Pacific Homicide

by Patricia Smiley

  Marchenko had told her Anya’s boyfriend was somebody important. Bell said he bought her gifts but nothing expensive; i.e., nothing he’d have to pay for with a credit card that could be traced back to him. Bell also told her the guy always met Anya in out-of-the-way places and that he liked to have sex in the open air. She remembered something Rogers said to her at the beach, that he liked to eat outside because the food tasted better.

  She lost track of the time she’d been bent over her pages, absorbed by Anya’s story. Only the pain in her neck and shoulders hinted that it had been too long. She rose and headed to the refrigerator for a bottle of Pellegrino and to stretch out the kinks. When she opened the door, she smelled something rank. Her nose led her to the meat drawer where she found a piece of raw chicken that had been pushed to the back of the drawer and forgotten. The odor reminded her of how Rags Foster’s clothes had smelled in the stuffy air of Pacific station.

  That’s when she remembered Rags’s property bag was still in the trunk of her car. She had offered to drive it to county jail but Lieutenant Bellows had upended those plans when he called her into his office and relieved her of duty.

  Davie pulled on a jacket and took the chicken out to the garbage can. On the way back, she grabbed Rags’s property bag from her trunk and was heading inside when she saw Alex Camden walking toward her, carrying a large framed photograph of an old woman flying a kite.

  “For me?” she said.

  “An exchange. I have a buyer for the Wyeth. Didn’t think you’d mind a change of scenery.”

  She didn’t mind. In fact, she was tired of looking at that lonely tree. He followed her into the house and leaned the photograph against the wall near the door. Davie set the property bag on the kitchen floor.

  Alex wrinkled his nose as he sniffed the air. “My dear Davina, what’s that smell? It reminds me of a Pont l’Eveque cheese I once had at a Marseilles bistro.”

  She pointed to the bag. “That belongs to a homeless man who’s probably still in county lockup getting his head examined. I was going to take it to him, but things went sideways and I forgot it was in my trunk.”

  Alex removed the Wyeth from the wall and hung the photo in its place. “How important could it be?”

  She remembered how agitated Rags had been at the Pacific jail, begging Vaughn to give him back his watch cap. The bit about the white octopus tangled in blonde seaweed had made her wonder if he knew something about Anya Nosova’s death, but given his fragile mental health there was no way to be sure.

  “It seemed important to him. Besides, it’s my duty to return personal property to the owner. I’ll call my partner and arrange a pickup.”

  Alex studied the bag. “I wonder what’s inside?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  Alex reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. He must have noticed the look of surprise on her face, because he held it up for inspection. “A gift from a well-wisher. One never knows what one might encounter in a yurt in Mongolia … or in a property bag in Bel Air.”

  “I can’t do that, it’s—“

  Alex interrupted. “It’s what? Against the rules? I’m not bound by those rules. Let’s just say I found the bag smelling up my guesthouse and decided to investigate the offending odor. Who would object?”

  Davie could have told him that a lot of people might object. She thought about the consequences of opening the bag, but dismissed them all. It was more important to know if Rags’s property held anything that could help solve the Nosova case than to worry about compounding her troubles.

  “Wait.” She went to her war bag on the floor of the bedroom closet and returned with two pairs of latex gloves. “We’ll need these.”

  Alex’s gloved hand cut through the flex-cuff on the outer bag and then the seal of Rags’s property bag, releasing the tangy odor of sweat. Using his index finger and thumb, he pulled out a watch cap with Mylar strips duct taped to the yarn.

  “Not exactly haute couture,” he said, “but not without its charm.”

  “Rags thought the Mylar protected him from the forces of evil.”

  Alex held the cap away from his body, like it was a dead rat. “Don’t we all wish it were that simple?”

  Digging deeper, he found a grimy backpack containing drug paraphernalia and a copy of the Los Angeles Times.

  She thumbed through the newspapers but found nothing that helped make a case against Cal Rogers. The stench of sweat drifting from the paper told Davie that Rags had probably worn it beneath his shirt to keep warm.

