Flipping Out (18 page)

Tony
Dominguez was strapped to a stretcher, his left shoulder covered in a field
dressing. Bags of fluids were hanging from an IV tree running down to his arm.
His face was contorted, and he was looking up, moaning something in Spanish.

'Tony,
it's Mike. You're gonna be OK.'

'Bastard...killed...my
wife,' he said.

'I
know. I'm so sorry.'

'I
got here...heard a shot...ran in...Martin running out. He fired twice. Second
one nailed me. I shot back.' He started sobbing. 'My fault she's dead...'

'Don't
blame yourself, TD.'

'I'm
a cop...I couldn't protect my own wife...' He let out a yelp of pain, and
started coughing.

The
paramedic outside yanked on my pant leg. in or out, Detective. This bus is
rolling.'

I
jumped out, and within seconds, the ambulance was blasting its way through
Saturday-morning traffic.

'Clue
me in,' Terry said.

'He's
in shock, but the bottom line is, Martin shot Marisol, then he got into a
shootout with Tony. Tony won.'

Terry
just nodded. I knew exactly what was running through his brain. This could have
been Marilyn.

'Let's
go see the others,' he said.

The
crime lab people had already gotten started. We put on gloves and shoe covers
and followed Wendy into the master bedroom.

There,
just a few feet from the chalk outline of the fictional Stephen Driscoll was
the very real, very dead Marisol Dominguez. She was wearing a pale blue
T-shirt, covered in blood at the neckline, and a pair of skin-tight jeans.
Jessica Keating was kneeling beside her.

'Another
cop's wife,' Keating said, skipping the usual happy to-see-you-hoys banter.
'COD looks the same. A small-calibre bullet to the back of the head.'

'Back
of the head?' I said. 'And she fell face up?'

'Tony
rolled her over,' Wendy said. 'After he took the bullet he managed to get in
here, but she was dead. That's when he called 911. He was on the floor with her
head in his arms when I got here.'

I
knelt down beside Jessica. 'Did the killer take a lock of her hair?'

'Not
that I can see,' she said, 'but I haven't really given her a thorough.'

'I
don't think he had time,' Wendy said. 'Tony heard the shot and came running in.
Sorensen headed for the front door, but he didn't get very far. He's in the
living room.'

Martin
Sorensen was lying face up on the living room rug. His chest and the carpeting
around him were soaked with blood. There was a .22-caliber pistol on the floor
near his right hand. One of Jessica's people was taking pictures of both the
body and the weapon from every angle.

'This
bastard was going to kill my wife next, wasn't he?' Terry said.

'We
don't know that,' I said.

'Mike,
it's me. Who are you bullshitting? Marilyn is the last partner. Of course she
was next.'

'Fine.
She was next. But now she's not.'

'What
I don't get,' Wendy said, 'is why. Sorensen had such a good thing going with
Nora. Why would he kill all these people?'

'Money,'
Terry said. 'Nora was making a bundle, and part of Martin's job was to watch it
pour in. He must've decided he wasn't getting his fair share.'

'But
what's the payoff for killing the money-maker?' Wendy said, is he in the will?'

'Not
for much. That would be too obvious,' Terry said. 'I think he figured he could
make a fortune on his own if he wrote a book about his life with Nora,
including all the juicy stuff that happened between the sheets.'

'Wow,'
Wendy said. 'I can think of ten people who would buy that book. And I'm one of
them.'

'The
problem is, he never would have been able to write it if Nora was still alive,'
I said.

'Or
Julia, for that matter,' Terry added. 'She would have at least tried to stop
him.'

'So
he killed the two people who were standing between him and the bestseller
list,' Wendy said. 'Why did he kill Reggie Drabyak's wife?'

'I
don't know,' Terry said. 'Maybe he was thinking more bodies sell more books.'

'You
guys interviewed him,' Wendy said. 'What was your take?'

'He
wasn't at the top of our suspect list,' I said, 'but he was starting to move up
the ladder. Last night Muller told us that Sorensen had been taking forensics
and other criminal justice courses that would make him a lot smarter than your
average murderer.'

'How
did he explain that?' Wendy said.

'I'm
sure he would've said it makes him a better resource for Nora, but we never got
a chance to ask him. We were planning to pay him a surprise visit this
morning.'

'Yeah,'
Terry said, staring down at the body. 'But we got all involved in this big
family breakfast, and Tony Dominguez got to surprise him first.'

If
you want to assemble a bunch of politicians in a big urban area like LA, there
are two words that will get their attention in a hurry.

Officer
down.

By
11:00 a.m. there were more windbags on Cherokee than you'd find at a party
caucus in Iowa. Council people, assembly people, and a gaggle of wannabes who
were gunning for their jobs in November showed up in droves. At the centre of
it all was the mayor himself.

He
arrived, buoyed at first, because LAPD had caught and killed the guy who had
murdered Nora Bannister and the two cop wives. He was probably thinking he'd
bask in the limelight of the capture, then do a photo op at the hospital with
the wounded hero cop.

Unfortunately,
his entourage had neglected to tell him that Marisol was dead too. Within
minutes of his arrival he was taking heat from reporters, Hispanic activists,
and political snipers of every persuasion, all of whom demanded to know why the
police hadn't put poor Mrs Dominguez into protective custody.

His
Honour didn't have a good answer.

So
he told Deputy Mayor Mel Berger to get one. Our handsome mayor is the face of
city hall, but Berger is the brains. Rail-thin and brutally ruthless, the man
is all guile and no body fat. He's the mayor's liaison to the Jewish community
and the Hollywood studios, and because he's fluent in Spanish, he knows how to
reach out to the Latino voters.

