by Sheila Lowe
While Coleman was running his DMV searches, Jovanic checked in with Huey Hardcastle, who was sitting in his car, surveilling Viper’s tattoo parlor, from half a block away.
“Any sign of Big Carl?”
“Guy fitting his description showed up at noon,” Hardcastle said.
“I guess he wasn’t driving a Tahoe?”
“No, man, a Harley.” Hardcastle gave a short huff of a laugh. “Size of that guy; looks like a monkey fucking a football.”
“What did you get on the plate?”
“Couple of ag assaults, three years at Folsom for possession.”
“Name, Huey? What’s his name?”
“Carl Latu.” He spelled out the Samoan’s name.
“Okay, stay on him.”
“You got it.”
Chapter Nineteen
As an ironic joke, Kelly’s ringtone was the old Madonna song, Like a Virgin. On Thursday afternoon, the music played. Even before she answered the call, Claudia had a feeling of foreboding that was borne out by Kelly’s first words.
“She’s split, Claudia. Gone. What the hell should I do?”
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Claudia stared through the kitchen window at the tub of bright red and orange geraniums spilling onto the patio deck, listening with dismay. “What happened?”
“I thought she was still asleep.” Kelly sounded ragged with anxiety. “I thought I could take a frigging shower without having to worry about her sneaking off, but damn it, when I came out of my room she was gone.”
“You’re sure she’s not just taking a walk, bumming a smoke off someone?”
“She raided my wallet.”
“You’re kidding! How much did she take?”
“About eighty bucks, I think. I’m lucky she left the credit cards.”
“Oh hell, I’m so sorry. I’ll reimburse you.”
“I don’t care about the money. Shit, Claudia, I can’t believe this. You trusted me to watch her, and…”
“Stop right there. This is not your fault. If she doesn’t want to be helped, there’s nothing you and I can do about it. You’d think she would appreciate a clean bed and a few free meals.”
Frustrated, Claudia blew air through her lips. Jamie Parker was not an easy girl to like, but even though she was streetwise, she was still young in years. She was not Claudia’s responsibility, but after the brutal murder of Angel, Jamie’s safety felt weighed on her.
“Did you check the guest room?” she asked Kelly.
“What’s to check? She didn’t have anything with her. All she left behind was an unmade bed.”
“Nothing that could give us a clue what she’s up to, where she went?”
“Nope. She didn’t even have a purse; there’s nothing.”
“Could she have called someone to pick her up?”
“I didn’t see a phone, but what kid goes without one these days? Even the homeless kids manage to get disposables.”
“You have a land line in your bedroom. Can you hit redial and see if she called someone while you were in the shower.”
“Hang on, I’ll try it.”
Claudia listened while Kelly gave her a blow-by-blow account of walking into the bedroom and trying the phone. “Good detective work, Claud, there is a number I don’t recognize. It’s in the 310 area code.” She recited the number and Claudia scribbled it onto the scratch pad she kept by the kitchen phone.
“I’m going to ask Annabelle if it looks familiar.”
“Okay, let me know.”
Claudia had another thought. “Jamie’s car was still on my street this morning when I drove Monica and Annabelle to school. I’ll go down and take a look when we hang up, see if it’s still there.”
“Dammit, Claudia, I screwed up.”
“Seriously, it’s not your fault. I’ll text Joel and let him know.”
“Oh, great. He already hates me.”
“No, he doesn’t. Anyway, he couldn’t do anything with Jamie, so he can hardly blame you for her taking off.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Cheer up. Streetwise kids like her always land on their feet.”
Except, Angel didn’t.
Claudia hung up the phone feeling less optimistic than her words suggested.
***
A light glaze of beach sand and dust cloaked Jamie Parker’s battered old Honda. Shading her eyes against the glare, Claudia peered through the driver side window. She was able to make out a dark, bulky object on the passenger side floor. She went around to the front of the car and tried the handle, surprised to find the door unlocked. It was a testament to her neighborhood that no one had ripped off the backpack in the foot well overnight.
Stealing a furtive glance around to make sure nobody was watching, Claudia took out the backpack and feeling like a thief, carried it back to her house.
Not sure what to expect, she tipped the contents onto the kitchen table. A pair of black jeans, a tank top. Car keys, a tube of mascara caked black around the twist top; a tube of bright red lipstick. A dozen blue square packets—condoms. A dangerous-looking pocket knife in a sheath. Grains of white powder in a flat piece of aluminum foil, a plastic stirring straw cut in half. Meth? Probably. Jamie didn’t have the money for coke. She would have needed a spoon and hypodermic needle for Heroin.
Depressed by the contents of the backpack, Claudia stuffed everything back inside and gave her hands a thorough scrubbing under hot water. A prickle of guilt stung her. She wondered how Joel would react if she told him what she had just done. Could he use what she had found as evidence of a crime? She was none too sure that arresting Jamie for drug possession would get the girl the help she needed. Claudia had a strong suspicion that the girl was already too old and too hardened to accept that kind of help.
