by Kit Frazier
We pulled into the parking lot of the city’s police headquarters and headed into the lobby, the December wind whipping at both of our short skirts.
“We probably should have changed clothes,” I said and Mia snorted.
“You want information, don’t you?”
She had a point. Cantu had told me Clark was a pompous ass, or words to that effect. And while I’d worn the skirt for Logan’s benefit, it certainly wouldn’t hurt trying to weasel information out of a jerk.
We pulled into the parking lot of the Justice Complex, all decked out in twinkling wreaths and an enormous light sculpture Texas flags.
We parked in front of the police department, and Tilda Collins, the retired cop at the front desk clacked her dentured smile at me.
“You here to see Detective Clark?” Tilda said.
I smiled. “Yup. What can you tell me about him?”
“He’s from California,” she said as if that explained everything.
“And Sgt. Dan Soliz?”
“Not in yet,” she said.
Then she handed me a Post It with Clark’s office number and Mia and I took the elevator up to the seventh floor.
#
“Be nice,” I said to Mia. “We want this guy to talk.”
She widened her dark eyes. “What? I’m always nice,” she said with a lot of shoulder and hip.
“Uh, huh,” I said.
Mia was deceptively cute and sweet, but piss her off and she’d open up a can of Columbian whoop ass on you that would knock you into next week. And Cantu had already indicated this guy was a horse’s ass.
“You said this guy isn’t gonna tell us anything useful,” Mia said and I nodded.
“Based on his report, or lack of report, he probably won’t tell us anything that’ll get us closer to John Doe’s identity or who the shooter is,” I said. “But we need to talk to him.”
“Just in case?” Mia wanted to know.
“Yes, and if we’re right, if John Doe isn’t a drug dealer, we need to make sure we get the story,” I said. “The whole story.”
We exited the elevator and headed down the hall to Clark’s office where he met us at his open door, which was canopied in Pottery Barn Christmas paraphernalia.
Wow. We’d hit the big time.
I gave Clark the once over. I’ve known cops all my life, and most of them are genuine, bona fide heroes. But, as in most professions, there are a few butt heads. And I’ve met at least one genuinely criminal sheriff, though I hadn’t proved it. Yet.
And from where I stood, Detective Clark was a bona fide butt head.
He was sporting blond-streaked hair that was freeze-dried into an ESPN anchorman helmet and a smile that showed way too many teeth. He was good looking in a Malibu Ken doll kind of way, complete with a Malibu Ken expensive dark pinstriped suit.
I tried not to snort. All hat and no cattle, as my daddy used to say.
The sad thing was that it probably worked for him. I’d bet he had a legion of badge bunnies clinging to him like Saran Wrap.
My distaste was immediate, and I wasn’t sure if Cantu had jaded my opinion, or if it was the way this knucklehead’s report looked nothing like the security video, or if it was just the fact I could tell he sat for an hour at some hairdresser getting his hair frosted.
“You must be Cauley,” he said to me, beaming as he gave me a double-handshake - his right hand lingering a little too long in the shake while he gave my upper arm a squeeze with his left, brushing my breast. “Detective Claude Clark, but my friends call me Dutch.”
“Hm,” I said, and wondered if the ol’ breast-brush was something dickheads inherited or if they learned it from some Dickhead for Dummies manual. I wondered who named him Claude. Probably code for Dirt Clod.
“And you brought a little friend,” he turned to Mia, smiling even wider when he saw her camera. “I didn’t realize there’d be a photo shoot.”
I heard Mia growl an inventive Columbian curse under her breath. I did a mental, uh oh. Despite, or perhaps because of her small stature, Mia hates being called “little.”
He leaned in to give Mia the old boob brush and she ducked into his grasp -
Flash!
The burst of light was so close to his face that it probably blistered the back of his eyeballs. He blinked hard and took a step back.
I turned to look at Mia and raised an eyebrow, and she sent me a wide-eyed innocent, Wha-a-a-t?
