The Crime Writer Page 20

  “Did she ever slip?”

  “We just celebrated with a twenty-year cake.”

  “Do you think she would have ever taken Xanax?”

  “Not a prayer of a chance. She wouldn’t touch my Black Forest cake, not even with the cherry brandy cooked off.”

  In the kitchen Mr. Broach dropped a coffeemaker, and the pot shattered. He looked down at it blankly.

  A potent three seconds passed before his wife said, “What were we going to do with it anyways?”

  “I’ve put you behind schedule,” I said. “Would you mind if I helped?”

  Mr. Broach said, “We wouldn’t mind that at all.”

  For the next hour, as the whine of traffic diminished and the kids chased each other around the street, whooping and screaming, I helped pack and load. We made decent progress.

  I came out with a halogen floor lamp and a framed Matisse print to find Mrs. Broach sitting on the ground, running her thumb over a white-ribbon barrette that had fallen from a bag.

  Mr. Broach paused before her, helped her to her feet.

  “I think that’s enough for tonight,” he said.

  We finished loading the stuff by the U-Haul, and he turned to shake my hand.

  “Maybe they’re wrong about you. With Genevieve Bertrand.”

  “I hope so,” I said back to him.

  Mrs. Broach smiled sadly at me. “You take care of yourself, Andrew.”

  Jennifer offered me a wave from the U-Haul as they pulled out, and I stood and watched until the taillights were two distant eyes in the darkness. The kids circled with their crew cuts and ten-year-old voices, yelling about stickups and screeching imagined injuries. Their toy guns emitted electronic blips and blasts, red lights blinking deep inside the barrels.

  I was almost to my car when I noticed that one kid’s pistol was deadly silent, nothing inside the bore but a circle of shadow. I jogged a few steps after him.

  “Hey,” I called out. “Hey.”

  He pivoted with a crooked grin and said, “Bang bang, you’re dead, buddy.”

  The gun he was pointing at me was real.

  30

  I put my hands in the air. “All right, I’m sticking ’em up, buddy. Don’t shoot.”

  He smiled, showing off a gap between his front teeth. All fun and games.

  I watched his little finger tighten around the trigger and said, “Wait! Lemme give you my wallet first.”

  Shuffling forward, I dug in my pocket and produced the pitifully light leather billfold. It distracted him just as I hoped, and I snatched the gun out of his hand, grabbing the barrel from the side and twisting it out and free. He stared at me, rubbing his wrist, stunned. “I was just playing.”

  “This is a real gun.”

  A shitty .22, to be precise. I nosed back the slide—no round in the chamber. Lucky thing, or someone would be bleeding out on the pavement right now. I dropped the magazine. A hollow point peeked out from the top, spring-loaded and ready to go. I reseated the mag and thumbed the safety on.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “I didn’t steal it. I didn’t. It was in my trash.” He pointed to a row of houses backing on the parking lot. Garbage cans lined the rickety wooden fence, awaiting pickup. “I found it. On my property. It’s mine.”

  I turned the pistol to check the serial number on the frame above the trigger and was not surprised to find only a stripe of gouged metal. “When?”

  The other kids circled, scared but keeping a good distance. A boy in an Angels cap ran off toward the row of houses.

  “Dunno. Coupla days ago.”

  “The night the cops were here?”

  “Day after. They weren’t looking for this, though. A lady got kidnapped from right there. That’s why we’re all playing together now. Buddy system.”

  “You talk to the cops about this?”

  He shook his head, scared. I looked across at his house. The kid in the Angels cap was returning, tugging at the hand of a big man in a flannel shirt. Through a back window, I could make out trophies and baseball pennants.

  “You see anything the night she was kidnapped? Out front here? Around ten, eleven?”

  “A car was there a little while.” He pointed at a parking space to the left of Kasey’s door—her car would have held the front slot. “Then it was gone. That’s all. I was up watching TV, so I didn’t even see nobody.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “It had a big butt on it with windows.”

  The best description I’d ever heard of a Volvo. I opened my door, digging through printouts. “What color was it?”

