Private Eye Four-Pack, page 34
The first one had a photo of Cathy’s body, a shapeless lump disgorged by the sea; the second was a wider angle and included a ghoulish ring of spectators.
“Have a look, Amy. I think this was the other woman in Frank’s life.”
She snatched the papers from my hand. “That’s not funny.” Her skin turned waxy and she choked out, “God—”
Ice lumped in my chest. “What is it?”
“Frank. Here.” She pointed to a blurred figure on the edge of the circle of onlookers. “Frank is in this picture.”
A connection. Not the one I expected, but a connection.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Amy’s color returned slowly, but her face was still as pale as the beach sand. “He never told me about…this.” She strangled on the word.
“Did he say anything about a girl who was young, pretty, strung out on drugs? Maybe she reminded him of his sister—”
“No!” She put up her hands as if to ward off my words. “No more. I’m sick of your questions, and I don’t want to know, do you understand? Now leave me alone.” She ran away, misjudging a wave and getting wet to her knees.
“Delilah, I’m getting awfully weird vibes.” T.J. edged nervously up the rock steps. “Let’s call it square, and I’ll see you around.”
I stumbled after him. “One more favor, please. It’ll only take a few minutes, I promise. You got your bike? Give me a lift to North Bay Estates.”
“I don’t have it here. I walked.” He vaulted a low stone wall edging the other side of the walk and angled across a grassy picnic area, heading for the street. A few seconds later the roar of a motorcycle told me he’d lied.
I didn’t blame him, but it left me in one hell of a fix. I needed desperately to get away someplace where I could sort out the new, conflicting information that boiled in my head. Ted’s house wasn’t a perfect choice, but it was the only place I could think of. The problem was getting there.
My rental car sat in Laguna Canyon, a long walk and a tram ride away from Main Street Beach. Did I dare risk going back for it? The police might have a make on the car by now. Maybe even a stakeout. The possibility seemed too grimly real. I couldn’t take the chance.
Without a car in Southern California, you may as well be stranded in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Cabs are practically nonexistent; buses run infrequently. Anyway, I couldn’t wait around at bus stops on Laguna’s main drag for the police to pick me up.
If Ted was home, I wouldn’t have to.
Following T.J.’s trajectory, I crossed the picnic area to the side street that rimmed the park. It curved in a gentle arc to meet Coast Highway. The intersection provided a gas station and a telephone booth.
I fumbled dimes into the coin slot, ignoring the guilt I felt. I had promised Edward to keep his father out of my problems, and, at the time, I meant it. But desperation has a way of canceling out promises.
I listened to the phone buzz on and on. Ted wasn’t home. So much for the easy way out. I thought about the long, uphill streets that led to North Bay Estates and sighed with resignation. I’d have to walk. It was at least two miles, and my body ached, but I would have to walk.
I’d have to keep to side streets, so there would be no opportunity to call Ted again when I reached it. If he was home, it would save me another long uphill pull; if he wasn’t, it didn’t matter. I remembered where he kept a spare key.
I stayed one block away from Coast Highway, following winding streets that made the walk even longer. Ocean breezes tempered the warmth of the sun, and I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. After an eternity of muscle-straining steps, I reached the high walls, covered in masses of scarlet bougainvillea, that marked the boundary of North Bay. I had to walk for one long, exposed block along Coast Highway to the first entry. Here a guardhouse monitored all visitors. If a resident expected you, he notified the guard. Without that notification you were turned away unceremoniously. A telephone booth off to one side allowed frantic guests to prod the memories of forgetful hosts.
I dropped in my money and twirled the dial. As the phone began to ring, I grasped the handle of the phone-booth door to close it against the rumble of traffic. My hand froze on the metal pull bar.
Turn signal blinking, a car spun left into the entry turnout. A brown Plymouth sedan, with two familiar faces inside.
The two men recognized me at the same time I recognized them. Brakes squealed, and the one on the passenger’s side jumped out before the car slammed to a stop. I had no place to go.
I hung up the phone and went out to meet them.
