“Got a lot of Marietta types after you, do you, Stud Muffin?”
“Naw. I see ’em comin’ and I head the other way.” Savannah pulled the collar of her jacket up around her neck and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s chilly in here.”
“Ah, stop your complaining. Since when did you turn into a pansy on a stakeout?”
“Since I stopped getting paid for it.”
“So... bill that Leah Freed gal for your time here tonight. You’re working on the case, after all.”
“That’s true, but she thought our killer was going to be somebody in the modeling business, not some civilian nutjob.”
“Who cares who it is, as long as you catch him, right?”
“I guess. I—” Savannah caught a glimpse of movement in the Buick’s side mirror. “Hey, somebody’s pulling into the driveway over there.”
“An old El Camino?”
“Yep. And he’s getting out and walking up behind us,” she said. “He fits your DMV description.”
“Big, fat, and ugly?”
“Watch your terminology there, would you? Big, horizontally enhanced, and attractiveness-challenged.”
“Yeah, that’s better.”
They watched as a large, slovenly fellow in baggy sweats sauntered up the sidewalk beside the auto shop. “I do believe that’s our boy,” she said.
‘Yeah, let’s get him before he gets into that van. God knows what he’s got in there in the way of weapons.”
“Knives, guns... bubonic plague?”
“Exactly.”
They got out of the Buick, being cautious not to slam the doors and alert their mark. They caught up with him before he was even halfway to his van.
“Ronald Tumblety?” Dirk asked in his most officious cop voice.
He spun around, fists clenched at his sides. “Who wants to know?”
“The police,” Dirk replied. “Detective Coulter. I need to ask you a couple of questions.”
“I got nothing to say to you people.” Turning his back to them, Tumblety headed for his van at double time.
Dirk caught him in three steps, grabbing a handful of his sweatshirt. Savannah pulled his right hand behind his back and held it there.
“Now why be so rude?” she said. “We’re really nice people when you get to know us.”
Dirk twisted his left hand behind his back and quickly cuffed him.
“Well,” Savannah added as Dirk tightened the manacles, “I’m nice. This guy’s not all that nice—especially to perverts who flash their pee-pees at little girls. He’s been known to be downright cranky with them.”
“I don’t flash children!” Tumblety exclaimed. And even by the dim light of a nearby street lamp, Savannah could see his pudgy face flush with indignation.
She couldn’t help chuckling. It always amused and amazed her that even society’s more distasteful citizens had their standards... and were frequently indignant when defending them.
“No, you’re a real stand-up guy,” Dirk said as he turned him around to face him. “We know all about you, Ronald. That’s why we’re here.”
“Why?” he said. “Did some woman accuse me of calling her late at night? Did she say I was hanging around outside her house? ’Cause if she did, she’s lying! I went for counseling, and I don’t do that stuff anymore.”
Dirk glanced over at Savannah, who simply twitched one eyebrow.
“She’s lying, huh?” Dirk said. “I don’t think so. I think you’ve been calling her and following her, and we both know that’s not all you did.”
Tumblety’s eyes widened, and he began to shiver. His teeth even started to chatter.
Savannah tried not to get excited, but this was a better reaction than she had frequently seen in coldblooded killers, twenty seconds before they confessed.
“I didn’t... didn’t do nothin’, I... I told you,” he said.
Dirk shoved his face closer to the guy’s until they were practically nose to nose. “Well, guess what... we know exactly what you did to her. We’ve got witnesses who saw you there.”
“No, you don’t! There wasn’t nobody th—er, that is, didn’t nobody see nothing, ’cause there wasn’t nothing to see. I didn’t do it.”
“I think you’d better come along with me, Mr. Tumblety,” Dirk said, pulling him down the driveway toward the Buick. “We’ll go to the station house and you can tell me in great detail all about what you didn’t do that nobody saw you do.”
“Huh?”
Tumblety looked genuinely confused. And Savannah silently thanked the good God above that so many criminals were basically stupid.
