“And for me, too. If Lorraine had started drinking I’d have probably joined her,” Rosie replied, and Jake smiled.
Lorraine came up to them. “Thanks for bringing me. Now we should get back in case Rooney needs me.”
Rooney watched the FBI agents talking to his chief. He sat in a hard-backed chair at the rear of the room; when anyone looked to him for an opinion he made no comment. The press had been given statements and the suits felt that, with the arrest of Art Mathews, they had been able at least to gain time. Even if they couldn’t provide evidence that Mathews had murdered all the victims, they were satisfied that by his own admission and subsequent suicide he had been guilty of at least three.
Andrew Fellows had come in and they had been in deep discussion with him for two hours. He had disagreed with their conclusion that Mathews was the killer. Not until they seemed to have grown tired of the sound of their own voices did Rooney ease his bulk from the chair. “You mind if I put my two cents in?”
They had forgotten he was even in the room. The chief looked pointedly at his watch. “Is it about the Lorraine Page woman?”
Andrew Fellows frowned. “Lorraine Page?”
“We’re still looking for her but it shouldn’t be long.”
Rooney squeezed between a row of chairs.
“Lorraine Page?” Fellows asked again, but no one answered him and she was forgotten as Rooney prodded the photograph of Didi, the last victim.
“What if our killer—and I’m excluding Mathews just for a moment—was looking for this particular woman or man—the transsexual? Looking for her because she and Mathews were blackmailing him.” There was a low murmur and Rooney held up his hand. “Let me finish. Take a look at them. Tough, hard-faced women, all bleached blondes, all prostitutes, as was this victim.” Again he tapped Didi’s picture. “It’s a possible motive because I think Hastings was also being blackmailed and possibly by Mathews …” The men listened, giving each other sidelong looks. The chief loosened his tie. Mathews had admitted at no time to blackmailing anyone. Rooney continued to repeat almost verbatim what Lorraine had said to him. He did not mention her part in piecing it together, or that she was the witness who had been attacked by the killer. Just before he gave the name of her suspect, he felt a hot flush spread through his body. The Thorburn family was powerful and all Rooney had was Lorraine’s theory. They did not have enough evidence: her own admission that Janklow had been her attacker would, as she rightly surmised, be tough to prove. As she had said, it would be her word against his. And as yet no incriminating evidence linked him to the murders. His thoughts racing as he spoke, Rooney abruptly decided that until he had more on Janklow, he would keep his identity to himself.
The room was silent. The chief stared at Rooney—they all did—and Andrew Fellows’s face wore a half-smile. It was hard to determine whether it was through disbelief or because he was impressed.
Rooney decided he might as well go for the big prize. He nodded to Hastings’s picture. “He used a garage to park his car, the S and A garage. I haven’t gone into this in any depth, but a number of the company’s employees were checked out against the description we had from the anonymous witness. The S and A garage is owned by a Brad Thorburn.” Fellows gasped at this but no one paid any attention. Rooney continued, “I’m not suggesting anything without further evidence. Obviously, considering the family’s connections, I have not, until tonight, even voiced my suspicions.”
“Just what are you implying?” Fellows asked, his face pink with agitation. Rooney looked at him then, and at the chief, who became aware that Fellows should not have been privy to this statement and suggested that he might wish to leave.
Fellows had not disclosed that he knew Brad Thorburn. He was unsure as to why not but, then, he hadn’t been asked. He intended to drive straight to UCLA but changed his mind and headed for Thorburn’s house.
Jake saw the patrol car even before he turned onto their street. Lorraine was in the backseat.
“You want me to drive past the cops?” Jake asked.
“Yeah, but not for the reason you think. I’ll go in but in my own time. There’s somebody I want to talk to first. I misjudged Rooney. He must have told them about me.”
She ducked out of sight as Jake passed the police car, turning left at the end of the street before he stopped.
“Where we going?” Rosie asked.
“I need to talk to Andrew Fellows. I won’t do anything crazy, believe me. I just want to run a few things past him.”
“I’ll drive you,” said Rosie.
