Decker was listening really carefully now. “Go on.”
“What they wound up doing was reproducing the skull in three dimensions from some kind of machine.”
“What kind of machine?”
“I’m sketchy on the details, Pete. I saw the show a while back…couple of years. But I remembered it because it was so different. They took X-rays and used the X-rays to make the three-dimensional copy of the skull. The police took the skull to the judge and the judge allowed it to be used for forensic purposes. The forensic artist used the copy skull to put a face onto the bones.”
“Did it work?”
“Yeah, someone recognized the face and they caught the guy.”
“Do you remember the case?”
He thought a long time. “It was an African woman who was living in the U.S., so she didn’t even have relatives that reported her missing. I think it happened somewhere in the middle of the country. Sorry, but I don’t remember names, but I’m sure there’s a copy of the show somewhere. It was either Forensic Files or Cold Case Files.”
Decker was writing furiously. “What is that? Court TV?”
“Forensic Files is on Court TV. I think Cold Case Files is A and E.” Mike took another bite of his food and chewed it slowly. “You could call up someone at the station that works with the shows. Maybe they would remember.”
“I’m sure I could order a copy of the show, if we could figure out what show you were watching and what case you saw. I’m thinking that the episodes might be listed online.” He looked at Hollander. “We could check it out. Would you mind coming back to the station house?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
16
THE SQUAD ROOM was two-thirds empty, the majority of the detectives out in the field investigating the ever-flowing tide of felonies. Like the ocean, there was a rhythm to crime, a high period followed by a low period that seemed to correspond with the phases of the moon.
The open space was divided up by groupings of desks with placards hanging from the ceiling to reveal the detail of the detectives working below the signs. The areas encompassed the usual divisional felonies—burglary, GTA, CAPS, juvenile and sex crimes, bunco, etc., with homicide tucked into a corner—private and rarefied. Shelving filled with casebooks lined a good portion of the wall space with several dog-eared district maps pinned at random spots along the drywall.
Marge Dunn had just received a packet of Roseanne Dresden’s phone records. The last call made from the missing woman’s cell originated in San Jose—12:35 A.M.—and she had connected to her house number, the line engaged for thirty-five seconds. Roseanne’s records begged the question: what was she doing in San Jose a little after midnight when WestAir said that she was on a flight from Burbank to San Jose the next morning at eight-fifteen?
It was possible that Roseanne flew into Burbank from San Jose on an earlier flight that morning, and never deplaned—which would explain why Erika Lessing never saw her.
Did an earlier flight even exist?
Logging on to WestAir’s Web site, Marge looked up flight schedules. The former flight 1324 had been retired. Instead there was a new flight—247—with the first departure from Burbank to San Jose now leaving at eight-thirty instead of eight-fifteen: a very thin sugar coat on a bitter pill, but who could blame WestAir for trying to make the public forget. More important, there was an earlier flight—246—that flew from San Jose to Burbank, it’s first departure at five o’clock in the morning. That meant that Roseanne could have come down from San Jose to Burbank and then turned around and gone back on the doomed flight 1324.
But why would Roseanne do a quick turnaround on a commuter flight unless she was working actively as a flight attendant? Marge circled Roseanne’s last call and wrote in the margins: Roseanne in SJ and trying to locate hubby? Did she talk to him?
Ivan could verify that. Then Marge noticed that the call was only thirty-five seconds. She wrote on the margins of Roseanne’s phone records.
Answering machine?
Did Roseanne’s husband get any message about her working agenda? Was that why he put her on the flight from Burbank back to San Jose? Had she left a message on the machine that she was in San Jose and was now working the route?
But that didn’t sync with WestAir’s story.
Marge stared at that final call. No matter how many times she did this task—retraced the last moments of someone’s life—it always gave her pause, seeing a marker that pinpointed one of a person’s final acts before the trip into the great void. Marge knew that in Roseanne’s case, there was a faint possibility that she wasn’t dead, that she had deliberately walked away from her current life to start up again as someone else, but that was stretching credulity.
