Bailey nodded.
“So just to play it all the way out,” I said, “Averly drops the car at the airport, then hops a plane to New York-”
“Where he buys the ticket to Paris in Brian’s name to throw us off-”
“Using Hayley’s iPad, right. And then, when the iPad got stolen, he had to get out of Dodge. Fortunately, I made my brilliant move of calling Averly-”
“Let it go, Sherlock.” Bailey tapped the desk. “So who bought those first two tickets to New York? Brian? Or Averly, using Brian’s credit card?”
“My bet would be Brian. He and Hayley were about to come into a million bucks. May as well live it up.” They’d deal with Russell’s wrath later. “We’ll need to get into Powers’s and Averly’s backgrounds, build up the history between them. Show they had a connection before the kidnapping.”
“Already did the background checks. Averly’s you know about. Ian Powers had no time to get busted. Daddy was a drunk, and by the time he was eight, he was a child star who was supporting his whole family.”
“Great. Now we’re prosecuting a charity sponsor, child star, and a kid who pulled the freight for the family. Anything else? Maybe he flies in care packages to the starving in Nigeria?”
“Don’t think he has a pilot’s license, but I’ll look into it,” Bailey said. “As for his connection to Averly, I’ll go back into Averly’s phone bill and check out the pattern of calls between them. They had to have known each other for a while for Ian to feel safe enough to pull Averly in-even if he didn’t let Averly in on the plan to kill Brian.” Bailey pulled Jack Averly’s rap sheet out of her file folder and laid it on my desk. “Here’s your copy. I highlighted the drug busts in yellow. So far, I’m still on board with our theory that he was Ian’s dealer.”
“We should interview everyone at the studio. See if we can find anyone who’ll say Averly was dealing.”
“You really think anyone’ll talk to us now?”
I shook my head. “But we have to try.” I turned back to my computer and started to type. “So two counts of murder for each of them, plus use of the knife, arming with a deadly weapon. And it’s a special circumstance of multiple murder, so it’s a mandatory sentence of life without parole.” I hit “Print” and the pages began to roll out.
“Meant to tell you. Just before I left the station I got word that Averly’s on a plane. Should be landing late tonight.”
“Great. I’ll get this paperwork downstairs. With a little luck, we’ll get these guys arraigned tomorrow morning.” I stood up to go.
But at that moment someone knocked on my door. I opened it to find a slender young man in a black Hugo Boss suit and silk tie flashing me a thousand-watt smile. His dark brown eyes with thick, curly lashes, rosy cheeks, and fine features gave him an almost delicate handsomeness. “Rachel Knight?”
“Yeah, can I help you with something?”
He put out his hand. “I’m Declan Shackner, your second chair.”
45
We learn the maxim at an early age that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover-and then we proceed to ignore it every single day. I took in Declan’s three-hundred-dollar haircut and his five-thousand-dollar suit and immediately sized him up as a rich, spoiled Hollywood brat who had only to point and his doting daddy would spare no expense or power play to get it. Unfair as hell, no question. But there it is. I’d decided that since he was brought on to be Vanderhorn’s spy/bun boy, I’d use it to my advantage and assign him the duty of making the daily reports. The knowledge that I’d already found a way to avoid the noxious chore brought a genuine smile to my face.
“Nice to meet you, Declan.” We shook hands, and I introduced him to Bailey, whose expression told me she’d had the same reaction to our new teammate that I had.
“It’s good you’re here. I do have something for you to do.” I explained that he’d be reporting to Vanderhorn for me and that he could start by telling the district attorney that I was filing two counts of murder.
“That’s it?”
“For now. Meet me back here in half an hour and I’ll give you the rundown on the case.” By that time, with charges filed, the story was going to start hitting the news anyway.
Declan flashed me another perfect smile with an “Okay, great!” and left to perform his first assignment.
“So who is that kid?” Bailey asked.
I gave her the scoop.
Bailey gave a short laugh. “Well, nice move making Vanderhorn’s spy do the duty.”
It was a minor victory, but I take them where I can get them.
Bailey and I went down to do the filing and get an arrest warrant, and when we got back, she put in the call to Ian’s lawyer, Don Wagmeister. She told him what I’d filed and offered to let him surrender Ian at the Men’s Central Jail, but only if he promised to produce his client within the hour. She ended the call saying, “At an hour and one minute, I’m going to assume you’ve declined this offer and I’ll arrest him wherever I find him.”
She gathered her papers into the file and stood up. “I’d better get over there.”
I was very glad to let her handle the booking herself. I hated the jail on Bauchet Street. Truthfully, I hate them all. But that one in particular is the very embodiment of institutionalized despair. “We should probably notify Antonovich and Raynie,” I said.
“You might want to wait for me and do it together. I think it’s gonna be a bitch.”
I figured Russell and Ian were buddies, but I didn’t know how tight. “You have some new info?”
“A little. I called that head of security guy, Ned, to find out if Averly ever worked at Warner’s. Just trying to see how far back Averly and Powers might go.”
“And this told you about Russell and Ian…how?”
“Ned said he’d have to check the records, but we got to talking about the fight between Tommy and Russell over the script again, and he said it was kind of unusual that Russell had even had a manager. He was just a co-producer at the time, and that’s too low on the totem pole to justify a manager as hot as Ian was-even back then.”
“So Ian was already on the rise as a manager?” I asked. “For some reason I’d thought Ian Powers was kind of a nobody back then. You know, ‘has-been’ child star struggling to make a comeback on the money side of things.”
“Apparently not-”
“Then Tommy’s screenplay was what got Russell through Ian’s door?”
“All Ned knew was that after the screenplay sold, Ian sprang for a group vacation with the wives in Tortola.”
I looked at her quizzically. How could Ned know that?
“Russell kept a photograph of the four of them all sunburned and drunk hanging in his office.”
“Classy,” I said. And after Russell’s screenplay made them both rich and huge, they had all the necessary ingredients for a long-lasting friendship.
Bailey nodded. “Russell’s likely to take this harder than you’d expect.”
“All the more reason why we’ve got to move. We can’t let him hear about it on the five o’clock news.”
Bailey tapped her file folder against her thigh. “If you decide you want me to come, just call me, okay?”
After Bailey’d left, I looked at the clock on the Times Building. Declan had been gone for over an hour. An inauspicious beginning, I thought. Just because daddy got you into the office doesn’t mean you can fiddly-fart around. I started working on my “to do” list, while I mulled over the problem of whether to wait for Bailey or not. I heard fast, light steps coming down the hallway toward my office and looked up just as Declan arrived at my door.
“I’m sorry, Rachel. He made me wait, and then he wanted to talk.”
“About the case?”
“A little. But more about how he wanted everyone to know that we’d be taking it one step at a time and that if it was starting to look like we had the wrong guy, we’d dismiss on Ian immediately.”