The Perfect Neighbor

by Blake Pierce

  Sometimes she imagined that he’d leave his wife and she could finally stop sneaking around. But Carl had warned her that if Mrs. Landinghag ever found out about them, the party would be over. Apparently, despite his job as a television executive, she was far richer than him. It was her house. She owned three of their four cars and their boat. She leased the private jet that currently had her spending an extra week in Manhattan.

  But all those were worries for another time. Once Carl arrived and they got reacquainted, she could move her car into the garage until his wife returned. She could lounge around the house naked if she wanted. She could lie out on the beach or borrow Carl’s boogie board. It was like she would be on vacation, even though her tiny Culver City apartment was only a dozen miles away.

  She giggled excitedly at the thought of it as she made her way down the long hallway to the master bedroom. She was just about to walk in when she heard what sounded like a soft groan. Or was it a snore? Unsettled but curious, she peeked around the corner and saw someone sleeping in the bed, turned away from her.

  She was slightly startled by the sight. Had Carl already arrived? Why hadn’t he called to tell her? And couldn’t he stay awake long enough to see her? That hag of a wife must have really worn him out for him to crash in the afternoon.

  She decided to sneak over and give him a wake-up surprise. Tiptoeing over as carefully as possible while wearing stilettos, she made her way around the bed. Carl had the covers over his head. Kelly carefully grabbed hold of them, ordering herself not to laugh and ruin the prank, and then ripped them off the bed completely.

  The man startled into consciousness, looking up at her with initially sleepy eyes that suddenly opened wide with shock. It wasn’t Carl. Kelly screamed, first in fear, then in embarrassment as she stumbled back, nearly losing her balance.

  For half a second, as her heart dropped into her stomach, Kelly wondered if she was in the wrong house. But she dismissed the thought immediately. This was the right home. It was hard to confuse with any others. And her key had worked.

  She toggled between fear and confusion, afraid of this random dude in Carl’s bed but not wanting to overreact. She tried to be logical. Had Carl invited a friend to stay while he was gone and forgotten to tell her? It wouldn’t be unlike him. He was absent-minded and she knew he had lots of buddies from out of town that he let crash at his place. And this guy was clean-cut, decent looking, and wearing silk pajamas. He certainly seemed to have made himself at home.

  She gulped hard, trying to regroup and hide her embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I thought you were Carl. I had no idea he had a houseguest.”

  The guy eyed her from head to toe, taking in her skimpy outfit, heels and all. He didn’t look drowsy anymore. She suddenly realized how exposed she was and her embarrassment doubled.

  “I’m just going to go back to the other room and wait there,” she said as he started to sit up. “No need to get out of bed. Again, I’m really sorry for the mix-up.”

  She turned and hurried toward the door.

  “Wait,” he called out.

  She turned around, hugging herself as if that might offer some kind of modest cover.

  “Yes?”

  “I love your stockings.”

  “Thanks,” she said, unsure if she should continue this awkward conversation or just leave. Finally she asked, “How do you know Carl?”

  He stood up and stretched. As he did, she realized that the pajamas he wore were Carl’s. Strange to wear someone else’s bed clothes.

  “I have no idea who that is,” he lied, the sleep now completely gone from his eyes.

  For a moment, Kelly’s brain short-circuited. This man said he did not know Carl. But he was in his house, praising her pantyhose. Kelly felt a cold shiver run up her spine. And then, when the man began walking quickly toward her, she screamed.

  She turned around and ran as quickly as she could down the hall to the top of the stairs. But as she reached them, her left heel broke. She lost her balance and began to tumble. She threw up her arms to try to protect herself but it didn’t help.

  The momentum sent her slamming into the side wall like a pinball and then across the stairs into the balusters on the other side. Somewhere along the way she hit her head hard. By the time she got to the bottom stair, she was disoriented and sure she’d broken some part of her left leg.

  Ignoring the confusion, pain, and the sound of the footsteps coming down the stairs behind her, she grabbed the handrail and tried to pull herself upright. She was almost standing when the man caught up to her and pushed her to the floor. She landed heavily on the marble and found that she was unable to get up. She felt woozy and weak. The man walking toward her looked blurry.

  She tried to crawl away but found that her right arm wasn’t working properly. Then he was on her, pinning her down as he pulled the stocking off her right leg, the one that wasn’t bent in an unnatural direction. Then he moved up so that he was sitting on her ribcage. He took the stocking, wrapped it around her neck twice, and began to squeeze.

  She tried to yell for help but only a hoarse rasp came out. Until now, she’d been so desperate to escape that the fear hadn’t fully taken hold. But now it did. Despite the agony of her multiple injuries and the feeling of drowning that being choked caused, she was overcome with sweaty clamminess as terror overcame her.

  She shook her body wildly in the hope that it might dislodge her attacker but he didn’t seem even slightly fazed. She tried to scratch at his eyes with her working hand but he appeared oblivious, merely closing them.

  She sensed the strength leaving her body and looked around for anything to defend herself. One stiletto rested just feet away from her. But it was on the same side as her broken right arm. Besides, she didn’t think she had the wherewithal to swing it, even if she could have grabbed it.

