by Rex Bolt
“Wow, you’re too dark,” was Chris’s first reaction, conveniently forgetting of course where she lived now. “But fine, mind you my accommodations are a little bare, but we can challenge each other a while longer.”
***
“You’re correct,” Reba said, opening a couple of cabinets. “A spartan existence in here. How long you were you planning on staying?”
“I don’t know. Forever’s not good enough?”
“What are you doing here anyway, Jeffrey? I don’t like to embarrass people, but guys like you and McBride kinda performing nothing all day, it does make one wonder.”
“I’ve answered this one before too,” Chris said. “We’re on the run from something. In my case, it’s from the Mob.”
“The Mafia,” Reba said, one hand on a hip now, biting her lower lip with a grin. “I mean I get it -- the average brain in this complex isn’t nobel prize level, so we’re dumbed down -- but you at least have to be more imaginative than that.”
“With my jive, you mean? . . . Come here.”
And she did as she was told, and the coffee sat there waiting a while, and it was old-fashioned high school making-out kind of stuff, nothing more advanced . . . and Chris hated to admit it, but while it was happening with Reba he was recreating the past in his head, a few specific girls from back in the day, at the forefront . . . and dang, Tracy Wilkins came to mind, the summer between junior and senior year, and he’d screwed that one up royally, hadn’t he. In fact he didn’t see her at the 25th reunion and someone said she married a guy up in Humboldt County, and they were growing dope as a career, had transitioned into the medicinal end when it became legal, and the whole shebang was pretty lucrative.
“It’s fine,” Reba said after a while, when it was clear Chris wasn’t into taking it to the next stage.
“Doesn’t sound like it’s fine,” he said, “entirely.”
“I understand,” she said, and when the voice sing-songed around on the syllables like that, you were pretty sure the person didn’t.
“But,” he said, “we got some TV. You ever heard of David Foster Wallace?”
“Maybe. Was he a civil rights leader? We’re not going to watch a documentary, are we, where this is going?”
“A writer. Kind of an obscure one. But yeah, what made me think of it, I got Netflix, they did portray the guy in a docu-drama, and he watched like 14 hours of TV a day. Chomping on licorice whips and frozen ding-dongs the whole time.”
“Frozen ones now. I’m out of the loop. Sounds like an improvement. Why are you telling me this?”
“It wasn’t bad, the flick. It got you thinking. I mean the guy was a genius, no doubt about it. But it was like he required the zombie-like downtime to keep the mind acute.”
“What else is on Netflix currently?” she said. Adding, “Also, I’m a bit worried about Karolina.”
“Oh no. How so?”
“You can start the movie, it’s probably nothing. I’ll touch on it after.”
“I can’t operate that way,” Chris said. “Something’s on the frying pan, I gotta know about it. Otherwise, why would you bring it up?”
“Okay . . . well, you know those college admissions scandals we’ve been hearing about in the news?”
“No.”
“No? Do you even read a newspaper? There’s all kinds of fallout. Celebrities possibly going to prison, even.”
“I should be up on that stuff. I got an LA Times subscription offer -- online, but 4 months free. Then 2 dollars a week. I turned it down, because I thought I’d be wasting too much time.”
“That’s the thing,” Reba said. Not needing to point out again her impression that he didn’t appear to be operating with a huge sense of daily urgency, so what did that mean, wasting time?
The fact was Chris did read the paper most days, but he tended to skip to the sports and entertainment sections. There was always the possibility of running into some article that reminded him of some of his own business, so why put yourself through that.
“In a nutshell,” Reba was saying, “parents have been paying a service to get their kids into good colleges. Now they’re being charged with bribery.”
“Jeez. What schools?”
“USC I believe is the main one mentioned. But several others. Stanford. Yale. Wake Forest.”
“Wait a second. Someone’s going to risk jail . . . to send their kid to Wake Forest? Where is that even?”
“I think North Carolina. But that’s beside the point. Jeff, Karolina’s worried she did the same thing.”
