Tie Die

by Max Tomlinson

  She swung by The Pitt, where nothing was going on that time of the day. No Steve. She used the pay phone in the back of the bar by the restrooms, where Melanie Cook had been “abducted” during her first “kidnapping.” She called Deena, who wasn’t home either.

  Good and wet, Colleen went back home, made tea, poured a splash of brandy into it, cranked up the heater and dried out.

  The doorbell rang.

  She checked the blinds first.

  An SFPD black-and-white sat in the middle of Vermont. Her heart thumped. What did the cops want now? She’d cooperated with Owens. She hadn’t missed her meeting with her parole officer. She’d been keeping her nose clean. Relatively.

  She buzzed the cops in, listened to heavy boots thump up the stairs. Opened the door to her flat, waited.

  A patrolman appeared around a bend on the staircase. Young, with a sandy-colored feather-cut just down to his dark blue collar. Getting away with it. He had the beginning of a permanent sneer. He was going to be one of those cops.

  She could tell he was annoyed having to climb three flights.

  “Colleen Hayes?”

  “Yes?”

  “Get your jacket.”

  That didn’t sound good.

  “Am I under arrest?” she asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Owens wants to see me?”

  “You got it.”

  “He could have just called.”

  “He needed to make sure you came down, ma’am.”

  Ma’am. She went inside, slid into her bomber jacket, turned off the heater and lights, grabbed her smokes, matches, came back out, locked up.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “You’re booking Steve Cook for murder?” Colleen asked Inspector Owens. She was surprised, but not too much. Her own doubts continued to be stoked by the fact there were things Steve wasn’t telling her. Like why he went over to Lynda’s the night she was murdered.

  She was back in the grubby interrogation room on the fifth floor of 850 with Inspector Owens sitting on the opposite side of the Formica table. A cardboard evidence box sat to his right.

  “We picked Cook up this morning,” Owens said, tapping the eraser of his number two pencil on his ever-present yellow pad. Today he wore a white shirt and tie up to the collar.

  That explained why Steve wasn’t home when she dropped by.

  “What made you decide to pick Steve up?” she asked.

  Owens dipped his head slightly, as if sizing up how much to tell her. “A tip.”

  Interesting. “Care to say who?”

  Owens shook his head side to side once.

  “Was it a young woman?” Colleen said. “New York accent?”

  “No,” he said. “Who might that be?”

  She smiled. He smiled.

  “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” Colleen said.

  “The call was to the anonymous tip line,” Owens said. “Some kid, sounded as if he was outdoors, on a pay phone, reading it off a piece of paper: ‘Steve Cook killed his wife. Check his place.’ Someone probably paid him to make the call.”

  Colleen nodded.

  “And yours?” Owens said.

  “Deena Vanderhaven,” she said. “The drummer with the band with no name. Steve sings in her band.”

  Owens squinted in apparent surprise. “She told you Steve waxed his ex?”

  “No, but she did say she saw him leave Lynda’s place around the time of the murder. Maybe a little bit before.”

  “And when were you going to tell me this, Colleen?”

  “I only found out about it late last night. Deena and I met at an all-night donut place.”

  Owens wrote something down. “What is this Deena doing, watching Lynda’s house at night?”

  “Following Steve around. Not that she’s jealous or anything.” Colleen gave a wry smile.

  “Ah,” Owens said. “It’s like that.”

  “They were involved at one time.”

  “Any reason to thinks she’s lying?” Owens asked. “About seeing Steve at Lynda’s?”

  “That crossed my mind, but I don’t think so.”

  “Well,” Owens said, “she’s telling you the truth.”

  Now Colleen was surprised. “You don’t think Steve did it, do you?”

  Owens gave a nod.

  “He confessed?” Colleen couldn’t believe that somehow. She realized now how much of her felt he was innocent.

  “Just the opposite. But we are talking about the same guy who fled the U.K. when a nude girl was found dead in his hotel room.”

  Nude. The past never let go.

