Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 10

by Serpent's Tooth

  “Not on school property, Pete.”

  Webster said, “I wasn’t on school property. I was on the sidewalk.”

  “You didn’t enter the school?” Strapp asked.

  “No.” Webster grew tense. “And last I heard interviewing kids politely didn’t constitute police harassment.”

  Strapp said, “Tell me what happened.”

  Webster recapped his conversations with the teens for the second time in twenty minutes. Strapp listened carefully.

  Afterward, Decker said, “When did the call from Westbridge come through, Captain?”

  “About five minutes ago.”

  Decker said, “And when did you leave the school, Tom?”

  “Around five-fifteen.”

  Decker’s eyes swept over the wall clock. Six-thirty. “Okay. Sean waited before he called the school to register the complaint. First, he called Jeanine, asked her what to do—”

  “Got their stories straight,” Oliver said.

  “So what do we do?” Marge asked. “Look for outgoing calls from Sean’s number to Jeanine’s. Or if he’s involved, would Sean be stupid enough to use his own phone number?”

  “People do stupid things when they panic,” Oliver said.

  “I say we look for incoming calls to Jeanine,” Martinez said.

  Decker looked at Strapp. “What would it hurt?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Decker picked up the receiver, dialed the phone company, gave out his badge number, and waited.

  Martinez said, “You know, it doesn’t say much even if he did call her. They are tennis partners.”

  Marge said, “It’s the timing, Bert. Sean hassles Tom, goes home, then waits to call the school. First, he calls Jeanine. You’re telling me he’s more interested in a tennis date than in registering a complaint?”

  Strapp said, “It proves nothing, Dunn.”

  “Yes, I’m still here.” Decker picked up a pen, wrote down the telephone number. “Thank you.”

  He hung up, held the slip in the air. “West Valley prefix.”

  Martinez said, “I’ll look it up.”

  Decker said, “If it isn’t in the backward directory, Bert, call up the phone company.”

  Martinez took the slip with the phone number and left to work at his desk.

  “Even if Sean did call Jeanine,” Strapp said, “just what exactly are you trying to establish?”

  Oliver said, “That Sean’s involved as the number two shooter—”

  “If there even is a number two shooter,” Strapp interrupted.

  “If Sean was involved in Estelle’s,” Webster said, “I don’t picture him as the number two shooter. Kelly Putnam summed him up as all bluff and no bite, and I agree. Sean’s hotheaded, but a coward. Backed off immediately when I came on strong.”

  “He called the school on us,” Oliver said.

  “A phone call avoids direct confrontation.”

  “Tommy, if he’s a red-blooded teenager, he’d do anything for pussy.”

  Webster said, “I don’t think the little snot has the balls to pull a trigger.”

  Martinez came back into the office. “Phone call was made from a pay phone about a half mile from the Amos house.”

  Marge said, “We should send someone out right now. Dust it for prints.”

  Strapp said, “Since when is it against the law for Sean Amos to use a pay phone?”

  “C’mon, Captain,” Decker said. “A kid like that is bound to have either a cellular phone or a car phone or both. Why would he bother with a pay phone unless he’s trying to hide something?”

  Strapp said, “If Tom doesn’t believe that Sean was involved in the shooting, why are we hassling him?”

  “Sir, I think he was involved in the shooting,” Webster said. “Just not as the triggerman.”

  “So how was he involved if he didn’t shoot?” Martinez asked. “Orchestrated the thing? Brokered it out?”

  “Maybe both.”

  Strapp threw up his hands. “I don’t like this at all. You’re chasing ghosts. Go back to standard investigating procedures.”

  Marge said, “So let me go out to the phone booth and dust for prints, Captain. That’s standard detective procedure from the get-go.”

  “I’m putting myself on the line here,” Strapp said, “allocating detective time without a decent reason. You know you’re going to find Sean’s prints on the phone. So what?”

  “Sir, we connect Sean to Jeanine,” Oliver said. “Then, twenty minutes later, the school calls us on a harassment charge—”

  “That’s reverse police harassment,” Marge said. “You know, we should check incoming calls to the school. Find out if any of them match Sean’s number.”

