Pacific Homicide

by Patricia Smiley

  Davie turned the box over and saw some sort of mark on the underside, but it was too blurred to read. She had a magnifying glass in her desk at the station but decided instead to take the box to the wonks at the Scientific Investigation Division. They could make the obscure seem obvious.

  Quintero was still taking photographs in the second bedroom. She knew from experience he had also taken shots before executing the search warrant to create a before-and-after record. Department regulations required him to do that to counter any claims of damage from the property owner. Lawsuits and liability were part of a two-headed Troig that gave city officials the heebie-jeebies.

  “I’m looking for a purple notebook full of names,” Davie asked Quintero. “Did you find anything like that?”

  “Nope.”

  She was disappointed but not surprised. According to Bolshov, Lana never let it out of her sight. “You can book these bags now.”

  “I’m not writing paper for dirty clothes, so unless you found stolen booze or cigarettes in there, forget it.”

  Davie knew taking Anya’s possessions from the apartment without consent or without writing a search warrant specific to the bags could cause trouble. If something in there proved vital to her case, the defense could challenge the chain of custody. Then a judge might not allow the evidence into court, and Anya’s killer could walk. Writing another a warrant and getting it signed would take time, though. Meanwhile, things had a habit of disappearing.

  “I found a couple of cigarettes in one of the bags and they looked stolen.”

  Quintero rolled his eyes. “Okay, but you do the paperwork and take the crap with you. I’m not going to book it into Property.”

  She nodded. “Did you arrest Satine?”

  “Can’t find him.”

  “He may be out of town.”

  Quintero’s jovial disposition melted away. “And just how do you know that?”

  Davie had planned to share the information with Quintero. She just hadn’t found the time. “Viktor Marchenko told me.”

  He whirled to face her. “What the—? You contacted Marchenko? When?”

  “I didn’t contact him. He contacted me. I interviewed him last night on his yacht.”

  A vein in Quintero’s neck started to throb. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  He jabbed his nicotine-stained finger toward Davie’s face. “Dammit, Richards. Marchenko’s in the wind too. You just couldn’t wait to talk to him, could you? Not even when I asked you pretty please.”

  She pushed his hand away. “He’s probably headed for Mexico.”

  Quintero’s face had turned a dangerous shade of red. “The Federales boarded his boat off the coast of Mexico a couple of hours ago. They didn’t find shit. No Satine. No Marchenko. No whirlybird.”

  The helicopter was probably on its way to some remote airport connecting Marchenko and Satine to any number of possible destinations. Davie understood the radiating heat of Quintero’s anger. She hadn’t meant to compromise his case, but she would have been irresponsible to ignore an opportunity to interview Marchenko about Anya’s murder.

  “I didn’t have time to call and ask your permission. What about Lana Ivanov?”

  “We know where she is.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Like I said, we know where she is.”

  “So she’s your informant.”

  “You’ve got balls, Richards. You screw up my case and don’t even say you’re sorry.”

  “I didn’t screw up your case. Marchenko made your surveillance team. He knew you were following Satine. That’s why Satine split, not because I asked a few questions about a dead Russian girl.”

  Quintero paused for a moment, contemplating the possibility that the arms dealer had blown his team’s cover. Davie figured things might get tense when he debriefed his people at the end of the day.

  He turned and stomped out of the room. Over his shoulder he added, “You haven’t heard the last of this.”

  35

  Davie itemized all of Anya Nosova’s property on a department form. Then she sealed the garbage bags and loaded them into her car. When she arrived at the station, she booked the bags and the heart purse into the Property room. After that, she drove downtown and dropped the wooden heart box and broken cigarettes at SID. It was unlikely the techs would find traces of DNA or fingerprints on either, but she had to be sure.

