Touched By Blood

by Craig Buckhout

  “Okay, I’ll be just a second. Don’t go into a trance or whatever you do, I have more questions.”

  Dodd’s cell showed an incoming call from Felix at 5:56 PM. If Malone showed up right after that call, Nick reasoned, he couldn’t have possibly been anywhere near the Empire Cottages. Since both Al and Dodd now eliminated Malone in the murders of Melanie Blaine and Edna, he probably didn’t kill the others either. But he certainly had something to do with it. The only way that Edna’s killer knew what cottage she was in, was from the message she left with Malone.

  Fran Decker poked her head in the office.

  “Hey Nick, the DNA came back on those coveralls. It was definitely St. Claire’s blood. They also ran the DNA on the tissue under Molly’s fingernails. That comes back to St. Claire, too. That’s kind of what we expected, but here’s one I’ll bet you weren’t expecting; Malone isn’t Malone. We ran Malone’s prints and they come back to some guy named Earl Manning. He’s a federal parolee wanted for a parole violation. We’re doing a work-up on him now.”

  “Whoa, hold on a minute. Malone is a parolee-at-large?”

  “Sure enough.”

  ”Is Malone a made-up name or did he steal it?” Nick asked.

  “Not sure yet. The computer shows about a dozen Carl Malone’s. We’re working our way through them now to see if there is any connection.”

  Nick went back into the interview room.

  “Malone use any other names?” he asked.

  “Any other names, no why? Don’t tell that’s not his real name. I wondered …”

  “When Felix called you Friday, how long did the two of you talk?”

  “Not very long, you see he was in a rush or something. I think …”

  “What’s not very long; thirty seconds, five minutes, what?”

  “Maybe just a minute or so. Did I do something …”

  “How long after you stopped talking with Felix was it that Malone joined you?”

  “It was like right away; almost as soon as I hung up. You see he doesn’t like me talking to Felix so I …”

  “Did the two of you stay together after that? Did Malone go anywhere?”

  “No, we just hung out. He was a little nervous like, so I sort of relaxed him.”

  That pretty well settles it, Nick thought. Malone is clean on the cottage murders.

  “Did he receive or make any calls while he was with you Friday night, especially in the hour or so after he arrived?”

  “Oh, that’s right, I forgot about that ‘til just now. He got a call but let it go to voicemail. It must have been important because he snapped his fingers real fast like and told me to turn the TV down so he could listen to it. And then all serious and everything, he sent a text message right after that. I thought he was done so I turned the TV back up, but he grabbed the controller out of my hands and shut it off; as if you need quiet to read a text message. After a couple of minutes he got a text back and that was that. He just turned the TV back on and seemed like before.”

  “How long after he got there did that happen?” Nick asked.

  “Ahhh …maybe, well, maybe thirty minutes or so. I would have remembered it if you weren’t acting so jumpy and everything. It’s like …”

  “Just a second,” Nick said and left the room.

  Outside he spotted Fanucchi.

  “Hey Fanucchi, I need a favor. Can you see if you can round up Malone’s cell phone and find out if he saved any text messages, sent or received, between 6:00 and 7:00 PM Friday? Santa Clara P D or the coroner should have it.”

  “How soon do you need it?”

  “As soon as you can get it. I’ll explain later.”

  Nick then went back into the interview room.

  “Just a few more questions,” Nick said. “Why did you two go to the motel in the first place?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, if you’d let me talk. Like I said over and over, he’s paranoid, oops, was paranoid. He said that the cops, ah police, wanted to talk with him but he didn’t want to talk to them. He doesn’t like you guys so much. So anyway, he wanted to get out of the house for a couple of days.”

  “Did he always carry a gun?”

  “No, at least not that I ever saw. Guns scare me. I nearly fainted when I saw him with it and then everything just sort of happened crazy. It was like the movies, only worse because it was really happening. I kept asking him ‘what’s happening, what’s happening,’ but he didn’t tell me, so I did the only thing I could do, I hid under the bed. Well, I couldn’t really get under it, so I just laid next to it real close.”

