Pacific Homicide

by Patricia Smiley

  “Are you married?” It was none of her business but she was curious.

  He sipped his wine without answering. In the distance she heard bits of surfer conversation fractured by the wind. It sounded like a radio off its station.

  “Working nights doesn’t leave much room for a family,” he said. “I’m not really father material. What about you? Married?”

  “Not even close.” She wasn’t sure why she’d been so emphatic. At one time she thought she was falling in love with Spencer Hall and might have married him had their relationship had time to develop.

  Rogers glanced at his watch, saving them both from the embarrassment of further revelation. “I have to be at work in an hour. I’ll give you a call if I find out anything more about the case.”

  He stuffed the blanket into the backpack and dropped the plastic dishes and empty food containers in a nearby trash can. Once they reached the parking lot, they brushed the sand from their feet and put on their shoes. Rogers walked with Davie to the Camaro.

  He studied the car, admiring the finish. “I’m guessing this isn’t a department ride. Looks fast.”

  “Zero to sixty in six-point-four seconds.”

  He put his hand on the back of her head and lowered his lips to hers. Startled, she pulled away before he could kiss her.

  Judging a man’s romantic intentions had never been her strong suit. She quickly thought back to the times they’d been together but couldn’t remember any signals she might have given him that she was interested in anything but a professional relationship. But behaviors could be misinterpreted. She’d been guilty of that herself.

  Rogers stepped away. “Can’t fault a guy for trying. I like you, Detective Richards. I guess I just got carried away.”

  She tried to imagine Rogers in her life—chatting with Grammy next to her blue recliner, passing muster with Bear, spending the night in her bed in Alex Camden’s guesthouse—but the images seemed out of focus. He was a good-looking guy, just not her type.

  “No problem,” she said. She got into the car and rolled down the window.

  Rogers leaned toward her with his forearms resting on the doorframe. “Stay safe out there.”

  Davie assigned no particular meaning to his words. It was what people said to cops. “You too,” she said as he straightened.

  Rogers disappeared into the sea of parked cars. As Davie headed down the lane toward the exit, she saw him in the adjacent lot. There were plenty of open spots near the restaurant. She wondered why he hadn’t taken one of them. Curious, she pulled behind a van out of view and watched.

  Rogers opened the tailgate of a black SUV parked at the far end of the second lot. He threw the backpack inside the vehicle and closed the door. A moment later, he got behind the wheel and headed toward the exit. Davie rolled her car forward. As Rogers passed her row, she saw two safety seats in the back.

  She tried to swallow but her throat was too dry. Rogers had implied he had no family. So why were there baby seats in his car? She considered the possibility he had nieces or nephews or that he transported children in connection with his job at the hotel. None of that seemed right. What made more sense, at least to her, was that Rogers had parked far away because he didn’t want her to see what was in the back of his vehicle. If his plan included having more than a professional relationship with her, he couldn’t let her know he had children and most likely a wife.

  Everybody lied.

  He had told her he was due at work but he’d been wearing jeans—not the attire for a job at an upscale hotel. It was possible he had another set of clothes in the car, but she doubted that. She could easily verify if he worked today or not, so she assumed that wasn’t a lie. Perhaps he would go home to change.

  Rogers turned right onto Pacific Coast Highway toward Santa Monica. Davie waited for a couple of cars to pass before she pulled into traffic behind him.

  41

  Davie followed Cal Rogers to an enclave of modest homes in Pacific Division’s Mar Vista neighborhood. She pulled to the curb a block away and watched as he turned into a driveway behind a white Toyota Corolla. The front yard of the stucco bungalow was boxed in by a picket fence. A pink tricycle lay on its side in the yard. White plastic streamers spilled out of the handlebars and splayed across the fallow lawn. He got out of his car and used a key to open the side door.

  Fifteen minutes into Davie’s vigil, Rogers emerged from the house wearing a suit and tie. She waited until he drove away before getting out of her car.

  As she strolled toward Rogers’s bungalow, plotting her next move, she noted that the architecture in the neighborhood ran the gamut from Cape Cod to banana republic plantation house. One Colonial looked as if the residents had been away for a few days. Throwaway newspapers littered the yard and a small notepad lay on the porch.

  She stepped onto the porch and grabbed the notepad, one of those giveaways Realtors used as calling cards. Moisture had curled the corners into a snarl. The black-and-white photo pictured on the header was of a woman with a pleasant face, but Davie guessed few people actually studied those pictures.

  As she neared the front door of Rogers’s house, she could hear a child throwing a tantrum. She rang the bell, and a pregnant woman answered the door. Soft blonde curls framed her face in contrast to the dark circles under her eyes. The woman looked like a former high school cheerleader who had retired her pompoms at least ten years earlier. A baby dressed in blue pajamas squirmed in her arms. On the living room carpet next to the couch, a toddler lay screaming.

  Davie smiled. “Sorry. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  The woman smiled back. “The glamour of motherhood, right?”

  Davie took one last glance at the name on the notepad and handed it to the woman. “I’m Margery Castle. I just stopped by to see if you’re thinking about selling your home.”

