Flipping Out (30 page)

I reminded her
that we'd be out tomorrow to go to the funerals for Nora and Julia, and she
reminded me that most of the squad room would be there too.

Marilyn was in
the living room, looking happier than I'd seen her in two weeks.

'I've been
getting calls from real estate agents all day,' she said. 'People are making
offers on the flip house. The latest is ninety thousand over our original
asking price.'

'I'll bet your
partners would all be thrilled if any of them were still alive to hear it,'
Terry said. 'But I'm sure their estates will be grateful.'

'It's sick,
isn't it?' Marilyn said. 'Last week, when Stephen Driscoll was lying dead on
his bedroom floor, we got a few nibbles. Now that we have real murders
happening in and around the house, we've got a feeding frenzy.'

'Proving once
again that real murders are not only stranger than fiction,' Terry said,
'they're a hell of a lot more profitable.'

The double
funeral for Nora and Julia was painful. Painfully long, painfully tedious, and
painfully boring.

Essentially,
Nora controlled it all from the great beyond. Despite the fact that she had a
normal life expectancy of at least another two decades, Nora apparently had
begun preplanning her funeral years ago. Her casket was bronze and copper,
solid as a Volvo, and probably just as expensive. Eight people gave personal
eulogies, and a half dozen Hollywood celebrities read pieces assigned to them
by their dear, dear friend Nora. One was a sonnet by Keats, the rest were all
excerpts from Nora's bestsellers.

It took more
than two hours to give Nora the send-off she always dreamt of.

Julia's ceremony
felt like an afterthought. Charlie spoke for a few minutes, then read one of
his wife's poems. His rhythm was off, and he pronounced a few of the words
wrong, but thanks to Nora, at least Julia's poetry got exposed to a full house.

Finally, Helen
Ryan, the blind woman we had met at Jo's funeral, spoke briefly, thanking Nora
for giving her the audio versions of every one of her novels. Then she sang
'Amazing Grace,' and once again, her powerful, soulful voice gripped the crowd.

Six bagpipers
led the procession as the coffins were carried from the church to the cortege
of hearses and flower cars. Nora Bannister, the ultimate control freak, was
still very much in charge.

After the
burial, friends and family gathered at Charlie's house. It was the first time
we got to talk to Tony. Aside from having his arm in a sling, he seemed in good
shape and good spirits.

'I'll be back in
the office tomorrow,' he said.

'Isn't that a
little soon?' I said.

'It's very light
duty. In fact, it's no duty. I got a call that Mel Berger from the mayor's
office wants to come over tomorrow morning and make some kind of a little fuss
about me, so what the heck? You know politicians,' he said. 'They'll turn you
into a hero, and then take credit for everything you did.'

Terry and I told
him we were happy to see him back and promised to be there tomorrow when Berger
made that little fuss. I'd known Tony for five years, and his slick, suave
mannerisms always seemed like part of his Latin charm. Now, knowing what I
knew, every polished gesture was just further proof that he was a lying
sleazebag, and

I couldn't shake
the mental picture I had of him leading Esteban Benitez to Jameson's Lexus. I
was trying to think of how to politely get away from him when I was rescued.

'Detective
Lomax? Detective Biggs?'

It was Helen
Ryan.

'I hope that's
you,' she said. 'You're kind of a visual blob, but I recognised your voices.'

'It's
your
voice that
should be recognised,' I said. 'Last week, when I heard some neighbour lady was
going to sing at Jo Drabyak's service, I thought, oh, great. But today, I knew
what to expect, and you didn't disappoint me.'

'Thank you,' she
said. 'I heard Marisol Dominguez was being buried in Mexico. In a way I'm glad.
I sing in church, and karaoke clubs, you know...fun places. I wasn't looking
forward to singing at yet another funeral.'

'I guess you
knew her pretty well,' I said. 'Your house is next door to the one they were
renovating, and Marisol was on-site every day.'

'Yes, and for
me, her death was the most personal. I mean, I was a witness.' She laughed. 'Not
an eyewitness, but I did hear the shooting.'

'We call that an
earwitness,' Terry said.

'You do not,
Detective,' she said.

'Were you in the
house at the time of the shooting?' I asked. 'Or outside?'

'I'm not
embarrassed to tell you that I was cowering under the kitchen table with
Dalton.'

'And who's
Dalton?' I said.

'My cat. It all
happened so fast,' she said, it was a beautiful Saturday morning, and I was
fixing Dalton's breakfast, when I heard the first gunshot. It wasn't very loud.
Just kind of like "pop." At the time I just thought it was a kid
shooting off a firecracker. But then bam, bam, bam! Well, there's no mistaking
that, so I crawled under the table, and I had the open can of cat food in my
hand, so Dalton crawled under there with me. I held onto her, and I said,
"Pussycat, we are not standing up until it gets real quiet out
there." And sure enough, two more pops. Of course, by now I figured out
they weren't firecrackers. It was two different guns. One much louder than the
other.'

'Did you dial 911?'
I asked.

'Oh heavens, no.
When you're blind, and you don't know which way the bullets are flying, you
don't stand up to make phone calls. I stayed under that table another ten
minutes till I heard the police sirens. Dalton stayed with me and just ate her
breakfast straight from the can.'

'Helen, are you
sure of that?' Terry said.

