He stepped away from her, his face like a boy’s in his confusion.
She ran her hands through her hair and looked up to the mirrors. “They may get turned on by this crap with the mirrors but please don’t play out your fantasies with somebody you don’t know, and will never know. Now, did you really call me a cab or was that all part of your come-on game?”
“How much do you charge?” His face was taut with anger.
“I choose my clients. Now how do I get out of here?”
He grabbed her wrist and she did a quick twist, released her hand, and brought it up as if to slap his face. “Stay off me, rich boy.”
“I said, how much?”
She could feel her stomach lurch, wanting him to hold her, wanting him to stop her tough talk, wanting him to kiss her just like he had a moment ago.
“Name your price!”
She looked for the door to get out. Shocking him hadn’t worked. He was humiliated, angry, and even more attractive.
“I said name your price.”
She glared at him. “You don’t have it.”
“Want to bet? Five hundred? You want more? Seven fifty? You don’t look like a thousand-dollar whore to me, but if that’s your price …”
He crossed to a wardrobe, opened one of the drawers, and took out a wad of notes. Just as he was about to proffer them, the telephone rang. He tossed the money at her as he picked up the receiver. He listened and then let it drop. “It’s your cab. Why don’t you leave me your number? Maybe we’ll make it another night.”
She laughed as he opened the hidden door leading to the staircase into the garden. She didn’t wait for him to direct her but headed straight down. He didn’t follow, but stood, watching her.
“I meant what I said, Lorraine.”
She paused and looked up at him. “I’m not a whore, Brad. I don’t want you or your money. Good night.”
He waited until the door below closed, then relocked it automatically, stood to see her stride down the pathway, and pause to give the dog a few words. Then he used the remote switch on the main gates, saw her hesitate as they swung open, but she didn’t look back. Maybe she didn’t know he could see her.
He lay down on his bed, looking up at himself in the mirror, confused and still smarting from her rejection. He was not used to it, nor was he used to meeting a woman who excited him so much. The phone rang. He sighed with irritation and snatched it up.
“What do you want?”
“Did you switch the security lock for the gates back on?”
“Yes.”
Steven Janklow replaced the phone and walked into his bathroom, closing the door silently. Locked inside the house he felt safe and secure. He let his silk dressing gown fall away from his body, gazing at himself admiringly as he stepped into the perfumed water. As he slid slowly beneath the soft warm bubbles, he sighed with satisfaction.
Lorraine traveled home in style. The car was a stretch Mercedes, the driver wearing a uniform. Yet another step up from Andrew Fellows’s company. The driver did not say a word the entire journey. She was glad, she didn’t feel like talking. Rosie, however, was still up and ready to launch in as soon as Lorraine opened the front door, her ludicrous slippers on, and her cotton nightgown leaving little or nothing to one’s imagination.
“You cut me off before I could tell you.”
“Rosie, I’m real tired. Can’t this wait until morning?”
“No. I got the photographs developed, that’s what I got for going back to the Janklow house.”
“You did what?” Lorraine snapped. She threw her purse down. “Listen to me, Rosie. This is not a game. You never—do you understand me?—never do anything unless you run it by me first. This is my job, not yours.”
Rosie stuck out her lower lip like a child. “I was only trying to help and then the car broke down. I walked from the Janklow house all the way down to Sunset, are you listening to me?”
“Yes,” she responded, “but I’m tired out—it’s almost three o’clock in the morning.”
“I saw the Mercedes and I got a good picture of the driver.”
Lorraine was hooked. “Janklow?”
“Yeah, well, I think so. You tell me.”
Lorraine stared at the photographs, lingering longest on the blond woman driver.
“Is that a man or a woman? You tell me.” Rosie made an elaborate show of matching the two sets of photographs, the ones with Steven Janklow driving, and the ones with the blond woman.
“It would be hard to tell if it wasn’t for the mouth.”
