Brazen

by Loren D. Estleman

  In the passenger seat riding away from headquarters, Broadhead was thoughtful.

  “I’m beginning to think I should make that donation to the widows-and-orphans fund. A man like that could change all my opinions about cops.”

  “You think Sheridan did it too?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve been around longer than you and seen the elephant, and he doesn’t always turn out to be Dumbo. If Padilla’s right about that bum—”

  “Homeless person.”

  “It’s just us, Val. I’ve got tenure. I don’t have to be politically correct. As I was saying: If Padilla’s right about that unfortunate victim of our cold harsh society, Sheridan had a made-to-order reason to set up his partner.”

  “I agree; but I don’t see him for the others.”

  “Who’s to say that once you decide to break the most important law of God and man the life of anyone else matters? It makes more sense than your phantom projectionist.”

  “We’re drifting away pretty quickly from the original scenario, that our killer’s got some insane resentment toward everyone who fits Beata’s curse theory.”

  “Not quickly enough for me. The Silence of the Lambs is a great flick, but it wouldn’t be the first time a successful idea opened the floodgates to every schlockmeister in the industry. I grew up on Nero Wolfe and Ellery Queen. Their creators put in a lot of overtime creating plausible motivations for their perpetrators. Whipping up a sensational murder on no other premise than the murderer had a bad experience in potty training is just plain lazy.”

  “Now you’re even beginning to sound like Padilla.”

  “Why not? We could use him on the debate team. He works on pure reason.”

  “Why are you trying so hard to sell me on Sheridan?”

  “Because I love you. You have a gift. Where others see a plain rock you see the gem under the dirt. Padilla’s got the same gift, only in reverse: He turns over rocks to expose the slime underneath to sun and air. You both serve mankind, but I’d rather hang out with you. Stop trying to do his job and concentrate on yours.”

  Valentino was touched by his friend’s concern; he rarely cracked his hard-boiled façade. “Can it be you’re mellowing in the glow of matrimonial bliss?”

  “Let’s just say I’m enjoying my second childhood. At age twelve I was too busy studying for my master’s to appreciate the first.”

  They drove a few blocks in silence. Then Broadhead said, “You didn’t share your other theory with Padilla. About the gathering.”

  “It was a long shot, to begin with. After what he said about Sheridan it just seemed silly.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  But, Valentino thought, it had probably seemed just as silly the first time.

  * * *

  They entered the parking lot adjacent to the old power station now occupied by the Film Preservation Department. Something chimed. Valentino pulled into a slot and glanced at the dashboard clock. Ten minutes past the hour. It couldn’t be the bell tower marking the time.

  The chime was repeated. “What the devil is that?”

  Broadhead said, “I think you’ve got a text.”

  “I never get a text. I don’t even know how to text.”

  “And they call me a dinosaur.” He snatched Valentino’s cell from the console between them, glanced at the screen, and handed it over without a word.

  Sure enough, there was a message. He turned off the phone.

  “It’s from my electrician.”

  “Do you want me to answer him for you?”

  “I can do that in person. Would you like to see what The Oracle marquee looks like when it’s lit up?”

  “I’ve been counting the years.” The professor looked at the building, a bleak obelisk whose construction appeared to have predated the invention of windows. “Anything to avoid another intimate moment with Ruth. Should we invite Harriet?”

  Valentino punched the POWER button and brought up speed-dial. The phone rang twice and Harriet’s voice came on.

  “How’s it going, Hawkshaw? Close the case yet?”

  “Padilla did. In my face.” He told her about the marquee.

  “This isn’t going to be a replay of last time, is it?”

  “Are you interested or not?” He’d had his fill of pessimism for that week.

  “Give me a minute to change, then come pick me up.”

  “We’re not dressing.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of shaking out the old ball gown. I doubt you want me showing up for the Big Event in a smock smeared all over with gray-matter.”

