The Scapegoat, page 7
“Lizzie would sometimes cancel on me, say she was seeing a friend. It was the only thing she was private about. I got to thinking that the friend might not be the same as the time before, and that didn’t matter to her.”
Coombes wondered if Walton’s discretion might not owe more to her date being married. It was a frustrating detail for her to have kept back from her best friend, but probably not relevant if her death was linked to the kidnapping.
“What about the former governor? Any tension between them?”
“Those two were like an old married couple. She’d worked for him so long she could finish his sentences. I asked her once if there was anything there and she just laughed.”
“What did the laugh mean to you?”
“That he wasn’t her type, obviously.”
“Any idea what her type was?”
“I honestly don’t know. I stayed with her dozens of times and often thought she was going to make a move on me, but she never did. It’s too bad, I would’ve rung her bell.”
Coombes tilted his head to the side.
“You stayed at the Tremaine mansion?”
“God, no. This was at her apartment downtown.”
He frowned and glanced at Sato. She shook her head.
“We don’t know anything about an apartment. Do you remember the address?”
“South Hill Street, I don’t know the number. I posted pictures of it on Facebook once but she asked me to take them down. Said she didn’t want other people seeing it. I assumed she meant Tremaine. I heard her take a call from him there once and she told him she was at her sister’s. I don’t blame her. She ate and slept most days in his home. I couldn’t do that. The best thing about work for me is leaving at the end of every day.”
It was a point of view Coombes could easily understand, having had the occasion to both eat and sleep at the PAB. Sato took over.
“Do you still have those photographs of the apartment?”
“Having them and finding them are two different things. They were probably on the cell I lost last year. None of that stuff was backed up.”
Sato opened her iPad.
“Would you recognize the building if you saw it again?”
“Of course.”
Sato pulled up South Hill Street on Street View and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Roche, the screen between them. He watched upside-down as Grace moved the camera car down the street, turning the view from side to side to see the buildings, then on again.
“That one,” Roche said, pointing.
Sato glanced around. “You sure?”
“It’s a building, not a man in a dark alley.”
A half-smile formed on Coombes’ face.
He liked Roche, for what that was worth. Sato zoomed in on the building number and he wrote it down and closed his notebook. They were done here, and all they’d learned was that the victim didn’t have an enemy in the world. The apartment, he knew, would be a dead end.
It probably did belong to her sister.
“Again,” he said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
The prosthetics artist fixed him with a stare.
“I’m not stupid, I know what’s happening. Everything’s being put into finding the governor’s daughter. News channels don’t even mention Lizzie anymore, just Amy.”
“You have my word that’s not the case, Miss Roche.”
He could see that she didn’t believe him. Roche was right. The living always took priority over the dead. If he could save Amy Tremaine at the expense of finding the truth behind Walton’s death, he’d take it.
He held out his card toward Roche and when she made no move to take it, he put it down on the table in front of her and tapped it twice with his index and middle fingers to get her to focus on it.
“If you think of something, give me a call.”
Coombes left her to her thoughts and walked through the lab where they made actors’ faces, to the doorway. Sato drew alongside and they continued on through the airlock, toward the company’s lobby area. As they were passing the plastic cases with aliens and robots, his cell phone rang. Gantz.
“L-T, what’s new?”
“Tremaine wants to see you again, sounded important. Tell Grace to sit this one out. I think he likes you.”
“What’s not to like?”
Gantz ignored that and read out an address near Fairfax.
“Is that an FBI safe house?”
“It’s his gym.”
11
Harlan Tremaine’s gym was located only eight blocks from Coombes’ home. As a result, he’d driven past it many times without realizing that such a famous establishment was right on his doorstep. It had a shabby-chic appearance with faded whitewashed brick and looked like it was on the point of going out of business. The run-down look disappeared as soon as he opened the door and he saw the high-gloss interior, straight out of a movie spaceship.
An attractive blonde eyed him suspiciously.
“Are you a member, sir?”
“I’m here to meet Mr. Tremaine.”
“Ah, yes. Here we go.”
The woman lifted a gym bag from under the counter and placed it in front of him.
“What’s this?”
“Your clothes. You’re going to be working out with Mr. Tremaine. He left this for you in case you didn’t bring any. He’s already inside.”
“You’re in luck, I already brought my own clothes.”
Coombes held his suit jacket open so that she could see his badge and gun holster, then walked past her toward the changing rooms. The blonde said nothing. He moved through the men’s changing room, past the entrance to a shower, and out into the gym.
It was packed.
He’d been in a few gymnasiums in his time, and they had almost always been near-empty. Not this one. Loud music thumped from every angle, full of energy. His wife’s kind of music, not his.
He scanned the room, back and forth, looking for the former governor. It took a moment to find him as he was sitting at a machine, pulling down on a bar.
Coombes walked over, very aware of his suit and his street shoes. He was drawing attention. Maybe the change of clothes would’ve been a good idea. His clothing was going to limit how long he had with Tremaine whether he liked it or not.
