“I checked out Richards senior. He keeps a low profile. Not even a traffic ticket in the past fifteen years. He owns a dive bar called the Lucky Duck, which gives him decent income but nothing to write home about. He also has a PI license. He works part-time for a small group of clients, mostly insurance companies.”
Harrington felt let down by the news. He had hoped for more. “Anything on the daughter?”
“She’s only worked Pacific Homicide for a short time. She keeps her head down, but I found people who were more than willing to talk trash about her.”
“Regale me.”
“In her patrol days in Southeast she earned a reputation as a cowgirl. Fearless, maybe too fearless.”
“Any information about the shooting?”
“Just a rumor. People say Hall had the situation under control until she panicked and started shooting.”
“Do you believe that?”
“It’s doubtful. Doesn’t fit her profile.”
In his peripheral vision, Harrington saw Thor Amdahl on the front porch of the building holding a plate of food. A moment later, the Norwegian shrugged and walked back inside.
“I need more than rumors,” Harrington said.
“That’s why I paid a call on Abel Hurtado’s widow.”
“Is she still grieving?”
Sloan reached for the heater knob and turned it up a notch. “Not that you’d notice. The police report claims she didn’t see what happened that night because she was prone on the bed getting the shit get kicked out of her. But her memory has gotten sharper since then.”
Harrington felt a tingling sensation on his skin. “How so?”
Sloan turned the heater up again. “According to the widow, the two detectives were screaming before the shooting, calling each other names.”
“Are you sure they weren’t addressing her dearly departed husband?”
Sloan picked up a pack of cigarettes from the dashboard. He tapped one into his waiting hand and slid it between his lips. “She said they acted like there was some sort of beef between them.”
“Don’t even think about lighting up.”
Sloan ignored the admonition. “After I left her place, I made a few phone calls and guess what? Davie Richards and Spencer Hall were having an affair. Hall was separated at the time and headed for divorce, but when his almost-ex-wife found out about the hookup, she wasn’t amused. He recently got back together with the wife, so I had a talk with her. She told me she’d called her husband about financial issues connected with their divorce just before he and Richards left for Hurtado’s house that day. He told her he had just ended his relationship with Richards.”
“Don’t you think that’s odd? His telling his estranged wife about breaking up with his lover?”
“Wifey has control issues. I’m guessing she pressed him for information.”
Harrington chuckled. “Maybe Richards was aiming at Hall and hit Hurtado by mistake.”
“It’s never smart to piss off a cowgirl,” Sloan said, “especially if she carries a forty-five.”
Harrington had merely been joking before, but now he steepled his fingers and considered the possibilities. “So, what’s next?”
“Some ambulance-chasing attorney got wind of the case. He claims Mr. Hurtado was a good man and a good father. The guy wasn’t beating his wife that night, only comforting her after she fell and smashed her face against the coffee table. The attorney claims Richards fabricated statements on the crime report to cover her ass. Now his poor client is left to raise a young daughter alone. Somebody has to pay. The lawyer is floating a settlement figure of ten mil.”
Despite the chilly air flowing through the open window, the heater was making Harrington feel clammy and uncomfortable. “Does Mrs. Hurtado really think a jury will believe perjured testimony, especially with two detectives contradicting her story?”
Sloan pulled a lighter from his pocket. “Lying on the witness stand isn’t limited to victims. As you know, cops lie too.”
Just like William Richards lied, he thought. The civil jury’s decision in the Richards trial still left a bitter taste in Harrington’s mouth. He would never get another chance to right that wrong, but it was within his power to keep Davie Richards off the streets if he found credible evidence that she was dirty just like her old man.
“Police groupies on the jury are going to think Mrs. Hurtado is a typical battered woman,” Harrington said, “excusing her abuser and turning against the cops who saved her life.”
Sloan rolled his thumb across the lighter wheel, igniting a yellow flame. “The scent of money is a powerful perfume. The defense will hire a hack expert in repressed memory and paint the husband as a martyred saint.”
Harrington studied Sloan’s face, marking the moment, calculating the risks of pursuing felony charges against Davie Richards. The theory that Richards meant to kill Hall defied logic. There was no evidence she was stupid. On the other hand, he understood the pain of unrequited love. It could be unbearable. Davie Richards’s lover dumped her just prior to the shooting. That may have caused sufficient mental instability that she lost control and killed a man. Once she realized she had screwed up, she convinced Hall to falsify the police report to cover it up. Conspiracy and collusion under color of authority were serious charges and, if proven, would end her career and possibly send her to prison.
He remembered Maria Luna’s face when she heard the jury’s verdict that William Richards was not financially responsible for her son’s paralysis. It seemed like a cable broke on a theatre curtain and yards of fabric had crashed down, smothering her under its weight. Before she walked out of the courtroom, she had flashed him a look that could only be described as contempt. Seeing her like that had broken something inside of him. He wondered if Davie Richards had experienced similar feelings just before the shooting.
“What’s Richards working on now?” Harrington asked.