She looked up just in time to see Decker and an elderly companion walk into the squad room. She did a double take.
“Hollander!” she cried out. “Is that you?”
“Feels like me.” Mike patted his chest and arms. “By God, I think it is me!”
Marge got up from her onerous task, walked over, and slapped him on the back. With a wide smile, he gave her a quick hug and regarded her at arm’s length. “Dunn, you still look as good as the day you deserted Foothill for this clown. And now I find out, pouring salt on the wound, that you outrank me.”
“Yeah, well, I promise I’ll use my power for the good of mankind. What brings you into enemy territory?”
“Him.” He crooked a finger in Decker’s direction.
“By personal invitation,” Decker told her. “We’re going online. Hollander remembered seeing some kind of technique that could help us identify our Jane Doe from the apartment building fire. Care to join?”
“I just got Roseanne Dresden’s phone records. I need to go over them, but keep me posted.” To Hollander: “Great seeing you, Michael. Don’t be such a stranger.”
“Last thing you need is an old fogy like myself bothering you.”
“It’s never a bother and I might even learn something from a veteran.”
He tapped his temple. “I collected a lot of stories working in the Naked City. Sometimes I remember my cases as if it were yesterday. Other times, it’s like working a cold case. My memory’s in deep freeze until some clue reopens the file and it all comes back to me in a rush.”
“I’m like that now,” Marge said. “I can only imagine what I’ll be like at your age, Mike.”
“Well, lucky for you that when you reach my age, you’ll probably forget this conversation.”
SITTING AT DECKER’S desk, both of them in front of the computer monitor, they logged on to Court TV, methodically going through the Forensic Files cases: over one hundred episodes, each with a thumbnail description. As Decker brought up each show, Hollander repeated the same phrase. “No, that’s not the one.”
An hour later they had exhausted the entire list.
Hollander got up and stretched. “I’m sure I remembered it from somewhere. I’m just not that smart or creative enough to make it up.”
Decker had his doubts. With age, sometimes recollections get confused, although Mike appeared to be sharp. “Do you want to go through them again?”
“No point to it, Rabbi. It’s not any of the episodes we looked at.” He scratched his head and sat back down. “Maybe it was a Cold Case File.”
“Let’s have a look.” Decker logged on to A&E and then on to the Web site for Cold Case Files. There were over one hundred episodes for that series as well. As with Forensic Files, each show came with a thumbnail sketch. Unlike Forensic Files, a half-hour program, Cold Case Files was an hour, sometimes divided into two half-hour cases; sometimes one case occupied the entire hour.
Decker brought up episode number one.
“No, that’s not it.”
Thirteen episodes later, they struck oil.
Mike exclaimed without hesitation, “That’s it.”
Decker was surprised, expecting another dead end. “‘Reconstructing Murder/Fire Flicks?’”
“It’s the first one,” Hollander said. “There’s a trailer tape. Does your computer have sound?”
“I think it does.” He pressed the bullhorn icon and unmuted the sound on his machine. All the computers in the squad room worked with muted sound. To hear conversation between the detectives was a must. Sometimes someone would overhear two people talking and add something very relevant. There was a reason why the detectives sat at open tables and weren’t housed in cubicles.
Decker played the intro to the episode. Like all good trailers, it revealed nothing about the actual case other than that the crime originated out of Wisconsin. Decker scrolled down the Web page to an icon that said Buy This Episode. The price was definitely within the departmental budget, so he clicked the icon. The response told him that this particular tape was no longer for sale.
“Well, that’s terrific.” But then Decker thought a moment. “The case involved forensic reconstruction and was made into a TV show. I’m thinking that it must have been some kind of long-term, high-profile murder. If you describe what you saw to Wanda Bontemps, maybe you two can go online together and cull through some of Wisconsin’s notorious murder cases. See if anything looks familiar.”
