The Perfect Veneer Read online

  She stepped through the opening to see what was beyond. Ryan followed her in. An officer stood silently in the back of the room, stone-faced. She saw Lowden Booth’s body out of the corner of her eye but deliberately chose not to look at it just yet. She would focus on that last. First, she took in the details of the panic room, which were as impressive as the hidden entrance that got her there.

  The room was about 12 x 16, the size of Ryan’s office at the station, which was more than reasonable for a bedroom and quite large for a panic room. Most of the ones Jessie had encountered were no bigger than a small walk-in closet. The floor was made of cement. There was a panel along the back wall with both digital and analog controls and multiple display screens. There was also an old-fashioned corded phone connected to the wall.

  Along one side wall was a metal toilet and sink, both built into the wall, with a curtain attached to the ceiling that could be drawn across for some modicum of privacy. On the other side wall was a large, narrow cabinet. When she opened it, she found two folding chairs inside, along with two cots, which were also folded. There were also a pair of blankets and pillows. On the top shelf was a combination-operated lockbox, which she suspected held a gun inside, one that Booth never got close to using.

  Oddly, the room was much more spartan than might have been expected for a billionaire with unlimited resources. She wondered why he hadn’t splurged a little more in order to make the space a bit homier. Unfortunately, that was a question she’d never get to ask him.

  “What do you think?” Ryan asked her.

  She appreciated that he’d let her take in the scene for a while before broaching the question. Ryan may not have been in the field for a few months now, but he’d partnered with her on dozens of cases in the last two years and knew how her profiling process worked: she liked to immerse herself in the scene before discussing it.

  “They must not have had much warning at all before the intruder got in,” she noted. “Booth never got to the cabinet with the lockbox. Hell, the door didn’t even close before the killer got in.”

  “Agreed,” Ryan said. “Frankly, I don’t think Booth got very far at all. Let me know when you’re ready to talk about the body.”

  Jessie nodded and turned to look at Lowden Booth. The man was lying on his side, his head resting next to a medium-sized safe not far from the door. The top left corner of the safe had a bloody smudge that appeared to correspond to the large gouge on the left side of his forehead, where blood had seeped out and created a large pool on the floor that now surrounded his entire head and upper torso, as well as the underside of a section of the safe.

  Jessie focused her attention on Booth. She already knew his biographical particulars from their call with Jamil and Beth on the drive up here. Lowden Booth, the co-founder of BoothCo Biomeds, was sixty-four years old, and a billionaire a dozen times over. That last detail, even in his current condition, was not hard to discern.

  Initially he looked just like any other man in his sixties who’d been woken unexpectedly from sleep. The man was wearing boxers and a white t-shirt. His clearly dyed brown hair was sleep-disheveled, even before the left half became matted by blood. His light blue eyes were wide open, frozen forever, perhaps in horrified anticipation of the imminent collision with the safe. But upon closer inspection, she noticed signs that he’d had multiple plastic surgeries over the years, not just on his face and his tummy, but possibly on his arms, and maybe even his backside.

  “I don’t think the safe was opened,” she said.

  “No?”

  “I guess the intruder could have come in, forced him to open it, gotten the contents out, closed it, then slammed his head into the corner of the thing,” Jessie posited, “but that doesn’t feel right to me. I can’t explain why. This all seems much more bang-bang. Maybe Booth tripped or maybe he was slammed into the safe right away. We’ll find out when we get it opened.”

  “What makes you think the safe wasn’t opened after he was killed?”

  “His head is blocking the door,” Jessie noted. “There would be blood smears on the cement when it was moved out of the way, but there’s nothing like that. I don’t think he was touched after he died.”

  “I just got word that CSU and the medical examiner have pulled up,” Officer Bailey called out from outside the door.

  “Perfect timing,” Ryan said.

  “Why do you say that?” Jessie asked.

