Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 16 - The Murder Book

by The Murder Book(Lit)

  'He's still out there?'

  'Maybe.'

  'Maybe? What does that mean?'

  'It's been twenty years, and he was a heroin addict.'

  'You're saying he'd have a poor life expectancy,' she said. 'But you're still looking for him... why has Janie's murder been reopened? What's the real reason?'

  'I was the original detective on the case,' said Milo. 'I got transferred off. Now, I've been transferred back on.'

  'Transferred back on by your department or you requested it yourself?' said Waters.

  'Does it matter, ma'am?'

  She smiled. 'It's personal, isn't it? You're trying to undo your own past.'

  Milo smiled back, and Waters returned the mug shot. 'Wilbert Burns. So now I have a name.'

  'He never introduced himself?'

  'He called himself our new friend. I knew he was a junkie as well as a dealer. From how spacey he was - slurring his words. Driving really slow. His music was junkie music - slow jazz, this really draggy trumpet. Janie tried to change the station, but he put his hand on hers and she didn't try again.'

  'How'd you know he was a dealer?' said Milo.

  'He showed us his wares. Carried one of those men's purses and had it on the seat next to him. When we got in, he put it in his lap and after we were driving for a while, he zipped it open, and said, "How about a taste of something sweet, ladies?" Inside were envelopes of pills and little baggies full of white stuff - I couldn't tell you if it was coke or heroin. That stuff I stayed away from. For me it was just grass and alcohol, once in a while acid.'

  'What about Janie?'

  'Janie had no boundaries.'

  'Did she sample Burns's wares?'

  'Not in the car, but maybe later. Probably later. Because she and Burns got something going on right from the beginning. All three of

  us were in the front seat, Janie alongside Burns and me next to the door. The minute he started driving she started in - flipped her hair in his face, rested her hand on his leg, started moving it up.'

  'How'd Burns react to that?'

  'He loved it. Said, "Ooh, baby," stuff like that. Janie was giggling, both of them were laughing at nothing in particular.'

  'Despite her racism,' I said.

  'I couldn't believe it. I elbowed her a couple of times, as in, "What's going on?" But she ignored me. Burns drove to the party -he knew exactly where it was, but we had to park up the road because there were so many cars there.'

  'Did he say anything about the party?' said Milo.

  'He said he knew the people throwing it, that they were rich but cool, it was going to be the finest of the fine. Then, when we got there, he said something along the lines of, "Maybe the President'll show up." Because the house had huge pillars, like the White House. Janie thought that was hilarious. I was pretty put out by then, felt like Janie was shutting me out.'

  'What happened next?'

  'We went inside the house. It was vacant and rancid-smelling and pretty much trashed, with beer cans and bottles and Lord knows what else all over the place. Kids running around everywhere, no band, just loud tapes - a bunch of different stereos set up all over the place, really cacophonous, but no one seemed to care. Everyone was blasted, kids were walking around looking dazed, bumping into each other, girls were on their knees, going down on guys right in the middle of the dance floor, there'd be couples dancing and right next to them, other couples would be screwing, getting kicked, stepped on. Burns seemed to know a lot of people, got plenty of high fives as we walked through the crowd. Then this funny-looking, kind of dumpy girl showed up out of nowhere and latched on to him.'

  'Funny-looking how?'

  'Short, fat, zits. Odd - spaced-out. But he immediately got all kissy-kissy with her, and I could see Janie didn't like that.' Waters shook her head. 'She'd known the guy all of fifteen minutes, and she was jealous.'

  'Janie do anything about that?'

  'No, she just got this ticked-off look on her face. I could read it because I knew Janie. Burns didn't see it - or he didn't care. Threw one arm around the dumpy girl, the other around Janie, and led both of them off. That little purse of his bouncing on his shoulder.'

  'And you?'

  'I stayed behind. Someone handed me a beer and hands started groping me. Not delicately. It was dark, and whoever was doing it started to get rough, yanking at my clothes. I broke away, started walking around, looked for a quiet room to mellow out in, but there was none. Every inch of that place was party-time. Guys kept putting their hands all over me, once in a while someone would pull me hard onto the dance floor and rather than fight it, I'd just dance for a while, then make my escape. Then the lights went out and the house got even darker and I could barely see where I was stepping. The Southern Comfort in my system wasn't helping, either. I felt nauseous, dizzy, wanted to get out of there, looked some more for Janie, couldn't find her, and got angry at her for bailing on me. Finally, I told myself forget her and the next time someone pulled me onto a dance floor, I danced for a while. And when someone offered me a pill, I swallowed it. The next thing I remember is waking up on the floor of an upstairs bathroom, hearing shouts that the cops were going to roust the party and running out of there along with everyone else - it was like a stampede. Somehow I ended up in the back of someone's truck, bouncing along Sunset.'

  'Whose truck?'

