Sunset Express

by Robert Crais

  I gave her my card and introduced myself. “I’m trying to find a guy named Steve Pritzik. I think he lives or used to live next door.”

  She read the card and grinned. “Are you really a private eye?”

  “Pretty amazing, huh?”

  She grinned wider and nodded. “Cool.”

  “You know Pritzik?”

  She offered the card back, but I raised a hand, telling her to keep it. “I don’t think so. Elton lives next door.”

  “Is Elton tall and blond?”

  “Oh, no. He’s short and kinda dark.” Ah. She rolled her eyes. “He’s such a creep. He’s always hitting on me, so I try to avoid him.”

  “I was just over there, and it looks like Elton hasn’t been around.” I told her about the mail.

  She pushed her hands in her pockets. “You know, now that I think about it, I haven’t seen him in a while. I haven’t heard his TV or anything.”

  “You think he might’ve moved?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you give me a guess how long he’s been gone?”

  She scrunched her face, thinking. “Couple of months, maybe.”

  “Between three and four months?”

  She waffled her hand. “He’s just such a creep I try to duck him. Sorry.”

  I said, “You ever see a tall blond guy hanging around with him?”

  She frowned.

  “Maybe four months ago.”

  She was swaying with Alanis, then she kind of cocked her head. “You know, I think maybe there was a guy like that. Elton had such scuzzy friends.” She nodded, then, starting to see it. “Yeah. There was this blond guy.” She nodded harder, the image pulling into focus. “Oh, yuck, what an asshole. He sees me on the street and follows me up the walk one day. He asks me if I want to go inside and fuck, just like that. Oh, yuck. I think he worked at a gas station or something.”

  I nodded.

  “All of Elton’s friends were like that. Real lowlifes.” She suddenly put out her hand. “I’m Tyler, by the way.”

  “Hi, Tyler.” We shook, and I gave her the big smile. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.” She smiled back, anxious to hear what I was going to ask. Alanis was really tearing it up inside.

  “I’m thinking about popping Elton’s door and sneaking in to look around. You wouldn’t call the police if I did that, would you?”

  Her smile grew wider as I said it. “No way! Could I come, too?”

  I shook my head. “Then if we’re caught, we’re both in trouble, you see?”

  She looked disappointed. Behind her, Alanis stopped singing and Tyler pulled a hand out of her pocket long enough to brush at the bangs. They were pretty incredible. “You really know how to pick locks and stuff?”

  “I’m a full-service professional, Tyler.”

  She stared at me for a few seconds and then she crossed her arms. She looked out from under her bangs at me. “And just what kind of service do you provide?”

  “I’ve got a girlfriend. Sorry.”

  Tyler stared at me from under the bangs for another couple of seconds, then uncrossed her arms and looked at my card again. “Yeah, well. If I ever need anything detected, maybe I’ll call.”

  “How about the cops?”

  Tyler made a zipping move across her lips.

  I gave her the big smile again, then went next door, slipped the lock, and let myself into Elton Richards’ half of the house. It was dim from the drawn shades, and I flipped the light switch but the lights stayed dark. I guess the power company had killed the juice. I said, “Mr. Richards?”

  No answer. Next door, I could hear Alanis start again, faint and far away.

  The house smelled musty. A ratty couch was against the wall under a Green Day poster, fronted by a coffee table made of a couple of 2 by 10 planks lying on cinderblocks and cornered by someone’s second-hand lawn chair. A black streamline phone waited on the planks. A pretty good Hitachi electronics stack was against the opposite wall, and a beat-up Zenith television with a coat hanger antenna was on the floor, and everything was covered with a light patina of undisturbed dust.

  I crossed into the kitchen and turned on the tap. No water. I went back to the living room, used my handkerchief, and lifted the phone. No tone. I guess Elton Richards had ignored his bills long enough for the power and water and phone companies to turn everything off. Say, about four months.

