Killer in the Hills by Stephen Carpenter Page B

back corner of the house and see the late-model Mercedes sedan in a tiny, tumbledown garage. The door on the driver’s side of the car opens and I see Fat Zach grunt his way out from behind the wheel. He goes to the back of the car and clicks a button on a key fob and the trunk lid opens. He digs around, collecting his camera gear from within the deep trunk of the luxury sedan.
    Zach was rumored to be worth around two or three million bucks. He had been sued for libel by furious celebrities several times, and each time he had countersued and won large settlements, which usually included non-disclosure agreements. Fat Zach may be a cockroach but he knows that truth is a defense in libel, and Fat Zach always got his facts right. He made most of his tidy fortune when he outted a famous leading man who had countercharged that Zach was a pedophile, and Zach sued him for a healthy sum. Thus, Fat Zach looks like a slug and lives like a pig and is probably a child molester but he pulls up to every premier, every award show, every party, and every perp-walk in a ninety thousand dollar car. And, since there is a party or premier or perp-walk or award show most every night in Hollywood, I had figured he would be coming home late, and I had figured right.
    I watch as he waddles to the back door of his house and fumbles with his keys in the lock. I grab my roll of nickels in a tight fist and walk toward him. Just as he opens the door, I raise my fistful of nickels and rabbit-punch him at the base of his skull and shove him into his little kitchen, where he sprawls out, face-down on the filthy floor, stunned. I put my knee in his back and press the roll of nickels against the back of his head.
    “Do exactly what I tell you or I’ll blow your head off,” I say.
    “Alright, alright,” he says.
    I shove the camera gear away and stand over him.
    “Get up,” I say. “Keep your back turned to me, put your hands behind your head.”
    He gets up, with considerable effort, glancing back at me as he puts his hands behind his head.
    “Rhodes?”
    “Shut up,” I say. I pick up his camera bag and dump out the contents, then jam the roll of nickels into his back. “Your office. Go.”
    He stumbles over thousands of dollars worth of camera gear with two dollars worth of nickels in his back, and I follow him down a dim hallway to a tiny office. The place reeks from decades of cigarette smoke, greasy food, bad plumbing, and God knows what else. I try not to breathe too deeply.
    “Sit down,” I shove him into his cracked Naugahyde desk chair. “Turn on the computer.”
    “Computer’s never off,” he says.
    “Just do it.”
    He moves a wireless mouse on the cluttered desk, which is scarred with cigarette burns. The large laptop screen comes to life.
    “Go to the file directory,” I say.
    “I don’t know what you want, but you’re making a—”
    I ram the nickels against the back of his head so hard that he bumps his nose against the computer screen.
    “Do it,” I say.
    He opens the file directory.
    “Type in Karen Penelope Rhodes,” I say.
    He enters the name and the screen fills with dozens of files.
    “Which one is the hotel security video?” I say.
    “The what?” he says. I whack him in the ear with my nickel roll.
    “Ah! Goddamnit—!” he says, cupping his ear with a pasty, surprisingly thin little hand.
    The coins are starting to come loose in their tight paper roll. A few of them slide out and scatter on top of the desk in front of Zach. No more whacking with the nickels , I think to myself. I’ll have to hit him with my fists from this point, but I don’t want to touch him. I think for a second about picking up a hand-sanitizer at the Hollywood Rite Aid after I leave.
    “Don’t make me mad, Zach,” I say. “I know you have it. And if you don’t show it to me right now I’m gonna take this computer with me and bring it to the FBI and let them look for little boys or whatever else you’ve got on here.”
    He