Chapter 30
Jimmy leaned against his car, watching the kids in bathing suits shuffle past, carrying coolers and boom-boxes as they headed toward the beach. He had parked on the Strand, the street paralleling Hermosa Beach, parked right across from Garrett Walsh's cottage, one of a string of million-dollar shacks built right on the sand, butted up against each other and separated from the street by a narrow alley.
A truck horn beeped at a Rollerblader racing down the Strand, keeping pace with the morning traffic, oblivious in his headphones. A trio of high-school-age girls cut through the alley and started down a beach-access path, their voices high pitched and eager, birdlike. That was the route Heather Grimm would have taken that day. One of the girls was blond like Heather, with a Hawaiian Tropic sun visor and folds of baby fat edging out of her thong. She carried a folding beach chair, stumbling slightly now as she shifted it to the other shoulder, then looked around, afraid that someone had noticed her awkwardness. He wanted to call out to her, remind her that it was Friday and she should be in school. He shook his head. Getting old, Jimmy.
Brimley should be here anytime now. He was back from his fishing trip and probably tired but was making the drive down from Ventura anyway, saying he felt he had promised Jimmy. It was a kind thing to do. Yeah, Sugar was a real angel, always ready to lend a hand-that's what Lashonda had told him as she fielded calls to her psychic hotline. That should have been good enough for Jimmy, but it wasn't. There was just something about an off-duty detective grabbing a disturbance call that bothered him. He hadn't caught Brimley in any lies. The man had told the truth about how he afforded living at the Blue Water Marina: The management did waive half his moorage fees and all his utilities. The boat itself carried a sixty-eight-thousand-dollar mortgage. Maybe Lashonda was right, but yesterday, after turning in his profile of Luis Cortez, Jimmy had driven over to Brimley's former apartment.
The old neighbors said Brimley had kept his TV down and moved his trash cans back off the street as soon as they were emptied, and he liked passing out fish that he had caught. Detective Wonderful. It was only on the drive back to the office that Jimmy realized that Brimley's apartment was north of the Hermosa Beach police station, and Walsh's cottage was south of it. The newspaper accounts of the murder all said Brimley was on his way home when he heard the noise complaint over his radio, said he had been just a few blocks away. So what was Brimley doing in Walsh's neighborhood when the call came in?
"Sorry. I'm late," Brimley said from behind him, hurrying along a the path that cut from Hermosa Avenue to the Strand, flip-flops rustling with every step. The beefy man was wearing shorts and a faded Bimini Tarpon Derby T-shirt. Instead of his field notes, he carried a box of Kreamy Kruller doughnuts, grinning. "Had to stop for supplies. You got to try one."
"No, thanks."
Brimley handed him one anyway, the doughnut the size of a bath sponge. "Go on."
Jimmy took a bite, and warm maple cream squirted into his mouth. It was delicious.
Brimley pulled out a doughnut for himself. "They don't have any Kreamy Kruller stores in Ventura. Probably a good thing too-I'd be the size of a walrus." He glanced at Jimmy's car. "Keep track of your time. The meter maids here got no heart."
Jimmy took another bite. He tried to see Brimley as he was-not as an amiable retiree but as the man who might have helped frame Walsh for murder. Who better to use for a setup than the arresting officer? "How was your fishing trip, Sugar?"
"Didn't catch a thing. Guess they saw me coming." Brimley squinted. "Your mug looks pretty good. You heal quick. That must come in handy in your line of work."
Jimmy darted across the street as the traffic broke, and Brimley humped along after him.
"There it is." Brimley pointed at Walsh's old beach house, a wood-frame cottage with a sagging front porch. "Walsh turned it over to Mrs. Grimm in a civil suit, if I remember right."
"She had to split it with his attorneys. It's been sold and resold since then." Jimmy nodded at the thick bushes circling the house. "Was the hedge that high at the time of the murder?"
"Higher. It was technically a code violation, but we're pretty kick-back around here. Unless there's a complaint."
"So the hedge would have muffled the noise from inside the cottage. Makes me wonder how somebody walking past would have heard anything."
