by David Stukas
“Don’t forget that he has a very compelling alibi,” Gorski warned us.
“Can I make a bold suggestion?” Monette proposed.
“Go right ahead,” the sergeant said.
“I’ve had this idea in the back of my mind that perhaps the murderer is someone like Martin—in fact, could be Martin Stevers. But, there was an accomplice who actually carried out the deed. It just seems that the killer was all over the place, as if two people were carrying out the deed separately. I mean, spiking Leo Thomas’s protein powder with poison—I assume that’s what killed him . . .”
“That’s correct.”
“... then getting ready to line up his next target, Marc Baldwin, then shooting Colorado Jackson—it all seems like too much for one person to handle!”
Gorski’s face looked flushed, as if Monette had outguessed him. Yet, despite the fact that Grayson had unearthed some dirt on him to get him to come over here and spill his investigation, he attempted to play it cagey. “That would explain another strange fact that’s come to light just a few hours ago.”
“And what might that be?” she asked.
“The threat letters. We sent all of them, including the ones sent to Marc Baldwin and Colorado, to our forensic lab in Riverside, and something strange turned up. The first batch, sent to Rex, were from a magazine using very cheap paper.”
“Like Spunk magazine?” Michael suddenly hinted, then realized that he shouldn’t have. “Oh, never mind. I was just thinking out loud.”
“I’m not acquainted with that publication,” Gorski said in complete innocence.
“Oh, never mind. You can only pick it up in Amsterdam. Please, continue.”
“The second batch of letters came from a very slick publication. Very expensive paper.”
“So what I think you’re concluding, Sergeant Gorski, is that two different people sent out those letters. Or, maybe the explanation isn’t quite so sinister: that the killer, or killers, ran out of letters from the first magazine and went on to another, different magazine.”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you have a copy of all the different letters?” Monette asked. “I never saw the ones sent to Rex or Leo.”
Sergeant Big Arms reached inside a briefcase and pulled out several photos of the letters. “I took the precaution of having the lab make copies for you.”
“That’s very kind,” Monette responded, and she meant it. I could tell by the sound of her voice. The sergeant was now considering her an equal in the proceedings. What Monette longed for was to be taken seriously, and not just as the only woman who claimed to have read every mystery ever written.
Since I was an integral part of this investigation, I got up and stood next to Monette, receiving the photos as she perused them and handed them to me. The room was silent while Monette and I shuffled through them.
“The only one I didn’t see was the one sent to Leo.” We both stared closely at the photo that was labeled with the words Leo Thomas and bearing the date the letter was received.
AlMOsT ToO LatE!
Stop nOW or DiE.
“There’s something about these letters . . . I don’t know . . . that bugs me,” Monette finally said as she continued shuffling back and forth. “It’s right in front of me, but I don’t know what it is. I think I’m either getting psychic about this case or I’m just going batty.” She shuffled back and forth through the photographs again. “Can your lab find out what magazine these came from?”
“It depends. We have some obvious magazines we can check, like event planner magazines and general-interest news magazines like Time and Newsweek that everyone gets. But it’s going to take time, because it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. There might be clues on the back of each letter that was cut out, like another word or words that might give us a clue. But it’s going to take time.”
“Which is something we don’t have,” Monette said starkly. “Marc Baldwin is under police protection with a killer after him, and Colorado is in the hospital. Oh, by the way, how is he?”
“He’s going to pull through, no problem. The doctors said they could release him in a day or two. The bullet shattered the window but didn’t hit him. He lost control of his vehicle and it hit an embankment pretty hard. It’s a good thing his car had an airbag.”
“Sergeant, could you give me a map of the area around where the killer shot at Colorado’s car? I want to look for vantage points where the killer could have stood.”
“Here’s a copy of the accident report filed with the Rancho Mirage Police Department,” he said, handing the document to Monette. “Oh, one last thing: I’m checking on the phone calls placed to Rex’s cell phone the night of the party, especially the last two. Mr. Wilsop here, I remember, saw Rex’s disposition change radically when he received them, perhaps prompting him to leave the party to meet his assailants. I’ll have the phone numbers that those calls came from by early tomorrow.
“That’s all I can tell you now. When I get more information, I will let you know. I want everyone present in this room to know that the information that I’ve shared with you is privileged and is not to leave this room. I trust that you will let me know if you learn anything. As I see it, this is a partnership. Thank you for your time,” Sergeant Big Arms said as he flipped his notebook closed, got up, and let himself out the door.
No one in the room moved or even said anything for a few minutes. While our silence could be put down to everyone digesting the facts just given to us, there was a much more imposing reason: We all wanted to know what Grayson had dug up out of the sergeant’s past to make him open up and sing like a canary.
“So what was it that made him tell?” Monette said, asking the question that was on everyone’s mind.
Grayson adjusted himself in his chair, pulling a pillow from behind his back and tossing it on the floor. “I just happened to find out that Sergeant Gorski did some gay porn years ago. I found pictures of him purely by mistake on the Internet. I just reminded him that his wife might not be so appreciative of his pictures as his clients at the gym used to be.”
