Probable Cause

by Ridley Pearson

  Something moved inside. He turned violently and shined the light into the black void of falling rain.

  Just as quickly, he reversed his position, for a gust of wind tore open the shed doors in a rusty-hinge scream. Instinctively, he raised the gun and trained it on the shape looming before him. He called out a warning, his words clipped as his slower left hand leveled the light on that shape in the shed.

  There, not ten feet away, was this man’s best friend, Rusty.

  Hanging by the neck.

  5

  SATURDAY

  1

  Grief had earned its place as an uncomfortable bedfellow for James Dewitt, a luxury he could not afford given the emotional hair trigger that had been forced upon him by recent events. For Emmy’s sake, he had been living in a delicately dangerous no-man’s-land, preserving what remained of himself after that day in the courthouse. Rusty’s murder nearly threw him over the edge. He spent hours in the rain searching the small property for any sign of an intruder, any evidence, his only discovery a small piece of ground beef—tainted, by the smell of it.

  He had two prime suspects, Howard Lumbrowski and Billy Talbot. He had aggravated both the day before, either could have sought to punish him. What toyed annoyingly in the back of his head was the realization he had put hundreds of men and women in jail with his testimony as a forensic investigator. Any one of these persons could have caught up with him. Such a consideration was so enormous in scope, he held it back with leather reins prohibiting its advance.

  The pink iridescence of morning found him exhausted and slightly drunk, a rosy blur flooding the broken sky, a similar blur of memory and Scotch flooding his thoughts. He drank in silence as Emmy nibbled at a bagel, her appetite gone, her smooth-skinned brow furrowed into a knot of worry, glancing over at him occasionally as if she didn’t know him.

  “Could we do it today?” she asked. He knew to what she was referring; her tone of voice told him that. “I’d like to get it over with. It would be better for both of us, I think.”

  “I suppose we could—” he began, but his words slurred and he stopped in embarrassment. He slid the glass beyond his immediate reach.

  “I think we should get it over with right away. We could ask Clarence and Briar to come.”

  “Mr. Hindeman,” he corrected.

  She didn’t like it. She pushed away from the table in disgust and glared defiantly at him. “This afternoon would work for me,” she said, as if her life were tightly scheduled. “Get your act together, Dad.”

  “My act,” he repeated softly, stretching to retrieve the glass.

  “Can we get him cremated on such short notice?”

  He nodded slowly, his head heavy. Emmanuel could arrange it for him.

  “Am I still grounded?” she questioned from the hallway.

  Dewitt shook his head, though she couldn’t be sure he had heard her.

  “Can I help, Dad?” she asked in a voice trembling with concern.

  “You do help,” he said with a lump in his throat. “More than you could possibly know, Em. Without you…” He hung his head.

  That brought her to tears and to his side, into his arms in an embrace of desperate worry. “I’m right here, Dad,” she said.

  Dewitt nodded, a headache thumping around in his skull like something was loose. When the phone rang, he checked the clock in panic: 8:30. “Thank God,” he said.

  2

  The gray fabric walls of Peter Tilly’s office cubbyhole at the Seaside Police Department were covered in posters and cutouts from calendars of bronzed, sinewy divers, male and female—mostly female. Outrageous bodies in high-cut spandex, hard nipples and firm buttocks. The picture of Tilly blended in well.

  Tilly appeared as fit today as he was in the photo, a Southern California boy all the way—beach-blond hair, baggy clothes, a gold I.D. bracelet, blue eyes, and a hard jaw. He wore contact lenses and squinted continually. When the man moved and his coat opened, Dewitt spotted the nickel-plated .38. Flashy. Dick Tracy gone Yuppie. He spoke in a smooth high tenor, an unusual voice. Tilly, who kept a pair of Heavy-hands on the edge of his desk, was working a springed hand exerciser in his right hand.

  “I talked to Saffeleti just now,” Tilly said. “The deputy DA on-call wanted me to check with the boss. It’s been cleared for us to search the trailer. Paperwork’s on its way over. He’s all pissed off ‘cause it’s the weekend. You want to talk to Wood first, or check the trailer out?”

  “We didn’t violate the Ramey?” Dewitt asked. He thought it only polite to say we.

