by Connie Dial
Being in a patrol car had been one of the most enjoyable times she’d had during her career. She missed the simplicity of driving out of the station every night with her partner and looking for trouble, police work in its purest form—every day different, every radio call possibly the most important event in another person’s life or the last precious moments of your own. Patrol was sporadic doses of adrenaline or boredom frequently mixed with mind-numbing fear. A person got tested, courage and ability measured every day. Maybe that’s what really bothered Josie about Bright. By all accounts, he’d failed the test but still got rewarded.
Behan had them back at Hollywood station by late afternoon. He’d stopped talking about the rich widow and was thinking about the Dennis homicide again. Josie had flipped through the pages of the binder as Behan drove, and was disappointed to discover the RHD detectives had already interviewed Cory Goldman at his home with his father and an attorney present. The interview had revealed no new information and basically Cory repeated the same scenario David had given her the night before. He claimed he wasn’t at the party and hadn’t seen Hillary for weeks, and was in fact trying to avoid her and her crazy mother. Cory described Hillary’s mother as a “religious crackpot” who had driven Hillary from her house with her constant ravings. There was a recent photo of the young man. He could’ve been handsome, but had pierced both ears and one nostril, shaved his head and had extensive tattoos on his neck and arms. It was difficult for Josie to believe this guy and her David were friends. In a lot of ways her son was conservative by today’s standards. He hadn’t done anything that caused permanent damage to his body and dressed like a flower child.
“So, what’s your game plan,” Josie asked Behan as they entered the back door of Hollywood station.
“Interview Fricke’s snitch and the other wits from the party,” he said, taking the binder from her.
“Captain, Red, where you been?” Fricke shouted at them from down the corridor near the division’s jail. “We been waiting.” He grinned and pointed at the closest holding cell.
Behan ordered Fricke to take the snitch back to the detectives’ interview room, and he’d be there in a few minutes. He waited until they were in her office, then asked Josie how she wanted to handle the investigation.
“The same way you handle all your investigations . . . ignore Ibarra and pester me,” Josie said.
“You know Bright will talk to Ibarra, and the little kiss-ass is gonna wanna run everything I do by the bureau first.”
They were standing just inside her office. Josie gently pushed the door closed with her foot.
“We’ll do what Chief Bright told us to do,” she said. “He’s the boss and it’s his investigation now, but everything goes through me first, same as always. Ibarra’s your boss. I’ll make him the official liaison between Hollywood and the bureau,” she said, thinking that would keep him preoccupied and out of everybody’s hair.
“What a fucking disaster,” Behan said.
“Do the best you can. You’ll make it work like you always do.” She tried to sound positive, but knew with Bright’s oversight and Ibarra’s ineptitude the case was destined to become a fucking mess, just like Behan said.
Behan reached for the door when the adjutant knocked from the other side, then pushed it open almost hitting the big detective.
“Sorry,” Sergeant Jones said, moving his stocky frame away from Behan. “Thought you’d want to know. Footbeat called in a dead body in an alley off the boulevard.”
“Homeless?” Josie asked. She knew street people were always overdosing and dying in those alleys off Hollywood Boulevard.
“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “She had ID. It’s Misty Skylar.”
“Fuck.” Behan mumbled.
“Another movie star?” Josie asked. She’d have to start using some of those amc gift cards gathering dust in her desk.
“Hillary’s agent,” Behan said on his way out. He told Fricke to put his snitch back in the holding cell while he tracked down a team of detectives to send to the alley.
“You want to go out there with me?” he asked Josie, who’d followed him back to the homicide table. She had a stack of work waiting on her desk and wasn’t interested until Behan reminded her that Misty Skylar had been at the Hollywood Hills party house with Hillary the night she was killed. It was too much of a coincidence even for the Hollywood crowd.