  Her watch read eight forty-five. Rose Miller’s funeral was scheduled for ten a.m. at St. Monica Catholic Church in Santa Monica. Davie was exhausted from the early morning wake-up call, but she had promised Grammy she’d take her to the service, so she headed to West L.A. She arrived at her grandmother’s apartment and found her dressed for travel in a purple knit dress that had been part of her wardrobe for decades and a black pillbox hat that Davie had never seen before.

  “New hat?”

  “I borrowed it from Mrs. Kimmelman. She told me Catholics have to wear hats in church, but I don’t think that’s true anymore. I never saw Rose in a hat except when she watched the Dodgers game on TV, but that was a baseball cap.”

  “Either way, you’re covered. The hat looks great.”

  “Marvin Levine says it makes me look like a Shriner.”

  Davie held up the black wool coat her grandmother had worn to Poppy’s funeral. “Marvin is full of shit.”

  Grammy guided her arms into the sleeves. “That’s what I told him.”

  The last time Davie had been in a church was a year ago after her grandfather died. The atmosphere inside St. Monica’s seemed tranquil until the pipe organ dirge draped her like a shroud. She believed death meant lights out. The end. No more pain. No more regret. But in the end, what did anybody know for sure? She wondered if Anya Nosova and Rose Miller had crossed paths in the afterlife and what they might have talked about.

  There was a reception in the parish hall following the service, but Grammy didn’t want to stay. She had paid her respects, she said, it was time to move on. Davie was glad because it was Friday. She’d been working the Anya Nosova case for three days, and she wasn’t even close to an arrest.

  The air smelled of eucalyptus and car exhaust as she guided her grandmother off of the curb and onto a broad crosswalk.

  “I couldn’t see much with these bad eyes of mine,” Grammy said, “but the church seemed beautiful. Saint Monica’s is Father O’Malley’s church. Did you know that?”

  “Who’s Father O’Malley?”

  “Bing Crosby. He played the priest in that picture Going My Way. The movie was filmed here. Mother took me to a matinee when I was eleven. It was my first visit to a movie theatre. Father was away fighting Nazis and we didn’t have much money.”

  Davie steadied Grammy as they crossed the uneven grass on the way to the car. “You never told me that story before.”

  “There’s a lot I haven’t told you, Davie. Remember, I lived a whole life before you were even born. At times it wasn’t easy, but I survived.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Grammy paused and faced Davie. “Sometimes you treat me like I’m fragile. I’m not, you know. I won’t fall apart if you share the bad things in your life. It might even help you to talk about them.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “Why not start with that Harrington character. Maybe I can’t see too well, but I can hear just fine. The TV news said he’s the new police watchdog. I still remember what he did to your father. I’m afraid he could do the same thing to you.”

  “My boss is checking on the situation.” Davie got them walking toward the car again. “He’ll let me know if I should worry.”

  “Have you ever heard the phrase trust but verify?”

  “Are you saying I shouldn’t trust my boss?”

  “No. I’m just saying
, in the end, you can’t rely on anybody except yourself.”

  Davie unlocked the car doors with her remote. “I can rely on you and Bear.”

  “Yes, because we’re part of you. We’re family.”

  She buckled her grandmother into the seat. “You’re very wise today, Grammy. Must be the hat.”

  36

  After dropping Grammy at her apartment, Davie returned to the station. As she entered through the back door, she saw Vaughn in the hallway outside the detective squad room. She wanted to tell him about the IA tail, but apparently he had just arrested a suspect in the Beau Fischer homicide and he was too busy planning his Detective of the Year acceptance speech.

  “Who is he?” Davie said.

  “Robert Foster, street name Rags.”

  “You get a confession?”

  “The guy barely knows what planet he’s on. He keeps jabbering about G-men and the Pentagon. Definitely fifty-one fifty.”

  The term came from the California Welfare and Institutions Code 5150, which allowed law enforcement to place a psychiatric hold on a person under certain conditions. It was cop shorthand for crazy, nut job, wacko, bananas. Lieutenant Bellows had ordered all personnel to use the term mentally challenged, but the old expression refused to die.