“You scalawag,” I said.
Grayson was somewhat repentant. “I hate to do things like that,” he said, throwing another fringed and tasseled pillow onto the floor, “but when it’s a matter of life and death, you can’t let anything get in the way.”
“I think that’s about all my head can hold for one day,” Monette said, standing up and giving the signal that it was time for all of us to go.
We said our good-byes as Grayson led the way to the door. Clifford, who hadn’t taken his eyes off Michael, reached inside the cardigan that he had donned to fend off the chill of the air-conditioning (it was freezing in their house—no energy crisis here). Clifford withdrew what looked like a photograph, placed it tenderly in Michael’s hand, winked at him, then stepped back into the house and watched us go. As our tiny car drove away from the Mansard-roofed desert minimansion, I asked Michael if I could see what it was that Clifford had given him.
“Here,” he said, listlessly dropping the photo over the seat into my lap. “Keep it. I’ve got my eyes on the sergeant.”
I picked up the five-by-seven glossy photo and began laughing so hard that I choked and was left gasping for breath. When I recovered, I handed the photo to Monette. Never mind that Monette was a terror on the road when she had her eyes on it, so I guess it didn’t matter that she was looking at a photograph at the same time. In it was Clifford, dressed in a police uniform, legs spread in a defiant stance, brandishing a nightstick menacingly and flashing an evil grimace as if he were about to break down the door of a noted Colombian drug lord and go in single-handedly in a blaze of testosterone-slick machismo. At the bottom of the photo, preprinted, were the words “Officer” Cliff Lockwood. (760) 555-5521.
13
Mission Implausible
It was getting late, and we were all hungry and felt that we should go out and get a bite to eat. I called Marc, who was answe
ring phone call after phone call from his setup people at the convention center. He said he couldn’t join us, because there was too much to do: there were just two days left until the opening festivities.
We all went out to a local diner and polished off burgers and fries. While we were eating, Michael spoke up.
“It’s obvious that Martin Stevers is one of the murderers,” he said with a sly look in his eyes.
“Yes, for once I think you’re right,” Monette conceded. “I just wish there was some way of proving it.”
“There is,” Michael replied like a cat dangling a piece of cheese in front of a starving mouse.
Monette was clearly amused. Michael with an original idea? This she had to hear.
“And pray tell, Michael, how do you intend to procure this proof? Break into his house here in the desert?”
Michael didn’t even have to utter a word, because the answer was clearly yes.
Monette slapped the table in unbelief. “Now, how to you think you’re going to pull something like this off?”
“Because I’ve done it before,” Michael answered, revealing a side of him that I had never before imagined. “Plenty of times.”
“Where?” I asked.
“In New York. I know how to break into a house or an apartment, for God’s sake. I belonged to the In and Out Club!” Michael interjected proudly.
“Please promise me this isn’t the kind of club I think it is,” Monette replied, expecting the worst.
“No, it’s not a sex club. The In and Out Club was a bunch of us guys in New York who’d break into houses and apartments just for fun. We never took anything. We just did it for kicks—to see if we could do it and not get caught.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Why is it that I never hear about this kind of stuff?”
“Listen to this—this is really great,” Michael said, priming me for what he was about to dish next. “We got bored just breaking into places, so we started sabotaging things. You know John McMannus, the real estate developer? He goes around sucking cock all around town, then goes home to his wife and puts on the hetero act. So we broke into his apartment and left Polaroids of us naked—from the neck down, no faces—all around his apartment for his wife to find. Stuff like that.”
Monette and I were flabbergasted.
“Michael, I think I’m really getting to like you,” Monette confessed. “This sounds like fun, but what if Martin has a security system?”
“I have something that will get me past that. It’s so simple a child could figure it out—well, a child who lives near a beach.”
Monette and I looked at each other and, in a moment of instant understanding, nodded our heads in agreement. We both had come over three thousand miles for a vacation in this desert paradise, but it seemed like the only thing we had done was watch people get killed and have head-on encounters with oversize dildoes. This seemed like fun.
And just like that, we took leave of our senses and drove back to Casa Vince, where Monette and I changed into the darkest clothes we could find. Michael wore a bathing suit and nothing else, telling us not to worry, that there was a method to his madness. He was also carrying a small suitcase.
It was dark now, and we headed toward the Deepwell area of town, following Michael’s directions. The wind, true to its reputation, was whipsawing the palm trees to and fro.
“So how did you get Martin’s address?” Monette asked Michael.
“I just went into Rex’s office and got it off his Rolodex. Okay, turn here and slow down—I need to see the house numbers.”
Deepwell was a well-kept neighborhood with the unmistakable signs of fairy dust everywhere. Yes, the faggots had moved in and claimed one of the best areas in town—like they always did. The houses were updated, and the yards planted with so much greenery, some of the properties looked like they belonged in upstate New York. My heart was racing with the sheer excitement that I would be, for a brief time, a cat burglar. I pictured myself as the debonair Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, eluding the idiotic French police.