  “Hell no. That’s why we had the place staked out all night, isn’t it? Wood came pimp-rolling out of his place this morning, and our boys picked him up. Piece of cake. We didn’t screw with Ramey. We’re not dumb over here you know… just overworked.” He smiled. He had perfect teeth and thin bloodless lips. “You don’t look so good, Dewitt. That your Don Johnson look, or what?”

  Dewitt felt as if he was walking on eggshells, because technically this was Tilly’s arrest. He ignored the man’s comments and recommended they search the trailer first.

  “Just so we understand each other,” the young detective said, “I’ve been working for a couple weeks on a thing. Some stores here sell legitimate car stereos up front of the store, but install hot stereos of the same models into the cars. Guys like Wood feed them their hot stereos, which is to say I have an ongoing interest in your perp. I got no quibbles with you; your homicides obviously take priority here. But if you could toss me some scraps… you know, if I could get a couple of minutes with him… I’d really appreciate it. I could use an insider on this thing. We know what’s going down, but we’re having one hell of a time proving it.”

  “Fine by me.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  “We’ll need a uniform with us when we search.”

  Sensing Dewitt’s impatience, Tilly stood. “Got one ready and waiting. Let’s go.”

  ***

  A set of rotted wooden steps led up to the lime green mobile home. The windows were clouded with brown soot. A regiment of black sugar ants streamed along a piece of corrugated siding, disappearing into an unfilled drill hole where a rivet had rusted out. A bed of yellowed litter had been pressed into the mud—a newsprint lawn. No more than ten feet separated one trailer from the next; Dewitt could hear a Neil Diamond song playing inside the adjacent, decaying Airstream.

  Dewitt handed Tilly a pair or surgical gloves. “Put these on, please.”

  “You got to be kidding me.” He put on the latex gloves then, as Dewitt had already done.

  “Top to bottom,” Dewitt explained. “Systematically and thoroughly. I’ll take the back. Any questions, any problems, I want to hear them now, not next week at this guy’s prelim.”

  “Fuckin’ pigsty,” said Tilly, fanning the air.

  With the curtains drawn, the interior of the small trailer felt even more confining. A car seat was propped up on several milk crates facing a banded-up black-and-white television that utilized a bent coat hanger as an antenna.

  Dewitt searched the kitchen first. The refrigerator held four cans of beer, ketchup, mustard, eggs, and a half quart of whole milk. The frost-encrusted freezer compartment contained several frozen dinners stacked next to half-empty ice trays. A Baggie partially filled with pot had been pushed to the back. This tiny quantity wouldn’t even be discussed by Saffeleti. Strictly misdemeanor.

  He continued down the confining passageway into the back, encountering foul odors in the phone-booth-sized bathroom, green-black mold having taken over every crack in the cheap pink tile, the surface of the plastic shower curtain, and the base of the toilet. Dewitt used his pen to move things around.

  The bedroom was no more than an oversized vertical coffin with a closet wide enough for six hangers. It smelled like a very old sneaker. The sheets might have been washed several months earlier—anybody’s guess. Stack of dog-eared Playboys by the lamp and a near-empty bottle of Vaseline Hand Care. Clothes in piles on
the floor: dirty, dirtier, dirtiest. Dewitt discovered a small removable panel that lead to the hot-water heater, and alongside it, a cardboard box containing a variety of impressive electronic gear.

  “Got something,” he called out, carrying the box out into the cramped kitchen.

  Tilly joined him and looked over his shoulder. The cardboard box contained several cannibalized car tape decks and a Panasonic cellular phone. Dewitt moved the decks around with his pen as Tilly steadied the box.

  “The way it works,” Tilly explained, to hear himself speak, “a guy hits a car tonight, he puts his take away, puts it in inventory for a few weeks so it can cool down. Tomorrow, he fences something he ripped off a couple weeks ago. All of ’em got inventories like this. What exactly are we looking for, Dewitt?”

  “This baby,” Dewitt said, reaching the deck on the bottom of the pile. “Pioneer car stereo, model KP-fifty-five-fifty.” He handed the machine carefully to Tilly, who took it by the edges in his gloved hands. Dewitt stepped toward a window for light, flipping through the well-used pages of his notebook. After a moment, he said, “Serial number: HF twenty-one-seven—”

  “No good,” interrupted Tilly. “He’s scratched up the numbers. No good.”

