by Sue Grafton
It was just after 5:00, and Con was doubtless at CC’s, knocking back Happy Hour drinks on a two-for-one deal. For my sake, I hoped he hadn’t been at it long. I spotted his car as soon as I pulled up in front, but the area was otherwise deserted. Across the street at the bird refuge, two women in sweats were just starting a walk, chatting with animation. Closer to the water, a mother looked on placidly as her five-year-old child fed day-old bread to the gulls under a sign that read: PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS.
I went into CC’s, pausing in the doorway to let my eyes adjust. A plank of daylight had fallen in the open door, enhancing the contrast between CC’s and the outside world. The place was dark. There was no one in the front room except the bartender and a waitress engaged in intimate conversation. Stacey and Dolan were seated in a booth in the rear. Stacey got up when I appeared. He was looking better today. I said, “Hi. Am I late?”
“Not at all,” Dolan said. Both had glasses in front of them. Dolan’s contained whiskey dark enough to pass for iced tea. Stacey’s was empty except for the ice cubes and a wad of freshly squeezed lime. Dolan hauled himself to his feet just as Stacey sat down. “What can I get you?”
“Water’s fine for now. I may switch later.”
“I’ll take another Tanqueray and tonic.”
Dolan frowned. “You just had one. I thought the doc didn’t want you mixing meds with booze.”
“Or else what, I drop dead? Don’t worry. I’ll take full responsibility. I’d be doing myself a favor.”
Dolan gestured impatiently and then moved off to the bar. I slid into the booth and put my shoulder bag on the seat beside me.
He said, “How’d your day go?”
“So-so. I’ll tell you about it as soon as he gets back.”
Stacey reached into his vest pocket and removed a pipe and a tobacco pouch, then filled the bowl. He fished around in another pocket for a pipe pick and tamped down the tobacco before he took out a wooden kitchen match and slid the head along the underside of the table. I waited while he puffed at the pipe. The smoke was sweet-smelling, like a meadow full of dried hay.
I said, “You’re as bad as he is.”
Stacey smiled. “On the other hand, suppose I only have a few months left? Why deny myself? It’s all in your perspective.”
“I guess it is.”
We engaged in idle chitchat until Dolan returned, bearing a tray with my water and two fresh drinks for them. He’d added napkins, a bowl of popcorn, and a tumbler of nuts.
“Look at this guy, buying dinner for us,” Stacey said.
“Hey, I got class. More than I can say for you.”
The air was cool and free of cigarette smoke, which Dolan corrected for as soon as he sat down. I didn’t bother to complain. Stacey’s pipe tobacco and Dolan’s cigarette smoke masked the faint whiff of noxious gases from the excavation site outside. Dolan helped himself to a handful of nuts, popping them in his mouth one by one while he looked at me. “What’d you get?”
“You’re not going to like it.” I went on with a summary of my travels, starting with Cloris Bargo and the lie she’d told.
Stacey said, “I talked to her twice myself and she never said a word about that.”
“It’s my charm and finesse.”
“Well, shit. I didn’t realize she was married to Joe Mandel. He worked with us on this.”
“I know. I remembered the name.”
Dolan said, “I can’t believe she was blowing smoke up our skirts. She actually admitted that?”
“Well, yeah. She said at the time she couldn’t see the harm.”
Stacey said, “Let’s leave that one alone. No sense butting into their business. I tell you what we might do though is ask Joe if he could locate Jane Doe’s effects for us. It’d be good to take a look. Might spark an idea. I’ll make a call and clear it with the sheriff. Don’t think he’d object, but you never know about these things.” He made a note to himself and turned back to me. “What else?”
“After I left her, I drove on up to Lompoc, stopping off at Gull Cove, which is closed, by the way.” I laid out my conversation with Roxanne Faught, what she’d said, and where the story she’d told me varied from what we knew. I gave them copies of the news clippings to demonstrate my point. “I think she lifted the details from these, which means we can’t rely on her. I believe she encountered someone, but it wasn’t necessarily our Jane Doe.”
