The Red Hot Fix (19 page)

“That’s her son, Pierce. No one would confuse him with ugly, would they?”

Play resumed and all attention returned to the floor. The collective moan in their suite was echoed by the crowd as Wilkerson sent LionEl into the game.

Mort watched the Wings’ reaction to losing their playmaker. “They’re leaning back.”

“And why not?” Larry asked. “LionEl doesn’t involve them.”

Mort shook his head. “Look at that.” He pointed toward a gang-up around LionEl. “He’s got two men wide open and LionEl’s not even looking.”

Twenty thousand fans watched LionEl refuse to adjust. He kept grabbing the ball, trying to force his way past a single-minded Laker defense.

“This is ugly.” Micki pulled another Dr Pepper from the fridge.

Mort used the binoculars to check out the owner’s suite. He wondered if Vogel was up to his old habit of calling orders down to his coach. But a scan of the suite showed no sign of Reinhart Vogel. Only his wife and her son. Both looked agitated. And with the Wings’ performance, Mort couldn’t blame them.

An eternity later the buzzer sounded the end of the first half and the Wings were down by eight. Nakita entered the suite carrying four large pizza boxes.

“A woman of sustenance as well as grace.” Larry hurried to help her with her burden. “Qualities so rarely found in tandem.”

Nakita smiled, checked the refrigerator and wine cabinet, and wished them all a pleasant half-time. Mort threw an arm over the shoulder of his old friend. “Relax, Larry. She’d only break your heart.”

“Perhaps.” Larry’s grin was Mississippi-wide. “But I’d mend.”

The second half played itself out as a carbon copy of the first. Barry Gardener was in for fewer than seven minutes, but when he was on the court, the Wings rallied. When they came close to catching the Lakers, Wilkerson switched and LionEl resumed his run-and-gun solo performance. By the third quarter the Lakers were up by twelve. Jimmy rummaged through some drawers and came up with a deck of cards. Halfway through the fourth quarter, Mort watched the game as his four suite mates played Texas Hold ’Em for toothpicks.

“Loser takes Bruiser for his nightly constitutional,” Jimmy announced. “And scoops the poop.”

The stands began to empty. Mort glanced up at the scoreboard. Less than two minutes left and the Wings were down by eighteen.

With less than ten seconds in regulation play, Mort’s cell rang. Then Jimmy’s. Then
Micki’s.

“When?” Jimmy barked.

“Who’s there now?” Micki asked.

“We’re on our way.” Mort clicked his phone closed and turned to Robbie. “You take the car home. I’ll ride with Jimmy.”

Robbie had been a cop’s son long enough to know when business called. “What’s going on?”

Mort looked at his two colleagues before answering.

“Reinhart Vogel,” Mort said. “Maid found him five minutes ago. Dead.”

“And all trussed up like a Christmas goose,” Jimmy added.

Lydia stood in the empty foyer of her house and shook the rain off her parka. Her footsteps echoed on hardwood through barren rooms. She’d wondered, on her two-hour drive from Langley, whether she would regret her decision to purge her home of all its furnishings. Standing in her vacant living room, looking across the expanse of lawn to Dana Passage, she knew she’d been right. She had enough money in offshore accounts, courtesy of her work as The Fixer, to last several lifetimes. She could remake her home into the sanctuary it once was.

But nest-building activities would have to wait. She’d come down from Whidbey for a specific purpose and wanted to be back on the island in time for an afternoon snack with Maizie.

Lydia double-checked the locks on the front door before keying the code allowing access to her lower level. She padded down carpeted stairs and crossed through her exercise room. Private Number hadn’t corrupted this part of the house. No one but Lydia had stepped foot on this floor since she purchased the home seven years ago. Every bit of construction, wiring, and installation she’d done on her own. What happened on this floor had nothing to do with her life as a clinical psychologist. This was the domain of The Fixer.

