by Alan Russell
“You think she was abducted?”
“So far nothing else adds up. And not only that, I’m pretty sure Heather’s last act was to protect Angie. Her coworker said Angie always slept in the same room with Heather. When I went into the backyard, I found a popped screen, but the bedroom window was closed.”
“You’d think she would have kept Angie close to her for protection.”
“I suspect Heather was afraid of Angie’s getting hurt. Her own protection was secondary to the safety of her charge.”
“You think she was acting like a protective mother?”
“I do.”
I thought about those occasions when I’d had to send Sirius into danger. It was something I always hated doing. Luckily, Sirius had only been badly hurt one time. That had been the second worst day of my life.
“I wonder what that psychologist would say about your theory,” Lisbet said.
“In the words of Freud, he’d probably say, ‘Yo mama,’ and maybe he’d be right.”
“It sounds like he believes Heather was leading some kind of double life.”
“Shrinks love familial dynamics,” I said.
“But he believed that when it came to her relationship, she was crying wolf, right?”
“Emilio supposedly told him Heather liked to overreact after the fact, but I’m not sure I’m buying that. That’s the same argument defense attorneys and their clients use when they try and put rape victims on trial.”
“You think Emilio is a liar?”
“All of us practice revisionist history. But if you’ve admitted to domestic abuse, no matter how much perfume you spray, you still end up smelling like a skunk.”
“He probably snapped when Heather told him she was going to proceed with the divorce.”
“He did admit to going ballistic.”
“But he claims to know nothing about her disappearance?”
I nodded.
“Do you think he’s guilty?”
“I know he’s guilty of having been abusive,” I said. “I don’t know if he’s guilty of having abducted his ex. To his credit, Emilio willingly entered a certified Batterer Intervention Program, what’s known as a BIP. He agreed to pay for the fifty-two weeks of courses in an attempt to win his wife back. Maybe he snapped because he spent all that time and money for nothing.”
“What’s your gut telling you?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure. I think he tried to underplay the extent of his anger. And I don’t believe he’s the reformed innocent he’d have me believe. I couldn’t help but feel his shrink was damning him with faint praise. In fact, he was careful to withhold comment on several of my questions.”
I sighed, which somehow turned into a yawn. “Excuse me,” I said. “It was a long night.”
“And an even longer day,” said Lisbet. “Are you ready for dinner?”
I nodded and said, “Thanks.” Surprisingly, I was actually feeling hungry. Maybe getting things off my chest had opened up room in my stomach.
Once a week Lisbet cooks for me, and once a week I cook for her. We also usually get takeout one or two nights a week, which means on average we spend half our evenings together. For the time being that seems perfect. I’m not sure if that’s because we are both used to our own space or whether neither one of us is willing to fully commit to our relationship. If there’s a problem, I suspect it’s with me. My wife’s death, coupled with my burns and PTSD, changed me. I kept pretending to be who I was until it got to the point where I had trouble remembering who that person was. I was an actor who’d forgotten his old lines. Lisbet kept me from going down the drain.
She served both of us. What I saw on my plate looked familiar. “Isn’t that what you just gave Sirius?”
Lisbet nodded and smiled. “I was looking for a dinner that I could serve all of us. It was simple: whole-wheat penne pasta, along with broccoli and turkey sausage sautéed in a little olive oil. And then at the end I added some cut-up grape tomatoes and basil.”
“Five ingredients and delicious,” I said, finishing a big mouthful.
“Sirius had five ingredients,” she said. “You added a lot of parmesan cheese that he didn’t.”
“Try sharing a car with a lactose-intolerant partner.”
“You’re lucky Sirius is too polite to complain about you.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
After dinner I fought off another yawn. Eagle eyes noticed and said, “You need to go to bed.”
“In a few minutes I’ll get my second wind.”
She shook her head. “It’s time for you to go to sleep.”
Lisbet is a graphic artist who works for herself. As I’ve told her too many times, she has a real SOB for a boss.
“Let me do the dishes at least.”
“Do not do the dishes. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.”
“How about collecting a kiss?”
“Later,” she said. “And I might throw in some interest. But for now, go and count sheep.”
Even though I’ve been dating Lisbet for more than a year, I still have trouble sleeping over at her place. The thought of my fire dream is always hanging over me. When it occurs, I get swept back to the night of the fire and find myself once more immersed in flames. Every time, my journey back is so realistic, and so personal. And in its aftermath I feel exposed. I hate being that vulnerable.
But I was too tired to worry about a fire dream. As I pulled back the bedcovers, I thought about wolves and sheep, and about crying and counting.
I didn’t have to count many sheep. I think I was even asleep before one pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis.
CHAPTER 16
THE NOT-SO FUNHOUSE
Heather opened her eyes and saw the squinting, leering face winking at her. Screaming, she pushed herself up.
In front of her eyes, the horrible figure transformed itself into a grimacing dwarf who was shaking her chains at her and screaming.
Just like I’m screaming, Heather thought. And there was something about the misshapen face that looked familiar . . .