  Broadhead borrowed the phone to call Fanta. She said she was up to her elbows in case law history, but wouldn’t mind putting aside Warner Brothers versus Olivia de Havilland to watch someone flip an electric switch. He hit END and returned the instrument. “Mind if we swing by to collect my future intended?”

  “As long as the conversation stays away from criminal proceedings.”

  “What’d Harriet say?”

  “Oh, you know women. She wants to powder her nose and shower off the stench of corpses.”

  “Thank heaven for that. There’s nothing like a shiny proboscis to take all the glamour out of a special occasion.”

  18

  FINDING A PLACE to park, in what was once the capital of America’s Wide Open Spaces, was always a challenge; but with another of Garth Brooks’s comeback concerts bringing out the earlybirds to stand in line for four hours at the Hollywood Bowl, the Dodgers hosting the Yankees, the Tall Ships moored outside San Diego, and simultaneous demonstrations scheduled by PETA, Amnesty International, and the North American Coalition to Preserve and Protect the Leopard-Throated Snail, the entire L.A. basin looked like the employee lot at Microsoft. The two couples bailed out at a thirty-minute meter fifteen blocks from West Hollywood and The Oracle.

  Valentino, veteran that he was, directed Harriet to remove a Jiffy peanut butter jar filled with quarters from the glove compartment.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked. “Brain the meter maid?”

  “I thought we could set up a relay system to keep the kitty fed.”

  Broadhead reached over from the backseat, snatched the jar from her, got out, and hailed a curly headed Hispanic youth seated on the curb next to a sandwich board reading MAPS TO THE STARS HOMES $5.00. He gave the boy twenty dollars for four maps, handed him the jar, and said he’d buy four more for his friends among the college faculty if he’d crank a quarter into the slot every five minutes.

  “Are you sure you can trust him?” Valentino asked as they began hiking.

  “Why not? He looks just like that kid in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father.”

  Fanta said, “Who?”

  The women were dressed practically, in leather walking shoes, slacks, and plain blouses, with the standard survival gear of water bottles, Gatorade, and chewing gum in their oversize shoulder bags. Broadhead, in heavy brown wingtips, thick tweeds, and his immigrant’s cloth cap, was hobbling and sweating after two blocks; they stopped frequently while he caught his wind. Valentino took off his corduroy jacket and tied it around his waist.

  “You look cute in a skirt,” Harriet said.

  “I’m secure enough to take that as a compliment, coming from a woman in pants.”

  Peter, the electrician, was waiting for them in front of the theater. He seized a cord attached to the heavy-duty cover he’d draped over the exposed wires in the marquee, and when they were all gathered on the sidewalk, tugged it loose. The cover fell away like the veil from a statue.

  “He’s one of you,” Broadhead told Valentino. But even his tones were hushed.

  Far above them, seeming to pierce the overlay of ocher smog spread like a dirty umbrella above the sprawling city, glittered a tower of thousands of LED lights, unlit at present, but reflecting what sunlight there was from their crystalline bulbs like scattered rhinestones.

  Now it was Valentino’s turn to express cynicism. “It looks okay, but w
hat happens when the sun goes down?”

  “I tested all the circuits,” Peter said. “What happened, one of my crew mixed up the Load and Line wires. There are only four of each, but the mathematical combinations are almost endless. It was trial-and-error and a lot of testing and tagging to avoid repeating the same mistakes.” With a flourish, the cheerful black technician drew the remote control from the tool belt girdling his hips and gave it to his client.

  Harriet pressed in close, taking Valentino’s arm with both hands. He glanced sideways at his friends and saw with satisfaction that the fingers of the professor’s right hand were interlaced with those of his fiancée’s left.

  “I’d say, ‘Here goes nothing,’ but that’s what happened last time.” He pressed the yellow button.

  A geyser of brilliant electric light shot up the obelisk-shaped tower on all four sides and across the half-circle that sheltered the entrance like a cliff: a dazzling rainbow with the white lights bordering it chasing around the edges in a synchronized stutter of brilliant illumination.