  “You look crestfallen, Davina, but at least you know what was inside.” Alex walked to a kitchen chair and sat. “Look, it’s none of my business, but why don’t you tell me the whole story. Beginning to end. Sometimes talking helps organize your thoughts.”

  Davie had worked alone since Vaughn had been assigned to the Beau Fischer homicide, so she hadn’t talked to anyone about the case. She missed having a partner. Telling Alex would give her a chance to sort out the narrative of Anya’s last days. Unlike her instinct to keep information from Rogers, she trusted Alex to keep things to himself. She quickly brought him up to speed on the investigation.

  “Anya’s telephone records were on my desk the day I was relieved of duty. Vaughn probably has them now. I believe they’ll show she made a call to Cal Rogers from outside the Volga Bakery on Saturday night.”

  “But you can’t be sure until you see the records.”

  “No, but I think Rogers was leading her on, promising to marry her, because Anya told the apartment manager that her secret boyfriend had proposed. Before she left for Satine’s party, she typed a Dear John letter to Andre Lucien, letting him know she was leaving him. I’m guessing she called Rogers on Saturday evening, but he blew her off. The clerk from the liquor store heard her shouting at someone on her cell. Maybe she threatened to expose Rogers to his employer or Grigory Satine or whatever boogieman made him sweat.”

  “But you said that call took place before the party at the hotel.”

  Davie began to pace. It helped clarify her thoughts. “It did. Rogers may have thought the situation was handled, but I bet the records will show he got another call from Anya in the early hours of Sunday. Let’s say this time he couldn’t calm her down, so they agreed to meet. She’d gone home, so he drove to her apartment in Westchester.”

  Alex craned his neck to follow her as she paced. “I doubt he would have met Anya inside the apartment. She lived with another man and Rogers couldn’t be sure the boyfriend wouldn’t come home and find him there.”

  “You’re right. He must have told her to come out to his SUV. They argued. Maybe he didn’t plan to kill her, but he did.”

  “You said those manhole covers were heavy. Could this guy have lifted one by himself?”

  Davie stopped pacing and leaned against the kitchen counter. “The Hyperion engineer told me most of them could be lifted by one person. Rogers is a strong guy. He beat up an inmate with his bare hands and nearly killed him. I think he’s strong enough to lift a manhole cover and motivated enough because he had to dispose of Anya’s body.”

  “And you think he did so in Venice, where this Rags person saw him. Why Venice?”

  Davie thought for a moment. “It’s not exactly on his way home, but not far off. Maybe he thought nobody would be out on the streets after midnight except cops and assholes, people he knew how to handle from his years in law enforcement.”

  “But Rags was there.”

  “And he saw everything.” She was sure Hyperion maps would pinpoint manholes on the Venice streets near where Rags camped out. “I have to call my partner.”

  Alex picked up the Wyeth and headed for the door. “May the force be with you, dear Davina.”

  Davie’s adrenalin felt charged as she reached Vaughn on his cell phone. “Did you get a DNA report on Anya Nosova’s baby?”
<
br />   “SID is backlogged. They’ll get to it, but I’m not sure when.”

  “We might have a comparison.”

  “No shit.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  44

  Davie buttoned her coat against a brisk onshore breeze. The sun had set, so she trained the beam of her flashlight on the trash can near the sand as Vaughn gloved up and extracted Cal Rogers’s plastic wine cup. It was still where he’d dumped it after their picnic a few hours ago. The black-and-white had attracted a few stares from passersby but a plainclothes detective sorting through trash wasn’t enough excitement to make them stay for the show.

  Even though it was Saturday, Vaughn had arrived at the beach wearing his usual silk tie and Wall Street threads that hung model-perfect on his lanky frame.

  The paper evidence bag crackled as he placed the cup inside. “I’ll book this at the station. SID can pick it up and take it to their nerd cave.”