“Good idea, although it might take up time for your detective.” Hollander curled the ends of his walrus mustache. “I was just thinking to myself that somewhere this tape exists. Maybe it’s in A and E archives, or if it isn’t, maybe I can contact the producer. Let me do some research before we bother a detective.”
“If that’s what you want to do with your free time, I won’t complain.” Decker raised up a finger. “Let me see if I can get you on as a consultant. That way you’ll get a little money for your services.”
“If you do that, Pete, then I won’t complain.”
Decker qualified: “As long as your consulting doesn’t interfere with my daughter’s remodeling plans.”
Hollander punched him in the shoulder. “What kind of lieutenant detective are you?”
“Blood is thicker than a paycheck.”
MARGE LEANED AGAINST the wall, arms folded across her chest, waiting as Decker looked over the phone records. She said, “I’m trying to figure out the best way to approach Ivan Dresden to make him feel like he’s on our side.”
“With her last call coming out of San Jose, he may actually be on our side.” Decker flipped through phone records. “What was Roseanne doing there?”
“Maybe working, but maybe she was visiting her old boyfriend.”
“So-called old boyfriend: nothing’s been verified. Is this Raymond Holmes’s phone number?” Decker recited the numbers out loud.
“Yep.”
“Roseanne hadn’t called it for the last six months. That jibes with Arielle Toombs’s account…that she had severed the relationship a while ago. But he did call her about three months before the crash.”
“Hmmm…what did we find out about Holmes?”
“He lives in San Jose at 5371 Granada Avenue. No wants, no warrants, no priors.”
Oliver walked into Decker’s office, rubbing his eyes and rolling his shoulders. His emerald tie was slightly askew and the collar of his jacquard white shirt was wilted. Marge checked her watch. It was almost four in the afternoon. “Hot time last night at Leather and Lace, Scotty?”
“Wish it were so.” Oliver yawned. “I just got out of court. Peabody homicide.”
“Kerry Trima,” Decker said. “The one with the inconclusive DNA. How’d it go?”
“The PD was wet behind the ears. He spent all his time attacking the DNA expert and gave our circumstantial evidence a free ride. He could have easily put a giant hole in my testimony, but luckily he didn’t ask the right questions. I think the jury will be swayed despite the lack of a smoking gun. What are we dealing with now?”
“Roseanne Dresden’s phone records,” Marge said. “Did you get my message?”
“About the midnight San Jose call?” Oliver shrugged. “What was Roseanne doing in San Jose eight hours before she allegedly perished on a flight from Burbank to San Jose?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Marge said. “I think it’s time to talk to Ivan the Terrible. Maybe he knows what she was doing there. And since Mr. Dresden fancies himself a ladies’ man, I figured we should interview him together and you should do most of the talking. You two can talk about Fifi at Leather and Lace.”
“Her name is Jell-O, not Fifi.”
“Jell-O?” Decker laughed out loud. “Is that for real?”
“Her given name is Marina Alfonse,” Oliver said. “By the way, I’ve altered my opinion of the young lady and that may have some bearing on the case. When Rottiger first talked about Marina’s reaction to Ivan, he implied that Marina thought that Ivan was a jerk. Fast-forward to last night. Now I find out they’ve been humping in secret because it’s against the rules to fuck your clients. Meanwhile, Dresden’s jacked up fifteen gees’ worth of lap-dance bills.”
Both Decker and Marge gasped.
Oliver said, “Yeah, I had the same reaction. The owner, a no-nonsense guy named Dante Michelli, got antsy and told Marina to collect a partial payment. To everyone’s surprise, Dresden paid the bill off in its entirety. Marina thinks he might have mortgaged the condo to get the cash, a condo he now owns because Roseanne is presumed dead from the crash. That spells m-o-t-i-v-e to me.”
“How’d he get a second mortgage on the condo so fast?” Marge wondered. “Insurance and the coroner haven’t declared her officially dead yet.”
“First of all, it’s been over two months since the crash, so the loan wasn’t necessarily a fast one. Second, maybe he has an in with the loan officer at the bank. Eventually, even if we don’t find the body, Roseanne’s insurance policies are going to have to pay out.”
