Dressed in a black leather jacket, black jeans, black T-shirt. Swaggering, shmoozing with the parking attendant.
No nerves; obviously, Delaware’s showing up at his office didn’t worry him. Just the opposite: Shull had taken Delaware’s questions about Drummond as proof he was safe.
If Drummond had been Shull’s partner in crime—if Drummond had known anything—Delaware’s asking about him had probably accomplished something else: Drummond was now a severe liability, bye bye, Kev.
Sturgis had opined as much at the last meeting. Drummond’s car near the airport meant Shull had probably taken care of the kid, used the Honda to pick up Erna Murphy, then planted it to imply Drummond’s long-distance rabbit. And it had worked. All those days wasted checking out airline rosters. All the time Stahl had spent watching Drummond’s apartment.
Meanwhile, Drummond was probably moldering somewhere.
Even if Drummond hadn’t been in on the bad stuff, he was a likely corpse. Because his disappearance provided distraction—terrific cover for Shull.
And because Shull liked killing people.
Modern art.
Bambu’s fake-grass door swung open and Shull exited with a knockout blonde in tow. Late twenties, big golden hair, a real Barbie. She wore a red glittery crop top under a short, black jacket, shredded second-skin jeans, high-heeled boots. Breasts way too high and too large to be real, too much makeup; Stahl upped his age estimate: the wrong side of thirty.
Your basic Sunset Boulevard party girl past her prime. But not a pro, she looked too happy positioned on Shull’s leather arm for this to be work.
Giggling. Staggering. Giddy.
Shull smiled back at her but he was composed.
Life is going so well for me.
Stahl sat in his car and watched the two of them flirt. Fixing on Shull’s macho posturing, just about feeling the heft of the sniper rifle on his shoulder.
The Expedition arrived and Shull was careful to hold the passenger door open for Barbie. Taking her hand as he did it. She kissed him in appreciation.
Once the blonde was inside, Shull and the parking valet exchanged conspiratorial glances.
Someone’s getting lucky tonight, bro.
Not the girl.
Shull stayed on Sunset and continued west, through the Strip and into Beverly Hills, speeding into even ritzier Bel Air. At Hilgard, he turned south, drove through Westwood Village, got on Wilshire and resumed a westerly route.
Making Stahl’s job easy, because even at this hour—2 A.M.—the brightly lit boulevard had its share of traffic. He hung three car lengths behind the Expedition, accompanied Shull and the blonde all the way through Brentwood and Santa Monica.
Down to Pacific Coast Highway. The beach. Here, the traffic was sparse, and the job became trickier. Stahl hung back, fixed his eyes on the SUV’s taillights. Shull picked up speed, traveling nearly seventy—twenty miles over the limit—as he crossed the coastal boundaries of Pacific Palisades and continued into the city of Malibu.
Going seventy-five per, eighty, eighty-five. Big hurry. No concern about being stopped on a traffic violation because he thought of himself as the kind of guy bad things didn’t happen to.
Or because a speeding ticket was just money, and he had plenty of that.
Did it also mean anything of forensic value been expunged from the SUV? A perfect cleaning was hard to pull off; one errant hair, a speck of body fluid could tell a tale. Shull didn’t transport his victims, he left them in place but, still, his own garments, the seat of the car—anything could’ve picked up some transfer.
Yet, here he was playing Daytona 500. Was the guy that arrogant?
Stahl’s mental meanderings were cut short when the Expedition made an abrupt right turn off the highway, into the parking lot of a white-board, blue-shuttered motel. The Sea Arms.
Caught off guard, Stahl continued another quarter mile, pulled over to the shoulder, turned around, and drove back.
Parking on the beach side of PCH, he studied the Sea Arms.
Two-storied, Cape Coddish building, behind an open parking lot. No rear property, the motel was nestled against the mountains. The usual AAA endorsement, a pink neon VACANCY sign on a tall pole.
Six units on each floor, the manager’s office down below to the right.