Chapter 38
It made sense. Not only did Edward Samuelson have access to all of the final versions of the pirated films, but he also had the skills to splice in the frames of the extortion videos.
“I heard Ed say to the others that he paid his ransom,” Alex said, recalling the conversation she’d overheard at Martin’s party.
“He could have been lying.”
“What about when you met with him? What was he like?”
Con huffed.
“I dunno. What you’d expect a film editor to be like, I suppose. He was a proud guy, ornery.”
“Ornery enough to kill Martin?”
David Lean, the expertly spliced films, the anger Ed had expressed at Martin for calling in the FBI.
Everything pointed at Edward Samuelson as being behind this.
But extortion by a man who was bitter at not being able to transition from editing to directing was a far cry from killing Martin and staging his death to look like an accidental overdose.
“Maybe?” Con said. “Ed makes good money, but I doubt he makes anything close to what Martin or the others pull in. And when Martin refused to pay him, perhaps he decided that enough was enough.”
“It’s always about the money,” Alex grumbled, repeating what both of them had said numerous times during their investigation.
Despite her words, something still wasn’t sitting right with Alex.
Something was off.
“What do you think about the videos he sent me?” Con asked. “Assuming it is Edward who is behind them?”
What Con was really asking was, Why go to such complicated lengths to extort his colleagues? Why splice them into pirated films? Why not just send them to Martin, Thomas, Charles, and Adon directly?
Alex supposed that extorting these men hurt their personal pocketbooks while uploading illegal versions of the movies hurt the company as a whole.
A two-for-one deal.
It still didn’t feel exactly right , though.
“Alex?”
“Mmm ? Sorry, was just thinking.”
Con gave her a queer look.
“I asked why you think Ed sent me those videos?”
Alex shrugged and spouted what made sense with respect to the narrative they’d formed.
“Considering that he sent the video of us at the party, he knew that we were present. Best guess is that he panicked, figured that we were getting too close to him. Decided to try and extort you—maybe not for cash, but to get you to stop your investigation.”
“Well, if he thought that was going to work, Eddie has another thing coming.”
Con entered the impressive Imperial Productions head office first, with Alex directly on his heels. They’d left Dwight back at OC Post with the computer, told him to continue to dig while they went to go have a little chat with Edward Samuelson.
Alex watched as her partner spoke to a secretary in the lobby who informed them that she wasn’t sure if Edward was in—she hadn’t seen him—but then went on to say that the man was known to arrive early and leave late.
When the secretary picked up the phone and offered to page him, Con declined.
“Thank you, but this isn’t important. I bet he’s busy—don’t want to take him away from his work for too long. And I’ve been here before, I know where his office is.”
Office, Alex quickly learned, was a bit of a colloquialism in this context. Unless, of course, there was a pristine work area hidden deep within the bowels of a typical LA subbasement.
“He’s down here?” she asked as they navigated the industrial space. The idea that they were missing a key element of this case started to fade the deeper they went and the dingier their surroundings became.
Hell, if she worked down here, Alex wouldn’t be shocked if she was pushed to murder, as well.
“Somewhere…” Con stopped at a fork in the tunnels and looked around.
Sweat dripped down Alex’s forehead and she wiped it away with the back of her hand.
“Which way?”
Instead of answering, Con took two steps to his left only to back up so quickly that they nearly bumped into one another.
“I don’t… I don’t know. Everything looks the same.”
Alex nodded.
“I’ll go left, you go right.” As she said this, she unclipped the latch on her hip holster.
“No, it’s this way. Come on.”
They went left.
Ten sweltering minutes later, they reached another fork.
“Goddamn it,” Con cursed, once again stopping.
Alex heard shuffling feet moving toward them and she pointed in the direction of the sound. Con pulled his gun and laid it down the side of his leg. He signaled for her to press up against the wall, make herself small, and Alex did.
“Edward?” Con said loudly. The sound bounced up and down the concrete corridor. “Edward Samuelson?”
A man came into view and Alex exhaled.
It wasn’t Edward. It was an elderly man wearing socks and Crocs. He looked as lost as they did and despite Con’s shouts, he didn’t seem at all alarmed.
She watched her partner put his gun away.
“Do you know where Edward Samuelson’s office is?”
The man looked up. He had wild, overgrown eyebrows.
“Yeah. Back that way, take a right at the first fork. Then continue straight and it’s there, at the end.”
If he was at all interested in why two members of law enforcement—today, they couldn’t look more like detectives or FBI Agents if they tried—it didn’t show on his weathered face.
Con and Alex hurried back the way they’d come and followed the man’s directions.
They arrived in front of a thick door.
“This is where I met him a few days ago,” Con informed her. He reached for the handle. It turned freely.
“What’s wrong?” Alex asked, noting the suspicion on her partner’s features.
“He told me that if he leaves the room, he always locks it behind him.”
The implication was clear, but Con reinforced it by drawing his gun again.
The man was inside.
Alex withdrew her own pistol from the holster.
Con opened the door and stepped to his left. Alex slipped in behind him, raising her pistol and sweeping the area to their right.
She saw rows and rows of massive computers held on wire racks, but no Edward Samuelson.