A solid metal door guarded her computer center. Lydia clicked on the overhead light of the cinder-block room and took a seat behind the console. Most electronics would suffer from a year of nonuse, but she’d consulted with designers and programmers from Berlin to Zurich and was confident the power her equipment had exhibited the last time she’d logged on would still be at her service. She thought of Oswald, the overweight, acne-scarred communications expert who had built her satellite routing system. He was nineteen and completing his Ph.D. at MIT when he devised a program to bounce her signal from one cell tower to another at random time intervals ranging from a half to three seconds using a jump system to choose towers around the globe. It would take more than two thousand years for the pattern to repeat. He had assured her that calculation was based on current infrastructure. With the monthly addition of new towers and his program’s ability to capture them the moment they came online, Lydia could be certain any message she sent from this center was untraceable. Oswald hadn’t cared why Lydia needed the system. The teenager’s only demand had been that the ten thousand dollars he wanted for his services be paid in cash. Now Lydia pressed a button and a request for her log-on information appeared before she could blink.

Maizie had run like a frightened puppy when Lydia suggested they take pictures. She needed to learn more about the “camera games” the tiny girl had described between gulps for
breath and wailing sobs.

Dunfield proved to be more sophisticated than Lydia would have guessed of the typical junkyard dealer. He’d nested his encrypted wares deep within cyberspace. She fed in everything she knew about Dunfield and allowed the program to scan millions of likely sites. In less than five minutes she had him. Special access codes, available by paid subscription, were necessary to gain links to his photos. Lydia whispered thanks to her European designers for a system that could blast through any firewall.

Dunfield’s first level of service offered little more than the average pedophile could find in Sunday morning advertising flyers. Users could select boys or girls and find photos of kids running around in bathing suits and underwear. Lydia’s stomach churned at the notion that pictures of smiling children, some just weeks old, were being used to fuel some abuser’s erotic fantasy. She scanned the faces. Though she couldn’t be certain of the infants, none of the subjects on this level appeared to be Maizie.

For a few dollars more, Dunfield’s customers gained access to photos of nude children. Some looked to be reprints of alleged “art” photos. Most looked like innocent family shots of kids in a bathtub or running around a yard sprinkler. The grainy nature of some suggested they were taken with a long-range lens. Lydia was sickened at what she saw. Still, a part of her was relieved she still hadn’t come across any pictures of Maizie.

Maybe he’s keeping them all to himself, for his own stimulation
. Lydia’s jaw tightened. Disgust and shame from her own childhood torture boiled as she realized what that could mean as Maizie got a bit older.

She hacked into the third level. Her fists clenched at what a year’s subscription service of $49.99 a month would deliver. Lydia saw her sweet library buddy. The scenes ranged from innocent to anatomically graphic. The one common thread throughout the scores of photos was the sheer terror in Maizie’s eyes.

A window attached to Level 3 teased an offering so spectacular the subscriber would need to pay fifty dollars just to see the advertisement. Lydia entered two commands and bypassed the PayPal submission. Her blood turned to ice when the enticement danced across the screen. Her temples throbbed a homicidal rhythm as Dunfield urged an early response due to his expected deluge of interest.

Lydia was certain he was correct.

She was equally certain she’d get there first.

She logged out of Dunfield’s site, shut down her computer, and double-checked the locks on her communication center.

She stepped to an adjacent door and keyed another code to gain entry to a small reading room with bookshelf-lined walls. One overstuffed chair sat next to a small table holding a lamp
and notepad. Lydia pulled out a volume of
To Kill a Mockingbird
from a lower shelf, pressed the dark red button concealed behind it, and stood back as the shelf swung on hidden hinges, exposing her armory. She bypassed assault rifles, sawed-off shotguns, and infrared scopes to choose two handguns and several cans of Mace. She pulled open a drawer and ran her eyes over the selection of knives arrayed against black foam fittings. A triple-sided gutting knife she’d picked up on an assignment in Hong Kong grabbed her attention. She tossed the knife, guns, and Mace into a small canvas bag. She tossed in two boxes of ammunition and zipped it closed before taking a final look at the clock. Twelve fifteen.

Plenty of time to get back to Whidbey in time for cookies and cocoa with Maizie.

Mort stood over the body and contemplated the great equalizer of death. Yesterday Mort’s pay grade wouldn’t have gotten him any closer to Reinhart Vogel than he’d been to the big man’s wife a half hour earlier. Separated by an arena, twenty thousand people, and a dozen security guards. Now Vogel was lying dead at Mort’s feet. His battered bald head less than an inch from the tip of Mort’s resoled wingtip. Cold eyes staring into nothing. Yielding no clues to whose face was the last he’d seen.