'Now, Detective
Biggs, I made a mistake when I thought you and Detective Lomax were life
partners, but I know when my kitty eats her turkey and giblets. Of course I'm
sure.'

'No, I meant the
gunshots.'

'Absolutely.
There were six shots all together.'

'Right,' he
said. Pop, pop, pop. Then bam, bam, bam.'

'No, no, no,'
she said. 'The first one sounded like a firecracker, then came the three loud
gunshots, then two more firecrackers. So it was more like pop, bam, bam, bam,
pop, pop.' She laughed. 'Listen to me. I sound like a Rice Krispies
commercial.'

Terry and I
thanked her, then moved outside where we could be alone.

'I think we just
got some damning testimony from a blind eyewitness,' Terry said. 'According to
Tony, there were six shots fired, and all of them were accounted for, so we
didn't question him. But in Tony's version the sequence was pop, pop, pop fired
by Martin, then Tony draws his gun and fires bam, bam, bam.'

'But in Helen's
version, there was only one pop,' I said, 'followed by a very deadly bam, bam,
bam, any one of which would have killed Sorensen. And yet, with three .45 slugs
in his chest, by some miracle his little pistol managed to go pop, pop, and
shoot off two more rounds.'

'I think the
words Helen sang this morning have just come true,' Terry said.

'How's that?'

'I was blind,
but now I see.'

It was time to
reopen the case, and we knew exactly where to start.

Even before we
met Ford Jameson we had heard of him. When you're shrink to the stars your name
gets around. We knew from Tony that despite the fact that Jameson was
supporting three ex-wives, he loved, and lived for, the finer things in life.
Art, wine, travel, and a variety of candidates for Wife Number 4.

His home was
smack in the middle of 90210. It was a substantial Tudor on Rexford, off
Carmelita, that Tony had told us was magnificent.

Terry and I
didn't get the tour. We rang the front doorbell, and Jameson, delighted to see
us, quickly escorted us through a marbled foyer into his inner sanctum, a
wood-panelled room that was more airplane hangar than doctor's office.

The furniture,
the size of his desk, the degrees on the wall said it all.
I am highly educated and very
expensive. You're sick. If you've got the money, I can fix you.

'Detectives,
what a pleasant surprise,' he said, after we had all eased our butts into soft
leather armchairs. 'I'm so glad you took me up on my offer to help.'

'Rumour has it
you're a miracle worker,' I said.

'My colleagues
chide me constantly,' he said, 'but my goal is to get my patients out of
analysis.'

I smiled. 'And
dialysis.'

It was swift and
hit the target like a kick in the balls. There was no way he could hide his
reaction. His face, his eyes, his body language all went into panic mode. I
only wished I could watch from the inside, as his heart, brain, adrenaline,
blood pressure, and other protective organs scrambled, kicking into high gear,
opening up airways and shutting down sphincters, as the internal Klaxon
screamed out
DEFCON 1.

The best he
could do was sputter, 'I don't know what you mean.'

'Let me phrase
it another way,' I said. 'For a psychiatrist, you have an amazing track record
of curing kidney failure.'

'I don't know
what kind of license you're taking with your authority here, Detective,' he
said, struggling to regain his composure, 'but my medical practice is none of
your business. The last I heard, you were being paid by the taxpayers of the
county to solve homicides.'

'You're right,'
I said. 'I apologise.'

His lips
twitched into a half smile.

'Here's the
murder victim,' I said, handing him the morgue photo of Esteban. 'I believe you
knew him.'

He grabbed it
quickly so I wouldn't have a chance to see his hand shake. He studied it
carefully. He knew who it was, but he needed time to think. 'I don't recognise
this man,' he said. 'I never treated him. Obviously he's dead.'

'All but his
kidneys,' I said. 'Are you still treating them? Which one of your patients is
walking around LA with one of Esteban Benitez's kidneys?'

'And before you
decide to continue to play dumb, let me tell you something,' Terry said. 'We've
been to all the major dialysis centres in LA. Once a patient starts going for
treatment, they don't drop out because they've finished reading all the
magazines. And yet, there have been a number of people who suddenly just
stopped showing up for dialysis. But the records show that they didn't die, or
get a transplant. At least, not one that's been recorded by the government
agencies who like to keep track of body parts whenever they relocate. And
here's the kicker. All those miraculously cured people are either your patients
or close blood relatives of your patients. You, Dr Jameson, have been
trafficking in black market human organs.'

It was total
bullshit. Sure, it was information we could track down eventually, but there
was no way we could have done it in such a short time without a fistful of
warrants and the blessings of our department.

But Jameson
believed it.

'My clients are
all wealthy people,' he said. 'They can afford to have dialysis units installed
in their homes. Or for that matter, they could have flown to some Third World
country and paid a willing donor. Just because I may know someone who's been
cured, doesn't mean I had anything to do with it.'

'Let me show you
another photo of the late Serior Benitez,' I said. 'Here's a shot of Tony
Dominguez helping him into your car. And yes, it's definitely yours. We have
footage of the license plate as it pulls away.'

'My car,
perhaps. But I don't see any photos of me. It sounds like you have something on
Tony. Why don't you arrest him?'

'On what
charge?' I said. 'Tony is one smart cop. He's kept his distance from the real ugly
stuff, but you...you're the doctor.'

'I'm a
psychiatrist, not a surgeon.'