  The audience stared, as at a spectacular display of fireworks. Valentino felt light-headed. After all these years, the completion of his Sisyphean task seemed within sight.

  Now all he had to worry about were the roof, the floors, the walls, and the disturbing noises made by whatever had taken up residence inside the ceiling over the snack bar.

  Broadhead was the first to overcome his awe. “Just what was missing from Southern California. Plenty of flash and no substance.”

  Fanta bent a knee, kicking the calf of his leg. “Me, too, you old goat. Let’s go back to my place and make love.”

  “After I soak my feet.”

  “Congratulations, Val.” Harriet raised her face. He kissed it, and turned to accept Peter’s outstretched hand. He brought it back holding the electrician’s bill.

  * * *

  There was a flurry of media activity once it was announced that the police had a person of interest in what the tabloid outlets had tagged “the Bombshell Murders;” no one now accepted the pretense that Karen Ogilvie had taken her own life. Whenever the story had lagged for want of a new development, the press had only to dig into the morgue files and rehash the details of the mysterious violent deaths of Thelma Todd, Marilyn Monroe, and Jayne Mansfield in Sunday magazine spreads chock-a-block with the cheesecake photos beloved of the genre.

  “Also the same misinformation that was dished up as news the first time around,” Broadhead pointed out.

  With the shackles flung off, the paleontologists of the press broadened their excavations to include such non-related scandals as the Fatty Arbuckle trial following the sordid death of an obscure female guest at one of the silent comedian’s wild parties and the still-unsolved murder of silent-film director William Desmond Taylor, complete with all the breathless myths that had been expounded at the time of the atrocities. The absence of a brazen blond star from those incidents was lost in the frenzy. (Roger Corman, rumor had it, was seeking the exclusive right to adapt the story to the screen.)

  Sharing the projection booth/apartment with Valentino one evening three weeks into the investigation, Harriet Johansen put down the post-mortem photos she was studying with a magnifying lens to contemplate his troubled face. He happened to be looking at a TV commercial for a local used-car dealership, but it was clear from his expression he was still immersed in Entertainment Tonight’s most recent feature, a mishmash of sound bite interviews with red-carpet celebrities who knew no more about the murders than anyone watching from his living room, but all of whom seemed to have definite opinions on the subject.

  “You know, Val, the organization I work for does get it right most of the time. Sheridan’s said nothing to draw suspicion away from him.”

  “He hasn’t confessed, either. Padilla was confident he would any minute.”

  “A show of confidence is a cop’s best weapon. Most murderers are familiar with their victims, and everything about this case points to a personal connection.”

  “What’s personal about waiting someone’s table?”

  “I’m talking about Sheridan and Root. I’m not assigned to this one, so I can’t form an opinion on whether Padilla was right about the others. But he was dead-on about Sheridan inheriting everything upon his partner’s death. Root had no other bequests in his will, and he didn’t have a chance to change it between the time he quarreled with Sheridan and he was murdered.”

  “You never met Sheridan. I’ll need more than a strong motive to convince me he was acting.”

  “He probably wasn’t. Most killers regret their actions. And you have to agree there have been no other such killings since Sheridan’s been in custody.”

  “This one’s clever, Harriet. Too clever to bring the heat back down on him while he’s got a pigeon filling in for him.”

  “I’ve worked some serial cases. These people don’t kill just because they enjoy it. They do it because they can’t stop themselves. Based on the cycles so far, he’d have acted again long before this.”

  “Maybe he skipped town. Do you keep up with investigations outside this jurisdiction?”

  “Not usually. I’m not that much of a workaholic. But because you’re involved—interested, I should say—I’ve paid close attention to the heads-up stuff the FBI feeds the department daily. Their only person of interest in some serial homicides in Maryland is a white-haired widow who knows more about commonly available poisons than is good for those who come into contact with her. The rest is the usual terrorist stuff. Unless your phantom maniac has been misreading the Koran or has redirected his attention from bombshell blondes to postmen and census-takers, in my professional opinion the LAPD’s on the right track and you’re obsessing over something more than old movies. I prefer you prattling on about John Wayne than John Wayne Gacy.”