  “You don’t think this is all a little fishy?” Colleen asked. “Steve has already been set up by a fake kidnapping. Now this.”

  “I agree, it doesn’t look good.”

  “Then let me ask again,” Colleen said. “If Steve did it, where’s Melanie? Deena saw him leave Lynda’s about the time of the murder—alone. On foot. Everything points to Melanie being taken in Lynda’s car. One of the occupants of that car was dripping blood. So where did Steve stash his own daughter if he didn’t take her after he supposedly shot Lynda?”

  “He could have come back later.”

  She shook her head. “And left Melanie there? With her mother—dead?”

  “Maybe Melanie’s not alive. We don’t know.”

  A chill shuddered down Colleen’s back. “That might be true, but if so, Steve had nothing to do with it. He borrowed money from the Mexican Mafia to save her. Lynda—he might have been tempted. But Melanie—no way.”

  “So how about this?” Owens said, reaching into the box, coming out with a plastic baggie. He set it down in the middle of the table.

  A LadySmith revolver with a baby-blue handle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Colleen picked up the baggie containing the LadySmith revolver, gave it the once-over. It looked like Lynda’s. She set it back down. Pushed it back over Owens’ way.

  “Shouldn’t this be on its way to ballistics?” she said.

  “It will be.” Owens tapped his yellow pad with his pencil eraser. “I wanted you to see it first.”

  To read the look on her face. “Why would you think I’d cover for Steve?”

  “Because he’s your client. Because you have a habit of not giving me all the info.”

  “I’ve given you everything I have,” she said.

  “Not right away.”

  “I have a responsibility to my client,” she said. “But that doesn’t include covering up murder.”

  “So you didn’t know about the gun?” Owens nodded at the baggie.

  “Not beyond what I told you. I first saw it in Lynda’s bedside table when she was still alive. It was gone when I found her dead.”

  “Then someone took it.”

  “And you seem to think it was Steve. But Steve was on foot, alone, and she’s gone.”

  “We found the gun in his flat.”

  An imaginary fist punched her in the gut. She recovered, quietly, forced herself to see sense. “Don’t you think it would be incredibly dumb for Steve Cook to keep a murder weapon in his house?”

  “From where I sit, he’s not exactly Mensa material. And we did find it under a floorboard in the living room.”

  So the gun had been well hidden. But the cops could find anything. “Did your tipster tell you where to find the gun?”

  “No. Just that he had it.”

  “Lynda had a key to Steve’s place,” she said, regretting that Steve never changed his locks. “I bumped into her there with two thugs a couple of days ago. Someone else could have easily planted the gun.”

  Owens shrugged. “This needs to be chased down and you know it.”

  “Did you get officers to canvass Lynda’s neighborhood, see if anyone saw anything around the time of the murder? Shots fired, her car leaving, that kind of thing?”

  “Been there. It’s a sleepy neighborhood of detached houses. It was late. No one heard, saw anything.”r />
  “Not even a car leaving?”

  “Not even.”

  “And what did Steve say about all this?”

  “Just that he wants an attorney. So we had to stop questioning him.” That was the law.

  “Did he call a lawyer?”

  “Not yet. He just asked for one. In the meantime, we can’t question him on the murder until he gets representation. We put a call into legal aid, but that’ll take time. And he can turn that down, too. He can sit it out and stall us until he goes before a judge and the judge can decide if he needs counsel. Seems he’s pretty savvy when dealing with the police, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Can you blame him?”

  “Of course not,” Owens said, “especially if he’s guilty.”

  Steve not talking didn’t look good. But he was probably scared spitless and didn’t know what else to do. But it wasn’t helping to find Melanie. If anything, it was doing the opposite.

  “Why don’t you let me talk to him?” she said. “You can’t question him anymore since he asked for representation, but I can. I might be able to find something. And, if Melanie is kidnapped, we can’t afford to lose time.”

