On The Edge

by Daniel Cleaver

  She smiled at me kindly. “Have you come to rough me up?” she jested.

  “I can if ya want,” I said, sitting opposite her.

  She placed her hands in front of her and I noticed the handcuffs. I turned to the uniformed cop guarding the door. “Take those cuffs off her immediately.”

  “But, sir –”

  “Do it now, this ain’t Russia. She’s a senior citizen and you will treat her with some respect.”

  “She’s a murderer, sir.”

  “Not until it’s proven.”

  “She said she is, sir.”

  “I am,” she volunteered brightly.

  I snarled at the uniformed officer. “Ya treat her with respect, do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ya make sure the others do, too, or they’ll be answering to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He unlocked the handcuffs and she rubbed her wrists to ease the pain. I could see the red marks on them and fumed inwardly.

  “Go and fetch us both a cup of coffee,” I said.

  “But, sir.”

  “Are ya gonna argue everything?”

  “No, sir.” He slinked away and looked as if getting coffee for a murderer was below him.

  “How are they treating ya, Mary? Do ya mind if I call ya Mary?”

  “Of course not, dear. They’re not treating me badly. I thought that other detectives had forgotten all about me. They all seem to be concentrating on the Hangman.”

  “He’s taking up a lot of man-hours.”

  “Are you getting any closer?”

  “Nope,” I admitted. “The Hangman has us running around like headless chickens.”

  “Oh well, at least I’m easy. I’m admitting to murdering my old man.”

  “Ya shouldn’t do that,” I said.

  “But I did it.”

  “What are the mitigating circumstances?”

  “Oh, I don’t believe in all that casting the blame elsewhere, saying I’ve got whatever the latest fashionable disease is, or that I didn’t get enough love as a child. I did it and I admit it.”

  “I wish ya wouldn’t. At least we ain’t recording this yet.”

  “Turn the recording on and I’ll admit it, so that the people behind the mirror can hear my confession, too.”

  I leaned closer to her and whispered, “Look, do me a favor and stop admitting it, just for a while. Or at least until ya get yourself a lawyer.”

  “I’m not going to hide behind a lawyer. I’m guilty.”

  I sighed heavily and followed correct procedure. “Now, as I understand it your old man suffered from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – the wasting disease?”

  “That’s right, dear, ALS, it’s also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

  “And he was in a lot of pain?”

  “Agony.”

  “And you’d agreed to help him end his life when it got too much for him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And so ya administered an overdose?”

  “Yes, he couldn’t, you see, he was paralyzed by then.”

  “Well, in my book that’s an act of kindness.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s against the law.”

  “Then the law’s wrong,” I said.

  “Maybe so, dear, but your job is to charge me with his murder.”

  “Yah, I know, but I don’t wanna.”

  “You can’t possibly know I’m innocent.”

  “But I do.”

  “How?”

  “I’d prefer not to go into it, but I have a way of telling. And I know ya don’t have a malicious bone in your body.”

  “Nevertheless, I took his life and you must do what you must do. I bear you no ill feeling.”

  This was surreal, a murderer begging to be charged and me trying to find a way to get her off.

  “Therefore,” she continued. “I deserve to be punished; I must go to jail for taking poor old Stanley’s life.” Her shoulders heaved and she sobbed. I patted her on the back, feeling inadequate. She’d been holding herself together since she had arrived and now the reality hit her, that her husband of fifty-plus years was dead, and although she’d acted out of kindness, she was the reason he was gone.

  She took a moment to compose herself, took a sip of coffee and grimaced.

  “The coffee’s disgusting, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Not half,” she replied. “So, are you going to put me in prison for my crime?”

  Not if I have anything to do with it, I thought. “We’ll see. Don’t be in such a hurry to go to prison. Tell me about yourself.”

  “Hmm, let me see, where to start? Well, I came out to Hollywood like many other young girls did, to be a star and, as it happened, I wasn’t a bad dancer and I appeared in the chorus line in a few movies, all before your time, I may add. I was only fourteen but told them I was eighteen and that was good enough back in those days.” She smiled at the fond memory. “I used to be able to kick my leg right up to there.” She tried to demonstrate, but her foot only rose a few inches from the cement floor. She showed me how high with her hand instead. “I was very flexible and double-jointed which made me quite popular as you can imagine.”

