The Crime Writer (25 page)

T
he skull and crossbones glowered at me from the matchbook, preserved benignly in a Ziploc. I paced under my kitchen lights, glaring back. Like the cigarette smoke, the matchbook struck me as a contrivance. But how was I supposed to interpret it? That Mort had written Genevieve’s address when first stalking her? I doubted that matches dating back four months had only just been used up. Had he jotted the address while planning the copycat killing? Maybe he’d been using Genevieve’s house as a workshop, taking Broach there after the kidnapping to avoid leaving evidence at his apartment. More or less unoccupied, it would make an ideal safe house. My windshield kiss raised additional questions: If Mort was framing me for the murders, why run me over
now
? Because he knew I was onto him? Was he trying to take me out before I could get something concrete to the police?

I thumbed open my cell phone and dialed. Angela answered, accepted my apology, and handed off the phone to her husband.

As always, Chic sounded alert, as if I’d caught him on a morning stroll. He listened quietly. I finished filling him in and asked, “Can you meet me at Genevieve’s?”

“Course. Why?”

“I don’t buy the matchbook any more than I bought the bondage rope. Someone who’s been this careful with evidence wouldn’t pull up on my street, have a smoke, and toss a matchbook with a convenient address on it out his window.”

“Unless they thought you was gonna be too dead to find it.”

A reasonable point.

“I think I’m being led.”

“And you gonna follow.”

“Yeah. I think he planted something in that house for me to find. Something that incriminates me further. And I want to find it before the cops do and get out before the trap springs.”

“Dangerous game.”

“That’s why I need blackup.”

“Then blackup gon’ be what you get.”

I stood in the gutter, Chic and his brothers—two I knew, one I didn’t—beside me, Genevieve’s house looming over us. We’d finished checking the surrounding streets and land, and Fast Teddie had squeezed through a bathroom window with a gold-plated Colt .45 and safed the house, making sure no one was inside.

Chic nudged me. “Ready to take a gander?”

I was.

We passed the strip of lawn with its broken sprinkler, made our way up the shifting pavers to the floating porch. There the philodendron, there the terra-cotta pot with the cracked saucer.

I had been here many times in my life, in reality, in dream, in memory. This late-night visit felt like a melding of all three.

Fast Teddie picked the front-door dead bolt in about three seconds.

Chic pressed the door open, handed me a flashlight, and said, “We’ll be where we’re at. Keep your cell phone on.”

I moved inside, closed the door behind me.

Alone in Genevieve’s house.

A memory attached to every object. Baccarat candy dish, sleek to the touch. Blank spot on the side table where a Murano paperweight used to rest. Pink-and-white striped scarf slung over the banister, bearing the faintest scent of Petite Cherie. The marble tiles of the foyer were hard underfoot. The knife block stared at me from the kitchen’s center island, five stainless handles and one empty slit. Thinking about that bleach wash given to Broach’s body, I checked the sink and the bathtubs and strayed into the dark garage. I searched the living room and the carpeted alcove that Genevieve used to refer to as a dining room, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

Only the upstairs master remained. My legs tingled as I ascended. Adrenaline? Fear? The door had been left ajar. Even in the dim light, it was clear—a broad-ranging blob, lighter than the surrounding carpet, where industrial cleaners had bleached the beige fibers.

The bed had been made, a detail that drove my emotion to the surface. Who had pulled it together during the aftermath? Genevieve’s mother? Had a thoughtful criminalist turned up the sheets before withdrawing?

I blinked myself back to usefulness and checked the closet, the sink, the luxurious pink bathtub with its inflatable headrest, touched now with mold.

I returned to the spot on the carpet and sat cross-legged.

Here Genevieve had met the curved boning knife.

Here her life had been extinguished.

Here I had sat with her body, dipped my hands into the bloody well, tumbled into seizure and blackout.

Somewhere the memory lurked, lost in the coralline whorls of my frontal lobe.

I wanted answers. I wanted a sudden flash of recognition, the thunderbolt of epiphany. Instead it was just me and the stainless quiet of a deserted bedroom.

After a few moments, I picked up on the faintest hiss. I stood, spinning to source it, wound up with my ear pressed to the built-in speaker beside the headboard.

I moved downstairs to the edge of the dining room, where a wall of fine-wood cabinets arced toward the kitchen. A picture window, the largest in the house, showed off a view of the hillside and intervals of the street below as it twisted down to Coldwater. The leftmost cabinet, where through some flight of bizarre Gallic logic Genevieve hid the stereo components, opened readily under my touch, releasing a wave of electronic warmth. Glowing from the dark stack of hardware, a green pinpoint. The CD player had been left on. Playing something the night of her death? Maybe that music I’d heard in my dream-memory as I’d stumbled up onto the porch hadn’t been merely in my head, like the sharp scent of smoldering rubber. The digital counter showed that the CD had run its course. I clicked “eject,” the tray sliding out to offer an unlabeled disc, something Genevieve had burned from her i Tunes library.

