Scavenger Hunt (17 page)

Jimmy reached for the scrapbook. “Please?” He turned back to the first photo, the eight-by-ten of Chase with her first-runner-up smile. “This is the official photograph, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“May I?” Jimmy had already started pulling off the photo, being careful not to tear the backing. COPYRIGHT BY WILLARD BURTON was stamped on the back.

“Geez Jimmy, what are you so happy about?”

Chapter 29

Helen Katz was already hammered by the time Holt walked into the Blue Grotto. She had staked out a prize booth in the corner farthest from the street and was slouched there by herself, smoking a cigarette under the no smoking sign. Her table was strewn with beer bottles and a near-empty bowl of salted peanuts. None of the other cops in the place came near her, clustering in twos and threes at the long bar, mostly men, but a few women too, the uniforms pounding on each other’s shoulders as they watched the game on the overhead TV, or sitting in the other booths bitching about the day, the bosses, the gangbangers, the stupid civilians, the squad car with the busted springs. Katz was hammered, but she spotted Holt immediately. She wasn’t the only one.

Holt surveyed the dingy saloon, then walked over to the bar and edged herself in beside a couple of boozy retired narcs. She said something to Rufus but had to repeat herself a couple of times before he nodded. There was something about the sight of Holt leaning against the bar in her designer suit, taking in the fishnet hanging across the fly-specked backbar mirror, a gold mermaid and carved wooden fishes caught in the net—it pissed Katz off. Holt didn’t belong here. If she wanted to talk to Katz—and what other reason would she have for walking into a strip-mall Anaheim cop hangout?—she could have called, left a message, sent a fucking carrier pigeon. Heads turned, following Holt’s progress across the crowded room, and that didn’t improve Katz’s mood either.

“I hope you don’t mind a little company, Helen,” said Holt, sliding into the booth.

“I don’t like pretty women.”

“I can understand that.”

Katz felt her cheeks flush. “Jimmy sent you to ask a favor? He think I’ll cut you more slack than I’ll cut him?”

“Jimmy doesn’t know I’m here.” Holt turned as Rufus brought over two glasses and a bottle of blue agave tequila. “Thank you.”

Katz waited until Rufus lurched away. “Is it my birthday?”

“I remembered that’s what you were drinking at the wake for Mack Milner.”

“I drank it because it was free and I can’t usually afford the good stuff. That don’t mean I like it,” said Katz.

Holt poured herself a double and downed it in one smooth movement, her eyes on Katz the whole time. “Then drink your beer.”

Katz smiled and filled the other shot glass. The tequila was as warm and smooth as she remembered, burning all the way down. She topped up her glass and did the same for Holt, noticing how small the other detective’s hands were, smooth and white. Katz’s thick-knuckled hands seemed like paws in comparison. So what? Let Holt try to take down a tweaked-out biker with those manicured hands of hers. She checked the bar and saw Wallis watching the two of them; he turned away, taking a sudden interest in the beer tap in front of him. Good idea. Wallis still had a hard-on at Katz for sending him packing at the Luis Cortez crime scene, but not enough to try staring her down.

“You have an admirer,” said Holt.

“It’s a lonely job, but somebody’s got to do it.” Usually Katz would have bit Holt’s head off for a remark like that. The good booze must be making her mellow. “You think the grand jury is going to indict Strickland? Courts officer told me some of your witnesses were going south. I’d hate to see that bastard walk.”

“So would I.” Holt sipped her second drink, watching Katz. “I heard you were involved in an altercation at the coroner’s office.”

“I don’t have
altercations,
lady.”

Holt covered Katz’s drinking hand with her own. “It’s
Jane.
Or
detective.
”

Katz stared at Holt’s hand, but Holt didn’t remove it. Katz liked that.

“There was an argument,” said Holt, sitting back now, taking her hand with her.

“I get in lots of arguments. What’s the big deal about this one?”

“Jimmy thinks Dr. Boone make a mistake on Walsh’s autopsy. Actually he thinks a lot of things, but none of them follow unless the forensic report was wrong, and—”

“And when you heard about me getting in Boone’s face, you thought maybe Jimmy was on to something?”

Holt nodded and finished off her drink. The woman could put it away. Katz liked that too.