“Too bad. It sounds like a dead end,” Dolan said.
Stacey said, “Dead ends are a given. That’s how these things go. We’re bound to run into a few along the way. All that tells us is to back up and look somewhere else. Lucky we found out about it now before we wasted any more time on it.”
“Knocks our hitchhiking theory all to hell,” Dolan said.
“Maybe so, maybe not. She could have gone to Lompoc by train or bus and hitched a ride from there.”
I said to Dolan, “What about the vehicles seen in the area? Any way to check those out?”
“Johanson said something about a hippie van. We could track down that guy—what’s his name…”
“Vogel.”
“Right, him. Why don’t we see what he remembers.”
“It’s a long shot,” I said.
“So’s everything else we’ve come up with so far.”
Stacey let that remark pass, still fixating on his original point about where the girl had come from. “Another possibility is she bummed a ride to Lompoc with a friend, someone she stayed with ’til she hit the road again.”
Dolan made a sour face. “Would you quit obsessing? We went over that before. If she’d had friends in the area, they’d have wondered what happened as soon as she disappeared.”
“Not if she’d told ’em she was on her way north. Suppose she stays in Lompoc a couple nights and then leaves for San Francisco. She goes out the door, has a run-in with the Devil, and ends up dead.”
“They’d still put two and two together as soon as the story broke.”
Stacey stirred irritably. “We’re not going to find answers to every question we ask.”
“So far we haven’t found answers to anything,” I remarked.
Stacey waved that aside. “Maybe our mistake is assuming she’s from somewhere else. Suppose she’s local? Someone kills her and then makes up a story explaining where she’s gone. That’s why she wasn’t reported missing. It’s part of the cover-up.”
Dolan was shaking his head.
“What’s wrong with that?”
Dolan sat back in the booth. “No one exists in a vacuum. She must’ve had family and friends. She worked, went to school. She did some damn thing. Somebody must have wondered. Essentially, this girl dropped off the face of the earth and you’re telling me no one noticed? There’s something off about that.”
I said, “But, Dolan, think of all the kids who disappeared in those days. There must be dozens unaccounted for. Families probably still fantasize they’ll show up one day.”
Stacey said, “Why don’t we forget that angle and come at it from the other direction?”
“Which is what?” I asked.
“What we talked about before, assume Frankie killed her and see if we can find a way to make it stick.”
“Based on what? Make that leap and we could end up spinning our wheels,” I said.
“We’re doing that anyway. The exercise is only pointless if it turns out we’re wrong. What do you say, Con?”
“I’m with you on that one. We’d be no worse off. I’ve always thought Frankie had a hand in it.”
Stacey turned to me. I said, “You’re the boss.”
“My thought exactly. Let me show you what I got.”
He opened a manila folder and removed two connected sheets of computer paper with perforated edges. I peered at the pale print. There, in abbreviated form, was Frankie Miracle’s criminal history, starting with his first arrest in Venice, California, in January of 1964. Stacey picked up the paper and began to rattle off the long s
tring of his offenses. “I love this guy. Look at this. 1964. Kid’s twenty-one years old, arrested for drunkenness and resisting arrest. Fined twenty-five bucks and put on a year’s probation. Well, okay. No problem. His first contact with the law…”
“That we know of,” Dolan said.