  I stood in the living room by the phone and thought about it. James Lester had met a short dark man and a tall blond man named Steve in a bar about a week before Susan Martin’s kidnapping and murder. Steve speaks of snatching a rich woman as a means of attaining the better things in life, and maybe the two are connected, but maybe not. Four months after the fact, I identify a possible Steve and trace him to this address which, in fact, is apparently owned by a shorter, darker man named Elton Richards. Maybe they are the same two men, but maybe not. Maybe tall blond guys named Steve just naturally have short dark friends.

  Two small bedrooms bracketed the bath. I searched each thoroughly, looking for receipts or ticket stubs or anything else that might provide a clue as to when and where Elton Richards and Steve Pritzik went. There was nothing. I went into the bathroom and checked behind and beneath the toilet and in the water tank. I pulled the medicine cabinet out of the wall. I checked in the little wooden cabinet beneath the lavatory. Nada. I went back into the living room and pulled the cushions off the couch and found a single 9 by 12 manila envelope. It was the kind of envelope you get in the mail from those sweepstakes companies declaring that you’ve just won ten million dollars, and it was addressed to Mr. Elton Richards. The end of the envelope had been scissored open, then retaped. I pushed my car keys under the tape, opened the envelope, and looked inside. Then I sat down.

  I took deep rhythmic breaths, flooding my blood with oxygen and forcing myself to calm. Pranayamic breathing, they call it.

  I looked in the envelope again, then tilted it so that the contents spilled out onto the couch. Inside there were seven separate photographs of Susan Martin and Teddy Martin, and two hand-drawn maps. One map was the floorplan of a very large house. The other was a street map showing the layout of someone’s neighborhood and a house on Benedict Canyon Road. It was Teddy Martin’s neighborhood, and it was Teddy Martin’s house.

  13

  I went to my car for the new Canon Auto Focus I keep in the glove box. I made sure I had film and that the flash worked, and then I took a pair of disposable plastic gloves and went back into the house. I put on the gloves, then photographed everything as I had found it, making sure I had clear shots of the handdrawn maps as well as the photos. When I was done, I left everything lying on the couch, then went next door and asked Tyler if I could use her phone.

  I called Truly first, who listened quietly until I was finished, then said, “I’ll notify Jonathan and we’ll get there as quickly as we can. Don’t let anyone else in the residence.” He cupped the phone, and I could hear muffled voices. Then he came back. “We’ll notify the police, too. Cooperate with them when they arrive, but keep an eye on them. Watch that they don’t destroy the evidence.”

  “Truly, they won’t do anything like that.”

  He said, “Ha.”

  When I hung up, Tyler was leaning against the back of her couch, arms crossed, a long paintbrush in one hand. Her home smelled of fresh jasmine tea and acrylic paint, and was decorated with oversized sunflower sculptures that she’d made from cardboard and wire. “You really think that this creep next door had something to do with Susan Martin’s murder?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I thought her husband did it. That restaurant guy.”

  “You never know.”

  “They said on TV that he did.”

  “That’s TV.”

  She shook her head. “L.A. is so perverted.”

  The first black and white arrived eighteen minutes later. The senior officer was a guy named Hernandez, and his partner was a younger A
frican-American woman named Flutey. I went out to meet them carrying a glass of Tyler’s jasmine iced tea. Hernandez said, “You Cole?”

  “Yep.” I told him what we had.

  He nodded. “Okay. Flutey, get the tape from the car and let’s seal it, okay? I’ll check inside and around back.”

  Flutey went for the tape, and Hernandez looked at me. “Where you gonna be?”

  “I’ll hang around out here unless you want company.”

  Tyler called from the porch. “Would you and the other officer like some iced tea?”

  Hernandez smiled at her. “That’d be real nice, miss. Thank you.” Tyler ducked back inside. Hernandez stared after her. Portrait of the crime scene as a social occasion.

