The Girl In the Morgue

by D. D. VanDyke

  “You said was inadmissible. What proves she killed Jenna? Her word against boyfriend. No evidence. Who will believe lying boyfriend? Who will believe little girl hold big .45? And you know, she is already halfway to Chicago by now.”

  Cal crossed her eyes at Sergei. “Why Chicago?”

  “No reason. Any big city where pretty face can get lost, where whore can find her own kind.”

  “Jenna stabbed Brook before she died. Somewhere, there’s blood evidence in that apartment to link her to the crime.”

  “Police will not waste time on complete crime scene forensics unless they believe it is real murder. For that, they must consider Brook suspect, and they do not. No, your old comrades are useless. I take it from here, Caliyasha. Go home and rest.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “I can’t believe you gave the recorder to Sergei,” Mickey complained two days later, gathering his things from the clutter of “his” basement room. His hands shook and his eyes jittered like a man who’d done hard time and wasn’t sure how to face the outside world again. When had he last actually left the building, other than to go home and face his mother? “You should have brought it straight back to me. Let me make a copy for Sergei. You don’t just give him the original and let him destroy it like that!”

  Cal rolled her eyes. “Like I said, I wasn’t expecting it. It happened too fast to stop him.”

  “You should’ve brought it straight here. I could’ve make copies for him, for the police, whoever, and kept the original safe.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” Cal snapped. She was still feeling sore and crabby, even after a couple days of bed rest. He’d harped on the issue of the recording every time she spoke with him, and he was stepping on her last nerve. “The case is closed, our client is satisfied, and the cops will never know what really happened.”

  Mickey looked around again. “You’re not satisfied.”

  “Yes I am.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Yes I am.”

  Mickey snorted. “What is this, junior high?”

  “No, it’s my office, and it’s not your home. Which is where you need to go. I walked here, I checked in, I’m walking home and then I’m collapsing in bed again. This place is a pigsty. I’m gonna have to fork out another hundred for the maid again, which I’m taking out of your pay.”

  “Aw, boss! You go on home and I’ll clean up real good. I can’t afford you docking me.”

  Cal didn’t feel like fighting about it. “Fine. I’ll give you this chance. Clean up and leave. Go home and shower, for Pete’s sake. Give your mother some money. She must be a saint to put up with you.”

  “She doesn’t put up with me. She’s happy that I’m here, out of her hair.”

  Cal felt a flash of sympathy for Mickey, and his mother too. “Speaking of money…” She slid an envelope out of her blazer pocket and melodramatically removed one hundred dollars, waving at him. “Here’s what I owe you, minus the cleaning deposit. Like I said, give her some of this.”

  “I will. Now go on, Cal. Get more rest.”

  Cal slipped out the basement walkout into the gated back parking lot, passing Molly. That reminded her she ought to call and check on Madge and see if they could release her from forensic impound. She’d had no official word, but she believed Bob the fireman when he said her brake lines had been cut, no doubt by Brook or one of her criminal buddies.

  She was just drifting off to fitful sleep in her own bed, admitting to herself that Mickey was right—she wasn’t satisfied with the results of the case—when her landline rang. Not many people had the number, so she picked up.

  Mickey’s voice said, “Cal, I found her!”

  “I thought I told you to stay off your computer, clean up and go home.”

  “I did clean up…some. Then I decided to take a break and I checked my webcrawler bots that were looking for hits on your friend Brook.”

  “Not my friend.” Cal sat up, shoving a protesting Snowflake off her and feeling the adrenaline kick her in the gut. “Where is she?”

  “Santa Clara, near San Jose. At least, that’s where she was this morning at nine a.m, when you were here talking to me. My bots got a hit on someone who used a credit card with the last name of Tancerz. Actually got a couple dozen Tancerz around the country, but it’s an unusual enough name I could eyeball all of them and follow up on anything likely. This card is issued in the name Ernestina B. Tancerz, and it was used to buy a weekly guest membership at a women-only fitness center, Ladies First, on Stevens Creek Boulevard.”

