‘This morning.’
‘This morning? I’m at work.’
‘Make up something. You feel sick. Your kid is ill. It’s that time of the month. I don’t fucking care, just do it.’ He hung up without waiting for an answer. She’d do it. She had no choice. Nobody defied him.
He needed to find Ellie. She needed to die. And it needed to look like she killed herself out of anguish or guilt or some other plausible excuse. Guilt was winning by a nose.
The dot on the screen had turned from green to grey at the Venice Fish Pier. She had no car. The old one had been found in the Farmer’s Market parking lot that morning, and the new one was in her parking garage. Everyone knew it. So she was on foot. ‘Her legs are long, but she can’t make up that much distance.’
He checked his appearance in the hall mirror by the front door. He thought he looked fine. The sheen of sweat, the pallor of his skin and the dilated pupils didn’t register. ‘Looking good, man.’ He popped another pill, dry swallowed it and left for her rendezvous with death. ‘Grandiose. At all times. The dominos are teetering.’
Perkins looked up from his notes. ‘Could you spell your name please?’
‘I-n-d-r-a-n-i G-u-p-t-a. Indrani Gupta. It’s not difficult, Sergeant.’
‘And could you tell me again what you saw?’
‘It’s the same thing I said on the phone.’
‘Ma’am, I didn’t hear the recording. I’d like to hear it from you, now.’
‘Where do you want me to start?’
‘Why were you in the neighborhood? Your address is on the other side of the Valley.’
‘I was visiting a friend. She lives a block over. I was walking to the bus stop.’
‘So you walked past this address?’ He slid a paper with Bart Sweeney’s address on it across the desk.
‘Yeah, I would have.’
‘And when you were near that address, what did you see?’
‘A tall woman with long blonde hair was leaving the house. She got in a new VW Beetle and drove off in a hurry.’
Perkins placed a sheet of paper on his desk. There were six photos on it. ‘Can you pick out the person you saw leaving the house?’
Indrani took a quick look and pointed at Ellie’s photo. ‘Her. No question.’
Perkins made a mark on the paper. ‘And what time was this?’
‘I was going to catch the 8:30 bus, so somewhere near 8:15.’
‘We’re going to need you to testify in court.’
Indrani swallowed and shifted in her seat. ‘That will be necessary? Can I can sign an affidavit or something instead?’
Perkins shook his head. ‘You’re going to need to be in the courtroom, I’m afraid. You’re the linchpin of our case. It’s all circumstantial otherwise. But you putting her at the scene clinches it.’
‘Really? Oh.’ She stood to leave.
‘No, not yet. Please sit down Miss Gupta. I’ve got a couple of more questions.’
She sat, and took a deep breath. ‘Yes?’
‘Why now?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You left the anonymous tip yesterday. Most people would leave it at that. But you decided to come in today to retell your story. Why?’
‘It seemed unfair he should be released from jail and then killed by the person who fabricated the evidence to put him in there in the first place. I couldn’t let it happen.’
‘So you know Mr. Sweeney?’
Indrani pulled the cuffs of her sleeves down to her palms absent-mindedly as she talked. ‘Oh, no. I never knew the guy. I heard about him though. He came up with that Blood Thunder movie, then that Ellie girl framed him for murder and killed him after he was acquitted.’
‘He wasn’t acquitted. His lawyer got him released on a technicality. He really did kill that young man and there was enough evidence to convict him. Unfortunately for us, and fortunately for him, he had a very liberal judge who believe the stream of crap fed to him by Sweeney’s lawyer. If hadn’t been killed we’d be in the middle of appealing his release.’ He closed the file and stood. ‘Thanks for your time. I’ve got your contact details. We’ll be in touch in the lead up to the trial if we need you.’
The Killer. He liked the sound of that. He leaned on the horn to stave off a squeegee-ing at the corner. ‘“The Killer”. I should get it tattooed on my wrist. Ironically. The best place to hide is right in front of the people looking for you. Ellie’s a smart cat. Who would think she’d go back to Venice? The cops are probably scouring the Valley for her. They’ll find her when I want them to find her. She’ll be floating facedown in the LA River.’ He downshifted. ‘But she’s got to suffer as bad as I did.’ He squinted, believing himself to be channeling Eastwood. ‘If only I could figure out how to make her suffer as long as I have.’
