Flipping Out (16 page)

The
food came and we filled him in on our meeting with Charlie.

'Charlie
had a babe on the side?' Kilcullen said with a mouthful of chilli, cheese, and
onions. 'Do you know who she is?'

'No,'
Terry said. 'We're guessing she's a cop, but he's not giving her up, because
even with an alibi, there's still one hour he can't account for.'

'Well,
then he didn't do it,' Kilcullen said. 'He wouldn't murder his wife and
mother-in-law, then leave himself hanging without an alibi. He's too smart a
cop.'

'Right,'
Terry said. 'Plus I saw him reading a copy of
Perfect Crimes
for Dummies,
so he couldn't possibly have made any mistakes.'

'You
think Marisol had anything to do with it?' Kilcullen said.

'I
wouldn't put it past her,' Terry said. 'She's one tough chick, and she lied
about not being at Nora's house yesterday afternoon. Her car was spotted around
four o'clock. The big question is why would she do it. She doesn't have a
motive. Martin Sorensen, on the other hand, has two. Fame and fortune.'

'He
wants to write a book about Nora,' I said. 'And he reminded us that nothing
sells like a dead celebrity.'

'He's
right,' Kilcullen said. 'You should see how many Elvis CDs my wife owns. What
do you know about this Sorensen guy?'

We
gave him everything we knew about Martin.

'Dig
deeper. Check his bank records, credit cards, phone calls, whatever you can
find,' Kilcullen said.

'We've
already got Muller on it,' I said.

'Tell
him to make it priority one. You know me, boys. I don't like to tell you how to
work your case, but until this guy is caught, there's going to be an epidemic
of cops staying home to protect the wife and kids.'

'Speaking
of which,' Terry said, 'can you do any better on Marilyn's protection detail?'

'What's
wrong with what we've got?'

'Nothing,
if she was an old lady who needed two boy scouts to help her cross the street,'
Terry said. 'The guys you had last night were a little green.'

Kilcullen
doesn't take criticism well. 'What are you talking about?' he said. 'They're
smart, they've got guns...'

'And
they're as low on the pay-grade scale as you can go without sending the
cleaning crew,' Terry said. 'How about I pay for lunch and you milk the budget
for a few more bucks, so I can focus on this case without having to worry about
who's looking after my wife and kids?'

Kilcullen
held up both hands. 'All right, all right. I'll upgrade. I'll do whatever it
takes to take care of them.'

'Good,'
Terry said. 'And I'll do whatever it takes to take care of myself.' He
sniffled. 'Because I was starting to feel a little touch of the flu coming on.'

'Do
you know what today was like?' Terry said as we were headed home on the Ventura
in bumper-to-bumper Friday night traffic.

'A
day without sunshine?'

'No.'

'One
of those bad dreams where you show up to take the final exam, and you realise
you never went to class all year, and you didn't even buy the book?'

'You're
getting warmer, but no.'

'I
give up,' I said.

'Today
was like the worst part of a romantic comedy movie.'

'I'm
from the school of thinking that romantic comedies suck from beginning to
middle to end,' I said, 'so you'll have to fill me in on which part actually
qualifies for the worst.'

'The
failure montage.'

'I
still give up.'

‘In
every romantic comedy, there's always some dork like Ben Stiller, and they want
to show you that he's a total loser at love, so what do they do? A two-minute
montage of him striking out on seven different blind dates. That was our day,
Mike. A montage of failure in living colour, without the sound track.'

'Ben
Stiller's not a dork,' I said. 'He's kind of cool.'

'OK,
so he's cool in a dorky way. My point is that the highlight of all our police
work today was watching our boss chow down a bowl of beans.'

'And
if that doesn't say romantic comedy, I don't know what does.'

'Right.
But if this were a movie, and if I were Ben Stiller, the boss would call and
tell me that his wife kicked him out of the house, and he'd invite himself to
spend the night in my claustrophobic little one-room apartment. And then...' He
started laughing. 'And then those damn beans would kick in.'

'We
could call the movie
Love's a Gas
'
I said.

For
the next five minutes we regaled ourselves in how shitty our day had been.

When
you work homicide, you have to find the laughs or you'll blow your own brains
out. It's not a job for the faint of heart. You start with some grisly murder.
Then you have to break the bad news to the victim's loved ones and watch them
go through shock, pain, and anguish. Then comes the investigation, which is
basically a series of blind alleys, dead ends, and other let downs.

Today
was a perfectly good example. After getting nowhere with Charlie and Martin, we
spent two hours trying to track down people on the enemies list Nora had faxed
us. The few that we reached either wouldn't talk without a lawyer or laughed at
the idea that they might even be considered a suspect.

'What
did the old bitch do?' her ex-publisher asked. 'Leave the names of people who
wanted her dead? I didn't do it, but I'd feel great if you told me I was at the
top of her list.'

Later
that afternoon we pissed away more time with Anton Areizaga. Anton is one of
our informants, a street hustler whose motto is, 'Information is like pussy.
You can always find somebody to pay for it.' He's been a semi- reliable source
in the past, but he's also been known to use us to put the squeeze on someone
he's pissed at.

'Billy
Shoes killed that cop's wife,' Anton told us.

Billy
Shufeldt, aka Billy Shoes, is a Hollywood pimp who rotates in and out of the
justice system.

'Detective
Drabyak is always busting him and his girls,' Anton told us, 'so Billy decided
it's payback time, and he shot Drabyak's old lady.'

'And
you know this how?' I asked Anton.

'Shoes
was bragging about it. Even showed me the gun he popped her with.'

