moment, but Milo reached the second floor without seeing another human. Room six was at the end of the shabby hallway. He knocked once, and the door swung open.
Though it was almost noon on the sun-washed streets outside, the room was dark, the curtains drawn. Milo slowly peeked his head into the darkness. “Hello…Tony? Fay? Is anyone here?”
He stepped over the threshold, fumbling for the light switch. He found it, switched it on and off but nothing happened. He cautiously took another step, his eyes slowly becoming accustomed to the dark. Glass crunched under his shoe, and Milo realized he’d stepped on pieces of a smashed light bulb.
“Hello?”
Milo saw the window and yanked the curtains open. A wall a few feet outside the door blocked most of the sunlight, but enough streamed in for Milo to see Fay’s computer network had been set up and was still running, though the monitor had been placed in hibernation mode.
Finally, Milo noticed light streaming from around the door to the bathroom. Over the constant hum of the feeble air conditioner, he listened for running water. He walked up to the door, placed his ear against it. “Tony? Fay?” he called.
Milo touched the brass doorknob, turned it. The bathroom door swung open. There was no window in the bathroom, but the tiny space was lit by fluorescent lights on either side of the cracked mirror. There was no bathtub, but the shower curtains were drawn.
He was about to leave the bathroom when Milo noticed brown spots on the white tiled floor…Lots of them. The big splotches weren’t brown, really. More like a dark red. The trail led to the shower. With trepidation, Milo slowly drew the plastic curtains aside.
Fay Hubley lay in the corner of the shower. Milo knew she was dead. There was no way she could be alive. Not after what had been done to her.
Gagging, Milo whirled, stumbled out of the bathroom and into the powerful grip of a brawny giant in a T-shirt and black leather vest. The man had long sandy-blond hair in a ponytail, a raggedy beard and shoulders as wide as a sports utility vehicle. Milo struggled and the man tightened his grip. Then Milo cursed — only to be silenced when the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun was shoved against the side of his head. When the intruder spoke, his breath stank of stale beer.
“Don’t make a sound, kid, or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off.”
8. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 P.M. AND 1 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME
The famously wealthy enclave of Beverly Hills was bounded by Robertson Boulevard on the east, Olympic Boulevard to the south, and the communities of Westwood and Century City on the west. Palm-lined streets and palatial mansions dominated the landscape, but all was not glitz and glamour inside this exclusive neighborhood.
An army of housekeepers and service personnel were also a part of this community — albeit a practically invisible part who cooked, made beds, washed clothes, cleaned pools, drove limousines, cut lawns, and nursed the children of the pampered show business elite.
At the moment, Lon Nobunaga was grateful for the service industry’s relative obscurity in this realm of the high and mighty. That, and a lack of vigilance by a member of Abigail Heyer’s security personnel, had allowed the tabloid photographer to climb a power pole that overlooked the front yard and driveway of the actress’s sprawling, Moorish-style mansion. Abandoning his car several blocks away, Lon, clad in his fake Pacific Power and Light overalls and ID tag, lugged a metal case containing his photographic gear to the front gate of Ms. Heyer’s estate.
“I’m here to check the power grid,” he’d told the guard. Without checking Lon’s ID — he had a fake in case — and without searching the toolbox in his hand, the guard simply nodded and swung the steel gate open. It was so easy Lon nearly chuckled. He knew that a second and third line of defense secured the three-story mansion, the patios and pool behind the house. But Lon didn’t need to get anywhere near the residence to snap the photo he was after — not when he could plainly see the driveway that led to the front door from atop this power pole. Not when he had his trusty Nikon D2X and fourteen different lenses to go with it.
Like most professional photographers, Lon was a recent convert to the digital realm. He’d chafed at the limitations of early digital cameras and stuck to the tried and true. But the technology slowly improved until Lon could find no fault with the newer models. Now he shot his pictures, selected the best, cropped and edited them, and then sent them via e-mail to the Sunset Strip offices of
For the past fifty-five minutes, Lon had pretended to work on the circuit box at the top of the pole. Meanwhile he listened to the all-news radio network, which broadcast Silver Screen pre-show updates every twenty minutes or so. He learned from the broadcast that Abigail Heyer’s plane had landed at LAX about an hour before. The newscaster mentioned Ms. Heyer’s tireless work on behalf of children trapped in the conflict-torn regions of Bosnia, Croatia, Chechnya, Daghrebistan. He added that her work with the United Nations focused the world’s attention on the plight of orphans around the world. But there was no mention of the woman’s pregnancy, which meant that no photographers or television crews had gotten anywhere near Abigail Heyer at the airport.
If the rumors of her impending childbirth were true — and his boss Jake Gollob was almost never wrong — then Lon’s photograph of the suddenly pregnant movie queen would be a major scoop. It would probably make the wire services, too. That meant money in the bank for Lon, and a happy boss at
Lon put the pause on his dreams of wealth when he spied a flurry of activity near the front gate. The guard was on the phone, nodding. Another security man rushed to the estate’s entrance. A Rolls-Royce with tinted glass windows rolled through the gate, followed by a black sedan with bodyguards.
Lon tore off his headset and fumbled for his Nikon.
Crouching low behind the circuit box, he pointed the lens at the Rolls as it halted near the front door of the three-story mansion. He began snapping photos as soon as the driver climbed out and opened the back door. Though the interior of vehicle was dim, he hoped the digital camera pierced the shadows for a decent shot, but almost immediately the view was blocked by a security man — a tall giant with white-blond, short-cropped hair who looked like a KGB man in a 1980s political thriller. Lon stopped snapping when he knew all he was getting was the guard’s broad back.
Finally, after a few long moments, Abigail Heyer climbed out of the backseat with help from the driver and security man, who took her proffered hands. She was very pregnant indeed, almost as big as she was in the movie
Lon quickly closed up the camera, stuffed it into the case meant to hold power tools, and climbed down the pole. He waited until the activity subsided before he walked back to the gate.
“All fixed,” he declared.
The gate guard didn’t reply. He simply buzzed Lon through, not bothering to open the gate himself.
As he hurried back to his car, Lon again marveled at how much the actually pregnant Abigail Heyer resembled the falsely pregnant character she played in
12:06:33 P.M.PDT La Hacienda Tijuana, Mexico
