The Dark Halo, page 7
10
When he got back to the detective bureau, five people were waiting for him in the captain’s office; Block, Gantz, Curtis, and two others. Block turned to him as he entered the room, his face showing irritation at having to wait for him to arrive.
“Coombes, this is Deputy District Attorney Rachel Boyd, Jake Curtis you’ll no doubt recognize, and William Fielding here is his legal counsel in this matter.”
He nodded at Boyd and Fielding. The lawyer began to speak.
“My client has become aware of your interest in him and has surmised that it relates to the unfortunate death of Milton Vandenberg. We’re here to make sure you don’t waste any time pursuing the wrong man.”
Curtis was the only person in the room sitting down. He was seated at a table the captain had at the back of his room; his hands folded together on top of it. He looked smug. Perhaps remembering the moment when he lost them at the intersection. Up close, the writer’s beard was something to see and Coombes stared openly at it for a moment.
“You have a recording that gives you an alibi?”
He addressed Curtis directly, ignoring Fielding.
“That’s right, from my home security system. The whole of last month. You can see where I was and when, it’s all timestamped. The cameras roll 24-7, it’s not motion-activated. After a month footage is archived, after two it’s deleted. I am offering a month because a day’s worth might not make sense.”
“All right.” Coombes said, turning to Boyd. “Where does the District Attorney’s Office fit into all this?”
“There are certain legal issues arising from the footage that Mr. Curtis is offering that he wants set aside for the greater good.”
“Specifically?”
Boyd sighed, her eyes drifting down to the floor.
“Use of a controlled substance, providing alcohol to a minor, and sexual activity with a person below the age of consent.”
“You’re kidding, right? You’re going to rubber-stamp statutory rape?”
Her eyes zipped back up to meet his.
“The would-be victim was 21 days from legal age at the time, and Mr. Curtis claims he was unaware. You know how that goes. We’d be setting the City’s money on fire trying to bring a successful prosecution. Of all the deals I’ll have to make today, this will be the easiest, believe me. Bottom line, the deal’s worth taking.”
Coombes turned and glared at Curtis. The writer’s face gazed blankly back, yet somehow there was amusement there, just beneath the surface. Curtis leaned way back on his chair, like he was sunbathing, his hands cupping the back of his head.
“If you prefer, you can reject the deal. I will then provide an edited version for the day in question only, then delete all the other data to prevent malicious prosecution. The edited version gives my alibi, but you’re not going to like it too much.”
“It’s not Detective Coombes’ decision,” Block said. “We’re taking the deal.”
Jake Curtis ignored the captain and smiled at him. Coombes fought the urge to grab him by his hair and slam his face repeatedly onto the table.
Boyd placed some paperwork in front of Curtis and he signed.
Why did he think a month’s worth of footage would be required?
The recording likely gave Curtis an alibi not only for Milton Vandenberg, but for William Morgan and Simon Keehan as well. That was why the captain and the DA’s Office were so willing to take the deal; the greater good Boyd had already mentioned.
“All right,” Coombes said. “Let’s have it.”
Curtis made a show of pulling two thumb drives out his jacket pocket, one had a red rubber band around it. The edited and unedited versions no doubt. He put the rubber band drive down on the table and put the other one back in his pocket.
“You’ll have questions about what you see but I can’t look at the footage, it upsets me. William knows my situation and can answer on my behalf.”
Coombes took the drive and left the room with Fielding. They walked down the hall to the meeting room where Sato had set up the laptop, and the three of them gathered around to watch the footage. The drive contained a folder with 30 sub folders, each having 16 further sub folders. He recognized the system setup. Month, day, camera. He drilled down to the folder representing the day of Vandenberg’s murder.
He turned to Fielding. “Which camera?”
“TV room.”
Coombes opened the folder and found a single file for the whole day. He sighed. A raw feed. It would make it harder to navigate, but would at least make any edit obvious. He started playback. Midnight in an empty room. The picture was black and white with visible pixilation in the darkest areas. Infra-red. He clicked fast forward and sat back in his seat. This was going to take a while. At around five a.m. Curtis entered the room, naked except for a pair of briefs that extended half way down his thigh. Coombes reversed playback to the point that he appeared and clicked play. The writer crossed the wide space and paused several feet back from a floor-to-ceiling window. His head was dipped down, not looking out. After a beat, he lowered himself onto the floor then lay on his side.
Nothing happened.
Coombes frowned and hit fast forward again. Two times, five times, then twenty times fast forward. The view barely changed. Curtis appeared to shimmer as the playback speed exaggerated tiny movements of his body. As the light levels came up, the picture jumped to color, the resolution suddenly pin-sharp.
It looked seriously uncomfortable; the floor was wood. From the reddish tones, cedar. Coombes doubted he’d be able to lie on it for more than five minutes. After four and a half hours, a German Shepherd came over and lay down next to him.
Coombes looked at the timestamp. If Curtis killed Milton Vandenberg, he would already be in his hotel suite arranging the death scene. Curtis had his alibi. He turned to the lawyer.
“Why’s he lying on the floor like that? Did he pass out?”