  Two detectives from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office arrived, followed almost immediately by a criminalist van. The lead detective was a heavyset guy with thinning hair named Don Phillips. A DA’s car came next, off-loading a thin woman named Sherman, a bald guy named Stu Miller, and an intense African-American guy in dark glasses named Warren Bidwell. Sherman was the Assistant Deputy DA charged with prosecuting the Teddy Martin case. Miller and Bidwell worked for her.

  All three of them slipped under the tape and went into Richards’s duplex, then Miller and Sherman slipped out again and came over to me. Tyler gave them a bright smile and pushed aside her bangs. “Would either of you like iced tea?”

  Sherman said, “No.” She squinted at me. “I’m Anna Sherman from the district attorney’s office and this is Stu Miller. Would you come inside, please?”

  “Sure.”

  Tyler said, “Can I come, too?”

  Anna Sherman said, “No.”

  I shrugged at Tyler and followed them.

  Inside, Sherman said, “Okay. Walk me through what happened.”

  I told them about getting the address from Pavlavi and finding the duplex deserted and popping the lock to let myself in. I told them about finding the envelope under the couch cushions and opening the envelope. Sherman stopped me. “You touched the envelope?”

  “That’s right.”

  The criminalist said, “What about the contents?”

  I shook my head. “Edges only. When I saw what I had I slid the stuff out onto the couch. I used my knuckles to separate the pages first time through. When I photographed the material I was wearing gloves.”

  Bidwell was glowering so hard his body was making little jerks and lurches and I wondered if he knew he was doing it. He said, “I want those photographs.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  Bidwell lurched harder. “You don’t? Are you a sworn officer? You have a search warrant or any authority to break into a private residence?”

  I looked at Sherman. “You want me to continue or should I call my lawyer?”

  Sherman closed her eyes and shook her head. “Not now, Warren.”

  The yard and the walk outside grew crowded with cops and media people and rubberneckers from the neighborhood drawn by gathering news vans. Between questions I watched the on-air television talent fan out among the cops. A woman I’d seen a thousand times on the local NBC affiliate was talking with her camera operator when the camera operator saw me standing in the window and pointed me out. The reporter said something and the operator trained his camera on me. The reporter ducked past Flutey and hurried over to the window. She was all frosted hair and intelligent eyes. “Are you the detective who found the kidnappers?”

  I gave her Bill Dana. “My name José Jimenez.”

  She waved her camera operator closer. “Look, we know that two men named Elton Richards and Steve Pritzik lived here and we’d like an on-camera statement.” The camera operator held the camera over his head, trying to scan the room.

  Don Phillips saw the camera coming through the window and said, “Jesus Christ!” He pushed in front of me, then leaned out the window and yelled at a uniformed sergeant. “Clear the area, for Christ’s sake. Seal it off from the street back.” The sergeant hustled away, and Phillips looked at me. “Are you trying to be cute?”

  I spread my hands. “Trying has nothing to do with it.”

  The uniforms were pushing the press and gawkers along the walk when a ripple spread up from the street and across the crowd as if someone had amped a jolt of electricity through the air. Heads turned and voices rose, and the TV people surged toward the street. Phillips said, “Now what?”

  Jonathan Green and Elliot Truly and the videographer from Inside News were working their way through the crowd. The videographer’s sound tech was trying her best to move people out of their way, but it was hard going until Hernandez and Flutey and a couple of other uniforms lent a hand. Anna Sherman came to the window, then gathered Bidwell and Miller for a whispered conference. When Green and the others pushed their way through the front door past the uniformed sergeant, Phillips said, “Where in hell do you think you’re going?”

  Anna Sherman came over and smiled tightly. “Let them pass, detective.” She offered her hand. “Hello, Mr. Green.”

  “Ms. Sherman.” Jonathan Green smiled at me. “Congratulations, son. I think you’ve made my day.” The videographer bumped into Phillips as he tried to get the shot, and Phillips shoved him away. Hard. The videographer said, “Hey.”

  Anna Sherman said, “Detective Phillips, this is Jonathan Green. Mr. Green represents Theodore Martin.”

  Phillips said, “How about that.”