Chris took a long sip of coffee. “All right let’s hold on now,” he said, “on a couple of fronts . . . a, you’re saying she’s going to be in the paper too? But b, Holy Toledo, Karolina . . . she has a college age kid?”
“She said she was young,” Reba said, like it was no big deal, and don’t worry about that part of it.
Chris was placing it, if the kid was 18 now, and Karolina was, what, 17 or 18 -- wow -- back in Estonia, or wherever it was she was liberated. That would make her mid-30’s now, which actually seemed about right. But still, not what you expected.
No point asking if the kid belonged to both of them, Karolina and the tennis pro husband, but Reba took care of that, adding that no, this guy’s not the father, and that either way, Karolina handled the college thing herself.
“How much money?” Chris said.
Reba said, “Or -- you could show a little sympathy for the woman. How about that?”
It seemed like an innocent enough question but Chris supposed she was right, and he opened Netflix and without asking he started ‘All The President’s Men’ . . . and once it got going, past the initial set-up where you’re not sure the Washington Post editor is going to leave Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman on the story once it appears there’s something to it -- from that point on Reba barely moved a muscle.
“Unbelievable,” she pronounced, when it ended. “I’m in love with both of those men.”
“A different reaction than I had,” Chris said. “Although I’ve seen it more than once before. My reaction is more like: that was one of the greatest detective stories ever told.”
Reba said, “I did like how they cradled the phones, and then when another important call would come in, they’d have to muffle the first one with their shoulder.”
“When I was younger I wanted to be like Robert Redford,” Chris said. “Every role, they were all perfect. Like tailor made.”
“But not any more? Now that you’re not young?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll still take being Robert Redford. Are you kidding? . . . Despite the cheap shot.”
“I should go,” Reba said. “Did you know I’m an artist? You weren’t even curious.”
“Ooh, sorry about that.”
“When you mentioned the Mormons at the art class -- I didn’t want to inject myself. But yep. I have a show going on, Red Valley Savings. The main area.”
Chris knew the bank, had never gone inside, but you could tell it was one open room, so there wasn’t anything besides a main area. He figured her stuff was on the perimeter walls where people use those ledges to fill out deposit slips. “Good to hear,” he said. “I’ll definitely check it out.”
She said, “And when you say the art teacher was a colleague -- what does that mean?”
“It was a community college. So, only that I taught a class for a while. Remedial skills English. One of those 3-hour once a week deals.”
“What happened with that? Why aren’t you still?”
They were standing by the door. “Chain of events,” he said. “You kinda shorted me out though. On Karolina. No detail there . . . Why’d you bring it up, in fact?”
“I don’t know why,” Reba said. “Other than you strike me as someone who might have an idea.”
“Gee. Help her wriggle out of it, you’re saying.”
“Something like that. That you’re kind of a fixer-person. Just my gut feeling.”
“Well you
’re giving me a lot of props for no reason,” Chris said. “What have you seen me fix, around here for example?”
“Nothing at all, so far,” she said, and that was that.
Chapter 7
Friday afternoon Dale the cop showed up to play a round of golf.
He was part of a foursome, with three buddies, and you had to unfortunately figure one or two of those guys might be law enforcement as well. None of them of course the fat Eclipse cop with the cowboy hat who’d questioned everyone the day after the woman’s body was found.
The three buddies went ahead and waited at the first tee and were taking practice swings and all that, and it would be a few minutes, there was a log jam ahead of them . . . and Dale hung back and asked Chris, “How’s tricks?”
Chris looked at him and Dale said, “It’s an expression. It won’t bite.”
And you had to like Dale, he was good company, and if you applied the old litmus test -- someone may be superficially friendly, but could you ride cross-country with them? -- Dale, you could, Chris felt.
Not that something like that was going to happen. Chris said, “So jumping past the other deal, Waylon and friends -- and you’re the second or third person I’ve had that non-conversation with -- but what do we got, on the situation here?” Chris pointing up the first fairway with his head, in the direction of the 11th hole.
“Zippo. Is what I’m hearing,” Dale said.
