The Night Detectives

by Jon Talton

She ran to me and gave me a long hug.

  Her face was flushed and, up close, her usually perfect hair was mussed.

  All I could do was sputter words. “What? Why?”

  She grinned at my discomfort.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Where to begin? She was Peralta’s ex-wife. She had moved away to San Francisco in as final a breakup as I could imagine. I had known both of them for most of my adult life. And here she was, having obviously been in his room. But it was none of those things. I felt the embarrassment of nearly coming across my parents having sex.

  “It’s all right, David.” She laughed that full-out laugh that always put me at ease. She studied me. “You’ve lost weight.”

  Her eyes held concern rather than a compliment. I knew the suit was now almost hanging on me.

  I said, “So you’re why he went to Balboa Park. I thought something was odd.”

  “Maybe he can grow a little after all,” she said. “I was down here for a conference, so…”

  So, indeed.

  She hugged me again, made me promise we would get together for drinks or coffee before we left, and disappeared into the elevator.

  After a minute to collect myself, I knocked on his door. He greeted me in a bathrobe.

  “Why are you blushing?” he demanded.

  “I got too much sun at the beach.”

  “Why is your shirt and tie a mess?”

  “A baby peed on me, okay? You change and I’ll come back.”

  “I’m fine,” he said and walked inside, leaving the door open. I reluctantly followed him.

  He plopped down on the unmade bed. I sat on a sofa and filled him in on Tim Lewis, the baby, and Grace Hunter’s small business. He closed his eyes and grunted after every few sentences, taking it in as he always did. He offered no more reaction when I showed him the flash drive. We would have to find someone to break the code.

  The room was too warm for my suit.

  I wrapped it up. “Tim Lewis has parents in Riverside. I told him to take the baby and go there today.”

  “Did you get their address?”

  “Yes.” I said it a bit too testily.

  “What’s wrong?” His Mister Innocent voice. Then, “Look next to you, on the desk. It’s the entire case file on the girl’s suicide.”

  I swiveled to see several thick folders bound with a large red rubber band.

  “Man, you have the pull,” I said. “How is Kimbrough doing?”

  “He’s happy.” He slurped on a Diet Coke. “I’d like to say it was my pull, but remember that suicide in Coronado? The girlfriend of the millionaire from north Scottsdale who allegedly hanged herself?”

  I remembered. It had happened at the Spreckles Mansion in the rich, idyllic town that sat on a spit across from San Diego. The rich guy had purchased the iconic house. As I recalled, he made his money from acne products and cosmetics. The girlfriend, young enough to be his daughter of course, had been alone when his young son had tripped and fallen over a balustrade in the mansion. The child had died.

  The next day the girlfriend had been found hanging from a second-story balcony, naked, a cloth in her mouth, and her hands bound with rope. As with Grace, the authorities had pronounced it a suicide.

  Peralta shook his head. “I can see your mind making connections, Mapstone. They’re not there. It has nothing to do with our case. Bill Gross is a good friend of mine.” That would be the San Diego County Sheriff. “His department was called in because Coronado PD doesn’t have the expertise for a complex death investigation. The media put Bill through hell on this one. News choppers overhead got pictures of the body and pretty soon it was on the Internet. Everybody became an amateur sleuth. They even got Dr. Phil involved.”

  He shook his head. “But the woman in Coronado really did kill herself based on the evidence. Hell, the sheriff’s department even put up a special page with the information on their Web site. Kimbrough said his chief didn’t want Grace Hunter to turn into another media circus. So we lucked out and have copies of everything.”

  “So what about our young woman?” I asked. “Suicide?”

  “You’ll have time for light reading.” He pointed at the stack of case files, in case I had forgotten. “The short answer is they believe it was a suicide.”

  “What do you believe?”

  He shrugged the big shoulders. “I’ll wait for your report. Kimbrough brought along the night detective who was the first to respond to the call.”

  “Night detective?”

  A quarter of one side of his mouth attempted a smile. “I’m showing my age, Mapstone.”