It was a wide mouth, a mouth Lorraine was sure belonged to the man who had attacked her. But she was concerned about Rosie, that she was becoming too involved and might do something that would get her into trouble or, even worse, get her hurt. “We’ll see if we can get them enlarged. Now, if it’s okay with you, I’m going to bed.”
Lorraine slipped into her bed on the couch and drew the covers close up around her chin. She gripped the sheet tight, twisting it around her knuckles. She had wanted to be loved tonight, she had wanted to be held, kissed, but she had been so afraid because, after all this time, after so much loss, she didn’t think she had any feelings left. Lubrinski’s death had been the worst moment of her life. He was the only person who had given her the love she had craved from her husband, who had loved her for what she was and asked nothing in return.
It began with a single, dry sob, wrenching upward from the pit of her stomach. Afraid Rosie would hear, she bit the sheet, held it between her teeth as the second sob shook her body. She told herself to get control. “Fucking take control of yourself, Page. People depend on you to be a rock. You start howling and you’ll make us a laughingstock. There’s a mother out there needing to know if her little girl is alive or dead—you show any emotion and she won’t be able to take it. You want to weep, do it at home, never on duty. You hearing me, Page?”
“Mrs. Bradley, I’m sorry but we’ve found Laura, and I’m sorry to tell you … Laura’s dead, Mrs. Bradley.”
Rosie sat up. Something had woken her and she was afraid for a moment. Then she heard the strangled, awful sounds. She threw back the blanket and went in to Lorraine. She was rigid, the sheet clenched between her teeth, her knuckles white from the strain of gripping her fingers so tightly. The sound was like a wounded animal, a low mewing sound, as she tried to suppress the desire to scream. Rosie reached over and picked her up in her arms, holding her and rocking her. “Let it go, Lorraine, let it free. It’s only me, it’s only big fat Rosie. You have a cry, let’s hear you cry …”
The dam broke and the mewing sound erupted into gasping sobs as the tears flowed. Lorraine held on to Rosie as if she was drowning, as if she was terrified to let her go. She sobbed for almost two hours. She wept for everything she had lost, for her children, her husband, her dead mother, her brother, her father. She cried for the boy she had shot, she cried for Lubrinski and called out that she was sorry, sorry, and at long last she wept for herself, for what she had done to herself, for what she had forced herself to become.
At last the crying stopped. She was drained, so exhausted she couldn’t speak. Her body still shook, and she made soft, hiccuping sounds as Rosie gently dried her face and together they walked into the bedroom. Rosie helped her into the bed, rinsed a washcloth so she could pat her face cool, and then got in beside her. Lorraine rested her head against Rosie, whose big fat arms cradled her friend as she said softly over and over, “It’s all over now, everything’s going to be better now, honey. It’s gonna be easy now.”
The ring of the telephone by the bed made Rooney’s heart thud so loudly he thought he was having a heart attack. It was Bean. They had just gotten a report in. The body of a white woman, aged somewhere between thirty and forty, had been discovered in the trunk of a stolen vehicle. Judging by the look of the corpse, the killer had struck the victim from behind with a hammer, and she also had horrific facial injuries. Rooney flopped back, cradling the phone against his chest
. His wife peered up at him, her face masked with night cream. She then squinted at the bedside clock, it was five-thirty in the morning.
“Jesus Christ, we’ve got another one. He’s done another.”
13
Rooney and his lieutenant waited in the anteroom of the City Morgue. Having dragged himself out of bed, he had joined Bean, who had been contacted even earlier regarding the corpse. It was now after nine and they were still waiting for results. They could do little until they had further information from the pathologist. The stolen vehicle, a Lincoln Continental, had been towed to the police lot and was being checked over by forensic experts. The owner of the vehicle had been traced, having reported his car stolen the previous day from outside his house in Ashcroft Avenue, in West Hollywood. Rooney was morose, knowing that the press would be on to the killing and had, more than likely, given it front-page coverage as he had declined to say anything to the photographers and reporters waiting outside the morgue. He slurped his cup of disgusting machine-made coffee and looked at Bean, irritated that even though called out at some ungodly hour, he was looking as neat and pristine as always.