  “I think it’s time we get some insights from people who are still alive, don’t you?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jessie was on board with the plan.

  They started with Grover Nix, the man in the suit with the crewcut who’d been sitting on the Booths’ bed talking to the officer when they walked in. It turned out that he was Mr. Booth’s valet and the person who’d discovered the couple in the panic room.

  “He’s been very helpful,” Bailey said before they returned to the bedroom. “He directed one of our officers to the control room where they log video of movements on the estate and he gave us a comprehensive run-down of what happened from the moment he first heard the alarm go off.”

  “Thanks,” Ryan said, as they both reviewed the initial details of Nix’s statement, which had already been logged into the digital police report. Once he was done, he looked over at Jessie and asked, “Are you ready?”

  She nodded that she was and followed him out.

  “You take the lead,” she muttered as they approached the valet, whose head was in his hands.

  It was Ryan’s turn to nod as he approached the valet, who seemed to sense them coming and suddenly sat up straight.

  “Hello, Mr. Nix,” he said. “I’m Captain Hernandez and this is Jessie Hunt. We’re handling the case. We’ve looked over your initial statement and were hoping to follow up. Are you able to talk with us?”

  “Of course,” Nix said in a British accent. “I’ll help however I can.”

  “The timeline we have here says you were in the kitchen when you heard the alarm go off at 7:26 this morning, but didn’t recognize it as the standard one for the mansion, that you immediately ran to the Booths’ bedroom, arrived there between 7:28 and 7:29, discovered the panic room with Mr. Booth dead and Mrs. Booth unconscious, disabled the alarm, and called us at 7:31. Is all that correct?”

  Jessie had been watching Nix closely as he listened to Ryan and noted that he was paying complete attention. He wasn’t dazed or distracted like most witnesses who had recently discovered a dead body would typically be, especially of someone they knew well.

  “Principally yes,” he said, “although to be clear, when I disabled the alarm, I thought that Mrs. Booth was dead too. I regret not having checked her vitals initially.”

  “How did you discover that she was alive?” Ryan asked.

  “She moaned,” he answered. “It was barely audible. I realized that the intruder must have knocked her out somehow, after tying her hands behind her back. Maybe they thought she was dead too. I suppose that’s your job to discern, yes?”

  “May I ask you a question, Mr. Nix?” Jessie wondered, speaking to the man directly for the first time.

  “Yes ma’am,” he said.

  “Why did you immediately run to the Booths’ bedroom when you heard the unfamiliar alarm?”

  Nix looked briefly flummoxed.

  “I was concerned for their welfare, ma’am,” he finally said.

  “But you’d never heard this alarm before, right?” she said. “It could have been tripped accidentally. It could have been an incursion at the outer fence of the property. Why go to their bedroom? Is it because you’re not just their valet, Mr. Nix, and you felt an obligation to check on them immediately?”

  He smiled reluctantly.

  “How did you know?”

  “Well, we could start with your precision memory of exactly where you were at any given moment. Then there’s your ability to, after finding your employer dead in a panic room, turn off the alarm on a complicated control panel, and have the wherewithal to immediately call the police. Plus, you guided our officers to the security control room and knew about the camera setup. You also managed to get from the kitchen, up two flights of stairs, and to the third-floor bedroom in under three minutes. And unlike most witnesses we talk to, you don’t seem undone by the fact that, less than an hour ago, you discovered the murdered body of someone you know lying in a pool of blood. Also, your suit jacket is undone and while you removed your gun and shoulder strap, there is still a visible mark on your dress shirt where you sweated through it during the incident.”

  “Pretty impressive,” Nix said, his eyebrows arched nearly to his hairline.

  “It sure is,” Ryan said, with an expression that toggled between admiration and arousal.

  “Why didn’t you just tell us straight out?” Jessie asked Nix, pretending not to notice her husband’s eyes lasering into her.

