The Scapegoat, page 8
Coombes glanced sharply up from his notebook.
“Really?”
“Yes. I thought for a while his sunglasses had a correction built into them, but I have seen him wearing no glasses at all, so I assume he has contact lenses.”
Tremaine hadn’t picked up on his spike in interest and that was probably for the best.
“This is worth looking into so I’m going to get right on it. In the meantime, if you see this guy call me immediately. Do not shoot him. We need him to get to Amy and in that situation, he has all the high cards. The best bet is to locate him, track him back to where she is, then drop the net on him.”
Tremaine said nothing, his eyes down by his feet.
“Look at me, Harlan. No cowboy shit, okay?”
Tremaine half-smiled.
“You really do have my number, Detective. We’ll do it your way for now.”
He put his notebook away and they turned away from the edge, back toward the roof exit. Coombes waited until they were almost there before he asked his final question. His tone light, conversational.
“Was there anything between you and Elizabeth?”
“I loved her, but not the way you mean. Lizzie was family. When my wife passed, she kept Amy and me going when we thought there was no reason to continue. Lizzie saved me many times over but when she needed me, I was fast asleep.”
They were at the door now.
“Did James Anderson ever meet Elizabeth?”
“No, but he would know about her. He knows everything about me. It’s all up on his goddam website.”
12
A dark-blue BMW sedan was parked in his usual spot in front of his home. He didn’t know much about the brand; all their cars were kind of the same to him. Looked expensive. Fast. It looked, in fact, like it had just rolled out the factory door, it was spotless.
Coombes sat for a moment studying it.
Who did they know that owned a BMW? Julie’s sister maybe. But she hadn’t seen her sister in a long time, almost two years. They’d had some kind of bust-up that he’d never cared to find out about.
The Beamer had a vanity plate that hurt his brain to look at. CSECLSD. Case closed, he supposed. He frowned. That didn’t sound like something his wife’s sister would choose, she worked for Google.
He opened the car door and stepped out onto the street. A couple of vehicles passed before he could cross over.
Up close, the German sedan was larger than he thought, its streamlined shape seemed to hide its size. Chrome details, sparkling paint with an unbelievable high gloss. It looked good. Over a year’s wages, that was for sure. Not that anyone bought cars anymore, they were all leased and this one would be no different.
He stepped right up to the glass to look inside, his hand shielding the sun. The windows were heavily tinted, but not illegal. He was able to see that it was unoccupied, and that a sea of black leather filled the interior.
Coombes continued up the path to his front door. The hair on the back of his neck was standing up, a primitive part of his brain was activating.
He’d experienced the same thing several times in the past, usually when he was about to be confronted by a dead body. He had learned to listen to his early warning system and not shrug it off.
Humans had survived for thousands of years not on luck, but by instinct. You didn’t learn from mistakes if you were dead. Instinct was passed down, a genetic knowledge.
The lock didn’t turn.
He pulled the key out and checked he’d used the correct one. It was. A simple flat key with the teeth on one side. He had two similar keys on his keyring, but he hadn’t used them. He didn’t think he’d ever mixed them up, the house key was on top of the stack, next to his car key fob.
He sighed.
There was a rocker switch on the inside that held the latch open or closed. Julie must’ve activated it by mistake. The surprise of seeing her sister again, maybe.
Coombes reached for the chime, then paused.
CSECLSD, that sounded like a lawyer’s plate.
Things had been patchy between them recently. Was she seeing a lawyer about a divorce? Had she already changed the locks? The barrel of the lock looked the same, not fresh and shiny.
He lowered his hand from the chime.
None of this added up. No lawyer would come out here on business, they’d make you go downtown. Into their fancy office with their secretaries, their pot plants, and their corporate art.
He walked around the side of the building toward the yard. Halfway down was a window into the bathroom. As was normally the case, the window was open a half inch, then clicked shut on the inside. He took a steel ballpoint pen from his jacket and used it to turn the mechanism from the outside, then pulled it open.
There was some kind of commotion inside, he could hear it as soon as the window opened. He pulled himself up and through the opening then lowered his feet carefully so as not to make a sound. Whatever was going on, he didn’t want to tip his hand.
He took off his jacket and set it over the edge of the bathtub. He was in good shape, but pulling himself in through the narrow window had caused sweat to break out on his face. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
The hairs all down both arms were standing up now.
He drew his weapon then quietly opened the door.
Muffled voices. Anger. Back and forth, like an argument. Coombes swung his gun around, checking behind him where the kitchenette diner was, then back across, into the living room.
On the coffee table sat the laptop Julie used to run her web design company. The laptop was open, a screensaver moving around. Next to it, sat two empty glasses. Flutes, the kind people used for drinking Champagne. As far as he knew, they didn’t own any such glasses.
He moved into the hallway and stared at a fat leather briefcase that sat on the tile. Next to it, was an equally fat dachshund that lay with its head resting on its front paws. The dog’s brown eyes looked lazily up at him before closing again.