Right
now he was reaching out hard to an Irish lieutenant by the name of Brendan
Kilcullen. Berger is not the type to bitch to the chief of police and hope that
his outrage and disappointment are communicated with the same intensity right
on down the chain of command. Mel Berger doesn't trust middlemen. If he wants
somebody's ass kicked, he makes sure it's his size 9 inside the wingtip.

Terry
and I were standing in the front yard, watching the interchange between the two
men from fifty feet away. We couldn't hear a word, but the body language was
clear. Berger's right index finger was wagging rapidly in the direction of
Kilcullen's chest. Never touching, but causing our boss to lean back
defensively.

Finally,
Kilcullen started walking in our direction.

'Five
dollars says he's not inviting us out for another afternoon of chat and
chilli,' Terry said.

'I'm
in deep shit,' Kilcullen said, as soon as he got us alone.

'Today
hasn't exactly been a slice of heaven for Marisol Dominguez either,' Terry
said.

'The
mayor is blaming me for Marisol,' Kilcullen said. 'Why didn't I protect her?'

'You
offered,' I said. 'She turned you down.'

'No
excuse.'

'Of
course it's an excuse,' Terry said. 'She's a private citizen. You heard what
she said about putting some cop in front of her house not doing shit. Remember
"Don't worry. I can take care of myself"?'

'Well,
obviously she couldn't.'

'And
that's LAPD's fault?' I said.

'Not
all of LAPD,' Kilcullen said. 'According to Berger, it's mine.'

'And
by extension, ours,' I said.

'Don't
flatter yourselves,' he said. 'If city hall decides to look for a scapegoat,
it's my head that'll roll. I'm the one who authorised protection for Biggs's
wife, but I didn't take care of Mrs Dominguez. According to Deputy Mayor
Berger, I should have been smarter.'

'There's
not going to be a scapegoat,' I said. 'Marisol made her own choice. Besides,
Sorensen was her business partner. He had access. If he was hell-bent on
killing her, ten teams of cops couldn't have protected her.'

'Debatable
point,' Kilcullen grunted. 'Were you on to this guy Sorensen?'

'He
was starting to look good,' I said. 'We were going to pay him a visit and push
him a little more this morning, but then we got the call from Wendy to come
here.'

'Did
you figure out his motive?'

'Money,
fame, glory,' Terry said. 'Basically, he helped run Nora Bannister's empire,
and he wanted it for his own.'

'Why
did he kill all those other women? I thought they were just small players.'

'They
were,' I said. 'We assume he killed Julia Knoll because she was Nora's
daughter. As for the others, we don't know what was going on in Sorensen's
head. We need some time to pull it all together. We'll start by searching his
apartment.'

'Start
now,' Kilcullen said. 'According to Berger, the mayor wants a full written
report.'

'By
when?'

'The
usual deadline. Day before yesterday.'

'If
we'd have had the answer then,' Terry said, 'Marisol wouldn't be dead.'

'Right,'
Kilcullen said. 'And my ass wouldn't be in a sling.'

Jessica
helped confirm what we had started to piece together.

'I
did a GSR test on both bodies,' she said. 'Marisol was clean. Sorensen had gunshot
residue on his right hand. The .22 we found next to his body appears to be the
murder weapon. Even if the bullet is too obliterated to give us useable
ballistics, you'll still have Detective Dominguez's testimony. That ought to
clinch it.'

We
knew the who, what, when, and where. Our job now was to figure out the why.

'We
should have been smarter,' Terry said, as we headed for Martin Sorensen's
apartment. 'And faster. If we had driven out to see Sorensen early this morning
instead of wasting our time on breakfast, we might have tripped him up before
he went over to the flip house and shot Marisol.'

'So
it's our fault,' I said. 'You think because we sat down to a family breakfast,
Marisol wound up dead.'

He
hit the back of his palm on the steering wheel. 'And why did we have breakfast
this morning? Because Marilyn was using food to compensate for Emily's dumb
stunt the night before.'

'So
it's Emily's fault that Marisol is dead,' I said.

'In
a convoluted, indirect way, yes.'

'How
old was Emily when you married Marilyn?'

'The
twins were seven. Emily was five.'

'But
if you
hadn't
married Marilyn, she wouldn't have needed police protection, and Emily wouldn't
be your daughter, and you wouldn't have wasted the morning eating figgy
scones,' I said.

'So
it's my fault that Marisol is dead,' he said.

'In
a convoluted, indirect way, yes. Of course, since I'm your partner, it's half
my fault.'

'Thank
you for clearing that up. I feel better already.'

I
knew he still felt like crap, but I've learnt that when something is gnawing at
Terry, he needs the time to let it chew. We didn't talk until we arrived at
Martin's apartment.

We
informed the building super that his tenant in 3-B was deceased. He extended
his condolences as if we were the next of kin, then let us in the apartment
without even looking at the warrant.

We
searched the place. There were eggshells and warm coffee grounds in the garbage
can, which indicated Martin had eaten a hearty breakfast before heading out to
kill Marisol. But there were no dirty dishes in sight, and the coffee pot had
been washed, dried, and put away. Even the bed was neatly made.

'Neat
as a pin,' I said. 'Not exactly your basic bachelor apartment.'

Terry
shrugged, it is if the bachelor is an anal-retentive mass murderer.'

Martin's
appointment book was on top of his desk. These days, a lot of searches turn up
a Blackberry, a Treo, or a Palm Pilot, which means that Terry and I have to
take it in for a techie to help us crack. Martin was one of those people who
still used one of those old-fashioned week-at-a- glance paper calendars.

'Good
news,' Terry said. 'We won't be needing a decoder ring.'

The
book was bound in black vinyl, and a quick thumb through it showed that Martin
Sorensen had a busy schedule. I flipped ahead to a few weeks from now.