  “What broke the case?”

  Vaughn spread vapor rub under his nose to mask the odor of sweat, urine, and fear that hung in the air. Civilian personnel in Records had closed all doors leading to the hallway. They were unaccustomed to the perfume of the street.

  “Eyewitness,” he said. “Another junkie saw him kill Fischer in a beef over drugs.”

  “I hope you have more than the word of a heroin addict.”

  Vaughn brushed off her warning with a shrug. “There’s more, but I think he’ll plead once he gets over being mad at me. Right now he won’t say a word.”

  That didn’t surprise Davie. Vaughn’s default setting for interrogating suspects was aggression, which often worked but sometimes backfired. Not everybody responded to his tough-guy posturing. Davie had accused him of watching too many bad-cop movies, but she knew her partner was wired to be a hard-ass, and he wasn’t going to change.

  “You want me to talk to him?

  Vaughn hesitated, reluctant to cede power. “Go ahead. But you won’t get anywhere.”

  Davie locked her weapon in the drawer of her desk. It wasn’t allowed inside the booking area. The arrestee wasn’t in the holding tanks visible from the hallway, so Davie tapped on the glass window. The jailer buzzed her in and pointed to a large room where a man lay slumped on a bunk under a mound of gray clothing. Davie recognized him immediately. Last time she had seen him was in front of the Inky Dink tattoo shop in Venice two days ago.

  His fingers were laced over his head to form a protective shield. He was agitated, pleading for mercy from a god only he could see. Davie watched from a few feet away as the jailer unlocked the cell with an oversized key that looked like it belonged in a medieval dungeon.

  Rags squinted at Davie. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Detective Richards. We spoke outside the tattoo parlor a couple of days ago. Remember?”

  His body relaxed. “Hey, pretty lady. I didn’t recognize you. I can’t see too good without glasses.”

  The jailer roused Rags from the cot and led him to a nearby interview room that held a small table and two chairs. Rags gestured for her to sit across from him.

  “I hear you’re in trouble,” she said.

  He reached out and grabbed her hand. “I didn’t kill Beau. Arnie dimed me, but it’s not his fault. They made him do it.”

  Davie heard the jail’s outer door open. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Vaughn step into the entryway and settle into the shadows out of Rags’s line of sight.

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  Rags withdrew his hand. “You know.” He nodded toward the hallway but the direction was nonspecific. Davie was certain he couldn’t see her partner or the jailer.

  “You mean somebody in the police department, Mr. Foster?”

  “You can call me Rags, because I know you.”

  She studied his face: skin weathered a reddish brown, unwashed hair the color of tumbleweeds, eyes gray and moist as river stones, reflecting that same flicker of intelligence she’d noticed in their first encounter. She wondered what kind of man he’d been before the drugs and the mental illness.

  “Why would anybody make Arnie accuse you of murder?”

  Rags tapped his fingers on the table as if he were typing a news story for an impossible deadline. “You can’t trust cops.”

  “I told you the other day, I’m a cop too.”

  “You’re different. You gave me a loan. Just so you know, I bought drugs with that money. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help myself. I’ll do better next time.”

  Fat chance, she thought.

  “We all make mistakes.” She leaned toward him, ignoring the pungent odor radiating from his clothing. “Tell me what happened between you and Beau Fischer.”

  He continued tap, tap, tapping. “Beau worked for the G-men.”

  “Sounds like Beau was a bad guy.”

  “The worst.”

  “I understand how sometimes you might have to kill a bad guy. Maybe Beau threatened you, pushed you too far. You had to kill him to protect your life. Is that what happened, Rags?”

  Rags shook his head from side to side like the slow ticking of a metronome. “I didn’t kill Beau.”

  “That’s what you said before. So, who did?”

  He was quiet for a while. Then he leaned toward her and whispered. “I typed a report.”

  Davie blinked. She had no idea what he meant. “What did it say?”