She smiled wide and shrugged at him. “No habla Ingles,” she said, and I shook my head.
“Well, that’s okay. Great in fact,” he said, clearing his throat and chuckling a forced laugh.
Then he turned to me and said, “Cantu probably told you I was the media liaison in LA.”
No, Cantu told me you were investigating a murder. And as far as media relations went, I bet he just liked to say liaison.
And he thought we were here to do a profile on him? Seriously?
Fine. Most cops don’t like to talk to media, and this would make my job a million percent easier.
He glanced over at his reflection in the window and tried to surreptitiously check his teeth like he was doing an interview for The Bachelor, not chatting with a reporter who may offer a couple of clues to John Doe’s identity, if not a tip that might get him closer to the killer.
“Glad to be dealing with a pro,” I said, giving him my second most charming smile - my first most charming smile I save for people I like. And people I respect. And people for whom I don’t get the overwhelming urge to kick in the leg.
Cantu was right. There was something up with this guy, and the best way to find out was to let him talk until he stepped in his own dog doodie.
“And this is Mia Santiago - she’s an award-winning photographer,” I said, and at that, he ramped up his anchorman smile.
“Yes, of course,” he said, and motioned us to sit as he moved behind his mammoth mahogany desk - clearly shipped in from California.
No way an Austin cop would ride that kind of desk.
Mia sat in the seat he’d indicated, but she continued to mutter.
I sat next to her, file in my lap, and stared at the gleaming, uncluttered surface of his desk.
Most cop desks look worse than mine, which is saying a lot. The Clod had the most immaculate cop desk I’ve ever seen. No burgeoning inbox, no teetering stack of reports, no family photos. No holiday hoopla, except for Austin fave Michael Martin Murphy’s Christmas cantata playing softly from an expensive looking iPod dock.
I straightened the disheveled papers inside my newly constructed John Doe file. Hm. Already I had more information strewn around the office than The Clod.
His office was, however, adorned with more than a dozen shots of The Clod glad handing various California celebu-tants, politicians and upper management law enforcement officers with more brass than God. Nice to know his priorities were in order.
I’ve met men like him. Interviews are easy because they love to talk about their favorite subject - themselves.
“You know,” he said, leaning back in his seat. “I’m a bit of a writer myself.”
I smiled and nodded like it was the first time anyone had ever told me that. In fact, everybody tells me that.
Hell. Even the guy who came out to fix my septic tank told me he sucks crap out of a hole for a living, but at heart he was really a writer. And then he proceeded to recite some of the worst iambic pentameter I have ever had the misfortune of hearing, accompanied by the equally malodorous stench of septic.
The only thing I wanted to know from The Clod was if he had anything on John Doe’s identity, how he was doing on the murder and if he’d spoken to the clerk.
But I was getting the feeling I was going to be doing my septic guy’s job - pulling crap out of a hole.
Based on the tidiness of his desk and the dearth of pertinent information in his report, I figured I already knew the answers.
But I learned a long time ago that when you’re fishing for i
nformation, it’s best to cast a wide net because you never know what you’re going to get.
“So, Detective Clark,” I said, smiling, leaning forward. “How long have you been in Austin?”
“Almost two months now,” he said. “Haven’t really had time to get to know the city, you know, good restaurants, a good place to wind down. I hear there’s a pretty good music scene here - I haven’t been able to find anything on my own.”
He gave me what I assumed was his charming, boyish grin.
I stared at his hair and realized he’d had a root perm. At least he’d found his way to a beauty shop.
Beside me I felt Mia stiffen and Flash!
She snapped another shot.
He blinked and frowned. “Errum,” he cleared his throat and eyed the camera. “I have some publicity shots…”
I hid a smile. Mia was jacking with him. He’d called her my “little friend.” These photos weren’t going anywhere except her office dartboard next to her headshot of Newt Gingrich.