  “Ernestina, huh? No wonder she goes by Brook. Sounds promising, but how can you be sure it’s her?”

  Mickey chuckled. “They have a modern, state-of-the-art system that transmits video to a security company over the internet. I hacked them and pulled footage of the front desk at the time the card was run. The image quality is only fair, but it was a young woman, right size and shape.”

  Cal threw off the covers and reached for a pen and paper to write down the information. “Mickey, I take back every bad thing I ever said about you. Except the part about you needing a shower and mouthwash. And to clean up. If this pans out, I may not even charge you for the maid.”

  “Gee, thanks,” he said with evident sarcasm. “I gotta get back to cleaning. Want me to pass this on to Tanner?”

  “No, I’d better be the one to do it.”

  “You sure? I hear you ain’t so popular at the department these days.”

  “You did your job, Mickey, and did it well. Now let me do mine.”

  Cal put down the phone before he could protest further, and began throwing on her clothes and gear, popping four ibuprofen to cut down on the aching and inflammation, and following it with her prescribed antibiotics. She contemplated the expired Percocet, but left it in her drawer. One brush with a DUI arrest was enough.

  As she dressed, she contemplated the courses of action open to her. She could call the police, of course, tip them off and let them deal with it. Despite the lack of evidence, Jay Allsop would take Tanner Brody and check it out when he could. That was the nice part about being the most senior lieutenant at Homicide—you got a lot of leeway.

  Leeway enough to sleep with your rookie partner and not get fired, she thought, remembering her brief involvement with Jay—an involvement the bomb and the lawsuit had cut short. Well, there were always silver linings. It would have ended badly anyway.

  But Jay would have to investigate off duty, and who knows how long that would take? The information was only about two hours old. Hell, Brook might still be there at the gym, working out.

  Or she could tell Sergei and let him pass it on to his no-doubt more-violent connections within the Russian mob. That might be what Brook deserved, but it would be murder at a distance. Cal would be responsible. Sergei would be more responsible, and she’d never forgive herself if it got messy and the hit was traced back to him. And Starlight would never forgive her.

  I’m sick and tired of lying around anyway, Cal thought. I choose option three. Go after Brook myself, but in public. Tell her the Russians are after her, try to get her to turn herself in. If that didn’t work, she’d have the M&Ms with her this time. They could detain Brook based on the person-of-interest bulletin until the local PD came to collect her, and pass the word to Allsop.

  And if the justice system failed after that, if they let her go, Cal would have done her job to the best of her ability, she decided. Sometimes you won some, sometimes you lost. She could walk away and keep Sergei’s money with a clear conscience.

  Besides, she owed Brook for the pain in her side. If the M&Ms had to physically restrain her, Cal would have to search her for hidden weapons, right? Might get a little rough, a little embarrassing. Payback was a bitch, and so was Brook.

  Cal was about to walk out when the landline rang again. She snatched the handset. “Mickey?”

  “Dear, I do hope not,” said Thomas. “I can’t imagine living as a young man trapped in that decrepit b
ody. Can you?”

  Cal stared at the receiver for a moment as if glaring at Thomas himself, and then put it back to her ear. “No, I guess I can’t. What do you want?”

  “How about a healthy you with me in a Napa bed-and-breakfast? Emphasis on the bed, breakfast optional.”

  “That does sound good, but not today. I have too much to do, and I’m not really healthy yet.”

  “All right, how about something less strenuous? Lunch at Aliotos? A day cruise around the Bay?”

  “Thomas, I have to go. Something’s come up. Why don’t you give me your number and I’ll call you later today. You have to be calling me on a burner phone, right?”

  “How about we talk about it when you come down the front steps.”

  Cal froze, and then peeked out her window. Her Mustang was parked at the curb in front of her house, Thomas leaning casually against the passenger door, cell phone in hand, looking up at her.

  “You bastard,” she said. “I didn’t give you permission to—to—”

  “Hurry up the forensics and get your car out of impound? You’d rather she sat there a month, where who-knows what could happen while the lab techs took her for joyrides up the coast?”

