Watch Him Die

by Craig Robertson

  ‘You’re a natural poet, sir.’

  ‘I knew I had to be good at something. You hear me though, right?’

  She hesitated but had nowhere else to go. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Rachel, take a bit of advice from a bitter old man. When they offer you DCI, think about it carefully, then take it. Then a few years later when they offer you Superintendent, think about it, then politely tell them to ram it. Unless you’re within a year of your pension, in which case think of the money and your grandkids. Otherwise it’s a pain in the arse and not the job you’re good at or meant to be doing. You’re good at what you do. Go do it.’

  CHAPTER 6

  Ethan Garland’s next of kin was listed as his wife. Ex-wife, to be more accurate. He and Marianne Ziegler had been divorced for five years, separated for two more, but he’d still listed her as his go-to in emergencies. And emergencies didn’t get much bigger than death.

  Salgado and O’Neill quickly learned that she’d moved out to Thousand Oaks, forty miles west of downtown LA. She was a teacher in a local grade school and her address was listed as Brossard Drive. The detectives were having to wait for DNA results to come back on the body parts and for Kurt Geisler, the best of their tech guys, to work his magic on the computer in Finley Street. That meant they had time for a drive.

  Marianne had reverted to her maiden name, seemingly having dropped the Garland tag as soon as she possibly could, which didn’t sit well with the idea that they might still be on close terms. Records showed she’d moved to Thousand Oaks in 2012, previous known address the marital home in Los Feliz. Despite being just forty miles from the city, her new home was a torturous hour-plus drive along Highway 101. For better or worse, it gave them time to talk.

  The two of them had worked together for three years and usually rubbed along pretty well. O’Neill was the brains of the partnership, logical and clear-headed, they both knew that. She was considered where he was impulsive, calm where he’d rage. Salgado worked on instinct, trusted his gut and his partner. More often than not, both were right.

  She was originally from the East Coast, about sixty miles from Boston, moving to the Golden State to go to college and staying. He’d occasionally rib her when her old accent resurfaced, usually in a few vowels when she was angry or drunk. Not that either happened often.

  Salgado was an Angeleno from Boyle Heights and got a nosebleed if he went west of La Cienega. Son of a cop who was the son of an immigrant. Being a cop was an inevitability for him, he’d known it since the day he first watched his old man pull on his uniform and broke his mom’s heart by telling her he’d be doing the same. She’d done her best to talk him into studying law but he’d never had either the smarts or the stomach for being on that side of it. It was always going to be ‘the job’. No one was more surprised than him when he ended up in a suit, but he liked it. Hell, he loved it.

  She had a partner, an architect named Ash, who she didn’t talk about much, and he’d learned to stop asking. He had a wife and two daughters and talked about them non-stop.

  *

  ‘Cally, you know that if we don’t tie this up soon then we’re going to get heat to drop it, right? The guy’s dead and the DA’s office isn’t going to win any prizes for prosecuting a corpse.’

  She shook her head from the driver’s seat. ‘You don’t believe that dropping this is right any more than I do.’

  ‘Hell no, I don’t. My gut tells me there’s something big here and I want us to have a part of it. But other people might see it differently and you know that too.’

  She didn’t reply for a full five minutes but he could hear her thinking as she steered them towards Thousand Oaks.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about my first DB?’ she asked. He knew she was talking as if the intervening gap had never existed.

  ‘Just my second day on the job working out of Metro and we got a call to an apartment off Beverly Boulevard. Neighbours called the cops because of a bad smell coming from the place. We break the door down and sure enough there’s a decomposing corpse. A young woman named Sara Zamorano.

  ‘She had a broken neck and had been lying there on her bedroom floor for maybe a month. There was no sign of a break-in, the body was obviously in bad shape, but it was screaming out foul play to me. She was young, late twenties, no reason she’d have fallen, nothing for her to have tripped over. My partner said accidental causes, straight off the bat. Everything that happened after that, he used to back up his thinking.