I noticed Clark glance at his reflection in the side window. He started to adjust his hair, realized what he was doing and stopped.
“Oh,” I said. “We don’t use publicity shots. Besides, Mia’s great and we won’t be here long. What did you do in LA, other than act as a liaison for media?”
He was still looking at Mia and her camera when he said, “Um, detective.”
“Homicide?” I asked and he started to nod, then caught himself, realizing the first thing I’d do was fact check. It does not pay to lie to a reporter.
“Fraud,” he said, still looking at Mia’s lens.
Mia made a quick move like she was going to lift the camera and he flinched.
She lowered the lens and he relaxed. Sort of.
I had to chomp my tongue not to laugh out loud.
I cleared my throat and The Clod redirected his gaze to me, and I could see his breath was coming faster. Mia’s game of chicken was better than an office party with one of her famous voodoo dolls.
“So this is a promotion?” I asked and his brows nipped down in the center. Now he was getting annoyed with me.
“I needed a change of scenery,” he said, and I thought, I bet. There was more to that story, but I’d poke that hornet’s nest some other time.
I was quiet, riffling through my file. Guys like him hate silence.
He watched me, his brows raised, his gaze intense. “You know Captain Colin Sullivan?”
I shook my head, still pretending to riffle through my file.
He continued to watch me riffle. “He’s a friend of mine. He, uh, thought I’d like it here, so when a position came open, he gave me a call.”
“Sullivan” I repeated. “Never heard of him.”
I halting my riffling to study one of the stills of the murder scene Ethan lifted from the video.
I looked up at him. “Cantu said you pulled the John Doe murders.”
The Clod’s jaw muscles went tight and my internal radar thumped the base of my skull.
“Yeah, I caught the case,” he said, and he sounded snippy - exactly the voice you’d expect from a Talking Malibu Ken.
“Your first murder?” I said.
His eyes narrowed. “First one in Austin,” he said, and ran a finger under his collar, loosening it around the base of his neck.
“Wow. Your first homicide,” I said, looking around at the many photos of himself he’d hung on the walls. “You must have really built up a reputation back home.”
I pulled Ethan’s close-up shot of John Doe - before his face exploded.
I studied it.
The Clod shifted in his ergonomically correct, non-city government issued leather chair.
“Well,” he said, brows drawn, eyes darting, shuffling to regroup.
He stared at the photo, then at the manila file, apparently trying to mentally pry open the cover to see what I really knew.
The Clod leaned further forward. His smile got bigger and he shrugged, palms up. “It’s the holidays. One of my sergeants pulled the case, and I offered to take it. He’s got family, you know.”
I didn’t know. What I did know was he didn’t seem like a guy who ran around toting Santa’s big bag of favors.
I nodded, did a little more riffling. “Any word on Avril Rodriguez?” I asked.
He blinked. “Oh,” he said, like he’d just remembered who she was and why I was there. “The clerk? She doesn’t speak English - she’s probably illegal and I’ve notified the immigration guys at ICE. We’ve got word out, but if she’s down with the bangers who started this, she won’t show. Alive anyway.”
Beside me, I felt Mia bristle, and I put my hand on her forearm to keep her from blinding him with her flash.
I nodded, all sympathy and sugar-spiced tea. “Any word on John Doe?”
The Clod’s gaze got hard and he said, “You mean other than he’s dead?”
He stood, and if he’d been a dog, the hair on the back of his neck would have bristled. “Look. I know you don’t know much about police work - “
Mia was so irritated she nearly levitated in her chair, probably concocting some curse to put a dent in his helmet hair.
“The dude had dope in his pocket,” The Clod went on. “We ID’d the second body as a low-level dope dealer. Theory is all three of these dudes were tweakers in the middle of a deal gone bad.”
Right, I thought. And one of the dope dealers took time out of his busy schedule to bust up a robbery?
My cell rang and The Clod frowned when the James Bond theme blasted from my purse.