***
Jovanic’s phone went straight to voicemail, which meant he was interviewing a witness and unable to answer. Claudia left a brief message. He called back ten minutes later on his way into the station. He had listened to her message and seemed unconcerned about Jamie’s defection.
Claudia chose her words with care. “I’ve got a, uh, hypothetical question for you.”
“Okay.” He already sounded wary and she hurried on.
“Hypothetically, what if someone entered an unlocked car without permission of the owner and removed an item?”
The long pause before he spoke told her that Jovanic’s suspicion antenna was turned up high and he was being just as circumspect in considering how to respond. “The car is unlocked? You’re talking about a theft.”
“Even if the car owner and the person removing the item know each other?”
“Even if. What kind of item might we be talking about? If the value is more than a thousand bucks, it’s grand theft. Otherwise, it’s petty theft.”
His answer gave her a flutter of relief. “Let’s just say—hypothetically speaking—that it was a backpack that contained something like, um, a controlled substance; drug paraphernalia.”
“Oh my God, Claudia, tell me you didn’t.”
“It’s hypothetical, remember?” she hastened to remind him.
“Yeah, right.” She could practically hear him grit his teeth. “So, what’s the question about this thief?”
“Harsh word, honey. The question is, if that activity—and finding the drug stuff—were to be reported to an officer of the law, what would happen?”
Once again, the long pause while he thought it over. “There would be some options. The officer could turn in the contraband. Which means he has to take the time to process it, write a report, and submit it as evidence, and that would royally piss him off if there wasn’t a good reason to do it. And of course, he would then have to explain where he got it, which could lead
to a big problem for the person who ‘found’ the evidence because she—assuming this ‘hypothetical’ person is a she—wasn’t acting under color of law. You know what that means, right?”
“Yes, of course I know what ‘color of law’ means. No law enforcement personnel instructed the person to enter the vehicle and take the property. She—or he—did it on her—or his—own.”
“Close enough. Of course, if there was just a small amount of the illegal substance, the officer might decide it wasn’t worth the effort. He might decide to flush it and forget about it. Or,” Jovanic mused thoughtfully, “he could seize it as evidence and use it to hang over the owner’s head; threaten her with jail if she was withholding important information in some other case the officer was aware of.”
“I see. Well, thank you, Columbo, this has been very instructive.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it has.”
Claudia heard someone in the background speak to him as he entered the police station. He told her he had to go. But not before he issued a warning. “Babe, be careful, okay? I’d hate to have to bail that hypothetical someone out of lockup.”
She rang off and poured herself a glass of ice tea, musing on what to do about Jamie’s backpack. Maybe just return it to the Honda and lock the door. She could decide later. But before she pushed Jamie out of her head there was one more thing that needed to be done.
Claudia took her tea up to the office and plopped down at her desk. She opened a browser and typed in the phone number Kelly had given her into a reverse directory. It told her that Jamie had called a mobile phone in Venice, no name listed. She was tempted to dial it, but not knowing who would answer, she decided to wait and show it to Annabelle. It might mean nothing at all.
She still had about an hour before it was time to pick up the girls from school. In the event she had missed something important, she wanted to take a second look at Ariceli Lopez’ handwriting.
The file she had made for the case was still lying on her desk, under a pile of other work that had accumulated throughout the morning. When she opened it, the handwriting gave her the same negative impression as it had upon her first inspection. Red flags leapt off the page. The first thing she noticed was the strange way Ariceli formed her personal pronoun “I.” It looked more like a capital D. The significance of that form might not be of importance to the murder investigation, but to Claudia it said Ariceli had problems in her relationship to her parents.
The nasty claw-like shapes on the bottom parts of the g’s and y’s, which some early handwriting analyst had misnamed “felon’s claws,” indicated that there was a strong chance she was molested in early childhood and then made to feel guilty about it, as if she were the perpetrator.
The large overall size of the writing indicated that Ariceli was not one to avoid conflict. In fact, several indicators—the blunt, heavy ending strokes on words, t-crosses that thinned to a sharp point—pointed to the young woman being antagonistic and fearless about it.
Claudia did not see Ariceli as the type who would step up and be accountable for her actions. She would lie readily if it would get her what she wanted. The lack of upper loops combined with overly rounded writing and strokes that intruded into the oval letters suggested that she lied as a defense, either to save face, or to avoid taking the blame whenever she could get away with it.
Ariceli’s motive for lying in her handwritten statement was clear enough: she either knew or guessed what had happened to Angel and she feared that at least some of the responsibility would attach to her. That was not the same as being sorry for any part she might have played in the circumstances of Angel’s death. Her ability to rationalize would justify what she was doing and make it okay in her own mind. Her outlook was so unrealistic, she might not even realize it when she was lying to herself.