Like a lot of gyms, there were mirrors all around. To help you look at yourself, to look at other people. If you saw that you were fat, shame propelled you to keep going; if you saw that you were looking good, it inspired you to keep going.
It was a win-win on the mirror front.
He saw that Tremaine was watching him as his arms slowly worked the bar down, then up again. Smooth and steady. There was no trace of anything on his face, no effort, no pleasure. It was as if pulling on the bar was like breathing in and out.
“You saw that video I suppose?”
“I saw. You have my sympathies.”
Tremaine was silent for a long moment.
“I had already agreed to pay them, it wasn’t necessary to do that to my Amy. Now of course, they want more money. The kind of money it takes a while to pull together.”
Five million dollars.
Coombes nodded, impatient to be going. Whatever he was doing here, it didn’t seem to be moving the investigation on, therefore it was a waste of his time. Tremaine’s expression seemed to clear, the tension holding his eyebrows down in a hard line melting away.
“You’re still wearing your suit, Detective.”
“I’m still working. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
“I took you for a man that looked after himself. You look capable.”
Tremaine looked capable, that was for sure. Capable of pinning a woman to the floor and crushing her throat with his bare hands.
“I take care of myself.”
“Oh yeah? How?”
The bar was still going up and down, rhythmically, like Tremaine had forgotten he was doing it. Coombes glanced at the stack of weights at the back. 180 pounds. It was almost his exact weight. The former governor was in incredible shape.
“Resistance mostly. Perps resist, I chase them down. It’s great cardio.”
“No doubt. What else?”
“I run trails in the hills, get some fresh air. Box a little too.”
The bar stopped moving and Tremaine let his arms drop down into his lap. They were glistening with sweat and were flushed pink with blood though his tanned skin.
“Excellent. I used to box when I was younger. When you’re in a fight, you think of nothing else. Surprisingly peaceful, considering you’re trying to hit another man and avoid being hit at the same time.”
More and more faces were turning their way.
Everyone in the gym had probably seen the video of Amy in the tank of water. But these were Tremaine’s people, they would leave him alone. He was the outsider. The faces were looking at him, openly hostile.
“How about we take this somewhere else?”
“All right.”
Harlan Tremaine stood and they walked toward the changing room. Before they got there, Tremaine stopped at a section with free weights. He lifted a huge dumbbell and began to do arm-curls. Coombes sighed.
“This wasn’t what I had in mind, Mr. Tremaine.”
“Relax, I’m nearly finished my routine.”
Tremaine wasn’t looking at him, or at himself in a mirror, he was looking at a woman less than ten feet away. She was wearing yoga pants and a top that barely covered her sports bra. The woman was about the same age as Tremaine’s daughter, but it didn’t appear that Harlan was thinking about Amy as he looked at her.
“What happened to your FBI friends?”
“I gave them the slip, they were driving me crazy. If someone was after me, they would have gone for me when they had the chance.”
“I agree.”
Tremaine glanced away from the young woman’s flexing rear end to look at him. There was something in his gray eyes, something he couldn’t read.
“I was curious about the origins of your name. About the spelling.”
“It’s pretty straightforward. My parents came to this country by plane, not on a boat.”
“I like you, Coombes. You say whatever’s on your mind, no filters. With that in mind, what I said before, I wasn’t kidding. I want my girl back and I want the animals that took her dead. After that video, it’s all they deserve.”
“If that’s what you wanted, you made a mistake involving the FBI.”
Tremaine nodded.
“They would’ve gotten involved anyway. By bringing them into it, I gained a measure of control I would otherwise not have had.”
Tremaine swapped arms with the dumbbell and resumed his scrutiny of the yoga pants. The young woman was now standing on one foot and stretching the other up over her head.
“I didn’t become a cop to kill people, Mr. Tremaine. I’m in the justice business, not the revenge business.”
“Yet sometimes, they can be the same. No? Let me tell you, when you’re on this side of the fence it feels different. If this happened to you, you’d want the same.”
“That’s why I’m not judging you.”
The dumbbell went back down on the rack with a heavy clank.
“I know that these things can go either way. Cornered suspects. Shoot-outs. All I’m saying, is that if that situation was to develop…well, I’d owe you.”
This was why Tremaine hadn’t wanted Sato here, Coombes thought. Repeating his offer in front of her would make it harder to pull off if the opportunity arose. Of course, if there was a shoot-out now through no fault of his own, it would appear to Tremaine that he’d done what he asked.
Even talking about it had compromised him.
“We didn’t have this conversation.”
Tremaine nodded again.
“I knew you’d understand.”
When you are used to being surrounded by yes-men the truth often didn’t get through. Tremaine expected to hear what he wanted and heard it anyway.
Coombes decided to drop it.