“This is it,” Michael proclaimed. “Pull around the corner and park the car. We’ll go across the lawn and make a preliminary inspection of the house and all points of entry.”
“And how do you know that Martin isn’t home?” I whispered, even though we weren’t out of the car yet.
“And you guys think you’re hot-shot detectives? I used an old technique called ringing Martin’s house and hearing the answering machine saying that he’d be over at the convention center all night and leaving his cell phone number there. Easy. Okay, since you’re amateurs, follow me to the house, and for God’s sake, be quiet.”
We slipped from the car and stole across the lawn. Despite Michael’s warning, Monette and I started laughing and struggled to stifle our giggling. We couldn’t help it, since it all seemed so silly. Here we were, dressed in black, and Michael in a bathing suit. It was ludicrous. Michael told us to stay put while he examined the windows. He disappeared for about five minutes, during which Monette and I laughed quietly to each other, finally getting our snickering under control only to look up at each other and start the laughing all over again.
Michael returned and told us that a window on the side of the house was open a crack. We followed him to our point of entry, wondering what he had in the suitcase that would ensure our safe passage into the house and past the security system that was clearly indicated by the signs planted amid the vegetation around the house.
Michael laid the suitcase on the lawn and opened it, lifting out a body suit in black.
“This is what all the secrecy is about? A wet suit?” Monette exclaimed—quietly.
“You see, Monette, you take great pride in solving mysteries because you’ve read a lot of mystery books. But that’s not the real world. This is,” he said, pulling and tugging the suit on. “The neoprene keeps the cold from getting in. Well, it also keeps body heat from escaping, too. So when I walk in front of a motion detector, I won’t give off any infrared body heat for the detectors to pick up. I can walk freely throughout the house,” he explained, tugging on a hood that covered his face almost completely.
“And what about dogs?”
Michael tapped his head to indicate his superior brain. “Martin doesn’t have any. I asked Vince. Okay, I’m going in, and I want you two to stay here and keep an eye out. Whistle if you see anyone,” Michael said, lifting the window screen out with the skill of a surgeon and sliding the window open. He hopped over the ledge and in seconds was inside the house. “Now, remember, whistle if you spot anyone,” he said, and disappeared into the bowels of the house.
“What I want to know is, what is Michael doing with a wet suit in the desert?”
“Don’t ask,” I warned her.
“Surfing in the sand dunes?”
“I said, don’t ask,” I repeated, starting to laugh again, when all hell broke loose.
Michael came tumbling out of the window like a Hungarian acrobatic act, followed by a viciously barking dog, who snapped his jaws at the now-empty window. As if that weren’t bad enough, a siren started to whoop and holler, no doubt raising the interests of the neighbors and, soon the police. The three of us ran across the lawn and jumped into the Chevrolet Metro, which Monette gunned into a series of fishtailing squeals that were surprisingly loud for such a small car.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” Michael shouted between gasps. “That goddamn Vince told me that Martin didn’t have a dog. See what happens when one link of the chain is weak?”
“Michael?” I managed to wheeze out between breaths.
“You know what I’m thinking?” Michael continued. “I’m thinking that Vince is our culprit and he set us up so we’d get caught! That’s what I think. Ladies and gentlemen, we have our murderer.”
“Michael?”
“Yes, what the fuck is it, Robert?”
“What was the address that Vince gave you for Mart
in’s house?”
“Forty-eight twenty-seven South Driftwood, like it says on the piece of paper you’re holding.”
“That’s correct. But that’s not the house we just broke into. We were at forty-eight twenty-three.”
“Are you sure?” Michael asked, not believing a word I said.
“As sure as this car is too small for the three of us. I remember seeing the numbers painted on the curb, because they’re the last four numbers of my telephone in New York.”
“Oh. I guess that explains the dog!” Michael said, as usual, getting ready to shift the blame like a congressman.
“Yeah, so what happened to the neoprene suit?”
“It worked perfectly for me, but I opened a door to a room and this beast from hell came flying out of the room and chased me. I guess he’s the one who set off the alarm.”
“Michael, it was a cocker spaniel that was chasing you. I know because I caught a glimpse of it. All you had to do was stare it down and it would have peed on the floor and run away.”
“I don’t believe it!” Michael replied, trying to squirm out of a first-class botched burglary. “It was dark, but all I could see were these glowing red eyes that burnt like the flames of hell.”
“It was a hyperactive cocker spaniel,” I asserted. “I saw it.”
Monette was laughing quietly to herself as she steered the car back to Casa Vince. Michael said he had to lie down for a while and he would probably go out and get laid that evening—at least that was something he couldn’t fuck up. Vince left a message in the office for me, saying that Marc had called and wanted some company for the evening—and that meant Monette, too. It wasn’t difficult getting her to stay the night. The lesbians she was staying with in Rancho Myass were still arguing and were no fucking fun—her words exactly.
We drove up to Marc’s house, noting the police cruiser parked reassuringly out front. Good, Marc was safe.
We sent out for a pizza and sat down to watch a schmaltzy made-for-TV movie about the life of Jackie O.