  I looked at the rumpled sheets and doubted that.

  He continued, “Departments used to have night detective bureaus to cover the late shift, so the investigation into a major crime could begin immediately. Now it’s almost all in-house with each unit, so, for instance, homicide has its own people on call. That’s the case here. I was using old-time cop talk. Did I ever tell you about the night detective I met when Miranda bought it?”

  He was being so uncharacteristically loquacious, and actually talking about himself, that I stifled my impatience.

  “It was 1976, and Miranda was out of prison. He actually went around signing Miranda warning cards. Somewhere I have one he signed for me. Anyway, I was a green deputy and was serving a warrant down in the Deuce. The old La Amapola bar. Means ‘little poppy.’ I must have gotten there the second after Miranda got in a fight and was stabbed. People were scattering. The first PPD unit was a night detective. This tall guy named Cal. They called him the Red Dude on account of his hair. He marched my ass out in a hurry. We became friends later. Never did find the suspect I was trying to arrest.”

  If I had my geography right, the bar where Ernesto Miranda died was located where the Phoenix Suns arena now stood. Mike Peralta, historian. It made me wish he would talk more about his past, but we had business and he moved right along. I tried to imagine a time when he had ever been a rookie and uncertain of himself.

  Night detective. It had a nice ring.

  “Anyway, I talked to the detective. You would have liked her. First name Isabel. Cute little chica. Make you forget about Patty.”

  “Will you stop that shit!” I pulled off my suit jacket and threw it on the floor. It would have to go to the cleaners anyway.

  His eyes followed the garment’s flight, then fixed his gaze on me again. “Grace’s body was found on the concrete by the pool. It was a straight fall and she landed on her head. Massive trauma, loads of blood. She was handcuffed from the back, nude, and no real note was left, like our guy said in the office yesterday.”

  “What do you mean ‘real note.’ ”

  “I want you to read the reports. Hang with me and I’ll give you the overall run-down. So the uniforms that initially respond go upstairs and the door to the condo was locked. The manager lets them inside.”

  He folded one brawny brown calf over the other and told me the cops found no sign of a break-in. The lock was a deadbolt, so nobody could simply close the door behind them and cause it to automatically lock. It had to be secured from the inside, as if Grace had done it, or from the outside with a key. The only ones with keys were Zisman and his wife. She wasn’t in San Diego on the twenty-second. There were no signs of struggle. Grace’s purse was there with a hundred dollars in it, her keys, and a brand-new cell phone.

  I said, “The handcuffs didn’t arouse suspicion?”

  “Sure. But sometimes people who want to kill themselves bind their hands so they can’t change their minds. I’ve seen those calls in Phoenix. That was the case with that girl in Coronado, although she used rope and not cuffs. SDPD thinks the same was true here. Kimbrough had Isabel demonstrate how a person could do it. Then walk to a balcony and go over.”

  “Where’d Grace get the cuffs?”

&nb
sp; “Apparently the former quarterback likes bondage. They used them during their playtime.”

  I tried to ignore his bulk in a bathrobe lying in a bed where he had had some “playtime” of his own. This was something I did not want to visualize or even contemplate.

  “Does he own this condo?” I asked.

  “He did. It’s for sale now. He was away at his boat when Grace killed herself and the alibi’s good. The owner at the slip next door saw him there during the time of the suicide. Zisman told the cops she was his girlfriend and she’d been feeling depressed, but he had no idea she might do something like this, yada-yada-yada.”

  “And they believed him?”

  “Zisman is a reserve police officer in Phoenix,” Peralta continued. “He showed his badge and identification. That might have bought him a little professional courtesy the night Grace died. He cooperated fully. I’m sure he was scared shitless this would make the papers or television and the missus back in Arizona would find out.”

  I told him newspapers usually didn’t report suicides out of concern that there might be copycats. Grace had died at night, with no television news choppers in the air.

  “So Zisman walked?”