If he said he wasn’t going to gun down a suspect in cold blood, what would likely happen is that the case would mysteriously be given to Wallfisch, another D-III detective at RHD. Wallfisch would doubtless be more agreeable to what Tremaine proposed but would be less certain to get his daughter back alive.
Amy had to take priority.
“Was there something you wanted to tell me about the investigation?”
“Yes, but not here. I’m going to hit the showers. I’ll get you out front.”
When Tremaine emerged from the changing room ten minutes later, he was wearing a blue suit, loafers, and a diver’s watch on a chunky bracelet that looked like it weighed four pounds.
Coombes stood and prepared to walk toward the exit but the former governor shook his head and pointed up.
“I have an arrangement with the management here.”
Coombes suspected the arrangement was that he owned the place.
They climbed up concrete stairs until they reached a door to the roof. A sign warned that it was alarmed, but no alarm rang when Harlan opened it. A brick lay on the other side and Tremaine used it to hold the door open.
“I want to show you something,” Tremaine said.
They walked to the edge of the roof that overlooked the parking lot.
“The black Tahoe.”
“Feds,” Coombes said. “They followed you here?”
“No, they arrived about twenty minutes later which means they’re up in my cell phone. I suppose switching from a Suburban to a Tahoe is considered undercover work in the FBI.”
Coombes nodded and tilted his head to watch a black helicopter move through the deep blue sky. The former governor was taking his time getting to the point.
“You asked me if I had enemies, someone that might want to hurt me.”
Here we go.
“That’s right.”
“Well, I did think of someone, but he’s not an enemy. Not exactly.”
Coombes frowned. “What then?”
“I guess you could say he’s a super-fan. I post something on my socials and he’s always the first to like it, no matter the hour. I’ll post a video on my YouTube channel that’s ten minutes long and he’ll post a comment two minutes later. See what I’m saying? If he watched the video then his comment should be a minimum ten minutes after posting. He has to be first. He also set up a website about me and sells merchandise with my face on it.”
Coombes felt a familiar rush and pulled out his notebook.
“This is good. What’s his name?”
“James Anderson.”
He wrote the name down.
“Have the two of you ever met?”
“Many times, though never by my design. I am asked to give keynote speeches all over California either related to my time in office, or to my foundation. So, I’ll be giving a speech and I’ll look down into the front row where the lights spill into the audience and I’ll see him looking back at me, his cell phone recording me. Not once, Detective. Every single time. If I check into a hotel, he’ll be in the lobby waiting for me, camera ready.”
“How does he know where you’re staying?”
“I guess he calls ahead and pretends to be a member of my staff. There are a limited number of hotels set up to cater to someone like me, so he’ll only have a handful of calls to make. I’m not going to check into some sleazy motel because of some weirdo. Screw that.”
Coombes thought for a moment.
“How long has this guy been doing this?”
“Since I announced my run for governor.”
“Wow. That’s a long time ago now.”
“You’re not wrong. At first it was flattering. I was trying to build my base and it made no sense to alienate anyone. He was dedicated, technically proficient, and was doing all this without being paid. For all I know, he helped push younger online audiences toward voting for me. I saw him as a bit of a clown. I’d laugh about him privately with friends. I figured it was the price of doing business; you’re in the public eye, this is what is costs.”
“I see that,” Coombes said, nodding.
“I thought when I hit the term limit, he’d lose interest. Why would he continue, when I was no longer governor? I thought there was a light at the end of the tunnel, that the situation would resolve itself.”
“But it didn’t.”
Tremaine shook his head.
“If anything, it got worse. Now that I’m a private citizen it feels like more of an intrusion. Back then I had a security guy, I was protected. Because of this joker, I now have a conceal carry license. I’m packing heat when I go to the Farmers Market in case this wacko decides to become famous at my expense.”
Coombes sensed where this was going.
“How long ago did you file a restraining order?”
“Three weeks yesterday.”
“Does he know where you live?”
“Are you kidding? Google knows where I live.”
It was a solid lead, but Coombes couldn’t help wishing he’d had it from the get-go rather than have this piece held back when he could’ve been hunting him down.
“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”
“You have to understand. It’s a huge leap to go from invading my privacy to…what’s happened. I thought he might come at me but I had nothing to base that on, just my gut. A worst-case scenario. Whatever he had going on, it was aimed at me. I didn’t think he’d go after my girls, that he’d try and hurt me through them. Not for a second did I think that, or I would have taken steps to prevent it.”
My girls.
The easiest approach would be to show Tremaine a screen grab of the man that followed his daughter, but since he was not long through telling him that he wanted the man dead, not to mention having a gun to hand, he decided to keep that to himself for the time being.
“Okay. How about you describe this Anderson character to me.”
“White. Brown hair. Your type of build, but three or four inches shorter.”
Coombes wrote this down.
“Anything else?”
“Sometimes he wears glasses. When I’m on stage the light bounces off them like two flashlights. When I’ve seen him outside, he always wears sunglasses, the type with straight legs that kind of rest on the top of the ear.”