He parked in a public lot at the north end of Venice and started strolling up the boardwalk toward the fishing pier. No way she’d still be there, but it was a place to start. He was getting distracted. The bikinis and the roller skates and the tight asses and the...he took a deep breath.
He pivoted and walked backwards watching a bikini bottom skate away from him. He licked his lips. ‘I should come down here more often.’ He sucked air through his teeth. ‘You, my sweet cheeks, will live.’ He turned back around and continued to walk, trying to pick out a tall blonde in the crowd of tall blondes. ‘Fuck. Like looking for a particular tree in the fucking forest. Tempted to cut down the entire lot of them.’
He sidestepped a panhandler and spit at his feet. ‘Get fucked, butt-wad.’ He shook his head. ‘Not worth the effort.’ He leaned down and looked the man in the eye. ‘You’re a lucky son of a bitch, you know that?’
The colors were bright and the sun hot. The skate park was full of kids. More BMX bikes than boards in the skate park today. He got in the face of a boy on a bike. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school, punk?’
The kid rolled up the inside of the bowl. ‘Fuck off asshole or I’ll fucking smash you.’
The Killer’s hand snapped out and grabbed the kid’s front wheel as it stopped on the upswing. The kid fell backwards, smashing the back of his head. He slid to the bottom, trailing a streak of blood.
He hopped in the bowl after his victim. ‘Smash me? You’re going to fucking smash me?’ He kick the prone kid in the ribs. ‘Get up ass-hat.’
He leaned over the prone body and grabbed him by the hair and lifted. ‘I said get up so I can knock you down again.’ He pulled hard, removing clumps of hair as the mostly stoned kid tried to get to his feet.
‘What the fuck man? What did I do to you?’
The Killer looked at his victim’s friends, standing around the edge of the bowl watching. ‘Your friends are pussies. You’re all pussies.’ He grabbed the kid by the throat and punched him hard in the face. The impact jarred loose his grip on his neck and the kid dropped like a rag.
That roused the other three who came at him in unison.
‘Oh, goody. A fight.’ He held up his hands and said, ‘Whoa, stop, stop, stop. There’s three of you and one of me. Not a really fair fight. You want to go get some more guys?’ He laughed at the look on their faces. ‘“More guys”. See what I did? Said it wasn’t fair and you’d assume I meant because I was outnumbered, but it’s because,’ he lashed out and punched the closest one in the throat, ‘you’re going to need more people if you think you’ve got even half a chance of coming out of this unscathed.’
The remaining two attacked at the same time, from either side, trying to double-team him. He laughed and elbowed the first one in the jaw and followed through with a punch to the other’s solar plexus, doubling him over.
He stood and looked at the four, three down and one struggling for air, and laughed. ‘I can not be defeated. By anyone.’
The one skater still standing took a swing at him. He shrugged off the feeble attack, elbowing the young skater in the head. He looked around. The crowd was thick. There were dozens of witnesses, iPhones and smart phones capturing
video of the event. ‘Fuck off the lot of you. He asked for it.’ He flipped them the bird and ran down one of the side alleys.
‘Well, that was fun.’ Adrenaline coursed through his veins. He looked back at the scene he left. The crowd was still focused on the mess in the skate park bowl. Sirens were approaching, ambulance and police. ‘Time to be elsewhere.’ He rolled his shoulders and flexed his hands. ‘That felt great.’ He stretched out his neck. ‘Now where’s that bitch?’ He turned another corner and used the app on his phone to log into her account and selected ‘find my mobile’. After a minute of searching the application reported that the phone was offline.
‘Shit. The fucking thing is still off.’
Emily held a napkin to the young man’s head. ‘Henry, get me some ice.’ She patted the young man on the back and pulled her hand back as she winced. ‘Sorry. You’ll be fine. The ambulance is not far away. Did you know that man? Why did he do this?’ She took the ice from her husband, wrapped the cloth around it and held it to the young man’s head.