“How’s your toothache?” Rooney asked him through clenched teeth.
“S’okay, hasn’t come back. I think I might need some dental work, but I use floss every morning and night now.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t bother. I’d like to know how the fucking press get on to everythin’ so fast, pisses me off. Chief’ll be havin’ heart failure at his gym by now, he been told?”
Bean nodded, then chewed his lips. “You know where it was found, don’t you? The car?”
Rooney took another gulp of the disgusting coffee and lit up a cigarette directly under the NO SMOKING sign.
“Yep, another fucking shopping mall.”
Bean nodded, “Yep, the ultimate mall this time—the Beverly Center. Maybe he uses them because the parking is free.”
“That a joke, is it?” Rooney asked bad-temperedly, and then turned as a detective from the L.A. police squad looked through the large double doors.
“Hi, you Captain Rooney?”
“Almost,” Rooney grunted.
The sandy-haired officer, wearing a neat gray suit and white shirt, walked in and joined them.
“I’m Detective Maynard from Parker Center, Homicide Squad.”
Rooney nodded as the pushy detective sat down and opened his file. “I’ve just been talking this over with my chief. Situation is that your crowd takes the case and, as we’ve been informed, the FBI might be brought in, you’re welcome to it.”
“Thanks a bunch,” Rooney said.
“You got use of our facilities if you need them, so this is what I’ve got for you.”
The Lincoln had been left in the third story of a garage where it could have remained for days, along with all the other cars on long-term contracts. The only reason it had been investigated was that the alarm had been triggered when another car accidentally touched the rear fender. According to the night security guard, he’d heard the ringing, so he had gone to take a look. No long-term parking ticket was displayed on the window or on the dashboard, and he was about to return to his booth to double-check his records when he saw something dripping from beneath the trunk. At first he presumed it was oil, but on closer inspection realized it was blood and called the police.
Rooney sighed. “He give a description of the driver?”
Bean shook his head. “He said he wasn’t on duty until late and the car was already parked. We’ve got a number for the daytime security officer, all there for you, but we haven’t spoken to him yet.”
Rooney checked his watch. “Get on to that right now.”
Bean looked. “Me?”
“No, the invisible man, who the hell you think I’m talking to?”
“I’m on my way.” Bean bristled.
Maynard passed over the statements and details his team had acquired and then, rather smugly, Rooney thought, made to leave, clearly pleased he wasn’t on this case. As he reached the door he turned back to Rooney.
“How many does this make to date?”
“Too many,” Rooney muttered, not looking up as he flicked through the folder. Rooney waited another two hours before the doors opened and the masked and gowned attendant gestured for him to follow. Draped in green sheeting, the body dominated the white-tiled room whose strip lighting gave a surreal white brightness to the rows of instruments and enamel sinks.
“Morning, Bill,” said Nick Arnold, the pathologist, as he washed his hands at a large sink. He was a squat, gray-haired man in his late fifties with half-moon glasses perched on the end of his puglike nose. “You’re pretty impatient for this one, aren’t you? I hear you’ve been hovering outside—you should have come in.”
Rooney hated being anywhere near an autopsy. He’d never gotten used to the way corpses were sliced open, never been able to stand hearing the hiss of stinking gases or looking at the blood pumping out; the open, sightless eyes of the victim as the body was systematically inspected.
Arnold knew Rooney of old and understood he wouldn’t want to take a close look. He appeared distinctly greenish already. “Come and have some coffee,” he said pleasantly. “It’ll be a while before we get the photographs and tests completed.” He yawned. “Got called out of bed for this one.”
“So did I,” muttered Rooney as he slumped into a low chair, its cushioned seat puffing loudly as his bulk made contact. “So what you got for me?”
“Death occurred late evening—can’t be more specific. Until I get my reports back, I can’t pinpoint the time, but it was evening and the last meal was banana bread.”