  Her hand shielded her eyes against the glare of a parking lot light. “Maybe you should take the plastic utensils, in case the cup doesn’t have enough saliva for DNA testing.”

  Vaughn’s expression hardened as he did a slow turn toward her. “You’re off the case, partner. Stop micromanaging.”

  She had been relieved Giordano had passed the Murder Book to her partner. Vaughn had worked with her in the early stages of the investigation, so he knew almost as much as she did. What he didn’t know, she had explained to him on the phone before he arrived. None of that meant she liked giving up control.

  “We want the same thing, Jason.”

  He jostled the entire plastic bag out of the trash container with enough force to let her know he was annoyed. “Look, I know how you feel, but I’m on top of it, so chill.”

  She appreciated his attempt at empathy, but he couldn’t possibly know how she felt. The department had suspended him for eight days for telling a dumb blonde joke; they had accused her of killing a man and lying about it on an official police report. Her suspension could land her in prison.

  “I’m not worried.”

  He tied the trash bag with a plastic flex-cuff. “Any idea when you’re coming back to work?”

  She hesitated because the future was hard to predict. “My attorney’s looking into that.” She didn’t mention that she had no attorney except for her slacker brother whose specialty was entertainment law. She figured that would only complicate the conversation and lead to questions she didn’t want to answer.

  “Like I told you before,” he said, “if I can do anything to help … ”

  A gull landed nearby, squawking for food.

  “Thanks. That means a lot.”

  He attached an evidence tag to each of the bags. “Let’s say they pull enough saliva off the cup to get a DNA profile and it confirms Cal Rogers is the father of Anya Nosova’s baby. That still doesn’t prove he killed her.”

  “He did it. Get a warrant. Search his house and his SUV. He may have killed her in the car. Search the laundry at his place for any clothes he may have worn that night. If you find anything, test it for trace evidence.”

  “Partner—”

  “You already have Anya’s phone records. I’m betting she called his number on Saturday night and again Sunday morning. And check with the Edison. See if Rogers ever used one of the guestrooms for an overnight stay with her.”

  “Davie, I’m not some rookie—”

  “Interview hotel employees. Somebody saw them together.”

  Vaughn’s body tensed as he jotted the case number on the tags. “The evidence is circumstantial. I’m not sure a judge will sign those warrants.”

  “Talk to Rogers’s wife. She must have had some clue her husband was cheating on her. Wives always know, even if they don’t want to admit it. She seemed afraid to cross him when I talked to her. Maybe she’s looking for an excuse to tell somebody what a jerk he is.”

  Vaughn turned to face her. “His wife? You didn’t tell me about that. When did you talk to her?”

  The breeze whipped a lock of hair onto her face. She anchored it behind her ear. “Go to the no-tell motel where Anya was assaulted. The details are in DCTS under Tiffany Jones, the alias she used. Show the manager a six-pack that includes Rogers’s photo. Maybe it wasn’t a john who beat her up, but maybe Anya told the truth for a change and it was boyfriend trouble. Cal Rogers trouble.”

  “Whoa—”

  “Take the same six-pack to County jail and see if Rags Foster can identify Rogers. I think he saw him dump Anya’s body.”

  “Look, Davie, I’m beginning to think you have a thing for Rogers.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Then what the hell’s wrong with you? First you have a picnic on the beach with the guy, then you follow him to his house like some stalker. You find out he’s married and all of a sudden he’s Attila the Hun. You’ve gone off the rails. I’m worried about you.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you? I never hooked up with Rogers. He was somebody I met during a homicide investigation. Period. At least talk to Rags Foster.”

  Vaughn walked over to the black-and-white and put the evidence bags into the trunk. The Latex gloves snapped as he stripped them off and shoved them into a separate bag. “He’s not in jail anymore. They kicked him loose.”

  Davie bolted toward Vaughn and grabbed his arm. “He bailed out? How? He’s got no money and no address. Now the court has no way to contact a one-eighty-seven defendant.”