"You and me, we think alike." Brimley licked his fingers. "When nobody stepped forward to take credit for the nine-one-one, I came back here a couple days later, same time as the original call came in. Early evening. Traffic was light. Loud music might have been ignored, but the caller had said there was a woman screaming inside. I stood there, and I figured you could hear that from the sidewalk."
Jimmy started toward the beach, Brimley beside him, the box of doughnuts tucked under one arm, the two of them trudging through the soft sand. Jimmy stopped after a few steps and took off his sneakers, barefoot now. The beach was dotted with groups of people lying on towels, high-schoolers mostly, a few families too. Frisbees arced across the sand. Teenagers paraded along the waterline, toes splashing, checking one another out. A volleyball game was in progress, and a hunky guy was doing a chestplant in the sand trying to get a hard serve. His girlfriend brushed him off as he got back up.
"Pretty, aren't they?" said Brimley. "I don't think I was ever that young."
Jimmy stopped on the surf side of the cottage, trying to see what Heather Grimm had seen that day. The deck extended out from the house about ten feet, surrounded by a waist-high wall.
"That wall is new," said Brimley. "Walsh liked an unobstructed view from the deck. He had a couple of lawn chairs out there, so he could check out the action."
"It would have worked both ways. From the beach you could see right into his place."
"Long as the curtains were open. They were pulled tight when I got there that night." Brimley felt around in the open box. "I made a few phone calls," he said idly, then finally selected a doughnut and looked up at Jimmy. "Turns out you weren't completely honest with me back at my boat. I'm a little hurt."
Jimmy's stomach felt like he was in Danziger's glass elevator again, riding it straight to the bottom.
Brimley took a big bite, red filling oozing onto his chin. "Remember when I said I had read about you, something about you saving a cop's life, and you waved me off, said you were just in the right place at the right time?" He flashed a raspberry grin. "Horsefeathers. You didn't just save a cop's life-you killed a man to do it. Huge fella too, almost three hundred pounds of pure meanness, from what I heard." He put his arm around Jimmy. "I never even fired my weapon in the line of duty. Not once. Only discharged it on the police range, and even then I only managed minimum competency, and here you are saving a cop's life."
The breeze off the ocean kicked up sand. Jimmy looked around, avoiding Brimley's gaze. "These cottages are close together. In your interviews, did anyone mention seeing anyone hanging around Walsh's house that night? Someone who didn't belong there?"
"Like who?" Brimley rooted around in the doughnut box but didn't pick one. "You think someone was checking out the house from the beach? A witness that I missed?" He thought about it. "I guess it's possible, but, I don't know if it matters." He plucked another doughnut out of the box. "We didn't need witnesses. Heck, we hardly needed forensics the way Walsh kept confessing. I read him his rights, and he kept talking anyway. Told me how sorry he was all the whole way to the station."
"I'm not criticizing. I give you a lot of credit. You had just finished a full shift when you heard the dispatcher on your radio. You must have been eager to get home and kick your shoes off. Most cops would have just kept driving. It wasn't your call. So don't worry, Sugar-you're not going to be the bad guy in the piece."
A glob of chocolate cream dripped from the doughnut onto Brimley's T-shirt. "Can you keep a secret?"
"Some of them."
"Heck, a man who saved a cop, I guess I can tell you-just don't put this in your article." Brimley leaned c
loser, his forehead shiny with sweat. "I wasn't on my way home that night. Not directly, anyway. I lived clear on the other side of town in those days, but I used to swing by here first just about every day." He bit into a chocolate doughnut. "It was the Kreamy Krullers. Good, aren't they? Well, the store on Hermosa Avenue was the only one in the area in those days, and I was hooked on the butternut eclairs. Used to grab a half dozen after work, and by the time I got home there wasn't more than one or two left." He patted his ample belly. "Can you imagine the fun people would have had with that if the papers had found out? Cops and doughnut shops-Jay Leno would have been making jokes at my expense for a month."
"That's what you were doing here that night?"
Brimley drew a forefinger to his lips. "Shhhhhhh."
Jimmy felt the ache draining from his shoulder blades. He hadn't realized how tense he was until Brimley's doughnut confession, the explanation offered up without being asked. It was almost always a mistake to like a potential suspect, to want to believe them. He was still glad that Brimley had offered up a rationale for his behavior- and not to make himself look good but to avoid looking foolish.