Lieutenant Ibarra was already on the scene when they arrived and was interviewing a pretty older woman in a revealing waitress uniform. The dead body had been discovered outside the back door of the bar where the waitress worked. Yellow police tape sealed the only entrance to the alley, and two uniformed officers stood in front of that flimsy barrier to keep curious pedestrians and the media from trampling the crime scene.
Josie couldn’t see the body until she passed the dumpster. Misty Skylar was propped against the wall between the dumpster and a pile of trash. She was wearing an expensive-looking black strapless cocktail dress, her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, and her arms folded against her chest. Her feet were bare but clean. Her head was back as if she was staring at the stars, though her star-gazing days were definitely over.
Josie moved around the body, careful not to touch or step on anything, and glanced at the face. The eyes were swollen shut and blood was caked under the victim’s nose and both ears. The spot where Misty’s mouth should have been was a black hole. The flesh around it burned or shredded. The wall behind her was covered with blood, pieces of cartilage, teeth and brain matter. A highcaliber explosion had gone off in the woman’s mouth.
“Too much blood and debris above her head,” Behan said, examining the gruesome mosaic on the wall. “She wasn’t in that position when the gun discharged in her mouth.”
“The body was staged,” Josie said and asked, “How old is she?” Misty had a young woman’s figure, but Josie noticed that the skin on the arms wasn’t firm and the manicured hands had a few age spots.
“Fifty-four,” Behan said.
“Found the shoes and her purse with ID and money in the dumpster,” Ibarra said, leaving the waitress with one of Behan’s detectives. “Megan’s a pretty good wit,” he added pointing at the waitress. “She remembers Skylar was in the bar last night, but barely drank anything.”
“Was she alone?” Josie asked.
“No, she was with some guy, but Megan didn’t get a good look at him. They left around midnight with another guy she can’t ID either.”
“Who does that belong to?” Josie asked, pointing at a large box with a dirty blanket thrown over the top, tucked in a corner at the back of the alley. She guessed from his blank expression Ibarra didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, so she added, “Looks like some homeless person is sleeping there, probably gets handouts from the bar. Does this Megan know who it is?”
Ibarra looked confused. “I don’t know. We’ll have to ask her.”
She wanted to say something like, “No shit?” but didn’t. Officers and detectives were milling around and always listening. Josie wouldn’t undermine her lieutenant. Though most of his subordinates didn’t have a high opinion of Ibarra, she wouldn’t contribute to his poor reputation while he worked for her.
An hour and a half later, Behan left his detectives in the alley and drove Josie back to the station.
“What do you think?” she asked, as he merged into heavy traffic on the boulevard.
“Ibarra’s an idiot.”
“About the homicide.”
“Somebody stuck a very big gun in her mouth and blew her brains out and then arranged her body like she was lounging at home watching TV. It wasn’t a robbery. Her cash and credit cards were in the trash and that diamond ring on her finger looks real, so I’ve pretty much eliminated the homeless guy as a good suspect unless he’s just a sicko who enjoys killing.” He was quiet a few seconds and then asked, “Don’t you think it’s odd the killer shot her in the mouth?”
“Why, is ther
e a better place to shoot her?”
“It looks like somebody got her out of the bar to kill her. So, why risk her screaming for help or fighting. Why not shoot her in the back of the head?”
“Maybe the killer needed to talk to her first.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“You interview the waitress?”
“She knows the bum as Mitch, says she slips him a bottle of beer once a night. The footbeat cops say they’ve booked him a couple of times. He’s a drunk and his real name is Roy Mitchell,” Behan said.
“Did she see him last night?”
“Nope, hasn’t seen him since the night before last.”
“That doesn’t bode well for Mr. Mitch.”
JOSIE RETURNED half a dozen phone calls and cut her stack of papers down to a manageable number before Behan was ready to interview Fricke’s snitch.
She sat in the room adjacent to the interview room and could see and hear everything on a video feed. Sara Jean Dupont or “Mouse” as she was known on the street was a short, skinny woman with little studs piercing her nose and near her right eyebrow. Tattoos decorated both arms and her right leg had a vine-like tattoo from her ankle to the top of her cut-off Levi’s. Her long hair was dyed blond.
