by E. E. Giorgi
A pool table stood askew between the bar counter and the entertainment center. There was a cue chalk on the far edge of the table. I plucked down one of the cues hanging from the wall and brought it to my nose. Nice quality wood. “Don’t you want to know who killed him?” I said, chalking the tip. I like the smell of chalk. It’s like a bass in a soul jazz tune. You hardly notice it, but if it’s not there you miss it.
He let go of the tassel brusquely, as if it burned. He ran a hand across his hair, less smoothly than he’d done before, then came around the countertop, dance-walking. He smelled elegant and refined, like his apartment. He smelled of a life of Martinis and strolls down Paseo Colorado, of expensive clothes and cocktail parties, of a life lived to be enjoyed except when real life happened, and things like HIV and murder came to shutter your dreams.
“We weren’t lovers in the literal sense, you know. I mean, he’d tested positive, and I—” He swallowed. “Ghosts find a way to haunt you even when you don’t believe in them.”
He brushed a hand along the edge of the table, dragged the rack toward the end rail and started filling it. I took aim and shot a couple of balls toward him.
He arranged the balls in the rack, then passed me the cue ball. “You break?”
“Sure.”
We silently watched the balls scatter around the table, smacking against one another. I pocketed two.
“Good break,” he said, reaching for a cue. He studied the kitchen carefully. “The press didn’t treat him right. One of the most conservative journalists blew up the meth story. He described Charlie as some uber-tattooed freak who liked to shoot up his veins.” He shook his head, sadly. “He wasn’t like that, you know?”
“Who was Charlie Callahan?”
David stared vacantly at the kitchen. “A beautiful person. Young. Determined. Full of life.”
I didn’t pocket on my next shot, so I passed him the chalk. He handled it with care, his genderless movements somewhat natural on his frame. We’re all chimeras in our own ways.
“Did things change after he got laid off?”
“He was devastated.” Strong shot, pocketed two. He ran his fingers behind his ear and chose a new angle. “He was scared he wasn’t going to find another job. And he needed a job desperately in order to afford the meds. That’s how I learned he was positive. He hadn’t told me before.”
“You learned then that he was positive?”
He leaned with one hip against the table and nodded. “He’d enrolled in this experimental vaccine trial, and I’d just heard in the news the preliminary results had been very promising. He’d been careful, but sometimes—Anyway. You never think how vulnerable you are until it hits you.”
He looked me over with large, wet eyes.
“Do you happen to know if he ever saw a Dr. Liu while he was on the vaccine trial?”
He positioned the cue and hit the ball hard in the middle. A straight shot into the pocket. “No. Thompson’s the name I recall.” He frowned, head cocked to the side. “Funny.”
“What’s funny?”
“His mom called me a couple of weeks after he died. She asked the same thing.”
“About Dr. Liu?”
“Yeah. She wanted to know if he was her patient.”
“What did you tell her?”
The corners of his mouth twitched downwards. “I didn’t say much to her. I despised that woman. She and her husband—they never spoke a word to Charlie after he moved out here. I don’t even know how she got my number. I asked her why she wanted to know. She mentioned some next-of-kin approval the doc needed, but she wasn’t even sure if it was his doctor asking. And then she added, You’re all the same pack, and hung up on me. Bitch.”
Foul shot, my turn, ball-in-hand. I chalked the cue and repositioned myself.
“You’re saying Charlie never mentioned a Dr. Liu?”
“Not to me,” he said.
“Was he happy with Dr. Thompson?”
He shrugged in his feminine way—a fallen angel who no longer knew what to do with his wings. “He saw Dr. Thompson only once. After that, it was always the P.A. He wanted better care but he couldn’t afford it now that he’d been laid off. He was determined to fight for his health. He told me he had a way, that he knew somebody who could help.”
He bounced the cue ball off the side rail and pocketed two balls in one shot.
“When did he tell you this?”
“Hmm, let me think.” He tapped his lips with two fingers. “It must’ve been early November, because I remember discussing plans for Thanksgiving over that same conversation.”
