Tavlin in the driver's seat and the Alfa's transmission in neutral, the second vehicle could have been used to push the convertible off the road toward oblivion.
Reese and Carvajal had turned up the most promising lead so far. On July 30, according to miscellaneousLomax Enterprises employees, Gregor Tavlin had paid his first return visit to Lomax corporate headquarters since leaving the company the previous year. He'd apparently demanded a meeting with Doren Lomax, who was not in the office at the time. According to Lomax's executive assistant, Doren's son David had fielded the call in his father's absence.
There had been rancor. According to the executive assistant, the two men had left the building together, taking their argument to lunch.
To the knowledge of the executive assistant, David Lomax did not return to the office from lunch that day. Neither did she know the specifics of his disagreement with Tavlin.
A search of the hard drive of the personal computer Tavlin kept at his home in Palos Verdes turned up a voice message from David Lomax in the inbox of Gregor Tavlin's answerphone software. The message was date-stamped July 30, 3:30 P.M. The same day they'd left the office together. In his message, Lomax had asked for a second meeting late that evening back at his office in the corporate building.
The building itself had no security cameras, but it did have a keycard entry system. Every full-time employee had a personal ID badge that allowed access to the facilities after regular business hours. According to the company's information technology department, each security card contained an embedded smart chip that allowed the system to record a log of all after-hours traffic in and out of the building. Daily records were backed up on a network server; at month-end, these logs were archived on CD-ROM and purged from the main system.
When Timms and his team had requested the archivaldisc for the month of July, they'd waited two days before receiving word that said disc—the only existing record for the night of July 30—seemed to have vanished into the same thin air David Lomax currently occupied.
An LAPD data recovery specialist had worked with the company IT department to retrieve the purged files from the network. No dice.
Meanwhile, a security manager for Club Maximum, a man named Luther Vines, stated during an interview with Timms and Drea that he'd personally checked out the July archives to David Lomax on the morning of August 1. When asked why he imagined a corporate executive had come to him with such a request, Vines had been unable to speculate. He'd simply been in the main office for an early meeting; he'd run into David Lomax in the lobby on his way in; and he had badge-level clearance to the security back offices where the archive CDs were stored.
David Lomax, of course, had been unavailable for comment.
The team had yet to discover the person who had seen Gregor Tavlin between the dates of July 31 and August 2. By the time they'd obtained search warrants for David Lomax's office and Silver Lake bungalow, the heir apparent—the last person known to have seen Gregor Tavlin alive—was officially 84 hours MIA.
On the morning of August 6, the day of Gregor Tavlin's public memorial service, Team Two and SID techs had searched David Lomax's office and his house in Silver Lake. Doren Lomax had attended both searches with lawyers.
It had been a delicate operation. Foul-ups were not an option. They didn't make a move without consultationfrom the district attorney's office, and they followed the book like an instruction manual.
Three days later, SID returned expedited forensic analyses of items collected during the search. The showpiece had come from the cushions of David Lo-max's living room couch: his company security badge.
The blood smears on the clear plastic card carrier had been typed against the samples collected from the trunk of Gregor Tavlin's car. Both came up AB-negative, with an antigen
Reese and Carvajal had turned up the most promising lead so far. On July 30, according to miscellaneousLomax Enterprises employees, Gregor Tavlin had paid his first return visit to Lomax corporate headquarters since leaving the company the previous year. He'd apparently demanded a meeting with Doren Lomax, who was not in the office at the time. According to Lomax's executive assistant, Doren's son David had fielded the call in his father's absence.
There had been rancor. According to the executive assistant, the two men had left the building together, taking their argument to lunch.
To the knowledge of the executive assistant, David Lomax did not return to the office from lunch that day. Neither did she know the specifics of his disagreement with Tavlin.
A search of the hard drive of the personal computer Tavlin kept at his home in Palos Verdes turned up a voice message from David Lomax in the inbox of Gregor Tavlin's answerphone software. The message was date-stamped July 30, 3:30 P.M. The same day they'd left the office together. In his message, Lomax had asked for a second meeting late that evening back at his office in the corporate building.
The building itself had no security cameras, but it did have a keycard entry system. Every full-time employee had a personal ID badge that allowed access to the facilities after regular business hours. According to the company's information technology department, each security card contained an embedded smart chip that allowed the system to record a log of all after-hours traffic in and out of the building. Daily records were backed up on a network server; at month-end, these logs were archived on CD-ROM and purged from the main system.
When Timms and his team had requested the archivaldisc for the month of July, they'd waited two days before receiving word that said disc—the only existing record for the night of July 30—seemed to have vanished into the same thin air David Lomax currently occupied.
An LAPD data recovery specialist had worked with the company IT department to retrieve the purged files from the network. No dice.
Meanwhile, a security manager for Club Maximum, a man named Luther Vines, stated during an interview with Timms and Drea that he'd personally checked out the July archives to David Lomax on the morning of August 1. When asked why he imagined a corporate executive had come to him with such a request, Vines had been unable to speculate. He'd simply been in the main office for an early meeting; he'd run into David Lomax in the lobby on his way in; and he had badge-level clearance to the security back offices where the archive CDs were stored.
David Lomax, of course, had been unavailable for comment.
The team had yet to discover the person who had seen Gregor Tavlin between the dates of July 31 and August 2. By the time they'd obtained search warrants for David Lomax's office and Silver Lake bungalow, the heir apparent—the last person known to have seen Gregor Tavlin alive—was officially 84 hours MIA.
On the morning of August 6, the day of Gregor Tavlin's public memorial service, Team Two and SID techs had searched David Lomax's office and his house in Silver Lake. Doren Lomax had attended both searches with lawyers.
It had been a delicate operation. Foul-ups were not an option. They didn't make a move without consultationfrom the district attorney's office, and they followed the book like an instruction manual.
Three days later, SID returned expedited forensic analyses of items collected during the search. The showpiece had come from the cushions of David Lo-max's living room couch: his company security badge.
The blood smears on the clear plastic card carrier had been typed against the samples collected from the trunk of Gregor Tavlin's car. Both came up AB-negative, with an antigen
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