“That’s a big help.” Rooney slurped his coffee, then licked his lips and looked up at Arnold. “Doesn’t anyone brew coffee anymore like in the old days? This is like drinkin’ …”
“It’s the machine age, Bill. You can have chicken noodle soup if you’d prefer it.”
“I think I got it, minus the noodles,” Rooney said, squinting into his plastic cup.
“Victim’s age was late thirties, may even be forty, but fit—good muscle tone.”
“Was she blond?” Rooney asked.
“That’s right, but who said she was female?”
“What?”
Arnold grinned. “He was almost a she, and at first glance I’d have said definitely female, heavy breasts, but he was also well endowed in the nether regions. Transsexual, Bill, one who’d been on a lot of hormone replacement treatments; Adam’s apple had also been removed at some time.” He stood up and pointed to drawings. “Hammer blow here to the base of the skull, which would have almost certainly rendered her unconscious. Her face was beaten to a pulp—nose, cheekbones, and frontal lobe shattered—very heavy blows, one eye forced back into this region and the other socket split open by the force of the hammer. Not a pretty sight now, but I would say she or he had at one time been quite attractive. Hair is bleached blond, well-cut, a good wig. Own hair is wispy blond, as you can see. We’ve also got nothing from under her fingernails, so the first blow was unexpected. She put up no resistance.”
Rooney went into the forensic laboratory to see the victim’s clothes. They were reasonably expensive, some with well-known labels. A female assistant, with a pair of plastic gloves on, was carefully sorting each garment. She held up a pair of high-heeled platform sandals.
“The clothes are bought from most malls and stores but these might be useful. As you can see they’re a very large size and there’s a label. They’re specials and the store is a well-known one catering to transsexuals and transvestites.”
Rooney nodded, jotting down the information, watching as the girl placed each shoe in a plastic bag. Then his beeper went off, and he asked to use a phone.
It was Josh Bean. He’d spoken to the day security officer, who had no recollection of even seeing the Lincoln. Rooney told him to make a few inquiries at the transsexual shoe shop, giving the size and style of the shoe from the corpse. He said he would meet up w
ith him back at the station, but if he got an ID on the body he was to buzz him directly. Bean agreed and after a beat, knowing the effect it would have on Rooney, he said quietly, “I think the suits have arrived. FBI, Bill.”
Rooney replaced the phone, swore under his breath, and then gave a weak smile to the still busy attendant. “Thanks for your help.”
Rooney radioed to his team from his patrol car to check out the owner of the Lincoln, exactly when he had reported his vehicle stolen. By the time he got to his office they had already discovered the car’s owner had been away for a week and only knew the car was missing when he returned home. So neither the security guards at the mall nor the owner could be certain of when the Lincoln had been stolen or the exact time it had been dumped in the mall.
By midday, forensic reports from inside the Lincoln yielded no bloodstains, no fingerprints in the interior or the glove compartment, and the steering wheel had been wiped clean. They did, however, find long strands of blond hair, which were sent to be tested and matched to the victim’s wig. All this took considerable time—time Rooney did not have. At lunchtime, Chief Michael Berillo summoned him.
Rooney listened to him glumly. He was still to lead the officers in the inquiry but only until the FBI officers had familiarized themselves with the evidence. Then they would take over and, as Berillo had so kindly phrased it, “You can start mowing the lawn, Bill.” He’d sounded gloating, even if unintentionally. Mowing the lawn was not something that Rooney pictured himself doing even if he’d retired of his own free will. Now this enforced “release from duty” was just what he had been dreading and he gave a long low sigh. “You shouldn’t feel you’ve been ousted due to any unprofessional conduct or lack of ability. It’s just that—”
Rooney leaned on the chief’s desk. “You gotta have a scapegoat, someone to blame for not making an arrest. Sure, I understand. I just didn’t expect to go out this way. I’ve given the best years of my life to the force, but it don’t matter. Somebody’s got to pay for not finding this crazy bastard, so why not make me the sucker?”
Cold Shoulder Page 27