  “Brown, or black even. It was hard to tell, ’ cause there was no light.”

  I handed him a picture of a Volvo 760. “Like this one?”

  “Yeah.” A dirty fingernail tapped the printout. “Like that one. Now can I have my gun back?”

  “Can I help you?” the man in the flannel shirt shouted, advancing quickly.

  “He was playing with a gun.”

  “My boys can play with whatever they damn well please.”

  “A real gun.”

  “Where’s my ten-year-old son gonna get a real gun?”

  “It’s not, Daddy. I swear.”

  The man continued at me aggressively. I didn’t want to fight a father in front of his son, so I chambered a round, aimed straight up, and fired. The boom sent the kids sprawling on the concrete and the man back on his heels, crouching, arms raised over his head.

  “It’s a real gun,” I said.

  Their scared reaction didn’t make me feel good about myself. Not even close.

  The kids stayed down on the ground until I drove off.

  “Remember for Chainer’s Law you showed me how to restore a serial number that had beenled off?” I raised my shirt, showing the pistol snugged in the front of my jeans.

  Lloyd stared at me across the pristine sheet of butcher paper that covered his lab bench. “You want to blow your pecker off? This isn’t a movie, Drew.”

  I withdrew the .22 and set it down beside the skull-and-bones matchbook, dimpling the glossy paper. Lloyd coughed uneasily and glanced around.

  He’d gotten stuck processing some paint chips and was eager to get home to his wife. Given my excitement over the pistol, he’d yielded to my pressure to see him at the lab. He was working late and figured his superiors would be gone by this hour. I’d caught a few stares on my way in, but the halls were mostly abandoned.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” he said, snapping on latex gloves. “Why bring a gun if he was planning on knocking Broach out with gas?”

  “It wasn’t for Kasey. Her he wanted alive and unconscious. It was in case one of the neighbors stumbled in on him or during that short unlit walk to the Volvo.”

  He dusted the pistol, though I was certain that five days of fetishistic fondling by the kid would have smudged over any underlying prints. Indeed, besides mine, Lloyd brought up only child-size marks, which we matched against the prints the kid had left on the Volvo flyer I’d shown him. The magazine and bullets—each of which Lloyd dusted and checked—had been wiped clean.

  Using a rotary hand tool fitted with a buffing wheel, he sanded the gouged strip where the serial number had been to a mirror finish. “Wouldn’t he know the neighbor’s routines? Everything else about this guy points to meticulous preparation.”

  “But I think he was getting desperate,” I said. “Needed a fix, maybe. He’s thinking less clearly here—he should’ve picked someone who lived somewhere more secluded, like Genevieve. But for whatever reason, he wanted Broach. Which meant neighbors. Which meant he wanted a gun for backup. Once he had her safely in the car, he didn’t need the gun anymore. The trash cans were at the curb, right on the way back to the freeway. He could’ve just slowed down and tossed the gun into one of them.”

  Lloyd carried the .22 over to a fume hood, beside a wire basket filled with guns, mags, pistols, and slides of all makes and models, samples for comparison. Quite a f
ew had their serial numbers ground off as well. He donned goggles and gloves and clicked a button on the fume hood’s overhang, the fan suctioning air out from the cube of workspace in which the gun rested. The acids and reagents ranged from clear to dark green; Lloyd applied them to the obliterated metal using cotton swabs, wiping gently in one direction. The acids ate into the steel, the smell keen and foul. The metal that had been deformed by the stamping process should erode more quickly, leaving us with a ghost impression of the numerals.

  Focused on his task, Lloyd said, “He’s got an unconscious woman in the back of his wagon and he’s worried about getting caught with a gun?”

  “It’s not just about getting caught. I think he doesn’t like guns.”

  Looking wonkish in his protective eyewear, Lloyd glanced up from the bubbling acid. “Morton Frankel,” he said, “doesn’t strike me as skittish.”

  “You might be surprised about the complexities of Morton Frankel. Kasey Broach was twenty years sober. The Xanax? I don’t think she took it. I think he gave it to her.”