  Strapp said, “This is really skirting the law.”

  Oliver said, “He’s a suspect—”

  “Suspect in what, Scott? You don’t have an atom of proof of Sean’s involvement.”

  “That’s what we’re trying to establish, Captain,” Webster said.

  “But first you need reasonable cause, Tom! Right now, you don’t have shit!”

  “How about this, Captain?” Decker spoke calmly. “Sean roughed up his sister.”

  “He grabbed her arm—”

  “According to the law, it’s assault,” Decker said. “True or false?”

  “Go on.” Strapp was irritated.

  “According to Kelly, Sean has a history of roughing up girls. Now after Tom spoke to him, he was angry…hotheaded. Maybe we should put a tail on him. Just to make sure he doesn’t do anything to his sister or Kelly or anybody else.”

  Webster grinned. “The Loo has a point, sir. Sean’s a bully. I think he bears watching. What do you think?”

  Strapp said, “You’re stretching longer than a hippo’s condom.”

  Decker said, “Of course we’re stretching. We’re doing everything back door—”

  “Why do you really want to tail him?” Strapp was annoyed.

  Decker said, “Because Tom thinks he’s immature and impulsive. And Bert made a good point. Maybe Sean is the broker for the hit. The middle man. The kid’s already registered a complaint against us—”

  “Westbridge never said it was Sean,” Strapp said.

  “Sir, we could check that out,” Martinez said. “All it would take is a quick call to the phone company.”

  Marge said, “Hate to be a broken record, but I’d still like to go dust the pay phone for prints.”

  Strapp scowled.

  Webster said, “What would it hurt to see where Sean’ll take this?”

  Marge said, “Scare him bad enough, maybe he’ll lead us to a candidate for number two shooter.”

  “Or to Jeanine,” Martinez said.

  “And maybe he’ll sit tight,” Strapp said. “If Jeanine Garrison has half the cunning we think she has, that’s exactly what she told him to do. Sit tight. Don’t do anything because they have no proof. And she’s right.”

  Marge said, “All the more reason to scare him.”

  “And how do you propose to do that without making contact with the boy, Detective Dunn?”

  “I agree,” Decker said. “No contact with Sean because he’s a minor. But it’s easy to shake him up, sir. Just make the tail obvious.”

  Oliver smiled widely. “Two-car tail. First for show. Second for real.”

  “What do you say, Captain?” Decker said. “Do we run an investigation or do we run?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  Decker was quiet.

  Strapp swore under his breath. “All right. Go for it.”

  Gaynor threw up his hands. “Sorry, Loo. I checked through six months of receipts. I couldn’t find any large sums of money debited from any of Jeanine’s accounts.”

  Decker rubbed his eyes, looked at his wall clock. Seven-thirty. He had hoped to make it home a half hour ago…take Rina out for dinner and a movie. If he hustled, they could still make a movie…maybe have ice cream afterward. He said, “What are your criteri
a for large sums of money, Farrell?”

  “Any lump sum over twenty-five hundred,” Gaynor said. “During the past week, she has made several withdrawals of around a thousand each. But I’ve traced them to deposits—for a caterer and for the arena for her upcoming wheelchair tennis tournament.”

  “Don’t talk to me about that!” Decker picked up an eraser, threw it across the room. “If she hired a hit man for Estelle’s, she had to pay him somehow!”

  “Hidden cash,” Gaynor said. “Withdraw a couple of hundred one week, a couple of hundred the next…pretty soon she’d have a tidy sum.”

  “A couple of hundred a week?” Decker looked at Farrell. “Take her a while to save up enough to pay off two hit men.”

  “Two hit men?”

  “I’m counting Harlan Manz as a hit man.”

  “So maybe she didn’t pay out in money,” Gaynor said. “Maybe she paid in sex.”

  “If Sean Amos hired a second shooter, she couldn’t have paid him with sex. Money had to have been exchanged somehow.”

  “So maybe Sean paid and she paid Sean back.” Gaynor frowned. “No, that wouldn’t work. There’d still be cash out from her accounts.” He paused. “She could have a secret account somewhere. I couldn’t tap into everything.”