I was about to thumb the tray back in to play the CD when my cell phone chimed, breaking the tense silence. My gaze rose to the window.

Down the hill two dark SUVs with tinted windows and no running lights turned off Coldwater onto Genevieve’s street, starting up the hill.

Chic’s voice came rushing through my cell phone—“Get outta there.”

I flew from the house, the pavers rocking violently in my aftermath. Leaping into my car, I slid Genevieve’s unmarked CD beneath my floor mat. As I zoomed away from the curb, I popped in my headset, watching Chic’s taillights blink on the stretch of road visible down the hillside to my left.

“Where are they?”

“A block down from me,” Chic said. “Teddie just executed the world’s slowest three-point turn to hang ’em up. Can’t see who through the tint. You got your piece?”

I set the .22 on the passenger seat. “Yep.”

“Nice and easy. You drive right past ’em heading down. The road’s narrow—they’ll need time to turn around. We hit the bottom of the hill, we go in five different directions.”

My grip tightened on the steering wheel. I wedged the .22 in the gap in the seat break; if chaos ensued, I didn’t want it sliding out of reach.

Blind turn followed blind turn, and then finally, a sweep of headlights illuminated a thicket of chaparral on the left shoulder. I slowed, hugged the wall of the canyon, and two black Tahoes flew by, rocking my car. No time to see a license plate. The windows looked uniformly black.

I was almost around the curve when, in my rearview, I saw the back Tahoe’s brake lights flare. My stomach surged.

Accelerating down the dangerous road, I said to Chic, “They spotted me.”

“Okay. Keep me in your ear. Tell me where you are.”

I skidded onto Coldwater, sending a spray of rocks and gravel across the opposing lane, and rocketed up the hill, blowing the light to veer left onto Mulholland. “I’m heading for home.”

“I’m right behind you.”

The lead Tahoe nosed into my mirror, but I lost it around a turn. The light at Benedict Canyon was yellow; I saw another dark SUV waiting at the intersection and hit the gas, squeezing through as it pulled forward to block me. Three cars in pursuit? The FBI? Gangsters? The mob? Maintaining a dangerously heavy foot, swerving into opposite lanes to shave turns, I kept my pursuers one bend of the road behind me.

Chic said, “What’s your cross street?”

Approaching Beverly Glen, Mulholland added a few more lanes, opening up for the intersection.

The wind brought me wisps of sound from a bullhorn: “Your vehicle over
now
—” Hitting the brakes, I careened around the turn and saw the blockade ahead—six police units parked nose to nose, lights strobing, doors open, firepower aimed at yours truly. A few confused drivers cluttered the intersection behind them, starting to reverse away from whatever was coming.

When the screech of my tires faded, I heard the sirens harmonizing behind me.

I said, “It’s the cops.”

Chic said, “I’m gonna go home now.”

In my rearview I watched the distinctive cherry red pickup veer right and ease calmly down a side street. I turned on my dome light, placed both my hands on top of the steering wheel. One of the Tahoes pulled up next to me, the dark window sliding down.

I said, “There’s a loaded .22 on the passenger seat.”

Over the aimed sights of his Glock, Bill Kaden said, “Yes, I believe I’m familiar with it.”

R
esting my cuffed hands atop the interrogation table, I gazed around at the familiar yellowed walls, the one-way mirror flecked with rust. It was morning, but you wouldn’t have known it.

Kaden and Delveckio had had me delivered by two gruff cops who smelled of cigarette smoke and refused to acknowledge me until they yanked me out of the backseat. A few reporters had been hanging around Parker Center on a rumor an indicted gangbanger was being moved downtown for a trial. In his absence they’d been happy to capture me doing the perp walk. Upstairs I’d been left to entertain myself for a few hours. Despite the cuffs, I tried to make hand-shadow animals on the far wall. Whoever said oppression breeds creativity was full of shit.

The door banged open, and Kaden ambled in. Cuffed sleeves, shoulder holster, smelling of chalk and coffee. Behind him Delveckio blew his nose into a handkerchief.

“We found Kasey Broach’s shirt in the laundry-room sink of Genevieve Bertrand’s house,” Kaden said.

The laundry room. I hadn’t even been bright enough to stumble over evidence planted for me.

Delveckio added, “And your prints all over the house.”

“Of course they are. I spent a lot of time there before we broke up.”

Kaden said, “We have you on her street.”

“I was taking a drive.”

Kaden gripped the table, arms flexing. “Are you denying that you broke in to her house a few hours ago?”

“I’m neither confirming nor denying anything until I talk to a lawyer.”

“So why don’t you request one now?”