  He nodded. “There was no evidence of his involvement. No probable cause to hold him, much less get an indictment. If they arrested every Arizonan who had a mistress stashed in San Diego, they’d have to build a new jail.”

  13

  It was nearly five but Peralta wanted to go out again. He had scheduled a meeting with a real-estate agent to see the condo.

  I changed into casual clothes, a light-blue shirt and cargo shorts. The Python was too big to carry, which was why I had invested in a Smith & Wesson 340PD Airlite, an eleven-ounce, snubnosed .357 magnum that slipped easily into the right-side pocket of the shorts. I stashed the Glock that I had confiscated from America’s Finest Pimp in a drawer. Who knew how many unsolved shootings or homicides it was connected to? I would deal with that later. Peralta was out of the robe, thank goodness, and in tan slacks, dress shirt, and blue blazer.

  We walked ten blocks down Broadway toward the waterfront. The condo was hard to miss: more than forty stories, right across from the beautifully restored railroad station, with its blue Santa Fe railroad sign on the roof. In the lobby was a watchful concierge and, sitting on the edge of a chair with perfect posture, an auburn-haired, middle-aged woman who exuded perkiness. The Realtor. We made introductions and she took us up the elevator to the nineteenth floor.

  We must have looked like the oddest gay couple she had ever dealt with.

  “I have so many clients from Phoenix,” she chirped. “This is the place to be.”

  The deadbolt turned with decisive effort and opened onto an empty living room. The condo hadn’t been staged for the sale. What most stood out was the handsome hardwood floor. And then the view, of course. Asking price: $599,000.

  I let her walk Peralta through the rooms and wandered off by myself to the balcony. It was amusing to hear her calling him “Mike” in nearly every sentence. Nobody but Sharon called him Mike. But he was as convivial as could be, a skill he had learned over the years while wooing voters. Not that he had needed to put on a front. His record as sheriff was spotless, with crime down, jail conditions excellent, response times across the county top-notch, and his history professor solving high-profile old cases. All that didn’t matter when his opponent ran against him claiming he was soft on illegal aliens. I pushed that out of my mind, opened the glass door, and stepped outside.

  The view of downtown and the harbor was not as stunning as you could get for one or two million bucks on the upper floors, but it would do. If you had the money to escape the summer hell and dust storms of Phoenix, San Diego would be about as close to heaven as you could get.

  The sun had burned off all the clouds and was now angled to throw the city into enchanting relief. The water was flawlessly blue and full of pleasure boats, which were dwarfed by the carrier at its mooring on North Island. The Navy kept the Nimitz-class carriers there because they wouldn’t fit under the bridge that connected San Diego to Coronado, even though it soared 1,880 feet, a blue arch, across the channel that led to the Pacific Fleet’s base.

  I drove that bridge many times but was glad not to be going over it this trip. I was glad not to make connections between Grace Hunter and the suicide at the Spreckles Mansion. As I got older, I didn’t like heights, didn’t like bridges. I didn’t like being on this balcony with the restless wind, distorted and accelerated by the other skyscrapers, flapping against my shirt. San Diego didn’t really get earthquakes. A small fault line ran through Rose Canyon east of La Jolla, but otherwise it was pretty safe. That made me happy, nineteen stories over downtown.

  At the edge, I looked down on the pool. A party was going on and the people looked very small. As I recalled, a body fell at thirty-two-feet-per-second, accelerating as it went down. It was a long damned time to contemplate death, to wonder if you’d made a big mistake.

  What desolation must this young woman have felt to want to kill herself, sure that the terror of the fall and the pain of impact would be brief, and then nothing, comforting oblivion. If that was what really awaited us. Who really knew? I reached under my shirt and ran my finger along my totem, Robin’s cross.

  “Hey, babe…” The video of Grace on the flash drive was vivid in my mind. The confident, teasing voice and smile. It fit perfectly with Tim’s description of a young woman who started her own business, however illicit, and was the consort of men who would pay thousands for her company. Would that same woman commit suicide?

  I stared down at the concrete for a good five minutes.

