One In A Million (The Millionth Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “What are the lab results going to tell us that we don’t already know? That most likely the last guy in that room was lover boy, who then fled the hotel half-naked? We still got a twenty-something-year-old girl splattered below a hotel room window.” He scratched absentmindedly at his face when he talked. Napoleon never had eczema. It looked like a bitch.

  “The timeline hasn’t been established yet.”

  “There are no cameras that are going to catch her going out the window, right?”

  “No.”

  The captain picked up the coffee cup on his desk and drank out of it slowly before continuing. “So. What then?”

  “I dunno.”

  “You don’t know?” the captain replied, a look of exasperation on his face. He ran his fingers through his hair, his cold blue eyes fixed on a spot in the ceiling. “What do you know then?”

  “The husband says he didn’t do it.”

  The captain laughed. “Fuck me.”

  “It’s what he said on the phone.”

  “Yes. I know. As he was refusing to come in, and while, as far as we know, he was fleeing.”

  “He’s the likely suspect, don’t get me wrong, I’m not an idiot, I know that.”

  “So?”

  “Something isn’t jibing.”

  The captain rocked forwards in his chair and looked hard at Napoleon. It was a look Napoleon had seen a hundred times in the past two years since this particular captain, who was an asshole, had become his superior. It was a look that portrayed good management skills and masked shitty people skills, an approach that tried to intimidate instead of coaxing agreement.

  “I’m glad you got some rest, Nap. But now we’re twelve hours out on this thing, and I still can’t get a read on where we stand. Murillo came up with jack on the witness statements. A few people at the bar remembered them all cozy. No signs of hostility or jealousy. Still, the last person we have her with when she was alive was Fasano. So just what, at least at this point, isn’t jibing?” He added air quotes with his fingers to the last word.

  Napoleon sighed and the act brought on his cough, which gave the appearance of weakness. His throat hurt less but he would kill for some cough medicine. But that was an AA no-no. He also didn’t think his answer was going to go over very well.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Well that’s just apple-pie-fucking a la mode!” the captain half-shouted. “Did you hear yet who this girl’s father is?”

  That was never a good question.

  “No.”

  “Assistant DA Hall.”

  Napoleon felt as if he’d been gut-punched. Shit.

  “We got two uniforms bringing him and the mother—who’s the head of the local chapter of the Red Cross, by the way—in here right after they’ve been to the damned morgue, where they’re gonna see their beloved child by the damn shovelful. And when they finally get in here and ask me what’s going on, I’m gonna tell them, what? ‘Well, Mr. and Mrs. You Could Screw Me Six Ways to Tuesday, not much, because my lead detective on this thing has got no jibe on things,’ is that right?”

  Napoleon fought the urge to tell him just where he could shove his damn sarcasm. It was an urge he had to stifle often while in the presence of the captain, who was, on his best day, a pretentious prick burned out on his job but too damned stupid to retire.

  “Captain, I—”

  “You nothing. Fasano’s cell phone’s dead now too—”

  “I figured he was likely to ditch it.”

  “Well… that’s a reasonable act for an innocent man, right? Does that jibe, Nap?”

  Napoleon crossed his arms and shook his head.

  “I want an APB out on his ass. The press isn’t on this yet, but it won’t be long. We go with ‘person of interest’ to cover ourselves legally, but you need to load up on cough drops, get Parker and head out after this clown.”

  “I take it you already pulled the GPS from his last call?”

  “That we did, and there’s your starting point—off the 5, a town called Beaury.”

  Napoleon sighed. “Okay. But one more thing?”

  “What?”

  “I figure him to call the wife again. I was going to get the tap going first, to get a read on his trajectory from there, east, north, whatever—”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Napoleon stood and put his hands on his hips. So they were bolting to Beaury with no idea of where the suspect was going to next. It was a pure panic move, so the cap could cover his ass with a grieving ADA, but there was nothing he could do about it. “Fine.”