Lorraine hesitated before she agreed. Jake got out and Rosie moved into the driver’s seat. He watched them pulling away from the curb but not until they were almost out of sight did he turn away and walk home.
The car backfired. Jake whipped around. It had sounded like a gunshot. It made him uneasy and he wished he’d stayed with the two women. He also wished he’d asked a lot more questions, but as he walked on he realized that he had been part of Lorraine’s cover-up story about the attack. He shook his head. He had known as soon as he saw the injury that it hadn’t been caused by a fall, as she’d said. With all her lies, Lorraine had not only used Rosie but himself. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became, and now he started to wonder where Lorraine had gotten all that money from. He remembered the way she clutched it when they’d had her wound stitched up. She was one hell of a liar, he told himself. Maybe there was more to the cops hanging around than either he or Rosie knew.
Rooney told the agents about Craig Lyall, again making use of Lorraine’s evidence. When the chief got back, Rooney was in the hot seat. Berillo wanted to know why he had been withholding so much evidence, and neither discussed it with him nor provided the agents with the information on Mathews’s blackmailing activities.
“I only pieced it together this morning. Like I said, it’s just supposition. I’ve been up all night on this. I hadn’t finished interviewing Mathews when the FBI took over. You tell me how such an important suspect with all this high-tech surveillance on his cell was able to slit his wrists. Don’t lay that on me, I wasn’t even in the station. It’s down to the FBI.”
The agents took his gibes and accusations without expression. One of them, the one with the blond crew cut and square jaw to match, was making copious notes as Rooney spoke. At one point he held up his silver pen for Rooney to wait a moment, continued to write, and then tapped his notebook and looked up, a frozen smile on his pale face. “Go on, Captain Rooney.”
Rooney gave a slightly raised eyebrow. “Thank you very much, Mr. Bicketsall.”
Without looking up, the agent underlined something and his voice was icy. “It’s Bickerstaff, S-T-A-F-F, Captain.”
Chief Berillo could feel the tension about to blow, so he burst it open to get the air cleared. “You’re seriously saying that Brad Thorburn is a suspect?”
The atmosphere in the room was really uneasy now. Bean remained silent throughout: he was wondering why Rooney had never mentioned any of his findings to him.
“I never said Thorburn was a suspect. I believe it’s his brother, Steven Janklow.”
Bickerstaff yet again held up his silver pen to indicate his desire to interrupt. “Excuse me, Captain, does Mr. Janklow fit the description of the killer given to your department after Hastings’s body had been found?”
Rooney shifted uneasily. Since he had never seen Janklow or interviewed him, he was hesitant.
“I haven’t interviewed him. All I know is he knew Hastings and—”
“And?” snapped the chief. Rooney felt as if they were all against him, closing in on him. He pulled at his bulbous nose, half wishing he’d kept his big mouth shut. He took a flier, lying through his teeth. “I held back giving you this information until I’d checked in the files for a possible vice charge against Janklow in the past. So far I haven’t been able to trace it and it was just mentioned to me by one of the workers at the garage. I didn’t want to act on hearsay—well, not
until I’d run it past you. I could be wrong on all counts.”
The chief glanced at his watch and then said, “You go through those vice records, Bill, immediately—but until you have more evidence we make no contact with the Thorburn family. If our man is Janklow, we need hard facts to arrest him; the Thorburn family is High Society and powerful.” The chief said the last sentence directly to Bickerstaff, who snapped his notebook closed.
“In other words, Chief Berillo, we back off the Thorburns until you say so. So we’ll wait for any further information from Captain Rooney before we open up the investigation.” Bickerstaff looked at his team, his eyes were expressionless. “Right, gentlemen, shall we discuss this new development?” Hemmed in by his men, Bickerstaff headed toward his allocated office.
Everyone else passed hooded looks to each other as they filed out of the room. Berillo turned on Rooney in a fury, demanding to know what the fuck he thought he was doing.
“Just trying to do my job.”
“Come on, Bill, who are you kiddin’? You’re just pissed off because the FBI has been brought in. If you’d even had half of what you blurted out tonight we could have held them off. What else are you holding back? You’d better come clean with me.” He stared hard at Rooney and then asked about Lorraine Page.
