Fatal Care (22 page)

It’s a half-hour show, Jake recalled. “So that would make it about ten-fifteen.”

Mikey nodded.

Jake nodded back. The hooker had purchased the mentholated cream at 10:20. The drugstore was about five minutes away from the Mirren house. “What happened next?”

“That’s when the other lady went in,” Mikey said without hesitation.

Son of a bitch, Jake was thinking. There were two women involved. “The other lady went in right after the first lady left?”

“Uh-huh. She came from the side of the house.”

“And what did she look like?”

“Her hair was like mine.”

“You could see it real good, huh?” Jake asked.

Mikey nodded again. “When the moon came back out.”

“And you’re sure her hair was blond?”

“Uh-huh,” Mikey answered.

Jake quickly put the pieces of the boy’s story together. A blond woman was on the side of the house, waiting for the hooker to leave, maybe even watching the show through a side window. The hooker leaves, the blonde moves in real quick and ices the doc before the hooker returns. Yeah. It had to be the blonde who—Son of a bitch! A blonde whacked the doctor. Maybe the same blonde who iced the Russian. Just maybe. But how could Mirren and the Russian be connected? They came from such different worlds. Jake hurriedly thought of other possibilities. Maybe the hooker and the blonde worked as a team. No, no, he decided quickly. The hooker came back with the menthol cream because she thought Mirren was still alive.

“You feel okay?” the little boy asked, studying the expression on the detective’s face.

“Yeah. I just got a cold,” Jake said, bringing his expression back to neutral.

“I get them all the time, too.”

“Now, I really want you to think hard on this one, Mikey,” Jake said. “How long did the blond lady stay inside the house?”

“Just a few minutes.”

“Then she left?”

Mikey nodded. “And then the lady with the bushy hair came back.”

“What time was that?”

Mikey’s gaze went to his mother. “Just before
Gun-smoke
started.”

“That would make it a little before ten-thirty,” the mother told them.

“When the bushy-haired lady came back, was she carrying anything?” Jake asked.

Mikey thought for a moment. “She got out of her car carrying a bag of something.”

The mentholated cream, Jake thought. She was bringing back the— His mind suddenly flashed back to the hooker’s car. “Did you see the bushy-haired lady’s car?”

Mikey nodded. “In the driveway.”

“What did the car look like?”

Mikey shrugged. “It was kind of old. That’s all I remember.”

“Thanks, Mikey,” Jake said, and moved aside, letting Farelli step in.

“You know, Mikey,” Farelli said easily, “I have a son about your age, and he watches a lot of television.”

“What’s his favorite show?” Mikey asked.

“Beavis and Butthead.”

Mikey nodded quickly. “I like them a lot, too.”

“Now, when my boy watches TV,” Farelli went on, “I can’t pull him away from the set. Do you think there could have been more people in that house and you just missed them because you were watching TV?”

Mikey shook his head firmly. “If anybody comes, Sparky starts barking and jumping around. We see everybody who comes and goes.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

Jake glanced over at Joanna. “You got any questions for Mikey?”

“Just one or two.”

Joanna sat on the bed next to the little boy and scratched the beagle’s ear. “Do you know that a dog once saved my life?”

Mikey was immediately interested. “How?”

“Once I got caught in a mudslide and got all covered up. They couldn’t find me, so they brought in a bloodhound and he started digging into the ground at the exact place I was buried.”

“Wow!”

“I didn’t like dogs so much before that, but I like them a lot now.”

Mikey picked up his dog and allowed it to lick his face. “I love Sparky.”

“I know,” Joanna said, hearing Mikey’s wheezes and thinking what a cruel fate it was for a little boy to have severe asthma. “Can I ask you a few quick questions?”

“Sure.”

“How can you be so sure that the blond lady was on the side of the house?” Joanna asked. “Maybe she just walked across your lawn to get to the Mirren house.”

Mikey shook his head. “I saw her come up Dr. Mirren’s lawn and go to the side of the house. That’s when Sparky really started barking.”

“Was she carrying anything with her?”

Mikey shook his head again.

“And you’re sure her hair was blond, huh?”

“Just like mine.”

“Was it pulled back?” Joanna asked. “Like mine is?”