'A
nine-millimetre Glock, right?' Terry said, pulling a couple of twenties out of
his wallet.

Anton
eyed the cash. 'Exactly,' he lied. 'I seen the murder weapon.'

'I'm
sorry,' Terry said. 'Did I say Glock? I meant a pearl-handled derringer.'

'Yeah,
that's more like it. I think I seen a pearly handle.' Anton reached for the
money. His fingers were delicate and neatly manicured.

Terry
whacked them hard and yanked the money back. 'How would you like a pearly
handle up your ass, you lying son of a bitch?'

'Shit,'
Anton said, massaging his damaged hand. 'Wrong gun?'

'Wrong
gun, wrong day, wrong cops,' Terry said. 'Get your weasely little ass out of
here, and stop wasting our time.'

The
only glimmer of hope in our montage of failure came at the end of the day.
Muller did a thorough check on Martin Sorensen.

'Nothing
unusual in his background,' Muller said. 'Finances, phone records, they all
seem pretty straightforward. There is one thing that's kind of interesting, but
you may already know about it.'

'We
don't have a lot on this guy except for a possible motive,' I said. 'What's
interesting?'

'Over
the past three years he took half a dozen criminology and criminal justice
courses at two local colleges. Forensics, weapons, profiling, stuff like that.
There's no record of him being enrolled in a degree program, so I'm guessing
Nora had him doing research for her books, and it was probably part of his job
to learn as much as he could about homicide.'

'That's
funny,' Terry said. 'Martin mentioned filing and fornicating as part of his job
description, but he never said anything about becoming an expert on how to kill
people.'

'So
he not only had motive,' I said. 'He had means.'

'Why
don't we pay him another visit,' Terry said.

We
drove back to Martin's apartment, but in keeping with the rest of our
unproductive day, he wasn't home.

'It's
Friday night,' Terry said. 'He's probably out hunting for cougars. Let's come
back tomorrow.'

Kilcullen
had authorised OT, so working the weekend wasn't an issue. In fact,
not
working wasn't even an option. At some point during our chilli-fest, the boss
had let us know that we'd be working long shifts, seven days a week, until we
caught the killer.

It
was after eight when we got off the 405 at Sherman Oaks and headed up Sepulveda
toward Terry's house.

'So
about this failure montage,' I said. 'Once it's over, things start to get
better for the hero, right?'

'Oh
yeah,' Terry said. 'It's all part of the formula, and by the end of the movie
he gets the promotion he's been waiting for, he marries the girl of his—' He
braked the car hard. 'What the fuck?'

We
had just made the turn onto Terry's street, Alana Drive. There were at least
ten cop cars scattered in front of his house, lights strobing, radios
squawking. A paramedic unit was parked in the driveway.

Terry
and I jumped out of the car and ran toward the house.

We
ran past a dozen cops who were casually milling about outside the house.
Apparently, whatever the emergency was, it had passed, and now they were
waiting for orders.

There
were two uniforms in the living room, along with Marilyn, Diana, Emily, Sarah,
and a third teenage girl I'd never seen before. Emily was on the sofa, sobbing.

'What
happened?' Terry yelled.

'It's
OK,' Marilyn said. 'We're all fine.'

'What
went on? What happened?' Terry looked around for an answer.

Sarah
held up both hands. 'I had nothing to do with it.' She pointed a finger at her
younger sister.

'Emily?'

'I'm
sorry, Daddy,' Emily choked out through her tears. 'I'm really, really sorry.'

Terry
sat down on the sofa and put his arm around the girl, it's all right. Just tell
me what happened.'

She
wiped her nose and ran her arm across her eyes to dry the tears. 'I wanted to
go to the mall, or a movie, or anyplace, but Mom wouldn't let me. She said I
have to stay home till you catch the asshole who's shooting everybody. Do you
know how bad it sucks to be quarantined to your house on the weekend?' She
looked at Terry for sympathy.

'That's
a family discussion. We'll talk about it later,' he said. He turned to the
cops. 'You were on watch?'

The
male cop stepped front and centre. He was big, burly, about thirty years old.
His female partner was smaller and older, with intense dark eyes. Kilcullen had
kept his promise. They were definitely more experienced than the kids who had
been on duty last night.

'Tim
Kaczmarek, sir,' he said. 'This is my partner, Jane Lester. We were parked
outside. We heard a girl scream, followed by three gunshots.'

'Jesus,'
Terry said. 'Did you get the shooter?'

'There
was no shooter, sir. Your daughter Emily and her friend over there...' He
stopped to check his notepad. 'Her name is Heather Gore.'

'Yeah,
I know her,' Terry said. 'What did they do?'

'They
downloaded some sound effects off the Internet. A scream and three gunshots. My
partner and I heard it, we called for backup, and ran to the house.'

'And
that battalion of cops out there,' Terry said. 'That's the backup?'

'We
radioed in a 246. They know we're watching your house, Detective,' Kaczmarek
said. 'Everyone scrambled. Code 3.'

Terry
turned back to Emily. 'So you were stuck at home on a Friday night, and you
thought, What can I do to have some fun? How about rousting up every cop from
here to Ventura County?'

'It's
not what we wanted to happen,' Emily whined.

'What
were you hoping for? Fire engines? Media coverage? Ryan Seacrest? What?'

'Heather
started it,' Emily said.

'Did
not,' Heather said.

'You're
somebody else's problem,' Terry said. 'I want to know what my daughter was
thinking.'

Emily
had stopped crying. 'Dad, we were sitting upstairs with nothing to do. My
entire social life was completely ruined,' she said, sliding comfortably into
surly teenager mode. 'I was trapped in my room like a rat.'