The bi-weekly cash deposits started around the end of November. Some nice help, he was getting.
“Was he ever more specific about this supposed—help?”
“No. He seemed ok—for a little bit, at least.”
My attention perked. “What happened afterwards?”
The question made him nervous. He hit the cue the wrong way and scratched it. He sighed, propped the cue stick on the floor and leaned against it. “Christmas came and he still hadn’t found a new job. You know, the holiday blues, I suppose.”
I rolled the cue ball in one hand. “David,” I said. “I can smell people. I can smell when they lie, when they deceive, and when they simply hide something because they fear some kind of repercussions. You may have moved on, but you ain’t gonna find closure until we cuff the bastard who killed Charlie.”
He dance-walked to the wall and hung his stick. “Want another espresso?”
“No, I want the truth.”
He swung his hips as he walked. Not as much as a woman, but still. He opened the small fridge behind the bar counter, took out two bottles of Coronas and a lime.
Perfect espresso and Coronas in the fridge.
The guy was starting to freak me out.
“I told you the truth,” he said, uncapping the beers. “Just like I told the truth to the other detective, back in January. A woman, I forget—”
“I know her. Go on.”
“She and her partner came only once. After that I heard on the news that they’d caught Olsen and he was killer. They never came back.”
“Did you believe it?”
“That it was Olsen? Could’ve been. He lived down the street. He yelled at us one time because we were holding hands.”
David cut the lime, stuck a slice inside the neck of each bottle, and passed me one.
“But you don’t believe it was him,” I said.
He left his beer untouched on the counter and scuttled off to a room to the left. When he came back he was holding a picture. “He gave me this a few days before he got killed. In case something happens, he said. Why would he say something like that?”
I took the picture from his hand and sniffed it. It smelled of paper—he’d kept it in a book. I recognized the same scents I’d detected when I went through Charlie’s personal belongings: passive smoke, cheap aftershave, cologne. I looked at the photo. It was Charlie, sitting on a beige sofa and smiling, one arm on the back of the sofa, the other on his leg, crossed over his knee. He was wearing jeans and a green T-shirt, and he seemed relaxed and happy. On the right corner I spotted one end of a coffee table, with two beer cans, an ashtray, and a pair of reading glasses. Behind him, was a poster of what looked like the Niagara Falls.
David said, “It’s a cell phone shot.”
“Where was it taken?” I asked.
“No idea,” he replied. “It’s not his apartment.”
“And he never said why he wanted you to have it or who took it?”
David plucked the lime out of the bottleneck and took a swig. “I told you all I know, Detective.”
And now it was my job to connect the dots.
TWENTY-THREE
____________
Detective Courtney Henkins opened a battered cabinet that smelled of alcohol, old wood, and overall stale. An eclectic assortment of bottles at various stages of aging and consumption twinkled in a shaft of afte
rnoon sun. Perched on a chair at the other end of the room, a Yorkshire terrier showed me her teeth and growled.
“Jameson?” Henkins asked, squinting at her collection.
“D’you happen to have a Barolo in there?”
A scratchy sound came from the depths of her throat. Some people would’ve called it laughter. “What’s that, a table game?”
“I’ll settle for Irish whiskey, then. Probably half your dose, though.” I picked up a centenarian raincoat from a shaggy recliner, tossed it on a sofa that appeared to function also as bed, desk, and closet, and sat down. The recliner welcomed me with the desolate tang of thrift store.
The high-pitched drone of a NASCAR race blabbered from the adjacent unit, the voice of the ESPN commentator rising with every lap. From the street came the giggles of the people walking down to the beach, and the smells of those who instead had nothing better to do than sit on the porch and watch them go by.
The terrier snarled and gave me a leery eye.
“Pearl’s not used to guests,” Henkins said. She set the bottle of Jameson on the chipped coffee table in front of me and padded to the kitchen—a square of linoleum that hosted an anachronistic stove and a whining fridge. The kitchen table was buried in cereal boxes and canned soups.
