Bannerman's Law (15 page)

“
Yes, I can
,”

“
Uh-uh
.”
She shook her head.
“
We're best friends
now
.”

No answer.

“
Tonight we'll talk about boys and do each other's hair
.”

Molly looked away.

“
You can tell me how it feels to get laid and I'll show
you how to pop zits without leaving big red pimples
.”

Molly smiled, but she frowned inside. Carla Benedict,
making jokes. This wasn't like her. Especially now.
Ahead, on Alameda, she spotted a convenience store. She slowed, then pulled to the curb when she saw a sign indi
cating that it had a public phone. Carla followed her eyes.

“
Who are yo
u
calling
?”
she asked.

“
Not me. You. See if there's a listing for DiDi Fene
r
ty.
If she answers, tell her you'd like to see her right away.
If she doesn't, don't leave a message, but get the address
.”

“
See her about what? Old movies? Lisa was dead for
hours by then
.”

”I think DiDi has a copy of her computer files
.”

Car
l
a blinked.
“
That someone wiped off her
machine
?’'

“
And heard the same message we did
.”
Molly gestured
toward the store front.
“
Go make the call
.”

Sumner Todd Dommerich had not intended to follow
them. They were already out of sight by the time he started
driving north on Alameda. He was not due at work until
noon. He had time to drive over to the campus, have
breakfast, read another newspaper. See what it said about
Lisa. And what else it said about him. Maybe do his laun
dry there and listen to what the students were now saying
about him. Or sit in on a lecture. There was no place he couldn't go at Southern Ca
l
because (the thought always
made him smile) he knew how to make himself invisible.

Had it not been for the silver Honda, he might not have
spotted the blue Chevrolet at all. The Honda, just ahead, had stopped at the curb again. That man, Hickey, was
crouching behind the wheel. What made him especially
easy to spot was that he was holding hi
s
arms up over his
shoulders, his hand
s
cupped around his temples as if he
were looking through binoculars. Dommerich drove past
him, not slowing.

Yes. That was him. Beefy. Thick lips. Thin hair,
brushed straight back, not clean, curled and shaggy at his
neck. And he was holding a video camera, not binoculars.

Dommerich followed its aim and he saw Lisa's sister.
She was coming out of a convenience store. He saw a
sheet of paper in her hand, a black stripe across the top
like a page from the phone book. She held it aloft, waving
it, and he followed her eyes to the blue Chevrolet and the
woman named Fa
rr
ell. Dommerich kept going.

He drove north for another long block and he pulled into the parking lot of a store selling cheap furniture.

Something was funny here, he thought. If the man,
Hickey, was a reporter, why didn't he just go talk to them? Why was he sneaking around, following them, taking pic
tures? Why couldn't he just leave Lisa's sister alone? The
policeman, back there, didn't seem to like this man very
much. Do
m
me
ri
ch was beginning to see why. He didn't like him very much either.

He waited until the blue Chevrolet went by, and then
the silver Honda. He fell in behind them, memorizing the
Honda's license plate as he drove. The Chevrolet turned
west on Slauson. The Honda followed for two miles. Then,
both cars climbed onto the Harbor Freeway, northbound,
and got off again at the Ve
rn
on Avenue ramp. A little
way farther, they turned north on Vermont.

This was really weird, thought Dommerich. They
seemed headed toward the campus. They were going ex
actly the way he would have gone if he hadn't seen them
first. If he didn't know better, he almost would have
thought that they knew he would be there. But he wasn't.
He was behind them.

He felt a tinge of relief, not unmixed with disappoint
ment, when he saw that they were driving past the campus
proper. But, suddenly, they turned left and he felt better.
They were heading into the area, just north of the campus,
where many of the students had apartments.

Lisa's sister and the older woman seemed lost. They
kept turning, left and right, once making an illegal U-turn
and doubling back. He could see that Lisa's sister was
holding a map. They drove right past the silver Honda but they didn't seem to notice him. The Honda made the same turn but Dommerich couldn't. The light had changed. The
Honda disappeared from his rea
rv
iew mirror.

He began cruising the side streets in the hope of spot
ting them again. Five minutes later, crossing Men
l
o Ave
nue, he did. The Chevrolet was double-parked outside a
big old Victorian, painted yellow. He knew that house.
Number 2101. It had an antique popcorn wagon on the
porch, chained down, and a park bench, probably stolen.
Three or four graduate students lived there. Stained glass
in the front door and in some of the windows. Lots of
movie posters on living room wall and framed cover
s
of
old fan magazines in the foyer. That was as far inside as
he'd ever been except he used the bathroom once.

Lisa's sister and the other woman were already on the
porch, the taller one ringing the bell. The Honda was no
where in sight.
Domme
ri
ch found a space halfway up the street. Recall
ing how he'd spotted the man named Hickey, he knew he couldn't just sit there. He stepped from his car and opened
the hatch. He took out a peaked red and green cap with
a pizza company logo on it and a large insulated pouch
for keeping pizzas warm. The two made a wonderful dis
guise, he knew. No one ever looked twice at a pizza deliv
ery boy.

