Killer Ambition - [9]

“I think so.”

Dorian was always in demand, so she wasn’t always available. But a high-profile case like this could put the whole crime lab under a microscope. Pun intended. I was willing to bet big money her boss would make sure she got here. Dorian herself never cared one way or another. High-profile, low-profile, it was all the same to her. All she cared about was the evidence.

Bailey turned to the officer. “We just want to take a quick look. We won’t go inside.”

The officer gave her an incredulous stare, then shook his head. “If Dorian catches you, you’re on your own. They don’t pay me enough.” The officer opened the door and stepped aside.

We stood on the threshold and leaned in as far as we could without falling. The tiled foyer led to a sunken living room that had a panoramic view of the city, as well as a swimming pool that ran from the middle of the room, under the glass wall, and out to the edge of the backyard. I’d have loved its sheer craziness if I didn’t know how well rats could swim. I supposed Russell kept an exterminator on permanent retainer. I couldn’t help but wonder whether that was a metaphor for his life in general. I recognized the iron fence surrounding the perimeter of the property as the one Hayley had been standing in front of in the photograph. I made a mental note to check whether there was enough background in the video to tell whether she was still here when it was recorded.

“What the hell do you two think you’re doing?”

“Shit,” I whispered.

Bailey rolled her eyes and we jumped back, away from the threshold. Dorian had arrived.

5

She pushed her sunglasses on top of her gray crew cut and planted her short, squat frame in front of us, hands on hips. “You two been in there already? ’Cause if you have…” The look in her eyes finished the sentence.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“I wouldn’t let her,” said Bailey-the obnoxious, kiss-ass traitor.

I shot her a sidelong look. “I’d never-”

Dorian cut me off with a wave of her hand. “I’ve got no time for this, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. You want the house and backyard?”

“Yeah.” Bailey explained what we were looking for and where the investigation stood at this point.

“Okay,” Dorian said. “Now feel free to get going. I sure as hell don’t need you here.”

We saluted and left. As Bailey pulled away I asked, “What was that ‘I wouldn’t let her’ business all about?”

“Just earning a few credibility points for future use-”

“At my expense-”

“You’re not the one who has to pull favors to get her. Sometimes you got to take the hit for a higher cause. There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team,’ Knight.”

“Yeah, but there is one in ‘kiss-ass.’”

“You’ll thank me the next time we need her and I have the suck to pull her out of rotation.”

She was probably right about that, but it didn’t stop me from privately vowing to get even sometime soon. Bailey’s smirking glance told me she knew what I was thinking. It’s not always a great thing having someone know you that well.

We rode through the traffic in silence for a few moments, then suddenly Bailey gave a short laugh. “What a trip. Ian Powers was little Mattie-”

Russell Antonovich’s manager and business partner.

“And he still knows how to turn on that cutesy smile,” I said. “So you watched the show too?”

“Never,” Bailey said. I gave her a look. “Okay, once in a while.”

We turned left at Outpost Drive and I enjoyed the view of the charming, old, and very pricey neighborhood as we headed over the hill and into the Valley to Clarington Academy, where we planned to brace up Hayley’s bestie, Mackenzie Struthers. The uniform who’d questioned her late last night hadn’t gotten much of anything out of her. It was our turn to try.

“Want to call the principal and have Mackenzie ready for us?” Bailey asked.

“Nope. I got her cell number from Raynie. I’ll call her when we get there. The less lead time, the better.”

“Good point.”

I had no particular reason to think Mackenzie would lie to us. But my experience with teenagers has taught me that they invariably keep secrets from the adult world and they consider it an honor to guard those secrets closely. I don’t think it’s nefarious, I think it’s just tribal loyalty. With a little time, I could probably earn enough of Mackenzie’s trust to get her to open up. But with Hayley’s life hanging in the balance, time was the one thing I didn’t have. I needed to know it all and I needed to know it right now. The less time Mackenzie had to ruminate and sift through what she did or didn’t want to share, the better.

And I had the element of surprise on my side because Hayley’s kidnapping wasn’t public knowledge yet. We’d decided to keep it all under wraps for the moment in the hope that it would induce the kidnapper to release Hayley. But that strategy was a short-term option; we wouldn’t be able to keep it quiet for long. Someone was bound to leak, and soon. There were dozens of employees, assistants, all their friends, and then there were cops and all their friends, and…you get the picture. And even if no one leaked, we couldn’t afford to wait more than a couple of days without running the risk that we were exposing Hayley to greater peril by keeping it quiet. If she didn’t turn up in the next day or so, we’d have to change strategies and put the story out there to ratchet up pressure on the kidnapper to let her go.