He winced. ‘Some bat-shit crazy dude I’ve never seen before. What the hell was his problem?’
‘He seemed crazed.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I mean by bat-shit crazy. He took out four of us. Dude’s doped up. And he’s not even that big.’ He looked up at Emily. ‘Did you see it?’
She shook her head. ‘I was in the kitchen. I heard the ruckus, but by the time I came out he was just leaving, hightailing it down the lane.’
‘So you saw him? You could identify him?’
‘There were enough videos of the fight. I’m sure the police will be able to identify him. Do you have anyone you should call?’
‘Nah. I’m good. My folks are going to kill me as it is.’
A pair of medics took over from Emily. She walked back to the entrance of the cafe shaken and concerned. ’Henry, it didn’t used to be like this.’
He shook his head. ‘This wasn’t normal. I’ve seen the odd push and shove in the park, and an occasional mugging, but that, that was psycho. Is the boy all right?’
‘He seemed lucid. No blurred vision. He wanted to leave. I think he should be in school and is in for a bit of trouble at home.’
‘Parents who don’t know where their kids are, are probably too thick to notice the young man has a gash on his head. He was the worse, right?’
‘Bumps and bruises for the rest. Surprised four of them couldn’t defend themselves against a single attacker. They were big kids.’
Henry smiled. ‘I didn’t see it, but I can guess. These kids in the park are more likely to smoke weed than anything else. Fighting is the last thing they would want to do.’ He hugged his wife. ‘Relax. You’re tense. The guy is gone. I don’t think we’ll see him again.’
She looked up at him. ‘You didn’t get a look at him, did you?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I didn’t see him from the front, just the back, but I got the feeling I knew him from somewhere.’
Chapter Fifteen
I was getting too hot. A couple of people had glanced at me over the past couple of hours like they thought they knew me. I disguised my hair, had picked up a horribly-priced pair of sunglasses from one of the carts along the boardwalk and had my hat pulled down low. But I couldn’t disguise my height.
I had turned my phone off to conserve battery about half an hour after talking to Kent. Marty would be wondering about me. What in the hell was I going to do? Someone else killed - killed - Bart and I needed to figure out who. I needed to exploit Kent’s friend on the inside. If I knew what the police knew, I could better understand why they found the case so compelling. Kent said he was going to call at noon. My source of time was the thing I had turned off. I went up to a hot dog vendor and ordered a dog and a drink.
‘Buddy, have you got the time?’
He glanced at the sun. ‘About noon.’
‘You don’t have a watch?’
‘Sure do. It says about noon too. You want sauerkraut on this?’
‘No, that’s good.’ I paid him and took my not A-list food to the beach wall and sat looking at the ocean. Still hiding in plain sight. Like a tree. I turned on my phone and waited for the flood of text messages imploring me to turn myself in.
The first one through was from a number I didn’t recognize.
“Your running, but your not hiding very well. We’ll find U”
Hard to take a threat seriously when they can’t distinguish “your” from “you’re”.
There were two more from Marty, each more desperate than the previous. One from Cathy telling me to call her and that she’d help and one from her asshole boyfriend Bernie. I didn’t bother reading that one.
Cathy would help. Of that I had no doubt. We hadn’t talked much, but she had my back 100% when Sweeney was trying to kill me a year and a half ago. I was stupid. If I’d pressed those charges, instead of just going for the case of Joel’s murder, he’d still be in jail, I wouldn’t be on the run, and I’d be having lunch right now with Favreau and Tom Hanks. A lunch a hell of a lot better than this.
Someone sat beside me. I avoided looking over in case they recognized me.
Wasn’t necessary. It was Danny.
‘Hey, Elle. What’s shaking?’
‘Jesus, mate. Lower your voice, okay? I’m on the lam, remember?’
‘Sure do. That’s why I’m sitting beside you. Nothing sticks out more than a beautiful girl eating alone. That stuff you’re eating will kill you, you know that, right?’