  “The killer gave her Xanax? Why? She was knocked out.”

  “Maybe not the whole time. Sevoflurane’s difficult to regulate, and Frankel’s not an anesthesiologist. Maybe she popped back into consciousness a few times—especially if he kept her under for a long period.”

  “Why would he care if he’s a sadist?”

  “Maybe he’s not.”

  Lloyd guffawed—the broad laugh. “Come on. This hardly matches a guy who used bondage rope to bind her wrists. So now what? He was worried about his victim’s anxiety? Morton Frankel with the two rapes and a molest? What kind of killer is he?”

  What I knew of Mort, I had to confess, didn’t match my theory. Which meant either my suspect had to budge or my theory, my character or my plot. Then it struck me—“Frankel’s in a small apartment. If he brought her there, maybe he gave her Xanax in case she stirred so she wouldn’t freak out and make noise before he could adjust the sevoflurane.”

  “That,” Lloyd said, “is a valid hypothesis.” He steered the boom-mounted lamp down to a hard oblique angle to pick up contrast on the gun, and used water to rinse off the acid. “I’m getting something.”

  I leaned to squint at the emerging characters, lighter than the surrounding steel, but he moved me back from the rising fumes.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “These aren’t numbers. They’re letters.”

  “How is that possible?”

  He applied a bit more acid, trying to get the final edges to resolve. He could’ve gouged off the number entirely, so no restoration could be performed, then stamped letters on and scratched it down again.”

  Easy work for a machinist.

  Lloyd took off the eyewear and threw it on the lab bench. “Looks like our boy has a sense of humor.”

  I stepped around and peered down at the frame of the .22. Brought to the surface of the gouged metal, a simple message.

  NICE TRY.

  31

  The .22 pressed reassuringly to the small of my back, I coasted down from Mulholland, leaving a message for Bill Kaden, Detective Three.

  “Morton Frankel just got his car back from the shop today,” I said. “He was getting a ding on the right front wheel well repaired. He caught me following him around, and we almost got into a fistfight, but I gave him the slip. Then I figured out Kasey Broach didn’t take Xanax, and I found a kid who gave me an additional sighting of a brown Volvo, putting it at Broach’s apartment the night of the murder. He lives in the westernmost house backing on the parking lot. Tell his father I say hello. Oh—and I also have a gun the same kid found in his trash can the day after Broach was killed. I had it thoroughly and professionally processed. There are no adult prints, no nothing except for a hidden greeting where the serial number used to be. ‘Nice try,’ it says. So I’m hoping all this is sufficient to move Mort up on your lengthy list of priorities. Go interview him. Pluck a hair out of his misshapen skull and run it against the unidentified sample you took off Broach’s body. Whatever. But keep him from coming here. If he’s our guy, I’m guessing he saved the MapQuest directions from last time he drove over to carve up my foot. If he shows up again, I’m gonna shoot him. And I have a gun with a serial number scraped off, so you’ll never trace it to me.”

  The beep cut me off.

  There. It was out now. If Delveckio turned out to be involved in some way—admittedly a long shot—my keeping his partner informed might bring the heat. My instincts told me Kaden didn’t have anything to do with some frame-up. And my instincts were right at least 30 percent of the time.

  A coyote trotted down the slope ahead of me, an escapee from a noir novel. He lunged up a neighbor’s hillside, his white-gray coat blending into the fog.

  Not surprisingly, Kaden called back in a minute and a half. “What?” he said.

  I pulled into my driveway, parked, and filled him in on the day’s adventures.

  When I finished, there was a speechless pause. “How’d you get the pistol processed?”

  “I know a guy.”

  “Okay, this has been nice and diverting so far, but now I’ve hit the wall. If you tangle in this investigation any further—”

  “You will arrest me for obstruction of justice.”

  A pause. “That’s right. Ed and I are gonna come see you tomorrow, and we’re gonna take the pistol and back you out of this case or—”

  “Throw my ass in jail.”

  “It would be a mistake to take this as a bluff, Danner.”

  “Why don’t you come get the gun tonight?”

