Killer Ambition - [17]

I held up my hand. “Don’t sweat it. We’re not here to bust you.”

This seemed to calm Legs down considerably. He nodded vigorously, practically bowing at the waist in his seat. “Cool. Thanks. Cool. Well, so I catch the drift that this dude was saying he had this girl and not to call the cops-”

“Did you catch anything about money?” Bailey asked.

Legs sniffed and used a paper napkin to wipe his nose. I wondered whether the nose ring got in the way when he had a cold. I decided not to ponder that question.

“Nah, I guess I just caught the tail end of it. Reason I noticed, though, was the girl. You know, the one whose picture was just on the news? She came into the café while he was typing. Real pretty. Dude seemed pissed that she was there.”

“What made him seem pissed?” Bailey asked. “Did he grab her? Yell at her?”

“No, nothing like that. He just seemed, I don’t know…annoyed? He didn’t let her sit down. Soon as she showed up, he packed up his laptop and they left.”

“Did he hold on to her arm? Push her?” I asked.

Legs looked off to the left. “Not that I remember. And tell you the truth, I didn’t think much of the whole deal. Seemed like a goof. The only reason I called you guys was because of the news flash about the girl.”

“So she didn’t look scared or upset?” I asked.

“Not to me. I mean, she wasn’t laughing her ass off or anything. But she didn’t look freaked.”

“Do you think you’d recognize the guy if I showed you a photo?” Bailey asked.

Legs shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt to try.”

Bailey pulled up Brian’s photo on her cell and held it in front of Legs.

He gave the photo a hard look, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s the dude. No question.”

“Thank you, Legs,” I said. Bailey took his contact information and we stood to leave.

“So I assume the girl’s been kidnapped,” he said.

“Not necessarily,” I semi-lied.

“But you’d appreciate it if I didn’t say anything about this conversation, wouldn’t you?”

The abrupt shift caught me off guard. I looked at him for a long moment. This was pretty savvy for any civilian, let alone the pierced counterculture specimen in front of me. “I can’t stop you from talking, but yeah, it wouldn’t hurt if you’d keep it to yourself.”

“Got it.”

We started to leave, but I turned back, too curious to let it go. “You said you had a class on Monday that got out at four o’clock. What class was that?”

“Not a class exactly. More like a weekly consultation. I’m finishing my Ph.D. in neuroscience.”

“So it’ll be Dr. Legs Roscoe soon.”

“Actually, Dr. Lawrence Roscoe. But yeah. Hopefully.”

At times like this I love my job.

9

We waited till we were in the car to discuss our latest find, courtesy of Dr. Legs.

“If Brian sent the ransom note from that café, and this was a righteous kidnapping, then how could he let Hayley float around like that?” Bailey asked.

“My question too. The only thing I can think of right now is that maybe he hadn’t made that video with her yet. Until Brian had her record that video, she didn’t necessarily know what he was doing. But the fact that he hustled her out of there shows he didn’t want anyone to see them together, that’s for sure. And we know he was somewhere else when he made that video and sent it with the ransom note.”

Bailey stared out the window for a few seconds, then nodded. “It’s possible. We’ll have to see whether we can figure out where the final ransom e-mail and video were sent from.” She checked her cell. “Russell’s and Hayley’s cell phone records are in. Still waiting on Brian’s.”

“They’re at the station?”

Bailey nodded. “Yeah. And our computer whizbangs are checking to see what they can get on the ransom e-mail, see if they can track down the computer it was sent from…so far, nothing,” Bailey said. “But now that Legs put Brian and that ransom note together, it’s less of a priority.”

True. Regardless of where Brian was when he sent the note, the important thing was to prove he’d written it, and Legs did that for us. “Be nice to find Brian’s laptop, though.”

“Probably won’t happen until we find Brian.”

I couldn’t argue with that point either. And I agreed with Bailey that we should get a look at those cell phone records sooner rather than later, but I knew that once we headed downtown, we’d probably be done for the day unless something else broke. “How about we check in with Hayley’s mom before we go back to the station?”

“Okay, but then we’ll need to get back and hit those records.”

The tension in Bailey’s voice matched my own anxiety level. Every passing minute made Hayley’s safe return seem farther and farther away. But now that Brian was looking like our number one suspect, I wanted to see for myself whether either parent knew anything about him. Mackenzie didn’t think Hayley had told them about Brian, but I couldn’t rely on that, and I had a hunch that if Hayley had told either parent, it was more likely to be her mom.

Bailey floored it to Raynie’s house, which was, indeed, close to Russell’s house in the hills-just five blocks away. It was a low-slung modern home set into the hillside with an entire wall of sliding glass doors that opened to two feet of balcony and an expansive view of the city. And just like Russell’s-and so many of the houses in this hood-it was propped up on stilts. Those things always made me nervous, and it didn’t matter that I knew they were set in granite and probably more earthquake-proof than the courthouse.