“He’s a hardhead,” said Katz.

“He’s a pain in the ass,” said Holt.

They clinked glasses. Katz savored her drink, reveling in the slow sensuality of the agave. Holt looked tired. Close up there were wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and dark circles under her eyes. “You worried about him?”

Holt stared right through her.

Katz lit another cigarette. “Jimmy told me about a love letter Walsh got in prison and a script he was writing.” She exhaled a plume of smoke. “A real cock-and-bull story about an angry husband who had it in for Walsh, angry enough to frame him for murder, angry enough to drown him in a fishpond and make it look like an accident. Knowing Jimmy, I’m sure there’s other things he didn’t tell me.” She blew a perfect smoke ring, a halo drifting over Holt’s head. “I don’t know if Jimmy is really on to something. I just figured I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Holt raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Why?”

“Why would
you
give Jimmy the benefit of the doubt?”

Katz shifted her weight. Her limp, wrinkled gray suit fit her like a hippopotamus’s skin, and she knew it. “He did a good deed, a favor for a dead kid I knew. Didn’t even bother telling me about it. Got me to thinking maybe I had been wrong about him.”

“Maybe you have.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not like I’m going to ask to wear his letter sweater.”

Holt cracked up at that one, but she wasn’t laughing at Katz. She just thought it was funny, and Katz laughed along with her.

“So what happened at the coroner’s office?
Did
Boone blow the autopsy?”

Katz shook her head and stubbed out her cigarette on the side of the countertop. “All I know for certain is he doesn’t like having his work questioned. He’s going to dislike a lot more things before I’m done with him.” She suddenly leaned across the table. “Just for curiosity’s sake, who does Jimmy think the angry husband is?”

“Jimmy’s not sure either.”

“He’s got an idea though,” said Katz. “Guy like Jimmy, he would
have
to have an idea.”

“Yes, Jimmy has never lacked for ideas.” They bumped hands reaching for the bottle, and Katz deferred, let Holt pour. “Do you know who Mick Packard is?”

Katz squinted, her head throbbing from the tequila on top of the beer. “The actor? Mr. Macho?
He’s
the angry husband?”

“Jimmy thinks so.”

Katz watched her. “But you don’t.”

Holt shrugged. “Jimmy talked to Packard’s wife, Samantha. The woman admitted that she and Walsh had an affair way back when, but said that she had never written Walsh a letter. She also said Walsh never even told her that he loved her.”

“So what? I’d lie too if I thought it would get me off the hook. Mick Packard’s supposed to have a bad temper and not be afraid to show it.”

Holt circled her glass with a forefinger, around and around. “Jimmy said the same thing. Samantha thought he was writing an exposé, and she was scared. She knew what her husband was capable of—that’s why she lied.”

“Makes sense to me.”

Holt looked up from her drink. “Not to me. A woman lies about a lot of things. She lies about her age, her weight, even her sex life. But denying that a man ever said he
loved
her?” She shook her head. “A woman doesn’t lie about that.”

Katz stared at her and finally nodded. Holt knew what she was doing.

Holt checked the room, then inclined her head toward Katz. “Jimmy might be wrong about Mick Packard, but if he’s right about Walsh being murdered”—her eyes were unwavering—“if he’s
right
about that, then whoever killed Walsh isn’t going to like Jimmy asking questions.”

“You’re worried about him?”

“Jimmy takes too many chances.”

Katz stifled a belch. “I consider that one of his few good qualities.”

Holt laughed, clicking glasses with Katz, and the two of them downed their shots.

Katz could barely hold her head up. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I don’t know if Walsh was murdered. I doubt he was. I just don’t like Boone coming on like an asshole when I ask him a few questions.”

Chapter 30

Jimmy leaned against his car, watching the kids in bathing suits shuffle past, carrying coolers and boom-boxes as they headed toward the beach. He had parked on the Strand, the street paralleling Hermosa Beach, parked right across from Garrett Walsh’s cottage, one of a string of million-dollar shacks built right on the sand, butted up against each other and separated from the street by a narrow alley.