  “Nap, I swear… Okay… You been on the job a long time. I wanna hear both sides here.”

  No you don’t, Napoleon thought. He knew he was delaying the inevitable, but he tried anyway. “The hole in the window is a problem. It’s too high.”

  “I agree. Too high for a suicide.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “But it’s what I meant. Go ahead.”

  “Even if we make the husband for a pitch and toss, he would have to be damn near superhuman to pull it off.”

  “Maybe the guy was high as a kite. Maybe we get the tox report back on the vic and they were both stoned on meth. Maybe they screwed like bunnies plugged into a wall socket and then got into a squabble when he couldn’t get it up again.”

  “Cap—”

  “Nap, c’mon now. We’ve seen drugged-up guys fight off seven, eight uniforms at a time.”

  “The glass was melted.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Look, I’ve been doing this a long time too, did my time in your job for fifteen years in South Central…”

  Oh no, here he goes with the damned credentials.

  Napoleon looked at the ground so he wouldn’t roll his eyes.

  “… some things you just can’t explain up front. Time will tell, and all that shit.”

  “So… what? He turned into a human fireball and threw her out the window?”

  “Maybe. How the fuck should I know.”

  “Cap. Seriously?”

  “We’ll figure it out. Eventually. Right now though I’m trying to understand why any reasonable cop in his right mind would be arguing anything but going after the husband. It’s clear as day.”

  “I’m not saying we shouldn’t.”

  “Yes you are. You’re getting ready to tell me your gut is telling you something, or some other Hollywood bullshit.”

  The captain was actually right on that one, but Napoleon wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of admitting it.

  For a minute there was silence between them.

  “Are you too sick to handle this case?” the captain asked with a hint of suspicion in his voice.

  Napoleon looked at him firmly, suppressing another cough by sheer will alone. “No.”

  Then the killing blow. “You haven’t taken any meds or shit that you’re not supposed to, have you?”

  You piece of shit. You gonna check my locker for NyQuil? See if you can pull my AA card? “Of course not.”

  “Good. Now that we’ve established that your judgment is not impaired in any way, I suggest you get your ‘jibe’ on all the way up to Beaury, rope this bastard and bring him in.”

  Napoleon stood, dropped his hands to his sides and stuffed them in his pockets. “Sure thing, Cap.”

  As he left the captain’s office, he could feel the smug bastard’s eyes on him the whole way out. This is what the job was like now. Work twenty-plus years to have some prick promoted over you who knows you can do his job better than he can, so he sets out to make your life miserable any chance he gets.

  Except this time, Napoleon hated to admit it, the jerk-off was right.

  Kyle Fasano was a gimme for this one.

  Damn near.

  Except for that window and that melted glass.

  And what about that video out in front of the lobby, when Fasano was there one second and then just gone the next? Just a cam
era glitch, right? Yeah. Sure.

  It didn’t jibe.

  CHAPTER 12

  Kyle stood outside the Beaury Public Library. It was an old brick building with tired mint-green trim. A row of hedges, someone’s idea of great landscaping at some point, made the building look even more tired, many of the plants dying off and wasting away in varying shades of brown.

  He was hoping the library would open early, but that wasn’t the case. The Saturday hours on the door were spelled out in white vinyl letters: 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. It was currently ten minutes past ten o’clock. Beaury moved at its own pace, and it seemed the librarian did as well; she was nowhere to be seen.

  Before leaving Denny’s Kyle had decided that he needed to find a computer, and he almost missed the poster in the lobby that led him here, advertising Beaury Library’s “Annual Summer Movie Series,” which this year featured the work of Alfred Hitchcock, beginning with Rear Window and working up to the Psycho finale, with The Birds and Kyle’s personal favorite, North by Northwest, sandwiched in between.