  “Because I keep my promises to my clients, even after their deaths,” he said, “and Mr. Booth made me promise not to reveal to outsiders what my real role here was.”

  “What do you mean?” Ryan asked.

  Nix stood up, buttoned his suit jacket, and brushed it off.

  “I suppose the cat’s out of the bag now,” he said.

  “It is,” Jessie confirmed, “so please, be as forthcoming as you can.”

  “You have to understand,” Nix said, extending his chin outward as if he was a knight describing his king, “Mr. Booth had legitimate concerns about his safety. While many feel that the drugs he has developed have improved the lives of millions of people, there are others who oppose the methods he used to bring them to market. Conspiracy theorists accuse him of implanting trackers in patients. Study participants have filed lawsuits against him. Competitors resent him. Gov
ernment investigators repeatedly scrutinize him. Even former business partners take issue with him.”

  “Are you saying that none of that is merited?” Jessie asked.

  “I’m not commenting on the validity of any of those claims,” Nix sidestepped. “That’s not my area of expertise. What I’m saying is that all of it puts a target on his back. He had traditional bodyguards, but he wasn’t satisfied with them. So someone put him in touch with me.”

  “Why you?” Ryan asked.

  “I guess I came with a good reputation,” Nix said. “I’m former SAS, for over a decade before transitioning into private security. When he reached out to me, I was ready to make a change, so the timing was fortuitous.”

  “How so?” Jessie pressed.

  “I was getting older,” Nix admitted, “and my body was starting to balk at the physical stressors that come with the grind of daily security work, so we came up with a plan that worked well for both of us; at least I thought it did.”

  “Do tell,” Jessie asked, intrigued.

  “We determined that he would get a new security team, one I chose. They would be Mr. Booth’s public-facing bodyguards, close to him, visible at all events. I selected them specifically for that purpose and they were excellent at it. They did the heavy lifting. They dealt with the aggressive fans or protesters. But I was ultimately in charge of that team, as well as a smaller, elite unit that would also attend functions and work here at the estate.”

  “How does that work?” Ryan asked.

  “Quite well, for three years actually, until today,” Nix said, with a whiff of defensiveness in his voice. “Since we would serve as security and real valets, we were able to stay close to both Mr. and Mrs. Booth to offer protection without anyone taking notice of us. Anyone wishing him harm would focus on the huge guys with shaved heads. The quiet fellows off to the side carrying suitcases, holding purses, taking empty glasses, handing over little notes—we were just wallpaper. It made it much easier to do our jobs.”

  “And here at the mansion?” Jessie wondered.

  “We have a separate company called Hatch Secure that handles exterior security,” Nix explained. “They work the guard house and patrol the grounds. Unless specifically instructed otherwise, they don’t enter the mansion. That’s the purview of my people. Exterior security is an eighteen-person contingent, broken up into three six-person units that work eight-hour shifts. Shift changes are at 6 a.m., 2 p.m. and 10 p.m.”

  “Are they armed?” Ryan asked.

  “Patrol officers have stun guns. Shift commanders have handguns,” Nix said.

  “No offense, Mr. Nix,” Jessie said, about to give offense, “but that’s a pretty comprehensive security arrangement. How did someone possibly get past it all, into the house, all the way to the Booths’ bedroom, to attack them in their panic room?”

  “That is a question that is going to haunt me for some time, Ms. Hunt,” Nix conceded, straightening his jacket unconsciously. “When you look at the video footage, which I’ve already reviewed, I suspect you’ll be as baffled as I am. I still don’t know how the perpetrator got onto the estate or into the house. Frankly, there are a lot of other things I don’t know as well.”

  “Like what?” Jessie pressed.

  Nix sighed heavily.

  “For example,” he said. “I had never heard that alarm before and I’m the head of security for this place. You can imagine how disconcerting that was for me. And when I got up here, I was stunned to discover that there even was a panic room. Mr. Booth had never mentioned having one. I don’t know if he didn’t trust me or if he wanted to have one place that was secure even from his own security. That’s not a crazy idea. But I was taken aback.”

