Jonathan Kellerman - Evidence

“Help your own, buy some international goodwill in the process, keep the savages from your door,” he said. “So what’s Prince Teddy doing with himself nowadays?”

“Since he returned, he’s completely off the radar.”

“Anything come up about why the Borodi property hasn’t been sold?”

“Maybe the sultan hasn’t gotten around to it.”

“Twelve bil,” he said, “what’s twenty million, give or take?” He swung his feet off the desk. “Interesting, Alex. Thanks, appreciated. The question is…”

“Does it relate to the murders.”

A knock on the doorjamb made us both turn.

Moe Reed said, “I might’ve found something on DSD.”

Milo said, “Dar Salaam Daoud.”

Reed’s eyes got big. “So you know about the murder.”

“What murder?”

“The guy who owned the property on Borodi.” Flipping pages of his pad. “Tariq Asman allegedly killed someone. If my source is credible.”

Milo eyed the young detective. “I’d invite you in, but you’ve been pumping too much iron and those biceps won’t fit.”

The three of us moved to an empty interview room still reeking of intimidation. Milo made sure the taping system was off, shoved the table into the center, drew curtains across the mirror.

“Let’s hear it, Moses.”

Reed said, “I called embassies in D.C., got nowhere until I reached the Israeli embassy and some guy barks, ‘DSD? That’s not Arab, it’s Sranil.’ When I asked what Sranil was, he hung up. So I went online, learned about Sranil. Including the fact that the Indonesians don’t like it, worry it could be used one day as a base for insurgents. So I figured maybe I could take advantage of that and went over to the Indonesian consulate. It’s a suite in an office building in Mid-Wilshire, you’d never know from the outside. The front office was full of cute girls, friendly, smiling, all of them shined me on, claimed they’d never heard of Sranil. So I leave and when I get to my car, one of the girls runs out and says, ‘I’ll tell you about that place but don’t come back.’ Real nervous and she’s taken off her I.D. badge. Anyway, she made it clear she doesn’t like the Sranil tribe, they were barbaric heathens before they became Muslims, the sultan pretends to be some righteous religious dude, meanwhile he’s covering up for his brother Tariq, who’s a major lowlife. She says that’s what you’re here about, right? Which takes me by surprise but I say sure. That’s when she gets into it, telling me how there’s a rumor Tariq killed some foreign party girl in L.A., it got covered up, he split. I tried to get details out of her but she said she had no firsthand knowledge, it’s just what she heard.”

“Heard where?”

“Around,” said Reed. “That’s all she’d say.”

“And she doesn’t like Sranil.”

“So she could be badmouthing them, sure. I couldn’t find anything on the Web about any murder.”

“Foreign girl as in non-Asian?” said Milo.

“As in European, she thought Swedish, but couldn’t pinpoint. Think it means anything, Loo?”

Milo filled him in on my research.

“Interesting,” said Reed. “But I’m not seeing any obvious link to the Borodi murders.”

“Me neither, Moses, but the fact that our female vic was snooping in Masterson’s files and Masterson’s in cahoots with the Sranilese government is a start. Let’s try to find out if the rumor about Prince Tariq has any substance. Look at unsolveds during the period he lived in L.A. Spread a wide net but focus on foreign female vics.”

I said, “Our female victim was a good-looking woman. She could’ve been a party girl, too.”

“Friend of the victim,” said Reed. “Maybe she’s foreign, herself, and that’s why she faked her identity-some sort of immigration issue.”

Milo said, “Cheap clothes says maybe the party was over, maybe she was aiming for a big score. The Borodi site definitely interested her. In addition to going there with Backer, she was spotted hanging around by herself.”

“What if the site was a previous crime scene, Loo? Tariq brought a girl up there and something went wrong-could’ve even been an accident, she falls down the stairs, or out of a window hole. Or he really is a scumbag. Either way, he’s gone but Brigid knows what happened, decides to profit.”

“If she knew where it happened, why bother to snoop in the files?”

“Okay, maybe she knew about the place in general, but needed details,” said Reed. “Or she was searching for other real estate Tariq owned, thinking he might be back and she could get to him.”

I said, “Blackmail could be involved but there could also be a personal component. Avenging a friend. That would explain her bringing Backer up there to have sex.”

Milo said, “Screw you, Tariq. So to speak. But they got spotted. Twelve bil would make it easy to hire a high-grade hit man. Sultan’s already rescued Baby Bro from one murder, what’s a couple more ten thousand miles away?”

Reed said, “Plus, he’s a dictator, used to having his way.”

I said, “A dictator who opens his palace to the peasants because he knows he’s on shaky sand. A fuss about Teddy murdering a girl and getting away with it could shift the sands uncomfortably.”

Milo got up, paced. “It’s a great story and I hope to hell it’s wrong because how could we ever get to someone like that? There’s also the same big question: If Borodi was a crime scene, why hasn’t the sultan unloaded it? And why have a lame, unarmed wimp guard it part-time?”

Reed said, “What if the body’s buried there?”

“All the more so, Moses. Dig it up, dump it, move on. Why hold on to the place?”

Reed had no answer for that and neither did I.

I pulled out my cell phone. Seconds later, I was hanging up from a frosty chat with Elena Kotsos. “She’s certain Brigid wasn’t European. ‘Pure American.’ Which she clearly considers an insult.”

Milo sat back down. “Moses, stretch that net to the entire state. And thanks for coming up with this. You done good.”

“It’s my job, Loo.”

“Hey, kid, remember what I always tell you.”

“Take all of the credit, none of the blame.”

“Better than Prozac, lad. Now be off.”

Milo ran image searches for the sultan and Prince Tariq. Two smallish men who resembled each other, with boyish faces, cleft chins, thin, precise mustaches. Full regalia, both of them smiling. Determination in the sultan’s eyes. Despite the show of perfect white teeth, discomfort in his brother’s.

Milo printed, kept surfing. female Scandinavian murder victim u.s .

A young woman from Goteborg missing three years seemed promising. Inge Samuelsson had worked as a bar hostess in various European and Asian cities, tried Las Vegas, vanished. But the final citation was happy news: She’d shown up in New Zealand, living on a commune, tending sheep.

“Lucky her,” said Milo. “South Pacific, plus all that lanolin.”

The phone rang. Sean Binchy said, “Hey, Loot, finally got employment records out of Beaudry. They really stonewalled until I threatened to go to the press, call them Constructiongate.”

“Creative, Sean.”

“I was actually joking, but they bit. A couple of suits went into an office and they must’ve called a lawyer because they came out announcing the gag agreement didn’t apply to subcontractors, they’d give me names when they found them but it would take a while, there was no central list. I said you guys do government projects, I’ve got friends at INS, they’re pretty interested in illegals working construction. And they went back to check again and said, ‘Guess what, we do have a list.’ Problem is, they keep all their old records in Costa Mesa. I’m heading there right now, but with traffic, it’s going to be a while.”