  The woman accepted the notepad without looking at it. “Thanks.”

  The toddler began kicking the glass coffee table, a budding soccer player scrambling toward an unattended net. The force sent a basket of Crayolas skittering onto the carpet.

  “You want me to hold the baby for a sec? If that glass breaks she could be seriously injured.”

  The woman glanced at the table in time to see another kick vibrate the glass. She thrust the baby into Davie’s arms. He smelled like sour milk and baby powder. He stared at her, decided she was an alien life form, and began to cry.

  The woman knelt beside the screaming toddler and handed her the notepad. “Chloe, look what Mommy has for you! A new coloring pad.”

  Davie scanned the living room. There were toys everywhere, unfolded piles of laundry and a half-eaten sandwich discarded on the couch. On one of the end tables was a wedding photo. Even from the door she could see the groom was a smiling Cal Rogers.

  When the kicking stopped, the woman came back to the door and reclaimed the infant. She patted his back to calm his cries, which produced a loud belch. “Sorry about that. You wanted to know about the house?”

  “Just wondering if you’re planning to sell.”

  “I get a lot of people asking me that. I always say no.”

  “No problem. I just thought—”

  “But my husband is up for a new job. If he gets it, we’ll have to move.”

  In the background, Davie saw Chloe pick up the sandwich, take a bite and throw it onto the carpet.

  “My company has offices all across the country,” she ad-libbed. “I could handle your sale here and help you find a new place. Where would you be moving?”

  The woman hesitated. “The D.C. area but I can’t tell you anything more. My husband thinks I’ll jinx the deal if I talk about it.”

  Rogers hadn’t mentioned he was planning to leave the state, which piqued her curiosity.

  Davie made a zipping motion across her mouth. “I totally understand. When will you kn
ow for sure?”

  The baby seemed fascinated by his mother’s nostril. He probed until he found an opening and jammed his finger inside, which made her voice sound nasally. “Pretty fast. Maybe a week or so.”

  Davie silently thanked a fellow Burglary detective at Southeast station who talked endlessly about his problems finding a new house and selling his old one. “I can check the listings in D.C. and send you some properties in your price range. I can also research the market value of your current home.”

  The woman pulled the boy’s finger out of her nose. “Maybe I should check with my husband first.”

  “You wouldn’t have to bother him with it if you didn’t want to. The report is no big deal. It’s free and there’s no obligation. If it isn’t what you want, just toss it in the recycling bin. I only mentioned it because, in my experience, it’s the woman who makes decisions about the family home.”

  The baby began to whimper. “Okay. Can you email it to me?”

  “Glad to. By the way, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Norah Rogers.”

  Davie programmed Norah’s phone number and email address into her cell phone. She figured if Cal Rogers’s wife followed up with a call to Margery Castle, the Realtor wouldn’t risk losing a listing. She would just pretend to have been a party to the conversation.

  Davie sprinted back to the Camaro, thinking about what Rogers had told her at the beach: I’m not really father material. That was the moment he should have added, I should know. I have two kids and another on the way and I stink as a dad. Instead, he had withheld the truth. To Davie, that was the same as lying. And in her experience, one lie inevitably led to another.

  She had let Cal Rogers’s eagerness to help her with the Nosova investigation cloud her judgment. Before acting on her suspicions, she needed more information, and since she couldn’t trust Rogers to tell her the truth, she would have to get creative.

  As soon as she slid into the driver’s seat, she pulled out her phone and called the cell number for Donovan Moran, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy she had worked with on a Grand Theft case before transferring to Pacific. She doubted news of her suspension had carried as far as the LASD. If it had, Moran might refuse to speak with her.

  She needn’t have worried. When he answered the phone, he seemed cordial and welcoming. He was on his way to work but agreed to meet her for coffee before his shift. They settled on the playground at a shopping center called the Malibu Country Mart.

  42

  Stringy clouds stretched over the shoreline as Davie cruised along Pacific Coast Highway past pale aqua lifeguard shacks and beach volleyball nets. Twenty minutes later, she arrived at the Malibu Country Mart. She remembered coming to the place as a teen. The restaurants were still there but the names had changed. The place had gone upscale—Beverly Hills at the beach. Even though it was January, a few leaves still clung to the trees. Strings of lights snaked around the trunks, holdovers from the holidays.

  Moran was a compact man whose Kevlar vest made him look barrel-­chested. Davie found him sitting at a picnic table with two cups of coffee, watching a couple of girls playing on the swings, squealing and pumping their legs toward the sky. One of the chains squeaked, adding to the symphony. They exchanged a few pleasantries before he glanced at his watch.

  “Sorry, but I can only give you fifteen minutes. What’s up?”

  “I’m hoping you can find out why one of your jail deputies left the job.”

  “Probably because it’s a shitty assignment. What’s the name?”

  “Cal Rogers.”

  Moran stared at her until she became uncomfortable. He broke eye contact to remove the lid from the coffee cup. “I’ve heard of him. Is this for a case you’re working on?”

  She let go of the breath she was holding. “For now it’s personal.”

  “Has he been hitting on you? Because I’ll tell you right now, he’s married. At least he used to be.”