  Dewitt told him, “Doesn’t matter. We have McDuff’s car. We have confirmation of Wood’s prints on wires beneath the dash.” Dewitt pointed to the clipped wires leading to the back of the stolen car stereo. “If this is the fifty-five-fifty taken from McDuff’s truck, then we should be able to show tool markings and match up all the wires. I’d like to find a toolbox. That would help with the tool markings. But chances are, we’ve got him with this alone. Let’s write it up and rush it over to the Salinas lab.”

  “On a Saturday?”

  “There’s someone over there by now. Some other evidence—” he said, catching himself. Lumbrowski had been a Seaside detective, and loyalties ran high among departments.

  ***

  “Has he invoked?” Dewitt stared through the two-way mirror at the big black man sitting restlessly at the interrogation table. Standard procedure was to let some time pass between the reading of the Miranda and the interrogation. If the perp invoked the Miranda, you had to leave him alone until the hearing. Some invoked. The seasoned ones knew that a good deal of the bargaining took place before any official filing. The only chance to walk away clean from an arrest was to cooperate fully, and always in the presence of an attorney.

  “No,” replied Tilly. “Arresting officer thought he might be high,” he said, reading the sheet. “He looks kinda high,” he added. “He requested a PD be assigned to him.”

  “Experienced. Who’s on-call?”

  “Mahoney’s on her way. You know her?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad for you.”

  “How long ‘til she gets here?”

  “Not long. If I know this one, she was out sucking off the deputy AG all night. She’s a comer, Dewitt… in more ways than one, if you follow. Has her sights set on the Attorney General’s office. We call her ‘Lay-ya Moaning’ around here. A real Crusader Rabbit, she can be a real bitch. A regular nympho from what I hear. Jumps everything in sight, uniforms, brass, other PDs, DA’s office. Anything she can find.”

  “You have any coffee?”

  “If you can call it that.”

  Five minutes later, Dewitt entered the room with a cup of burned coffee. The interrogation room smelled like cigarette smoke and armpits. One sip of the coffee and it suddenly tasted the same. He placed it out of reach.

  Wood didn’t look up. He knew Dewitt wasn’t his PD. Probably knew them all by name. “What we’ve got here, Marvin, is a big problem,” Dewitt said.

  No reaction.

  “Big, as in capital B, capital offense.” Dewitt waited. “You think I’d be here at ten on Saturday morning if this thing was about stealing a car stereo? Think about that, Marvin,” he said, circling him now, talking behind the man’s head. “You know the system. Why the hell would a Carmel detective be talking to a pink-sheeter like you on a Saturday morning?”

  “We wait, whitebread. And the name ain’t Marvin, it’s Wood, man. We wait for my main man, then we talk.”

  “When was the last time a lawyer helped you, Woodman? I mean actually helped? I can help you, Woodman. This is my case. It isn’t Detective Tilly’s, it isn’t even Seaside’s. This is my case. You do any trading, any negotiating, it’s going to be with me. You wait for your PD, you get a lawyer all involved, and this thing is going to get real messy. Bad. You follow? You want to know why? Because I’m investigating two homicides, Marvin. And guess who my prime suspect is?” He was across the table from him now, staring into stoned eyes. “You hear me, Woodman?”

  Wood leaned up on one cheek and broke an enormously loud amount of wind and smiled slightly. “I hear ya, whitebread. Still, I best wait for my man.”

  The smell was horrible. Dewitt fanned the air. “It isn’t whitebread, Woodman, it’s Detective Dewitt. Kiss your foul ass goodbye, dude. I’m talking two counts of murder one.” He paused by the door, hoping the man might change his mind.