A truck horn beeped at a Rollerblader racing down the Strand, keeping pace with the morning traffic, oblivious in his headphones. A trio of high-school-age girls cut through the alley and started down a beach-access path, their voices high pitched and eager, birdlike. That was the route Heather Grimm would have taken that day. One of the girls was blond like Heather, with a Hawaiian Tropic sun visor and folds of baby fat edging out of her thong. She carried a folding beach chair, stumbling slightly now as she shifted it to the other shoulder, then looked around, afraid that someone had noticed her awkwardness. He wanted to call out to her, remind her that it was Friday and she should be in school. He shook his head. Getting old, Jimmy.

Brimley should be here anytime now. He was back from his fishing trip and probably tired but was making the drive down from Ventura anyway, saying he felt he had promised Jimmy. It was a kind thing to do. Yeah, Sugar was a real angel, always ready to lend a hand—that’s what Lashonda had told him as she fielded calls to her psychic hotline. That should have been good enough for Jimmy, but it wasn’t. There was just something about an off-duty detective grabbing a disturbance call that bothered him. He hadn’t caught Brimley in any lies. The man had told the truth about how he afforded living at the Blue Water Marina: The management did waive half his moorage fees and all his utilities. The boat itself carried a sixty-eight-thousand-dollar mortgage. Maybe Lashonda was right, but yesterday, after turning in his profile of Luis Cortez, Jimmy had driven over to Brimley’s former apartment.

The old neighbors said Brimley had kept his TV down and moved his trash cans back off the street as soon as they were emptied, and he liked passing out fish that he had caught. Detective Wonderful. It was only on the drive back to the office that Jimmy realized that Brimley’s apartment was north of the Hermosa Beach police station, and Walsh’s cottage was
south
of it. The newspaper accounts of the murder all said Brimley was on his way home when he heard the noise complaint over his radio, said he had been just a few blocks away. So what was Brimley doing in Walsh’s neighborhood when the call came in?

“Sorry. I’m late,” Brimley said from behind him, hurrying along a the path that cut from Hermosa Avenue to the Strand, flip-flops rustling with every step. The beefy man was wearing shorts and a faded Bimini Tarpon Derby T-shirt. Instead of his field notes, he carried a box of Kreamy Kruller doughnuts, grinning. “Had to stop for supplies. You got to try one.”

“No, thanks.”

Brimley handed him one anyway, the doughnut the size of a bath sponge. “Go on.”

Jimmy took a bite, and warm maple cream squirted into his mouth. It was delicious.

Brimley pulled out a doughnut for himself. “They don’t have any Kreamy Kruller stores in Ventura. Probably a good thing too—I’d be the size of a walrus.” He glanced at Jimmy’s car. “Keep track of your time. The meter maids here got no heart.”

Jimmy took another bite. He tried to see Brimley as he was—not as an amiable retiree but as the man who might have helped frame Walsh for murder. Who better to use for a setup than the arresting officer? “How was your fishing trip, Sugar?”

“Didn’t catch a thing. Guess they saw me coming.” Brimley squinted. “Your mug looks pretty good. You heal quick. That must come in handy in your line of work.”

Jimmy darted across the street as the traffic broke, and Brimley humped along after him.

“There it is.” Brimley pointed at Walsh’s old beach house, a wood-frame cottage with a sagging front porch. “Walsh turned it over to Mrs. Grimm in a civil suit, if I remember right.”

“She had to split it with his attorneys. It’s been sold and resold since then.” Jimmy nodded at the thick bushes circling the house. “Was the hedge that high at the time of the murder?”

“Higher. It was technically a code violation, but we’re pretty kick-back around here. Unless there’s a complaint.”

“So the hedge would have muffled the noise from inside the cottage. Makes me wonder how somebody walking past would have heard anything.”

“You and me, we think alike.” Brimley licked his fingers. “When nobody stepped forward to take credit for the nine-one-one, I came back here a couple days later, same time as the original call came in. Early evening. Traffic was light. Loud music might have been ignored, but the caller had said there was a woman screaming inside. I stood there, and I figured you
could
hear that from the sidewalk.”