  ‘He was a guy named Jack Megson. In his forties, paunchy, jaundiced, misogynist, casual racist, quick to go for his nightstick, but hey, he loved his mother. You know the type. We had to do door to door in the building and Megson made every interview go the same way. No one heard anything, no one thought anyone would harm Sara, no one had any reason to think it wasn’t a terrible accident.

  ‘It wasn’t that Megson didn’t want to work the case, not that he didn’t care exactly, more that he didn’t care enough. More that he wasn’t remotely fucking moved by any of it. He was just pissed that it meant paperwork and he didn’t need there to be any more. She was dead, right? Nothing would change that, right?

  ‘And nothing did. No thanks to Jack Megson, no thanks to me. So, I made two promises to myself. First, that I’d never forget Sara Zamorano. And I haven’t. There’s not a week goes by that something doesn’t remind me of her and that apartment. Second, that the day I became like Megson would be the day I quit. That if I stopped caring, if all I worried about was paperwork, if all the bodies became the same then I’d be out.’

  They drove in a silence for a full minute before Salgado replied.

  ‘Do you remember every victim on every case you’ve been called to?’

  She considered it. ‘No. But I remember that they were all different and I remember that I cared every single time.’

  *

  Thousand Oaks wasn’t just an hour’s drive from LA, it was also a world away. For a start, whoever named the place couldn’t count. There were far more than a thousand of the trees. It was an oasis of rolling hills, close to both beaches and mountains, without quite the scalding heat of the deserts and the valleys. There were wide boulevards and an absence of high-rises. It was LA’s wet dream, but not all the Angelinos voiced approval.

  ‘What’s with all the space and white people?’ Salgado complained as they hit downtown. ‘And the sky. How can they have so much sky? And it’s far too quiet.’

  ‘Fourth safest city in America,’ she reminded him.

  ‘This ain’t a proper city. And if it is, it’s the fourth dullest. We’d be out of a job in a month. Give me bangers and drive-bys any day of the week.’

  ‘Yeah? Careful what you wish for, Salgado. I get the feeling we’re going to have all the bad shit we can handle.’

  They both fell silent for a while at that, both tasting the truth of it.

  Brossard was just a couple of minutes north of Thousand Oaks Boulevard, pretty one and two-storey properties, many with lawns and yards that would cost a film star’s divorce in the city.

  ‘This is some pricey real estate for a schoolteacher, ain’t it?’ Salgado questioned.

  ‘Looks that way. We’re not talking LA prices, but some of these got to be three quarters of a million for sure.’

  It turned out the answer was in the address. The half added to the number indicated not the impressive, well-tended house facing the street but a much more modest garden building to the rear. It was nice enough, but so tightly squeezed in between its neighbours that you had to wonder if they realised it was there.

  O’Neill knocked on the door with Salgado standing a few feet behind her. They had no reason to think of the ex-wife as a suspect and were better off not frightening her into silence. Anyway, despite what they knew and feared about Garland, this was still a death notification and there was policy to work by.

  The woman who opened the door was a little over five feet tall with long auburn hair pulled behind her and seemingly held i
n place by the spectacles on top of her head. In her mid-fifties, she was slim in a sleeveless hippie dress of summer colours. She smiled as brightly as her dress.

  ‘Hi. How can I help you?’

  ‘Ms Ziegler? I’m Detective O’Neill from the Los Angeles Police Department. This is my partner, Detective Salgado. May we come in?’

  The smile faded like a setting sun. ‘Um, sure, of course. Please, follow me.’

  She led them into a small, busy room that screamed love, peace and happiness. A huge mandala tapestry stretched across one wall while the others were a patch-work of prints, dreamcatchers and Hindu symbols, all held together by strings of lights. A calico cat was curled up in an armchair, one black eye opening to appraise them while the ginger eye still slept.

  The woman scooped the cat up into her arms and took its place on the chair, cradling it on her lap while offering the two-seater sofa to the detectives. They opted to stand and that did nothing for her peace of mind.

