Cold Shoulder

by Lynda La Plante

  Rooney got up and crossed to his window. He stood playing with the blind. “How long you been sober?”

  “I told you, a year. Call my husband, he’ll tell you. Call my roommate, she’ll tell you. I’m straight, Bill.”

  He stared at her, meeting her unflinching eyes, and then he turned away, stuffing his hands into his baggy trouser pockets.

  “You’ll call in every day?”

  “I’ll call in on the hour, if that’s what you want.”

  “Yeah, it is,” he said quietly, and opened his wallet.

  Lorraine couldn’t believe it: he was going to pay her there and then. “Is there any way I can get copies of the statements you got to date?”

  Rooney nodded, counting out a hundred bucks. “This is it, Lorraine, and believe me when I say I’ll have you brought back in here so fast if you try to fuck with me. I need information.”

  “I’ll also need photographs—everything you got so far.”

  Rooney looked at her, suddenly uncertain.

  “I got to know what’s going on, Bill.”

  “Yeah. I guess you do.”

  Rooney watched Lorraine walk out of the building. His bladder felt full but he didn’t want to take a leak. He was wondering if he was crazy, he could see the folder she was carrying, full of copies of the thick case file. If the Chief found out he’d be in real trouble. He told himself he must be nuts, especially not even getting her to sign for the cash. He had a moment of blind panic: if she was to take it to the press he’d be screwed to the floor. Then he relaxed; he was almost nailed there already. He checked the time and put in a call to Andrew Fellows.

  “Ah, Captain, I’m so sorry not to have gotten back to you since you gave me this new stuff on Hastings. Reason is, I haven’t had much spare time, I’m on a lecture tour.”

  “I’d appreciate your input as soon as possible,” Rooney rumbled.

  “I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve got a moment to go over the file, but I’m up to my ears right now.”

  Rooney listened to the drawling voice, half smiling at the “ears” line, waiting for what he suspected was coming. It came.

  “I don’t suppose there’s some way you could finance me, is there? This does take up a considerable amount of my time.”

  Rooney said he would run it by his chief and dropped the phone back on the hook. The chief would, no doubt, arrange payment—it had been his idea to bring Fellows on board, so let him budget for him. Rooney was stretched and he was not about to pay Fellows out of his own pocket, not like Lorraine.

  He remembered finding her on the floor in the old precinct, looking into her face in the patrol car when he held that poor kid’s Sony Walkman under her nose. She’d given that half-dazed smile. He thought about that moment now. That kid would’ve been alive if it wasn’t for that bitch. He wanted to be deeply angry, but he couldn’t, and it confused him. She had to be pretty tough to have survived, to have gotten herself back together. At least he hoped she was, that she wasn’t right that moment walking into a bar with his case file in one hand and his cash in the other. If she was, then he would make sure, no matter what else he did, that she paid a high price. That decision made, he felt free to rush to the men’s room, really in need of a leak.

  When Lorraine got home she fell onto the sofa and slept for the rest of the day, then spent that evening reading through the case files. Her concentration blanked out Rosie and her television shows. When Rosie went to bed, Lorraine continued working, sifting through every statement, studying each photograph, jotting down notes. It was four in the morning when she stretched and got up. She had sat with her legs tightly crossed, just the way she had when she was working in the old days. She massaged her thighs, easing out the cramp, then sat staring into space. Rooney was right, they had nothing: no witnesses but herself. If only he knew! Lorraine had seen the killer—had almost gone down on him, had almost gotten herself killed. And now she also had a clear memory of the killer’s cuff links. She wondered if Norman Hastings had ever bought or owned a reconditioned vintage car. From what she had read so far, she doubted it, but then, everyone had sure been wrong about him being the perfect family man.

  Lorraine didn’t go to bed until almost five, and by then she was so wired she was unable to fall asleep. The sofa was uncomfortable and too soft, her back ached and her legs still felt as if they were going to cramp up. She was in the half-dream state when suddenly she had a vivid image of the boy. She saw him running, saw the flash of the bright zigzag on his jacket.

