It was a nice house, cozy, comfortable, and the mattress was heaven. Cam was tired and hyped up at the same time, but the beer and soaping up in a shower old enough to be on an I Love Lucy episode mellowed her enough to nod off.
She came awake at 7:00 a.m. at the loud horse-racing bugle ringtone of her cell. For a second, she didn’t know where she was, then remembered. “Wittier here.”
It was Supervisor David Elman, LAPD.
“Our Serial struck again, call came in twenty minutes ago, in Santa Monica. Another actress, Deborah Connelly, aged twenty-six. Fits the profile exactly. She was killed in her bed last night, her laptop and cell phone missing, according to her boyfriend, who found her.”
Cam closed her eyes, let it sink in. Another murder, and on her watch. It was a punch to the gut.
“Thank you for calling me so fast. I’ll be there in thirty-five minutes. Don’t let them touch anything, okay? We need a pristine crime scene.”
He was huffy about that, for good reason, but Cam didn’t care. She called Daniel, got an out-of-breath voice. “Yeah?”
“Cam here. Another murder.” And she gave him the address in Santa Monica. “I’ll see you there. Fast as you can, Daniel.”
* * *
She parked her rented Toyota at the sidewalk at Deborah Connelly’s condo thirty-one minutes later, Daniel pulling in right behind her. There were two patrol cars and two Crown Vics crowded in the driveway and at the curb.
When he joined her, Cam asked, “You were out of breath when I called. What were you doing?”
“I’d just come in from my morning run.”
He didn’t look like he was hungover from too much beer, and he’d gotten up early to run? He looked sharp in gray chinos, a blue blazer, and white shirt, boots on his big feet. She wanted to slug him.
“Do you know any of the people in the Santa Monica station?”
“Arturo Loomis, on the force for twelve years and counting, so lots of experience, and pretty smart. Your only problem with him is that he was married to a DEA agent who screwed him over big-time in their divorce. Maybe you’ll luck out and someone else took the call.”
She didn’t luck out.
30
* * *
21 CRANDLE AVENUE
SANTA MONICA
WEDNESDAY MORNING
Cam spotted Loomis immediately, center stage, surrounded by three other officers, two men and a woman, listening to him talk. They fell instantly silent when they saw her.
Detective Arturo Loomis was a big man, midthirties, fit, and in charge. She couldn’t see him ever taking crap from anybody. He wore aviator glasses over sharp, intelligent eyes and didn’t acknowledge her. He looked toward Daniel, nodded.
Daniel said, “Arturo, let me introduce you to the case lead, FBI Special Agent Cam Wittier. Agent Wittier, this is Detective Arturo Loomis, Santa Monica.”
She saw rage on his face. That was good, it meant he cared. Unless the rage was directed toward her.
“Agent.” A clipped, hard voice.
“Detective Loomis.” She stuck out her hand. Slowly, unwillingly, Loomis shook it.
“How long have you been on-site?”
“I was called in forty minutes ago. My lieutenant told me not to process the scene because it’s an FBI case. So we’ve all been standing around with our thumbs in our mouths waiting for the Feds to show up.”
“The Fed is here now. I understand Ms. Connelly’s boyfriend found her?”
He nodded. “The boyfriend, yes. He called 911, then the housekeeper showed up. Boyfriend’s in the kitchen. He’s a mess. So far we can’t get anything useful out of him. As of a few minutes ago, he was still Froot Loops. His name’s Mark Richards. The housekeeper, Pepita Gonzalez, is in the living room and she won’t shut up. Detective Turley”—he nodded toward a tall, no-nonsense woman in her thirties—“she speaks Spanish, almost as well as you do, Daniel. Ms. Gonzalez told her the boyfriend and the vic were moving into a new place together. Ms. Gonzalez usually comes every other week, but she came today to help pack boxes. She didn’t see any strangers, only the boyfriend’s car in the driveway.
“As I said, nobody touched the scene or the vic, order of Supervisor Elman.”
Cam knew she should let it go, but she couldn’t. “We can at least give her the dignity of using her name, Detective Loomis. She was Deborah Connelly.”
Loomis stared at her, surprised, then dismissive. “Yeah, I thought you already knew that.”
They walked together to the entrance hall, stacked high with neatly labeled boxes. Deborah Connelly had nearly finished moving out. Would she still be alive if she’d left a night earlier? No, not if the Serial was targeting her. He would have followed her.
Cam said, “I’d appreciate your calling your forensics team in, Detective Loomis, if you haven’t already. I’ll look in on the crime scene, then I’d like to speak to Mr. Richards.”
Detective Loomis shrugged. “Knock yourself out. Our forensics team is already here. I knew we’d be covering that, from my buddy in Van Nuys—”
Cam turned back. “Detective Jagger?”
He blinked, obviously surprised she knew his name, shook his head. “No, Detective Corinne Hill. Nice to know you trust us to investigate a crime.” He gave her a long look, added, “Corinne said even Frank was coming around after that bash your showbiz folks threw last night in the Colony. Too bad the vic—ah, excuse me, Deborah Connelly—didn’t buy it a day earlier, I could have rubbed elbows with the rich and famous, too.”
“That’s enough, Arturo,” Daniel said. “Cut her a break.”
If not for the fact that Daniel had told Cam Loomis’s wife had really burned him bad she’d have taken him apart. Her hand fisted, but she only nodded and left them, hoping Daniel would get him in line. She calmed as she walked down the oddly silent hallway, steeling herself for what she was about to see. She walked past the master bedroom and continued down the short hallway to the rear of the house, and into a room she saw immediately had become an office. On top of a desk were neat stacks of papers, piled high and ready to be stacked into boxes standing open nearby. Deborah Connelly had been neat, orderly. There was no laptop, no cell phone.
She stood in the center of the empty room. She smelled jasmine. Deborah had spent a lot of time in here. Cam could see her getting halfway down the pile of papers stacked in the center of her desk, wishing she could get another box or two packed before going to bed but hanging it up for the night. Was she already showered, wearing her nightgown? Cam picked a sheet of paper off the top of one of the piles. It was a notice of an audition for a part in the last Mission: Impossible. Printed in neat black ink across the bottom: Yeah! Now I can pay the rent. Tom Cruise was very nice to me.