Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(104)
Luke stands. “I actually did write for the paper at SF State.”
“Good, now work on the social anxiety part.”
Luke opens the door before Mona’s finished talking.
“I’m probably just letting you go because I’m sick of watching Judy check out your butt every five minutes.”
“That’s a nasty lie!” Judy shouts.
Just for good measure, Luke wiggles his butt as he passes Judy’s desk. He can’t help himself. He’s that excited to have cleared the hurdle that is Mona Sanchez so quickly.
36
Frederick Pemberton owns two vehicles: a motorcycle and an SUV.
Within a few hours of their arrival in Newport Beach, Luke managed to plant GPS trackers on both of them; the Kawasaki the doctor drove to work and the Cadillac SRX he left in the parking garage under his condo high-rise. The high-rise is ten stories, a drab stone tower fringed with deep balconies, right at the entrance to the Lido Peninsula, a little finger of land that sticks out into Newport Bay.
According to the stats Bailey sent, Pemberton lives in 8B; a twenty-five-hundred-square-foot two-bedroom unit with a view of the harbor. But it’s also got neighbors above, below, and along the eastern wall. A shitty kill house, by any measure. And the building’s security is mostly for show. A guardhouse at the entry next to some aboveground visitor parking. Keypad entry to both the lobby and the subterranean garage—the kind of defenses designed to keep thieves from backing up vans and trucks to the place, not the kind favored by residents with grave secrets. As evidenced by the fact that it took Luke twenty minutes to plant the tracker on Pemberton’s Caddy and make it back to the Jeep several blocks away, where Charley waited for him with her shaky hands clasped between her knees.
The parking garage at Pemberton’s office tower—a fifteen-minute drive away at Newport Center, where immaculate, modern high-rises stand on a circular drive around an upscale shopping mall—was even less secure. Luke returned to the Jeep without having broken a sweat.
Now they’re back at the Travelodge in Corona del Mar, waiting for the doctor to finish his workday, the contents of their recent trip to Best Buy spread out between them on one of the room’s bouncy twin beds.
Luke’s busy assembling stuff. Charley’s busy assembling her thoughts.
Luke seems to be having more fun.
She bought four GPS trackers total out of her dwindling funds, as well as an additional tablet to monitor their signals. Luke paid for the car mounts, one for the GPS tablet, the other for the tablet that came with her are these things real contact lenses, which maybe she should be wearing right now because technically she’s working. They both are.
But for now working means waiting for Pemberton to go on the move again. Whoever’s watching the transmission from the lenses, are they really going to be that interested in seeing Luke unwrap the equipment while she scrolls through texts from Bailey on her burner phone?
She’s not even reading the texts. Not really. She’s got them memorized. And it gives her something Zen-like to do as she draws a map from memory in her head. Pemberton’s condo is eight minutes south of their motel if they take State Road 55; twelve if they take surface streets. His office is only a few miles east, but Upper Newport Bay cuts through the land between, which will force them onto crowded PCH to the south or north onto the toll road if they have to pursue the good doctor in a hurry.
Eyes on 73.
“It’s Bailey,” she says. “He got into the tollbooth cameras.”
“All of them?” Luke doesn’t even look up from the mount he’s assembling.
All three entrances? she types.
Jamboree Road, McArthur, 55 intersection.
“All of them,” she says.
“Hot dog.” But he’s already assembling the next mount, too preoccupied to give in to excitement.
Hot dog is right. It’s a huge help. Between this and how quickly the GPS trackers got planted, she feels dangerously close to a good mood.
If Pemberton’s taking a long drive, to his country house, for instance, he’s got almost no choice but to use the toll road at some point. He can’t get to the 405 or the 5 freeway without it. Better yet, the old pay booths are all gone. The whole thing’s run by cameras that snap your license plate photo when you enter and send you a nice fat fine in the mail if you don’t go online and pay the toll within five days. Cameras Bailey can now see through.
Meanwhile, about seventy-five miles south and a little ways inland, Marty, or one of the guys he’s got working with him, is currently perched on a back road that snakes through the dry, boulder-strewn mountains just east of Interstate 15, and he’s studying the former vineyard Pemberton’s turned into his country house.
Based on what she saw online, the surrounding countryside is beautiful, but Temecula is hardly the Napa Valley of Southern California many of the locals would like it to be. It’s more rugged, for one, and you can still snag a parcel of land for only several hundred thousand dollars. But a short drive south is the Pala Casino Spa Resort. That’s where one of Marty’s buddies has parked a motor home so the whole crew can use it as their crash pad in between watches. It’s a great idea, although she won’t want to smell the inside of the RV if this thing drags on for too long. But so far none of the guys is complaining.
Yesterday evening Marty gave her an excellent report on Pemberton’s place.