  Decker ran his hands through his hair. Marge walked into his office, her nose and cheeks blackened with print dust. “The good news is I have solid whorls. The bad news is Sean Amos doesn’t have anything resembling a record. So I have nothing to match them against.”

  Decker said, “Label them and put them under Jeanine Garrison’s file for the time being…until I figure out what to do with them.”

  Marge said, “Are both Scott and Tom watching Sean?”

  “Just Oliver right now. Because the kid hasn’t moved. Holed up in his manse.” Decker blew out air. “Strapp’s right. The kid’s gonna sit. Whole thing’s a bloody waste of time.”

  Suddenly, he stood and put on his jacket.

  “It’s been a long day for me. I’m packing it in.”

  Gaynor said, “Save my wife a trip if you took me home, sir.”

  “Be glad to.”

  “I’ll take you home, Farrell,” Marge offered. “If you don’t mind waiting until I’ve finished some paperwork.”

  “Nah, I don’t mind.”

  “Nonsense,” Decker said. “I’ll take you home now, Farrell.”

  “It won’t take me long, Pete.”

  “It’s not a problem for me, Marge.”

  “This is nice,” Gaynor said.

  Decker stopped talking. “What’s nice, Farrell?”

  “Being fought over.” The old man smiled. “Been a long time since I’ve felt wanted.”

  25

  Prayer in front of a mirror was forbidden.

  Which was fine with Decker. At six in the morning, the last thing he wanted was to look at his haggard face. Of course, that wasn’t the reason for the prohibition. The eyes were supposed to be focused inward to God, not outward, seduced by vanity. Yet every so often Decker caught his reflection in the living room’s bay window. A large figure wrapped in a tallith—a long fringed religious shawl—and tephillin—known by the clumsy English word “phylacteries.” They were small prayer-filled boxes which were secured to the body by leather straps. One set of long thin strips of hide had been wound down the length of his right arm; another set encircled his skull, then dangled past his shoulders. A black leather box rested on his forehead; a second was perched on his biceps.

  Weird.

  Still, the primitive ritual worked. Every morning as he girded his arm and head, Decker thought about God even if only for a twinkle of time. Thinking about Rav Schulman’s explanation…the beautiful allegories he had used. The box on the forehead representing God’s gift of intellect to man, the other on the biceps connoting man’s brute strength tethered to the spiritual.

  But he looked strange. As he removed the paraphernalia, he wondered what his fellow professionals would think if they saw him bound in leather, as if embroiled in an S&M sex game. He pondered this as he undid the straps, freeing himself of symbolic servitude.

  The phone rang. The business line. Still partially tied, he picked up the receiver. “Decker.”

  Strapp spoke. “David Garrison was found dead in his apartment ten minutes ago. Looks like an OD.”

  Decker refrained from cursing. He still had God’s name resting on his forehead. “Who found him?”

  “Cleaning lady.”

  “She’s sure he’s dead?”

  “As cold as Russian vodka.”

  “An OD. Okay. Let me guess. There was a needle conveniently gripped in Garrison’s fingers.”

  “By his side.”

  “Jeanine’s slipping—”

  “There’s no evidence that Jeanine was anywhere near the place.”

  “There’s where you’re wrong, sir. We’ve got concrete, carved-in-stone evidence that Jeanine was there.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “David Garrison’s body. There’s your evidence.”

  “Decker—”

  “I’m coming down.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  He ducked under the yellow crime-scene ribbon that had been stretched across the door.

  The first detective at the scene, but not the first cop. Four officers, one of them talking to a young Hispanic woman in a white uniform, who was rubbing her arms. Beside her was a pail filled with bottles of cleaning solutions and brushes. The cleaning lady. She’d keep for a moment. He flashed his badge to the uniforms, went over to the body.

