by Paul Bishop
“Had to get money somehow otherwise I was going to sink.” Smack Daddy looked chagrinned.
“So you released remixed tracks stripped straight off of the YouTube videos.”
“Told you,” Smack Daddy insisted. “Had to create a streaming revenue. The videos were going viral. Three of them over two million views. It was a pot of gold just sitting there. I needed it to get out from under.”
“But you didn’t give any of it to Changeling, did you?”
Smack Daddy smirked. “Just kept stalling. His lawyer just did wills and trusts, had no idea how entertainment law worked. I turned the tap on and filled the buckets.”
“Did Changeling ask you for money?”
“Sure. Had some sob story about his nephew needing special care. Man, I’ve heard it all in this business. Smack Daddy needed special care before some sad sack kid who doesn’t know up from down.”
This was the real Smack Daddy. His words were pastel blue, but had taken on a vivid shine. I realized I was beginning to see not just colors, but all the various shades of meaning they could convey.
“Did he know you were putting the five million dollars together?”
Smack Daddy nodded. “I told him. Tried to explain he’d get his money once Smack Records was free and clear of the leeches. Told him and told him. He just needed to be patient.”
“He ever see the money?”
“Once. He was at the house playing with Unicorn. Came into my office when I wasn’t expecting him. It was costing me thirty cents on the dollar to get everything in cash, but I was almost there. I’d just taken a payment and was stashing it away when he walked in. You should have seen his eyes.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. Just walked out.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Two weeks ago. Still needed a couple more payments to get the full amount in cash.”
“Did he ever hear you call Unicorn ugly? Did he ever hear you say you didn’t want her?”
“Of course,” Smack Daddy said. “I made sure everybody knew. Had to keep the men with their hooks in me away from my family. Couldn’t let them know my family was my weak spot. Had to keep them away until I could get the money to pay them off. Then I’d make Changeling knuckle down and work. We both would have made more money than he’d ever need to take care of a hundred messed up nephews. Smack Daddy knows how to make money if he has a product, and Changeling was just that – a product.”
Pagan waited a beat, letting Smack Daddy’s statement settle on his ears.
“Have you had any contact with Changeling since your daughter and the money were taken?” Pagan asked softly.
“No.”
Pagan cut his eyes to mine. I’d seen nothing but pastel blue attached to the word, so I nodded in the affirmative.
Pagan dropped his eyes to Smack Daddy again. “How do we find Changeling?”
Smack Daddy shook his head. “I got nothing man. Only his lawyer. And like I said, he ain’t picking up his phone.”
Chapter 29
“Art is the lie that enables us to
realize the truth.”
- Pablo Picasso
Turned out Smack Daddy had something other than the lawyer’s phone number – and it was a huge gold nugget.
He had the lawyer’s name.
Myron Kruger.
Kruger – as in the Krugers who first worked at, then bought, Jack Martin’s mortuary and connected cemetery, renaming it Valley of Olives.
We were headed there now, but I had to get something off my chest first.
“What did you do to Smack Daddy in the lobby?” I asked.
Pagan was taking his turn behind the wheel of the Escalade, but I sure as hell didn’t feel like taking one of his catnaps.
“I told you we don’t have a lot of time. If we don’t keep moving and crack this open, bad things are going to happen.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
Pagan shook his head. I got the feeling he was a little irritated I’d noticed his actions. Either something was wrong or he wasn’t used to being questioned.
“I just planted a subconscious suggestion for him to tell the truth.”
“Hypnosis is out of policy.”
“You think Internal Affairs – pardon me, Professional Standards Bureau – is going to believe I have the ability to instantly hypnotize people into telling the truth?”
“Do you?”
“What color were Smack Daddy’s words? Did he tell us the truth?”
“Yes.” I didn’t like admitting, caught myself folding my arms high and tight across my chest in anger.
“Then what is the issue?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was I not playing fair?”
“There’s a difference between fair and legal,” I said, feeling petulant.
“Semantics,” Pagan said, calling me on my statement.
“You said you need me to stop you from making another mistake.” I wasn’t ready to concede.
Pagan shot me a look. “Are you going to play the mistake card every time we have a disagreement? Shouldn’t you save it for special occasions?”
“Don’t be a jackass.”
“Listen to yourself,” Pagan said. “What colors are attached to your words? What color is disapproval? Censure?” Pagan’s tone had turned edgy, rough. His voice had changed. “Would you feel better if it had taken us several hours to wring the truth out of Smack Daddy and then not being sure we had it all?”
Suddenly, I registered the colors of Pagan’s word streamers. Like his voice, they had changed. The usual red hues I associated with him had blurred. There was a harsh bright yellow intertwined around them as if trying to contain the red in a stranglehold.
I had an epiphany. “Are you channeling Changeling?”
Pagan shook his head and took a deep breath. “Not him, his emotions.”
I didn’t question him. I could see it in his words.
“Changeling is not a master criminal,” Pagan said. “Everything he’s done, starting with the hit and run murder of Jack Martin, has been fueled by opportunity.”