EIGHTEEN
“Keep your hands where I can see them. Put your purse on the ground, real slow.” The driver used the top of the car to steady his gun. It was the black cop, much bigger and grimmer than he seemed the night before.
“I think I remember the drill,” I said wearily, putting my hands on my head.
The guard popped out of his house, demanding, “What’s going on out here?”
“Police business.” The gun never wavered, and the black eyes never left my face. “Officers Hayes and Barnes, Los Angeles Police.”
Badges reassured the guard, and he went back to his sentry duty. While Hayes kept his gun trained on me, Barnes patted me down and cuffed my arms behind my back. After searching my bag for weapons, he tossed it in the back seat and guided me into the car after it.
We rolled out onto Coast Highway and headed south. All the long blocks I’d walked flashed quickly past. Move up one space, go back two. Like some damn stupid game. Over now, I thought dully. The game’s over and guess who lost?
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
“Laguna Beach police station,” the man beside me said tersely. A sleepless night had rimmed his eyes in gritty red, and a long day had stretched the skin like a pale membrane over his bony, misshapen nose.
“Look, fellows,” I said. “I’m sorry if you got into trouble because of me.”
“Hear that, Hayes? Compassion, yet.”
A puckered scar gleamed whitely across Hayes’s thick, black neck just above his collar. “You’re one slippery lady.” There was almost admiration in his deep voice. “I’d like to know how you managed to ditch us last night.”
“Fast on my feet.” I wasn’t about to mention Rita’s part. “How’d you find me?”
“You got helpful friends,” Barnes said. “We caught up with one of them. He couldn’t wait to spill everything.”
T.J., I thought. He was the only one who knew where I was going.
Conversation ended as we inched through the downtown traffic. I had nothing left to say. My eyes burned and my body ached as though it had been beaten by a big, heavy stick. I needed to rest someplace dark and soft. A jail cell was not what I had in mind.
Maybe it won’t be so bad, I thought. I would tell Ralph Overholt about Cathy; I’d explain her link with George Mertin. Surely he’d follow through on the investigation and discover why Terrell disappeared after he watched Cathy’s body being pulled from the ocean. He would see the importance of tracing that last vital link.
Sure he would.
Face it. Although the killer never set me up for Mertin’s death, this time the frame fit perfectly. Why look any further?
Jack’s killer, his real killer, was going to get away with it. The certainty scalded my insides like acid. I was close, so close, and now the son of a bitch was going to slip beyond my reach once again.
Not this time, I thought fiercely. Not this bloody time.
The police station was located on a side street about one block away from Forest Avenue. Hayes parked the car in front, got out, and went around to open the door. As I slid out, with Barnes close behind, I scanned the area to refresh my memory of the layout. The station itself was a two-story, stucco and wood, substantial-looking structure. I knew from previous visits that it housed administrative offices downstairs and jail cells upstairs. Outside, a high cyclone fence encircled the building and enclosed a parking lot. The only opening was the front gate.
As Hayes closed the door, I asked, “What about my purse?”
“It’ll be okay. I’ll lock up. Anyway, we won’t be here for long.”
Hayes and Barnes bracketed me; each took a firm grip on my upper arms, and they quick-stepped me inside. The reception area was small and cozy. A doorway behind the front desk revealed the communications center. Its static-garbled conversations vied with clattering typewriters in another room next door.
Silent, I cursed myself for never establishing a rapport with anybody on the force. There had been one man, a friend of Jack’s, but, sick of traffic, tourists and Hare Krishnas, he had resigned and moved to Oregon.
I didn’t recognize the policeman on the desk who greeted us with a satisfied nod. “Good work. Glad you found her. I guess I can call off our unit.”
“Yeah, thanks. You were a big help.” The sarcasm was plain in Barnes’s voice.
“We did the best we could,” he protested. “You got any idea what it’s like around here when the festival’s going full swing?”
Hayes shot his partner a warning glance and told the desk sergeant, “Hey, it’s okay. What about the paperwork?”