He had no special plan in mind. Except to see Lisa's
sister again. Get a better look. Maybe even hear her voice.
Maybe pretend that he couldn't find an address. Get her
to help him. Be nice to him.

He approached the blue Chevrolet. The street map, he
saw, was still on the dashboard. Good. That would be a
reason for speaking to her. Also, on the console, there was a parking stub from the Beverly Hills Hotel and the page
he'd seen in her hand. He was right. It was from a phone
book. Page 332. All the listings started with
F.

A flash of silver caught the corner of his eye. The
Honda. It was slowly rounding the next corner. Dommer
ich
’
s heart rose to his throat but then he remembered. He
wa
s
invisible. He stood erect, pretending to look around
for the address that ordered a pizza. He chose a house two doors up with no cars in its driveway. He went there and
pretended to ring the bell.

The Honda, which had hesitated several houses farther
up, now cruised by, slowly. The two women were no
longer on the porch. The Honda went on to the far corner
where the driver with the greasy hair pulled to the curb
three cars forward of where Dommerich had parked. Dom
merich, tugging his visor down over his eyes, returned to his car. Opening the hatch, he took out a three-sided plastic pizza sign that had a magnetic base. He centered it on
his roof. Now even his car would be invisible.

_1
4

At the storefront office of Luxury Travel Ltd. In
Westport's
Co
m
po Shopping Plaza, Paul Ba
nn
e
r
ma
n
was preparing to
leave for lunch
—j
oining Susan at Mario'
s—w
hen the light
flashed on his private line.

He closed the glass door, shutting out th
e
buzz from
the reservations desks, and picked up the receiver. He said
his name, then sat when he heard
Lesko's
voice.

”I was wrong about them having a suspect
,”
Lesko told him.
“
Kaplan says they got zilch
.”

Bannerman was surprised.
“
No lists of known sex offenders? No anonymous tips abut possibles who fit the profile
?”

“
They've got those up the ass
,”
Lesko answered.
“
Kaplan says they've all been checked out.
.
.
.
I'm talking more than five hundred here.
.
.
.
And about twenty
were worth a few days' surveillance,
mostly because they
had the killer's blood type. Most of those have been elimi
nated, or at least they were someplace else when the last
killing went down
.”

“
Which one?
Carla'
s sister
?”

“
No. The one before. Kaplan found out why they don't
think the same guy did Lisa Benedict
.”

Banne
rm
an waited.

“
You gotta keep this quiet, okay? They keep it out of
the papers for a reason
.”

”I understand
.”

“
Four things
,”
Lesko told him.
“
First, the guy took
some hair from each of the first six but not from
Carla's
sister. And the others were all blond, by the way, so make
that five things
.”

“
They're sure? That no hair's missing, I mean
?”

“
Yeah. This guy takes a pretty good chunk and some
scalp about the size of a half dollar. The shrinks call it a
totem. Basically a souvenir. You wouldn't believe the
things some of these guys cut off and keep
.”

Yes, he would.
“
What else
?”

“
The next thing is she was douched. She was douched
real good
.”

Bannerman blinked.
“
You mean after she was
.
.
.”

“
Yeah. No semen. No blood samples. In fact, she was
scrubbed all over. Even under her nails
.”

Bannerman
’s
frown deepened.
“
Go on
.”

“
Here's the big one. Someone tried to revive her after
she was strangled. And they don't think it was the
strangler
.”

A long silence.
“
How would they know that
?”

“
Hand prints
,”
Lesko answered.
“
One size hand
choked her. A bigger hand used CPR. He left mark
s
on
her chest where he tried to pump it and on her cheek
where he held it like for mouth to mouth. They also think
he closed her eyes because they should have been open
like all the others. And that ear-to-ear smile was cut long
after she was dead
,”

Bannerman rubbed his eyes, taking a moment to absorb
all this. Lesko was patient.

“
There's more
,”
Lesko cleared his throat,
“
but it's all
theory
.”
Bannerman heard the sound of a page being
turned.

“
Go ahead. Please
.”

“
First, about the smile
.
.
.”
Lesko took a breath.
“
The
medical examiner thinks whoever cut it wasn't enjoying
himself. He used words like
hesitant, uneven.
In other
words, he made a mess of it. The six others showed
more practice
.”

Banne
rm
an tried to blink away the image that his mind
seemed to insist on showing him.
“
Is that it
?”
he asked.

“
Just about
.”
Another sound, a new page being turned.
“
For what this is worth
,”
he said,
“
the first victim also
went to USC and she lived maybe a half mile from Lisa.
Kaplan says, or the FBI says, that the first victim of a
serial killer is usually fairly close to where he lives or
works. The guy couldn't help himself. A sudden impulse.
But after that, he tries to spread it around more. Kaplan says it's unusual to hit his own neighborhood a second
time
.”

“
And, apparently, he didn't
.”

“
Looks that way
.”