Rooney covered effortlessly. “She’s my informant, but I didn’t know until tonight that she knew Mathews or that she was with him the night Holly was murdered.”
“I want her brought in and I want to talk to her. I want to know just what the hell Mathews was up to.”
“It’s in his file. He’s been in for blackmail and extortion, along with his porno rap, and Page is apparently on her way in.”
“Is that it?”
“That’s it. Like I said, let me dig into Janklow’s past some more and then I’ll come right back to you.”
The chief agreed, but told Rooney to call him, no matter what time it was, if he discovered anything else.
Rooney returned to his office where Bean was waiting with a nervous look on his face. “Everything all right with the chief?”
Rooney closed his office door. “Yeah, we’re like this.” He crossed his fingers.
“You blew everyone sideways in there. That Ed Bickerstaff’s nose was sure out of joint. I heard him say to his guys as they left, you know what he said?”
“Bunch of assholes.”
“Yeah, I guess you heard him, too …”
Rooney started rummaging through his desk drawers. “So what about Lorraine Page?” Bean asked. He just didn’t get what was going on between the captain and this strange ex-cop, but it worried him—for himself. “According to Officers Hully and Arthur you were at her place. They said you were bringing her in.”
“I left when she didn’t show—that all right with you? And for chrissakes, if you are gettin’ into a hot sweat over releasing that squad car from outside her place, forget it. I’d say right now the FBI action man has got problems of his own—Art Mathews’s suicide for starters.”
Bean’s face showed his relief. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right.” He sat down, watching Rooney banging open one drawer after another. He leaned forward, his elbow resting on the edge of the desk. “You did a hell of a lot of legwork since you left here last night, and you didn’t mention any of this to me—Janklow, the Thorburn family. If you’d seen those agents’ faces, talk about jaws dropping open. I was impressed. They were really pissed. They were patting each other on the back ten minutes earlier about Art Mathews. They really upped the pressure on him, you know, he was crying his eyes out.”
Rooney didn’t even appear to be listening as he searched through yet another drawer. Bean picked up a rubber band and began flicking it, eventually got around to asking what had been on his mind from the start.
“So, um, did she tip you off about Art Mathews?”
Rooney raised his eyebrow in mock surprise. “God no, that was supreme detective work on my part, Lieutenant.” Then he scowled. “If Mathews said he killed them, I figure he’d have said he’d shot his mother just to get those suits off him. He was scared—must have been scared shitless about being sent up for blackmail again. He’d have done eighteen years this time and the little prick knew it. They just wanted to make an arrest, period. I think they were lucky he did kill himself, because if I’d have gotten my hands on him, I might have ended up with a different result, like negative.”
Bean still flicked the rubber band. “So why did he kill himself, then?”
“Because maybe he knew he was in very deep and we’d have dug up something. Christ almighty, I gave them his fucking file, he was serving time when two of the victims were done. I don’t care what any of that FBI crowd want to say about copycat killings, those victims were all done by the same man.”
Bean sucked in his breath. “Or woman. That’s what Fellows threw in this morning.”
“Bullshit, and stop flickin’ that thing, you’re gettin’ on my nerves.”
“Sorry. He said that all the crap that’s written about male or female strength is hyped up out of all proportion. If a woman wanted to kill, she could have done it. He even said that was why the victims took a blow to the back of the head first—incapacitated them.”
“Well, Fellows is looking up his own tight-assed butt. We got that witness, the one that gave us the description, right?” He almost disclosed who she was but stopped himself. Instead, he leaned over the desk. “She described her attacker as a man, right?”
Bean looked at Rooney. “Lorraine Page. So where does she figure in all this? What if they were doing it together? She was with Mathews the night Holly was murdered, he said so.”
“I know, I know …” He felt his stomach turn over. What if Bean was right? Could she be that much involved?
Bean now crossed to the internal window blinds looking in on the main office floor. “Well, however you came up with it, it sounded like hot shit to me.” Rooney looked puzzled. “It was nice to watch you in action, Captain.”
