“So the guy’s a phantom,” said Milo. “Same for my victim.”
“Really,” said Cifuentes. “So maybe they rehabbed together.”
Milo looked at me. “You know, Sam, you may have hit on something.”
“You think?” said Cifuentes. “So where do we take it?”
“Any local rehab places you could talk to who might remember Barlett? Using his DMV shot, seeing as he coulda changed his name.”
“I could try.”
“There’s a problem?”
“Well, you know, they’re big on confidential and all that.”
“Sometimes murder trumps that.”
“Does it? You’d know, okay I’ll try,” said Cifuentes. “Your victim have any known substance history?”
“Nothing’s come up, so far.”
“Want me to show them her DMV, anyway?”
“I’d appreciate it,” said Milo. “She was in Vegas right before she came to L.A., probably two years ago. I’ll look into their facilities. Gonna text you her picture right now.”
“Whatever,” said Cifuentes.
“You don’t like it, Sam?”
“Not a matter of what I like. With all due respect, I’m not into chasing ghosts.”
After sending Meagin’s headshot to Cifuentes, Milo sent Barlett’s and hers to Alicia, Sean, and Moe and asked them to divide up rehab facilities in Clark County, Nevada.
Alicia and Moe responded with thumbs-up emojis. Sean called.
“Happy to do it, Loot, but there’s got to be a lot of them there, Sin City and all that.”
“Sin is what pays our salaries, kiddo.”
“It sure does, Loot. My mom calls it being an uncivil servant. So no way you want me to narrow it?”
“I wish.”
“On it.”
Clicking off, Milo wheeled around, half facing me. “If Meagin and Barlett met in rehab, the bad guy coulda also been there. As to why he decided to stalk and shoot them...” He shrugged.
I said, “To my mind, the jealous lover thing’s still on the table.”
“Twelve-step spiced up by the eternal triangle?”
“Mutual addiction’s among the worst foundations for a relationship but it happens.”
“One phone call in seven months says whatever Meagin and Barlett had, it was over. And she was still in Vegas when he was working at the church. So whatever complication happened was a while back. Which leads me to my next question: why would a jilted lover wait this long to get revenge?”
I said, “Meagin could’ve done a good job hiding so it took a while to locate her. Or his resentment’s been simmering the whole time and as long as he was clean, he could manage it.”
“Guy relapsed.”
“A return to meth or coke — or even to alcohol — could’ve topped off his anger with some serious paranoia.”
“So I could be looking for an addled and/or addicted ghost who cools down long enough to plan three homicides, shoot precisely, and get away clean.”
“His criminal skills could be well seasoned.”
“Phantom with a prior history,” he said. “Even more wonderful.”
Chapter 35
Time stretched to nine days after Meagin and Gio’s murders.
When Milo and the young detectives’ contacts with Clark County rehabilitation centers produced nothing, he expanded the search to the entire state of Nevada. Then California, excepting Ventura County, where Sam Cifuentes had paid personal visits to facilities with the same disappointing result. Failure had led Cifuentes’s sergeant to direct him to robberies.
Next stop: Arizona. While that was going on, Milo phoned to ask if I had any other ideas. Given the ghost orchid’s home in Florida, I suggested they try there.
“Already begun.”
That stretched the investigation but turned up nothing.
He switched gears and looked for any murderers across the country featuring the use of a .38 Police and Military revolver and a precise single shot to the heart.
And found something.
Five-year-old unsolved in New Orleans.
That victim, a bartender in the French Quarter named Nicole Fontenot, had been ambushed in a rear parking lot as she left work shortly after two a.m. She’d gone through two boyfriends with substantial felony histories but both were incarcerated at the time of the shooting and no evidence pointed to their associates.
Milo said, “The D on that case retired last year but I reached her and showed her Meagin’s and Barlett’s DMVs. She’d never heard of them, told me who to call at their records department. Nice fellow, actually apologized in a Cajun accent for no result.”
“Any chance of getting a ballistics match?”
“Unfortunately not. The bullet went through Fontenot, hit the side of a metal dumpster, and got too deformed for comparison.”
“Same as Meagin and Gio,” I said. “Powerful load, relatively up close. And a parking lot behind the bar sounds like Barlett.”
“And Louisiana’s close to Florida, the way this is going, we’ll be playing Game of the States into the next millennium. I’ve still got a loose end with Irma and Adelita, didn’t hear from Toni Bowman so I called. Her maid extended her vacation in Mexico until yesterday. Minute she got back, Toni had her call Irma. Straight to voicemail. The maid did give her an address where she’d driven Irma a couple of times, the two of them weren’t close pals, they met in MacArthur Park and chatted from time to time. Studio apartment near the park, I just got back from there. New tenants, manager has no idea where Irma is, she hadn’t lived there for a while. Probably after getting the job at the mansion, why pay rent? Now she’s gone somewhere else, hopefully not Mexico.”
“Hiding,” I said. “Ups the chances something she saw or heard at the mansion scared her.”
“Exactly, as in something Dougie said or did. What you said before about people treating the help like furniture. We’ve seen his temper firsthand, he coulda let loose in her presence — hers and Adelita’s — and freaked them out.”
“Maybe they saw him slash and trash the painting.”
“That or worse. The more I think about the guy, the more I’m back to seeing him as my prime suspect. Despite his supposedly being surprised about Meagin’s death. So he is an actor. He had the means to hire a pro — maybe some construction guy he’s used on jobs, there’s always ex-cons on work crews. And no problem making sure he was out of the city when it happened.”
“What’s his connection to Barlett?”
“Same deal, Barlett was an old flame of Meagin’s, Doug found out they’d corresponded and got mad. We learned about Barlett from Meagin’s phone, easy enough for Doug to do the same. He phoned me yesterday, still bitching about the jewelry. Called me an obstructionist bureaucrat with no clue how to do my job. Then he repeated it. The word ‘clue.’ And cackled. Then he said he’d be hiring a lawyer to get all the bling back and hung up. He’s nuts, Alex. Why obsess on the jewelry? Yeah, we’re talking a few hundred thou but for him that’s small change.”
I said, “Easier to focus upon a side issue than his big problem.”
“Which is?”
“Coming to grips with how Meagin manipulated him. Beginning with how she picked him up. Seduced him and got him to marry her without divulging anything personal, then proceeded to cheat on him from the get-go. Getting suckered is totally at odds with his self-image as a savvy businessman and a tough negotiator. Once he finds out she also conned him about the purple diamond so she could wear it for Gio, he could really blow.”