  “Freeze!”

  She sat up, wide awake now. She didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to see herself, didn’t want to see the boy’s jerking body as the bullets tore into him. She flipped over the sheet, got up, and drew back the curtains. She forced herself to think about the murderer, remembering exactly where he had picked her up, right at the corner intersection. She could feel the sweat begin to trickle down from her armpits; it was another hot clammy night, but she didn’t put the air conditioner on in case it woke Rosie. She got out some ice cubes and ran them around the back of her neck. She saw his face again in her mind, the rimless glasses, the wet lips. She remembered the smell of him, his underwear. She wondered if he lived nearby. On Orange Grove maybe? Or in one of the apartments Nula and Didi lived in? She flicked through the files. She didn’t know why, but she doubted the man who’d attacked her was from this area. Maybe he lived in someplace like her old condo, that was certainly upmarket enough for his tasteful clothes and manicured hands. She knew he also was familiar with the area, the way he had driven directly to the shopping mall. Was he Helen Murphy’s husband as Rooney suspected? She doubted it, no way that man had a wife whoring, no way was he a truck driver, as Murphy’s file stated was his employment. Murphy was their only suspect, and Lorraine dismissed him. She closed her eyes, making herself visualize the face again, forcing herself to try and recall every single detail: the rimless, gold-framed glasses; the close-set blue eyes; the straight nose; and the wide, wet, thick-lipped mouth. She conjured up a picture of his hands, went over exactly what he had said, how he had picked her up, how he had reached into the glove compartment. She wasn’t scared, she just let the killer move into her mind. And just as she had done with the Laura Bradley murder, she repeated to herself, over and over again, her voice a soft whisper: “I’ll get you.”

  9

  Rosie was so immersed in the horror of the statements and pictures she didn’t hear Lorraine walking into the bedroom.

  “That was private, Rosie, you shouldn’t be reading it.”

  Rosie, seated on the edge of her bed and surrounded by photographs, looked up and hunched her shoulders apologetically. “It’s those morgue shots that get me—really close up, aren’t they? I didn’t know you looked like that when you were dead. How can they clean them up like that?” She held up Helen Murphy’s photograph. “This is her when they found her, and this is her at the morgue and this is her after—I mean, here she looks like she’s sleeping.”

  Lorraine walked into the bathroom. “They had her face fixed up with plaster for an ID. Makeup, that’s all. The only suspect they got is her husband, a trucker, but they’re way off, he’s not the killer.”

  Rosie shut the file. “I doubt if anyone’ll grieve over these women, they look like they’re all pretty shot up—in fact, some of them look happier dead, know what I mean? Well, not the little blond girl, she’s sort of cute.”

  Lorraine leaned on the bathroom door. “Yeah. She doesn’t fit in, does she? All the others are older, worn out, hard …”

  “You know what I think?” Rosie licked her lips. “I think he picked you up. You were hit on the back of the head but somehow you got away from him. The taxi brought you back here and … I worked out that it was the seventeenth of May.” Then she shrugged her heavy shoulders. “It couldn’t have been you, though, could it?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that was the day Norman Whatcha-call-it was done—they found him in his
own car, right? So he wouldn’t have been whacking you over the head and killing somebody else, would he?”

  “I fell on the sidewalk, Rosie.”

  “Yeah, and I’m Julia Roberts’s look-alike.”

  Lorraine walked into the shower and pulled the curtain closed. Rosie surprised her—not that she had said anything intelligent, or especially intuitive: Lorraine had been cracked over the back of the head in exactly the same manner as described not once but eight times in the files. But it was the simple dismissal of the possibility that the man could have killed Hastings and then on the same day attempted to kill again. Lorraine made a mental note to check through the exact times and dates of each murder.

  Lorraine felt tired, but a good sort of tired. She had worked hard last night just assimilating all the evidence, and although she didn’t like to admit it, she had liked talking it over with Rosie. That’s what had surprised her: that she had, for a few brief minutes, felt like a player again. “Marking out the jigsaw” was the way she used to describe it to Mike.