Stacey smiled. “That’s right. But boys will be boys. They’re not going to execute the lad for public drunkenness. In May that same year, he was arrested for burglary and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Probably screwed a thirteen-year-old. That’d be about his speed. Put on probation. In February of ’65, he was arrested for another burglary. He pleaded guilty; sentence was sixty days in jail and probation. Judge is really cracking down on him,” he said, tongue in cheek. “June 1965. Burglary again. This time, his probation’s revoked and he’s sentenced to state prison, six months to fifteen years; released after serving six months. December 1965. Drunk and disorderly, assault, and marijuana possession. Admitted for psychiatric evaluation and treatment of drug and alcohol dependency.” Stacey snorted derisively. “The guy’s a creep. We all know that. April 1966—burglary and escape. November 1966—robbery, kidnapping, attempted rape. This time they threw in assault and possession of a dangerous weapon. March 1967—another burglary. Oh, and here’s a good one. I can’t believe this guy’s back on the street. In January 1968, Frankie abducted a woman from a supermarket parking lot. He was later arrested on charges of kidnap, assault, robbery, oral copulation, sodomy, and attempted murder. You better believe she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since she ran into him. January 1969—attempted kidnap, statutory rape, contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Now we’re getting down to business. In March 1969, he was picked up on charges of armed robbery, assault, and attempted murder. Case dismissed. Cops probably beat a confession out of him, and the public defender had the whole thing thrown out. Sometime in June, he met a sixteen-year-old girl named Iona Mathis. He was married to her briefly—six months I think. About as long as some of his jail time, as it turns out. Which brings us to Venice, California, late July, when Frankie killed Cathy Lee Pearse.” Stacey shook his head. “God bless the courts. If they’d done their job right, they could have saved her life.”
I said, “How’d he manage to get away with all that shit?”
“Easy,” Dolan said. He stubbed out one cigarette and fired up the next. “He knew how to work the system. Every time he was charged with multiple crimes, he’d plead guilty to one in exchange for the others being dropped. You haven’t met Frankie. He can be as charming as all get out. He had judges and prosecutors bending over backwards, trying to give him a chance to straighten up and fly right.”
Stacey returned the report to the manila folder. “Lot of times he was sentenced to state prison under the old indeterminate sentence system. Other times he was released on automatic parole. Longest he ever went between crimes was this period between March of ’67 and January of ’68.”
Dolan said, “Bet you a dollar he just didn’t get caught. He hasn’t gone that long between crimes since he started out.”
“Probably right about that. If you look at the pattern, you can see the stakes go up. Violence escalates. The stretch between crimes starts getting shorter and shorter until he killed Cathy Lee. For that one, he only served seventeen years on a life sentence so he’s still lucking out. If I were her parents, I’d be pissed as hell.”
I said, “What else do we have?”
Dolan pulled a battered notebook from his jacket pocket and began to leaf through the pages. He clicked his ballpoint pen. “Frankie’s cellmates. Turns out there were twelve altogether, but half the last known addresses are incorrect. We got two in state prison and one serving time in a federal prison camp in Yankton, South Dakota. I know the whereabouts of three for sure: Lorenzo Rickman, Pudgie Clifton, and John Luchek.”
Stacey said, “Scratch Luchek. He was killed in a two-car accident in 1975. Drunk hit him head on.”
“Right. That’s the information I have.” Dolan drew a line through the name. “Rickman’s out on parole. Word has it he’s been a real good boy of late, working as an auto mechanic at a place out in Colgate. I got the name here somewhere. Stacey’ll stop by Monday to have a chat with him. Which leaves Clifton, who’s currently at the tail end of ninety days on a misdemeanor possession. I picked up mug shots on all these guys in case you need something to refresh people’s memories. I mixed in some unrelated photos so we can’t be accused of biasing the witnesses—assuming we find a few.”
“Let’s be optimistic. It doesn’t cost anything,” Stacey said.
Dolan passed one pack of photos to me and one to Stacey, who said, “We’ll let Kinsey talk to Pudgie. He’s the type who’d respond to her feminine wiles.”
“Like I got some.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself.”
Dolan said, “That leaves Frankie.”
“You and I can draw straws, but let’s hold off on that until we contact the other two.” Stacey winced and then stood up abruptly, saying, “Shit! Hang on a sec.”
Dolan said, “What’s wrong?”
Stacey groaned, then sucked in air through his teeth, his face tense. “Damn back’s seizing up. Jeez, that hurts. Pain’s shooting all the way down my leg.”