It was a distortion of her face, she realized, with her eyes scrunched and her forehead distended. Her arms and legs were truncated. Heather took a step to her right, and then a step to her left. Her tiny legs mimicked her movements.
It’s a funhouse mirror, she realized.
The notes from a calliope started up. It sounded like circus music, but with a twist. There was a nightmarish quality to the tune, with harsh notes and discordant syncopation, and that was even before sinister laughter joined in.
A nearby wall suddenly became illuminated. Heather followed the trail of light and could make out the lens of a projector. The music changed, but there was little improvement. “Send in the Clowns” played, not as sung by Barbra Streisand or Cher, but more like Jim Morrison on acid.
Clown images showed themselves, each one creepier than the last. They were clowns with claws, fangs, dripping blood, and animal eyes; their makeup was running so that they resembled Heath Ledger’s Joker. The last featured clown looked more normal than the others; he was holding a bouquet of balloons and waving. He was identified by name, and Heather thought the name was familiar: John Wayne Gacy.
And then her memory was jarred: pictures of Gacy’s victims appeared. Heather turned away and covered her mouth, fighting off sickness.
“Stop it!” she cried. “Stop it!”
The music stopped, and so did the projection.
“Hello!” Heather cried. “Is anyone there?”
No one answered her cries.
“Hello!” she called again. “Hello!”
She tried to sound controlled, to keep her panic in check. Someone had to be observing her, or at least hearing her.
She took a few deep breaths. This is real, she told herself. I am not imagining this. I am a prisoner, and I must not submit to fear. I have to think.
Soft music came from the hidden speakers. This time it wasn�
�t scary. In fact, it was familiar to her. It was music she’d asked to be played at her wedding. Etta James was singing “At Last.”
She and Emilio had danced to this song.
“Emilio, are you out there?”
No one answered her question.
The light came on again, but what was being played was out of focus, and at first Heather had no idea what she was seeing. One moment she could almost make out what was there, and then everything became blurry.
The picture became more distinct as James sang of “a thrill to press my cheek to.” But it wasn’t a cheek that was being pressed. A naked female form took shape, images shown in bits and pieces. Heather saw toes and fingers, and lips and hips. The arch of a foot turned into a backside curve. At first the shots were fast and didn’t linger. The model’s face remained hidden. Her body appeared unmoving until the camera lingered for long enough to show a chest rising and falling.
Heather grew uneasy when a hand with a surgical glove appeared and began cavalierly tracing its way along the woman’s body, the sheathed fingers displaying a familiarity and contempt with the flesh upon which it was probing and prying. The hand slapped the buttocks once, twice, and then a third time. Flesh reddened, but the woman didn’t respond.
“No,” said Heather. Her throat was dry.
The gloved index finger and thumb came together, pinching down hard on a pink nipple.
That was why she’d awakened to her chest and different parts of her body hurting. It was her own body she was looking at. She was witness to her own violation.
Heather didn’t want to scream, but she couldn’t help herself.
While Etta James called out, “At last,” the gloved hand continued its assault.
CHAPTER 17
MAKING A COLLAR
Sleeping through the night is something I rarely do. In the words of Rodney Dangerfield, “I don’t know how to sleep. I know how to pass out.” Exhaustion had made me pass out.
Lisbet had left me a note on the kitchen table saying she had an appointment and would talk to me later in the day. She signed it XXOO but didn’t stop there. The impression of her lipstick brightened the stationery, and my day. Next to her note, a bowl of her healthy cereal sat alongside a bran muffin. As I took a seat, Sirius joined me.
“Nice try,” I told him. “Lisbet wrote that she fed you and took you out for a little walk.”
I took a bite of the bran muffin. Lisbet was always extolling its virtues, talking about how her favorite local bakery sweetened its muffins with applesauce. After what felt like a few minutes of chewing, I was able to swallow.
Sirius was still waiting me out, so I gave him half the bran muffin. It took him a second to inhale it.
“Lisbet says that these muffins are low in fat and cholesterol, and high in fiber, magnesium, phosphorus, and manganese.”
What she hadn’t said was that they tasted like cardboard. Sirius finished the rest of the muffin. As he ate I thought back to how I’d told Langston Walker that Lisbet was doing her best to make me eat healthier. It still seemed almost incomprehensible to me that he was gone.
Out of respect to Lisbet, I made it halfway through my bowl of puffed whole-grain cereal before disposing of the evidence.
“Don’t tell,” I said to Sirius.
As early as it was in the day, I was already feeling the weight of the Heather Moreland case. That’s how it is when I’m working on something that matters to me. I get obsessive, and I want answers. The weight of a case is something I can’t shake. I feel it in my gut sitting there like an undigested meal. It’s a pressure that keeps growing, and the only relief comes from getting answers. I was hoping Sergeant Reyes had some of those answers, or at least updates.
My call to Reyes went through to his voice mail, and I wondered if that was his way of reminding me that officially I was just a cop trying to reunite Heather with her dog.
There it was—that weight in the gut. And I couldn’t even blame Lisbet’s cereal or Langston’s death.