  “How about the Acura, whose car is it?”

  “It’s mine. It didn’t get damaged did it? Tell me it doesn’t have blood on it or something.”

  “I thought you guys drove to the motel together?”

  “Who said that; I didn’t, …did I? You see I followed him to the bar and waited outside in my car for him to come out, and then I followed him to the motel.”

  “The way you said it made …never mind, it’s not important. You have any relatives that don’t live in the area?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Lt. Terrie Callister was just stepping off the porch when Nick was stepping on. Timing is everything.

  “Hey, Terrie, everything okay?”

  She stopped and faced him. “So what’s the deal? What’s going on between you two?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She stared at him for several seconds before saying anything. “You know damn well what I’m talking about. You and her; there’s something going on, isn’t there?”

  “Where you going with this?”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You didn’t answer the question, but I guess that is the answer. You’re screwing her, aren’t you? At night, she’s staying with you, isn’t she?” She was whispering loud.

  “Okay, yeah, she’s staying with me. The threat is real, Terry.”

  She leaned-in towards him with her face up close. “Oh, give …me …a …fucking …break. A witness, Nick? A fucking witness? What the hell is the matter with you? You, who are always so much in control.”

  “Hey, slow down. Is this about her or about us?”

  “Me, slow down? Me, slow down; sounds to me like you’re the one who should slow down. But don’t worry Nick, I’ll keep your little secret, but not because of you.” She hit him in the chest with the back of her hand. “Because of her. The weird thing is, I like her a hell-of-a-lot better than I like you right now.” As she walked off to her car she said, “A witness, Nick? Smart. Real smart.”

  Nick stood on the porch and watched Terrie drive off. The patrol cop posted at the curb across the street was staring at him but looked away when their eyes met. Nick turned towards the door and was about to knock when Ellen opened it.

  “I kind of heard. Are you in trouble?” she asked.

  “Aw, don’t worry about it.”

  She took his hand and pulled him inside the house. “Of course I’m worried about it.”

  “I’ll take care of it. It’s no big deal.”

  “You want me to stay someplace else?”

  “No.”

  “You want to take a step back; you know, last night,” she said.

  “No. How about you? Do you want to take a step back?”

  “No.”

  “You sure you want a relationship with a cop?”

  She looked into his pale blue eyes, smiled, and said, “No, but the thing is, I like your mom.”

  “Yeah? Well, I like the sex.”

  “You know, we hardly know one another,” she said picking at something on the sleeve of his coat and then smoothing the material with the tips of her finger. “Things are moving pretty fast.”

  “That’s true, and it could get complicated.”

  “Yes, I suppose it could. But I really like your mom.”

  “And I really like the sex.”

  “You want to have some now?” she said, still smiling.r />
  “With a beat cop parked right outside. What if he comes to the door?”

  “I could put on a robe.”

  “Hmm, that could work, but it’ll have to be fast. Al wants me to stop by. I promised him Chinese and later tonight I’ve got to interview a witness.”

  “Not too fast, though.” She stepped closer to him and put her hands on his hips.

  “No, not too fast.” He put his arms around her.”

  “Well, we better not waste any time.” She took him by the hand and led him towards the bedroom. “By the way, your mom is planning dinner for six — stuffed cabbage rolls.”

  “You talked to my mom?”

  “Of course. I like talking with her.”

  “Maybe we can stop and see Al on the way to my mother’s, then.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Roger Templeton was seated at a large round table close to the kitchen, leaning over a sheaf of papers, alternately tapping the keys of a small calculator and making notes. His charcoal gray suit coat was hung over the back of his chair, his tie and collar loosened, and the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled to the elbows.