  ‘Ms Ziegler, we—’

  ‘Marianne. Please. It’s Marianne.’

  ‘I’m afraid we’re here with some bad news, Marianne. It’s about your ex-husband, Ethan Garland.’

  Whatever Marianne had been expecting, it hadn’t been that. She seemed puzzled, as if not sure what would constitute bad news. She leaned forward, smothering the cat with her body.

  ‘Ethan? Why would you . . .’

  ‘You’re listed as his next of kin.’

  ‘I am? Why would he . . . That man. Still, I guess there’s no one else. His mother has been dead since he was young, his father too. Ethan has cousins in Nevada but he hasn’t had contact with them for years. But still, he says it’s me?’

  The significance of it finally dawned on her. ‘So, wait. Why are you here?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Marianne,’ O’Neill continued. ‘I have to tell you that Ethan died at his home in Los Feliz. He suffered what seems to have been a heart attack.’

  They watched her closely, seeing her eyes follow the words as if she were reading a music score, the resulting thoughts peppering her forehead.

  ‘Oh.’

  It was all she could manage. A single syllable of surprise. She sat in uncertain silence, looking from one cop to the other, thinking of a response.

  ‘I loved him enough to marry him once but that seems a long time ago now. I just –’ she looked at them apologetically – ‘I just don’t know how I’m supposed to feel right now. I need to feel, I should feel, but I don’t know what it should be.’

  ‘There’s no rules,’ O’Neill reassured her. ‘No should or shouldn’ts. I take it things didn’t end well with Mr Garland?’

  ‘You could say that. You could say it didn’t end well at all.’

  There was no mistaking the anger. It might have been dulled by shock or sentiment but both detectives could hear it loud and clear. Before they could question that, Marianne sat taller in her chair, the cat stirring as her grasp tightened.

  ‘Wait. You’re detectives, right? I don’t understand. All I know of police work is what I see on TV, but I thought it would be uniformed officers who did this. You said Ethan died from a heart attack.’

  Her eyes narrowed further and her voice sharpened. ‘What has he done?’

  Salgado and O’Neill liked the sound of that. Liked the sound of there being more.

  ‘Why do you say that, Marianne? You think it’s likely he’d done something? Is that the kind of person Ethan was?’

  She held Salgado’s gaze for an age, a debate erupting behind her eyes.

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is the kind of person he was.’

  Her voice tripped over its own guilt, stumbling over the bad taste it left in her mouth. Marianne didn’t like talking bad about the dead. Even Ethan Garland.

  ‘Is this why you’re here? Not to tell me but to question me? I’m not Ethan’s next of kin, I can’t be after this length of time. Detectives, what has he done?’

  The cops exchanged glances, a silent discussion on how much to say. Salgado settled it.

  ‘We’re not yet sure he’s done anything. We do have reason to think something else might have happened but we’re not in a position to discuss that right now.’

  She stared again. Harder. Longer.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  They breathed out. ‘Tell us about Ethan. How did you meet him, what was he like, why did the marriage break down?’ O’Neill paused. ‘Tell us what we need to know, Marianne.’

  She blinked back tears and swallowed hard, composing herself. And she begun.

  She’d spent years dating other kinds of guys, got promised the moon and got let down time after time after time. Ethan had been different and that’s what she’d liked about him. He had a quiet kind of confidence: sure of himself, but not a braggard. It was like he knew who he was and was okay with it.

  They’d met in a diner where they both went for breakfast. It was weeks before they nodded at each other and another before they smiled and said hello. A week later, she asked if she could sit beside him and they chatted most days after that. She had to do all the running and liked that Ethan didn’t just want to drag her into the sack.

  She stopped long enough to gulp down some air and stroke the cat behind an ear.

  They got married six months after that first date. It was a small wedding. Ethan just had the few cousins in Nevada as family and only one of them showed up, a guy named Mike Durrant. Marianne’s mom and dad were there, her brother, a bunch of people from school, some friends. Her dad and brother didn’t like Ethan right from the get-go but she figured that was because he wasn’t their kind of guy, the jock or whatever.