It made her life... and Dirk’s... so much simpler.
Fifteen minutes later, Savannah and Dirk arrived at the police station with Ronald Tumblety sitting in the back seat of Dirk’s Buick amid the assorted Dirk junk.
They pulled him out of the car and took him through the rear entrance. Once inside the brightly lit hallway, Savannah got her first look at their latest suspect. She shivered, thinking how unsettling it would be to have a weirdo like that fixated on you.
Long ago, she had observed that wicked living often showed on a person’s face. Sicknesses of the soul frequently manifested themselves in dull eyes, muddy skin, bloated features, sluggish mannerisms, and even a rank body smell. Good old Ron had them all.
But apparently, he didn’t feel the same revulsion to-ward her that she did for him. The moment they stepped out of the darkness and into the light, he caught a good look at her and smiled from ear to ear, in spite of his circumstances.
“Wait a minute!” he cried. “You’re not a cop!”
“I never said I was,” she replied.
“I’ve seen you before! You’re a famous model!” Savannah cut a quick look at Dirk, who was instantly alert “Oh?” she said. “You’ve seen my pictures?”
Tumblety looked mildly confused for a moment Then he said, “Uh, yeah. Some swimsuit pictures, I think. You looked really nice.”
“And when did you see my pictures?” Savannah asked, forcing a dimpled smile.
“Not too long ago.”
“I’ll bet it was pretty darned recently,” she said, giving Dirk another pointed look. “Since I just started modeling.”
Tumblety’s dead eyes cut back and forth between Savannah and Dirk. “Huh? What do you mean?”
“What she means,” Dirk said, taking him by the arm and propelling him toward the interview room down the hall, “is that you and I have got a lot of talking to do, amigo.”
Savannah watched them disappear into the tiny room that was hardly more than a cubicle. Then she hurried into the adjoining room, which was as cozy as a telephone booth with all the ambience of a broom closet. But the room’s big attraction was that she could see everything going on next door through a one-way mirror. And she could eavesdrop by listening to the speaker installed there for that purpose.
“The first thing you get to do,” Dirk was saying as he pushed Tumblety down onto a chair and shoved him up to the table, “is explain to me where you were and what you did yesterday. And don’t leave nothing out, ’cause remember, I’ve got witnesses.”
Dirk uncuffed Tumblety’s left hand and manacled his right one to a leg of his chair.
“Talk to me,” Dirk said, “and don’t lie either. If you lie, I’ll know, and I’ll get really pissed.”
“Maybe I oughta have a lawyer.” Tumblety flexed his wrist against the handcuff and winced at the pain it caused him.
Dirk shrugged. “You’re not under arrest. We’re just havin’ a little chat here. But if you’ve done something you shouldn’t have and need yourself a lawyer...”
“I told you before, I ain’t done nothing.”
“That’s not what the witnesses said.”
“What witnesses? There wasn’t nobody watching nothing I did yesterday.”
Dirk glanced over at the mirror and grinned. “They saw you gawking at those models by the hot tub. You were told to stay away fro
m those girls. What do you think those restraining orders are for... for you to wipe your nose on? Huh?”
“I wasn’t watching those girls. And didn’t nobody see me do it neither.”
Dirk leaned over him, practically breathing down the neck of his sweatshirt. “That’s not what a certain husband and wife say. They told me that they looked out the second-story window of their beach house, and they saw you acting suspiciously. They called 911, and we came out there, but I guess we just missed you.”
“I wasn’t peeping!” Tumblety said, trying to stand. Dirk pushed him back down onto the chair. “I was just walking by that fence on my way to the beach. Since when is it against the law to walk down to the beach?”
“Don’t yank my chain, dude,” Dirk said, pacing behind his chair. “You were watching those models from behind that fence, watching them and playing pocket pool.”
Savannah stifled a laugh from the other side of the glass. Dirk was taking stabs in the dark with this guy, but Dirk had been on the job long enough to make accurate blind jabs.
