"There goes the obvious motive." Bear ejected the disk. "I don't think Chase was worried about news of Tess leaking to his fiancee. Nor do I think a knocked-up broad from the high desert would throw his world into Puritan uproar."
"No, he doesn't strike one as the most discreet individual." Tim looked from the urn to the DVD in Bear's hand and thought someone could probably write a treatise on the psychology stretching between them. "Can we take the DVDs as evidence?"
Bear stared at the seventy or so unlabeled DVDs. "You're thinking Tess makes a guest appearance?"
Though the notion of enduring a review of Chase's humping through the twelve seasons was less than palatable, Tim nodded. "It'll give Guerrera something to do while his cafe cubano congeals."
"If there was footage, I doubt Chase would be reckless enough to keep it after Tess was killed," Bear said. "We can talk to the AUSA, but even at Camarillo Vet-n-Law, we know prosecutors won't green-light a warrant for the DVDs anyway. Not with the Kagan lawyers and various elected allies weighing in from around the country. Think ahead to how appalled-appalled-they'll be about the way our pursuit of unrelated sensitive materials undermines the murder victim's dignity."
"Unless the tapes themselves are illegal," Tim said. "Then we could seize them and avoid an ass chewing from Tannino." Bear shrugged. Also unfamiliar with state statutes, Tim flicked open his Nextel and dialed home. "Is it illegal to videotape yourself having sex with someone without their consent?"
Dray said, "Babe, all you have to do is ask."
Tim laughed, then said, "Seriously."
"That's one of those laws that makes you wonder what they're smoking in Sacramento. Video without consent is perfectly okay in California, but audio without consent is illegal."
"Clever prick kept the sound off," Tim said.
"Who's this clever prick you've been cheating on me with?"
Edwin floated into view at Bear's shoulder, and Tim muttered, "Gotta go."
"You seem to have lost your way en route to the door?" Edwin suggested.
Bear slotted the DVD back into the row and closed the armoire. "We need to speak with Dolan."
"He's quite upset."
"Us, too. Distraught, even." Bear took a step forward, forcing Edwin's head to tilt back until his Adam's apple bulged out. But if Edwin was intimidated, he didn't show it. A man practiced at contending with the whims of plutocrats didn't scare easy.
"Mr. Kagan has gone to the indoor pool."
"Where's that?"
"I'll be happy to escort you." The impeccable white glove unfurled toward the door, and for not the first time, Tim wondered if Edwin might be holographic. L.A.'s rich loved their musty props, but even for the town that produced Citizen Kane, Edwin seemed a stretch.
Bear and Tim hung back on one of the endless halls that conveyed them soundlessly across the mansion.
"What kind of idiot has an indoor pool in Los Angeles?" Bear whispered.
"The kind of idiot who has an outdoor one already."
They arrived at an unimposing door off a dank corridor, and Edwin rapped on it once and pushed it open. Diffuse green light undulated around the dark walls like sheets of gauze. Dolan's form streaked through the water, swimming laps with punishing exertion. When he came up for air at the near end and spotted them, he was gasping.
Tim and Bear stepped down onto the tile, and Bear thanked Edwin and shoved the door closed in his face. They'd have limited time before Edwin's situation report would bring Dean's interference.
Dolan swiped his thin brown hair out of his face and squinted, handicapped without his glasses. "Hi."
Tim reached the edge of the pool and crouched, looking almost directly down into Dolan's face. "We know about the rape in the limo. We know everything. Your brother's dead. You can't protect him anymore. We want to hear your side of what happened-it's Jameson's motive, but it's also what makes you an accessory."
Dolan's chest was still heaving from the laps. For a moment it seemed he might cry, but then he slapped the water with both arms and sank down so his head bobbed on the surface. "Chase keyed to Tess the minute he saw her. Sitting outside her house with his stupid guitar. He likes older women. Milfs, he calls them. He told me Tess turned him on even more since she had"-he blushed at the memory-"a fuck trophy."
Resting on the poolside towel, a cell phone put out a classical-music ring-Bach's haunted-castle organ riff shrilling off the hard tile. Dolan tensed. Tim looked down at the hot-orange caller ID screen. DadStudy.
"I program rings for certain people." Dolan's face said the rest.
Eager to get him back on track, Tim said, "And 'fuck trophy' would be slang for…?"
"A kid."
Bear gave Dolan the stare he'd perfected from years of playing bad cop in interrogation rooms.
"Look, Chase was Chase. He was a dick. But he was charming when he wanted to be. He was my brother, but I didn't…No one could…" Dolan trailed off, staring at the rippling water. When he spoke again, his words were pressured, almost eager. "I didn't see much at the shoot. He'd followed Tess out to the garage. I went to get him because he was supposed to be overseeing the producer. I could…I could hear some banging from the limo, but I thought…I don't know what I thought. Percy was there, outside, like he was standing guard. I started for the limo. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. When I got close, Percy squared himself toward me, said, 'Let's give a man his space.'" Dolan made a faint sound of disgust. His face was wet from the pool water; Tim couldn't distinguish tears on it. "I heard her…kicking on the window, you know, then her hand, fingers spread. I could see it even through the tint, the shadow of her hand. Banging." Dolan raised a dripping arm and imitated the gesture, perhaps unknowingly. "You know when you freeze?"
Tim wanted to say no but opted for silence.
"I'm not like them. I never know what to do." Dolan looked shrunken and feeble in the pool. "So I left." His gaze dropped again to the water. "I left. I waited around the corner by the elevator. A few minutes later, I heard the door open. I peeked around the corner. I saw her bloody mouth in the crack of the door before it closed. Chase straightened his shirt. The front pocket, the monogrammed one, was ripped. The driver rolled down the window and said, 'She okay?' and Chase said, 'She's fine. I'll get her son as soon as we wrap. Then you can take her home.' And he thumped the roof like a pit-crew guy sending off a race car. I went upstairs before he reached me and pretended like nothing had happened."
"And Tess threatened to prosecute?"
"I can't-how did you…?-I can't discuss that. I can't discuss anything involving the trials."
"Trials?" Bear was mystified. "What trials? The drug trials?"
A boom startled Tim upright and jerked Bear 180 degrees. The door vibrated on its hinges, stunned, where it had struck the tile wall. Backlit by the light of the corridor and centered in the doorway was Dean's silhouette, somehow conveying the strength of a man with enormous power at his disposal, a man assured of his place on the planet.
"Gentlemen, it's already been a very long night, and I need to ask you to continue your questioning in the morning," Dean said. "My surviving son has a great deal of work ahead of him."
"What did you talk to them about?"
Dolan turned toward his open locker, searching for privacy but finding none. Now that he'd actually dredged up the memory and cast it in words, he realized that what he hadn't told the deputies seemed almost as vivid. Chase's air of exuberance when he'd returned to the commercial shoot, as if he'd just stepped off a harrowing roller coaster. Chase's sullen face days later when the chickens had come home to roost. How Chase had gone directly into Dean's study and seemed to disappear, swallowed up by the high-backed leather chair. Though Dolan had walked with him to their father's door, he'd held in the hall, knowing himself to be an outsider in matters such as these. As Percy swung the door shut, Dolan heard his brother's disembodied voice, finally confessing to the old man-We've got a problem here.