“A Jane Doe found in the sewer. She’s the lead Investigative Officer.”
Harrington felt a chill on his back. “Do they know who the victim is?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
Harrington watched the flame of Sloan’s lighter move closer to the cigarette. He counted the teardrops on the detective’s paisley tie, considering what he was about to do. His pulse escalated as he thought about the peril to his career and possibly to his personal safety if things went sideways.
“Bring Hall in for questioning,” he said. “Squeeze him until you get the truth.”
16
The Volga Bakery where Anya Nosova bought her vatrushkis was located mid-block on Las Palmas in Hollywood. It was not far from where the cab driver had dropped her off the Saturday night she disappeared.
The owner was squat and bald except for a fringe of wispy hair circling the back and sides of his head. The man’s stooped shoulders and dark under-eye pouches signaled to Davie that he was a person whose weighty responsibilities kept him awake at night. His name was Pasha Kozlov and he was not happy to have an LAPD Homicide detective impeding commerce in a store full of paying customers.
According to Kozlov, he had kept the bakery open until nine p.m. the previous Saturday because it was a key weekend in the Russian New Year celebration and everybody wanted bread and pastries. Anya had come into the store at about eight forty p.m.
“Did she usually come in that late?” Davie said.
“She is dressed up. Fancy black dress. Red coat. High shoes. I think maybe she go to New Year’s party.”
“Have any idea where?”
A middle-aged couple walked out of the store without buying anything. Kozlov threw up his arms, apparently exasperated by the missed sale. “That night I have many customers. Like now. No time for Anya.”
The implication was not lost on Davie. Kozlov had no time for her, either. She waited as he bagged a loaf of rye b
read and a dozen cookies for an elderly woman wearing an old-fashioned babushka headscarf.
“Did Anya seem upset that night?”
A bell above the door tinkled as a young woman walked in with two small children. Kozlov seemed irritated that Davie was still buzzing around his store like an unwanted fly.
He shrugged. “She order one vatrushki. Her cell phone ring. She go outside. Talk, talk, talk.”
As soon as the search warrant for phone records was returned, Davie could identify the person Anya had been talking to that night.
“Did you hear what she said?”
“I help customer. I turn around. Anya is gone.”
“She left without paying?”
He tidied loaves of bread on the counter. “She left without vatrushki. Without purse. I wait. Nine o’clock, I close store.”
“She never came back?”
“No.”
“What did the purse look like?”
“Is like a red heart but with beads that sparkle.”
“Where is the purse now?”
“I give to policeman. On Monday.”
Davie felt tension radiate along her jaw. She doubted that anybody from the LAPD had picked up Anya’s purse. Still, somebody had interfered with her investigation, possibly compromising evidence. She wondered who it had been and what she would do about it.
“Did he give you his name?”
A customer stood at the cash register drumming his fingers on the counter as he waited to pay for a bag of rolls. Kozlov frowned before pulling a business card from under the counter and handing it to Davie. It was a two-sided generic card printed in bulk by the Los Angeles Police Department. It had a blank line that allowed detectives to write in a name and telephone number, but there was nothing written on this card.
“What did the guy look like? Tall. Short. Fat. Thin.”
“I see many men that day. Who knows if they are fat? Please, now you give me peace and quiet to run my store.”
A thousand questions cycled through Davie’s brain, the foremost of which was, Who had given that business card to Pasha Kozlov in exchange for Anya’s purse? Any sworn or civilian personnel who worked for the department had access to those cards. They were handed out to dozens of people every day. Checking the card for fingerprints was probably a waste of time. Even if the paper surface were smooth enough to absorb prints, any number of people could have handled the card since Monday. Still, she slipped it into an evidence bag she pulled from her notebook.
At some point Anya must have realized she had left her purse at the bakery. She didn’t have a car and she was wearing high heels. She must have eventually arrived at her final destination or she would have gone back for the purse. She might have sent someone to collect it, except the purse was picked up on Monday, two days after her disappearance. It had been Tuesday morning when Hyperion employees discovered her body. Until then, nobody knew she was dead, leaving Davie to wonder if it had been Anya’s killer who had collected the purse, hoping to eliminate any evidence that might implicate him in her murder.
17
Davie stood on the sidewalk outside the bakery inhaling deeply. She wished she were a bloodhound capable of following Anya’s scent, but all her brain registered were fumes from passing cars and the aroma of burnt sugar streaming from the bakery’s exhaust pipes. Her gaze traveled along the pavement, but she saw no manhole covers capable of swallowing a body.
Anya hadn’t taken a forty-dollar taxi ride to Hollywood just to buy pastries, so the bakery probably wasn’t her final destination. Kozlov said Anya was dressed for a party. She had only ordered one vatrushki, so she wasn’t buying for a crowd. She’d probably bought the pastry for herself before moving on to the evening’s main event.