Jimmy started toward the beach, Brimley beside him, the box of doughnuts tucked under one arm, the two of them trudging through the soft sand. Jimmy stopped after a few steps and took off his sneakers, barefoot now. The beach was dotted with groups of people lying on towels, high-schoolers mostly, a few families too. Frisbees arced across the sand. Teenagers paraded along the waterline, toes splashing, checking one another out. A volleyball game was in progress, and a hunky guy was doing a chestplant in the sand trying to get a hard serve. His girlfriend brushed him off as he got back up.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” said Brimley. “I don’t think I was ever that young.”

Jimmy stopped on the surf side of the cottage, trying to see what Heather Grimm had seen that day. The deck extended out from the house about ten feet, surrounded by a waist-high wall.

“That wall is new,” said Brimley. “Walsh liked an unobstructed view from the deck. He had a couple of lawn chairs out there, so he could check out the action.”

“It would have worked both ways. From the beach you could see right into his place.”

“Long as the curtains were open. They were pulled tight when I got there that night.” Brimley felt around in the open box. “I made a few phone calls,” he said idly, then finally selected a doughnut and looked up at Jimmy. “Turns out you weren’t completely honest with me back at my boat. I’m a little hurt.”

Jimmy’s stomach felt like he was in Danziger’s glass elevator again, riding it straight to the bottom.

Brimley took a big bite, red filling oozing onto his chin. “Remember when I said I had read about you, something about you saving a cop’s life, and you waved me off, said you were just in the right place at the right time?” He flashed a raspberry grin. “Horsefeathers. You didn’t just save a cop’s life—you killed a man to do it. Huge fella too, almost three hundred pounds of pure meanness, from what I heard.” He put his arm around Jimmy. “I never even fired my weapon in the line of duty. Not once. Only discharged it on the police range, and even then I only managed minimum competency, and here you are saving a cop’s life.”

The breeze off the ocean kicked up sand. Jimmy looked around, avoiding Brimley’s gaze. “These cottages are close together. In your interviews, did anyone mention seeing anyone hanging around Walsh’s house that night? Someone who didn’t belong there?”

“Like who?” Brimley rooted around in the doughnut box but didn’t pick one. “You think someone was checking out the house from the beach? A witness that I missed?” He thought about it. “I guess it’s possible, but, I don’t know if it matters.” He plucked another doughnut out of the box. “We didn’t need witnesses. Heck, we hardly needed forensics the way Walsh kept confessing. I read him his rights, and he kept talking anyway. Told me how sorry he was all the whole way to the station.”

“I’m not criticizing. I give you a lot of credit. You had just finished a full shift when you heard the dispatcher on your radio. You must have been eager to get home and kick your shoes off. Most cops would have just kept driving. It wasn’t your call. So don’t worry, Sugar—you’re not going to be the bad guy in the piece.”

A glob of chocolate cream dripped from the doughnut onto Brimley’s T-shirt. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Some of them.”

“Heck, a man who saved a cop, I guess I can tell you—just don’t put this in your article.” Brimley leaned closer, his forehead shiny with sweat. “I
wasn’t
on my way home that night. Not directly, anyway. I lived clear on the other side of town in those days, but I used to swing by here first just about every day.” He bit into a chocolate doughnut. “It was the Kreamy Krullers. Good, aren’t they? Well, the store on Hermosa Avenue was the only one in the area in those days, and I was hooked on the butternut eclairs. Used to grab a half dozen after work, and by the time I got home there wasn’t more than one or two left.” He patted his ample belly. “Can you imagine the fun people would have had with that if the papers had found out? Cops and doughnut shops—Jay Leno would have been making jokes at my expense for a month.”

“
That’s
what you were doing here that night?”

Brimley drew a forefinger to his lips. “Shhhhhhh.”

Jimmy felt the ache draining from his shoulder blades. He hadn’t realized how tense he was until Brimley’s doughnut confession, the explanation offered up without being asked. It was almost always a mistake to like a potential suspect, to want to believe them. He was still glad that Brimley had offered up a rationale for his behavior— and not to make himself look good but to avoid looking foolish.

“What is it, Jimmy?”

“Nothing. I’m just
really
glad to hear about your love affair with Kreamy Krullers.”

Brimley scratched his head. “I’m never going to figure you out.”

“If you trust me with that kind of damaging information,” said Jimmy, recovering fast, “that means you’re probably going to let me see your field notes.”

