eat it up in the Midwest.”
Bennett said nothing. Just smelled the night air, listened to the
murmur of distant traffic and the burble of the pool filter. His thigh
ached a little in the cold, where the bone had been broken a dozen
years ago. Complications on a job in . . . Dallas, had it been? “B., really, I can’t.” The man talking faster, angling and wheedling. “How about this, how about I take a room at a hotel? You
can have the house, you know, my pleasure, I want you to have it.” Ripples in the pool’s surface cast streaks across the producer’s
face. Far away, a car honked, loud and long. There was really no
need to drive Dago out of town—Bennett mostly didn’t want the
guy near him, talking too much and thinking too little—but he also
didn’t want Jerry to think that they were negotiating. So he just
slowly let his smile fade.
“I.” D’Agostino staring at his bare feet. “I’ll get packed.” Bennett nodded, turned back to the view. A police helicopter
swung back and forth in circles somewhere over Van Nuys, the
searchlight glowing. He heard the sound of Dago’s footsteps, waited
till the man was almost at the door, then said, “Jerry?” “Yeah?”
“The gun.”
A pause, and then the sound of the guy walking back. He came
alongside Bennett, reached into his pocket, pulled out the pistol. Bennett took it, held it loose, not quite aiming at the man. “And
your car keys.”
“What? How do I get to the airport?”
“Call a cab.”
Later Bennett explored his new house. It really was a nice place,
the décor a little tacky, but the views spectacular. He set up his laptop in Jerry’s office, at a desk facing the window, so that he could
look out at the city spread wide below him.
Shortly after Laney’s death, Bennett had broken into their house
and left a few things. Life had gotten so much easier these days.
God bless the Internet. Used to be difficult to get surveillance equipment, never mind streaming video, broadband wireless, scriptable
file transfer protocols.
He’d placed three cameras. The first appeared to be a carbon
monoxide detector and plugged into the wall in the entryway, with
a clear view of the door. The second, secreted in a book, had gone
on a shelf in Hayes’s home office. The final camera, his personal
favorite, was in a Kleenex box, one of those decorative types that
rich people liked, so that even their tissues matched their color palette. That one he’d put in their bedroom, on Laney’s nightstand. All
three were high-res, worked in near darkness, and best of all, were
motion-activated. They broadcast right over Hayes’s wireless router,
dumping everything they recorded to an anonymous file server. Not so many years ago, Bennett would have had to sit on his ass
and watch the house himself. Now he just logged in.
All three cameras showed multiple files. Busy busy. He opened
the most recent first, starting with the hallway. The video began
with the front door flying open, men rushing in, cops with their
guns out. Moving fast and splitting up, yelling, Clear!
Interesting.
The office and bedroom cams showed the police—scratch that, sheriffs—coming in equally hard. Then, once it became clear that whoever they were looking for wasn’t there, they relaxed, wandered about. Opened drawers, glanced in closets. The audio was a little muffled, but he could hear them talking about an intruder, and
saying Hayes’s name.
So his boy was back in town.
He was about to switch to earlier files when he saw one of the
deputies glance around, then quickly open one of the dresser drawers, pull out a pair of white lace panties, and jam them in his front
pocket. Bennett chuckled. He took a screen cap into Photoshop,
upped the image size, and tinkered with the unsharp mask settings
until he could read the cop’s nameplate. “Deputy Wasserman. You
nasty celebrity crotch sniffer.” Bennett saved the file, made a note of
the sheriff’s info. Never knew, might come in handy.
The next video clip was the man who vanished. Daniel Hayes in
living color, walking into his front hall.
Gotcha.
The man looked exhausted. No surprise, given the distance he’d
covered. Bennett had a woman at American Express who’d rather
her boss didn’t know about her “recreational” freebase habit, and
based on the charges on Hayes’s card, he’d sprinted east like his ass
was aflame. Then vanished once he reached Maine.
What brings you back, Dan?
On the screen, the man stared at photographs, a shell-shocked
expression on his face. Up in the bedroom he moved slow, a glass
of whiskey in his hand, going through his own drawers like he was
looking for clues. He looked over at Laney’s side of the bed, right at
the goddamn camera, and for a second Bennett wondered whether
he’d been burned. But no; something else had obviously affected
him, the guy slipping to his knees, shaking and crying. In the next scene, the writer walked into his office like he’d never been there. Looked at his shiny award, chuckled. Then sat down at the desk, gazed out the window, and saw something that spooked him. He was on his feet, tearing through cabinets, snatching his computer. The audio caught something, a voice, but too far and too garbled. Based on the time stamp, that would be the sheriffs. Hayes sprinted out of his den, then into the bedroom, and then, nothing.
Must have gone out a window.
Bennett leaned back, tapped a finger against his teeth. What did
you just see?
There had been something off in Hayes’s behavior. Grief? Partly,
sure, but there was more. Exhaustion? The guy had driven back and