  He drummed his fingers on the wood table in a dull staccato beat. “I saw the octopus and the blond seaweed. I saw him, too, in the alley. He wants to get rid of me because I know too much.”

  “What does an octopus have to do with Beau Fischer’s death?”

  “I know who killed her.”

  Vaughn was right. Rags Foster was certifiable. Deciphering his gibberish was taxing her patience.

  “Her? You mean him. You know who killed Beau Fischer?”

  “I figured it out later,” he said. “It wasn’t an octopus. She was a pretty lady, just like you, except not a redhead. She was a blonde.”

  “Are you saying Beau killed a blonde girl?”

  He shook his head. “Not him. And she was already dead. Then she disappeared. Poof. Down the rabbit hole.”

  Davie’s mind clicked back into high gear. The Hyperion engineer told Davie that Anya’s body could have entered the sewer system in only two ways: either through an open pipe in a construction area or through a manhole. It was farfetched, but she pondered the possibility that Rags Foster had witnessed Anya’s murder, or at least the dumping of her body—not down a rabbit hole but into a manhole in Venice, where Rags was known to hang out.

  “Are you talking about the blonde girl they found in the sewer? Anya Nosova?”

  Rags stopped tapping. His gaze darted from side to side, and then his eyelids opened wide. He seemed to have connected the dots in his scrambled brain. “I couldn’t have saved her,” he said.

  Davie heard footsteps. She turned to see Vaughn walking toward the table. She shook her head to indicate the interview was still in progress. Vaughn ignored her.

  “Time to go, Mr. Foster,” he said.

  Rags recoiled at the sound of Vaughn’s voice. “Where are you taking me?”

  “County jail, thirteenth floor. Great view. You’ll love it.”

  Rags’s breathing became shallow. “You took my watch cap. I need it back. It protects me again the forces of evil.”

  “You’ll get it back. Later.” Vaughn pulled cuffs from his belt and moved closer.

  Davi
e stepped outside the interview room to block Vaughn’s path, inhaling the odor of the menthol under his nose. “Rags and I are still talking.”

  “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” Rags shouted.

  “I’ll let the state handle that,” Vaughn muttered.

  “Help me, pretty lady.”

  She put her hand on Vaughn’s arm, noting the smooth wool of his Italian suit. “I need to talk to you outside.”

  “Look, Davie,” he said, “we can’t keep Foster at the station. We don’t have the personnel or the facilities to handle a fifty-one fifty. I need to book him into county jail so somebody can do a mental evaluation before he totally freaks out. If he goes off on us, I’ll have to call an RA to take him to the mental ward of some hospital. Which means I’ll be tied up there all night.”

  Vaughn was right. The rescue ambulance techs would provide medical aid, or more likely transport Rags to a hospital for observation. That could delay him, but letting Davie continue the interview was more important than his time.

  “It may sound crazy,” she said, keeping her voice low, “but I think he may know something about Anya Nosova’s murder. I want to ask him a few more questions.”

  Vaughn sighed then slid the handcuffs into his jacket pocket. “Okay. Just don’t take too long. Getting through downtown traffic is going to be a bitch.”

  Davie heard loud pounding coming from the interview room. She turned to see Rags “typing” on the wood table at a feverish pitch. His eyes seemed wild and unfocused. “Somebody help me. Please. I want a lawyer.”

  Shit.

  Back in the day, the law allowed detectives to interview an arrestee after he invoked his Miranda Rights, but only if the questions were about an unrelated crime. A recent court decision had changed all that. Now that Rags had lawyered up, she couldn’t ask him anything more about Anya Nosova. The man was obviously unstable, but if he did know something, whatever information he might have had was lost to her.

  For every door that opened, another was slammed in her face. Davie left Rags to Vaughn without another word. She exited the booking area and headed for the squad room, hoping the warrant for Anya’s telephone records had been returned and was waiting on her desk.