Rhodes pulled the telephone closer, examining the keypad.
“It’s digital,” he said. “Looks like six messages.”
Lena moved within earshot as Rhodes found the right button and hit PLAY. Except for the voices, the first five messages were pretty much the same as the last. There was Jim Dolson from Cincinnati. But there were three more men from out of town staying at various hotels on the Westside. The fourth was from some guy claiming to be on vacation with his wife and asking if McBride did three-ways. And then the fifth, this time from a woman, wondering if McBride was bisexual.
All six messages referred to the victim’s ad in the current edition of the LA. Weekly. According to the time stamp, all six calls were placed after McBride’s body had been discovered in Hollywood.
Lena grabbed the LA. Weekly off the foyer table and quickly returned to the bedroom. Paging through the back of the paper, she sat down beside Rhodes and began sifting through what appeared to be several hundred classified ads for escort services, phone sex, and massage parlors. McBride’s ad was in the middle of the pack on the second page.
Massage Therapy. Hot young blonde with magic hands and knockout body seeks men who want to relax under my spell. For pure joy call Jennifer at. .
Lena reread the ad, then opened her cell phone and entered the number printed in the newspaper. When McBride’s phone rang on the bedside table, she didn’t close her cell even though she had confirmed the match. Instead, she let the machine pick up and listened to the outgoing message. It wasn’t the default message that came with the phone. It was Jennifer McBride’s voice. She wanted to hear it. Absorb it. The voice of the victim before she was murdered.
Lena could feel the hairs behind her neck standing on end. An ice-cold chill fluttered up her spine. It was a simple message. Direct and to the point. McBride greeted the caller using her phone number rather than her name, then promised a callback to anyone leaving their contact information. The message ended with an easy Thanks.
Lena paused a moment before closing her cell-McBride’s voice now seared into her memory and a part of her being.
“Jones told us that he never saw her with anybody,” she said. “And I’ll bet he spends a lot of time by that window.”
“She didn’t bring them here,” Rhodes said. “She went to them. Somewhere around here she’s got a bag of tricks.”
“I didn’t see it when we went through the place.”
“We weren’t looking for it,” he said. “If she didn’t take the bag with her, then it’s here.”
They checked underneath the bed and behind the hamper in the bedroom closet. It took them ten minutes to find it. A small black duffel bag in the foyer closet right beside the front door. Rhodes carried it over to the coffee table in the living room. Ripping the zipper open, he turned the bag over and shook the contents out.
Lena knelt down on the floor, picking through the lingerie and thinking about the small heart-shaped tattoo she had seen between McBride’s shaved vagina and her bikini line. She counted three transparent baby-doll negligees with matching G-strings, a variety of push-up bras, a sheer robe, and a pair of black panties. But there was something else here: a white skirt and matching top. Lena held the blouse up for a better look, eyeing the low neckline and the red cross that had been embroidered over the left breast pocket.
“She wore a costume,” Rhodes said. “She played a nurse.”
“Looks like it, huh.”
Lena returned to the duffel bag, giving it a lift and measuring its weight. Spinning the bag around, she opened the first side pocket and fished out an array of scented oils, three different kinds of condoms, a vibrator, and an extra package of batteries.
She looked over at Rhodes on the couch. He was reaching down for a cosmetic case that had fallen on the floor. As he unzipped the case and split it open, his eyes danced over the contents and widened some.
It was a cache of pills.
Rhodes cleared a spot on the table, shaking the plastic bottles and reading them off one by one before setting them down. The list was impressive and seemed to cover a client’s every want or need. Viagra and Cialis were here. But so were ample supplies of Xanax, Valium, Vicodin, and Oxycodone.
“She knew somebody,” Rhodes said.
Lena eyed the labels. Jennifer McBride’s name wasn’t listed, nor was the pharmacy. She played the victim’s ad back in her head.
Hot young blonde with magic hands and knockout body seeks men who want to relax under my spell. For pure joy call Jennifer at. .
The words relax under my spell seemed to have a new meaning. A darker meaning. She looked back at the lingerie and costume, at the condoms scattered across the table. She remembered the belly ring Madina had removed from the corpse at the autopsy. Jennifer McBride had been more than a masseuse. As Lena mulled it over, it seemed clear that the young woman’s apparent innocence was an asset to her business-something she probably flaunted.
Lena glanced over at Rhodes. His eyes were turned inward; his face, troubled. She wondered if he was thinking about his sister again.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I was just thinking about how this will play with the chief.”
“You mean because of who McBride turned out to be?”
“Yeah. The chief and Klinger. You know what I’m saying. When you’re so straight you’re bent, who gives a shit about a whore on dope?”
“You and me,” she said quietly.
“You and me,” he repeated, still thinking it over. He got up and crossed the room to the window, rubbing his neck and gazing outside. “That guy’s still sitting by his window,” he said. “Still waiting for McBride to come home.”
“Now we know why. She knew that he was out there and probably liked to tease him.”
Rhodes turned toward her and leaned against the sill. “There was this case in Atlantic City,” he said. “Four prostitutes were raped and strangled to death a couple years ago. They were found in a drainage ditch. I remember it because the details were so bizarre. The bodies were laid out in a row fully clothed. But their heads were facing east and their shoes had been removed. I remember it because another murder case was making headlines. Not here in the States, but from a small town outside London. This time it was five prostitutes. Their bodies were found over a period of ten days.”