“I got somebody on it. Shouldn’t be long. You want to wait in the squad room? Maddox!” he yelled.
The typewriter noise decreased slightly, and a uniformed policewoman stuck her head around the door. “Show these officers down to the squad room and rustle up some coffee.”
About my height, the extra weight she carried was firmly compacted into her solid, square frame. White teeth flashed a smile from a deeply tanned face as she nodded to us. “Afternoon. This way, please.”
We followed her sturdy back down a corridor, Hayes on one side of me, Barnes breathing down my neck. I craned my neck in a frantic survey. The doors we passed were little help. Commander Wesley L. Varley. Supplies. Men. Women. She stopped to open a door on the left, moved out of my line of sight, and I saw it. Straight ahead at the end of the hall. Exit—Emergency Use Only. God bless the Fire Department.
“In here,” Maddox said. “You can use that desk. How do you like your coffee?”
“Black,” Hayes said.
“Black’s fine,” Barnes agreed.
Nobody asked me.
“Back in a minute.” Maddox closed the door behind her.
Hayes lowered his bulk into the creaky chair behind the desk. “Turn around,” Barnes told me.
He unlocked the cuffs, but one bracelet stayed on my right wrist, and he snapped the other one to his left. Two chairs sat on the other side of the desk facing Hayes. Barnes nudged me into one and collapsed into the other with a tired grunt.
I flexed my shoulder muscles, savoring the relief from tension caused by having my arms pulled behind my back. It wouldn’t last. As soon as proper sacrifices to the red-tape demons were completed, the cuffs would be replaced. I’d be marched to the car and driven to L.A. where the steel bars and tight security would make the slender bracelets look like an undercooked noodle.
Time was running out. My brain cranked like a rusty motor, grinding uselessly. Say I managed to get the cuffs off, then what? Hand-to-hand combat with Hayes and Barnes? Why, sure. I’d just punch them out. Jack had even demonstrated the technique that time I lost a painful bout with a burly shoplifter.
“I’d rather use my head than my hands,” I had argued.
“Well, if nothing else, darlin’, I’m going to teach you how to lay somebody out with one well-placed blow.”
“Oh, sure. That guy today was the size of a gorilla.”
“Doesn’t matter. Look, no fancy stuff. Just give it all you’ve got right here.” He had tapped a spot on his chin. “Short-circuits the nervous system. I guarantee it.”
Oh, Jack, I thought. Why couldn’t you demonstrate something useful, like dematerializing?
Maddox trotted in with her thick fingers laced around three Styrofoam cups. “Brought you some, too,” she said to me. “Black, okay?”
“Sure, but what I really need—I have to go to the bathroom,” I blurted out. It wasn’t inspired, but it was all I could think of, and besides, it was true.
Barnes put his coffee down with a long-suffering groan. “Where is it?” he asked Maddox.
“Down the hall, but listen, sit down and drink your coffee. I’ll take care of it.”
“I don’t know,” Hayes said. “We lost her once before. I’d hate to think about a second time.”
“She won’t get away. Anyway, I can go inside with her.” Maddox stood next to me as if comparing our sizes.
Evidently the comparison convinced Hayes. He nodded to Barnes. “Yeah. Okay.”
As soon as Barnes unlocked the cuffs, Maddox produced a pair of her own, and I was attached to a new keeper, forced to match her brisk stride.
Some improvement, I thought gloomily.
Exit—the sign at the end of the hall mocked as we left the squad room and turned right. Each step put extra distance between me and the only available escape route.
Think, I told myself. If there were individual stalls in the bathroom, if she would unlock the cuffs so I could have some privacy…But there was only one unenclosed toilet in the room, and she had no sense of modesty at all.
“This is going to be damned awkward,” I said. “Can’t you take these off?”
“Nope.” Her voice was pleasant but firm. “Not a chance.”
I managed as well as I could while she stood there, as unyielding as a concrete post. I dabbled water on my hand and dried it by wadding up a paper towel. I searched the room for something to use for a weapon. Nothing. Nothing. Even the wastepaper receptacle was part of a permanent wall fixture.
