Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

“We’ve been told it is.”

“Have you checked it out?”

“Nah, we’re just watching the paint fall off. They should be closing up in about a half hour.”

“Okay with you if I do a little reconnaissance now?”

“No problem,” said Del Rio.

Scotty got out of the car. There was a little spring in his step as he crossed the wide street, went over to the loading dock on Artemus, and shouted something up to the forklift driver.

The driver pointed to a door up a flight of metal stairs and Scotty waved at him, took out his phone, sprinted up the steps, and pulled the door open.

“I don’t know if he’s gay,” said Del Rio. “A little bouncy on his feet, maybe.”

“Bet you a hundred this Scotty was a cop.”

“How do you figure?”

“I know eleven hundr

ed cops. He feels like one of them.”

“Then I’ll keep my money. And I’ll ask him,” Del Rio said.

Another fifteen minutes had passed—Del Rio feeling uneasy that the guy had been in there for so long, wondering what Jack knew about him and how Scotty was supposed to fit into the team—when Scotty came around the corner, a piece of paper rolled up in his hand.

He looked both ways as he negotiated the street traffic, then he got back into the car.

“I inquired about a job,” he said, grinning. “This is my application form. I got a little tour of the place.”

Del Rio was laughing inside, but he didn’t show it. The kid was smart.

“What did you see?”

“Very decent security,” he said. “Got cameras over the doors, wires in the windows. The van, gotta be the one we want. It’s white, scraped all to hell on one side. Parked in the back northeast corner. I didn’t want to be too obvious, but I walked by it.”

“Jesus,” said Cruz. “You do a lot with fifteen minutes, dude.”

“Let’s get this fifty-thousand-dollar ride off this block,” Scotty said. “I got pictures.” He showed his phone. “Maybe we can work up some ideas.”

CHAPTER 31

I DROVE THE Lamborghini into my short stub of a driveway and swiped the key fob across the pad. The iron gates rolled open, and I saw a notice taped to my front door. I wasn’t close enough to read it, but I knew what it said.

“Do Not Enter by Order of the LAPD.”

I turned off my engine and sat for a couple of minutes, trying to imagine my brother walking Colleen up to the door at gunpoint. I saw him jabbing a gun into her back, going into the house with her. And then I couldn’t see any more.

Was Tommy so sick, so morally corrupt, he could actually kill Colleen? Honest to God, I didn’t know.

I got out of my car and walked down the narrow side yard, along the fence and out to the beach. The sun was still bright at five p.m. Yesterday at about this time, someone had been readying Colleen for her last mile.

I headed south, parallel to the shoreline, passing two enormous houses and one small one that had resisted the real estate brokers and the bulldozers. The fourth house had a hybrid Victorian-contemporary design with a high profile and a wide deck.

It was where Bobbie Newton lived.

Bobbie was a gossip columnist, the queen of prime-time celebrity news, and the ex-wife of some Wall Streeter back east. She was sitting out on her deck, tall drink in her hand, feet up on the railing. She wore an open shirt over her hot-pink bikini, a white visor in her blond curls, dark glasses, and a Bluetooth cuddling her left ear.