“Not if we declare her disappearance a homicide,” Marge said.
“And what evidence do we have for that?”
“Well, we certainly don’t have any evidence that she was on the plane,” Decker said. “Especially with her last phone call coming in from San Jose.”
Marge said, “There is a possibility that she flew in on the five A.M. flight from San Jose going to Burbank and then flew back out on the doomed eight-fifteen flight.”
“I thought WestAir didn’t have a work assignment for her on that flight.”
“As far as we know, they still don’t,” Marge said. “So how do we approach Ivan?”
“Ask Ivan why Roseanne was in San Jose. Then see if he knows anything about Raymond Holmes.”
“So you want us to bring up her ex-lover?” Oliver asked.
Marge said, “The last call on Roseanne’s phone was to her house from a tower in San Jose.”
“Okay…so you’re thinking she went up to see him.”
“It’s possible, although there doesn’t seem to have been contact between them for a good three months before the crash.”
Oliver nodded. “So with Ivan Dresden, we’re, what…using the approach that we think Mr. Holmes was the last one to see her alive so help us make him the bad guy?”
“It may be true,” Decker said.
“But we’re still considering Ivan the Terrible a suspect even though we’re not approaching him that way.”
“Yes.”
“And we’re figuring that if the heat’s on Raymond Holmes, Dresden may feel relaxed enough to open up.”
“Especially if we appeal to his ego,” Marge said.
“We need your help, Mr. Dresden,” Oliver acted out. “The police are counting on you.”
“Yeah, we can lay it on as thick as peanut butter,” Marge said. “You never can go wrong appealing to a man’s ego. Guys are basically fragile creatures. I mean, we women really don’t even need to put out. A few well-placed compliments are all it takes for a movie and dinner.”
17
IT WAS A condo in a neighborhood of block-long condo compounds, all of them refurbished, seventy swinging-singles apartment houses, each building bleeding
into the next. The exteriors were fashioned from wood and stucco with balconies for every unit. The sycamores and elms that had been planted three decades ago as little sprouts were now mature trees providing shade and greenery—a good thing because summer temperatures in West Valley often reached one hundred degrees and beyond. Weaving in and out of courtyards abloom with impatiens and azaleas, Dunn and Oliver passed two swimming pools, four Jacuzzis, a glassed-in gym, a recreation room, two resident coffeehouses, and dozens of parking lots, giving the complex the feel of a planned community with suburbia mall overtones.
The Dresden unit was on the third floor of a three-story building. Ivan answered the knock with a scowl on his face. Briefly, Marge studied the man and decided that pictures didn’t do him justice. He had thick black hair, startling blue eyes, and a strong chin, his only imperfection being small pits and dots that landscaped his skin. He was slightly shorter than Marge, around five ten, but he carried himself with an air of haughtiness thanks to a good-looking face and a sculpted body. He wore a black muscle T, long black sweats, with a towel around his neck, though he didn’t look as if he had just worked out. Every hair was in place, not a bead of sweat anywhere.
“Thanks for seeing us, Mr. Dresden,” Marge said.
“Do I have a choice?” he snapped back. “It’s not enough that I have to grieve for my wife, but you people are preventing me from getting my insurance. Money can’t take the place of Roseanne, but I don’t see why I should have to suffer any more than I’m doing.”
They were still standing outside. Oliver said, “Maybe it would be better if we talked indoors, sir?”
Dresden snorted but moved out of the way. The detectives entered the condo and looked around. The furniture was chain store contemporary, but nicely appointed. The place wasn’t a sty, by any means, but it could have used some tidying. There was a week’s worth of newspapers scattered about, and a trash can filled with empty beer cans, take-out Styrofoam cartons, and dozens of torn health-bar wrappers. Plus, the room would have benefited from a woman’s touch—flowers, pictures, candles—because everything was done in stark lines and in pale colors—whites, grays, and pastel blues, except for a lone black leather couch.
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