  Stretched out on the floor, Garrison’s arms and legs were bent at all angles. He had landed or had been positioned on his back, his head arched back, white lips apart. Clean blond hair framed a gray face, fell across open dead eyes, the pupils already fixed. A knocked-over chair was at his left side, the needle and tourniquet at his right. He wore jeans and a short-sleeve T-shirt. Two puncture wounds in the cubital fossa—the triangular depression below the elbow crease. The common plexus of veins where junkies first shoot up—until those vessels collapse. Then they go for the backs of the hands, the legs, the feet, the stomach, finally settling on anywhere with a pulse.

  Such ugly business.

  He heard a grinding sound, looked up. Out of nowhere, a wheelchair broke through the yellow ribbon, as if it had just won a race. The machine’s occupant was very muscular from the waist up. Blond curly hair, manicured three days’ growth of beard.

  Wade Anthony.

  Behind him was Jeanine. Wide-eyed. Her mouth agape. Dressed in loose sweats.

  “I got a call from David’s landlady!” she shrieked to no one in particular. “What’s going on?”

  Decker stepped in front, blocking her view of the body. “Ma’am, can you step outside for just a moment?”

  Instant anger in her eyes. “What are you doing here?” she snarled.

  “Ms. Garrison—”

  “Get out of my way! Now!”

  Anthony spoke up. “Can someone tell us what’s going on?”

  “Be glad to tell you, sir, once we’re outside—”

  “Get out of my way!” Jeanine charged him, bounced off his chest. It was then that Decker noticed she was wearing makeup—including foundation. Because it had come off on his shirt. She also wore earrings and had put on perfume.

  Two uniforms—a man and a woman—rushed over. Injected themselves between Jeanine and Decker. Stood their ground, legs apart, arms folded across their chests.

  “Back off, ma’am!” the woman ordered.

  Arms flailing, Jeanine started screaming. “You goddamn son of a bitch, bastard—”

  “Back off!” the female officer insisted.

  Jeanine screamed, “I want to see my brother and this bastard won’t let me through!”

  Decker shouted over her, “Ms. Garrison, can you let me talk?”

  “You son of a bitch! Get out of here!”

  Strapp chose that moment
to make his entrance. Jeanine whirled to him. “Get this monster out of my way. He won’t let me see my brother! He’s trying to brainwash him against me! That’s what David told me. The police were brainwashing him—”

  Strapp said, “Ms. Garrison, the police are here because we received a call. I’m sorry to say that your brother has reportedly died of an overdose!”

  Jeanine’s hands gripped long blond hair. “Oh God! Oh no!” She yanked at her tresses. “My parents, then this! It can’t be! It just can’t be!”

  Hate-filled eyes turned to Decker, advanced toward him. “You killed him, you bastard!” Abruptly, she drew back her hand, smacked him hard across the face.

  Decker’s fingers went to his stinging cheek as fury clouded his senses. The female officer—Heather Morgan—grabbed Jeanine’s arm, turned her, and pushed her face against the wall. “Calm down this minute!”

  “I’m going to get you, Decker!” Jeanine struggled against the officer’s grip. “I’m going to get you all!”

  Decker said, “Take her out of here!”

  Anthony hoisted himself upward until his rear was off the seat. He yelled, “Let her go, man! She’s just had a terrible shock!”

  Strapp said, “Let her go, Officer Morgan!”

  Decker’s eyes grew in shock. “What?”

  “I said, let her go, Officer!” Strapp reiterated. “That’s an order.” To Decker, he said, “Take a walk, Pete!”

  A second slap across the face. Not a physical one but much deeper and harder. “I don’t friggin’ believe—”

  “Now!” Strapp gripped Decker’s arm, pushed him forward. “Take a long walk!”

  Jeanine shook off Officer Morgan, smugness stamped across her face. She shrieked, “You’ll hear from me in court, Lieutenant. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging on street corners!”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “It’s a promise—”

  Strapp pushed Decker forcefully. “Out, Lieutenant!”

  Jeanine screamed, “I’ll ruin you, you bastard!”

  Decker stepped toward her. “The sentiment runs both ways, lady!”

  “Out now, Decker!” Using an interlocking finger grip and body leverage, Strapp was barely able to contain him. He slowly managed to inch the big man away from the scene, away from the apartment. Using maximum exertion! Maximum effort!