“Edward?” Con said again. “Edward, it’s Agent Striker. You in here?”
With two fingers, Con pointed down the rows of computers, then at Alex’s chest.
She nodded and started walking forward.
“Ed? You here? We just want to talk.”
Alex cleared each of the eight rows of computers before eventually meeting Con at what she could only describe as a battle station: eight monitors, stacked in twos, a dozen or more devices that she didn’t recognize sitting on a wooden desk.
What she didn’t see was a computer.
Three thick cables lay loosely on the surface leading to nothing.
“Shit—he’s not here,” Con said. “That’s where the computer was last time. He must have left in a hurry.”
He indicated a rectangular outline on the desk that was a lighter shade than the surrounding area.
“But not before sending you those emails,” Alex remarked. She grabbed her partner’s arm. “Let’s go. We need to tell Marcus Allen to put out an APB for Edward Samuelson.”
***
“Let me get this straight, Agent Striker,” Marcus’ voice came from Con’s cell phone, which he had put on speaker and laid on the dash of his Audi rental. “You want me to put out an all-points bulletin for this Edward Samuelson, an editor at Imperial Productions because… the person who uploaded the pirated films used a username that may or may not be that of a famous editor turned director?”
That was exactly what Con wanted.
Marcus was missing one key fact, that the same username had been used to send him a copy of the video taken inside Martin Yeo’s house during the party.
Footage that had subsequently been deleted.
But Con hadn’t shared this information with the Special Agent in Charge.
And neither had Alex.
“Last night, I overheard Edward speaking with Martin, telling him to just pay the damn ransom. And he was pissed because Martin decided to involve the FBI.”
“Didn’t you also say that all of the people you heard talking were extorted?” Marcus shot back.
“Yes, but we think that Edward just made this up.”
Marcus was nonplussed.
“Not enough for an APB. Not enough to bring any charges in the pirated film case.”
“This isn’t a pirated film case any longer,” Con countered. “This is a murder investigation. You said so yourself.”
Again, this didn’t seem to bother Marcus.
“Which only means that we need stronger evidence before we bring this Edward guy in.”
“Look,” Con pleaded, “Edward himself told me that he’s the first to arrive and the last to leave IP. He grumbled about how the directors and producers gave him virtually no time to do his job. We go there in the middle of the afternoon today and not only is he not there, but Edward has taken his computer with him. And he’s probably the only one of the group with the skill to cut the scenes into the pirated movies.”
“So you think.”
Con’s face went red.
“For fuck’s sake, Marcus! This is our guy! You told us to close this case, so let us fucking close it! Put out the APB!”
There was a short pause and then, “Agents Striker and Frost I would like to see you in my office.”
Con threw his hands up and then slammed them on the steering wheel. Pain shot up to his elbows and he winced.
“This is a waste of time! Edward is just—”
He felt a hand on his arm and looked over at Alex.
She was trying to calm him.
It didn’t work.
“—putting more distance between us and him. If he goes after Thomas or—”
“This is not a request, Agent Striker,” Marcus boomed. “It was an order! I want you and Agent Frost in my office, now! ”
Con reached for his phone. He jammed his thumb on the END button multiple times. The call was dropped, but his aggressive actions somehow opened the audiobook and Matthew Nelson Neil’s voice filled the car.
“ Motherfucker! ”
He flung his phone into the backseat.
“Fuck!”
Con put the car into drive and peeled out of the IP parking lot.
He drove for several minutes in the direction of the OC Field Office before Alex spoke up.
“What are we going to do?”
Con didn’t have an answer.
What he wanted to do was strangle Marcus Allen. What he wanted to do was find out what The Sandman was doing outside the gas station and who he was talking to.
What he wanted to do was figure out who the fuck the woman who had been watching him dig all last night was.
What he did was pull into the field office parking lot.
Alex reached into the backseat and retrieved his phone. She was handing it to Con and he was in the process of thanking her—his temper had subsided somewhat—when it buzzed in her hand.
She looked down at it, a frown appearing on her face.
“You got an email.”
“Is it from Edward? From DLean? ”
Alex squinted at the phone.
“No—it’s… I think it’s from San Quentin.”
Con rudely snatched the phone from her.
San Quentin?
It was suddenly difficult to swallow, and he felt hot despite the AC that was blasting cold air into the cabin.
“Con?”
“Go,” he said quietly as he opened the email. “Head on up. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Alex opened the door and then stepped out.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I just… I need a sec to collect myself.” He offered his partner a weak smile. She didn’t leave. “Please.”
“Okay. See you in a few.”
The moment his partner’s back was turned, Con turned his attention to the phone.
It was a simple email, standard, impersonal.
Except for Con, it was the exact opposite.
May 31, 2024: Inmate 98441–143 at the San Quentin State Prison has approved your request for visitation. Your visit has been approved for: May 31, 2024, 14:00h—15:00h. No changes to the visitation time or date are permitted. This is an unmonitored mailbox. Do not reply to this message.
Shaking now, Con forced his eyes away from the screen and peered through the passenger window.
Alex was standing just inside the doors, staring at him through the glass.
Their eyes met and Con ground his teeth.
Then he looked away and started to drive again.
He didn’t look back.