“You never quit.”

“Never.”

Brimley popped the last of the doughnut into his mouth. “I got my notes in the trunk of my car. Just don’t gloat.” He closed the lid on the box. “That’s all for me. You want to come get the notes? I don’t know what else there is do out here except sweat.”

“Not just yet.” Jimmy scanned the beach. “Take a look around. The girls are all in groups, lying around on their blankets, talking, oiling up, and checking out the boys from behind their sunglasses. That sort of thing never changes. So why was Heather different? Why did she come here alone that day?”

“You asked me that on the boat. I told you I didn’t know, and neither did her mama. The way you keep asking makes me think you must know the answer.”

“No, I just have the question.” Jimmy was tempted to tell Brimley about his conversation with Chase Gooding, tell him about the photographer who cruised teenage beauty contests, and Heather’s new agent who hadn’t bothered to attend her funeral. He kept quiet though. The good husband wouldn’t have killed Heather himself—he would have farmed the job out. Jimmy wondered if the man who had done it had come this way, come in off the beach, a towel draped around his neck. Jimmy took in the whole scene and scanned the shoreline. He wondered how long the man had been out there, imagined him with his nose in a paperback, waiting for the crowd to drift off and the darkness to come. Most of all, he wondered where the man was now.

“You got cop eyes, Jimmy. I mean that as a compliment.”

“I take it as a compliment.”

“It’s a mixed blessing, seeing things clear, noticing what other folks miss.” Brimley hunched his broad shoulders, his bare arms burned from the sun. He might love the sun, but the sun didn’t love him. “The Heather Grimm homicide was the biggest case of my career, but I wish I had never taken the call. I should have let the uniforms handle it. She was dead already. Wasn’t like I did her any good.” He shook his head. “Hermosa is a small department, we probably didn’t get more than one or two murders a year. I had seen things before, bad things, but nothing like what was in that little house.”

Jimmy had only seen photos of the crime scene; they were bad enough.

Brimley shook his head. “I thought it was going to be just another domestic disturbance call. Tell them to keep it down, and I’d go on about my business. Instead, the door opens, and Walsh is standing there holding that stupid gold statue, blood everywhere,
everywhere,
and lying next to the fireplace—this pretty blond girl with her face caved in. I tried CPR, that’s what you’re supposed to do, but her teeth were all over the carpet, and the whole time Walsh is crying like
he’s
the one hurt.”

“I’m sorry, Sugar.”

Brimley’s expression hardened. “I’m a gentle person, but it took everything I had that night not to shut him up for good.”

“The nine-one-one disturbance call—I haven’t been able to get a copy of it.”

“I’m not surprised, the way they keep things. Not that it would do you much good anyway. Call came in from the street. Too much traffic noise in the background, if you were hoping to recognize the voice.” Brimley started toward the street. “Come on, you can borrow my notes. Maybe they’ll do you more good than they did me.”

Jimmy kept pace with him as they slogged through the soft sand.

“I think you were pulling my leg back on my boat,” said Brimley. “I asked how you found out where I lived, and you said you just handed the job off to someone else, but I bet you didn’t. You’re a bird dog, that’s what you are.” He walked slower now, the two of them side by side. “I’ve known a few cops who were the same way. We’d get a heads-up on a skinny hooker or a car prowler with braids, some description that would fit half of L.A., but by the end of the shift, the bird dog would drag in the bust, acting like it was no big deal. Never could figure out how they did it. Instinct like that—it’s a gift.”

Jimmy kept walking.

“Me, I never had a gift,” said Brimley, a little out of breath now. “I always said the only reason they made me a detective was because I didn’t have enough street smarts to stay in uniform. Even so, once I had the bad guys in custody, well, they’d tell me what I needed to know, without me ever having to get nasty in a back room. I hate that rough stuff, smacking a man with a phone book or planting a knee in his privates. That’s not police work. Me, I’d settle back in my chair and break out a candy bar, a Baby Ruth maybe or a Butterfingers, and I’d take a nibble, looking across the table at the bad guy. Then suddenly I’d catch myself, apologize for my poor manners, and offer him a bite. Heck, couple of candy bars later, we’d be old friends, and the hardest con would tell me anything I wanted to know.”