The Cinderella Murder (32 page)

L
aurie was surprised at how simple it was for Detective Reilly to record Keith’s call to Martin Collins, with a simple cord from Keith’s cell phone into a laptop’s microphone port. After considerable negotiation, Reilly agreed to let Leo and Laurie listen in on the call, but with no cameras or recording on their part. If the call panned out, Laurie could find another way to report the facts for the show. Right now, she just wanted to hear what Martin Collins had to say.

With the help of an audio splitter, Leo, Laurie, and Detective Reilly were all plugged in with their own earphones. She gave Keith a thumbs-up as he hit the dial button. The man was far from perfect, but today he was doing the right thing.

“Hey, Martin, it’s Keith,” he said when the call connected. “You got a sec? I had a weird visit from the police.”

“The police?”

“Yeah, asking about a Steve Roman. Bald, muscled, maybe in his forties. They said he belonged to Advocates for God, but I told them I didn’t know him. Does the name ring a bell?”

“Sure,” Martin said nonchalantly.

Laurie arched an eyebrow in her father’s direction. They had just connected the head of AG to a man spotted near Lydia Levitt’s murder, a man who was monitoring their movements just days prior to the attack on Jerry. Was it really going to be this easy?

Through her headphones, she listened as Martin continued. “I told you I wanted to know what Nicole was saying to those TV people? I asked Steve to lend a hand. He’s helpful that way.”

“Helpful? The police think he killed a woman in the Bay Area while he was snooping on one of the show’s participants. And three days ago, someone broke into the show’s set, stole a bunch of equipment, and nearly killed a member of the production team.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Steve used to be a violent person. But that was a long time ago. I don’t know anything about a woman in the Bay Area, but, yes, he did tell me about the unfortunate situation at the house in Bel Air.”

Laurie clenched a fist in celebration.
Yes,
they had identified Jerry’s attacker.

“
An unfortunate situation?
”

“He crossed a line. He said he found a door unlocked. He went in. Then someone came home and found him there. He told me he panicked, but he didn’t tell me how bad it was until I read about the assault in the paper. I’ve been counseling him, but it may be time for me to call the police before he hurts someone else.”

As Keith had explained it to them, Advocates for God encouraged all members to open up fully to the church but did not observe the traditional priest-penitent privilege. Instead, it was for the church to decide when disclosure of the information was necessary to “advocate for God’s goodness.” It sounded like Martin was getting ready to use what he knew about Steve Roman to distance himself from the man’s crimes, depicting Roman as an out-of-control lone wolf.

“Martin, it gets worse. The police also asked me whether—I feel gross even saying it. They asked if I had ever seen you be
inappropriate
with children.”

The line fell silent.

“Martin? Are you there?” Keith asked.

“Yes. This has to be coming from Nicole. She’s crazy. She fabricated something like this when she was in college. That’s why I wanted to keep an eye on her during the TV show. Obviously it’s not true, so don’t repeat that to anyone. Now, I better track down Steve. He’s clearly become a problem.”

When Martin hung up, the kitchen immediately broke into cacophony as they all spoke at once, rehashing every last word of the conversation. Detective Reilly formed his hands into a capital T to quiet them. “Good work, Keith. We’ve got what we need for an arrest warrant for Steve Roman. I’ll follow up with Martin Collins to get him locked down on the details of whatever Roman told him about the assault on Jerry.”

“Wait,” Laurie said. “You’re not arresting Collins?”

“I’ve got no probable cause. It’s not against the law to ask someone to keep an eye on a situation. If it were, there’d be no private investigators.”

“But Steve Roman’s not a PI. He’s hurting people. He probably
killed
Lydia.”

“And that’s why we’re going to arrest him. But until we can prove Martin Collins solicited Steve Roman to commit these crimes, he’s an innocent man.”

Laurie started to argue, but Leo interrupted. “He’s right on the law, Laurie. But a running start is just the beginning, right, Reilly?”

“Absolutely.” Reilly’s brow momentarily unfurrowed. “Once we get our hands on this Steve Roman character, he might have a different story to tell. Happens all the time. We’ll get the phone records, search his apartment, the works. I’ll get the arrest warrant out pronto. We can apply over the phone now. Trust me, we’ll get to the bottom of all of it.”

Laurie tried not to be disappointed. After all, they had probably solved Lydia’s murder and the attack on Jerry. But they still had no idea how any of this connected to Susan’s murder.

Reilly had just finished packing up his recording equipment when Grace came running into the kitchen. “Turn on the television!” she yelled, reaching for the remote control on the counter.

Laurie placed her hand gently on Grace’s forearm. “Hold on a just a minute, Grace. I’m about to walk Detective Reilly out.”

“No, it can’t wait.” She fumbled with the buttons and began flipping channels until she reached her destination. “Look!”

On the screen was a helicopter’s aerial footage over bright blue water. An anchor’s voice said something about a “thirty-nine-year-old genius” and the “revolutionizing of the Internet.” It wasn’t until Laurie read the text at the bottom of the screen that she understood what she was watching:
REACH founder and CEO Dwight Cook’s body recovered from a scuba accident, sources say.

No, not Dwight. Please don’t let it be him, Laurie thought.