“My client is bipolar. When he’s depressed, sometimes all he can do is…well, you can see. It cripples him in effect. He lies or sits and has to wait for it to pass. The world can overwhelm him. It’s not physical. He could move, he just can’t see the point of anything and shuts down. People use the word depression all the time, but most don’t have it like this.
“When he’s up, it’s a different story. He’s a live wire, the funniest guy in the room, a hit with the ladies. You name it. He can also do an amazing amount of work in this manic phase. He wrote the first Firestorm movie in three hours. But, as you can see, sometimes he’s like this so maybe it balances out.”
Jake Curtis was still lying on the floor. It had to be the most boring alibi in the history of the world. Three more hours had passed and all that had happened was that the dog had got up, cleaned itself at length, then walked out of shot. Coombes grabbed the play head with the mouse and dragged it rapidly along the timeline. The light dropped and a lamp came on. Coombes went back to see if he’d got up to put the lamp on. He hadn’t, it was automatic.
“He’s there all night, Detective. Most of the next day as well.”
“You already watched this? Or he told you?”
“I watched it. He sent it to me this morning. Like you, I put it on fast forward. I left it playing like that while I ate breakfast and drank coffee. I knew what to expect, I’ve known him for years.”
“What about the drugs and the under-age sex?”
“It’s on a different day. I haven’t seen that. I don’t want to.”
“Why include it if it’s not on the same day? He already has his alibi.”
“Because if you watch his behavior on the days before and after you can see the changes in his mental state, it shows the pattern. Eventually, we felt you’d want the extra footage so we thought we’d get out in front of the problem and make a deal while we had leverage.”
Coombes rubbed his chin.
“Whose idea was the deal? Yours or his?”
“His, why?”
“No reason.”
Curtis was smart, and this move proved it. Would they have asked for the extra material? It was possible, his behavior in the footage was certainly abnormal. In his experience, anyway. But was he really getting out in front of a problem, or was there something else going on? Something felt off about it.
Coombes opened the next day’s clip and found the moment when the writer got off the floor. He did so slowly, like he’d forgotten how to move. The dog rushed forward, barking, tail wagging, overjoyed his master had come back to life. It reassured Coombes that he hadn’t been looking at some kind of dummy.
He’d recently re-watched Escape From Alcatraz and Clint Eastwood’s fake head was fresh in his memory. The man had really been lying there for thirty-six odd hours on a hard wooden floor. It wasn’t eye-witness testimony, but it was hard to argue with as an alibi. Eye witnesses were unreliable in any case, they lied, they forgot dates and times. A good 50% of alibis were worthless and unverifiable.
He turned to face the lawyer.
“You know about the pig’s head?”
Fielding nodded.
“A bad business. I can’t condone it.”
“You’ll be telling me his manic phase is responsible for that?”
“I wouldn’t insult your intelligence. Jake can be unpredictable. Sometimes, to be blunt, an asshole. But he’s no murderer. The timing of the pig thing is poor, I agree. My client made Milton Vandenberg a lot of money and had merely asked for a better percentage. The way he was treated by the studio he helped build from nothing was appalling.”
Coombes felt the tension go out of his shoulders.
As much as he disliked Jake Curtis, he had to admit that the case against him was weak and circumstantial. Vandenberg’s murder was close to a perfect crime and that didn’t fit well with someone who thought nothing about mailing a pig’s head under his own name.
“All right. We’ll need to study these recordings and verify they’ve not been altered in some way. I will also need access to a medical professional familiar with his case who can confirm this behavior as typical.”
“We thought you might. My client has instructed his physician to give you whatever you need. If this really was murder, he wants the killer caught. Whatever made Vandenberg a target might make him one too.”
Here’s hoping, Coombes thought.
Grace ejected the thumb drive from the laptop, labeled it, and dropped it into an evidence bag. Then closed the laptop and put it in her case. When she was finished, the three of them walked back down the corridor together to Block’s office.
“Obviously, Jake is keen that none of this ends up online or the nightly news. We’re trusting you to keep a lid on this and not have copies spreading around. Can you do that?”
It’s Jake now, when he’s asking a favor.
“I work Homicide. Your client’s interest in children will be ignored on this occasion, but tell him he won’t get a second pass. He’s visible to us now. If he even drives past a school, his life will take a turn for the worse. Make sure he understands.”
The lawyer flinched and a dead silence fell between them. They re-entered Block’s office, only to find that Block and Boyd had left, leaving Gantz to watch the writer. He nodded to his lieutenant and turned to Curtis. He looked diminished. Coombes had seen him at his lowest, lying broken on his floor for 36 hours, and he was clearly embarrassed by the situation.
“Can I go?”
“I wanted to ask you something first.”
“All right.”
“You know all the main players at the studio. Who’d you pick as a killer?”
“From the studio? Are you kidding? Not one of them has a spine, never mind a set of balls. You’re barking up the wrong tree there, Detective.”
Fielding passed him a business card and a sheet of paper with the address of Curtis’ physician. They were done.