She waited patiently with her legs crossed until Behan entered the room. As soon as he sat across the table from her, Mouse smiled, and Josie thought she might’ve been a very attractive girl without all the permanent bodywork.
After the preliminary information was put on record, Behan got to the substantive questions. Mouse claimed she had encountered Hillary Dennis at the Oasis Club in Hollywood and had introduced the movie star to a guy she knew only as Little Joe, an unemployed musician and part-time pimp, who dealt a little heroin on the side. She claimed Hillary kept pestering her until she agreed to introduce her to the dealer.
“Like I told Officer Fricke, Hilly don’t come round much the last few weeks, so I figure she got connected somewheres else,” Mouse said. She spoke barely above a whisper and very slow.
“Did Hillary have problems with Little Joe or anyone you know about?” Behan asked.
“Hilly pays up front, so I don’t believe so. . . .” Mouse hesitated as if she were remembering something and deciding whether or not she should speak. She looked around the room. “Is anybody besides you hearing me?”
“No, absolutely not,” Behan lied.
Josie turned up the volume. She could barely understand the little woman.
“She told me once . . . there was this Hollywood cop that hassled her some when he catched her coming outta the Palms. She weren’t worried. She had the junk hid up her pussy but he give her a hard time.”
“Did he know who she was?”
“Oh yeah, he messed with her a couple a times. She says they got to some kinda understanding. If you know what I mean,” she said, almost whispering, and winked at Behan.
“Did she say who the cop was or mention anything else about him?”
“No,” Mouse said.
Behan looked up at the hidden camera and mouthed the word, “Fuck.”
Josie turned down the volume, sat back and knew it was always foolish to think things couldn’t get worse.
FOUR
Without dates and times, it was nearly impossible to find out which cop had stopped Hillary Dennis. To make things even more difficult, Mouse didn’t know if the officer was in uniform or plainclothes, and it was impossible to know if he was a real or fake police officer or if Mouse was making up the whole thing. The list of possible suspects had to include Donnie Fricke since the Palms was his favorite and frequent target, but Josie wasn’t ready to believe Fricke would or could do what Mouse described.
Behan was willing to keep an open mind and although he liked Fricke, told Josie he’d seen better cops do worse and anything was possible. Just the idea one of her officers might be involved in a homicide left Josie feeling sick.
She went back to her office but couldn’t concentrate on routine tasks. She threw a stack of unsigned papers in her desk drawer and locked it. It was only seven p.m. but there weren’t any community meetings on her calendar tonight so she was done. An early dinner, a long luxurious bath and a good night’s sleep were the only plans she had until Jake called. The phone rang just as she was about to leave. He wanted to meet at a little bar in Old Town Pasadena. From the sound of his voice he’d been there a while.
The prospect of sitting in a bar with her husband—who hadn’t been home all night and had fortified his courage with alcohol—wasn’t appealing, but Josie knew they had to talk. Jake was a good man, but he wasn’t content with his life and was making hers miserable too. She was already feeling so shitty it was probably the perfect time to do this. Why ruin a good day.
The Carriage Inn was on a one-way street, three long blocks from their house. It was in a refurbished brick building with a copper-plated oversized door and green shuttered windows. It had a hand-carved mahogany bar with a black marble surface scratched and stained from nearly fifty years of service. Jake enjoyed drinking there. Although the place was small, dark, and barely surviving on a handful of locals, Josie didn’t mind—it was the perfect place for a family dispute.
Parking space was nearly nonexistent in that part of Old Town, so she decided to leave her car at home and walk to the bar. The Porsche was in the driveway, so Jake was on foot too. The late summer evenings were getting cooler. It would be a pleasant walk, a way to release some of the tension that had been building all day. She changed into a nice pair of jeans, her comfortable boots, a clean shirt and jacket to cover her .45. Maybe this wasn’t such a terrible idea.