I took a quick shower and put on fresh clothes. Lisbet allows me a drawer in her place, as well as some closet space. On my end she has pretty much taken over the guest room closet and drawers. When Lisbet does the laundry, she uses things like conditioner and dryer sheets. I sniffed approvingly; Sirius sniffed approvingly. I thought of Angie and wondered how she was doing; I thought of Angie’s mom and wondered how I was doing making headway into her disappearance. That pressing weight I was feeling told me things could be going better.
“Office,” I said to Sirius.
My partner eagerly followed me to the car. He knew “office” was Central Police Station in downtown Los Angeles, where I have my work cubicle. Officially, Sirius and I only report to the Chief of Police. At the time the Chief and I came to that understanding, I was offered an office in the Police Administration Building. In a rare show of wisdom, I knew it would be a smart career move to distance myself from the brass. Central is only a mile away if the Chief needs a face-to-face. Luckily, he doesn’t feel the need to meet with me very often.
The drive was the usual stop-and-go, but I was glad on this commute there was more go than stop. It’s not usually that way. As Sirius and I made our entrance into Central, Sergeant Perez decided to serenade us with the song “Puppy Love.” There were two problems with his rendition: he only knew the first line, and he couldn’t sing worth a damn. Perez is the watch commander of the station; his service stripes, or what cops call hash marks, put his long seniority at LAPD on display.
Sirius wagged his tail at the sergeant’s musical greeting. My partner is fond of Perez. There’s no accounting for taste.
Other than Perez, there were only a few cops at the station. Everyone was out in the field. Sirius and I offered up our greetings to those who were there, and then I settled into my cubicle. My wish for solitude wasn’t granted. Perez came back and joined us, but luckily it wasn’t to sing another verse of “Puppy Love.”
“Too bad Captain Becker isn’t here,” he said. “I know she wanted to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“One of our fair citizens had a complaint about you.”
Perez’s deadpan expression and delivery always makes it difficult to tell if he’s on the level or if he’s pulling your leg.
“What did I supposedly do?”
“It isn’t what you did, but what you said. You remember a few weeks back when you ticketed some lady for talking on her cell phone while operating a vehicle?”
I did remember. If the woman hadn’t been violating almost every law known, I would have ignored her. Detectives don’t like handing out tickets. That’s the job of traffic cops.
“I could have written her up for speeding, texting while driving, talking on her phone while driving, and negligent driving,” I said. “She was actually putting on lipstick while talking and texting. And get this: since her hands were occupied, she was controlling the steering wheel with her legs. Vishnu would have had trouble doing as many things as she was.”
“That’s what you remember?”
I shrugged. “That’s about all there is to remember. As I recall, she tried to talk her way out of the ticket and act all flirty, until I made it clear that wasn’t going to work.”
“Now you’re getting warm. This lady even tacitly admitted to Captain Becker that she was playing up to you. But she said that still didn’t give you the right to say what you did.”
“Remind me what I said.”
“Does this ring a bell? This lady is probably batting her eyelashes at you. One of her blouse buttons might have even magically disengaged itself, as they frequently do whenever there’s a prospect of a ticket. And she says breathlessly, ‘I didn’t think L.A. cops gave pretty women tickets.’ And you replied, ‘We don’t.’ And that’s when you handed her the ticket.”
It had been a hot day, and I’d been provoked. I wished I hadn’t said it, but now I remembered that I had. “She wasn’t batting her eyelashes, but she was ki
nd of lisping.”
“We don’t,” said Perez, laughing.
He tried to give me a high five, but I ignored him. He tried the same tactic with my partner. Sirius is more polite than I am, and gave him five.
“We don’t,” said Perez again. “I think the captain was on that call for fifteen minutes. And when she hung up, she said something about having to deal with another Detective Sirius situation.”
I had hoped the captain would have forgotten about that incident. A few months earlier, “Detective Sirius”—or someone writing a report using his name—had sent a letter to the public defender representing a lowlife I’d arrested. The lawyer had wanted “Officer Sirius’s” account of the situation leading up to the arrest.
“Hey, Gideon,” said Perez, “what do your dog and your phone have in common?”
I shook my head.
“They both have collar ID,” he said. “Get it?”
“I wish I didn’t,” I said, and waved him away.
He didn’t leave quietly. “We don’t,” Perez said again, and laughed all the way back to his desk.
After making quick work of messages, mail, and email, I began studying my case notes on Heather Moreland. Reyes still hadn’t called me back; I hoped he had more on her disappearance than I did. Even though I’d never met Heather, I had this sense of knowing her and wanting the best for her. After everything she’d gone through while growing up, Heather deserved a happy ending, the kind reserved for old Disney movies.
Given my few options, I called up Katie Rivera.
“Any news?” she asked, sounding slightly breathless.
“That’s what I was going to ask you.”
I heard her let out some disappointed air. “Everyone around here is sort of in a state of shock.”
“What are they saying?”
“They’re hoping Heather’s absence is some kind of misunderstanding,” she said. “No one could imagine anyone wanting to hurt her.”
“Not even Emilio?”
“Only a few of us are aware of what’s going on in Heather’s marriage, so it isn’t like everyone is pointing a finger at him.”
