Such a Perfect Family, page 19
I had to unearth the details of that trouble. And I had to figure out some way to discover if Bobby was alive. If Ackerson was as good as my lawyer had indicated, she had to have all his monetary resources under surveillance. But the man had been a successful businessman for a long time.
Chances were he had a cash reserve.
But he’d also have to hide himself. The media had put the faces of the three likely victims online, and he was a good-looking man, the kind of man people noticed. He might’ve done something drastic like shave off his hair, I supposed, but even then, he’d have to be careful. If I was him, I’d hide until the heat eased up and the news cycle moved on.
Where?
His businesses had moved real goods. Goods needed warehouses. Not just offices. Warehouses.
* * *
—
Three hours later, the night dead silent around me, I walked up to a large warehouse in an industrial area on the edge of the city. The company did have other warehouses in other cities, but I had no way to get to those without arousing suspicion.
I had to start here.
The entire area was dark but for the anemic street lighting, the forklifts and trucks of the various businesses parked for the night, and the lights off behind security fencing. All the fencing bore the signs of various security firms, but I didn’t see any actual guards as I walked over from where I’d parked the car some way down the street. Live guards probably weren’t worth it for most of the businesses.
But they were for Bobby’s.
I ducked back, barely avoiding the scythe of light that was the security guard’s flashlight as he patrolled the Elektrik Ninja warehouse.
“Come on, boy!”
A huff of sound, then four feet scrambling behind him.
A dog? The security guard had a fucking dog?
Anxiety was a twisting snake in my gut. I could talk my way in and out of most situations, but I was no expert at breaking and entering. And I certainly wasn’t good enough to avoid both a live guard and his canine companion.
On the flip side, would Bobby hide out in a place as secure as this? He’d have as hard a time slipping in and out without being spotted. Or maybe he wasn’t slipping out at all, had prepared everything he needed before the massacre of his family, and was just hunkered down in a space to which no one else had the key?
Could be he’d kept an office in there that none of his warehouse managers could enter.
I stood paralyzed in the shadows, trying to figure out my next step. If only Ackerson could see me now.
Paranoia had me spinning around, searching for any hint of a tail. Would Ackerson do that? Just tail a random suspect as Baxter had tailed me so many times, an obsessive presence hovering on the edges of my life? If she was doing it, she was a ghost. Nothing moved nearby, and I’d glimpsed not even a hint of another vehicle on the road behind me when I’d parked.
Maybe your car is bugged, said the part of me that had learned to watch my back.
If it was, they might know I was lurking around the business, but what would that get them? Nothing.
Metal clanged, a gate was scraped back. A minute later and powerful headlights speared the night. I sank deeper into the shadows as a van trundled out. It emerged right under a streetlight, so I saw the doggy face hanging out one side, tongue lolling.
The dog saw me, too. Or scented me. It barked.
The security guard grumbled something at the dog that quieted it before jumping out and going to close and lock up the gate. He was back in his car a minute later, the red of his rear lights soon vanishing into the distance.
Not a full-time guard, just one who did the rounds at various properties.
It was possible he’d be back again sometime tonight, so I had to be fast if I was going to do this. And at some point in the last quarter of an hour of standing here, I’d apparently decided I was—because I was moving before I’d consciously processed the decision.
The gate was heavily padlocked, but I’d figured on that. It wasn’t as if the fence had barbed wire on top—it was basic chain link. Climbable. Even if I was caught on security cameras, all they’d see was a figure in jeans, their face shadowed by a black hoodie with no branding or markings to make it stand out, and covered by a disposable face mask I’d grabbed from the hospital.
Now I grunted through that mask as I landed on the concrete on the other side of the fence.
The entire area was motionless, not even a rat skittering across the neat frontage.
Running quickly to the warehouse building itself, I began to look for an entrance. It was sealed up tight. Not only that, it had warning stickers on every door and window that bore the logo of a security company—same logo as on the guard’s van. The place was wired to sound an alert on break-in.
Of course it was.
I wanted to slap myself. I really wasn’t good at this breaking and entering thing. My expertise was in financial sleight of hand, and only when it came to Audrey. I’d been scrupulous with the money that belonged to my clients, focusing all my skill on making them more money.
But I was here now, and I wasn’t about to give up. And…how fast would the security company respond to an alert anyway? This wasn’t a central location, and they weren’t cops, with the ability to run red lights. Even if they got that same guard to turn back around, it had been at least five minutes since he’d left.
If I waited a few more minutes to hopefully let him drive further away, I might get ten solid minutes.
Good enough.
In the meantime, I found a suitable projectile in the dumpster—a cracked mug someone had thrown out. At least I’d been smart enough to grab a set of disposable gloves from the box on the wall of the ICU.
I wouldn’t be leaving any fingerprints.