The wine glasses, the dog.
Julie’s sister wasn’t here.
It wasn’t a home invasion.
He moved back toward the kitchenette. On the counter he now noticed a big black bottle. He was right, it was Champagne. The cork and its wire cage lay next to it. He sighed. It was obvious what this was, you didn’t have to be a detective.
The bedroom door was shut.
The angry voices seemed to be coming from within. No, not anger. It was like a wild animal had been tricked into entering the room, then had the door shut on it. This animal was trapped inside, and it was tearing itself apart trying to get out.
Nothing good would come from opening the door, he knew that. Not with the Champagne glasses out there on the coffee table. The easiest thing would be to leave and return home at the regular time, pretend none of it had happened.
But he couldn’t do that, it wasn’t who he was.
He transferred his gun to his left hand then slowly turned the handle. The door opened a crack, so that the latch was outside the door frame. The sound coming from inside got louder. The sound on its own was more than enough but he couldn’t stop himself. He had to go on. He had to see it with his own eyes. It was like removing a sticking plaster, you had to rip it off quickly in a single action. In the end, they said, it was better.
All the pain in one go, not drawn out.
With the gun back in his right hand, he kicked the door wide open.
Julie was on the bed on her hands and knees while, behind her, a heavily muscled man mounted her from the rear. They were both naked. Their heads turned to look at him. Julie wore some kind of gag and she started to laugh through it when she saw him. Saliva ran out her mouth, around the gag and onto the pillowcase in a thick, viscous stream. The man stared at him with a neutral expression, his bucking hips not stopping or slowing for a second.
The final piece of energy left his body.
He felt cold and disconnected. It was like a bad porn movie, except the woman was his wife. His brain couldn’t accept what it was seeing. She was tied to the bed and gagged, yet her facial expression told him that she was enjoying every second. Perhaps more so, now he was watching.
This was the end for them, there was no way back.
The lawyer, if that’s what he was, bared his teeth.
“Beat it, man.”
Coombes felt his finger tighten involuntarily against the trigger of his weapon. He wanted to kill the stranger as sure as he wanted his next breath.
He forced himself to count to ten inside his head, the way his father had taught him. If you waited until ten, you generally made the right decision.
Julie was still laughing at him, she couldn’t stop.
The cop part of him figured he could shoot the lawyer and later claim he thought the man was raping her. The gag and bindings, combined with the man’s physicality, would sell it.
But he knew that if he pulled the trigger once, he’d continue firing. Julie’s gagged laughter was destroying him. The laughter, and the smile that was pulling her eyes up at the corners. He’d kill both of them and, after that, he’d put the gun in his own mouth.
It was how these things went; he’d seen it before.
Inside his head, he reached ten.
He turned and walked into the hallway.
After a moment staring at the floor, he put his Glock back in its holster and retrieved his jacket from the bathroom. Mechanically, he pulled it on.
Coombes looked around.
He wouldn’t be back here, there was nothing left for him. Already the house looked different, like he’d taken off a pair of sunglasses.
All around him he saw the same things, except now he saw how little of it was his. Julie had chosen everything, and he’d gone along with it because he’d loved her. If she wanted the floral drapes, who was he to say no? As long as she’d been happy, he’d been happy.
His eyes stopped on the television.
It was one of the few things he’d chosen. Julie hadn’t cared too much about tech stuff, that was his field. He walked across to it and began to unplug the leads.
There were his suits as well of course, but they were in the wardrobe behind the man with the heaving buttocks. Most of them were old and needing to be replaced anyway.
He lifted the television off the hooks on the wall and carried it toward the front door.
It was a flat panel, but it was plasma, not LED. He’d bought early, and chosen the wrong technology. The picture was great but it was old now and not 4K. It wasn’t even 1080p. None of that mattered now.
The weight was what mattered.
Coombes opened the front door and lugged the television down the path to the street, leaving the door of the bungalow open. He kept standing on the power cord. He paused to wrap it around the base, then lifted the television above his head. It was really heavy. The newer LEDs were light as a feather.
Reaching the sidewalk, he paused to get his breath back. Heads turned as people drove by.
He was in front of the BMW. CSECLSD.
“Close this,“ he said, and threw the television at the windshield. The showroom clean glass instantly turned opaque as it smashed. The car’s alarm sounded; its lights flashed. The television slid slowly down off the hood onto the sidewalk leaving deep scratches in the paintwork.
Coombes walked across the street to his car.
It disappointed him that the television hadn’t penetrated the glass into the cabin. The glass had been caught in some kind of safety film, designed to protect the driver.
He climbed into his car and slammed the door.
After a moment, the lawyer appeared outside his bungalow. He was still naked, still apparently, aroused. The man was a machine. He looked like a quarterback, not like any damn lawyer Coombes had seen before. The man ran down the path toward his ruined car and started randomly screaming with rage, his hands gripping his head.
He glanced at the rearview mirror and saw a bittersweet smile on his face. He hit the ignition and revved the engine, over and over, loud enough for the lawyer to hear. The man charged across the street toward him.