"What is it, Jimmy?"
"Nothing. I'm just really glad to hear about your love affair with Kreamy Krullers."
Brimley scratched his head. "I'm never going to figure you out."
"If you trust me with that kind of damaging information," said Jimmy, recovering fast, "that means you're probably going to let me see your field notes."
"You never quit."
"Never."
Brimley popped the last of the doughnut into his mouth. "I got my notes in the trunk of my car. Just don't gloat." He closed the lid on the box. "That's all for me. You want to come get the notes? I don't know what else there is do out here except sweat."
"Not just yet." Jimmy scanned the beach. "Take a look around. The girls are all in groups, lying around on their blankets, talking, oiling up, and checking out the boys from behind their sunglasses. That sort of thing never changes. So why was Heather different? Why did she come here alone that day?"
"You asked me that on the boat. I told you I didn't know, and neither did her mama. The way you keep asking makes me think you must know the answer."
"No, I just have the question." Jimmy was tempted to tell Brimley about his conversation with Chase Gooding, tell him about the photographer who cruised teenage beauty contests, and Heather's new agent who hadn't bothered to attend her funeral. He kept quiet though. The good husband wouldn't have killed Heather himself-he would have farmed the job out. Jimmy wondered if the man who had done it had come this way, come in off the beach, a towel draped around his neck. Jimmy took in the whole scene and scanned the shoreline. He wondered how long the man had been out there, imagined him with his nose in a paperback, waiting for the crowd to drift off and the darkness to come. Most of all, he wondered where the man was now.
"You got cop eyes, Jimmy. I mean that as a compliment."
"I take it as a compliment."
"It's a mixed blessing, seeing things clear, noticing what other folks miss." Brimley hunched his broad shoulders, his bare arms burned from the sun. He might love the sun, but the sun didn't love him. "The Heather Grimm homicide was the biggest case of my career, but I wish I had never taken the call. I should have let the uniforms handle it. She was dead already. Wasn't like I did her any good." He shook his head. "Hermosa is a small department, we probably didn't get more than one or two murders a year. I had seen things before, bad things, but nothing like what was in that little house."
Jimmy had only seen photos of the crime scene; they were bad enough.
Brimley shook his head. "I thought it was going to be just another domestic disturbance call. Tell them to keep it down, and I'd go on about my business. Instead, the door opens, and Walsh is standing there holding that stupid gold statue, blood everywhere, everywhere, and lying next to the fireplace-this pretty blond girl with her face caved in. I tried CPR, that's what you're supposed to do, but her teeth were all over the carpet, and the whole time Walsh is crying like he's the one hurt."
"I'm sorry, Sugar."
Brimley's expression hardened. "I'm a gentle person, but it took everything I had that night not to shut him up for good."
"The nine-one-one disturbance call-I haven't been able to get a copy of it."
"I'm not surprised, the way they keep things. Not that it would do you much good anyway. Call came in from the street. Too much traffic noise in the background, if you were hoping to recognize the voice." Brimley started toward the street. "Come on, you can borrow my notes. Maybe they'll do you more good than they did me."
Jimmy kept pace with him as they slogged through the soft sand.
"I think you were pulling my leg back on my boat," said Brimley. "I asked how you found out where I lived, and you said you just handed the job off to someone else, but I bet you didn't. You're a bird dog, that's what you are." He walked slower now, the two of them side by side. "I've known a few cops who were the same way. We'd get a heads-up on a skinny hooker or a car prowler with braids, some description that would fit half of L.A., but by the end of the shift, the bird dog would drag in the bust, acting like it was no big deal. Never could figure out how they did it. Instinct like that-it's a gift."
Jimmy kept walking.
"Me, I never had a gift," said Brimley, a little out of breath now. "I always said the only reason they made me a detective was because I didn't have enough street smarts to stay in uniform. Even so, once I had the bad guys in custody, well, they'd tell me what I needed to know, without me ever having to get nasty in a back room. I hate that rough stuff, smacking a man with a phone book or planting a knee in his privates. That's not police work. Me, I'd settle back in my chair and break out a candy bar, a Baby Ruth maybe or a Butterfingers, and I'd take a nibble, looking across the table at the bad guy. Then suddenly I'd catch myself, apologize for my poor manners, and offer him a bite. Heck, couple of candy bars later, we'd be old friends, and the hardest con would tell me anything I wanted to know."