  The railing was at my belly button, but I was about ten inches taller than Grace Hunter. If I were suicidal and athletic, I was tall enough to hike one foot to the top of the railing and launch myself off. No fuss, no time for second thoughts. Grace couldn’t do that. Based on the description of a five-foot-four woman, her legs weren’t long enough. Handcuffed, she would have had to do a bit of a gymnastics move to go head first. Or maybe she hopped up on the railing backwards and pushed out into the sea-kissed air.

  I was gripping the railing so hard my hands started to hurt. Making myself stop, I ran them along the smooth metal. The balcony was secluded, so nobody from an adjoining unit could see what was happening there. Other condos, offices, and hotels were too distant to give a detailed view, so witnesses were unlikely, especially after dark. I’m sure the cops had checked that out.

  Such a lovely place to stand. How could you look out on this city and see anything but pleasure and hope? I knew better.

  “Et in Arcadia ego…”

  The Latin phrase came into my mind. “Even in Arcadia, I, death, hold sway.”

  If she didn’t kill herself, who did? Not America’s Finest Pimp: he was searching for her, didn’t know she was dead. Zisman? It still couldn’t be ruled out. Alibis can fall apart with a little push. I wondered about this Edward that AFP had mentioned with dread. I wondered more why Grace, safe with Tim in Ocean Beach, with a new baby and seemingly much to live for, had gone to see Zisman.

  “David, I see you like the view!” the agent chirped behind me. Her voice gave me a start. “Oh, I’m sorry!”

  “David is a little jumpy,” Peralta said behind her. Two beats later, he asked, “Was this the condo where that girl fell from?”

  She quickly herded us back into the living room. “Yes, it was a terrible thing. A suicide. Young people have such a hard time…”

  After a few minutes more, she loaded us with marketing materials and we left, walking in silence. Peralta wanted to eat at the Grant Grill in the restored U.S. Grant Hotel, so we waited in the bar, me with a martini, him with a Budweiser, surrounded by tourists. Only three people came up to say hello to him and say how much they wished he were still sheriff. They meant well. It made me angry.

  After
two more martinis and a fabulous supper, I felt better. Peralta and I went back over what we knew as we ate. He wanted to visit Grace’s parents. I wanted to check out the list of regular clients. It had only taken me a day to go from not wanting to take this case to full buy-in. I had even landed another client. Was this Peralta’s usual ability to rope me in, or had I done it myself? Better to follow this case than to sit at home alone with only my thoughts, memories, and regrets. My mind was a bad neighborhood. I didn’t want to wander around there alone.

  “If we visit her parents, maybe they’ll agree to become our clients,” he said, polishing off the king salmon. I wondered if he was joking. It sounded a bit like a used-car salesman on the make.

  I told him about Tim Lewis hiring us and said we didn’t have to worry about having a real, live client. His expression was unreadable, but I didn’t think he was happy about my effort at business development. He was not worried about spending our dead client Felix’s money at this posh restaurant, however.

  I used the silence to fold and refold my napkin. I reached in my pocket and slid out my iPhone, slid it back. Then: “So you don’t think it’s a suicide?”

  “I want you to read the reports and give me your opinion, Mapstone. But, based on what you’ve told me, what she was into, and the cops didn’t know about it…” His voice trailed off, his meaning obvious. He ate and chewed, thinking.

  He said, “I don’t know why SDPD wouldn’t have had Grace in its computer when her boyfriend filed the missing person’s report. Maybe a lag. Maybe a system glitch.”

  “Maybe somebody paid off.”

  He poked his fork at me. “Why do you keep checking your phone? If you want to call Lindsey, call her.”

  “Like you called Sharon?”

  He smiled slyly. A rare, actual smile.

  But my phone-checking wasn’t about Lindsey, to the extent that anything I did wasn’t about Lindsey.

  “It’s past nine now,” I said. “Grace’s boyfriend ought to be in Riverside. He ought to have been there hours ago, even with the worst traffic jam in California. I told him to call me, and I’ve heard nothing.”