Yes, sir
, Mort thought.
Yesterday you would have passed me on the street without a second glance. And I’m the guy who’s gonna figure out who killed you
.

A uniformed patrolman stepped in front of Mort to unroll the body bag. “Trixie’s moving uptown, eh, Chief?”

“And she’s getting antsy.” This from the officer who took the maid’s statement. Thin hair and thick waistline. “Just one day since her last kill.”

Mort and Jimmy exchanged looks.

“I’ll take the gist of the maid’s statement,” Mort said. “Save your opinions.”

Thick and Thin looked around to see if anyone else had caught the putdown. He flipped his pad open and read off the facts. “Says she’s been on the payroll just over a year. Comes three times a week to tidy up and do laundry. She figured since the lady moved out and with the Wings playing at home, the joint would be vacant. Figures it’s a good time to do her thing.”

Mort scanned the living room. Six officers. A dead man sprawled on the floor. Still enough room for a neighborhood beer party. “Tell me more about the lady who moved out.”

“One of Vogel’s chippies is my guess. I mean, look at this place. Everybody knows Vogel and the missus got a palace on Mercer. That’s a half-hour ferry ride at most. What’s a guy with a mansion that close need with a pad downtown? If this ain’t a love nest, I’ll eat my hat.”

Mort looked at the officer’s strained belt and had no doubt that given sufficient ranch dip, the man could follow through on his wager. “We have a name on the newly departed woman?”

“Maid didn’t know. Just that she could tell it was the same woman from the laundry and the food in the fridge. All organic crap. Maid gets word she needs to come by and pick up a new key. Comes up, boom. No ladies’ clothes. No tofu shit in the fridge.”

Mort bit his lower lip. “So the maid comes up …”

“Security desk says she signed in at 9:32. She came straight to the penthouse.” He read from his notes. “She headed to the kitchen and put her cleaning supplies on the counter. Came in
here to put on some music to entertain her while she cleans. Rounds the sofa, finds him laying here all bloody and dead, and runs out of here screaming something in Spanish so loud it brought everybody running. They take one look and punch 911.”

Mort watched the coroner’s crew zip Vogel into his bag and heft the corpse onto the gurney. His attention stayed with them as they rolled the self-made mogul away. Then he nodded to Thick and Thin. “I want your full report on my desk by sunup. Facts only.”

The officer mumbled his assurances and left. Two members of Micki’s forensic team finished dusting the living room, and she sent them to join the squad in the kitchen. “I want everything,” she reminded them. “If there’s a mouse in this place, I want a sample of its hair and droppings.”

Micki showed Mort a pair of cuff links tagged and bagged for evidence. “Wings logo accented in diamonds.” She tossed them onto the evidence trolley. “Probably getting ready for the game when he was hit.”

“Not that he missed anything,” Jimmy grumbled.

Micki, Jimmy, and Mort stood alone in the luxurious room.

“Who’s gonna say it first?” Jimmy finally asked.

“This isn’t Trixie.” Micki stood with her hands on her hips.

“Press is going to be all over this.” Mort rubbed a hand through his hair. “The chief’s gonna go ballistic.”

“She’s right, Mort. Sure, he’s tied up.” Jimmy ticked off on his fingers. “But A: Reinhart’s head is smashed like a melon. Trixie strangles her vics. B: Look at this crib, Mort. This is as far from Trixie’s by-the-hour motels as I am from the king of Spain. And let’s not even pretend a guy like Vogel is going after some dockside prostitute. If Vogel wants hired help, he’s calling Esme. And finally, C: Trixie leaves a bright red smooch on the vic’s forehead. Same spot every time. Like she’s sending a message. Vogel’s head was clean. What’s different in this case is precisely what we’ve kept from the press.”

“And I’m supposed to find comfort in that?” Mort had lived with Trixie’s handiwork for nearly four months. He knew her M.O. like he knew his name. This wasn’t Trixie.

But it was a lucky break.

“Listen.” Mort glanced to assure himself the forensic team was out of earshot. “This stays with us. I want everyone else—the press, the uniforms, the public—to assume Trixie struck again.”

Jimmy took a step back. “You gone crazy, Mort? Chief thinks we let Trixie get another one—especially one the size of Reinhart Vogel—and he’ll eat our oysters for breakfast. We’ve got to tell him this is a mimic.”