65

L
aurie didn’t want to believe that Dwight was dead. Three hours after Detective Reilly’s departure, she wanted to hear that this was all some misunderstanding. When Dwight had called last night, she was so wrapped up in tracking down Steve Roman and his connection to AG, she hadn’t even found the time to return his phone call. Now that sweet man—that sweet, overgrown boy—was dead, and she was convinced that his death had to be connected to her investigation into Susan’s murder. And she was wondering if she could have stopped it.

Timmy was upstairs playing video games, but the adults all huddled in the den to watch the television coverage. Between Keith’s phone call to Martin Collins and the news reports of Dwight’s death, they were on edge. The LAPD had obtained a warrant for Steve Roman’s arrest, but he was still at large. Was he still in Los Angeles, on his way back to San Francisco, or on the run toward the Mexico border? Could he return to target the team again?

At the sound of the doorbell, Grace let out a yelp, then placed a hand to her chest. “Oh my Lord. I’m like some girl in the middle of a horror movie.”

Leo went to the front door, gun in hand, and gazed through the peephole. “It’s Detective Reilly,” he announced.

Laurie could feel their collective relief.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Reilly said, entering the den with a laptop already in hand. “First I’m afraid I have some bad news. Dwight Cook’s body has been positively identified. I’ll spare you the physical details, but there’s no question that it’s him.”

Laurie blinked back the tears that were starting to form.

Alex leaned toward her and whispered, “Are you okay? We can take a break.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m okay. Please, Detective Reilly, tell us the rest.”

“I didn’t realize this when I was here earlier, but apparently this house is owned by Dwight Cook?”

“Yes,” Laurie said. “He lent us the house to help us out.”

“
Help you out
, huh? See, one of my fellow detectives was going through Mr. Cook’s computers as part of their investigation. Apparently Reverend Collins wasn’t the only person keeping an eye on your production. Cook had every inch of this place wired for surveillance.”

“Like, spying on us?” Grace asked. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but that’s straight-up perverted.”

“Not your showers or anything like that,” Reilly clarified. “But pretty much everything that has happened in this house since your arrival is on video.”

“The house is usually vacant,” Laurie said. “It would make sense he’d have a state-of-the-art security system in a high-end property like this.”

“It’s not only a matter of the equipment,” Reilly explained. “Given how the video files are set up, we can tell that Dwight actually viewed them. We can also tell when he was watching and what footage he watched. Apparently he stopped watching last night at nine twenty-three
P.M
.”

Laurie checked the voice mail log on her own cell phone. “He called me just a few minutes later. He said he needed to talk ASAP.”

“And . . . ?”

“We were in the middle of trying to figure out Steve Roman’s connection to our case. I didn’t have time to call. Obviously if I had known . . .”

She felt her stomach drop as Reilly rolled his eyes, clearly frustrated by the dead end.

“Well, here’s the thing.” Reilly flipped open his laptop on the coffee table and began tapping away. “Dwight watched a couple of clips repeatedly.”

He turned the screen so they could all see it. “One clip was the attack on your friend,” Reilly said. Laurie felt sick as they watched the brutal assault on Jerry. Reilly paused the tape just as Jerry’s masked assailant rose from his bloodied body. “See that insignia on his shirt? We’ve got a tech trying to sharpen the image, but at least the body type is consistent with Steve Roman.”

“So Dwight must have called me because he had Jerry’s assailant on video,” Laurie said.

Reilly was shaking his head, fast-forwarding through the video. “I doubt it. He saw the assault for the first time three nights ago and has replayed it multiple times since. He would have called you earlier. But here.” He slowed the tape. “This is the segment Dwight watched right before he called you.”

Laurie immediately recognized the scene from yesterday: Keith, Madison, and Nicole, side by side on the living room sofa, discussing the day Susan was killed. Reilly played the interview to its end and then paused it. “It looks like he kept replaying the very end. Is there some reason he’d be interested in that scene?” Reilly asked.

“I have no idea,” Laurie said. “He wasn’t really friends with any of them apart from Susan. I’ve got to ask, Detective Reilly. If you have colleagues searching Dwight’s computers, are they certain Dwight’s death was an accident?”

“No. If anything, it looks like the scene was staged to seem accidental.
They found traces of bleach throughout the entire interior of the boat, and according to the medical examiner’s initial inspection, the nitrogen levels in his tissue are inconsistent with having scuba dived that night. The current theory is that he was already unconscious when his body hit the water.”

“Could this be more of Steve Roman’s crime spree?” Laurie was thinking aloud, wondering if Roman would have a reason to go after Dwight. “The alternative is that Dwight knew something about one of the other suspects.”

“That’s our theory,” Reilly said, “especially if he figured it out as he was watching the end of this video. I thought you might realize its significance.”

Laurie shook her head. What are we missing? she thought.

The buzz of Laurie’s cell phone broke her concentration. She wanted to throw the thing across the room until she saw that the call was from Rosemary Dempsey.

“Hi, Rosemary. Can I call you right back—”

“Are you watching the news? They’re saying that Dwight Cook is dead. And now there’s a warrant out for some man named Steve Roman, and it has something to do with the attack on Jerry? Are we in danger? What in the world is going on?”

66

S
teve Roman rocked back and forth, shirtless, on the motel bed.

His name was all over the news. The police would be monitoring his credit cards as they searched for him. The second he heard his name on the car radio, he made a quick cash purchase on the streets of South Central L.A., then found a fleabag dive willing to accept cash for a room, no ID necessary. He counted the remaining bills in his wallet. Twenty-three bucks. Not much he could do with that.