Josie found her husband in one of the tight straight-backed wooden booths. The bartender Stu, an older man with closecropped, dyed black hair and a large diamond stud in his left ear, was talking to two skinny young women, the only other patrons. Stu waved at Josie, and she nodded at the bottle of red wine he held up. Jake had his suit jacket folded on the seat beside him and was sipping something that looked like scotch.
“You came,” he said, smiling with a confused half-grin that meant he probably didn’t remember exactly why he’d called her.
“Are we celebrating something?” she asked, sliding into the booth across from him. “Like you coming home,” she added barely above a whisper.
“Are you happy?” he asked, after a long silence, ignoring or missing her sarcasm.
“Mostly, how about you?”
“I don’t think so.”
He said it so casually Josie didn’t know how to respond. She suddenly had a strong desire to go home. Something bad was about to happen.
The bartender brought Jake another drink and put a large goblet of red wine in front of her. She didn’t ask what it was, took a big swallow and then sat back and waited. He stared at his fresh drink but didn’t touch it. His hair needed combing, and he hadn’t shaved. There were a few tiny red spots on his right sleeve. Spaghetti sauce, she thought. So, he hadn’t changed his clothes since yesterday.
“What’s going on with you?” she asked. “If you wanna work with Bob Steiner then quit the D.A. and do it,” and just stop pissing and moaning about it, she thought.
He glanced up at her. “You don’t care?”
“Of course I care, Jake, but you made the decision, so what’s the problem?”
“I’m not happy.”
Josie exhaled and leaned on the table. She loved her husband. Usually, he made her happy, at times angry, but at this particular moment he was really annoying her.
“Why?” she asked, attempting to control that touch of sarcasm she’d been told slipped into her voice when they argued.
“Maybe I need a change,” he said, not looking at her.
“Because?” she asked, in a tone she usually reserved for one of her denser police probationers.
“I don’t know how to explain . . . it’s a feeling, a big empty space in my gut. You know I really care for you and David, but something’s not right with my life. I d
on’t want to hurt you . . . it’s not your fault. It’s me, my problem.”
He was slurring his words a little and trying to organize his unruly thoughts, but she immediately picked up on the phrase “care for you” instead of love you.
Finally, when she couldn’t listen to the illogical rambling anymore, she interrupted and said, “It’s not that difficult; just tell me what’s bothering you.”
“I’m not happy,” he repeated as if she didn’t get it the first time.
“With me,” she said, firmly. One of them had to say it.
“No, no,” he protested. “You’re a great wife and mother. . . .”
“Bullshit,” she interrupted. “I’m never home. I hardly ever cook or clean. We can’t enjoy a movie or dinner without my lieutenant calling me about a dead body or officer-involved shooting. David’s a mess. He’s practically raised himself . . . badly.” She stopped. He wasn’t disagreeing with her. “This is my job. We’ve lived this way for twenty-two years. I haven’t changed. I still love you.” She knew she should shut up now, but couldn’t stop herself from saying it. “Be man enough to tell me if you don’t feel the same way.”
He straightened his back just slightly, and she knew she’d hit the testosterone target dead center. Working around mostly men for so many years, she’d discovered the one certain way to get a guy’s attention was to question his manhood.
“I need some time by myself.”
Josie finished the glass of wine. “I’m tired,” she said. She wasn’t, but wanted to go home. If they were going to have a real conversation, she needed him sober enough to figure out what he wanted to say and then remember he said it. Also, it was important to look in his eyes, but he was carefully avoiding that. Jake wasn’t a good liar. They both knew it. She figured that’s why he wasn’t telling her anything. A lie wouldn’t work, and the truth might hurt. In her experience, the statement “I need some time by myself” was a euphemism for, “I want to try somebody else. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll be back.” She got up to leave, and he didn’t move to stop her.