  As her vision got blurrier, she thought she was hearing things. A loud metallic sound rang in her ears. It was strangely familiar. And then, in a flash, she knew it was real. The sound was the garage door opening. Carl was home. But then, in what would be her last fully formed thought, she realized something else: he wouldn’t get to her in time.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  An hour and a half after leaving Carlos Fogata, Jessie and Ryan were back at the beach.

  She was glad that he didn’t mind driving because she was over it. Besides, the trek allowed her to get in a much needed nap. The only downside was that when she woke up, she discovered that she’d been slumped backward and her top had adhered to her back. Peeling it away from her raw skin without screaming out loud was an accomplishment.

  After parking at the police station, they made their now-familiar walk back to the Strand. As they did, Jessie thought about Cory Jules, the homeowner who’d demanded Carlos be fired. She wondered if his squirrelly demeanor was an indication of something more than just being an entitled jerk.

  She found it hard to believe that a guy with his physical proportions could move stealthily around the Bloom house without being noticed by neighbors. She found it even harder to imagine that he could get the jump on Garland, who was older but still a very alert, reasonably spry guy. Though she didn’t completely dismiss him, she thought they needed to look at other possibilities and Ryan agreed.

  “Maybe we should talk to some folks south of the pier,” she suggested. “It seems like everyone in this area knows each other. Maybe someone in that direction noticed something unusual. I don’t think we need to just stick to the couple of blocks near the crime scene.”

  “Good point,” Ryan said, smirking slightly. “We can see if the people on the other side of Manhattan Beach Boulevard reveal their nosiness and prejudice differently than their friends to the north. I wonder if they consider themselves to live on the wrong side of the tracks.”

  “Very funny,” she said as they walked along a stretch of the Strand she hadn’t visited before. “Should we split up again?”

  “I don’
t ever want to split up,” he said, smiling goofily.

  She knew what he was doing. Ryan was trying to take her mind off the fact that she was exhausted, sore, and weighed down by grief. It wasn’t entirely working but she appreciated the effort.

  “Then let’s start out together,” she replied.

  They began knocking on doors. Since it was still early afternoon, they didn’t get many answers.

  “I wonder how many of these people are at work and how many are just out of town,” Ryan mused.

  “Either way, it makes our job harder,” Jessie muttered.

  After three failed attempts, they came to the front unit of a massive, fancy, four-unit condo complex. There was no need to knock on the door because the apparent owner of the beach-adjacent unit, a sixty-something man wearing only shorts, was sitting out front on a wooden bench, holding what looked like a massive margarita. His skin was deeply bronzed and crinkly and the white hair on his chest formed tight little curlicues.

  “No trespassing,” he growled as they approached, though he appeared delighted to see them.

  “Getting started on the evening early?” Ryan asked, nodding at the man’s drink.

  “How do you know I ever stopped?” he asked grumpily, before looking at Ryan’s suit and adding, “You’re wasting your time. I don’t want to be saved.”

  “We’re not actually here for that,” Jessie said, trying not to be charmed by the gruff disdain the guy seemed to have for them. “We’re with the LAPD, investigating the deaths up the way. I assume you’ve heard about them.”

  “Do I seem like the kind of guy who would have heard about them?” the man asked before taking a generous sip of his drink.

  “Actually, you do,” Jessie assured him. “May I ask your name?”

  “May I ask yours?”

  “Of course,” she replied sunnily. “I’m Jessie Hunt, a criminal profiler for the department. This is Detective Ryan Hernandez.”

  “Jessie Hunt,” the man said, playing with his silvery goatee. “I know that name. Aren’t you the gal who wrote all that crap about your cop bosses on Facebook and got crushed for it?”

  Jessie was surprised. Most people fixated more on the hacked racist and anti-Semitic comments falsely attributed to her than the ones where she supposedly called her superiors corrupt.

  “That would be me,” she conceded.

  “Too bad it turns out you didn’t really write them,” he opined. “It would have been fun to watch the crap fest that could have played out in public if you really had called them out.”

  “It’s been a pretty sizable crap fest despite the comments being faked,” she told him before trying again. “So what’s your name?”

  He looked like he was going to continue to be combative, but then seemed to change his mind.

  “My full name is Randall Horatio Fuller. But my friends call me Randy. My enemies call me Full-Of-It.”

  “Do you have a lot of enemies, Randy?” Jessie asked playfully.

  “I sure do. I’m kind of a one-man neighborhood watch around here. And as it turns out, my neighbors don’t take too kindly to being watched.”

  “Seen anything interesting lately?’ Jessie asked, fully aware that he was dying to share everything he knew.

  “You could say that,” he replied, making a token effort to be coy.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and say that,” Ryan suggested.

  “Well, here’s the thing, Detective Hernandez,” Randy offered. “It’s real easy to pick out the troublemakers in the wintertime around here. Everybody’s living in their own homes, leading their normal lives. It gets chilly, so you don’t get all the inlanders coming down. And it gets dark earlier so anybody out and about when they shouldn’t be draws notice. But the summer’s a different story altogether.”