  Owens rubbed his chin. “It’s worth a try. Otherwise we wait until he goes up before a judge. Which won’t be until later today at the very earliest. But only under one condition.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You can’t tell him about this conversation. And you don’t warn him off, tell him to stay silent. None of that. The whole idea is to get information.”

  “No problem. When can I talk to him?”

  Owens looked at his watch. “Visiting hours are over but we’ll get you in there. And—” he gave Colleen a stare—“I’m going to be listening in.”

  That might make things tricky.

  “He didn’t do it,” she said.

  “Maybe not. But he’s made for this and you know it. His ex pretended to kidnap his kid and screwed him over. The fact that his daughter is gone just might mean he’s got her tucked away somewhere. It probably wasn’t planned; he acted out of passion. But the motive is in flashing neon letters. If it goes to court, they better not put too many men on the jury because any guy is going to give him a pass.”

  She’d get a chance to talk to Steve. It could only help find Melanie. Time was pressing and having him sit in a cell wasn’t doing anyone any good.

  “I’ve got a condition, too.”

  Owens gave a weary smile. “And?”

  “When you hear Steve, you consider letting him go. He won’t leave town. You can always arrest him again later if things don’t stack up. But we need to find Melanie. And he can do a lot more outside than stuck in here.”

  Owens seemed to think about that for a moment. “I’ll give it my consideration.”

  That was probably the best she was going to get. “Deal.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  San Francisco County Jail #4 occupied the seventh floor of 850 Bryant. It was essentially a small town of four hundred unwilling citizens, which included a laundry, kitchen, emergency room, library, and other sundry facilities. The once-white walls of the visiting room were grubby gray now, with the odd scrawl of graffiti. Harsh fluorescent lights beamed down onto an antiseptic bank of nine Plexiglas windows along one side with backless visitor stools bolted to the wall below each window. A phone hung to the right of each visitor station.

  No other visits were in session when Colleen arrived, being that it was late in the evening and visiting hours were officially over. The sheriff’s deputy, a slender light-skinned black man in khaki with lace-up boots, showed her to window number one, at the far end of the room. Colleen noticed a ceiling camera pointed at them.

  She saw Steve Cook’s shadow on the other side of the glass before she sat down on the hard stool. He wore a wrinkled black T-shirt and needed a shave. He looked more pissed off than upset, which was the way to be. Colleen had spent close to a decade behind bars and despair didn’t work. And, despite it all, he still managed to look good somehow. He was just that kind of guy. The one she had spent the night with. It might have complicated things, but she didn’t regret it. She hoped he wouldn’t make her regret it.

  She picked up the phone and Steve did the same. The guard stood behind her against the wall with his legs apart and arms crossed.

  “Imagine my surprise,” she said. Owens was listening in. But she would also do her best to communicate with Steve on her own terms. The deputy watched her intently.

  Steve gave a frown. “Looks like you found me, Coll.”

  She searched his face for clues. No one seemed to be a killer on the surface. “I’ve been hunting all day. Been to The Pitt twice. Then I learned you’d been arrested.” She raised her eyebrows and nodded at the receiver to her ear, to hopefully let him know the phone call wasn’t completely on the up and up. She saw his tongue moving around his lower lip, as if weighing her look and words.

  “I see,” he said.

  She gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  They stared at each other through the smudged Plexiglas for a long moment.

  She’d just get it over with. “You know what I’m going to ask, don’t you, Steve?”

  “I didn’t kill her, Coll. I already told you.” His eyes softened. For a moment he looked fraught and weak. And for that moment she believed him one hundred percent. He recovered.

  “They found Lynda’s gun,” she said. “In your flat.”

  “Someone set me up.”

  “Lynda’s father?”

  Shook his head. “Doesn’t bloody make sense. Rex is a complete arsehole, but he is one of the few people who didn’t want to harm Lynda. No, I can’t see it.”

  Defending Rex didn’t help Steve. If he was looking for an out, he could have jumped on it, pointing the finger at him. “So who?”