Henkins went through her cabinet doors as if it were somebody else’s house. She emptied an ice tray in the sink, distributed the ice cubes between two glasses, and, despite my request, she filled both to the rim. I hoped by the time I left the place I still remembered my way home.
“So. Where’s your handsome partner?” she slurred, handing me the drink. She took the first swig while slumping on the sofa-turned-closet, on top of the pile of clothes. The sofa whined, the clothes didn’t complain. Pearl jumped down from the chair and ran on her mama’s lap.
“Not that I couldn’t fancy you,” she added after the first mouthful of whiskey.
“Sure,” I said, lifting the glass. “Be my Circe, I’ll be your Ulysses.”
She laughed, gulped down the rest of the drink, and smacked her tongue. And then she leaned backwards like a wilted plant, peering at the ice in her glass, eyes already filmed with the first signs of intoxication.
So there she was. Balls of steel drowning in a glass of whiskey, solitary companion of the lonely. Guessing from her age, she’d sailed through a few rocky marriages and survived the roughest times with the LAPD, back when the Affirmative Action was but a joke among the brass circles, and discrimination against women and minorities was considered a form of machismo.
She’d tamed the testosterone but not her addictions.
I set the glass on the coffee table and asked, “Where’s the restroom?”
She peered at me through skeptical eyes. “Door to the left. The one to the right’s a closet. That’s all there is, can’t get lost.”
I didn’t. I knew exactly where to go and what to look for. When I came back, both ladies were where I’d left them, Henkins on the sofa, her glass refilled, and the sour terrier on her lap, eying me sternly.
Friendly company.
I flashed them a smile—it went unnoticed—and as I resumed my post on the battled recliner, I leaned forward and clonked a little something on the coffee table. The little something caught Henkins’s attention. Her half-lid stare popped open. “What were you—”
“Your doctor’s name’s Andy Liu.”
“That’s none of your business,” she snapped.
“You made it my business, Courtney, by slipping one of those prescription bottles in Callahan’s evidence box.” I pointed to the bottle I’d retrieved from her bathroom cabinet. It was identical to the one we’d found in Charlie’s evidence box, except the name wasn’t scratched off on this one. The patient’s name was Courtney Henkins, the doctor’s A. Liu, and the office number was the office number I’d called after I left David Labeaux’s house, where they told me the only Dr. Liu in their practice was Andrew, not Amy.
Pearl snarled. Henkins pushed her away, sat up and poured herself another drink. I considered how many more minutes of her lucidity I had left. She drowned her face in another glass of whiskey. “We busted our asses over the Callahan case,” she drawled. “You spoiled RHD dicks—everything’s set on a silver plate for you. You grab it, run, and get the glory.” She ended the spiel with a hiccup.
“Bullshit,” I said. “That’s what you wanted us to think.” I leaned forward and leveled her eyes. They were tired eyes. They may have even been pretty in a previous life. “Satish and I found a prescription bottle in Callahan’s evidence box. It was from an A. Liu doctor. We thought of Amy Liu and made the connection. Problem is, the prescription bottle was never logged as a piece of evidence. You wanna know what I think? That’s a rhetorical question, I’ll tell you anyway. I think it wasn’t logged because you put it in there, after Amy Liu had been murdered and the case got transferred to us. You took advantage of the fact that your doctor’s name is A. Liu, scratched off part of the label, and sneaked down to Property as soon as you got a chance.”
I leaned back and watched her eyes struggle not to droop.
“You planted evidence, Courtney,” I pressed on. “I don’t know why you did, but I have a theory. Somebody wanted the case out of the way. A young gay man brutally murdered. Some got outraged, some didn’t, it got political. The pressure to catch the killer mounted, they caught one, not quite the right one, but close enough to let the moods cool down a bit. Maybe not forever. Maybe just for a while, like the Sherri Rae murder. Bury it for a while, and let a few people retire or leave. People in this country seem to have a short memory. And the few who do remember find it damn convenient.”