  Vaughn pulled his arm away, avoiding her gaze. “Rags isn’t a murder defendant. He didn’t kill Beau Fischer. It was a junkie named Arnold Waters.”

  She remembered interviewing Rags at the Pacific jail. He’d mentioned the guy who’d accused him of killing Fischer. Rags said he forgave Arnie because somebody pressured him to do it. She allowed herself a moment to wonder if that person was Jason Vaughn. Maybe he’d ignored key evidence in his eagerness to make an arrest.

  “At least you made it right,” she said. “You solved the case.”

  He put the unused tags in an envelope and threw it in the trunk. “It wasn’t me. It was some Pac Pal soccer mom.”

  “What?”

  “A couple of prep-school assholes from Pacific Palisades went slumming in Venice and started a junkie fight. They filmed Waters sticking a shiv in Fischer’s gut. The mom was snooping in her boy-genius’s cell phone and saw the action. She freaked and dragged the wannabe filmmaker and his phone into the station.”

  Davie felt a jolt of apprehension. “Where’s Rags now?”

  “Probably back in Venice shooting up with his homies.”

  “He’s a witness in the Nosova case. We have to find him.”

  “We?”

  “Okay. You have to find him.”

  Davie walked to the Camaro and pulled Rags’s property bag from the trunk. She handed it to Vaughn. “Here’s his watch cap. Once he sees you’re returning it, I think he’ll trust you enough to talk.”

  Vaughn slid the foul-smelling bag into the trunk and slammed it shut. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, Davie, but you have to trust me now. Stand down. If you don’t, you’re going to end up with ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.”

  She stared at him for a moment. “Will do.”

  That lie would likely get her into deeper trouble, but there was no way she was going to stand down until Cal Rogers was locked up for the murder of Anya Nosova.

  Her partner would be busy writing search warrants and finding five booking photos that looked enough like Cal Rogers to make up a six-pack. Finding Rags Foster would be low on his list of things to do, but it topped hers. When he worked at the jail, Rogers had demonstrated he was capable of violence. If he found out Rags Foster had seen him dump Anya’s body, he might try to eliminate Rags as a witness. She had to find him.

  As soon as Vaugh
n headed back to the station, she took out her phone and dialed the number for the public defender’s office. Even though it was Saturday, she left a message for Rags’s lawyer. She spent the rest of the day searching for Rags at homeless shelters and alleys near Venice where he was known to hang out, but it wasn’t until Sunday morning that she found him.

  45

  Rags Foster’s luck was finally changing. The people at County jail had given him a yellow uniform and put him in a special observation module called the ding tank, because that’s what they called people like him—ding-a-lings. They also gave him medication at the pill-call window, which made him sleepy and unsteady on his feet. Then on Saturday afternoon, the tall detective—Rags remembered his name was Vaughn—came to the jail with Rags’s attorney and told him Arnie had confessed to killing Beau Fischer, which meant Rags was off the hook.

  Detective Vaughn looked mad about that. Rags could have told him that all those fancy threads he wore didn’t make him right about everything. The pretty lady detective hadn’t come with him to the jail. Too bad. Rags liked her. She didn’t treat him like a nobody who had no history or no place in the world. Plus, she’d given him money. That showed she had heart.

  Once Rags was free, his public defender drove him to the homeless shelter in Venice. She gave him a disposable cell phone with prepaid minutes in case she needed to contact him to testify against Arnie. Before he got out of her car, she slipped him five twenties. He guessed it was because she was still young enough to believe people deserved a second chance in life. He hoped she’d stay nice forever but doubted that she would.

  Rags was still at the shelter on Sunday morning when he saw Detective Vaughn walk through the front door and start talking to the lady at the desk. He tried not to listen, but his ears perked up when he heard them mention his name. He hated it when people talked about him when he was close enough to hear. Like he was invisible. Reminded him of doctors yapping in the elevator about people’s private medical problems.