  'A bunch of guys. Surfer types. They ended up at the beach, Santa Monica or Malibu, I couldn't tell you which. We partied some more, and I fell asleep on the sand. The next morning, I woke up and I was alone. Cold and wet and sick to my stomach. The sun was rising over the ocean and I suppose it was gorgeous but all I could think about was how lousy I felt. Then I thought about my father - stationed up at Mugu - and I started crying and got it into my head that I had to go see him. It took me four hitches to get up there and when I reached the base the sentry wouldn't let me through the gate. I started crying again. It had been a long time since I'd seen my dad. He'd remarried, and his new wife hated me. Or at least that's what my mother was always telling me. Whatever the truth was, he'd pretty much stopped calling. I bawled like a

  baby, and the sentry made a call and told me my dad wasn't there, he'd shipped out to Turkey three days before. I just broke down and I guess the sentry felt sorry for me because he gave me all the money in his pocket - thirty-three dollars and forty-nine cents.' She smiled. 'That I remember precisely.'

  Reaching under her glasses, she fingered the inside corners of her eyes. 'Finally, someone was being nice to me. I never thanked him, never knew his name. Walked back to PCH, stuck out my thumb, caught a ride with some Mexicans heading over to Ventura to pick cabbage, just kept thumbing my way up the coast. My first stop was Santa Cruz, and I stayed there a while because it was beautiful and there was this retro-hippie thing going on, plenty of free food and parks to sleep in. Eventually, I moved on to San Francisco, Crescent City, Oregon, Seattle, back down to Sacramento. The next ten years are kind of a blur. Finally, I got it together - you don't want to know the boring details.'

  'Like I said, we want to maintain your privacy.' Melinda Waters laughed. 'Thanks for the thought.'

  Milo asked her a few more questions - more gently, unproduc-tively - then we left her sitting at her desk looking dazed. As I drove out of the lot, the smoke from the Italian restaurant's chimney caught my eye.

  'Want lunch?' I said.

  'I guess... yeah, why not.'

  'No fast food, though. Let's aim high. We deserve it.'

  'For what?'

  'Making some progress.'

  'You think so?'

  The taverna across the street was divided into four small, whitewashed rooms, each warmed by a beehive-shaped fireplace and topped by low ceilings striped with rough-hewn logs. We ordered beer, a mixed antipasto, spaghetti with capers and olives and garlic, and osso bucco from a lithe, young woman who seemed genuinely happy to serve us.

  When she left, Milo said, 'Progress.'

  'We can place Janie wi
th Willie Burns and Caroline Cossack the night of the murder. You don't have doubts she was the dumpy girl, do you?'

  He shook his head.

  I said, 'Melinda's story also supplies a possible motive: jealousy. Caroline had a thing for Burns, thought Janie was moving in on her territory.'

  'The eternal triangle leading to that?'

  'The eternal triangle combined with dope and psychopathology and a low-inhibition party scene and Janie's racism. No shortage of

  triggers. And something else fits: Janie's murder presented as a sadistic sex killing and we've been wondering why other victims haven't shown up. Because cold, sexual sadists don't quit. But if the murder resulted from a passion-of-the-moment flare-up, a sole victim would make sense.'

  'Janie in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

  'Melinda's description of Janie makes her the perfect victim: drugged-out, not too bright, prone to fantasy, a tendency to irritate people, a history of sexual abuse. Throw enough ingredients into the stew, toss in a few careless "niggers," and who knows.'

  'What do you think about Janie's blase reaction to the downtown

  rape?'

  'Doesn't surprise me,' I said. 'People expect rape victims to react the way they do on TV. And sometimes that happens. But pseudo-calm is pretty common. Protective numbness. Given Janie's victimization by her father, it makes perfect sense.'

  'For her it woulda been more of the same,' he said. 'Poor kid.'

  He picked at his food, slid his plate away. 'There's a discrepancy between Janie's description of the rape as Melinda remembers it and what Schwinn told me. According to Melinda, the rapist dropped Janie off a couple of miles from her home. Schwinn's informant told him Janie'd been dumped in an alley and found unconscious by some wino.'

  'That could've been Janie prettying up the picture,' I said. 'Grasping for a shred of dignity.'

  'Pathetic,' he said.

  'Any idea who Schwinn's informant was?'

  'Nope. He never gave me a single bit of insider info. I kept waiting for him to clue me in, to help me learn the ropes, but we just went from call to call and when the time came for paperwork, he went home. And now here he is, pulling strings from the grave... If Janie made up the part about walking home, maybe the young guy in a Jag was bogus, too. Her not wanting to admit he was a drooling, scabby hunchback in a jalopy? The alleged wino.'

  'Could be. But if she was being truthful, the Jag story's interesting. A young guy with hot wheels checking into a fleabag hotel wouldn't be safe. Unless he had connections. As in Daddy owns the place. And Janie told Melinda the clerk seemed to know the guy. It

  might be interesting to know who held the deed on fleabag hotels twenty years ago.'

  'You're thinking some real estate honcho. The Cossacks. Or Larner.' He told me about Playa del Sol, rubbed his face. 'I remember a few of the hotels down there. The scuzziest ones were on or near Main, between Third and Seventh. SRO flops, full of winos. The Exeter, the Columbus - there must've been a good half dozen, mostly propped up by Federal subsidies... so now I'm supposed to solve a twenty-year-old rape with no victim as well as a murder. Don't think so, Alex.'