‘We all die, Danny.’
‘Only crazy people want to accelerate the process.’
‘Maybe I’m crazy.’
He laughed and shook his head. ‘No one in this entire fucking city is saner. Hey, did you see the new thing I put in my gig?’
I shook my head. ‘Been kinda distracted. What is it?’
‘I’ve got this new puppy. A gorgeous black lab. I call him Damien which is funny because he’s the sweetest, cuddliest animal you’ve ever met. So I hold him up and show the audience, walking around and letting the kiddies pet him. And some of the hot girls because, hey, guys and puppies, right? And then when I reach in my bag of tricks to pull out the bowling ball, I swap him for a very real looking stuffed dog. Nobody ever notices the switch because, you know, I’m fucking amazing. Then I juggle the puppy, bowling ball and running chainsaw and the crowd absolutely looses it. I finish by picking out a middle-aged woman and throwing the puppy at her. More than one think it’s dead. I have had to pull the real deal out of the bag a couple of times now to stop a riot.’ He laughed. ‘Brilliant, no?’
I groaned and shook my head. ‘You’re going to get arrested one of these days. The bag big enough for the puppy?’
‘It is for now. This will only work for the next couple of months and then he’s going to be too big. He loves it in there, though.’ He shifted on the wall, moving a smidgen closer. ‘So, I’ve got to get going back and earn some coin. What are you doing for the rest of the day, besides keeping your gorgeous head down?’
‘I’m waiting for a call from that friend who has a friend in the police department in the Valley. He’s trying to find out as much about the case as he can. If I know as much as the cops do, then maybe I can figure out why they’re so damned intent on only looking at me for this.’
‘You trust him?’
‘We worked together before and both of us suffered under Sweeney. He’s a fellow Australian I’ve known for years.’
‘You didn’t answer the question.’
I thought about Kent. All he’d been through, still acting where he could and doing the best he could, and nodded. ‘Yeah, I do.’
‘Okay then. Have your phone call and come and see my puppy act.’ He reached over and gave me a side-to-side, brother type hug, hopped off the wall and wandered back to his setup.
And on cue, my phone rang. But it wasn’t Kent.
‘Hey, Charlie. I can’t talk. I’m expecting a call.’
‘What?
Where are you?’
‘Seriously Charlie. I’m in the wild with no charger and limited talk time. I’ve got to go.’ I terminated the call and impatiently kicked at the wall with my heels, waiting for Kent.
The time on my phone was 12:17 when it rang.
‘Ellie?’
‘Kent, did you find out what I asked?’
‘Wow. You charging that thing somewhere? I’ve got a ton of news.’
‘No, I turned off all the non-phone stuff. No Wi-Fi, location services, even turned off the mobile data. Voice only. And then I turned it off after I talked to you last. So give it up. What did you find out?’
‘Stevie works in the homicide department as a records clerk. She’s a good friend. I know what she tells me is true. And it doesn’t look good.’
I slid off the wall and sat in the sand, leaning back against it. ‘Tell me.’
‘Apparently Perkins is very conscious about the mistake he made with Joel’s death, thinking it was a suicide when it wasn’t. They discounted the suicide angle very quickly. They have your gun. You had a gun?’
‘I’ve never had to really use it. It’s more of a security blanket.’
‘Well they have it now, and ballistics match it to the bullet in Sweeney’s head.’
‘So someone stole my gun.’
‘There’s also the earring, a couple strands of long blonde hair and a witness who saw you leaving Bart’s place the night he was killed.’
‘No.’ I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall. ‘Not possible. I was here. I was home.’
‘You’re home now? Are you crazy?’
‘No, I’m not home now.’ I chewed my lip. ‘Tell me about the witness.’
‘An Indian lady visiting a friend walked past the house on the way to the bus stop and saw you. She picked you out of a photo line-up.’
‘She’s mistaken. My face is on half the billboards in town. Of course she picked me out. Casino Indian or Dell tech support Indian?’
‘Dell.’
‘Okay. We all look alike, right?’
G'Day USA Page 12