  The door banged open and she stormed in. “As I understand it, Detective,” Mahoney began before offering an introduction, “my client requested representation prior to counsel. The door’s behind me. I’ll call you when, and if, we’re ready.” Mahoney took off her jacket, read from a folder, and then looked up at Wood. She stood with a broomstick posture, breasts thrust out, nipples denting the sheer fabric. Not much of a face, stretched skin on a frame of sharp bones, a pointed chin and matching hook nose. Cats’ eyes. Wood stared straight at her breasts. She seemed accustomed to it. She perched her sumptuous butt on the edge of the table, her skirt hiked up to mid thigh, her legs long, slender, and muscular. Two different women: awkward, birdlike, and self-conscious behind the face; bold, beastly, and well-provided from the neck down. “We’re waiting, Detective.”

  Dewitt left the small room and closed the door. “She’s a hardass,” he said to Tilly.

  “Depends on who you talk to,” Tilly said. “Like I say, that ass gets around. Rumor is that those lips of hers can suck a cork out of a wine bottle.” He added, “And I’m not talkin’ about her mouth.”

  ***

  When she finally called him in, Leala Mahoney studied Dewitt, regarding him, it seemed, as a butcher might regard a side of beef. In his case, disheveled, exhausted beef. She was staring. She squirmed and shifted restlessly in her chair, the tip of her tongue moistening her already-glossy lips, which she had set in a beguiling smile. She preened herself, continually tucking this into there and smoothing this flat and tugging on that. Her voice was naturally creamy, her hair had been weaved in streaks of blond, and he was guessing she was somewhere in her early thirties and that she wore pigmented contact lenses. No one could possibly have eyes that green. He nearly asked her to stop doing that with her tongue.

  “I can only assume, Mr. Dewitt, that your presence here at Seaside indicates—what would I call it?—an interest in my client that perhaps supercedes the present charges.”

  “That’s true, Counselor. I explained that to Woodman, here. He didn’t seem too interested.”

  “I be interested, whitebread. I just got to wait for my—”

  “Main man,” Dewitt interrupted, hoping to irritate Mahoney. She struck Dewitt as a woman proud of her accomplishments in what had once been a predominantly male profession—criminal law. It would be to his benefit to drive a wedge between Mahoney and Wood if he could.

  “Am I correctly informed, Detective Dewitt, that you are heading up the current homicide investigations and that Mr. Wood’s detention is somehow related to this investigation?”

  “I don’t want nothing to do with no murders,” said Marvin Wood in a low guttural growl.

  Some PDs insisted on interrupting every other sentence and breaking your train of thought. Dewitt tested the waters. “That may depend on your willingness to cooperate, Woodman. What I’m telling you, Woodman, a
nd you, Counselor, is that we—I—can make this just as hard on both of you as I want. Okay? What I have here,” he said, waving the folder at them, “is hard evidence connecting you, Woodman, to a pickup truck in which a murdered man was found.” He watched for Wood’s reaction and actually felt disappointment when the man looked so genuinely surprised. “Cooperation is the name. Besides me, on the other side of that mirror are a couple of cops who are just dying to bust you on grand larceny—”

  “Ain’t no grand larceny, man. Alls I done is lifted a car stereo.”

  “You’ve lifted at least a half-dozen car stereos, Woodman. We did a little work on your water heater, if you understand what I’m saying.”

  “Shit. Man, I got me a job at stake here!”

  “Mr. Wood is concerned that violation of his probation and the present charges may restrict his ability to retain his current employment,” the woman said, brushing off something from her padded shoulder.

  “If you like the job,” Dewitt said, “then start talking.”

  Reading, Mahoney informed Dewitt, “The terms of Mr. Wood’s most recent probation dictate he maintain steady employment for a period of no less than eight months, and that should he be charged with a criminal offense, he will be resentenced, with a possible jail term of four years without parole.”

  “Four years, eh, Woodman? That’s a long time to spend bent over with your legs spread,” Dewitt emphasized, “isn’t it? But four years is nothing compared with life.”

  “Fuck you,” Wood said.

  “You got that wrong. It isn’t me they’ll be fucking. Excuse me,” he said to Mahoney, catching amusement in her eyes. “You might keep that in mind… a life sentence, Woodman. Maybe we can work with this. Perhaps there’s a solution here we’re overlooking.”

  “Fuck you, whitebread. My ass is fried.”

  Dewitt checked with counsel, who, reading from Wood’s folder, nodded at him. Wood knew the boundaries of his probation better than Dewitt. He was obviously a veteran.