  George McGinty burst through the door red-faced and angry. “What’s the prisoner doing uncuffed?”

  “I said it was okay.”

  “What if she tries to escape?”

  I looked at her and then at him and said, “Really?”

  “It’s the rule.”

  “Well, you know what ya can do with your rules.”

  “That’s your problem – the rules,” McGinty snarled.

  “She’s a frail, old lady, George.”

  “Not so much of the old, dear,” she said.

  “She’s a murderer.”

  “I am,” she piped up.

  I tried to reason with him. “Look, all she did was to add a couple of extra pills to her husband’s medication to ease his suffering.”

  “It’s against the law.”

  “Use your common sense, McGinty, just for once.”

  “You’re in trouble.” He turned on his heels and slammed the door behind him in frustration.

  “I’m glad you’re dealing with me and not him.” She patted my hand.

  “Where were we, oh yah, your flexibility and the casting couch?”

  “It wasn’t that bad, most of the directors knew I was underage and there were plenty of willing girls who would happily sleep with them if they thought that it might lead to a role in a movie.” She took a sip of her coffee and her mood darkened as if she was remembering some long-forgotten memory.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Well, there were one or two where my youth seemed to excite them.”

  “Like who?” I asked my ears pricking up.

  “They’re all dead now,” she said, “oh, apart from Bruce Matherson. He seems to go on forever.”

  Bingo!

  Bruce Matherson again, popping up on my radar.

  “I was lucky to escape his clutches, there were rumors back then that the young ’uns would go to his house up at Bel Air and never return.”

  “Go on,” I urged.

  “He was horrible, all yucky. He oozed what he thought was charm, but he was really oily and repellent. I’d gone to his home all wide-eyed and innocent, being promised an audition as a dancer on his show. Well, I arrived in what seemed to be the middle of an orgy – they were doing things that’d make your head spin.” She shuddered at the memory. “He got me in a room alone; it was more like a chamber. I think it was off his bedroom and I remember there was a camera on a tripod. Anyway, his hands were all over me. I was shouting for him to stop, but that just seemed to make him worse and when I told him I was only fourteen that sent him into a frenzy.”

  “How did ya get away?” I asked, genuinely interested.

  “Ah, well, he saw this.” She pulled her hair back and showed me a clump of hardened flesh where her ear should have bee
n. “He nearly had kittens, kept on that I was defective. Me defective? When he would quite happily have raped me, a fourteen-year-old and I’m the defective, the horrible man.”

  “Did ya tell anyone?”

  “You betcha, I went straight to the police and they said that they’d deal with it, but it all got hushed up. I was offered a speaking part in a movie and was occupied with learning my lines and what have you . . . do you know, it’s only just struck me, I wonder if he had pulled strings, so I’d be busy on my movie and forget about the charges. Which of course I did. What a wicked man.” She shook her head and drank her coffee.

  * * *

  Back in the squad room, a sat in my cubicle. Mia popped her head over the partition. She’d seen my distress.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “The quack.”

  “Your shrink, what about her?”

  “She knows who The Hangman is.”

  She gasped. “No way? She told you that?”

  “As good as.”

  Mia paced between the desks. “That sucks. Are you sure?”

  “She says she can’t reveal doctor-patient confidentiality, that she’s sworn an oath.”

  “So what? She knows who’s committing these atrocities and she won’t help stop it.” Mia slumped into her swivel chair. “She’s as bad as the killer.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  George McGinty and Milo Sanchez sauntered in, hearing our raised voices. “What’s wrong with you two?” George asked.

  “The Hangman. We know who it is – well, we know someone who knows, but they won’t reveal it.”

  “Can’t you do a number on them?” said George.

  “What do ya mean?”

  “Beat it out of them.” We all looked at him. “What? This is different.”

  “They’re not a suspect.”

  “Make them one,” he said.

  “Won’t work,” I said. “They don’t have to tell. We can’t make ’em.”

  Mia said, “Our hands are tied.”

  “How come? Is it a priest, has the perp confessed to his priest?” George asked. “There must be exceptions?”