  Jets of water sprayed down onto her uptilted face. She and Mike had talked over her cases in the beginning, but gradually he’d become uninterested, telling her that he didn’t want to hear about the victims or the details of the murders, he had to study. She had no one to talk it out of her system with: she had just bottled it all up inside.

  She gasped, having turned the taps to cold. She didn’t want him to come back into her life, not now, please, not Lubrinski, she couldn’t deal with him. It had been Lubrinski who’d realized she was bottling up all the horror, anger, disgust. It had been Lubrinski, after a particularly heavy night—when they had found two teenagers in a boardinghouse, stiff from death, stiff from drugs, stiff and stinking, but they were so beautiful, like frozen angels the pair of them—who had insisted they go to a bar, insisted they get smashed. Drunk, she had suddenly broken down and Lubrinski had gripped her tightly, had even cried with her as he said it was okay to let go, to let the poison out, rather than have it seething inside her. Lubrinski.

  Rosie was eating muffins, a smear of jam across her cheek and also over the file, which Lorraine promptly snatched away from her. “Don’t get it sticky with jam!”

  Rosie washed her hands in a great display, and then returned to reading the files and statements. “This Andrew Fellows is something else, isn’t he? You read what he came up with about Helen thingy? The killer really likes them in bad shape, doesn’t he?”

  Lorraine couldn’t help but be drawn in. “Apart from Holly.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, maybe he just got lucky that night.”

  Lorraine dressed and made up her face. When she came back into the bedroom Rosie was still engrossed in the files.

  “Could you borrow that car from Jake’s friend?”

  “What do you need a car for?”

  “I need to go to Santa Monica. Do some investigation work. Maybe you could help me.”

  Rosie’s face lit up. “Do I get paid?”

  “Yeah, you’ll get paid, Rosie.”

  They eventually found W-rent W-rent Wreckers, where Lorraine had to put a hundred bucks down in case they made even more dents in the Mustang. The man was not overly interested in the invalid license Rosie waved at him, but the car cost fifty bucks for a week, plus gas, on top of the hundred-buck deposit. Rosie drew a diagram of all the dents to avoid them being conned on their return, and in a cloud of exhaust fumes, bangs, and the engine clacking at an alarming rate, they bombed out of the parking lot.

  The roof was down—it could not go up—but it was a bright clear day, and not too hot for the second of August. Lorraine smiled; whereas one time she had been unable to recall the month or year, she now kept a diary. And she would need it for Rooney. She rested back on the torn seat and considered how they—she, she corrected herself—would go about interviewing the men working at the vintage car garage in Santa Monica. All she wanted to know was if they sold cuff links; if so, how many, and how many men they employed. And she needed to know if they had someone fitting the description of the killer. With Rosie at the wheel, Lorraine relaxed for the journey, as much as Rosie’s driving style would allow: she was an incurable horn tooter, thrusting an abusive finger up to anyone who cut her off. Yet, and again Lorraine found herself surprised, she was a competent driver, even if she did cut across lanes. But she did it with such assurance that it didn’t make Lorraine nervous.

  Rosie sighed as they turned into yet another road, Lorraine shaking her head. She simply could not remember where the place was, or which route the cabdriver had taken. She knew they were close, but she didn’t want to ask directions. Instead, she told Rosie to drive to Mike’s address: maybe she would recognize landmarks, and since Mike’s house was along the shore, she was confident she’d be able to direct Rosie from there.

  With a screech of tires Rosie made a U-turn and headed for the beach.

  “Keep going, we’re almost at Mike’s house now.” They drove on until she spotted it. She hadn’t meant for Rosie to stop, especially not so close, but she jammed on the brakes hard. Lorraine felt the confidence draining from her. “That’s it, just across the street.”

  Rosie peered over the road. “Very nice. Worth a few dollars, this area’s not called the Gold Coast for nothin’.”

  “Just drive on, Rosie.”

  “But you don’t know where we’re going!”

