Reinhold looked up and, seeing the gun pointed at him, froze in mid-swing. Trembley went on.
“It looks suspiciously like you’re trying to destroy evidence, sir. That is a crime. I need you to place that…item down and carefully step away from your desk with your hands up.”
Jessie thought the whole gun thing was excessive. But it seemed to work, so she kept her opinion to herself. Instead, as Reinhold stepped back, she was able to properly take him in for the first time.
Phil Reinhold looked like a man who was just holding on. What little hair he had left was combed over the top of his head so that it looked like alfalfa sprouts on top of a muffin. His face was craggy and paunchy at the same time and he had deep indentations on the bridge of his nose where Jessie imagined his glasses usually sat. He was heavy for his size. She guessed he was approaching 250 pounds. His suit, which he apparently didn’t have the resources to replace, was shabby and ill-fitting. His tie appeared to have a mustard stain on it.
As he stepped back, Jessie approached the desk, put on gloves, and slid the thumb drive into an evidence bag. She had no way of knowing if it was salvageable. That was a question for tech.
“Whatcha doin’, Phil?” she asked, glancing at his computer monitor, which was open to an empty file titled, “Break Glass.”
“You need a warrant!” he declared plaintively, speaking for the first time. He didn’t seem to Jessie like the kind of man who would strike fear in the hearts of movie producers and executives.
“Plain view rule, Phil,” she said nonchalantly. “Look it up. It seems that you were so busy trying to destroy the thumb drive here that you forgot to exit the screen of the file you just deleted with the provocative name. I guess we know what file to tell our tech team to look for.”
Reinhold scowled at her but said nothing. She pressed on.
“Care to tell us what was so damaging that you felt the need to crush it with…” she looked at the description on the thing he’d been using as a hammer, “your 1996 Entertainment Agent Award?”
“Isn’t this the time where I ask for a lawyer?’ Reinhold asked.
“It can be,” Trembley said. “That also means it’s the time when we arrest you, handcuff you, and take you down to the station.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Reinhold asked haughtily. “I’m drinking buddies with the BHPD assistant police chief. I’m not sure he’d be happy about you treating me so poorly.”
“Mr. Reinhold,” Jessie corrected, “you seem to be under a misapprehension. We aren’t taking you to the Beverly Hills station. We’re LAPD. You’ll be visiting Central Station downtown. We’re located just off Skid Row. You may be used to scotch with the assistant chief but I suggest you prepare yourself for sharing a urine-stained holding cell with our buddy Maurice. He’s the guy who gets picked up a few times a week for starting a fight with a park bench.”
While Jessie called the tech team to come and collect Reinhold’s computer, Trembley cuffed the agent and escorted him to an adjacent conference room, then left him to stew for a while. Jessie thought she heard the man whimpering.
Though she knew Reinhold was her priority, she was also itching to break the guy so she could visit Ryan at the hospital and see Hannah for dinner. Thankfully, it only took about twenty minutes for Reinhold to change his tune. Once he learned that Jessie and Trembley wanted to talk to him about Corinne Weatherly’s murder, he backed off on his demand to speak to a lawyer.
“What’s on the thumb drive, Phil?” Jessie asked as she sat down at the table across from perhaps the most pathetic-looking suspect she’d ever encountered. He was hunched over and his multiple chins cascaded down to his chest. His eyes seemed to almost sag out of his skull.
“What does that have to do with Corinne?” he protested feebly.
“We don’t know yet,” she replied. “But we’re going to find out at some point. Our tech folks are working on retrieving the ‘Break Glass’ data as we speak. And I can assure you that banging it a few times with a chintzy award isn’t going to keep it hidden. Your best bet is