“No. It was straight down.” Mikey pointed over to his mother. “It kind of looked like Mom’s.”

Jake nodded to himself. Blond hair, shoulder length. Maybe she left some of it behind for the crime scene unit to find.

“Mikey, you really helped us a lot,” Joanna said, getting to her feet. “I know your mom is very proud of you.”

Mrs. Sellman walked them down the stairs to the front door. As Joanna and the detectives stepped out, reporters began yelling out questions from across the street.

Jake turned to Mrs. Sellman. “Ma’am, I’m going to leave a police officer at your door for a while to make sure the press doesn’t bother you.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

The detectives and Joanna walked across the lawn, heading for Alex Mirren’s house. They ignored the reporters who continued to shout questions. Three television trucks with antennas were parked at the curb.

“A zoo,” Farelli commented as they approached the Mirren driveway. “A big, damn zoo.”

Jake signaled to a member of the crime scene unit and quickly walked over. “Did you find any blond hairs?”

“Not yet,” the investigator replied. “Why?”

“Because a blond woman was seen on this side of the victim’s house last night,” Jake told him. “Check around, particularly by the window looking into the victim’s bedroom. You’re searching for long blond hair and maybe fingerprints on the window or windowsill.”

“I’ll get right on it.”

Jake watched the investigator leave, thinking about other places the blonde might have left her fingerprints. The front doorknob, the Kleenex box, maybe the night table. He made a mental note of the places and then turned to Joanna and Farelli. “Are you two thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Regarding what?” Joanna asked.

“I’m thinking Los Angeles may be a big city, but I’ll bet we’ve got only one young, blond, female hitter running around.”

“The blond hitter,” Joanna said, nodding to herself. “A pro who tries to cover up her hits.”

“It’s almost got to be,” Jake agreed. “She carefully set up the hit on the Russian and did the same with Alex Mirren.”

“And I’ll bet she had him staked out,” Farelli picked up the story. “And she just waited. Then the bondage hooker comes along and gives the hitter a golden opportunity.”

Jake nodded. “That’s why the ligature around Mirren’s neck was all wrong. Our hitter doesn’t have much experience in bondage games.” Jake looked toward the rear window of Mirren’s house. The hitter could have been in and out in under five minutes. It doesn’t take long to strangle a tied-down man. “And the timing was perfect. According to Mikey, the hooker left the house at ten-fifteen or so, and we know she went to the drugstore to buy the mentholated cream. She made the buy at ten-twenty. While the hooker was away, the blond hitter moved in for the kill.”

Joanna stared out into space, thinking aloud. “What in the world does Alex Mirren have to do with a Russian carrying around dead fetuses?”

“I don’t know,” Jake said. “But they were both killed by the same blond hitter and that connects them to one another.” He glanced over at Farelli. “Anything new on the Russian?”

“Nothing so far,” Farelli answered. “The cable company in that area isn’t doing such a good job. They’ve had hundreds of complaints. We’re running them down one by one.”

“You check their workbooks for Russian- or Middle European–sounding names?”

“Nada. A big blank.”

They crossed the lawn to Alex Mirren’s house and entered. The crime scene unit was finishing up in the living room and starting to pack away their equipment. Jake led the way into the kitchen, where he turned on the water and took a swig from the faucet.

“We’ve got to find that hooker,” Jake said, wiping his lips with a finger.

“You figure she’s involved?” Farelli asked.

“Probably not,” Jake said. “But she might have seen something we can track. She and that blond hitter might have crossed paths, if only for an instant.”

“Shit,” Farelli grumbled. “We’ll have to interview a million hookers. And chances are, we’ll still come up empty.”

“There might be an easier way,” Joanna suggested.

“We’re listening,” Jake said.

Joanna pointed at a messy countertop that was covered with empty boxes and containers for pizza and take-out Chinese food. Receipts from the food deliveries were still attached to the empty boxes. “This guy called out to have his food delivered. He might have done the same thing for the hooker. There must be a dozen escort services listed in the yellow pages.”

Farelli smiled at her and then at Jake. “She’s getting pretty good at this, isn’t she?”

Jake looked at Joanna admiringly. “And he probably called from home.”