I smiled and stood up, blocking him from Mia’s mental death ray and said, “We have to go,” I said. “That’s the cavalry.”
“The what?” he said. Probably thought he was the cavalry.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, heading to the door, Mia hot on my heels.
“What about my interview?” he said.
“We’ll call you,” I said, and we walked out the open door without looking back.
Chapter Seven
“Well that was a bust,” Mia said as we headed back toward the elevator.
I shook my head, fishing my still-ringing cell out of my bag. “We got what we needed - we confirmed The Clod is a dickhead and he’s not doing due diligence this case.”
I shrugged the phone to my ear, doing a finger wave goodbye to Tilda as we made our way back to the Jeep. “MacKinnon.”
“How’s the dog?” Sergeant Dan Soliz’s voice said and I grinned into the phone.
“Marlowe’s busy getting ready for Mama’s Christmas party,” I said, leaving out the part about Logan not being dead. “How’s Napalm?”
Soliz had been drafted into Search and Rescue Team Six when our fearless leader Olivia Johnson gave him a police dog she’d confiscated from a really crappy crooked sheriff. I thought of The Clod and wondered if he had a dog. I hoped not.
“He ate the telephone and had the answering machine for dessert,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Mia and I are just now leaving Detective Clark’s office.”
“Huh,” Soliz said. “You gonna show him Austin’s live music scene?”
“I’d like to show him the business end of a size eight boot,” I said and Soliz chuckled.
“Hey,” he said. “You asked me to find Avril Rodriguez. I found her, but you need to be real careful with her.”
I let out an indignant huff. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Miranda ‘Bleeds-n-Leads’ Phillips?”
He laughed. “Sometimes I forget. She’s scared, so tread lightly.”
“I just want to ID my John Doe so I can get my obituary done before the Soiree. This guy’s got to have a family worrying about him somewhere,” I said.
That was the truth, but not the whole truth. I did want to get the obituary done, but I also wanted to get to the bottom of my suspicion that there was more to John Doe than Clark’s report. And at some point, Detective Clark and I were going to have a Come to Jesus Meeting.
“Thanks,” I said. “I owe you.”
“About a million,” he said and I said, “Now it’s a million and one.”
He snorted.
“Can I send you a shot of a tattoo that might be Texas Syndicate?” I said, and Soliz said, “Sure. We’ll just make it a million and two. Where’d you get the tatt?”
“Off John Doe,” I said, and Soliz said, “Yeah, I already got a shot of that.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Anything you can tell me?”
“Um, no,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t know or if he couldn’t tell me. I sighed, but didn’t press it. Cops typically hate media, and part of getting them to two-step is knowing when to let it go and come back to it later.
“Hey,” I said, changing gears. “You know anything about a Captain Colin Sullivan?”
There was a long silence. “Who wants to know?”
“Clark said Sullivan recommended him for the Austin transfer,” I said.
Another long silence.
And then he said, “Cauley. Stay away from Sullivan.”
And then I was talking to a dial tone.
“What was that all about?” Mia wanted to know and I shrugged.
“I’m not sure. Yet.”
Mia frowned as we left-exited the interstate onto East Eleventh. “That’s not like Soliz - warning you off like that.”
“I know,” I said. And I had a feeling that Soliz was taking his own Come To Jesus Meeting to a certain Captain Sullivan and his Californ-ucating protege, Detective Clark.
#
Avril Rodriguez did a crappy job of disappearing herself.
Sergeant Dan Soliz had tipped us off that the very pregnant Avril was alive, if not well, and hiding out at her aunt’s house on the dodgy end off East Eleventh Street. He’d also said he’d put under covers on the house to keep an eye out for the girl.
I pointed the Jeep down Eleventh and headed off onto a small side street, and my breath caught as Mia and I were greeted by a half a dozen chollos sporting ass-crack jeans and barracuda eyes.
They were listening to a thumping beat of what I assumed was supposed to be music.