Lena knew where Rhodes was going. She actually remembered reading about both cases after an article popped up during a Google search. The story appeared in The New York Times, which had recently opened their archives and made them free of charge. After her last investigation ended so violently, Lena began researching past cases in an attempt to better understand the man she had chased down and killed. It had been part of her recovery. Dealing with the aftermath of taking a human life. The article in The New York Times was a side-by-side comparison of the two cases Rhodes was talking about.
“In the UK,” she said, “the detectives asked for help and the community came together.”
“That’s right. They put up billboards at the soccer stadiums. They blanketed the streets with flyers. Even the prime minister offered his sympathy to the victims’ families. What these women did for a living was irrelevant. The community came together because the victims were from their neighborhood and needed help. That’s all that mattered to them.”
“I read about it,” she said. “They closed the case. They caught the guy.”
“He’s going on trial next month. In New Jersey, they don’t even have a suspect yet because no one at the top gives a shit. They didn’t process Missing Persons Reports. They wouldn’t even let vice detectives knock on doors. They wouldn’t let them do their jobs. The victims were whores, right? Streetwalkers who used drugs. Did you know that all four victims were mothers and left behind young children?”
Lena nodded.
“Well, no one else did,” Rhodes said. “No one else knew because no one put it out there. The detectives’ hands were tied. Bad things happen to bad people-the victims probably deserved it, right? And even if they didn’t-even though the guy’s still out there-our neighborhoods are better off without them. Our lawns are greener. There’s more room on our streets for more luxury cars. If we keep quiet, the casinos won’t lose any money and people will still come to play the slots.”
Rhodes became silent, but Lena knew why he seemed so bitter. Jane Doe No. 99 counted because she was an innocent victim, but Jennifer McBride wouldn’t because she was a whore. If they worked the neighborhood, no one would care because no one would think that it had anything to do with them. The victim would be seen as irrelevant. The investigation, a needless interruption in their busy and important lives. Even worse, when the chief reviewed his list of unsolved cases and cut it against the murder rate climbing to five hundred, there was a good chance that he might reevaluate his resources and spend them somewhere else. The case might be shot down the divisional highway, then dropped altogether and put on ice.
She could feel her heart beating in her chest. The anger that came with the possibility that Jennifer McBride might not count at Parker Center if your office was on the top floor.
The phone began ringing again-another two rings before the machine picked up. Thirty seconds later, another shadowy voice filtered out of the bedroom. Another potential customer who had read McBride’s ad and anxiously awaited her spell. Another willing subject who didn’t realize that his fantasy-the hot young blonde with magic hands and a knockout body-had been dead for two days and was lying in a plastic bag at the morgue.
When the call finally ended, the silence came back. The anger. As Lena considered the evidence, she realized that they were still riding the train without a ticket. Still making their run in the dark. She looked over at Rhodes staring at the pills lined up on the coffee table. After a moment, his eyes seemed to clear and he headed for the bedroom.
Lena found him sitting on the bed by the telephone. He was holding the handset and gazing at the LED screen.
“Does it strike you as odd that she only had one phone?” he asked.
Lena shrugged. “I’m sure she had a cell. We just haven’t gotten there yet.”
“I mean here. There’s only one phone in the apartment.”
“It’s cordless. This is a small place.”
Rhodes paused to think it over. “Makes sense, I guess. Today’s the fourteenth, right?”
“What are you doing?”
“Her address book must have been in her purse. I was hoping maybe she programmed the automatic dialer, but she didn’t. When I picked up the handset, I realized that she had Caller ID.”
Lena moved closer. Rhodes had found the menu and was toggling through the caller list. He was moving backward, and she recognized her cell number and the two calls that had come in while they were here by the time and date. Some of the numbers farther down the list were blocked, and most were from area codes that she didn’t recognize. When Rhodes reached the first number with a name attached, he stopped and became very still.
“What is it?” she asked.
He turned the screen toward her so that she could get a better look. A moment passed, and the glow in her stomach returned.
The call only lasted for thirty seconds, but it was from a doctor. Lena checked the area code and zeroed in on the name. Joseph Fontaine, MD had called at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 12, from somewhere in L.A.
“We’re looking for a surgeon, right, Lena?”
She met Rhodes’s eyes and caught the sharp glint. “That’s the night she was murdered.”
Rhodes turned back to the handset and continued toggling through the Caller ID list. He didn’t have to go very far before Fontaine’s name popped up on the list again. The call had been made at 4:00 p.m. that same day and lasted another thirty seconds.
“He’s hitting the machine and hanging up,” Rhodes said. “Trying to reach her, but not leaving a message.”
Lena dug into her pocket for her notepad, found the first clean page, and wrote down the doctor’s name and number. When she finished, Rhodes clicked through the list until he reached the end. Of the thirty-six calls McBride received this month, seven belonged to Joseph Fontaine, MD. Three were hang-ups made on the day McBride was murdered. But the remaining four were spread over the previous ten days, each lasting for almost an hour.
Rhodes placed the handset on the cradle and turned. She could feel his breath on her face. The heat emanating from his skin. His eyes on her.
“You bring your computer?” he asked.