Read Online Killer in the Hills by Stephen Carpenter - Free Book Online

hesitates, then scrolls down the list of files with his right hand on the mouse. I notice him slide his left hand off of the desk. I grab his wrist and spin him around and reach under the desk and feel the steel grip of a pistol. I kneel down and see a holster stuck to the underside of the desktop with brown packing tape. I pull out the pistol—a Nazi-era Luger. I check the magazine, which is loaded. I pocket the roll of nickels and hold the gun at Zach’s head. The gun is dusty and corroded and I doubt that it will fire but Zach isn’t worth shooting, anyway.
    “Is there anything in this place that isn’t at least fifty years old and nasty?” I say.
    “Computer,” Zach mumbles, with an odd note of pride.
    “Probably more dangerous than the gun, in your hands,” I say. “The video.”
    He scrolls down to a file and opens it.
    We watch in silence as the dark, grainy security video from the Chateau Marmont plays: Penelope walks down the hall with a man wearing sunglasses, a bulky cargo jacket, and a baseball cap, his head low. He is average height and weight, white, and other than that I can’t tell anything more. They enter the room and the video rolls on uneventfully for a minute.
    “How’d you get this?” I say.
    “Guy I know at the Marmont,” he says.
    “Fast forward.”
    Zach hits a key and the video scans forward until the man exits the suite.
    “Pause it.”
    Zach pauses it and I look carefully at the man, but I can’t see anything more than I could before.
    “Do you have any idea who that is?” I say.
    “No idea,” Fat Zach shakes his head. “It’s too dark, too far away.”
    “Roll it.”
    Zach rolls the video again and the man walks away.
    “That’s it,” Fat Zach says. “No one else shows up until housekeeping, about six hours later, when they found her.”
    I scan down the list of the other files on the screen and notice some files with different extensions.
    “What are those files?” I say.
    Fat Zach doesn’t say anything, so I grab the long gray hairs on the back of his head and pull.
    “People who went to the girl’s website,” he grunts. “BabyKare.”
    “Who are they?” I say.
    “Nobodies—nobody I know, anyway,” Fat Zach says. “This is my property. I paid for it and you can’t—” he says, and I slap the back of his head.
    “Bullshit,” I say. “You know everybody. Give me a name.”
    Fat Zach hesitates. His skinny little T-Rex arms flail around and then he grips the desk so he doesn’t fall over if I hit him again.
    “I swear, I don’t know any of them,” he says. He opens a few files and I see names and credit card numbers. “Most of them probably aren’t the cardholders’ real names, anyway.”
    “These are people who paid to visit Karen’s website?” I say.
    “Yes.”
    “You know how to find out who they are,” I say. “Don’t tell me you haven’t tried.”
    “I have tried, but I just got this stuff today,” he says. “I need more time…”
    I grab the back of his neck and push him over, chair and all. He flops around on the floor like a beached manatee as I shut down the laptop and unplug it from the wall. I stuff the power cord into the camera bag and turn the laptop back on. The screen comes to life and prompts me for a password.
    “Password,” I say.
    Zach says nothing. I kick him in the leg and point the Luger at him.
    “Give it to me, Zach.”
    “You won’t shoot me,” he says.
    “You’re right,” I say, and pull the chair off him and kick him in the groin as hard as I can. He shrieks and curls up in a fat ball, his face twisted in pain. Tears squeeze out of his eyes and run down his face.
    “Password.”
    I wait as he cries for a moment, then I rear back with my foot again like a placekicker—
    “Evelyn,” he says.
    I type it in and the computer comes to life. From nowhere I remember Evelyn was his mother’s name. Touching.
    I kneel underneath the desk, where there is a rack of backup hard drives blinking. I unplug