processed it you never really wanted to do it again when you were more awake. As far as you were concerned, that task was done. Grace, like most women he knew, was a morning person. Something he was not. Either way, they were going to have to call it a night and hope that tomorrow was more productive.
“Don’t keep me in suspense. Did any stand out?”
He watched the slow rise and fall of her chest and her peaceful, calm face. She looked like she was ready to fall asleep. After a moment, she turned her head toward him.
“Unfortunately, Johnny, I think you may be on to something.”
“Sorry I ruined your night, Grace.”
“If that’s what you think happened, then you don’t know me at all.”
5
Coombes was at his desk the next day by 7:30, he didn’t want to waste any time that was left to him before his lieutenant put him on another case. To save additional time, he’d brought a steel vacuum container of coffee from home. He poured a cup and got straight to it, pulling up the hotel’s security footage Sato had retrieved the previous afternoon. It was a folder full of clips, close to 80 files. He was going to need that coffee.
His first task was to find footage of Vandenberg arriving at the hotel, checking in, then moving through the hotel to his suite. Once he’d done this, he’d broaden his search to look for likely suspects, first near Vandenberg as he arrived, then, more of a long shot, at any other time.
Three cameras covered the front desk. One pointed toward the desk from about twenty feet back, covering the whole width of the desk and the two people that stood behind it checking people in and out. The other two cameras were mounted high on either side, facing guests. Coombes set up the three feeds in separate windows on his computer then pressed play on each one.
He watched Vandenberg walk up to the desk and smile at Anna Lomax. As she stated in their interview, Vandenberg was on his own. There was no line behind him, there wasn’t even a guest at the station to his left. The feed had no sound, so Coombes couldn’t tell what was said. The two were familiar, friendly, even.
Vandenberg looked relaxed and happy, not the face of someone who planned on ending things a short time later. He had no luggage, though he did hold something in his right hand. Anna Lomax put a card envelope on the desk in front of Vandenberg.
The keycards.
He took the card envelope, thanked her and moved off toward the elevator. As he turned the shape of the object in his hand changed shape. It was a plastic bag with a wine bottle in it. No other guest had been close enough to him to hear what room he’d been given. Coombes let the desk footage continue to roll for a couple of minutes after Vandenberg left the shot, but still no-one appeared or followed after him.
From a single camera across the lobby, he watched Vandenberg press the button for the elevator then stand back and set the bag carefully on the floor between his feet. He was doing something with his hands in front of him, then he put one in his pants pocket.
Removing a keycard from the envelope to hide in the elevator.
To his surprise, Coombes found there were two cameras inside the elevator, one mounted above the control panel at head height, and another up high in the opposite corner. He was able to see Vandenberg get in, select the 12th floor then move to the side, his back to the wall. The doors started to close then opened again at the last second.
The feed went black on both cameras.
Coombes frowned, both clips were still playing. He paused them, then dragged the playhead back on both videos. One minute the picture was there, the next it cut out. Coombes dragged the playhead forward and the picture came back. Now the elevator was empty. He scrubbed back and forth. There was no picture for four and a half minutes. He scrubbed forward again, watching guests come and go. Kelly Taylor, the old man’s daughter, was not one of them. Almost an hour later, the feed went black again. The doors opened on 12, the cameras died and when they came back the elevator was on the first floor and a young couple were getting on.