  “They did what?”

  “Just say ‘thank you’ and get out here, Cal.”

  Cal slammed the phone down and grumbled the whole way down the steps, ignoring the train of domestic animals that followed curiously after. On her front steps she stopped and gazed down at Thomas, who was dressed stylishly but androgynously in a long cream-colored cashmere coat and mid-heeled boots. With a fedora and a multi-hued scarf, he made her think of a cross between David Bowie and Doctor Who.

  Not a bad look, really.

  Thomas dangled the car keys by one manicured finger and shook them lightly. “Come on. Let’s spend the day together. Whatever you have to do can wait, can’t it?”

  “Not really,” she said as she walked down to street level and snatched the keys. “Thanks, by the way. For Madge. How the hell did you get that process hurried up?”

  “I have my resources, California Gale Corwin.”

  “Any chance you got a look at the inspection report?”

  “As suspected, someone cut your brake lines, with a sharp steel blade rather than, say, tinsnips. Nothing more to be said, but at least it’s an official finding, so you’re in the clear as far as the crash. I’d say Brook tried to murder you.”

  Cal frowned. “I never told you about Brook. Have you been digging into my business?”

  “As I said…”

  “You have your resources. Dammit, Thomas, I’m getting tired of knowing nothing about you while you get to know anything you want about me. That’s not fair, and if you actually want to have anything like a relationship, anything more than a wham-bam, thank you ma’am whenever you’re in town, we have to have some reciprocity.”

  “Come along and you have the whole day to ask me questions.”

  “And the whole day for you to deflect them. No.” She shoved past him and opened the driver’s door. “Thanks again for dropping Madge by.”

  “And having your brakes fixed.”

  “Oh, yeah. Thanks for that too. How much was it?”

  Thomas waved airily and opened the passenger door. “On the house.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  He put on a bored air of longsuffering. “Coming along. If you don’t want to take a day off, I’ll simply have to join you in your whatever-it-is that’s more important than I am.”

  Cal threw herself into the seat. “Fine. In fact, you can be useful. I was going to call the M&Ms for backup, but you’ll do—if you can refrain from shooting anyone. Especially Brook.”

  “Oh, we’re going to see Brook? Such a naughty girl, that one. Drug dealing, extortion, intimidation, assault, murder. People are annoyed.”

  After buckling in with the retrofitted modern shoulder belt, Cal started the car, put her in gear and tested the brakes. They felt fine. “People? What people?”

  “People who depended on Peter Potoczek for their supplies. People who supplied Potoczek and lost a market. People who don’t like attention from the law enforcement community. People like that.”

  “People like you?” Cal pulled out and headed for I-280 south beneath a threatening sky. The interstate would have less traffic than the older 101 freeway that paralleled it to the east, and though the route was a bit longer, it would drop them straight onto Stevens Creek, ten miles of boulevard filled with commerce and suburbia that ran the length of the corridor from Cupertino to San Jose.

  “People like people for whom I do jobs from time to time. I am the message, not the sender.”

  “How very Zen. You and my mother should hang out. Sounds like a cop-out, though, as if you don’t have a choice to refuse.”

  “Of course I have a choice to refuse, but I can only make it once, and then I’m done. Life is one big set of compromises. I’ll keep doing what I’m doing as long as I believe in it.”

  Cal cocked an eyebrow across the car. “You believe in it? What’s there to believe in? You’re a killer for hire.”

  “A murderer, you really want to say.”

  Cal squirmed. “I was trying to be diplomatic.”

  “Some people need to be murdered. I didn’t hear you protesting when I saved a child by putting bullets into the back of three kidnappers’ heads.”

  “Yeah, well…I get the feeling not all of your contracts are so clear-cut.”

  “Actually, most are. If people like me didn’t exist, paid by people like my various employers, the world would be worse off than it already is.” Thomas swept a pointing finger across the view through the windshield. “All this rich suburban tranquility is bought by violence that most never see, rather like your health—such as it is—is bought by your white blood cells constantly killing invading pathogens.”