  “You’re right, of course.” He picked up the remote and switched to Wheel of Fortune.

  “Good.” She returned to her study of a severed larynx.

  “Unless,” he said, watching Vanna White flip over letters, “our killer isn’t a nut.”

  She started to groan; then slid the photo back into the file and took off her reading glasses. “What do you mean by that?”

  He turned off the set and leaned forward, dangling the remote between his knees. “What if our killer isn’t insane?”

  “The odds are he isn’t; or at least not the way usually associated with mass murderers. Padilla’s theory is—”

  “—that Sheridan cobbled up a serial pattern in order to divert attention from his real purpose, which was to kill his partner in order to ensure his security. Everyone assumes it had to be one or the other. No one’s considered a third possibility, that there’s a Mr. X acting on a motive we haven’t even thought of.”

  “Which brings us back to your mysterious projectionist. The lieutenant and I are colleagues,” she said. “I’ll find out if he’s been working that angle. He has, you know. What he said’s true: No good detective stops detecting just because he’s got a good suspect in the cage.”

  “I’d like to be in on that meeting.”

  “What, you don’t trust me?”

  “You’re the only person in this world I trust completely. If it turns out he’s wrong, I want to hear him admit it to my face.”

  “If he isn’t—and I’m sure he’s not, he’s one of the best we have—you realize you’d be giving him another chance to make fun of you for playing detective.”

  “He’d have that right. I’m not the easily bruised creature you think.”

  “You are, though; which is one of the reasons I love spending time with you. I spend most of my day with hard-hearted cynics. It’s their way of coping with the dregs of humanity they spend most of their days among. Here’s the deal: If I ask him about those projectionists and he says nothing came of that line, you drop this matter and don’t mention it again.”

  “You think that by not talking about it I’ll stop thinking about it?”

&n
bsp; “I think that you’re a reasonable person, who understands that when there’s no other place to look, you’ve found what you were after, and won’t let it keep eating you.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “What’s not fair?”

  “Drawing the ‘reasonable’ card.”

  And he smiled. After a second, she returned the expression and put her glasses back on.

  “The jig’s up.”

  “What?” She started, looking up from the file.

  Valentino was watching Wheel of Fortune. “‘The jig’s up,’” he repeated, gesturing toward the half-finished puzzle on-screen. “Phrase.”

  “You’re hopeless.”

  “If I were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  19

  THE NEXT DAY was a Saturday. It being Harriet’s day off, Valentino didn’t begrudge her postponing their meeting with Padilla until Monday. They attended the Garth Brooks concert: Her section chief had given her tickets when his wife went into labor three weeks early. Neither of them was particularly fond of modern country music, but it was a rare social evening out, and to turn down her superior’s generosity would not have served her career well.

  They enjoyed themselves tremendously. The artist was at the top of his form after his long and highly praised hiatus to throw over fame and glory to spend time with family, and even Broadhead, who caught the concert on cable, remarked that it was refreshing to listen to music with a discernible melody and understandable lyrics. (“There isn’t a true rhyme in a carload; but one can’t have everything.”) The couple fed off the enthusiasm of a manic audience and found themselves humming the star’s signature tunes while waiting for the parking lot to clear.

  Valentino spent Sunday with Broadhead in the Film Preservation Department’s screening room, viewing the jumpy frames of a 1915 silent adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, recently discovered in of all places, a bomb shelter in a previously top-secret Soviet training facility in Siberia. They had to admit, despite doubts about the Bard’s immortal poetry being reduced to actors’ face-making and scraps of dialogue consigned to title cards, that there was a certain advantage in being able to fill in the many continuity gaps with the help of the Folger Library, and looked forward to the funds that would be siphoned off from art-house showings into the department’s treasury.