  The woman who finally opened the library door another five minutes later appeared to be in her late sixties. She had pure white hair, pudgy hands and wore a floral-print dress with purple flats to match. Her smile was thin but courteous as her eyes sized up Kyle.

  This was to be expected. He’d managed to clean up a bit in the Denny’s bathroom, but he still looked a bit disheveled: his shirt was a wrinkled mess, his hair needed a good combing and he was in need of a shave. These were probably the things that caught her eye, but Kyle always felt that librarians were a lot like bartenders anyway—they knew the regular clientele and made note of those who weren’t. That was fine. His plan allowed for witnesses. It even counted on them.

  A half-dozen people filed into the library behind him, two adults and four teenagers, everyone fanning out to separate tables once inside. Kyle didn’t need a table, but with the old lady no doubt watching, he made a show of it. He walked calmly over to the periodicals section for a few magazines and the day’s paper, which, he was happy to see, said nothing so far about him, at least on the front page.

  Using them and his duffle bag to mark his table, he sat down and forced himself to read for a good fifteen minutes, using his peripheral vision to track the librarian as she unlocked the restrooms, shuffled some books between a few carts and turned on a light in the children’s reading room. She then cleared her throat and made her way to the front desk, where she sat down facing the lobby, her back to him.

  Perfect.

  He also took note of his fellow library visitors; none of them appeared the slightest bit interested in him or, more importantly, sported any horns or hooves.

  Relieved, he turned his attention to the walls of the library and was saddened. The shelves were not as full as they’d been in the library he’d used as a kid. Books were going out of fashion it seemed, and as if in testimony to this fact he noticed one of the teenage boys approach the island of computers that was situated off to one side of the library and mostly out of view of the front desk. Technology waited for no one. Even Shakespeare was digital now.

  Kyle rose quietly and went to the computer nearest the librarian, noting that the teenager was partially obstructed from her view and thankful for it. That would be important when the moment came. He needed some quality private time with Google to track down Victoria, and he wasn’t the least bit worried that he would be able to do so. In this day and age, no one could hide.

  This being sleepy little Beaury he doubted that he needed a password, but after a few seconds of internal debate he walked up to the librarian anyway.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yes?” she politely replied.

  “I want to use computer number…” He paused for effect, to make it easier for her to remember the number later, in case the cops came looking for him here. “Four. Do I need a password?”

  “No, but if you’re planning on checking anything out or doing any printing, you’ll have to use your library card—if, that is, you have one?” It was a question couched in an assumption. They both knew full well that Kyle didn’t have a library card, but she left him the opening he needed to answer without really answering.

  “Oh, okay, well I’m not planning on doing either of those things, but thanks.”

  She nodded at him curtly then returned to whatever logbook she was filling out.

  Back at the computer, Kyle hit the space bar. The screen popped up immediately. He checked the security systems as best he could. The standard firewalls were up, Windows 8 was running and a fairly recent version of Firefox was installed too. He was by no means a master of IT, but he knew enough to erase his search history within the browser but leave it in the control panel for when the time came. They needed breadcrumbs to track him, after all. So he would lay them out accordingly.

  He began typing in random websites and doing random things. First, he went to the Bank of America website, where he tried to log in to an account name he made up by using the barcode from a book on the counter next to him. He also threw in a few odd password tries. He was denied and moved on. Then he searched the La Jolla and Coronado areas near San Diego on Google Maps, using one of the stubby pencils and some scrap paper that was provided at each monitor to write down a few addresses. Next was Zillow, where he entered in these addresses one by one, making sure to click on the property details at each page and linger there awhile so it would appear as if he were really researching them.

  He wrote down the names of the property owners, Larry Klein and Timothy Reardon, and began Googling them, digging up all he could on each one and even clicking through to their Facebook pages. He had no intention of making this easy for the police, for Caesar, or whatever that detective’s name was, by logging in with his own Facebook account. So he quickly created a new account using a name he just made up: Joaquin Murietta.