  Steve shrugged. She saw that measure of desperation again in that little motion of his shoulders. “Like you said, someone connected to the fake kidnapping decided to take over when you blew their scam. Only now they kidnapped Melanie for real.” His words took a sharp turn upwards in pitch, the worry about Melanie weighing heavily, most likely. She felt for him. Even more, she felt for Melanie, a girl she didn’t even know. That poor kid was probably being held somewhere awful, in crummy circumstances—and that’s if she was lucky.

  If someone had hijacked the kidnap, that might explain why Lynda said she couldn’t get her hands on the money. Whoever took Melanie probably had it and was after more. “But you never heard from anybody for more ransom money—did you?” she asked.

  Steve shook his head no again.

  They might be going to let Steve stew for a few days before they put in another demand. Make him sweat. Especially if they knew he was under arrest and in jail. Colleen looked Steve in the eye. There was still something she needed to know. It was digging at her.

  “Steve—did you go over to Lynda’s house the night she was murdered?”

  She saw a flinch of surprise, not much, but enough. He was hunkering down.

  “No.”

  Her heart sank. Unless Deena was lying. But Deena wasn’t lying. Was she?

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” she said, meeting his gaze. “The truth will help get your daughter back.”

  Steve looked away, slightly ashamed. Then he looked back at her with more resolve.

  “Okay. Yeah. I did go over to Lynda’s.”

  “Why, Steve? Why? I told you to stay the hell away.”

  He gave a helpless shrug. “Because I’m a complete fucking idiot, that’s why. Because I couldn’t believe a woman I’d married, one who’d had my kid, would fucking stitch me up the way she did. Because I wanted to see Mel. It was stupid on my part, yeah, it bloody was. But I didn’t kill her, Colleen. You have to believe me.” His eyes were pleading. But she remembered the look her ex gave her before she let him have it, and her ex had been guilty.

  “So what happened, Steve?”

  “Lynda wouldn’t let me in.
We argued at the front door. She told me to leave. So I left.”

  “What time was that?”

  Steve looked up to the ceiling as he calculated. “After midnight? No, one o’clock. A bit after. I wasn’t there long. I walked down to Monterey, caught the bus.”

  The time jived with what Deena had told her. And the fact that he was on foot, alone.

  “Which bus?”

  “Twenty-three. It was the Owl Service.”

  “You talk to anybody on the bus?”

  Shook his head no.

  “Remember the driver?”

  Shook his head again.

  “Where’d you get off?”

  “Glen Park BART.” Bay Area Rapid Transit was a new light rail system in SF and beyond.

  “You took BART home from Glen Park?” she asked.

  “BART was closed.”

  “What did you do? Take a bus over to the Mission? Call a cab?”

  “Fuck, Coll,” Steve said through his teeth. “I didn’t kill her. Are you going to bloody believe me or not?”

  “Just answer the question, Steve.”

  “I decided to stop at the bar—The Glen Park Station. My mind was full of shit, yeah? I had a couple of quick belts. Left, walked home. I walked home, yeah? I needed to unwind.”

  It was a decent walk, a couple of miles. “Talk to anybody in the bar?”

  “The barman was some old codger with a comb-over.”

  “Think he’d remember you?”

  “I don’t bloody know.”

  Colleen took a deep breath through her nostrils, sifting it all out.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “That’s it, Coll? Okay?”

  “It means I’m working things out, Steve.”

  “Great,” he said. “While you’re working things out, someone’s got Melanie. Really got Melanie this time. And I’m sitting in here, unable to do a fucking thing about it.”

  “Has Octavien been hounding you for the loan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t call him. It’s better if he doesn’t know where you are. You don’t want anybody who works for Octavien finding you in here, either.”

  “That doesn’t help Mel. I need to get out of here. I need a lawyer.”

  She wasn’t supposed to bring the lawyer subject up. But Steve had. So she could play along. “I won’t argue with you there, bud.” She gave him wide eyes. Let him know the subject was open. Keep going, Steve.