“Because we’d have to stop talking. I know you think you’ve got something on me. Probably something horrifying. And I want to know what it is.” I was sweating through my shirt. “I can tell from the setup. Nine units pursuing me, handcuffs, the smug set of your mouth. So what do you got? My high-school prom date ten toes up beneath the bed of tulips in my front yard?”

“You don’t have a bed of tulips in your front yard,” Delveckio said.

“I know, but ‘hydrangeas’ is a mouthful.” A loaded silence. I was too anxious to let it stretch on longer. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get it over with.”

Kaden said, “We were on our way to arrest you when an anonymous call tipped us to a break-in at Ms. Bertrand’s address.”

“Why were you on your way to arrest me?”

He threw down an evidence bag containing a familiar hair on the table in front of me. “This hair matches several left behind by the Redondo Beach Rapist over the past three years.”

“I…
what?
”

“He wears a ski mask, so we’ve never been able to get a composite. Seven rapes and we’ve got nothing but the occasional strand of brown hair.” Kaden eyed me. “Matches
your
hair color.”

“This is bullshit. By the time we’re done, you’re gonna have me toilet training the Lindbergh baby with Jimmy Hoffa.”

“You wanna tell me why the hell you were having
our
lab process a hair from a wanted rapist?”

“They made a match and Ordean spooked,” I said, more to myself than them.

“Of course he spooked. He’s a fucking TV actor. The CSI clowns consulting on his show ran a microscopic hair comparison to play show-and-tell, put it against strands from high-profile outstanding cases. It hits the jackpot, they about swallowed their tongues. Ordean said you gave him this hair. Has no idea where you got it.”

“Where do you think I got it?”

Kaden reached over and pressed a thumb to the swelling around my eye. “Morton Frankel.”

I jerked away, and they snickered at me.

Kaden asked, “Why were you at Genevieve Bertrand’s house?”

“Someone tried to break in to my house tonight, then run me over with a brown Volvo. He left this behind.” Cuffs jangling, I pulled the Baggie holding the matchbook from my pocket—they’d missed it when patting me down for hardware—and flung it on the table.

Delveckio examined the skull-and-crossbones matchbook sourly, or maybe that was just his face. The more I studied him, the less I could imagine him having anything to do with Adeline—or any of the Bertrands, for that matter. Rather, the less I could imagine them having anything to do with him. Delveckio awkwardly manipulated the bag, showing his partner the address inside.

“Who tipped you?” I asked. “That I was allegedly at Gene vieve’s?”

Kaden said, “An anonymous caller.”

“Don’t you trace incoming phone calls?”

“It came in to my private line. Not 911. Not dispatch.”

“That’s a very anonymous anonymous call. When you go pick up Mort, why don’t you see if he’s got your digits written down somewhere?”

“We can’t pick him up,” Delveckio said.

“The guy tried to make me Volvo meat.”

“Says you.”

“And the matchbook.”

“This evidence”—he tapped the bag containing the hairs—“was illegally obtained.”

“But not by you,” I said. “So you know you
can
use it—for a warrant and to build a case. And I’ve been told that it’s all about building a case.”

Kaden glared at me. “You ever fucking relent?” He jerked his head at Delveckio, and they left me alone with my none-too-chipper reflection.

I wasn’t wearing a watch, so there was no way to gauge the time. Every few hours I’d ask to go to the bathroom, and I’d be respectfully led down a hall, passing under a clock.

After my third escort deposited me back in the room, I asked if I’d been arrested, and he said, “Not yet. You’re still just being questioned.”

I asked, “You guys trying out a new Zen interrogation technique?” He looked at me blankly, so I added, “Don’t you have to charge me or let me go?”

“Not as long as we’re holding you as a person of interest.”

“Person of interest,” I said. “That’s flattering. I think I’ll call my lawyer now.”

“Hang on,” he said. And then, as if I’d argued, “Just hang on.”

He exited, pointedly leaving the heavy door ajar. A few minutes passed, and then I heard the staccato beat of footsteps down the hall. Morton Frankel, led in cuffs, passed the open doorway, Kaden and Delveckio on either side. Catching sight of me, Frankel bucked against the detectives, elbows flaring, and glared in at me. Bruises ringed his eyes from when I’d broken his nose, and he stood stooped from my stabbing him in the thigh. A sheen covered his face, and he had sweat stains under his arms; they’d kept him under the lights. Seeming to relish the confrontation, the detectives gave him a moment.

Frankel said, “I’m gonna gouge out your eyes and skull-fuck your head.”

He lunged at me, causing me to jump up. My chair clattered over. Laughing, the detectives yanked him from view, and I heard Kaden ordering someone else to get him to Booking. Kaden and Delveckio returned, closed the door, and sat opposite me. Kaden’s eyes went to my knee, which was jackhammering up and down from the scare, and his lips pressed together in a smirk. From his watch it was already two o’ clock.

