Jan Burke - Nine

And even Kit’s protection could go only so far.

The news that someone was killing off the FBI’s ten most wanted had scared him. Now, thinking about it, he couldn’t see that it was any different than worrying about a shoot-out with police or fearing that his former partner in crime would catch up with him. Maybe these vigilante guys, whoever they were, were heroes.

Meghan would be worried, though. He wondered if he should call her. He hoped she would call Kit-he knew she often talked to him about her wayward brother.

But none, I think, do there embrace.

The line kept running through his head.

Los Angeles, California

Monday, May 19, 7:20 P.M.

Alex felt the drag brought on by a lack of sleep, the urge to call it a day, but decided not to delay talking to Ty Serault’s former employees. Other than looking for matches to the climbing rope, and the work Ciara was doing on Catalina, they had too little to go on to ignore this possible link.

He tried calling the former Crimesolvers USA employees. Dwight Neuly was in and willing to talk to him if he could make it soon-at eight-thirty, Neuly needed to meet with the editor of the student film he had directed. Alex looked at Eric Grady’s address. It was closer, but Neuly was available now, so he made the drive to USC, where Neuly had agreed to meet him. He called ahead to the campus police, and after meeting with them briefly, parked off Jefferson, near the halls that Star Wars built.

Neuly was as cooperative as any student at the end of a term was likely to be. After talking to him, Alex was fairly sure he had no connection to the murders. He would check further into his financial health, but to all appearances, he was not in need of money. Neuly claimed that he had spent the last week trying to finish a project for a film class. He had pulled out a Palm PDA and beamed the names and phone numbers of five members of his postproduction crew to Alex’s own Palm-telling him that any time they couldn’t vouch for, his roommate could.

When he got back to his car, Alex called in and checked his messages. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times wanted to know if he would verify that anticoagulants were injected into the three victims discussed at the press conference today. Alex swore. On top of everything else, they’d have to figure out who was leaking information to the press.

He looked through the files again, resisting the idea of driving back to the Santa Monica area, where Eric Grady lived. He studied Grady’s employee ID photo. Grady had mugged for it-Nola had said he was a clown, and apparently he took the role on from the beginning. Most of the other employees had posed with serious expressions bordering on grim, but Grady’s face was close to the lens and grinning.

He called the phone number in the file and learned that the number was no longer in service. He started to thumb back through the file to see if another contact was listed on Grady’s application. He paused as he came to the copy of Grady’s driver’s license photo, attached to his Immigration and Naturalization Service I-9 form, which required proof of citizenship.

The man in the photo on the license was not Grady.

Or, more probably, the man on the employee ID badge wasn’t.

There was some resemblance-thin faces, dark hair cut in an identical style, dark eyes-but Alex immediately noticed that even in the employee photo, taken at its odd angle, the differences were readily apparent-the jaw-line, the shape of the earlobes, the noses.

He cussed himself out for wasting time talking to Neuly, then ran a DMV check on the driver’s license for Grady.

The answer came back quickly. Eric Grady was deceased.

He asked for a date of death.

“Last year. July fifth. That’s a presumed DOD.”

He looked at the application. “Eric Grady” had applied for a job two days after he was dead. The employee who used his name and driver’s license had been hired by Ty Serault on July 7.

He called the homicide bureau and got one of the detectives on duty to run a computer check for him, to look up all the information available on Grady’s death.

The call came back within minutes. “He was a John Doe for over half a year. One of our cases-in fact, you should talk to Ciara. It was hers.”

“I will. Tell me what you have, though.”

“He was twenty-two, hadn’t been seen since a Fourth of July party last year in Malibu. At first, no one missed him. His body was found in Carbon Canyon in February of this year. Didn’t identify him immediately, but Ciara brought a forensic anthropologist in on it. Got the age and sex, and from there, Ciara put it all together. Theory was that he wandered off drunk from the party sometime after midnight on July fifth-he was found not all that far from the party house-stumbled in the dark and fell to his death.”

He thanked the detective and hung up. For a few moments, he sat in the car, resting his forehead on his fists on the steering wheel. Angry at himself for not seeing the differences in the photos earlier, Alex also wondered what kind of background checks Serault was doing.

So the phony Eric Grady was in a position to take calls-or hear of other calls-from people who thought they were seeing FBI fugitives in various parts of the country. He had joined the Crimesolvers USA staff just after the real Eric Grady died, used his ID and probably his references to get the job. He left the staff not long after the body was found, perhaps fearing publicity about the case would expose him.

But the identification of John Does didn’t make the news as often as the public supposed. For that matter, murders didn’t always get attention from the media. Alex just happened to be working on three cases that had the full attention of the country at the moment.

He looked at the goofy photo of the young man on the ID badge. The clown. Some clown. He’d sure as shit brought the circus into L.A. County.

Alex got back on the freeway, heading toward the last known address for the phony Eric Grady. He tried calling Ciara but only got her cell phone’s voice mail. She might be on her way back from Catalina, out of cell phone range. He left a message for her.

He called Serault Productions and asked for Nola Phillips.

“Nola? I’m hoping you can help me out here. Who takes the photos for the employee ID badges? Is that done there at the studio, or off-site?”

“We do it here. One of my jobs. I take the photos and then laminate them onto a badge.”

“Do you keep the negatives?”

“I take them with a digital camera, but yes, I keep the files. Why?”

“Eric Grady. His photo was a little-”

“Dumb? Yeah, I thought so, too. But that’s the one he wanted on his badge.”

“Do you have any others of him?”

“I’ll look.”

“He worked for you for eight or nine months and left about two months ago, right?”

“Yes, I think so. It’s in the files we made for you.”

“Anyone else worked at his desk since he left?”

“No, I don’t think so. We haven’t filled that position yet. Ty wanted to wait until summer. We start taping new segments in August, so we hire in June and July.”

“How late will you be there tonight?”

“Until eleven or so.”

“Mind if I come by again?”

“Not at all.”

“I’ve got another stop to make, but I have a feeling it won’t take long. I’ll call when I’m on my way from there.”

Eric Grady’s “apartment” turned out to be a rented private mailbox. The store in which it was rented was closed for the night. Alex turned around without getting out of the car and called Nola to say he was ten minutes away.

Ciara called back before he reached the studio. She hadn’t had any luck on Catalina, but she was bringing several boxes of papers back to the office, to continue following up on the next day. He told her what he had learned about the Crimesolvers employee.