Rooney smiled. “I always was one of the best. Now, why don’t you go get some sandwiches and coffee?”
Bean crossed to the door. “Anythin’ you say. I can tell it’s gonna be a very long day, an’ since we were up all night, it’ll feel even longer.”
As the door closed behind him Rooney slumped in his chair. He wasn’t one of the best, he doubted if he ever had been, but she was. It was Lorraine who was hot shit, and she’d proved it. He just hoped to God she was right, and that she hadn’t run off. Did he want to crack this so badly he was going to let her risk her neck? He knew he still had the trump card that she was the witness. If he was forced into a corner he’d bring it out. He wondered how long it would be before they brought her in, then suddenly felt cold. What if Bean was right? What if she had been giving him the runaround all along? What if she’d never been a witness but a killer, and the description was just to put them all off the scent? He picked up the phone and punched out her number. No answer. Where the hell was she? If she wasn’t brought in within the hour, he’d go out looking for her personally. She wasn’t the killer—that was dumb, that was crazy—but he felt a horrible nagging in his gut. She was connected to Didi and Mathews; he’d told the FBI that she had been with him the night Holly was murdered. He should have brought her in with him, he shouldn’t have trusted her. She might even now be in some bar drinking herself into a stupor—she’d threatened as much …
Bean came back in. He’d called for some takeout rather than schlepp out for it himself.
“What else did Fellows say about it maybe being a woman?”
“None of the victims had been sexually abused, there’d been no trace of semen, not even on Holly. Victims all struck from behind, just their faces mangled. You find what you were looking for?”
Rooney didn’t seem to hear but stared blankly ahead. Bean waited a moment before asking sarcastically, “Maybe changing your theory, are you, Captain?”
Rooney frowned; Bean was really getting under hi
s skin now.
“She’s an ex-cop, right? She’s capable of taking care of herself, she’s tough, I’ve heard you say it, and she’s been out hooking. She’s got a record. Maybe, just maybe, she’s also got a lot of venom in her, a hatred of women that look like her.”
Rooney hit the desk hard. “No. No way. Piss off out of here, go on. And, Josh, get a bottle of bourbon for me.”
Bean knew now what Rooney had been banging around looking for. He pursed his lips; he didn’t like being treated like a messenger boy, first for lunch, then for booze …
“You got a problem?”
“No, Captain, but you might be gettin’ one.”
Rooney watched Bean walk away down the corridor. Any other time he’d have flattened him down with some scathing remark, but he didn’t have the energy. He couldn’t have lost his touch to that extent. He shut his eyes and recalled Lorraine’s face, the way her pale eyes bored into him, the scar making her face switch between vulnerable and street tough. He read through her file again: the arrests, the charges, the no-shows at court, the attacks on arresting officers, even that she had been held in a straitjacket. Drunk and disorderly was recorded time and again. Drunk in charge of a vehicle, drunk when arrested for breaking into a liquor store—she had fought the arresting officer, bitten him, kicked him, and punched him in the face. It had taken four of them to get her into the wagon. She’d been held in the cells for three days, charged with assault, and spent two months in the L.A. women’s county jail. If he hadn’t known her, he would have described her without hesitation as dangerous. Could she be capable of murder? His feet ached as he walked up and down, swearing alternately at Fellows for throwing this “woman killer” angle into the investigation, at Lorraine, and finally at himself.
When Bean returned with the food, Rooney seemed even more distracted. Bean placed on the desk a ham and cheese on rye, two coffees with their plastic lids on, and then removed from his pocket a brown paper bag with a pint of bourbon. Rooney didn’t even say thank you. He took the top off his coffee, gulped a few mouthfuls, and topped it up with bourbon. Just as Bean had his own sandwich raised to his mouth, Rooney barked out, “Check that vice charge, the Janklow thing, get on that first.” Bean didn’t say he was already working on it, he just left Rooney alone, taking his lunch with him. He’d seen these dark moods often and didn’t want to be on the receiving end of one today.
Cold Shoulder Page 36