The mug had World’s Best Boss written on it in big black letters. Be ironic if that had been Bobby’s mug. Or maybe the better term was “poetic justice,” I thought as I decided I’d waited long enough, and threw it toward a window that looked into a little public-facing office. Likely a pickup zone for people who lived locally and didn’t want to pay shipping costs.
No alarm shrieked, but the alarm pad inside the door was flashing red when I crawled through the window. It had alerted the security company.
I ran into the bowels of the warehouse.
Chapter 42
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Feb 18
Time: 10:23
Forensics finally fucking emailed me the full report on Virna Musgrave’s car. Our boy Tavish may have made his first mistake. I don’t care if Grace Green thinks the sun shines out of his ass—he did this, and I’m going to nail him for it.
Chapter 43
There was no sign of life anywhere inside the echoing vastness of the warehouse, and I realized the stupidity of my entire plan about two minutes into my heart-pounding run through the long alleyways between metal racks stacked up to the ceiling with various goods. Purple toasters, sleek white heat pumps, and an endless array of table lamps of every variety, a blur of shiny boxes peopled by perfect faces.
The place was too damn big and too damn dark. Bobby could be standing one rack over and I’d never know it. But even more important—there was nowhere to hide in here. No special office as I’d imagined. Bobby couldn’t have stayed here without being spotted, and there was no way countless employees would’ve kept his presence a secret.
Giving up, I was about to run back and out before I was busted when I spotted the small room tucked into the back right corner of the warehouse. Unlike the pickup area out front, this one was a full cube, with a door and windows. Sweat sticking my T-shirt to my skin under the hoodie, I turned the handle on the door.
It opened with ease.
Pushing my way inside, I looked around for anything that might be helpful. Invoices littered the desk, anchored by a mug still half-full of a thick black liquid that might’ve been coffee. Yellow sheets of paper sat on another end, carbon copies of the delivery drivers’ logs. More papers were stuffed into the filing cabinets in back, while files sat spine out behind the desk.
I frowned, my eye caught by the red lettering under the mug.
I carefully moved the mug to another pile. Even if I forgot to move it back, there was no chance the person who worked here would remember exactly how they’d left this mess of a desk.
OVERDUE!
That was the red stamp, the edge of which I’d glimpsed. On its own, it didn’t mean much. Even businesses this big sometimes slipped. A human input error and a supplier didn’t get paid in time. It happened.
Except…
I flipped quickly through the pile of invoices.
OVERDUE!
OVERDUE!
OVERDUE!
The entire stack blazed red ink, and when I looked at the dates, I saw that they went back at least two months. The wall clock ticked, the second hand sounding like a hammer. Realizing I’d passed the ten-minute mark three minutes ago, I grabbed a handful of invoices out of the pile, then closed up the office and ran.
I was expecting to hear voices at any second, see headlights spearing through the windows, followed by the sound of a police siren, but the world was as silent as when I’d entered. Shimmying my way out of the window, I didn’t dare linger to catch my breath and—after shoving the papers into my waistband—quickly scaled the fence.
I was literally two meters down the sidewalk when headlights turned into the street. Sliding back into the dark between the streetlights, I watched as the security guard turned into the drive and stopped in front of the gate.
No dog this time. Different guard.
I waited only until he was inside before making my way to the far end of the street and my own vehicle. Sweat was a sticky paste along my spine, had broken out along my forehead, but I didn’t dare rip off the mask and pull off the hoodie until I was well away from the area, with no signs of pursuit.
The papers I’d thrown onto the passenger seat taunted me, but I didn’t try to look at them at the few traffic lights where I had to stop. I wanted the time and light to examine them properly.
The drive to the motel seemed to take forever.
I spotted no lights in the suite occupied by Shumi’s family, and hopefully, Ajay wouldn’t have looked for my car when he returned to the motel. If he had, I’d just say I’d gone to see Diya.
Once inside my room, I stripped down to my briefs and let the air cool down my overheated skin. At least I’d had the good sense to leave a couple of soft drinks in the small fridge, and now opened a cold Coke as I sat down on the bed to go over the papers I’d stolen.
The first overdue invoice was for a small bill from a plumber who seemed to have come in to fix an issue with the employee toilet in their flagship Rotorua store.
I set it aside.
Big businesses often pulled this shit, keeping up their bottom line while drawing out payments to smaller players, well aware of who held the power in the situation. What was the plumber going to do? Not do business with what was probably a major client that did always come through on the bills even if they took their time?
The next two invoices were similar. I was starting to think I’d wasted the entire night when I realized the amount of zeroes on the bill now in my hand. I whistled through my teeth as I read it through. It was an invoice for the rental on the Rotorua warehouse.
Elektrik Ninja was four months behind.
The next invoice was from a major supplier and it bore a curt coda: All shipments on hold until invoice paid.
My temples throbbed. Why had these been on what I assumed was the warehouse manager’s desk, rather than going to Bobby at his much nicer office at the flagship store? Because the warehouse manager handled any bills related to the warehouse? No, that didn’t explain the plumber’s bill. Maybe the entire senior team had just gathered there for an emergency meeting after the fire.