  “Nah, not a priest, plus we’ve checked,” I said.

  “Not the department’s shrink?” asked George, making the connection. “My God, she knows what this sicko does to his victims, yet she won’t help us?”

  Mia sneered, “Says it’s her job.”

  “That’s no excuse,” George snarled.

  “Jesus,” Milo sighed. “She’s meant to be on our side.”

  “She don’t see it like that,” I said.

  “Make her,” George said.

  “I’ve tried,” I said.

  “She can’t let this murderous sonofabitch walk the streets.”

  Mia said, “Her oath is sacrosanct as far as she’s concerned.”

  I banged my fist into a nearby wall. “One word from her and this would all be over.” I stood and kicked my desk but it didn’t ease my anger. “I’ll kill that bitch! She’s the one who should be strung up!”

  “Cool it, man,” Elvis warned.

  I saw all eyes were upon me and tried to keep my anger under control. “We should drag her in here and force her to look at these photos, see the atrocities being committed. Atrocities that could be avoided in the future.” I tried to be calm but it wasn’t working. I could feel the rage boiling in me. “I hate these holier-than-thou Ivy League types with their prissy morals. They care more for their sick patients. They think they can cure them or make all sorts of reasons why we should feel sympathy for them, that they were beaten as kids or something. That we must forgive their crimes.” My face flushed red with fury. “Then they write books about these monsters – while making themselves a small fortune and becoming a celebrity in the process, starting another series of wannabe killers.” I kicked my trash can across the room for emphasis.

  The captain stood in the doorway of his office: he’d heard most of this. “If she’s the department shrink does that mean the Hangman’s a cop?”

  “That’s what she implied. We’re talking about a cop gone rogue,” I said.

  The captain said, “It’d explain how he gets the girls to go with him without a struggle.”

  “You’d trust a cop, right?” Mia said.

  I clicked my fingers. “That’s how the Hillside Stranglers did it, they pulled the victim over while using a cop car. The girls would pull over for a cop, who wouldn’t? Then wham! It was too late.”

  “But a cop, doing this?” said George, not wanting to believe it.

  “It’s happened before,” I said. They all looked to me and I had their full attention. “Recently Christopher Dorner killed four here in California in 2013. Over in Florida, they executed Manuel Pardo, a rogue cop who had killed at least nine. Before him in the 1970s still in Florida there was Gerard Schaefer, killing teenage girls and topping the list has to be the Russian cop, they nicknamed the werewolf, Mikhail Popkov; he killed over two dozen using his cop car and badge to gain his victims’ trust.”

  “Fairly isolated,” said George.

  “But it happens,” I said. “It must be a cop.”

  “In that case and with your track record,” George said, turning his sad, droopy eyes to me and pointing. “My money would be on you.”

  Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica, CA 90402 – 18:45.

  I felt like my career was circling the drain. Instead of going straight home, I went for a cruise in my Camaro. When I’m frustrated, I liked to blast along the Pacific Coast Highway and get my car up to a ton. I know where all the cop speed traps are; well, I should do by now and occasionally I get into races with other muscle car drivers, but unlikely at this time of the day, though. The traffic was moving slowly, it was still the tail-end of the rush hour. The Pacific Coast Highway, or the PCH as the locals called it, was my favorite stretch of highway, especially the section of the Pacific as it passed LA, and on a good day you could see Catalina Island twenty-odd miles off the coast; other times it would disappear in the heat vapor. A slick-looking dude in a yellow Porsche honked his horn at me and gave me the ‘bird’. I smirked and swerved around him. I found myself relaxing. I put in a Four Seasons CD, only a doo-wop band could do justice to the journey. I was in a classic muscle car cruising the PCH and they would be the perfect accompaniment to it. I’d always thought I was born in the wrong era. I harked back to the late-50s/early 60s, where everything appeared to be simpler. The nation was affluent and everyone seemed optimistic about the future. I just needed a girl by my side and I felt myself thinking about Mia.

  Elvis butted in, “What kinda tune is this?”

  “Huh? What’s that?” I asked.

  “We’re being told to, ‘Walk Like a Man’ by a cat that sings like a girl?”