Along with her delight in watching Dirk in action, she couldn’t help feeling more than a little creepy to think that this guy had been spying on her and the others... not to mention pulling his taffy while he was peeping.
It made her feel like she needed delousing.
“So, you followed one of the girls from her house to the shoot. And after you watched the girls, you decided to follow one of them from that location, too. Didn’t you?” Dirk said.
Savannah held her breath. It was another bluff on Dirk’s part, but she could easily follow his train of thought. This jerk had been watching them at the photo shot, then Tesla Montoya—who had felt threatened enough by this guy to get a restraining order against him—had disappeared within the next few hours. Not a bad bit of logic.
And from the look on Ronald Dirty-Old-Man Tumblety’s face, she thought Dirk might have hit the bull’s-eye.
“I didn’t have nothing to do with that!” Tumblety cried. “I wasn’t the one who grabbed her! It wasn’t me!”
Savannah was pretty sure her heart skipped a couple of beats, then started pounding somewhere up in her throat. She took a step closer and laid her hand on the glass.
She could tell by the set of Dirk’s jaw that he was holding tight reins on his own emotions.
He walked around to the other side of the table to face Tumblety. Placing both of his big hands on the table, he leaned toward his suspect.
“Then let me tell you, buddy,” he said, “if you didn’t grab her, you’d better tell me right now who did, ’cause you’re about five seconds away from getting arrested for kidnapping, assault, and murder.”
“Murder?” Tumblety looked up at Dirk with shock and genuine horror in his eyes. “She’s dead? He killed her?”
“He, who?”
“The guy who grabbed her. I don’t know his name. I saw... I saw...”
He gulped and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his free hand. “I was following her, okay... like you said. But I didn’t take her. She was driving down Johnson Avenue and stopped at a coffee shop there on the corner of Johnson and Charles Street. When she got out of that little black Mitsubishi of hers, a van pulled up next to her, and its side door opened.”
“And...?” Dirk said.
“And I saw somebody’s arm reaching out of the side door. He grabbed her and pulled her inside. Then the door slammed closed, and the van took off.”
“Where did he take her?”
Tumblety shrugged, not meeting Dirk’s eyes. “I dunno.”
“You know. You followed them, and you know.”
“Okay, I followed the van for a little ways. It went down Johnson to the freeway. Traffic was heavy and I lost them on the 101.”
“Going which direction?”
“North.”
“How far north did you follow them?”
“Just a mile or two. I lost them about even with the Hinze Boulevard exit.”
Dirk let out a long breath, as though he, too, had been holding it. “And did you happen to get the license number of this van?”
“Huh? Naw. Didn’t think of that.”
Dirk muttered something, then said, “Okay. How about a description?”
“I told you, I didn’t see the guy.”
“I know. I mean the van. What color was it?”
“Oh. It was an old white panel body with a rack on top.”
Savannah felt her bubble deflate a little. White vans were a dime a dozen. And of course, that was assuming that Ronald Tumblety wasn’t lying through his scraggly teeth. That he hadn’t kidnapped poor Tesla himself.
His story didn’t exactly wash, considering the trashed house and the blood on her sofa, which suggested that she had met with foul play inside her own home—not at a coffee shop on Johnson Avenue.
And apparently, the same thing had occurred to Dirk, because he was saying to his unhappy guest, “I’ll tell you what, my friend. You stay here and make yourself at home for the night, while I check out your story. And you better be telling me the truth, man, or you’re gonna find out what it’s like to be on my bad side.” “The night? The night? You’re gonna put me in jail?”
“It’s more like a holding cell. Consider it a room upgrade from that van of yours.”
Five minutes later, Dirk and Savannah met in the parking lot behind the station.
“Got him all tucked in snug as a bug?” she asked him as she laced her arm through his and they walked to the Buick together.
“More like a cockroach in a garbage can.”