  “Just drive, will you? I don’t want him to see me.” As they set off, Lorraine tried to concentrate on the road ahead. But all she could think of was Mike and the girls. She closed her eyes, and then jerked forward as Rosie hit the brakes again.

  “You’re not even looking, for chrissakes! We carry on at this rate and we’ll run out of gas.”

  Lorraine yanked open the door and got out of the car.

  Rosie sighed heavily. “We lost again?”

  Lorraine didn’t answer, but walked over to the railing and stood looking out at the ocean. Rosie sat in the car for a few moments, then joined Lorraine. “You okay?”

  “Not too good, Rosie.”

  Standing side by side they looked like a comedy duo: one so tall and slim, the other so round. A female Laurel and Hardy, but nothing was funny.

  “I’ve lost my girls, Rosie, I know that. It wouldn’t be right for me to see them. They’re happy, settled, they call her Mom. They’ve forgotten me—but then, I wasn’t really worth remembering.”

  “Don’t say that. Everything’s worth remembering, the good and the bad, and things are gonna get good for you. You never know, maybe next time you see them it won’t be so bad.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  Lorraine looked down into the plump, concerned face. “You’re the eternal optimist, aren’t you?”

  “Yep. That’s why I got myself so together.”

  Lorraine slipped her arms around her, gave her a squeeze. “I’m glad I found you, Rosie.”

  “Me, too,” Rosie said.

  Lorraine released her and turned to face the road. She remembered the cab took a right at the next intersection. “Okay, let’s go. I think I know the way.”

  “You sure you want to do this?”

  Lorraine threw up her hands in frustration. “Why do you think we came here? Now get in the car, I’ve been working out exactly what I want to say. I’ll draw a picture of a cuff link and you show it to the salesman. You say your husband has lost one, and you want to replace it—are you listening? Left, take a left.” They drove on for another seven or eight miles and then Lorraine leaned forward.

  “Keep going, I think it’s on a corner. Not so fast …”

  They were heading down Santa Monica Boulevard, and near where it crossed Robertson Boulevard they saw the car dealers’ garage. They pulled up in front of the building next to the vintage car showroom. Rosie got out carrying the sketch, armed with the questions she had repeated four times to Lorraine.

  Lorraine watched her disappear as she passed between the vintage cars on disp
lay in the parking lot. When she slid up to sit on the back of her seat, she could see Rosie inside the big glass-fronted showroom, waiting at the long mahogany counter. Then she lost her as Rosie accompanied a man to the far end of the showroom. Lorraine dropped back into her seat, and lit a cigarette, never taking her eyes off the showroom entrance. Had she asked too much of Rosie? She was about to go in after her when she appeared.

  “Christ, what have you been doing? Do you know how long you were in there?”

  “Sorry, but the guy never stopped talkin’. You want the good news?” “Yeah, yeah. Come on, tell me.”

  “Okay. They sell the cuff links, or they used to. They were originally part of a promotional thing, started in 1991. You know, spend a hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars on a vintage car and they’ll throw in a set of cuff links.”

  “Shit!” Lorraine hit the dashboard with her fist. But Rosie wasn’t through. She had the number of workers, forty-eight in all, each of whom had been given cuff links with their Christmas bonus. Around two hundred and fifty sets had been made up—that was the bad news. Further good news was that the first batch had been made in cheap silver, which had proved so popular that they had had a second batch made. These had been handed out last Christmas—and only to their executives, the difference being that these were made in nine karat gold. Rosie beamed. “There’s a board showing the top salesmen and the directors, listing their offices, so I presumed they’d be the executives, right? Eight in all.” She fished around in her purse and dragged out a dog-eared Mickey Mouse notepad and a felt-tip pen. She sucked the end and then scribbled down as many as she could remember. Lorraine watched in astonishment. Rosie chuckled as she underlined the last name: she’d remembered all eight, even their titles.

  “I always win every time! Those game shows where they show you a sort of runner thing with articles and you gotta remember each one! Now, were the links you saw gold or silver?”

  Lorraine couldn’t remember. “You see anyone with blondish hair, rimless glasses, wide wet mouth?”