  'Just tossing out suggestions,' I said. 'Isn't that what you pay me for?'

  He forced a smile. 'Sorry. I'm feeling hemmed in. Unable to do my usual investigative thing because it puts me in the crosshairs.'

  'Paris Bartlett and the call from Personnel.'

  'And the level of the players. That dinner with Obey, I don't imagine they were convening to crochet samplers. Bacilla and Home live for graft, and if Walt Obey's involved in something, it has lots of zeros attached to it. Broussard wasn't at the restaurant, but his hand's been in this right from the beginning. He's Obey's neighbor, and Obey was one of his biggest supporters. All that makes me a flea. And guess what: a rumor's circulating around the department about an HIV-positive detective about to retire soon. "Stay healthy," huh?'

  'Oh my,' I said. 'Subtle.'

  'Cop's subtlety. We train with nightsticks, not scalpels. Looks like I couldn't have picked a worse time to stir the ashes, Alex. The hell of it is I've accomplished nothing... you finished? Let's get back to the smog. This city's too damn pretty.'

  During the drive back to Albuquerque, he was glum and unreach-able. The taverna's food had been excellent, but I'd finished more of my plate than he had, and that was a first.

  He spent the flight to L.A. dozing. When we were back in the Seville, he said, 'Finding Melinda was progress in terms of motive, means, and opportunity. But what the hell's all that worth when I have no idea where my suspects are? If I had to bet, my money would be on Willie Burns in some unmarked grave. The money

  folks behind Caroline would have seen him as a threat, and even if they never got to him, there was his heroin habit. Crazy Caroline, who could also be dead, or anywhere from the Bahamas to Belize. Even if I found her, what could I prove? They'd bring in one of your colleagues, and she'd go right back to some plush-padded room.'

  'Sounds bleak,' I said.

  'Some therapist you are.'

  'Reality therapy.'

  'Reality is the curse of the sane.'

  I took Sepulveda to Venice, got onto Motor Avenue going south, drove past Achievement House.

  'Talk about subtle,' he said.

  'It's a shortcut.'

  'There are no shortcuts. Life is tedious and brutish... it can't hurt to look into those SROs. Something I can do without attracting attention. But don't expect anything. And don't get yourself in trouble thinking you can fight my battles.'

  'Trouble, as in?'

  'As in anything.'

  Robin had left a message on my machine, sounding hurried and detached. The tour had moved on to Vancouver and she was staying at the Pacific Lodge Hotel. I called the number and connected to her room. A happy male voice answered.

  'Sheridan,' I said.

  'Yes?'

  'It's Alex Delaware.'

  'Oh. Hi. I'll go get Robin.'

  'Where is she?'

  'In the bathroom.'

  'How's my dog?'

  'Uh... great-'

  'The reason I'm asking is because you seemed pretty in tune with him. Showing up prepared with a Milk-Bone. Very intuitive.'

  'He - I like dogs.'

  'Do you?' I said.

  'Well, yeah.'

  'Well, good for you.'

  Silence. 'Let me tell Robin you're on the phone.' 'Gee, thanks,' I said, but he'd put down the receiver, and I was talking to dead air.

  She came on the line a few moments later 'Alex?'

  'Hi,' I said.

  'What's wrong?'

  'With what?'

  'Sheridan said you sounded upset.'

  'Sheridan would know,' I said. 'Being a sensitive guy and all that.'

  Silence. 'What's going on, Alex?'

  'Nothing.'

  'It's not nothing,' she said. 'Every time I call you're more...'

  'Insensitive?' I said. 'As opposed to you-know-who?'

  Longer silence. 'You can't be serious.'

  'About what?'

  'About him.' She laughed.

  'Glad to amuse you.'

  'Alex,' she said, 'if you only knew - I can't believe this. What's gotten into you?'

  'Tough times bring out the best in me.'

  'Why in the world would you even think that?' She laughed again, and that was probably what set me off.

  'The guy shows up with a damned dog biscuit,' I said. 'Let me tell you, hon, men are pigs. Altruism like that always comes with strings-'

  'You are being totally ridiculous-'

  'Am I? Each time I call your room, he's right there-'

  'Alex, this is absurdV

  'Okay, then. Sorry.' But there was nothing remorseful in my tone, and she knew it.

  'What's gotten into you, Alex?'

  I thought about that. Then a rush of anger clogged my throat, and out it came: 'I suppose I can be forgiven a bit of absurdity. The last time you left me didn't turn out so great.
'

  Silence.

  'Oh... Alex.' Her voice broke on my name.

  My jaw locked.

  She said, 'I can't do this.'

  Then she hung up.

  I sat there, perversely satisfied, with a dead brain and a mouth full of bile. Then that sinking feeling set in: Idiot, idiot! I redialed her room. No answer. Tried the hotel operator again, was informed that Ms Castagna had gone out.