Jonathan Kellerman - Guilt

He produced a form of his own: Prema’s consent to search the entire property. She scrawled her name without reading.

“Okay?” she said, drumming granite.

“You’re sure he’s over there.”

“He drove in late, like one thirty in the morning, hasn’t left since. I saw it right there.” Pointing to the bank of screens.

“It records twenty-four-seven?”

“It sure does. Everything feeds into a computer and before you got here, I scrolled through. He has not left.”

“Does Detective Burns have the hard drive for that computer?”

Prema’s perfect mouth formed an O. “Sorry, forgot to tell him about it. But all it does is record feed from the security system and most of that’s blank.”

“Where’s the computer?”

She slid open a drawer beneath the screens, pulled out a small laptop.

“How far back do you keep recordings?”

“Hmm. I really don’t know.”

Burns’s grumpiness turned to outright hostility. “I told you to give me everything. You didn’t think to mention this?”

Prema said, “I-it slipped my mind.”

He began pushing buttons, muttered, “ ’Nother piece of crap.”

Prema looked to me for support. I gave her a who-knows? smile. She returned to her tea as Burns fiddled with the laptop.

“What date do you want, Lieutenant?”

Milo told him.

“Hmmph. Here you go.”

Nothing the night of the murders until one thirty-three a.m., when a vehicle passed through Donny Rader’s gate.

Big, dark SUV.

“No front plate,” said Burns. “Tough luck for you, Lieutenant, the camera angle could pick it up.”

From across the kitchen, Prema said, “That’s got to be his. He’s piled up a bunch of tickets for not putting on a front plate.”

Burns mumbled, “Ooh, major scofflaw.”

Blocking Prema’s view with his own bulk, Milo placed his hand on Burns’s shoulder. Burns looked up at Milo. Milo’s wolf-grin lowered his head. A naughty child finally disciplined.

Milo pulled out the pages he’d received from DMV: regs on Donny Rader’s sixteen vehicles. Four Ferraris, three Porsches, a Lamborghini, a Maserati, a Stryker, a pair of Mercedeses, an Aston Martin Rapide, a vintage Jaguar E-type.

Two SUVs, both black: a Range Rover and Ford Explorer. “Go back, let’s see if we can figure out which it is.”

Three rewinds later, the bet was on the Explorer.

Milo said, “Now go forward.”

“Sure, Lieutenant.”

We didn’t need to wait long.

Forty-nine seconds after the first SUV had exited, an identical set of wheels rolled through Rader’s gate.

Front plates on this one. Milo said, “Freeze that,” and checked the tags against his notes. “Yup, Wedd’s.”

Prema said, “Mel was there?”

“Any reason he would be?”

She shook her head. Rested her chin in her hand and stared at nothing.

Milo said, “Why don’t you relax somewhere, Ms. Moon.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got nowhere to go.”

Low, morose tone. Burns looked at her as if for the first time. Bland curiosity, no sympathy.

Milo prodded Burns’s shoulder with a fingertip. “Keep going.”

Twenty-nine seconds after Wedd’s exit, a third vehicle, smaller, shaped like a car, zipped through Prema’s gate.

Pinpointing the make and registration was easy: brand-new Hyundai Accent, Banner Rental. It took several calls but Milo finally reached a supervisor at the company’s corporate headquarters in Lodi and obtained the details.

Adriana Betts had rented the car three days prior from the Banner office on Santa Monica Boulevard in West L.A. Taking advantage of special weeklong rates.

Poor deluded woman playing amateur detective.

Milo took the laptop from Burns, fast-forwarded through another ten minutes. Twenty. Nothing. He handed the machine back to Burns, said, “Let’s go.”

Prema said, “It’s happening?”

“In a bit, Ms. Moon.”

“Why the delay?”

“We’re organizing, ma’am. Now I suggest you go and find a place where you can-”

“Just as long as you do it before the tribe returns. I can’t have them exposed to bad things.”

I thought: If it were only that simple .

We headed for Prema’s acre of parking lot. Burns said, “Fresh air. Finally.”

I said, “You don’t like actors.”

“Don’t try to shrink me, Doc.”

Milo said, “It’s a reasonable question, Morry. Whatever your bullshit is, it came close to obstructing.”

Burns turned pale. “I-”

“It’s still a good question, Morry.”

“Whatever,” said Burns. He began to walk ahead of us, thought better of it, stopped, threw his hands up. “My sister was an actor. Did some crap off-Broadway, nothing serious. She killed herself five years ago. Completely ruined my parents’ lives.”

“Sorry,” I said. “The business was too much for her?”

“How would I know about the business?” said Burns. “She ruined their lives by killing herself because she was a narcissistic drama queen, always had been.”

Milo said, “Morry, stay in the van, see if you can do anything else with the machines.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll get nothing but I’ll try.”

As Burns loaded his equipment, Tyler O’Shea emerged with Sally. He rubbed Sally’s scruff. The dog looked rejuvenated.

Milo said, “We’re a go, Ty, let’s do it on foot. I’m gonna start with the soft approach, nothing SWAT-ty, because this joker’s no genius, he has drug issues and a closetful of guns, I’m hoping the element of surprise will be enough.”

“Plus he’s famous,” said O’Shea.

“What does that have to do with it?”

“More of a surprise, El Tee. Probably no one ever bugs him.”

“Famous,” said Milo. “If everything works out, that’ll change to infamous.”

The walk from Prema’s property to Rader’s took six minutes. Sally would’ve preferred to run it in two. Milo had the gate code, courtesy Prema Moon: 10001.

“Had to keep it simple, Lieutenant, because he can’t remember anything.”

He pushed the buttons, the gate cooperated, we continued along asphalt in need of resurfacing. Longer, steeper access than to Prema’s estate, an easy quarter mile with nothing visible other than greenery. At some points the trees grew so thick that the sky disappeared and day turned to imposed dusk.

O’Shea said, “Man likes his privacy.”

Milo lengthened his stride. O’Shea took that as the shut up it was meant to be.

As we kept climbing, Sally’s fur rippled in the breeze. Soft but acute eyes analyzed the world at hand. Her posture was erect, her trot rich with pride. Work-dog heaven.

Then she stopped.

O’Shea said, “Would you look at that.”

The road ended abruptly at a mesa filled with cars. Enough parking space for a dozen vehicles positioned properly but I counted seventeen sets of wheels stacked within inches of one another, some extending to the surrounding brown grass.

Donny Rader’s black Explorer was positioned nearest to the road, slightly apart from the automotive clog. Easy exit for the daily driver. Milo photographed the SUV from several angles, scribbled in his pad.

The other cars, exemplars of high-ticket Italian, German, and British coachwork, were caked with dust, splotched by bird-dirt, fuzzed by leaves. A few tilted on deflated tires.

Sixteen matches to the DMV list. The addition was a red convertible sandwiched in the center of the stack.

Milo squeezed his way over to the BMW, took more pictures, made more notes.

O’Shea said, “Can I ask why that one, El Tee?”

“Victim’s wheels.”

“He kept it? What an idiot.”