Coombes watched them walk down the corridor toward the elevator. As he was walking, the spring seemed to return to Curtis’ step, and his shoulders began to pitch from side to side with exaggerated swagger. Either his confidence was returning, or the pretense was dropping away. He continued to watch them wait on the elevator. After a moment, Curtis turned and looked back at him, a smile on his face.
11
By Monday morning, it was clear to him that Vandenberg’s threatening mail was a dead end, just as he’d imagined it was on Friday afternoon when he’d first seen it. Milton Vandenberg was simply one of those people that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and after spending the weekend in a windowless room with Sato and four rookies, he supposed he might have that in common with the studio boss.
The majority of the mail was taken up by screenplays that had been saved as part of the security sweep of each of the threatening writers. These scripts were 90 to 120 pages in length, roughly an inch thick, and contained no information related to the threats.
The correspondence that followed confirmed only what he’d already established from Jake Curtis. Namely, that writers were an opinionated lot, who knew a lot of swear words and cool ways to kill people.
Given the type of movie the studio specialized in, none of this should’ve come as any surprise to staff at Pacific Pictures, and the entire pile of paper should’ve been moved to recycling where it belonged long ago.
This was true of every piece of correspondence, except one. Jake Curtis’ parting shot to Vandenberg, the pig’s head.
All that remained, were four photographs printed on cheap office photo paper, and the original consignment paperwork Curtis had calmly filled in, signed, and attached to the box for the courier. As both a homicide detective and combat veteran, Coombes had seen more than his share of dead bodies, but there was something still shocking about the photographs of the animal’s head lying on the floor next to the wheels of an office chair.
He imagined Carly Rogers, Vandenberg’s executive assistant, opening the package for her boss. Perhaps curious or excited about what the box contained, a half-smile ready on her face, cutting the tape and opening the cardboard flaps…then screaming loud enough to fill the building. The box then falling on the floor and the pig’s head rolling out. The scene played vividly in his head every time he saw the pictures.
There was also a photograph of the inside of the box, which was stained black with blood, suggesting that the head had been attached to the pig’s body not long before Curtis sealed it inside the box.
Alibi or not, he still wanted the screenwriter for the killings and nothing in the correspondence from Pacific Pictures had made him think otherwise.
It took less than five minutes to drive to the next murder on South Olive Street, but the area was already flooded with news crews and patrol cars. Coombes was used to arriving late. Every scene he attended was always processed first by at least one uniformed officer, a supervisor, and sometimes another pair of detectives. Delays were inevitable, but this time over two hours had passed before it was escalated to RHD.
The report that came through was that the victim was Haylee Jordan, a reality show actress, and that it looked like she’d slit her wrists in her penthouse hot tub. Other details were limited due to the belief that it was simply another routine suicide.
Finding nowhere to park, Coombes abandoned his Dodge on the street and left his card behind the windshield where it could be easily seen. The vehicle was fitted with light bars on either side of the rearview mirror, yet he’d still had it towed. A strong wind whipped around him as he stepped out onto the asphalt, and he paused to button his suit jacket while he waited for Sato to walk around the hood.
Another victim, it was a disaster.
And yet, from a certain point of view, another chance to get a lead and solve the case. So far, the case was going nowhere, they needed all the help they could get. Unfortunately, he didn’t think the killer was going to be in a charitable mood.
Coombes glanced up at the building that towered over them, then moved toward the entrance and the waiting press pack. Cameras turned their way, already running. He ignored them and pushed on, forcing the crowd to open up and create a space. Reporters and journalists calling out questions, all of which he tuned out. They were almost at the police line when he heard his own name.
“Detective Coombes! Is there a link between the deaths of Haylee Jordan and Milton Vandenberg?”
His head began to turn automatically before he caught himself.
He reached the police line and ducked underneath the tape, holding it up for Sato. A man came under the tape with them while apparently recording the whole thing on a tablet computer, but was swiftly ejected by two officers. Sato looked at the man’s incursion with alarm and he positioned himself to protect her in case anyone else came through.
There was a strange mood in the crowd that he didn’t like.
They gave their name and badge numbers to a rookie in the entrance lobby. He noticed a lot of names and numbers already on the page, something he couldn’t figure. The lobby was not where he would have stationed this cop, but he said nothing and walked onto the elevator and hit the top button, marked PH. Nothing happened, the panel was dead. A piece of paper hung down from its bottom edge on a strip of tape on the wall. He flipped it up to see the front, expecting it to say Out of Order.
Type 3439 on keypad for PH - LAPD.
Coombes noticed a small number grid like a pocket calculator next to the elevator controls. He typed in the code and the main panel lit up. Again, he pressed the button for the penthouse and this time the doors closed and they began to rise up through the building.
Sato spoke softly, as if they could be overheard.
“It’s not going to be long before the press figure this out.”
“You mean that it’s a serial?”
“Yeah.”
Coombes said nothing for a moment. It was the first time any reporter had recognized him, and it was somewhat unfortunate that it had happened now. She was right. Two high profile suicides little more than a week apart being investigated by the same detectives all but drew them a picture. The reporter almost had it already. It wouldn’t last the day.
