story on the news had tripped the silent alarm at the back of my head, the one that won’t let me sleep until I’ve investigated further. Call it a sixth sense; call it intuition—either way, I’ve learned not to ignore it.
I opened up a second browser window and navigated to Google. I typed in two words—a name. As I hit return, I didn’t know whether I truly wanted to find anything or not. I didn’t really expect to get anything useful on just the name, so I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t. Some images showing half a dozen unfamiliar faces, presumably belonging to men who shared the name. An invitation to view the profiles of individuals of that name on LinkedIn. Even the website of a writer by that name, who apparently specialized in sensual erotica . I was pretty sure none of these links would give me what I was looking for.
I left the name in the search field and added Los Angeles . Fewer results, but none of them any use. Again, I wasn’t surprised. The type of person I was looking for wouldn’t be much of a social media animal. The type of person I was looking for would try to leave as little trace of himself as possible. Not so different from me, if only in that respect.
I retrieved my beer and took a long pull. I looked out of the floor-to-ceiling window at the black void of the ocean. I thought about the distance from here to California. It was the better part of three thousand miles. About as far away as you could get without leaving the continental United States. I thought some more, and then my hands returned to the keyboard. I deleted the first name and left everything else in the search field: just the last name and Los Angeles.
I got some more Facebooks and the website of a performing arts theater and some more random grains of sand from the Sahara of the Internet . . . and one news article, second from the bottom of the first page. A news article about an event that occurred in the late nineties.
I heard an echo in my head from long ago. It’s the truth.
I clicked on the link, and the alarm in the back of my head picked up in intensity.
17
Los Angeles
Sarah Dutton had been found. Not a dead body, but a living, breathing potential witness. Sarah hadn’t exactly been living under a rock for the previous twenty-four hours, but it seemed she’d been similarly cut off from the real world—ensconced in a three-thousand-dollar-a-night penthouse suite in the Chateau Marmont.
Expensive room or not, she was still in the twenty-first century. She’d made it to two p.m. before learning she was feared murdered and the subject of a statewide search, but she’d laid low for another few hours anyway. Allen didn’t think that was particularly odd. She’d never been in that precise situation herself, of course, but she decided it might easily provoke panic in your average young lady. And besides, reading between the lines, Allen decided the fact that she had not been occupying the expensive hotel room alone might explain her hesitation.
The sun was all the way down by the time they got underway, and the evening traffic was typically sluggish. She and Mazzucco made slow progress on the drive back to the palace on Mulholland Drive. The house looked somehow bigger in the dark, the high walls lit from ground level by floodlights.
Walter Dutton was a changed man from their first encounter. Where before he’d looked unkempt and shaken, now he looked rejuvenated. He was dressed in a suit that Allen suspected wouldn’t leave much change out of her monthly paycheck. From the moment he opened the door to them, he seemed impatient. Allen wondered if he was overcompensating, embarrassed about his earlier show of vulnerability.
He ushered them back into the big living room, where there were two other people waiting. The first was another suited man with a silk tie and gray hair at his temples. Allen’s time in DC had attuned her to certain indigenous character types, and she would bet that
I opened up a second browser window and navigated to Google. I typed in two words—a name. As I hit return, I didn’t know whether I truly wanted to find anything or not. I didn’t really expect to get anything useful on just the name, so I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t. Some images showing half a dozen unfamiliar faces, presumably belonging to men who shared the name. An invitation to view the profiles of individuals of that name on LinkedIn. Even the website of a writer by that name, who apparently specialized in sensual erotica . I was pretty sure none of these links would give me what I was looking for.
I left the name in the search field and added Los Angeles . Fewer results, but none of them any use. Again, I wasn’t surprised. The type of person I was looking for wouldn’t be much of a social media animal. The type of person I was looking for would try to leave as little trace of himself as possible. Not so different from me, if only in that respect.
I retrieved my beer and took a long pull. I looked out of the floor-to-ceiling window at the black void of the ocean. I thought about the distance from here to California. It was the better part of three thousand miles. About as far away as you could get without leaving the continental United States. I thought some more, and then my hands returned to the keyboard. I deleted the first name and left everything else in the search field: just the last name and Los Angeles.
I got some more Facebooks and the website of a performing arts theater and some more random grains of sand from the Sahara of the Internet . . . and one news article, second from the bottom of the first page. A news article about an event that occurred in the late nineties.
I heard an echo in my head from long ago. It’s the truth.
I clicked on the link, and the alarm in the back of my head picked up in intensity.
17
Los Angeles
Sarah Dutton had been found. Not a dead body, but a living, breathing potential witness. Sarah hadn’t exactly been living under a rock for the previous twenty-four hours, but it seemed she’d been similarly cut off from the real world—ensconced in a three-thousand-dollar-a-night penthouse suite in the Chateau Marmont.
Expensive room or not, she was still in the twenty-first century. She’d made it to two p.m. before learning she was feared murdered and the subject of a statewide search, but she’d laid low for another few hours anyway. Allen didn’t think that was particularly odd. She’d never been in that precise situation herself, of course, but she decided it might easily provoke panic in your average young lady. And besides, reading between the lines, Allen decided the fact that she had not been occupying the expensive hotel room alone might explain her hesitation.
The sun was all the way down by the time they got underway, and the evening traffic was typically sluggish. She and Mazzucco made slow progress on the drive back to the palace on Mulholland Drive. The house looked somehow bigger in the dark, the high walls lit from ground level by floodlights.
Walter Dutton was a changed man from their first encounter. Where before he’d looked unkempt and shaken, now he looked rejuvenated. He was dressed in a suit that Allen suspected wouldn’t leave much change out of her monthly paycheck. From the moment he opened the door to them, he seemed impatient. Allen wondered if he was overcompensating, embarrassed about his earlier show of vulnerability.
He ushered them back into the big living room, where there were two other people waiting. The first was another suited man with a silk tie and gray hair at his temples. Allen’s time in DC had attuned her to certain indigenous character types, and she would bet that
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