Dr. Seymour Kloppenberg, Private’s own Dr. Sci, was the proud head of thi
s lab, but right now he and Mo-bot were in Mo’s office, a dark cave of a room that Mo liked to call her “cozy hole.” She was burning incense, had scarves draped over the lamps, and photos of her husband and kids saved screens on the dozen computer monitors banked above her desktop.
The local news was on video six, tight close-up of a talking head reporting on the sensational “Murder in Malibu.”
Sci reclined and rocked in a swivel chair, but Mo was on the edge of her seat, visibly angry and agitated. An accomplished warrior on a multilevel, real-time online combat game, Mo sometimes felt the lines blur between game and reality.
The feeling was coming over her, that rush of being in a warrior frame of mind.
As she watched the reporter speak to the camera, Mo assumed her avatar’s personality, thought about weapons in her arsenal, and assembled her virtual army.
The reporter staring back through the screen was Randi Turner, who had been a fixture on Channel 9 for the past couple of years. Turner said to the camera’s eye, “Jack Morgan, CEO of Private Investigations, is widely viewed as the prime suspect in the murder of his former lover and personal assistant Colleen Molloy.”
Pictures of Jack flashed on the screen, and then shots of Jack, his arm around Colleen, running through rain from a restaurant marquee to his car. After that, there was a film clip of them at a Hollywood party, whispering and laughing.
Turner spoke throughout the slide show.
Turner said, “Jack Morgan’s father was the late Thomas Morgan, convicted of extortion and murder in 2003, died in prison in 2006. Like his father, Jack Morgan is said to have links to organized crime.”
Mo had had enough.
She sprang up from her chair and yelled at the TV, “Links to organized crime? Paid off his brother’s gambling debt, you mean.”
“Take it easy,” Sci said. “All this means is that the press is reaching. If they had something on Jack, they wouldn’t need to refer to his father. They wouldn’t have to imply anything.”
Turner spoke from the high-def screen on the wall above Mo’s desk. “Sources close to the police tell Channel 9 that physical evidence found on the victim implicates Jack Morgan, but the nature of that evidence is being withheld from the press.”
“Damn you. Die, bitch!”
Sci grabbed the remote from Mo’s hand and shut the TV off.
Mo said, “I could cut off her head, slice her below the knees, and leave her standing in sections. She wouldn’t even know she was dead.”
“Maureen, emotion is counterproductive.”
“Jack could never have killed Colleen.”
“No, he couldn’t, he didn’t, and he won’t get charged. This is just the free press at work, churning the news.”
“Oh, and you’re saying no innocent person has ever gone to prison? That never happens?”
“What do you say? What if you put all this energy into working the case?”
“Sure, I will. But you and I both know,” Mo-bot said, “the only thing that can save Jack is a confession from the killer. A confession that includes an explanation of how he got Jack’s semen into Colleen’s body.”
CHAPTER 46
I WENT THROUGH my voicemail as I drove.
I listened to a message from an edgy Carmine Noccia, heard from Del Rio and Scotty, then got an update from Cruz about the murder at the Beverly Hills Sun. I talked at length to our Rome office, during which time Justine returned my call. I called her back and got her voicemail.
“I’m on the road,” I said. “I’ll try you again later.”
At just after eight p.m., I pulled into my driveway. I was undoing my seat belt when a police cruiser drove up behind me and parked on the shoulder of the highway. The cruiser’s grill lights sent bursts of color across the gates and the stucco wall.
The lights came on in my mind too. I’d been driving on autopilot for the past forty minutes, had driven myself home, although I hadn’t meant to come here at all.
The squad car door slammed behind me. I buzzed down my window, and a flashlight beam blinded me so that I could only see the patrolman’s silhouette.