  Jonathan and Truly went to the couch and leaned over the papers without touching them. Phillips said, “Don’t touch anything. We haven’t printed them yet.”

  Truly was grinning wildly and shaking his head. “This is wonderful. Would you look at this? This is absolutely fabulous.” He grinned at me and then he grinned at Sherman, only Sherman didn’t return it.

  Green said, “Mr. Cole, are these the same documents you found when you entered this residence?” He said it loudly so that everyone in the room could hear.

  “Yes.”

  Green motioned to the videographer. “Would you get a close up of this, please?”

  The videographer almost tripped over himself getting there. Bidwell said, “Who is this dork?”

  Truly said, “They’re from Inside News. They’re doing a documentary on Jonathan.”

  Bidwell said, “Oh, for God’s sake,” and shook his head.

  As the videographer panned the evidence, Jonathan looked back at me. “There are no new documents, and none of the documents you found are now missing?”

  “Of course not.”

  The videographer panned up to Jonathan, and Jonathan said, “Mr. Cole photographed the documents found in this envelope before the police were summoned. That photographic record constitutes an accurate accounting of exactly what was here before the police took possession of the evidence. We intend to compare those photographs with these to see if the evidence has been tampered with.”

  Phillips went red. “Hey, what the fuck?”

  Anna Sherman told him to shut up. She said that if Phillips couldn’t control himself he should go outside.

  Phillips said, “I know what he’s saying and I don’t like it. I run a clean house, goddammit.” He was purple.

  Sherman said something to Bidwell and Bidwell led Phillips out.

  They had me go through it again, Jonathan Green and Elliot Truly asking questions and the videographer and the sound tech recording me. Anna Sherman listened with her arms crossed, occasionally digging her heel into the floor and rocking her foot, and, like Green and Truly, occasionally asking more questions. Bidwell and Phillips came back, but this time Phillips kept his mouth shut and glowered at us from the corner. When I was done, Jonathan Green looked at Sherman again and said, “We’ll want these documents preserved, and we’ll want to examine them as soon as practicable. We’ll want the results of your fingerprint analysis, and then, of course, we’ll want to do our own.”

  Anna Sherman’s jaw was tight. “Of course.”

  “Do you have anything more for Mr
. Cole?”

  The criminalist said, “I asked Cole for permission to take his prints. He said okay.”

  Green nodded. “Please do it now in our presence.” The criminalist broke out his fingerprint kit and had me sit on one of the dinette chairs. He took my prints quickly and professionally, then gave me a Handiwipe to clean off the ink. The videographer recorded every moment. I said, “Don’t you ever run out of tape?”

  The sound tech laughed.

  Green walked back to the couch, again examined the papers without touching them, then looked back at Sherman. “You realize what we have here, don’t you, Anna?” The patient father.

  Anna Sherman did not respond. The pouty daughter.

  Jonathan Green smiled. “If you don’t, Ms. Sherman, I’m sure the district attorney will. Tell him I’ll expect his call soon, if you would.”

  Her jaw flexed.

  Green said, “I think we can go, Elliot. Mr. Cole’s had a long and fruitful day. I expect he wants to go home.”

  Phillips coughed loudly from his corner of the room, but the cough soundly suspiciously like, “Fuck you.”

  I followed them out. The street at the end of the walk was jammed with media people and broadcast vans and uniformed cops trying to clear a path. Hernandez and Flutey flanked Jonathan and we crossed under the tape, and the media people surged around us, pushing their cameras and microphones at Jonathan and shouting their questions. There were so many broadcast vans that it looked as if we were in a forest of transmitters, each spindly stack pointing at the same invisible satellite 22,500 miles above in geosynchronous orbit, like so many coyotes crying at the moon. I said, “This is nuts.”

  Truly yelled in my ear so that I could hear him. “It hasn’t even begun.”

  The woman with the frosted hair jammed her microphone past Hernandez and shouted, “Jonathan, can you tell us what was found?”

  “I’m sorry. That information should come from the district attorney’s office.”