“Let’s go.” Maddox jerked her chin toward the door.
“Just give it all you’ve got right here.” Jack’s words rang in my mind.
What did I have to lose? Taking a deep breath, I clenched my free hand into a fist and swung as hard as I could, yelping as pain flashed up my arm from the shock of the blow.
Her mouth fell open. Her eyes blanked out. For one long, agonizing moment she swayed, then she toppled like an axed tree, dragging me along. Her heavy body cushioned some of the fall, but her elbow caught me just below my breastbone, driving the air from my lungs. Dazed and gasping for breath, I waited for the door to burst open. Somebody must have heard the thump of our bodies hitting the floor. My ears strained, but no footsteps thundered in the hall.
Good God, it worked, I thought, awed.
My arm hurt, and my fingers tingled painfully as I took the key from her pocket and fumbled to open the handcuffs. I stood up shakily, stepped over her inert body, and cracked the door. Nobody in the hall. I looked back at Maddox, having second thoughts. Maybe if I took her jacket and—forget it. By the time I wrestled it from her limp body, she might be awake or Hayes and Barnes might become suspicious. I had only one option—run.
I slid out of my shoes. Carrying them in my hand, I flew down the hall barefooted—and noiseless, I hoped. But when I hit the exit door, all hell broke loose. It opened all right, but an alarm went off, wailing like a deranged hound dog.
The door opened directly to the parking lot. It clanged shut behind me, but not before I heard the heavy rumble of Hayes’s shout and a stampede of running feet. Any moment they would come boiling out the back door. No chance to get over the fence. Only one place to go.
The confusion inside gave me a few precious seconds to scoot around the building. I ran out the gate and across the street with the hot concrete slapping my bare feet, down a short block and around the corner to plunge into the crowds on Forest. I forced myself to slow my pace, blending with the crowd, stopping once to put on my shoes. In the distance, tires screamed and a siren wailed. It would all be over if I didn’t get off the street and quick.
I ducked into a woman’s shop and pretended to go through the racks, keeping my eyes on the plate-glass window at the front of the store. Across the street I saw Hayes bulldozing a path through a crush of shoppers. That meant Barnes must be on my side. I grabbed a few things and headed for the back of the store. Next to three dressing rooms was a curtained doorway marked, Employees Only. Both clerks were busy at the cash register. I slipped through the curtain into a back storage room, left the clothes on a rack, went out the back exit, and ran down an alley.
A car, I thought, with pain clawing at my side. I’ll never get away without wheels.
The alley opened onto a street packed with cars. I walked close to the curb, searching for unlocked doors and keys left in the ignitions. One careless person, I prayed. Just one. There were none, at least on that particular street in Laguna.
A few cars ahead, an elderly couple climbed out of their Buick. I sucked in my breath, willing the driver’s forgetfulness, but he carefully locked his door.
“My, isn’t this nice,” his wife exclaimed, beaming. “I can’t believe we got a parking place so close.”
“Certainly is. Look out, mother. You forgot your door again.” He inserted the key and clicked down the pin.
Moving quickly, I closed the distance between us and bumping him hard, picked his keys out of his pocket. I grabbed the swaying old man with a loud apology.
“I’m so sorry, sir. Are you all right? My mind was a million miles away—so clumsy of me.”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he said. His wife twittered like a frightened bird. “Mother, please. Nothing to get excited about. It’s all right, young woman. Just be more careful next time.”
I watched them, unable to breathe properly, until they turned the corner. Then I waited two long minutes before I picked up the keys and unlocked the car.
A floppy beach hat lay on the back seat. I put it on, cramming my hair up inside the crown. The plush velour seats cradled my sore body and the engine responded instantly with a well-mannered hum.
Now all I had to do was to figure out where to go. I knew where I wanted to go. Everything in the case zeroed in on North Bay Estates. Cathy’s death. Frank’s disappearance. And there was something else, something stuck like a burr in my memory that I couldn’t dislodge to examine. I had to go there.