***
Playa de la Reina Middle School was on half-day schedule. Claudia stopped the Jaguar at the curb outside the school at one PM and waited for Annabelle and Monica. They walked out together, each lugging a backpack similar to the one Claudia had taken from Jamie’s Honda. The big difference was, instead of condoms and drugs, theirs held school supplies and the multitude of stuff teenage girls could not do without.
After dropping Monica at her home, Claudia got out the piece of paper with the scribbled phone number from Kelly’s phone and handed it to Annabelle as they drove away. “Whose number is this?”
Annabelle looked at it and frowned. “Where’d you get this? Have you been snooping in my stuff?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, where’d you get it then?”
“Right now, I’m asking the questions. Whose number is it?”
“Mouser. Angel’s boyfriend.”
“I need to know if he picked up Jamie today.” From the corner of her eye, Claudia caught Annabelle’s surprised look at her.
“She cut out on Kelly?”
“It would appear that way.”
“What a bitch.”
“Language, Annabelle,” admonished Claudia, but secretly, she agreed with the assessment.
“Mouser was mad at her. I totally don’t think he would pick her up.”
“But he might have?”
“I doubt it.”
“Let’s find out.”
“Mouser’s never gonna talk to you, Claudia.”
“That’s why I need you to call him.”
“But Joel said for me not to talk to him, remember?” Annabelle retorted with an air of self-righteousness.
“I think under the circumstances he’ll understand. I just need to make sure Jamie is still safe. Call him, please.”
“Right now, with you listening?”
“Yep.”
Settling into her pouty face, Annabelle slumped back in the bucket seat and pulled her backpack onto her lap. She dug out her iPhone in its hot pink glitter case and without another word, punched in the numbers and waited for Mouser to answer.
“Hey. It’s Annabelle.” A moment later she jerked the phone away from her ear, turning a fierce glare on Claudia. “What’re you talking about? I just told them what you wanted me to. Listen—no, wait, don’t hang up! Hey! Did you give Jamie a ride? Today.”
Claudia could not make out what Mouser was saying, but she could tell he was agitated.
“Don’t fuckin’ yell at me.” Annabelle’s own voice rose. “Do you know where she is, or not? Fine!” She clicked off the call and tossed the phone into her backpack.
“F-bombs, Annabelle. Not allowed, remember?”
Annabelle’s glare heated up. “You set me up. The cops went over to his house and hassled his brother and Ariceli.”
“Annabelle, seriously, is that something I would do to you?”
“But you knew he was gonna be pissed.”
“I knew Joel and his partner went over there before Mouser talked to you. They have to question everyone who knew Angel. And remember, Mouser asked you to talk to Joel on his behalf. So does he have a good reason to be pissed?”
“I guess not.” There was a short silence. “Sorry.”
“Apology accepted. Look, sweetie, even if he didn’t do kill Angel himself—and I don’t know whether he did or not—Mouser’s brother is involved in the murder.”
“What do you mean? He hurt her?”
“I don’t know anything about that. But if he helped move her body like Mouser told you he did, it’s called being an accessory after the fact. It means he becomes part of the crime.”
“What do they do to someone who’s an accessory after the fact?”
“He could go to prison. I think maybe he could even be charged with the murder.”
“Even if he didn’t kill the person himself?”
“Yes, even then.”
“Damn.” It was less an epi
thet than an expression of surprise.
“Language, Annabelle,” Claudia reminded, feeling like a broken record.
“It’s just a word, why does it matter?”
“We’ve had that conversation enough times that I don’t feel like repeating it right now. Did Mouser say anything about Jamie?”
“She called him for a ride, but he didn’t have any wheels today and even if he did she’s a filthy skank and he wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.”
Claudia suppressed a sigh. “I’m sorry I asked.”
Chapter Twenty
“Hey, who’s having a sale on sugar skulls?”
Jovanic turned to the morgue attendant who had just brushed past him. Bone-thin, lank black hair slicked under a hair net, a dark olive-complexion, he had a cadaverous look that fit his job.
“What’s that, Mario?”
“Your gal there.” The attendant jerked his thumb at the nude body of sixteen-year-old Angela Eliana Tedesco laid out on the stainless steel table. A modesty sheet had been placed over the lower part of her torso. Her head and upper body were propped on a wood block to give the medical examiner better access. The long blonde hair had fallen away from her neck, exposing the sugar skull tattoo on her shoulder. “Second time I’ve seen that tat this week,” Mario said. “Vic we picked up yesterday has one just like it. Maybe some tattoo parlor got a twofer sale going on or somethin’.”
“Are you sure it’s the same?”
The morgue attendant gave him a mocking look and shook his head as if in disbelief. “Would I say so if I wasn’t sure?”