“Good detective work,” Kaden said. “At his place our boys found a rape kit in a footlocker—ski mask, flashlight, pick set, cloth gags, plastic flex-cuffs, the whole nine yards. And the boy was just sentimental enough to keep a few trophies—a scarf, bathrobe sash, bracelet.” He paused, bit his lips. “Only one problem, Danner. One of his hair samples we have on record was from an attack he committed the night of January twenty-two under the Redondo Pier. Around, say, eleven o’ clock. That time and date ring a bell?”

When Kasey Broach was kidnapped.

Disappointment came in a rush. I sagged back in my chair.

Delveckio gave me a wan grin. “So unless Frankel chartered a helicopter to make his rounds that evening, that pretty well puts him out of contention.”

“Who borrowed his car?” I asked.

“We’re looking into it,” Kaden said. “But we’re assuming he needed it to get to Redondo to rape Lucy Padillo.”

“That was the car,” I said. “The dent on the right panel, everything.”

Delveckio threw the matchbook on the table in front of me. “We had the lab take a look at this. No prints, which strikes us as a bit odd, given that it
is
a matchbook. But you’ll like this part even better: The handwriting didn’t match Frankel’s. Know whose it matched?”

Kaden smiled. “Yours.”

I opened my mouth but realized I had not a single goddamned thing to say.

“You’re chasing a phantom all right, Danner.” Kaden unfolded a photocopy—the matchbook note next to a sample of my handwriting, pulled from a DMV form I’d filled out sometime last year. Matching characteristics of the letters had been circled in red. At a glance it made a convincing argument.

“Block letters are the easiest to forge,” I said quietly. I didn’t know this to be true, but it sounded good, and I had the force of desperation on my side.

Kaden and Delveckio looked at me like well-intentioned friends about to point out that my belt didn’t match my loafers.

“Right,” Kaden said, “and good ol’ Mort takes a crash course in forensic handwriting after his shift stamping metal.”

“But congratulations,” Delveckio said with false cheeriness, “you caught a rapist, helped us close a case. So you’re in the clear.”

He offered his hand, but I knew better than to take it.

They both chuckled heartily.

Kaden said, “It doesn’t quite work that way, as we tried to explain. You refused to walk the line, and now we have you on obstruction of justice, assault and battery, a couple B& Es. We asked you nicely, we asked you not nicely, and we warned you that this would wind up in the shit. But you were too busy playing gumshoe to think we were serious. That there would be consequences. So we’re gonna charge you. Because, see, we’re curious why you’re so desperate to hang Kasey Broach’s murder on someone else. You’ve got your taped alibi, fine, but we’re gonna connect the dots, because we know they’re there to be connected. And while we’re busy doing that, we’re gonna leave you in general pop over in Twin Towers.”

Kaden stood and gripped my arm hard at the biceps. He led me out into the hall. What was I supposed to do? Kick and scream? Fight?

We rode the elevator down, then drove across to Twin Towers. They tugged me out, me moving numb on my feet, not fully believing they’d put me in the fish tank with murderers and rapists but believing it at the same time. I was prodded into Tower One. The building’s hexagonal shape, contributing to the much-touted panoptic design, turned the interior into a house of reflections, each module faced and flanked by its multiple mirror image. The smell of the building had been singed into memory, bringing me back to those infinite four months. The stained concrete, the metallic din, the echo of wall-muffled shouts and clangs. The thick air took up bitter residence at the back of my throat.

“You have to charge me first,” I said, “and let me call my lawyer.”

The detectives left their Glocks in the gun lockers, and we passed through the double security doors into the no-man’s-land of Sheriff’s deputies with their tan-and-green uniforms and holstered pepper spray. Beyond one more gate of bars, I saw the inmates circling the vast rec room, talking shit, their too-loud laughter edged with aggression. Frankel wasn’t among them, but he would likely be soon. While two cohorts watched, a prisoner with a shaved head and a goatee leaned up against a skinny black kid, pinning him to a barred window. A ripple of awareness passed through the group, heads swiveling to the gate, to me behind it.

I twisted my arm free. “This is bullshit. You can’t do this.”

Kaden unlocked my handcuffs. The deputy nodded at a colleague behind ballistic glass, and then the gate hummed pleasantly and he drew it aside and gave me a little shove. I knew better than to turn back pleading, so I stood and faced the others. The rec room was deep, at least a hundred blue jumpsuits dotting the metal benches and hanging from the pull-up and dip bars. The air was still, un-cooled, and the heat from all those sweltering, stressed-out bodies vibrated the air like a low, sustained note.

Behind me the gate closed with steel finality.

Maybe fifteen convicts drew toward me, interest piqued. A man with matching crosses branded into his forearms stepped out in front, stretching his fingers wide as if flexing them. I moved to the side, putting concrete at my back as the others spread strategically and began their approach.