Whatever the reason, one thing I knew: Bobby had been about to lose everything.
A flash of memory, Rajesh slapping Bobby on the shoulder at the party as he told a friend how proud he was of his children. “Bobby’s built his own life, and he never rode on my coattails even when I wanted him to! Now Diya’s going to be settled with an accomplished life partner. I’m a very lucky man.”
At the time, I’d just been annoyed that Rajesh was ignoring Diya’s success as an event planner, had held my tongue only because I’d been standing with another group nearby, not actually part of that conversation. But now I thought back. Bobby had smiled and shaken the hand of his father’s friend, nothing in his expression giving away the panic that had to be churning inside him.
His entire identity had been about his success as a self-made man. Men like that didn’t like to admit to failure. In the worst cases, they decided that the only way to escape what they thought of as their shame was to ensure there was no one left alive to witness it.
* * *
—
Before finally falling into a fitful sleep, I sent Ackerson an anonymous tip via a throwaway email address: Bobby Prasad wasn’t as successful as everyone thinks. Look at his business accounts. He couldn’t even pay his rent! His shops would soon have nothing to sell because no one was going to extend a further line of credit to such a loser!
I’d deliberately written it in a mean-spirited tone as might come from someone passing on gossip. But I couldn’t base all my hopes on Ackerson following that thread and realizing that Bobby had likely murdered his entire family to save himself from the humiliation of having to admit his failure.
I hadn’t mattered, wasn’t important, could live.
Yeah, that logic made sense.
He might even have killed himself, his body in pieces in the ruins of the house.
No way to know. The obsessive searching I’d done on such murderers—who I’d learned were called “family annihilators”—had thrown out an even mix of those who ended their own lives alongside those of their families, and those who walked away to begin a whole new life.
As if now that they’d erased their family, they’d also erased their shame and worry.
My mind was still struggling to comprehend the cold psychopathy of the entire thing when I woke the next morning. But I couldn’t afford to be distracted by my horror at what Bobby had done. I needed more to bolster my case, had decided to focus on Ajay’s comment about Bobby’s teenage trouble. I knew it was flimsy, but it was all I had.
Hopefully, the more incidents I could add to his pattern of antisocial behavior, the better I’d look in comparison.
The only problem was that I had no idea where to start my research.
Standing in front of the motel bathroom’s chipped sink as I finished shaving, I thought back to the engagement party.
My mind flickered with a collage of images.
How Diya’s father had smiled indulgently at her, how her mother had brushed back her hair now and then.
Love.
Yet they’d allowed the blame for Ani’s violent death to be placed on her head. Protecting their bigger, stronger son because he wouldn’t make as sympathetic a subject as Diya. Blame the innocent little girl, sweep the whole thing under the rug. Even if that meant giving her a psychic wound that festered until she needed medication to fight it.
Richard—that’s it!
My mind snagged on the name of the husky blond man with a small red birthmark near his left cheekbone whom Bobby had introduced as his fishing buddy.
“Known each other since the first day of high school,” Richard had said. “Bobby’s uniform was ironed, his hair in this real tight cut, and I thought for sure he was going to be a swot.”
They’d both laughed then, because the next day, they’d turned up to try out for the school’s junior rugby team, ended up together in the scrum, and that was it. A friendship that had lasted through school and differing career paths.
Richard hadn’t gone to college, I thought with a frown, trying to follow that thread to lock down a way to get hold of him. He and Bobby had been chatting about how Bobby would invite him and his— “Apprenticeship!” I tapped a fisted hand against the cold porcelain of the sink.
Bobby had groaned that the apprentice electricians had been a bigger hit at the college parties than fellow students like Bobby. “I shot myself in the foot inviting you lot,” he’d said with a laugh. “All the girls wanted the buff blue-collar guys, not the nerds.”
But when I grabbed my phone and looked up “Richard + electrician + Rotorua,” I got several hits and all of them came with a face attached that wasn’t of the man I’d met.
I tried to remember who else I might’ve seen chatting with Richard.
A vague memory emerged, of neighbor Tim in an enthusiastic discussion with the younger man. Could be nothing, but at least it was a start. But first, I had more important business.
Chapter 44
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Feb 23
Time: 09:06
Bastard must’ve been born under a lucky star. The partial fingerprint on the fucking critical engine component isn’t enough for a match.
Time: 19:09
Perez thinks we missed something. Because either Tavish Advani is a master criminal…or we’re looking in the wrong place. I can’t see it. Advani fits every single parameter. He has the motive. He had the means—access to Virna’s house and vehicles. And he’s got a track record of dead lovers.
Man is also the kind of smart that’s dangerous.
Virna had no enemies, and her son has his own millions. He didn’t need to kill Mom to get his hands on the inheritance. There are no other suspects.