“Or on his way home,” Farelli added and pointed out the window at Mirren’s car in the driveway.

Atop its rear window was a car-phone antenna.

Jake and Farelli trudged up the stairs to the third floor of the old office building. The wooden steps creaked loudly under their weight.

“And of course, the prick has got to have his office on the third floor,” Farelli grumbled.

“Of course,” Jake said.

“And of course, the elevator in this piece-of-shit place ain’t working.”

“I wouldn’t use it if it was.”

“You got a point.”

Everything about the building in North Hollywood was old and run-down. The exterior was covered with pink paint that was cracked and peeling. Inside, the floors were scuffed and worn, the ceiling spotted with watermarks. And its elevator looked like an antique. It was a brass cage with its door chained shut. An OUT OF ORDER sign was attached to it.

At the third-floor landing, Farelli stopped and leaned down to massage his thigh. It felt as if there were a hot poker inside it.

“Is your leg still bothering you?” Jake asked.

Farelli downplayed it. “Some.”

“Maybe you ought to go back and see the doc about it.”

“I did. He said to keep exercising it.”

Farelli straightened up and pushed the pain aside. Reaching for his notepad, he said, “Let me tell you about the guy who runs this escort service. He’s a hustler named Frankie White. According to Vice, he’s a small-time operator who runs a string of five or six girls. He does his business out of this office and contacts the hookers by beeper.”

“Any rough stuff?”

“None recently.” Farelli turned to a page in his notepad and referred to it briefly. “He once did five years in the slammer for armed robbery. But that was in the early seventies.”

“And since then he’s gone on to bigger and better things.”

“Yeah,” Farelli said, closing his notepad. “Now he runs a stable.”

They walked down a narrow, stale-smelling corridor to Suite 302. ECSTASY ESCORTS was painted on the glass panel in the door. Inside, someone was coughing loudly. Jake knocked and entered, Farelli a step behind him.

A middle-aged man talking on the phone behind the desk looked up. He had a cigar clenched between his teeth. “Yeah? What?”

Jake flashed his shield. “You Frankie White?”

The man spoke quickly into the phone. “I’ll get back to you,” he said, and hung up. His gaze went back to the detectives. “Yeah. I’m White.”

“We need to talk to you about your girls,” Jake said.

“I guess I’d better call a lawyer,” White said unhappily.

“Why? Have you done something wrong?”

White glanced back and forth between the two detectives. “What do you want?”

“We want to look at the list of girls you sent out last night, and we want to know where you sent them,” Jake said.

“I don’t keep records.” White was a short, wiry man, totally bald except for a fringe of hair just above his ears. His eyes were dark and lifeless, his teeth stained brown from tobacco. He tilted back in his straight wooden chair and puffed on his cigar. “I got no records. So it looks like I can’t help you.”

Farelli moved in next to White. “No record book, huh?”

“How many times I got to say it?”

Farelli kicked the chair out from under White. The cigar went flying into the air as Frankie White landed flat on his back with a loud thud. His head bounced off the wooden floor. “Oww! Goddamn it!”

“You’ve got to watch those chairs,” Farelli said coldly. “Sometimes they slip.”

“I ain’t got no damn books.” White picked himself and his chair off the floor. Then he searched around for his cigar. “If you don’t want to believe me, too fucking bad.”

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Jake said, and waited for White to relight his cigar.

“I’ve had my balls busted plenty of times before,” White spat. “One more time ain’t going to matter.”

“That’s the easy way,” Jake went on. “The tough way would be for me to have to round up your girls and question them individually. And after I’ve questioned them, I’ll have a cop tag along with them wherever they go. That won’t be so good for business.”

White shrugged, unmoved.

“And then I’ll have the girls talk to the people over at the IRS. I’ll bet those girls have been paying you a cut, and I’ll bet you haven’t been reporting that to the IRS as income.”

White’s eyes slowly widened.

“Then the girls will give evidence against you for tax evasion, and they’ll be let off. But not you, Frankie.” Jake lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “And let me remind you, those IRS guys are real bastards. They’ll send you away for ten years if you try to fuck them out of a nickel.”

White reached inside his coat pocket and took out a black book, his eyes still on Jake. “No IRS, right?”