“What’s the doctor say?”
“How do I know? This ain’t Death at my door. I told you—I pulled a muscle. I can’t call the oncologist for every little thing.” He leaned sideways, stretching. After a moment, he stood upright, taking a long, slow, deep breath.
“Better?”
“Much. Sorry to interrupt. Damn thing caught me by surprise.”
“Would you quit the self-diagnosis and call the guy?”
“The doctor’s a woman, you sexist prick. You ought to give some serious thought to the assumptions you make.”
“Quit the bullshitting, Stace. This is all a big smokescreen. You keep acting like you’ve only had the back pain for the past two days when you’ve complained of it for weeks. You should have had the docs take a look while you were in the hospital.”
“It wasn’t hurting me then.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You know what? This is called ‘denial.’ This is you trying to minimize a problem that could be damn serious. Hell, give me the gal’s name and I’ll call her myself.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Then you call.”
“I will. I was going to do that.”
“Now.”
“Con, cut it out! It’s past five. She’s probably left for the day.”
“Then call the service, leave CC’s number, and have her paged. We can wait. You don’t call her, I will. I’m sick of hearing you bellyache.”
“You don’t even know her name.”
“I’ll find out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Quit arguing. Maybe she’ll give you some Valium to help you sleep at night.”
Stacey shook his head. “I hate making a fool of myself because of you.” Despite his grumbling and protests, he did go off to find a phone.
Dolan and I sat without looking at each other. I didn’t like the sound of it any more than he did. Finally, I said, “Are the two of you okay? You seem testy.”
“We’re fine. He’s just pissing me off. It’s not about his back. The man’s depressed. He thinks the cancer’s spread and that’s why he doesn’t want to get it checked.”
“I missed that, I guess. He seemed fine as far as I could tell. I mean, aside from his back.”
“That’s because he puts on an act for your benefit. You should’ve heard him before you showed. The shit’s wearing him down. If he’d had a gun on him, he’d have blown his brains out. He’s that close.” Dolan held up his thumb and index finger a quarter of an inch apart.
“You’re not serious.”
“I am. He wasn’t even going to do the chemo until I talked him into it. As far as he’s concerned, this is the end of the line so why play it out? Get the damn thing
over with is his attitude.”
“But suppose the cancer’s moved into his bones?”
“Now, damn it, don’t you start. Don’t be so negative.”
“I’m just saying I can understand where he’s coming from.”
“Well, keep your opinion to yourself.”
“My opinion’s not relevant. He can do anything he wants. It’s his life.”
“Wrong. He could use a pep talk. He needs someone to make him realize how selfish it is.”
“To kill himself? How so?”
“People who commit suicide are the ultimate narcissists. What makes him think everything revolves around him? I’m in this, too. Thirty years down the drain and all because he’s a cowardly damn chickenshit and won’t see this through.”
“But what if he’s terminal? I don’t understand what you want.”
“I want him to think about someone else for a change.”
“If you don’t get to think about yourself when you’re dying, when do you?” I said.
Stacey reappeared moments later and we dropped the conversation. He declined to sit, remaining by the table with his fists pressed into the small of his back.
Dolan fired up another cigarette, pausing to cough into his fist. “What’d she say?”
Stacey waved the cigarette smoke away from his face. “She’ll see me first thing tomorrow morning; maybe take an X-ray or do a CT scan.”
“What’s the matter with her? Did you tell her how bad it is? She should see you right now and find out what the hell’s going on.”
“Goddammit. Quit nagging. This isn’t an emergency so lay off that stuff. Anyway, I’m tired and it’s time to go home. I can’t be sitting here drinking all night like some I could name.”
“Sit down. You haven’t had dinner yet. You have to eat. It’s my treat.”
“I got food at my place. You two stay. I can get a cab.”
“I’ll take you,” I said. “My car’s right outside.”
“You don’t have to do that. I can manage on my own.”