  Around him was a buzz of activity that seemingly escaped his awareness. A half-dozen workers were stripping cloths from the other twenty-five tables positioned throughout the room. They were also stacking chairs on large rolling carts and pushing the carts through a set of double doors on the wall opposite, into storage. In one corner of the same room was the DJ dressed in all white — shoes, pants, and shirt. He had just finished coiling up his cables and was now hefting a very large box speaker onto a flatbed. Through the wall behind Templeton, water could be heard running and pots were sounding off against one another. Voices were made in loud and sustained discourse, punctuated by an occasional laugh. It wasn’t the ideal place for an interview, far from it, but sometimes that’s just the way it goes.

  As Nick traversed the room, a man wearing a white tunic open at the neck and checkerboard pants, walked from the kitchen. He put a piece of paper on the table. Templeton picked it up, looked at it, and set it aside to continue with his calculations and notations. No words were exchanged between the two men.

  The steady approach of his footsteps on the hard floor was apparently insufficient to herald his arrival, so Nick stepped around to face him before he spoke.

  “Mr. Templeton?” Nick asked.

  Templeton looked-up, took off his readers, those small ones that tend to slide low on the nose, and smiled.

  “Aw, you must be Sergeant …you know what, I’m not going to even try pronouncing your name. I’ll only embarrass myself.”

  “He stood up, shook Nick’s hand, and said, “Please, please sit down. Now I hope you’re going to go easy on me. Blaine was a little shook-up by your questions.” Templeton was smiling.

  One point for Templeton, Nick thought. The identity of Melanie Blaine hadn’t been released yet, nor the fact that Peter Blaine had disappeared. Templeton sounded as if he wasn’t aware of any of that.

  “They’re just questions. It tends to be the answers that are difficult.”

  Templeton laughed. “Well, I guess that’s one way to look at it. So what questions do you have for me?”

  “I’d like to start off by asking you about Nolan St. Claire.”

  The smile faded from his face.

  “You know, I hope you don’t think badly of me for saying this, but I really didn’t care for the man. He struck me as a pompous, egotistical, ass. That’s still not a good reason for someone to kill him, though.”

  “What would be a good reason to kill him?”

  Templeton smiled again.

  “Wow, you are direct. Just a question, huh? I have no idea. If I had to speculate, it was a bad business deal, a love triangle, something already with a lot of emotion in it that was made worse by his personality.”

  “Possibly. What was the nature of your dealings with him?”

  “I was hired by Peter Blaine to put on his event. After the contract was signed, he asked me to provide St. Claire a car; not just any car but something of quality. In doing so I had to have St. Claire’s schedule, specifically when and where he would arrive so I could get the car to him. In that regard, we had a couple of phone conversations, and I had another with his pilot just before he landed in San Jose.”

  “In your conversations with St. Claire, did he ask you to provide for anything else?”

  “You mean like a hooker, right? Yeah, Blaine said you’d probably ask about that. And the answer is no, we just talked about a car.”

  “Did you refer him to anyone who might be able to make those arrangements?”

  “No, and I wouldn’t have either,” Templeton said.

  “If I had a lot of money and was from out of town, who would I go to, to find a prostitute?”

  “I have no idea. They used to advertise escort services in the paper, but I don’t know if they do that anymore. I would imagine that the internet would also be good for that.”

  “Maybe, but I can’t see a guy like St Claire taking a chance like that,” Nick said. “I think he’d want the best and also he’d want to know that he wasn’t going to find himself tied naked in a hotel room somewhere. He wasn’t the kind of person who would do things himself either, he’d have someone else do it for him.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. I guess you’d know more about that sort of thing than me.”

  “Do you know this man?” Nick asked, sliding a mug shot of Earl Manning, AKA Carl Malone, across the table to him.

  “Looks familiar, like he’s someone I’ve seen, but I can’t say that I know him. If I do, he’s not someone I’ve met more than once.”

  “How about a strip club called The Rack; have you ever been there?”