  He had a point. I changed the CD to something heavier.

  “I told ya that headshrinker would be a waste of time, man.”

  “Yah, I know, she saw right through me. She’ll get me signed off or on psycho leave at the very least.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Hit the waves.”

  “I ain’t got time for surfing.”

  “Chill out, man, calm down, catch some rays, catch some waves, it always used to work, I bet there’s some rollers up at Malibu.”

  I glanced out the window at the waves rolling in. It was tempting. I used to love to surf. I never liked team sports, but surfing I excelled at and got a name for myself as a teenager, I even had the chance to surf the big ones on Oahu’s North Shore, in Hawaii. The best spot for huge waves that held a good shape. I felt calm surfing; it did not faze me. The bigger and more dangerous the wave, the more I liked it and the more I’d impress my contemporaries and, more importantly, the ladies. I calmed and slowed down to the speed limit.

  The Porsche flashed past and Slick gave me the finger again.

  “Kill that sonofabitch!”

  “Not now, Elvis.”

  “Just shoot him, no one would know.”
<
br />   “Everyone would know, for Christ’s sake, look around!”

  “Run his plate, get his address and we could go around there –”

  “There is no we, Elvis, now if ya can’t be constructive, you’ll have to go. You’re the reason I have to see the Quack in the first place.”

  “She’ll get you fired,” Sheldon said nervously. “Or arrested.”

  “Yah, I screwed up with Calvin Cooper, that’s for sure,” I said.

  Elvis added, “All this could have been avoided if you’d hidden the body.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “‘I should’ve hidden Calvin Cooper’s body?!’” I repeated. “Huh? How could I? His body was wedged through the captain’s windshield the last time I saw it.” I sighed heavily. He had a point, though: if I’d gotten rid of the corpse, it would have saved me a real bunch of trouble, with the S.R.B., the I.A.D. and the captain himself.

  Christ, I’m thinking like a criminal now.

  One month earlier – Fleapit, corner of Hollywood and Vine, CA 90028 – 17:30.

  We’d had a tip-off on the whereabouts of a convicted child killer called Calvin Cooper, who’d absconded. We’d caught him once before, but thanks to an I.A. colleague, Conrad Snyder, he’d walked. Snyder and I had a history, which clouded his judgment. He’d made it his business to get me and trawled over the bust and got the case kicked due to a minor discrepancy in the arrest procedure and Cooper had walked, then had gone on to kill another two children. Both homicides I could place fairly and squarely on Snyder’s head. He’d let his hatred of me cloud his thinking. He’d help a child killer go free so he could score points against me.

  We arrived at the door of the run-down flophouse with my partner at the time, Dobie Grayson. We went through the normal procedures, Dobie announced that we were the police when the perp fired five bullets through the door; a stray splinter went through Dobie’s eye, into his brain, and I could tell he was dead before he hit the ground. I radioed in our position and called for assistance and the Coroner’s van, no need for an ambulance. I was gonna wait for backup when I heard a child scream from inside the apartment. I took a deep breath and charged into the dingy apartment. It was damp and musty, with an evil presence I could almost taste. I kicked open a bedroom door, nothing there. I kicked open the bathroom door, nothing there either. I heard a noise from the closet behind me. I opened the door quickly when the child fell out on top of me, making me jump as we both tumbled to the floor. As I was getting my bearings, Calvin Cooper kicked me in the ribs. He chuckled in delight and grabbed the child. I stood groggily and looked all around. My gun was gone, Calvin Cooper was gone, and the child was gone. I saw an open window in the kitchen and popped my head out. Cooper fired down at me from the metal fire escape. He made it onto the roof as I clambered up the fire escape after him. I neared the top and I kept low. I felt in my boot for my backup piece, a compact 9 mm Glock. Ineffectual at a distance but would do the trick if I got close enough. A bullet ricocheted off a nearby parapet. I tucked the gun back into my boot and hurled myself over the low wall in one fluid movement and rolled parachutist-style. I heard and felt bullets hitting the roof near me: luckily Cooper wasn’t much of a shot. I rolled behind a skylight, peered out and saw Cooper and the child near the roof access door.