  “I get a feeling you’ve used that metaphor before.”

  “I have.”

  “But people aren’t a disease.”

  “The worst ones are.”

  Cal sighed. “You’re painting yourself as a noble vigilante, and I accept that on one level. But who decides who dies, and how can we be sure the right ones do?”

  “It’s estimated that five to ten percent of everyone on the death rows around this country are completely innocent, falsely convicted. I can say with complete confidence that my record is far better than that.”

  “So you’ve never killed anyone by mistake?”

  Thomas let his head fall back and closed his eyes. “No. I can’t say that. But I only made that mistake once, and I learned from it. I doubt the criminal justice system can say the same.”

  Cal drove in silence for some time, thinking about Thomas’ seductive reasoning. She’d heard similar arguments before, but she couldn’t agree.

  She also couldn’t disagree very strongly. When did the end justify the means? How did her feelings for this man, a man she instinctively thought of as good, shape her view of what he did? Was she just making excuses for him because she l—l—liked him? Isn’t that how evil always wormed its way in, behind a pretty face?

  No answers came to her before she took the exit onto Stevens Creek Boulevard and immediately became enmeshed in the traffic there. She watched for address numbers and within five blocks had located the strip mall where Ladies First was found. By the time they arrived, the sky darkened and it began to drizzle.

  Thomas checked his watch. “Almost noon. You think Brook will still be working out?”

  “Only one way to find out.” Then she did a double-take, staring at Thomas. “How much do you know? I never told you she was at this gym. Do you have my phone bugged or something?”

  “I don’t.”

  “But someone does.”

  Thomas sighed. “Dear, have you never heard of the NSA? Everyone’s phone is bugged nowadays.”

  “Are you saying you work for the NSA?”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny wh
o I might work for upon occasion. I’m only saying, with all communications flowing across a vast network, anyone with the right resources can reach in and pluck out what information they need…much as your Mickey does, in his own small way. You have no problem with him doing it unto others; you can hardly complain when it’s done unto you.”

  “Oh, I can complain all right. I’m not the bad guy here.”

  “And Brook is, oh yes. But not for long.” He sighed. “Are you sure you don’t want to simply take a nice drive? Half an hour and we could be driving through the redwoods on the way to a late lunch at a Santa Cruz beachfront restaurant.”

  “Wait, what? ‘Not for long?’ What does that mean?”

  “I mean, you set the dogs on her, and if you can find her, they can too. Why not let them catch her? Back off and let it happen.”

  “I thought about that, but my conscience was bothering me. I want to give her a chance to turn herself in. I don’t want to be responsible for Sergei’s guy who knows a guy who knows a guy giving her a bullet to the back of the head…if they’re even that merciful. I imagine people who murder on demand don’t necessarily have a lot of compunction about raping first.” Cal clenched her fist. “God, I’m sorry, that sounded horrible. Present company excepted, I’m sure. I am sure. Aren’t I?”

  Thomas gazed gravely at Cal. “For present company, you can be so assured. Even were that not distasteful to my own sense of honor, it would be extremely sloppy and unprofessional. However, the ones after her are not necessarily like me.”

  “Well, let’s go see if she’s here, and if she’ll listen to reason.”

  Thomas grasped Cal’s arm as she began to open her door. “And if she won’t? If she tries to finish you off?”

  “Then I guess you get to shoot her.”

  “Me? The last thing I want is a righteous self-defense shoot in front of witnesses. That’s why this is a bad idea, Cal. Nothing good will come of it. Please, let’s go. Leave her to her fate. She’s unimportant. You’re not.”

  Cal shook off his hand, stepped out of the car, and then leaned back in out of the rain. “I have to try. Maybe it’s a woman thing. I get the impression she’s had a rough life. That doesn’t excuse her killing Jenna, but it might excuse killing Potoczek. Mostly it’s for me, though. I shouldn’t have assumed Sergei would play fair, and I have to make that right. I have to give her the chance…for me, not so much for her. Do you understand?”