  “I’ve been there. What can I tell you, I like looking at naked women.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I would say I’ve been there maybe three or four times.”

  The man wearing the tunic stepped from the kitchen and announced, “We’ll be another ten minutes.”

  “Okay, I’ll have it ready for you,” Templeton replied.

  He looked at Nick and said, “Sorry, give me just a second. This guy wants his money.”

  Nick watched as Templeton wrote out a check, pulled it from his checkbook, and set it aside on the table.

  “Are you friendly with any of the dancers at The Rack or any employee for that matter?”

  Templeton laughed.

  “Well, only friendly in terms of when I put a dollar on the stage, they smile at me, and I smile back.”

  “Do you know the name Misty; she was one of the dancers?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Carl Malone?”

  “Nope.”

  “How about a woman named Nona Pantz or Edna Faulk?”

  “That’s a name to remember. No again.”

  Nick took the same photos he’d shown both Blaine and Forney, and handed them to Templeton. Included in the stack were those of Molly and Edna.

  “Who do you recognize in these pictures?” Nick asked.

  “Well, quite a few people actually. Blaine of course. This is Fred Arnold. That’s his wife Gert. There’s St. Claire, and Wendell Gertz. I’ve done a couple of events for Wendell. He throws a great party. This looks like Rebecca Homer, and this guy here, from the side, looks like Jack Rawlings. These two women look a little familiar, too. Since you earlier asked me about the strip club and dancers, I’ll take a guess and say I’ve seen them there but can’t say for sure.”

  “In the photo where you and St Claire are pictured, what was he saying?”

  “I don’t remember. It was probably something about business. That’s what they usually talk about at these gatherings. Business people talk about business and golf, and athletes talk about their sport and golf …and women. I’ve done a couple of parties for one of the Forty Niners, that’s why I can say that with some authority. I’ve always thought that if you play golf, which I don’t, at least don’t very well, you will
fit in at just about any of these gatherings. Do you play golf, Sergeant?”

  “No, not my thing exactly.”

  The man in the tunic came out of the kitchen again and approached Templeton. Nick noticed he was wearing tennis shoes. Templeton handed him the check he’d written and shook his hand.

  “I included a little extra, thanks again. The food got a lot of compliments.”

  “Anytime. I see you’re busy so I won’t take your time.”

  Nick watched the two of them interact and also thought of how Templeton had answered his questions so far. His overall impression was that Templeton wasn’t holding anything back; that he was being honest and straight forward in his answers.

  The man in the tunic disappeared back through the kitchen door.

  “In this business you have to know good Chefs,” Templeton said to Nick. “If the food is good and presented well, people will remember that. I get a lot of business that way. Especially the wives, they seem more attentive to those kinds of things then the men are.”

  “Do you know a man named Ramon Forney?” Nick asked.

  “Sure. Now he’s an interesting person. That house of his is something else, isn’t it? He’s also got his fingers into things all over the county. But yes, I know him and have done jobs for him, too.”

  “Did you know that he owns the strip club?” Nick asked.

  “Now that I didn’t know, at least if I was told, I don’t remember.”

  “Mr. Templeton, Nolan St Claire was killed early Thursday morning, can you tell me where you were at that time?”

  “How early is early? I’m an early riser.”

  “Say between five and six in the morning.”

  “That early huh, well I was probably having coffee in my kitchen about 5:30. After that I showered and headed to the office. I like getting there early because it’s quiet and I miss the heavy commute traffic.”

  “Was anyone with you to verify that?”

  “No, I live by myself, and my office manager, Margaret, doesn’t get to work until nine.”

  “Make any calls, talk with anyone, use a credit card to make a purchase, gas maybe?”

  “Well I can’t really say about buying gas. I do go through a lot of gas, so it seems like I’m always stopping to fill-up. At that time of the morning, though, I doubt it. As far as talking to anyone, it’s very unlikely.”