  “How’s that?” Ryan asked.

  “For one thing, you got all the rabble-rousers coming in from the city, looking to blow off steam. They go crazy, bugging folks who are just relaxing on the beach, getting in the way of surfers and then getting pissed when a board knocks ’em in the head.”

  “They should know better,” Ryan said, egging him on.

  “You get it,” Randy said, before glugging some more margarita. “Those types are bad enough. But what’s worse is when residents take off for the summer. Some of them leave their places unattended and the yards get all gross. That’s a whole other story. Then there are the folks who rent out their places. Now, all of a sudden I have to deal with a different breed of rich troublemakers who think they own the town, treating the locals like crap and the streets like their own personal garbage dump.”

  “Sounds like a real nightmare,” Jessie offered, trying to sound sincere.

  “It is,” Randy agreed enthusiastically. “And then I get the worst of both worlds.”

  “Like what?” Ryan wondered.

  “For example, there’s this couple that lives two doors down, Carl and Eileen Landingham. She’s the worst so I don’t mind when she’s gone, which she is right now. But Carl—who’s not actually a terrible guy—he’s got this chippy he likes to bring around when Eileen’s away. The girl has no regard, playing music too loud, that kind of thing. Carl thinks he’s being all sneaky but everybody knows what’s going on.”

  “Sounds rough, Randy,” Jessie said, feeling that she’d buttered him up enough to get more specific. But before she could ask her real questions, Randy’s eyes went wide. He pointed behind them.

  “Speak of the devil,” he said, looking at a fifty-something man who was sprinting out his front door, yelling and flailing his arms wildly. “That’s Carl there now.”

  Jessie and Ryan looked at Carl, who appeared to be in genuine distress. Then they heard what he was screaming.

  “Help me! Someone killed her!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ryan reached the man in moments.

  He glanced back and saw that Jessie, with her still-sensitive back, was a few seconds behind.

  “I’m a police detective,” he said to the man. “What’s going on?”

  The man had an expression that was part horrified and part disbelieving, as if he couldn’t process what he’d just seen.

  “I just got home and found my…girlfriend in the foyer. She’s dead. Somebody did something awful…it looks like she was beaten or something. I tried to help her. I thought she might be alive because she’s still warm. But there’s no pulse.”

  “Take us in there now,” Jessie said, short of breath from just arriving.

  The man ran back inside and they followed him. The door was open. Before they even got inside, Ryan could see the body on the floor of the foyer. It was rough. The victim, a woman who appeared to be in her twenties, was lying on her back, wearing nothing but a teddy. Her left leg bent back grotesquely in the wrong direction. Her right arm was equally disfigured. She was bleeding from somewhere on the underside of her head, a crimson pool slowly spreading outward.

  But none of that was what drew Ryan’s attention. Wrapped around her neck was a stocking, one that looked similar to the one that had been used on Priscilla Barton. Ryan noticed something else. On the marble floor were bloody footprints headed off in the direction of the back of the house. The prints were of bare feet and they looked fresh.

  “I think this happened in the last few minutes,” he said, looking over at Jessie. “I’m going to follow the prints. Will you call it in and secure the house?”

  Jessie nodded and he took off, running down the hallway where the blood trail went. It led through the kitchen to a door that opened onto the alley. He unholstered his weapon and carefully peeked outside. The prints, now fading, headed to the right and he moved in that direction.

  After about twenty yards the bloodstains disappeared completely and he was left guessing which direction to go. The guy could have hidden in any of these places, especially since so many were currently unoccupied. He looked around for any clue that might help.

  Ryan was in an alley that divided
the homes directly on the Strand from those one block east. They were equally impressive, in some case more so. The owners seemed to compensate for being a block away from the beach by being even more ostentatious in house size. Unlike the Strand homes, which had little yard space, the ones he was looking at now had large green spaces.

  In fact, just up the way, he saw that one home with a yard had a small cabana. He squinted to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. It looked like the cabana door was slightly ajar. He moved in that direction and scaled the wooden fence without any trouble. As he approached the cabana, he considered calling Jessie but didn’t want to make any noise that might tip the attacker off.

  When he got to the door, he saw that it was dark inside. The windows were curtained and there were no lights on. He took off his sports jacket and tossed it on the ground. For what he was planning, he’d need as much deftness as possible and wearing the jacket would interfere with that.

  Without pausing to think about it too long, Ryan got a running start and dove into the room, rolling into an elegant somersault and popping upright. He spun around, training his gun on the interior of the cabana.

  It was sparsely decorated with nowhere to hide. Despite the dimness, it quickly became clear there was no one in the room. Then he saw the other door. He gathered it led to either a bathroom or closet. Either way it was closed.

  He shuffled to the right and approached the door from the side, briefly debating whether to try to access the room with stealth or force. But it didn’t take long to decide. If someone was behind that door, they surely heard him enter the cabana.

  He also doubted, though he couldn’t be sure, that the killer was armed with a gun. In his experience, if someone was a stabber, they carried only a knife. If they were a strangler, they usually only had a cord, or in this case, a stocking. Most killers were quite loyal to their weapon of choice.