  ‘I thought I knew better. Even when the wedding night didn’t go the way I expected, I still thought it was all okay. Or would be.’

  ‘Not as you expected?

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Can I ask why that was?’

  ‘Well it wasn’t down to me, Detective. The only thing I’d liked about the football guys and that type was the sex. They were pigs and they were all about them and they couldn’t form a coherent sentence, but they knew how to use their bodies. Let’s just say I liked that. Ethan and I’d never had sex before we got married and I guess I thought that was how he was. Religious or whatever. Waiting till it was right. But that wasn’t it at all.’

  They were married six months and beyond some kissing, he barely touched her. She tried to talk to him about it, but he didn’t want to know. She was sure that he masturbated, but not enough to call him on it. She hoped he’d change, or she’d change him, but every time she tried to touch him, to encourage him, he’d get mad, shout at her, storm out of the room or throw things. It got so she just stopped trying.

  She stopped, rubbing at reddening eyes, and having to look away from them. She resumed, telling them that Ethan had always been odd but that she just hadn’t seen it at first. He was cold, never really loving or caring, just cold. He just didn’t care enough about people and he certainly didn’t care enough about Marianne, spending hours on end working in his office in the cellar, never explaining what he was doing or why.

  ‘I wanted to know though, so I kept at him. I nagged at him till he snapped. He was across the room and had his hands around my throat before I knew it. He was strong, much stronger than me. I remember his fingers digging into my neck, squeezing my windpipe, choking the life out of me. I was sure I was going to die.

  ‘I can’t say exactly why he stopped except that I saw something change in his eyes. It was like he woke up, suddenly realised what he was doing and quit. He looked at me for a few moments as if he didn’t know who I was then let me go.’

  Marianne closed her eyes, screwed them tight shut. Her head bobbed up and down.

  For the first time in their marriage, for the first time since they met, Ethan wanted sex. Right there and then. She didn’t, but she didn’t have any say in it. When it was over, he just got up and left the room. Hours later he said he was sorry but that she shouldn’t have pushed
him. She somehow convinced herself he hadn’t raped her, that it was all her fault.

  Two months later, she was reading when he emerged from the cellar in a vile mood. He barged into the kitchen and came back out demanding to know why there was nothing to eat. She said she’d made food earlier but that he’d been in his office and she’d make him something else. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the stairs, saying he’d show her his office if she was that desperate to see it. She got no further than the door. He pulled it back as if to let her inside but forced her arm into the gap and slammed the door closed on it. Repeatedly. Only the noise of the bone breaking made him stop.

  There was a hush in the room. O’Neill bristled with anger while Salgado did his best not to breathe.

  When there were items on the news about something terrible, a murder maybe or a school shooting, Ethan would just sit very quietly and intently and not take his eyes off the screen. Marianne learned not to interrupt and just let him watch. If there was a multiple pile-up with fatalities or maybe a natural disaster, then he’d go from channel to channel devouring it all.

  ‘Did he ever talk about any murders in particular?’ Salgado asked.

  Marianne’s eyes widened. ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘We’re not assuming anything here,’ O’Neill rushed in to reassure her. ‘We’re at a very early stage of the investigation.’

  ‘But that’s what you think, isn’t it? You think Ethan killed someone.’

  ‘We think it is possible that he has. Or at the very least that he was involved in something connected to a killing. Marianne, do you think that is something he was capable of?’

  No hesitation. ‘Yes.’

  *

  In the end, Marianne ran.

  *

  Ethan was watching a news item on TV, a murder story. She talked over the show and he went crazy. He threw things around, told her how the victim on television had had his throat and wrists cut and was left to bleed to death. He asked if she wanted the same. She said she wanted a divorce and he backhanded her hard till she fell to her knees. He stormed out of the room towards the kitchen and she knew he was going for a knife. As soon as he was out of the room she made for the front door and ran. She didn’t stop running till she got to Thousand Oaks.