  Officer Bailey poked his head into the room and gave a gentle wave.

  “You wanted me to let you know when the EMTs were planning to take Mrs. Booth to the hospital,” he said. “They’re just about there.”

  “Thanks,” Ryan told him. “Don’t let them leave yet. We’ll be right there.”

  “We obviously have to head next door,” Jessie said to Nix, “but before we go, tell us this. You’ve been in charge of security here for three years. You said yourself that as a valet you recede into the background and go unnoticed. With your experience and proximity to the situation, there’s probably no one better equipped to give us an opinion: what do you think happened here?”

  Grover Nix stared at her and his eyes, dark and penetrating, seemed to size her up, deciding whether she could handle what he had to say. Whatever conclusion he came to in his head, his response was matter of fact.

  “I’ll preface this by saying that I’m no investigator. I often used to have kill people as part of my job. Now I make my living by trying to make sure people don’t get killed. Having said that, despite the mask being worn, the footage I saw of the perpetrator running from the scene suggests a male. You’ll have experts who can better determine that, I’m sure. Regardless, he knew the best place to run to avoid being caught by the guards, where there would be gaps in our security perimeter at that time of the morning. Once he scaled the fence, it’s only a few hundred yards to Cactus Canyon Trail and then a short jaunt into Runyon Canyon Park. It’d be easy to get lost among the early morning hikers, joggers, and dog walkers in there.

  “Beyond that, whoever did this knew where in the house the Booths’ bedroom was. This is a giant mansion with over forty rooms, including nine bedrooms. This person knew where to go, how to get there, and just as importantly, how to get out fast. According to the footage, he wore gloves. He was prepared. He knew what he was doing. He had intimate knowledge of the terrain. That suggests someone who knows this place well or who is at least familiar with another person who does.”

  “An inside job?” Ryan asked. “I thought you vetted everyone.”

  Nix shook his head.

  “I vetted everyone on my security team and everyone who was on the exterior security company workforce,” he corrected, “along with any mansion employee who joined after I took over. But that’s just the last three years. Mr. Booth has lived here for eight years, and he brought some of his staff from his prior home. There are employees here who have been with him for over two decades. I did security checks on all of them. But unless I found something earth-shattering, Mr. Booth wasn’t inclined to do anything. In my time here, he only let me fire one employee, and that was a member of the waitstaff who repeatedly made lewd comments to one of the housekeepers.”

  “So you can’t vouch for the personal integrity of staff who were grandfathered in,” Jessie replied, “or say, much younger wives that he married before you came along?”

  Nix didn’t bite.

  “Mrs. Booth was here before I came on the scene,” he said. “They’d been married for two years before I was hired. And it’s true that I didn’t do anything other than a cursory background check on her to make sure she didn’t have criminal record. Going beyond that would have been a good way to get myself fired.”

  “Mr. Nix,” Jessie said with mock disappointment, “that doesn’t sound like going the extra mile for your client.”

  “I can assure you, Ms. Hunt, Mr. Booth’s lawyers did a thorough workup on her long before I came along,” Nix countered. “In my experience, they leave no stone unturned. But for what it’s worth, I liked her. They already seemed like an old married couple by the time I got here. They were so comfortable together that I was actually surprised when I found out that she was his second wife. You should definitely do your due diligence. She is the wife of a billionaire after all. I suppose that inherently equals ‘suspect.’ But I’ll admit to this, when she started moaning and I realized she wasn’t dead, it gave me a little spark of hope. I won’t ever be able to pretend that I didn’t fail this family. But at least someone survived, even if it wasn’t because of me. I’ll hold on to that.”

  Grover Nix looked genuinely torn up. Jessie had half a notion to try to buck him up. But a return visit from an anxious-looking Officer Bailey told her that they’d run out of time.