Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

There were no cuts or bruises on her baby-soft hands.

Even if she’d been wearing gloves, there should have been some physical signs from strangling a man to death with a wire.

“What classes are you taking?” Cruz asked.

“I’m studying emergency medicine,” said Delaney. She folded her arms and furrowed her brow as she looked at Del Rio.

“What were you doing at the Sun?” Cruz asked. “Don’t bother to lie, Jillian. We have a record of the phone calls from the john to Phi Beta. And we have you on time-dated surveillance tape. So how about it? Tell us about your date last night.”

CHAPTER 27

THE COLLEGE GIRL who was moonlighting as an escort still looked afraid, but she was getting her stuff together, Del Rio thought. In fact, she was getting huffy.

“So, are you going to charge me with prostitution? Because look,” Jillian said to Del Rio. “I’m putting myself through medical school. That’s not an insignificant achievement. In a couple of years, I’ll be saving lives. You really want to get in the way of that?”

“We’re not here to bust you for your extracurricular activities,” Del Rio said. “Tell us about the guy last night.”

“Maurice? He was nice enough. No rough stuff. Nothing weird. He just wanted a good time. The kind he doesn’t get at home.”

“What happened after the good time?

”

“Nothing. All the financials are handled through the service.”

“And how did he seem to you when you were leaving?”

“He was happy. He said maybe he’d see me again next time he was in town. I said good-bye. The limo was waiting for me out front.”

“There’s not going to be a next time for Bingham,” Del Rio said. “He’s dead. He was murdered.”

“But how could that…? Oh, no. After I left?”

“Did he get any phone calls while you were there?” Cruz asked. “Did he say he was worried about anything? Did anything about him seem unusual?”

“Nothing at all. Clean guy. Wore tighty-whities and a wedding ring. A normal date in every way.”

Back in the car, Del Rio put the CD into the player and ran it through all the way to the end once more.

There were long stretches of emptiness, interspersed with individuals going to their rooms. And there were crowds of people who got off the fifth-floor elevator on their way to the roof, their bodies blocking the camera’s view of 502.

Someone in one of those crowds had to have gone down the hallway, gained access to 502, and killed Bingham. But Del Rio never saw the door to 502 open after Jillian Delaney left.

“You think that girl could have killed the john?” Del Rio said to Cruz.

“I don’t see it.”

“Me neither. Someone came to his door and Bingham let him in. I’m calling this lead a dead end,” Del Rio said.

“Maurice Bingham’s last ride,” said Cruz.

CHAPTER 28

CRUZ SPOKE INTO his phone to someone named Sammy as he headed the car toward the Hollenbeck area of East LA. When he hung up, he said to Del Rio, “I’ve known Sammy his whole life. I didn’t expect to know him this long. I thought by now he’d be just a memory in his grandmother’s mind.”

Cruz knew a lot of Sammys. He could have become a Sammy himself. He had grown up in Aliso Village, a notorious, crime-ridden housing project in the Flats. He became a boxer, went pro, was a middleweight on his way up until a bad concussion made him see double for a while. Maybe it cleared his mind enough for him to look for a way out.

He joined the LAPD for a year, then Bobby Petino—DA Petino—his second cousin twice removed, gave Cruz a job in the investigative branch of his office. A hard-ass ex-cop named Franco became his boss, and Cruz learned. He saw a lot of dead bodies, got to know people, learned what to look for to help the DA make a case. In three years, Franco was working for him.