  He had no idea why he chose that name, but he vaguely recalled that he was some sort of Mexican bandit who killed a bunch of ranchers in the old west. Using the name of a murderer might not prove to be the smartest choice if they ever caught him, but he was out of time; the teenager had just stepped away from his monitor, leaving the opening Kyle needed to use the one computer that was out of sight of the librarian and therefore couldn’t be cataloged in her memory.

  Kyle then pulled down the browser history and deleted everything. He left the cache untouched.

  Next, he worked his way calmly around the island, watching as the boy disappeared into the non-fiction section before he went up to the computer he’d been using. Looking at the monitor, Kyle had to smile. The boy hadn’t bothered to navigate away from his last web page: the Maxim Top 100 Hotties. Maybe he was doing a term paper on fake breasts and the “mystery” of the female orgasm. In either case, he probably belonged in the fiction section.

  Kyle went to Google and paused a moment before he typed in her name. Was he really going to do this? Yes. He was.

  His fingers tapped the letters of her name: Victoria Duncan.

  It was her maiden name, but he was hoping to get lucky. He didn’t. So he took it a step further and added in her middle name, Alisa.

  This provided a solid hit half way down on the second search page. It was a public announcement in the Monterey Herald of the marriage between Victoria Alisa Duncan and Michael Vincent Brasco. Seven years ago. She waited awhile to get married, evidently. Kyle went back to Google, where he searched for “Victoria Alisa Brasco.”

  The first page that came up listed a half-dozen links, three of them for the same Victoria, who lived in Monterey, California. The first hit was for a PTA meeting a few months back, the next for a charity function at Pebble Beach from last summer, and the last was, of course, for Facebook.

  He clicked the Facebook link, and there she was, clear as day.

  A weight settled in his chest at the sight of her profile picture.

  She was in a ski jacket and smiling that same slightly sad smile that she always wore, as if she knew
something about happiness that the rest of the world didn’t, perhaps namely that it was an illusion.

  Her profile and photos were private, but her “Likes” were on display. Any remaining doubts he’d had that it was her were now wiped away by three of the five items listed: The Cure, Walt Whitman and Slurpee. It was part of the genius of Facebook. Our cumulative likes identified us almost as well as our photos or even our fingerprints.

  How many Cure songs had they listened to together? He took her to see them at the LA Sports Arena for her seventeenth birthday, a present she had been overjoyed by. He wondered if she still had her Whitman collection and that silly blue t-shirt of his portrait she always wore. And as for the Slurpee? How many times had he driven home with that sweet taste of her favorite flavor, cherry, on his lips, lingering there from all their kissing?

  He felt himself lost in a daze of nostalgia before the world came back to him. When it did, he switched to Google one last time and typed in her husband’s full name, her full name and “Monterey, CA.” Their property listing came up multiple times without even the need for a click through: 12546 Genevieve Drive. He wrote this final bit of information down and backed the browser bar up to the Maxim Top 100 list again.

  Looking around he noticed that no one else had entered the library and that the librarian hadn’t moved. Still, the room felt oddly different, less like a place now and more like a detour. It was. He could feel it. He’d just taken a turn to somewhere, in the world, in his life.

  The police were coming. He could feel that too, though he didn’t know how. It was just a vibrating sort of “knowing.” With this in mind, he grabbed his duffle bag and walked out of the library without a goodbye.

  As he left he didn’t see The Gray Man, who’d been quietly standing near a stack of books behind the computer island the whole time.

  “Once more unto the breach,” The Gray Man said to no one in particular as he watched Kyle leave and cross the parking lot outside.

  After a moment, The Gray Man walked over to the computer the teenage boy had been using. Kyle shouldn’t have returned the web page to where it had been. The Gray Man reached up and typed in a new website. He knew it was most likely an exercise in futility; teenage boys were unbelievably fertile ground for the enemy, but he did it nonetheless, if only to show the boy that there were two sides to every coin.