  She smiled. “Where were you a couple of hours ago?”

  He brushed leftover crumbs from the table toward a squirrel that was begging for handouts. “Just so you know, what I’m about to tell you is a mix of fact and rumor, so don’t take it as gospel.”

  “Understood.”

  Moran sipped his coffee as he waited for noise to abate from a small plane flying overhead. “Rogers had a reputation for hitting on anything with lady parts. When he worked the jail, there was a rumor he got serviced by a hooker waiting to visit her pimp.”

  “Was he disciplined?”

  “The incident got a few eye rolls. Then it went away.”

  A breeze kicked up, brushing cold air across Davie’s face. She wrapped her hands around the cup for warmth. “Sort of like, what happens in jail stays in jail?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then why did Rogers quit?”

  Moran looked around to make sure nobody was listening. “He beat the shit out of an inmate. A couple of deputies pulled him off before he killed the guy. Rogers knew he’d crossed the line. He resigned a few days later.”

  “No charges were filed?”

  “It happened around the time the Bedlam League story broke.”

  That story had made the front page of the Los Angeles Times. It was just one of many scandals that had tarnished the sheriff’s department in the past few years. The Bedlam League was a gang of L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputies accused of beating inmates and instigating fights in the Men’s Central Jail in downtown L.A. She wondered if Rogers was a member of that gang or if he had just been swept up in the culture of violence.

  “So the Rogers incident fell through the cracks?”

  “One isolated assault was nothing compared to the Bedlam bombshell.”

  “The inmate didn’t sue?”

  “No time for that. He was treated in the infirmary and released the next morning. Jail overcrowding. Two days later, the guy was dead. Lit up in a drive-by.” Moran checked his watch again. “If you want my advice, stay away from Rogers. He’s bad news. And if this changes from personal to professional, call me. I might be able to connect you with people who know more than I do.”

  She lingered at the table after Moran had gone, nursing her cooling coffee. The obvious had been staring her in the face, but she’d ignored it because Rogers had once been in law enforcement. Rogers worked security for an upscale hotel. Hookers often hung out in hotels. Anya Nosova had attended Satine’s parties, possibly many times after she arrived in L.A. Davie figured that’s how Cal Rogers had met her—at the Edison hotel.

  She understood how it might have happened. Rogers was married with two small children and another on the way. Every day he left two screaming kids and a harried wife to work as Director of Security in an upscale hotel where he hobnobbed with the rich and the beautiful. Anya was a stunning young woman. He’d told Davie none of the employees at the hotel had seen Anya before last Saturday night, but that was likely another lie. He may have just been attempting to sidetrack her investigation.

  If Davie was right, that Rogers had met Anya at one of Grigory Satine’s many parties at the Edison hotel, then Rogers could have known Anya back when she lived at the Marina del Rey apartment. Which might explain the heart-themed gifts she’d found both there and in Andre’s apartment. Rogers had given them to her over the course of their relationship.

  Davie thought about the generic LAPD business card used to collect Anya’s heart-shaped purse. Rogers could have easily acquired one of those cards. Anya must have told Rogers she’d left her purse at the Volga Bakery. He had to get the purse in case there was anything inside that might lead back to him.

  He must have panicked when he found out she was expecting a baby. A pregnant hooker was a threat to his marriage and that new D.C. job, especially if Anya pressured him to marry her.

  As Director of Security, Cal Rogers had a
ccess to the parking garage at the Edison. He could have taken Grigory Satine’s keys from the valet and planted the purse with the necklace inside Satine’s car. Maybe he planned to make an anonymous call to the police, but Satine had found the purse before he could do that. Satine may have recognized the purse as Anya’s and told Marchenko to give it to Davie, hoping it would serve as a bargaining chip to delay Quintero’s investigation of the Russian.

  Davie jumped when she heard a scream. Her gaze flew to the playground and she saw a woman attempting to coax a young girl down a yellow slide. The child seemed terrified, crying and shaking her head. Davie had known that kind of fear. It rocked your confidence to the core. The girl had a choice: face the unknown or retreat down the ladder to safety.

  Davie faced that choice, as well. She wondered if there was still time to prove her new theory that Cal Rogers had killed Anya Nosova without destroying what was left of her career. She frowned when she glanced toward the slide and saw the mother guide her child down the ladder. Davie tossed the empty coffee cup in a trash can and headed for her car, knowing that, for her, retreat was not an option.

  43

  Davie left Malibu and drove back to the guesthouse in Bel Air. She paced the floor, trying but failing to work off her escalating belief that Cal Rogers had killed Anya Nosova. Detective Giordano would assign another detective to pick up the investigation where she had left it, probably Vaughn since he was already familiar with the case. She thought about calling to tell him about her suspicions but hesitated. So far they were based solely on intuition and conjecture.

  The department had schooled her to believe the foundation of a successful investigation was good note taking, but her chrono on the Anya Nosova case was in the Murder Book at the station. Davie sat at the kitchen table and jotted down every detail she could remember from her interviews and research. She could have used her laptop, but the ritual of scratching the pen across the paper gave her time to think.