She said nothing, so I went on with my theory. “Until June all precautions had been taken to keep Charlie Callahan all hushed up. Then Amy Liu dies in a similar way. What’s the connection? Copycat or serial killer? A serial killer picks his victims at random. They’re the hardest fish to get. No pattern, no motive. But you provided a pattern, Court, by making us believe that Callahan was Amy Liu’s patient. You gave us a connection because you couldn’t tell us there was a connection. Why?”
“He was—” she started, then closed her mouth and bit her lip. She came forward and went for the bottle. I was faster. She hit her hand against the coffee table and cursed. Her eyes strayed to the Jameson now nestled on my lap. No amount of alcohol was going to smear the glare she sent my way. She flopped back on the sofa and sighed.
“He was her patient. In a way. They found Amy Liu on June nineteen. As soon as I heard sulfuric acid had been used, I went to see my captain. I told him I wanted a new task force on the Callahan case. There was a chance this could be the same killer and we had to reopen the case. He told me the case was going to the RHD. He said, ‘Henkins, file your request to retire.’ I told him I didn’t have enough benefits. He said, ‘We’ll make sure you do.” She laughed bitterly. “I couldn’t believe my ears. I gave my life to the agency. That’s how they pay me back.”
She looked at the bottle, languidly, then pushed her empty glass toward me. “My mouth is dry.”
I poured some more whiskey. “Keep talking,” I said.
She took a swig, swished it, then examined her reflection in the glass. “The name Amy Liu was familiar. I knew there was a connection. When I saw that she was an HIV doc I remembered.”
“Did you interview her over Callahan’s death?”
She shook her head. “I knew nothing about her until she showed up at the morgue.”
“At the morgue?”
Henkins sloppily nodded her head and tittered. “Don’t you love coincidences? I just love coincidences.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences. What did she want at the morgue?”
She gulped down another mouthful of whiskey. “Samples, she said. She had to get consent from Callahan’s estranged family. She got it, collected her samples, and we never heard back from her.”
I turned the bottle on my lap. The reek of alcohol was starting to annoy me. Hen
kins drained her third glass. Her eyes were slippery. She licked her lips and gave me a lopsided smile. “You’re cute.”
“Talk to me, not the bottle. You never went to see Amy Liu, then? You never asked her why she needed those samples?”
She shrugged. “We got Callahan’s killer, didn’t we? Malcolm Olsen. Violent, homophobic—he fit the bill. When they cuffed him over a domestic violence call, they called me down to the joint, told me, ‘This is your suspect, grill him.’”
“And instead of reporting what was going on, you ducked your head, complied, and forgot all about Amy Liu. I bet your memory got refreshed when you heard she’d been murdered.”
She tilted her head and stared at me. “You think you’re a smart ass just because you’re RHD?”
“I don’t think much until I hear the whole story.”
“Jesus.” She clonked the empty glass on the coffee table and sprang to her feet. She stood there, thinking, then flopped back on the sofa. The terrier jumped back on her lap and sent me a disapproving glare. “Of course it became important after she was killed. Thing is, it was no longer there.”
“What wasn’t?”
Her forehead corrugated. “Her request. She’d filed a request for the samples, with the father’s consent and all, and it wasn’t in the murder book. I called the morgue. They didn’t have it either. Then the captain called me in his office. He said to forget the Callahan case. He said to pass everything onto you guys and keep my mouth shut.”
“So you kept your mouth shut instead of reporting the fact that you had been harassed to silence. Was it a change of heart that gave you the idea to slip one of your prescription bottles into Callahan’s evidence box? I guess at that point it no longer mattered whether the evidence was fake or real.”
The monotonous drone of the NASCAR race on the neighbor’s TV ebbed off, replaced by the loud music of the commercials. The terrier chewed her paws. Henkins’s eyes glazed over again. She brought the glass to her lips, but there was no more whiskey and the ice cubes had reduced to pebbles. I set the bottle back on the table. I was done with her. I was done with everything. She could drown herself in a pool of alcohol if that was what she wanted.