I changed gears mentally and caught up. “The kidnappings – they wouldn’t have happened if not for the opportunity of five million dollars in cash.”
“Exactly. He sees himself as an avenger and a protector, willing to kill to do both.”
“Do you feel he’s a threat to Gerrard or Unicorn?”
Pagan shook his head. “No. But if he’s used the five million dollars to hide them away somewhere…”
I picked up the thread. “…He might do something to himself so nobody will learn his secrets.”
“It’s in the name he chose for himself. A changeling is a force of destruction and chaos.”
It was my turn to nod. “And he’ll use chaos to steal away and protect other children, so what happened to him, won’t happen to them.”
“All you have to do is listen to the tones in Changeling’s voice when he sings – there is a deep rage and an equal and opposite depth of compassion,” Pagan said. “I can feel them both.”
“Literally? Is that what it means to be a true empath?” I needed to know how he really ticked.
“Yes.”
The truth wasn’t just in the color of his words. I could see the pain etching itself into his face.
“Holy crap.”
“Yeah,” Pagan said.
We were silent for a moment. Pagan changed lanes and sped down the freeway off ramp, turning north onto Sepulveda Boulevard. Almost immediately, I could see a sign for the entrance to Valley of Olives Cemetery and Mortuary on the west side of the street.
Pagan was becoming more and more agitated.
“What else are you feeling?” I asked.
“Despair,” Pagan instantly replied. “Changeling knows time is running out. He knows we’re coming, and he will protect the children at any cost to himself.”
Chapter 30
“People
would lie less, or learn to deceive more skillfully, if they understood how easy it is for a trained investigator to detect lying.”
- Ruth Rendell, Harm Done
The actual gates leading to the Valley of Olives entrance were off Sepulveda on Morrison Street. The cemetery was old, but tidy and appealing. It was nestled in a natural basin, bordered by the Ventura Freeway on the south, the San Diego Freeway on the west, and the concrete channel of the Los Angeles River on the north. The traffic noise from the intersecting freeways was a constant. I wondered how any of the interred could rest in peace.
Still, there was a charm and a calm to the area with recently tarmacked drives winding through buzz-cut grass expanses filled with ground level memorial plaques and dotted explosions of cut flowers. In another section, headstones and statues proliferated.
There were enough mature palms, cypress, and pine trees to give the area the feel of a park. That wasn’t including the rows of olive trees, which gave support to the cemetery’s name.
Several twenty-foot-long by eight-foot-high internment walls, for the keeping of ashes, helped to act as dividers for different areas of the cemetery. Far in the back, I could see a number of marble mausoleums rising up to proclaim the high financial standards of the families who owned them.
The large building housing the mortuary offices had a profusion of colorful bougainvillea spread from one end to the other, as if holding the walls together.
I’d looked at a satellite view of the area on my phone and knew there were several outbuildings behind the main offices. Two appeared to be residences. The other was a long rectangle, most likely discreetly hiding away those things needing to take place at a mortuary none of us like to think about.
There were three cars parked in the lot outside the main building. Pagan added the Escalade to the line-up. Before we got out, I used my phone again to download the information on Myron Kruger and his parents, which Chris Lancaster had scanned and emailed over from RHD. I read it quickly to Pagan. There was nothing really of note, but I didn’t know how much Pagan was taking in.
When we got out of the Escalade, his face was taut and drawn.
“You okay?” I asked.
He took a deep breath and forced out a smile. “Can you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“He’s waiting.”
I frowned and shook my head. “How do you know?”
Pagan shrugged. “As I told you, ever since I was a child, I’ve been able to put myself in somebody else’s place – literally feel what they are feeling. It’s an instinct. I have to think consciously about it to turn it off.”
“You turned it off when you were dealing with Michael Horner?”
Pagan looked down then back up at the sky. “I was just so damn tired.”
“But you’ve never met Benny White, Changeling. How can you feel him?”
“I’ve seen him, I’ve watched his videos, I’ve heard him sing. I know where his pain comes from. I don’t need to meet him to feel him.”
After another moment passed, I asked. “Is that what it’s like, being an empath? Feeling everybody else’s pain? What about their joy, their excitement?”
“I can feel those things, but they don’t linger. It’s the negatives that are absorbed into my psyche.”
I considered the implications, then said, “I’m glad being an empath is your gift and not mine.”
Pagan seemed to come back into himself. “Sure you don’t want to trade?”
Before I met Pagan, I would have given anything to not see colored word streamers – not to know when people were lying. Now I realized there could be more…difficult gifts.
“Not a chance,” I said.
We continued to stand by the car in silence for a moment. Pagan was scanning the area, almost sniffing the air like a hunting dog.
I laid my free hand on his arm. “No more parlor tricks, okay?”
He looked down at my hand on his arm and gave me another tight smile. “Won’t need them,” he said.
He led off and I followed. I was using my cane, but was so juiced with adrenaline, I hardly needed it.
As we walked, Pagan asked, “Where would you go if you were ten and needed to hide?”