  Kaden covered the mouthpiece for a murmured consult, then said, “We’re outside Morton Frankel’s apartment.”

  I felt a surge of excitement at having managed to get the proper authorities, or at least authorities, on what I hoped was the proper trail. If Delveckio and Frankel knew each other already, would Kaden pick up on it? What would he do even if he did?

  “Is he there?” I asked.

  “He is. We’re gonna take him in for interrogation.”

  “Break him.”

  “We will. We’re gonna sit on his pad for a few hours first.”

  “Why wait?”

  “See if he gets up to anything. Plus, they’re softened up when you wake them.”

  I recalled SWAT crashing my house at 4:00 A.M., dragging my discombobulated ass from bed.

  “I doubt Mort softens significantly.”

  “Either way he’ll know we’re keeping an eye now.”

  “I’ll sleep soundly.”

  “Try not to murder anyone while you’re doing it.”

  Now that I knew Frankel was taken care of for a few hours, I called Caroline, apologized for running late, and asked if she would like to come over. She agreed hesitantly, which I took as progress. I would’ve liked to have cooked, but my excursion to the crime lab had left me short on time, so I cruised down the hill to Simon’s Café. The eponymous owner, dapper, gray-haired, and with a black mustache, is everything you want a chef to be. A septualingual Moroccan export by way of Haifa, he makes a borek of three blended cheeses that, with its pickled lemon garnish, will make you speak in tongues. I ate at Simon’s last with Genevieve, a late-night dinner that left us stumbling, food drunk, into the warm Valley air afterward.

  Diners are used to people-watching in L.A., and I took note of the heads rotating to observe my entrance. I approached the counter, mindful of the whispers, and paid for my order.

  The familiar restaurant effaced the ten months since I’d seen Genevieve to what felt like hours. Our split, though not nasty, had been sharp with unspoken resentments, and we’d barely spoken afterward. It occurred to me that Genevieve had likely changed in my absence, the accelerated transformation people make after a breakup. The Genevieve I knew may not have been the one who died. A talk-show shrink I watched once ventured that people either get healthier or sicker emotionally as they grow older. They never stay the same. Under the conditions of this psychological
parlor game, which route had Genevieve gone?

  As I left with my to-go bags swinging about my knees, a woman met me at the door. Her face, wrinkled severely, looked more anguished than angry. “You shouldn’t be on the streets.”

  I smiled politely. “How else will I find Nicole Simpson’s killer?”

  I zipped home, leaving the packages on the kitchen counter and walking through the house clicking on lights and whistling for Xena.

  The shredded remains of several of my throw pillows were strewn through the living room. Tufts of stuffing had settled about the carpet and in the fireplace.

  My house had been searched? Again? For what?

  A strand of toilet paper ran from the powder room, across the entryway and living room, disappearing into the dark family room. I drew the pistol and turned on the light. The couch itself had been massacred, the suede torn to pieces. I followed the toilet paper around the ottoman to where Xena lay, snoring contentedly, the end of the two-ply strip in her drooling mouth.

  I lowered the gun, surveyed the damage. “Glad your fangs work for something.”

  She awoke at my voice and scrambled to her feet, licking my hand, then followed me around contritely as I cursed and picked up the larger clumps of fabric.

  As I plated dinner, I called Hope House and got Junior on the line.

  “I gotta return Xena.”

  “You can’t return no dog.”

  “She chewed up half my house.”

  “Homes, she just upset you leave her all day. You gots to think of your responsibilities.”

  I paused from setting the table. “My responsibilities?”

  “Thass ride. I come talk to her, homes. Thass all you need.”

  “I’m dropping her off. First thing tomorrow.”

  “Where? Here? I can’t do nuthin’ with her.”

  “Then we’ll take her back to your cousin’s.”

  “That wasn’t my cousin.”

  “Of course not. I’m coming tomorrow morning. With the dog. And we’re dropping her somewhere or I’m taking her to the pound.” I hung up and looked at Xena. The ropy strands of saliva dangling from either jowl made her look doleful. “I’m just bluffing. I would never take you to the pound.”