Jimmy wanted to laugh. The rap was total bullshit. He had seen the look that crossed Brimley's face when he thought no one was looking. Brimley's gift was that he was the good cop and the bad cop all in one, a terrifying combination. No wonder suspects were quick to spill their secrets. Jimmy was just glad he didn't have anything that Brimley wanted.
Chapter 31
"Happy now?" Sugar didn't introduce himself. Old buddies like the two of them didn't need introductions.
Silence on the line.
"I told you not to do anything, didn't I? Let sleeping dogs lie, that's what I said. Now they're up and yapping."
"Who is this?"
"Yeah, okay, this is a wrong number." Smart. At least the man still had his wits about him. "You didn't do the job on your own, I know that much. You always need help. Now I got this fellah showing up at my place unannounced, asking questions. Somebody else to worry about. Somebody else needs quieting down."
"I didn't do anything."
Sugar looked out across the Pacific, the waves the color of blood. " 'Red sky at morning, sailors take warning, red sky at night, sailor's delight.' The question for you, my old friend, is what time is it? Morning or night?"
"Listen carefully. Please. I didn't do-"
"Morning or night?"
"I didn't do anything. I give you my word."
"It was an accident?" said Sugar. "That's what you're telling me?"
"Accidents-accidents do happen. Some men invite misfortune upon themselves…"
Sugar held the phone lightly, watching the sunset. It was his favorite time of day, the stillness filling his chest, quieting his heart.
"The dogs you spoke of-I'm concerned too. I trust you can put them back to sleep?"
On the edge of the horizon, Sugar watched a fishing boat caught in the setting sun, its rigging on fire as it headed home.
"Hello? Are you still there?"
Sugar broke the connection. Let
him worry for a change. Holt winced as the dog's howling undulated up from somewhere below. "I thought you said your building didn't allow pets."
"The kids in two-eleven just got a puppy," said Jimmy, not looking up from the papers spread across the kitchen table. "Looks like a dachshund and collie mix. Wish I had been there for the conception."
Holt shut the window, then sat down beside him. She opened one of Brimley's notebooks. "I still can't believe Brimley loaned you his raw notes."
Jimmy flipped through another one, skimming now. He had to strain to read the handwriting. It was a routine interview of one of Walsh's neighbors, a banker who hadn't heard anything the night Heather Grimm was killed. Hadn't seen anything either. There had been a football game on that evening, and he liked listening with the volume turned way up to catch the crowd noise. Brimley must have been bored with the banker-the margin of the notebook was covered in doodles, rods and reels and sailing ships. A sketch of a hooked marlin wasn't half bad, the marlin leaping in the air, an odd smile on its face. Fisherman humor or cop humor, Jimmy couldn't decide.
Holt chewed her thumbnail as she stared at the page. "Helen Katz. She got into an argument at the ME's office with Dr. Boone. Right in the middle of an autopsy. Helen may be the only person in the world to confront a man holding a stainless-steel blade."
Jimmy looked up.
Holt kept reading. "I didn't get any specifics, just that it was something about his findings in the Walsh case. A cop from Anaheim PD said Boone tried to pull attitude, and Katz came back at him so hard he dropped the liver he was weighing."
"How did this cop know to contact you?" Holt didn't answer, but Jimmy saw her smile anyway. "Thanks, Jane."
"Thank Helen Katz. I think she's got a crush on you."
Jimmy laughed.
Holt tapped the open page with her forefinger. "No wonder Brimley didn't like your suggestion that Heather went to the beach to seduce Walsh. This is his second-no, his third meeting with Mrs. Grimm. She had gotten a visit from Walsh's attorneys the previous day. They were intimating the same thing. Mrs. Grimm was very upset, weeping. Brimley jotted down that she was on medication. Tranquilizers." She squinted at the page, tilted it slightly. "Looks like Valium."
Scavenger hunt Page 19