I immediately remembered what Chad and Sophie had said about the cemetery, and I clicked into Pagan’s thought process. “Somewhere familiar. Somewhere where nobody had ever found me. You think he had a bolt hole here.”
“When they played hide and seek here, nobody ever found him.”
“What then?”
Pagan shrugged. “Let’s find out.” He pushed open the mortuary door.
As we stepped into the cool interior, I did feel something. It was like a soft blanket, or a cone of silence had been lowered, as if talking in a normal voice would shatter the walls.
The carpeted lobby area was partially filled with a round polished wooden table with a tall vase of real flowers in the center. The fragrance of the flowers was an assault on the senses, as if covering up the scent of constantly hovering grief and pain. On the back wall, a huge Star of David hung over a closed door. On a side wall was a smaller simple cross. Door-lined hallways escaped down either side of the lobby.
Our entrance caused a soft bong to resonate. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see a man emerge from the first open door off the left hallway. He was probably in his thirties, but short and heavyset, with mud colored eyes and a shock of finger-combed hair as black as his ill-fitting suit.
He took us in with an uneasy assessment, but delivered a professional smile. “Can I help you?”
Pagan smiled. “Myron?”
“Yes?” he answered in the positive, but there was a question still in his tone.
Pagan stepped forward and extended his hand. I went on high alert, but Pagan did nothing more than grasp Myron Kruger’s hand and shake it.
“Ray Pagan,” he said. “I think you’ve been expecting us.”
“Expecting…” The color of Myron Kruger’s word belied his attempt at witlessness. It was the color of fear.
“Detective Ray Pagan and my partner, Detective Jane Randall,” Pagan said, putting the emphasis on detective.
The color drained from Kruger’s face.
“Please come this way,” he said. With an ushering hand, he showed us into the office from which he had appeared.
Inside, an older man and woman stood up from a flowered upholstery couch set against the back wall. The family resemblance to Kruger was clear.
The woman took one look at Pagan and burst into tears. The man beside her, obviously her husband, put his arm around her. He, too, looked on the verge of tears.
I wasn’t shocked when Pagan stepped forward and gathered both of the older folks into an embrace. The three of them held onto each other as if they were standing on the deck of the Titanic.
Myron looked at me and blinked. I blinked back at him. We both stood there awkwardly while grief poured out of the trio. I had a tentative grasp of what was going on, but there was no way I was hugging Myron – no matter how pathetic he looked.
I did try out a smile, which caused him to offer me access to a chair in front of a paper strewn desk. I slid into it with as much grace as I could muster. Myron sat in another chair opposite me. Progress of a sort.
“My parents,” Myron finally said. “Isaac and Abi Kruger.”
“They own Valley of Olives?” I asked. I knew the answer, but was just searching for something to say.
My stilted question had the effect of breaking up Pagan’s group hug with the older Krugers.
“Yes, we own it,” Isaac Kruger said, handing his wife a big white handkerchief to wipe her eyes. “One day, hopefully not too soon, it will belong to Myron. He’s a good son. He will bury us here.”
“You bought the business from Harvey and David Martin after Jack Martin was murdered?” I asked, watching closely and seeing Abi Kruger give a slight wince at my harsh use of the word murder.
“A t
errible hit and run,” Isaac said.
People who are innocent have no issue with the use of harsh words. Suspects who are guilty, or who have guilty knowledge, will use softer words. Money is missing not stolen. Touchy-feely stuff not child molest. Hit and run not murder.
Pagan spared me a glance. “Why don’t we all sit down,” he said to Isaac and Abi. Pagan sat with them on the couch. It was a tight fit for three, but nobody complained. Abi was in the middle between the two men. Isaac held one of her hands. Pagan took the other and looked at her directly.
“You have another son, don’t you?” Pagan asked her gently.
Tears immediately returned to Abi Kruger’s eyes.
“He is not our son,” Isaac answered for his wife. “But he has been like one.”
Myron Kruger cleared his throat. “You’ve come for Benny, haven’t you?” The statement was spontaneous, driven by anxiety. “I knew dealing with the record company was a mistake, but I just thought…” He tapered off.
I saw the pain for his parents’ predicament in the color of his words and wondered if there was pain there also for Benny. His words certainly let us know we were closing in on Changeling…Benny White.
“It’s not like we needed the money,” Isaac said. The look he shot Myron was right out of the I told you so playbook.
“He’s not a bad boy,” Abi Kruger said. “He was…is…just…different.”
“Please explain so I can understand,” Pagan directed gently. “He needs someone on his side right now.”
“You are on his side?” Isaac Kruger scoffed.
“We both are,” Pagan said, indicating me with his free hand.
I wasn’t sure I was on the side of somebody who had most likely committed two murders and kidnapped two children. However, I arranged my facial expression appropriately remembering a great interrogator becomes the person the subject needs you to be in order to confess. If the Krugers had been harboring Changeling, helping him hide the children – for whatever reason – they were suspects, too.
“How can that be?” Abi asked. “You are the police.”
I doubted the police in Germany, from where the Krugers immigrated, were exactly paragons of forgiveness.