“So... are we off to the coffee shop on Johnson?”
“You betcha. And if there ain’t a black Mitsubishi sit-tin’ empty in that parking lot, this guy and me are gonna go a couple o’ rounds.”
“Yeah, yeah... I love it when you talk tough. But when it comes right down to it, how many perp asses do you reckon you’ve actually whupped?”
He gave her a sideways look and a grin. “Not enough, darlin’,” he said, doing a pretty fair impression of her Southern accent. “Not even near enough.”
Chapter
14
The intersection of Johnson Avenue and Charles Street had once been home to a couple of service stations, an empty, weed-choked lot, and a dilapidated shack that sported a sign advertising tarot and palm readings by Madame Wanda.
But in the past three years, the area had become gentrified, and the four corners were now occupied by a swimsuit boutique, an art gallery, a bookstore, and the ubiquitous coffee shop, all nicely landscaped with palm trees and flower boxes overflowing with bright-faced marigolds.
Each shop had a mini-parking lot in front of it, which provided a dozen spots per establishment And during business hours, those spots were usually full of townsfolk, not to mention scores of Los Angeles tourists, seeking respite from the city heat and smog at the coast beaches.
But at two in the morning, the intersection was dark, deserted and silent. And the moment that Savannah and Dirk rounded the corner, they instantly spotted the black Mitsubishi, sitting alone in one of the spaces in front of the coffee shop.
“Tarnation,” Savannah said.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Dirk replied as he pulled into the lot and parked a few spaces away from the empty car. “I was hoping his story was a load of b.s., and I could hold him for something more than just violating an order of protection.”
“Let’s check this out and maybe we’ll find something good.”
“Naw, we’re not gonna find squat. You wait and see.”
“Well, aren’t we just a beam of sunshine and light.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
As they got out of the Buick and walked toward the Mitsubishi, Dirk reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out another pair of latex gloves. As Savannah watched him slip them on, it occurred to her that the good old days, when you could just push evidence around with a pencil or pick up it by holding one corner, were gone forever. Nowad
ays, the focus of defense lawyers was on the cops and whether they had “contaminated” evidence by mishandling it, breathing on it, or even being in its vicinity. Unlike the defendants, investigating officers were considered grossly incompetent until proven not guilty.
A perpetrator could murder someone in front of fifty witnesses, while a TV camera crew filmed the whole thing, and even if the killer confessed, the defense attorney would want to know if the cops had used gloves when processing the scene.
Savannah loved defense attorneys—even more than she loved root canals and Pap smears.
When she and Dirk reached the car, the first thing they noticed was that the driver’s door was ajar.
Dirk squatted beside the door and studied the handle. “Looks like she left in a hurry.”
“Just like ol’ Tumblety Numb-Nuts said,” Savannah replied.
“Yeah, yeah. He’s probably the one who grabbed her, no matter what he said. Dollars to doughnuts it was his rotten old van she got pulled into, not some mysterious white one.”
“That old blue van... the one with the two flat tires... the one with three-foot-high weeds growing around it... weeds that haven’t been disturbed for—”
“Eh... don’t interrupt me when I’m talkin’.”
“Don’t confuse me with the facts, is more like it.”
“Whatever.”
“Give me some of those gloves of yours. I’m all out,” she told him as she peered through the windows of the car, trying to get a better look at a bundle lying on the back seat.
He shoved a pair into her hand with a grunt and mumbled something that sounded like, “Get... own friggin’... gloves....”
“Oh, please. Like you pay for these yourself. You’re just being pissy because you thought you had your case solved and now—”
“Now nothing! It could still be him.”
“Could be. It could have also gone down exactly like he said.”
Savannah tried the handle on the rear passenger door. “Whoever got her, she wasn’t exactly expecting to get nabbed. She was driving around with her doors unlocked. Not a good idea in this day and age, whether you’ve got a stalker or not.”
Cereal Killer Page 14