Storefront businesses huddled together on both sides of the street, including a frame shop, a dry cleaner, and a hair salon. She scanned each façade until she spotted a surveillance camera mounted at the roofline above a liquor store across the street. The lens appeared to be pointing toward the front door of the bakery. If luck were on her side, the video had captured shots of Anya arriving and leaving the bakery sometime before nine o’clock last Saturday night. The tape might also confirm who had left the LAPD business card the following Monday.
When the young man behind the counter heard Davie open the front door, he looked up from a physics book that was lying open in front of him. He had dark unruly hair, rimless eyeglasses smudged by fingerprints, and a faded maroon and gold hoodie emblazoned with the logo of the University of Southern California Trojans.
Davie looked around the store but saw no other customers. She showed her department ID. He told her his father owned the store. When she asked to see the surveillance tape he began to sweat, which soon produced the acrid odor of fear.
“I know how to work the system,” he said, “but there’s no film in the camera. We just keep it for show.”
“That’s not helpful if somebody robs the store.”
“I have a good memory for faces. I could identify the robbers.” His gaze darted below the counter. “And we have a gun. It’s registered. I can show you the permit if you want.”
“Who was working at eight thirty last Saturday night?”
He averted his gaze. “My father.”
“When will he be in? I’d like to talk to him.”
“He left for India Sunday morning—on business. He won’t be back for a month.”
“What time did he close the store on Saturday?”
He hesitated. “Actually, I closed the store that night.”
“And what time was that?”
“Eight fifty.”
Davie gave him a stony stare. “Don’t play games with me. Why didn’t you just tell me you were here that night?”
“You said eight thirty. I wasn’t working at eight thirty. I didn’t get here until eight fifty. Twenty minutes. That’s a big difference.”
“Did you see a woman in a red coat standing outside the bakery around that time?”
The clerk brushed sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his hoodie. “Yeah, I saw her, but I heard her first. She was screaming. I thought she was being mugged so I went outside to check, but she was just yelling into her cell phone.”
“What was she saying?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t make out the words. I waved but when she saw me, she started running.” He paused to moisten his lips. “The problem is I may have been holding the gun when I waved at her, but I didn’t mean to scare her. Really, I didn’t. I only took it with me because I thought she was in trouble. She reported me, didn’t she? Please don’t tell my father.”
“Which way did she go when she left the bakery?”
“Toward Highland.”
Davie held up Bell’s photo of Anya. “Do you recognize this woman?”
The clerk glanced at the picture. “Yeah, she’s the one I saw. Is she going to press charges? Please don’t arrest me, I have a really important physics test next week. I have to ace it or I won’t pass the class.”
Davie didn’t bother telling him that Anya Nosova was in no position to jeopardize his grade. Instead, she recited her standard lecture on gun safety and the penalties for Brandishing a Weapon. Then she advised him to load a tape into the store’s surveillance camera or, better yet, upgrade to digital.
Back in the car, she thought about where a young girl might go for a Russian New Year’s party. The neighborhood was dotted with small businesses and a few modest houses. One of the nearby residents might have hosted an event but if not, where else would Anya go to party? Restaurant. Club. Hotel.
She steered the car toward Highland, surveying both sides of the street for possible venues. She had driven only five blocks when she spotted a five-story boutique hotel with a row of taxis waiting by the curb. The sign read The Edison. She parked on a side street and
went inside.
18
The manager of the Edison, who introduced himself as Charles Nyland, was in his early fifties, wearing the pinstriped suit and guarded demeanor of a company man. As soon as Davie told him she was looking for evidence that a murder victim had attended a party at his hotel, he hustled her to a quiet alcove adjacent to the lobby where no one could eavesdrop on their conversation.
“We did have a Russian New Year’s party Saturday night,” he said, “but the hotel has an exclusive clientele, and I can’t give you any information about our guests without a search warrant.”
“Look, Mr. Nyland, nobody wants to invade the privacy of your guests, but I need to look at your surveillance video to see if my victim was here. If I don’t see her, I’ll leave.”
“You’d be spying on guests without their permission.”
“If you don’t want the footage to be seen, why do you have a security system?”
“It’s strictly for guest safety.”
Davie pulled out a piece of paper from her notebook, labeled Homicide Investigation Notes, and wrote the words refuses to cooperate large enough for Nyland to read them even upside down.
“Do you have children, Mr. Nyland?”
He stared at the words on the page. “Yes. Two.”
“Someone killed Anya Nosova and dumped her body in the sewer. She was just nineteen years old and her parents’ only child.”
His face betrayed no emotion. “I’m sorry for their loss.”
“Yeah, me too. No parent expects to outlive their child.” Davie slowly closed her notebook. “With or without your cooperation I’m going to find out if she was at this hotel last Saturday night. If you want to play hardball, I’ll come back with a search warrant. A judge will order you to give me details about every party and every guest registered at the hotel for the past year.”
Davie knew no judge would grant her such a sweeping warrant, but Nyland didn’t need to know that. There was a short silence before the manager cleared his throat.
Pacific Homicide Page 10