“
Who do you think did? I mean, if you were investigat
ing Lisa's death, where would you start looking
?”

Lesko hesitated.
“
The kid was straight, right? She
wasn't anything like Ca
rl
a
.”

“
Not at all
.”

“
Then I'd look at boyfriends. Neighbors. Most murder
victims knew their killer. This sounds like one guy did it
and someone else tried to cover it up but he also tried to
help her. Me, I'd look for that second guy to crack sooner
or later
.”
A thoughtful pause.
“
Let the LA cops handle
this, Bannerman
.”

“
Just asking
.”

“
You going out there
?”

“
I'll fly out for the service. Actually, most of our peo
ple want to go. I said I'd think about it
.”

“
You know who's already out there? Your KGB pal from Bern
.”

“
Leo Belk
i
n
?”
Bannerman blinked.
“
What's he doing
in California
?”

“
He's with this group from Mosfilm. They're like Russia's Hollywood. The story is they're studying special ef
fects.
Belkin's
probably along to keep them from going
over the hill
.”

Banne
r
man doubted it. That's a goon's job.
“
Do you
know where he's staying
?”

Lesko
ri
ffed through several pages.
“
Century Plaza
,”
he answered.
“
Anyway, if you do go, leave Susan home,
okay
?”

“
Um
.
.
.
actually, she's one of those who asked
.”

“
Bannerman

He winced, bracing himself. But a click on the line
interrupted a likely review of Bannerman
’
s unhappy travel
history with his daughter.
“
Hold it
,”
Lesko growled.
“
This might be Elena
.”

Bannerman drummed his fingers. Then he began count
ing on them. There was Billy Mc
H
ugh and Janet Herzog.
They wanted to go. Anton Zivic felt that he, at the very
least, should represent the rest. Five or six more felt badly
about having given Ca
rl
a a wide berth and didn't want to
add insult to injury.

That was probably too many. On the other hand, it was hard to argue that Westpo
r
t would be left poorly defended.
Their numbers had more than doubled right after Ma
r
bella
and other old friends kept turning up every few months
as word got around Europe that they would be safe here.
The State Department had not interfered. Barton Fuller
was keeping his distance, save for an occasional peace
feeler. The CIA, surely at Fuller's urging, had not pressed
its claim for the return of the money and property he and
his people had seized. But the detente would not last for
ever. The other shoe would eventually drop.

Bannerman glanced at his watch. He'd been on hold
for three minutes. Lesko, he imagined, would be talking
to Elena, telling her about the latest impe
ri
lment of his
daughter and threatening to break his legs if he
...

“
Guess what
?”
Lesko clicked back on.
“
That wasn't
Elena. It was
Ir
win again
.”

The voice sounded oddly pleasant. Almost gleeful.

“
How long did you say
Carla's
been in California
?”

Ba
nn
e
rm
a
n
closed one eye.
“
She got in late last night.
Why
?”

“
So that's what? Maybe four hours, not counting sleep
?”

“
Lesko. What has she done
?”

“
How does decking two FBI guys sound? How about
if one of them was Jack Scholl, the agent in charge? How
about if she also went at him with a kitchen knife
?”

Bannerman felt a headache coming on.
“
Was she ar
rested
?”
he asked.

“
Andy Huff was there. He squared it. But that was
because he thought Scholl was a schmuck and Ca
rl
a was
just some poor bereaved sister
.”

“
But now he knows better
.”

“
What he knows is that he now has two professional
assassins prowling his tow
n
looking for a
.
.
.”

“
Intelligence operatives
,”
Bannerman said quietly.

“
What
?”

“
Operatives. Not assassins
.”
■

“
Hey! This is me, remember? I could count seven bod
ies from the first month I knew them
.”

And two more of your own,
Bannerman thought, but he
chose not to argue. He took a breath.
“
I
'
d better get out
there
,”
he said.

“
But no Susan, right? Now especially
.”

“
I'll talk to her
.”

“
You don't talk to her. You tell her. Where is she
now
?”

“
Down at Mario's. Waiting for me
.”

“
Give me the damned number. I'll tell her myself
.”

Good luck,
thought Bannerman.

He broke the connection, then punched out the number
of the Beverly Hills Hotel. No answer in the bungalow.
He left a message.

He started for the door, then hesitated. He returned to
his desk and reached for a copy of the hotel guide on
the shelf behind it. He found the number
of the Ce
n
t
u
ry
Plaza Hotel.

₁₅

A massive young man in a T-shirt and shorts, clearly a
weight lifter, answered the door when Molly Fa
rr
ell rang.
H
e
stood, blocking it, his expression uninviting, as she
asked for DiDi Fene
r
ty.

She's not seeing anyone, he said. Not today. He began
to close the door when he reacted to a touch behind him.
A young woman appeared, easing him slightly to one side.
Her eyes, swollen, haunted, passed quickly over Molly and
settled on the smaller of the two visitors.

“
You're Ca
rl
a
,”
she said. The eyes became moist
again.