Coombes nailed the throttle and pulled the wheel hard over, aiming straight at the other man. He swung across the road, causing other vehicles to take evasive action. The lawyer’s eyes popped open in surprise and he was forced to jump to the side to avoid the fender of the Dodge as it came toward him. It was hard to see over the hood, but it looked like he’d missed him by inches.
He hit the brake and lowered the window, looking down at the naked man that lay sprawled and bleeding at the side of the road.
“If I see you again, I will kill you. That’s a promise.”
The man said nothing.
He glanced up. His wife stood in the doorway, arms crossed. She looked the same as she always had, beautiful but slightly sour like she’d sucked on a lemon.
Probably the only thing she hadn’t sucked today.
He was pleased to note that she’d taken the time to cover her body, there was only so much humiliation he could take. Next to him, the lawyer hadn’t moved since he’d crashed down on the ground. Shock was kicking in. His hands were shaking by his side and his eyes remained wild from his near miss with the fender. The man’s pumped-up quarterback body had finally gone slack and limp.
Satisfied, Coombes buried the throttle once more, leaving five feet of rubber behind him on the warm asphalt. He needed a drink. He needed to lose himself down a deep hole, where there was no light and no chance of being seen, even by himself.
His cell phone began to ring.
He considered not answering it, but the screen displayed his partner’s face with a cheeky smile. Grace Sato, the one good thing in his life.
“Grace, what’s the news?”
“We got a hit off facial recognition for our mystery man.”
“Fantastic.”
“Don’t get excited, we’re probably looking at an eye witness.”
“Okay.”
“Anton Schofield, thirty-eight years old. Born in Munich, Germany to a Czech mother and a Russian father, moved to the US in ’08. Looks like a real charmer, Johnny, but there’s a problem. His name’s flagged. He’s a missing person.”
“Give me the address.”
13
Schofield’s home was located in the hills west of Laurel Canyon, half a mile above Sunset Strip. It wasn’t exactly the kind of place that rolled out the welcome mat, and steel security barriers and impossibly high hedges were all around. Money lived here, and it didn’t want you knowing about it. Were it not for his GPS unit, Coombes might not have found it at all, but there it was right in front of him.
The security gate was open and he turned in onto a short driveway that fed around the side of the building. Sato’s car was already there, as was a Hollywood cruiser, and a Lexus SUV.
He got out and walked to the front door.
Nobody had gone in yet, he was just in time. Coombes nodded at the uniforms who stood back watching, hands on hips. A short Latina stood next to Sato with a huge bunch of keys. When the woman saw him she began to unlock the house.
The door had three separate locks, which either indicated a certain level of paranoia on the part of the owner, or an understanding that danger was close at hand.
The door opened and a beeping started.
Loud, insistent. For a moment he imagined coming home to this noise every day. You couldn’t shut it out, it was deafening. He followed the woman inside, Sato next to him, her hand resting on her holstered weapon.
The Latina walked to a control panel and waved a dongle across the front.
Silence returned and he felt his heart begin to slow.
The woman came back over so that she was standing in front of them. She was wearing a business suit with a light-colored top underneath. The top appeared to struggle with the task assigned to it.
Or maybe it was exactly right, he couldn’t tell.
She was nervous, she didn’t want to be there, not if the owner lay inside somewhere dead.
“Sorry, we weren’t introduced” he said. “Who are you?”
“Maria López. I look after some of the houses around here when their owners are away. They call, ask me to restock their fridge, or get a cleaner so it’s ready when they come back. We get them whatever they want.”
He nodded.
Rich people, they had so many homes that half the time they were someplace else. The other side of the country, the other side of the world. Being rich was hard, it was a full-time job living the life of Riley.
“When was the last time you heard from Mr. Schofield?”
“Not since October or November last year. I’d have to check my files.”
“Is that normal?”
“No, he usually needs something twice a month, maybe more.”
“What did you think of him?”
She avoided his eye.
“I don’t know him, sir. I only met him once. Everything is by telephone.”
“Well, did he seem like a nice guy?”
“He was different from my other clients.”
“How so?”
The woman hesitated.
“He looked like one of those men that stand in nightclub doorways.”
“Like security? Shaved head, muscles?”
“Yes.”
He thought of The Hard Limit and the bouncers Lass had taken out.
“Anything else?”
“He had a tattoo on his neck.” She pointed to her own neck, under her left ear. “An eagle with two heads, like it was looking both ways. It looked European. I thought he might be a Nazi. He looked at me like I was a cockroach.”
“Did he frighten you?”
“I can’t say that, sir.”
“I won’t tell him. He might be dead up there.”
The woman flinched. Eventually, she nodded.
“All right, Maria. Leave the keys and a number where we can reach you.”
She handed him the ring of keys and began to look through her purse. He looked at the keyring. At least ten metal keys, plus what he took to be a clicker for the security gate, and the dongle for the alarm console.