“I like that about you,” Chris said. “No punches pulled, even with dumb civilians prodding you for information.”
“Like I told you -- the department here, they don’t inspire a lot of confidence. My impression is, they were overwhelmed. Still are. Even any chance of picking up prints, that’s gonna be a pipe dream by now.”
“You mean . . . they haven’t necessarily handled the evidence correctly?”
“Butchered it, would be more like it. The scene and the DOA both. You see Jeff, what we’re running into more and more, our line of work -- mine -- is paperwork and computers going wild, out of balance with good solid detective work.”
“Meaning . . .”
“Meaning -- and probably I’ve been guilty here too, I can’t give myself a total pass -- but too many times we expect the crime to solve itself, and we don’t cover our ass with details up the wazoo along the way.”
Chris got the gist of it, but Dale clarified, “You take this case specifically. You have a poor gal, ID’d now as Veronica Shepcolon, a troubled life, in and out the system, minor shit. She’s been holding court last year, year and a half at the Haliday Jay down the road -- which all cops on the I-17 corridor beat are familiar with.”
“Yeah I was thinking,” Chris said, “I mighta been there once. Picking someone up middle of the night who did something stupid.”
“Like what,” Dale said.
“Well the story I got, she met a guy in a bar, some married doofus, and they end up there. She calls me a couple hours into it, the guy’s taken off and can she get a ride.”
“You were living up this way then?”
Chris knew he was going too far, no need to insert any of this, but he had a good instinct about Dale, that he was simply curious, and not about to take any inquiries to a next level. So you might as well tell it straight, more or less. So Chris said, “Not then, I was visiting a friend in Mesa. This gal was a friend of his.”
And Chris was right, nothing beyond that from Dale, no who did that happen to be, and why.
Though uh-oh, Dale was asking now, “Why didn’t your friend pick her up then?”
And Chris answered, seamlessly as possible, “We were at a strip club in Tempe when she called. I volunteered.”
“Good judgment. Too much to drink, the other guy? And that the place with a healthy percentage of Brazilian women?”
“Oh yeah big-time on the Brazilian women . . . Not really, on the guy having too much to drink . . . It was more, I was starving, and there was a 24-hour donut place on the way, if I had it straight . . . so I volunteered for the assignment.”
“That’s funny,” Dale said, “I can relate.”
“I know it, I wouldn’t mind one now in fact . . . my long-winded point being, when I pick her up, she’s out of the room already, sitting in the lobby reading a paperback. I sat down with her for a few minutes, tried to lay a little lecture on her about meeting up with stranger-men -- meanwhile I’m getting some perspective on the place, and it seems like an upstanding, typical Holiday Inn Express clone operation.”
“What time was that at?” Dale said. “And what night?”
“I think it was a weekend, because of the strip club element seeming ramped up. I’m guessing, 2, 3 in the morning?”
“Interesting,” Dale said, “you must have caught the joint with a little downtime. Three managers at least, that I know of, have been pinched, the last 4, 5 years.”
“Ah . . . Looking the other way, you mean?”
“That, and taking payoffs. Some shakedowns. Desk attendants even helping book gigs, on occasion.”
“Dang.”
“A pimp got into it a few months ago in the parking lot with an employee, couple shots were fired, both of ‘em lucky. But the employee turned out to be shadier -- and with a rap sheet twice as long -- as the pimp.”
The foursome ahead of Dale’s completed their tee-shots -- if you could call them those, all four balls squirting off their 3-drivers, nothing remotely down the center of the fairway, and it was going to be a long nine holes from Dale and his buddies behind these guys.
Chris said, “Kinda unreal, then. Wow . . . so what you’re getting at, in relation to Eclipse PD and all, our deal here, from Wednesday morning?”
“Point being,” Dale said, “chubby Jake over there who you met, and the others, they figure since it stems from the Holiday Jay, that there’s your answer sooner or later, meaning your POI. Myself, I like to work ‘em straight up, no contingencies that someone’ll likely be connected somewhere else. It don’t turn out that way, then you’re up the ass without a paddle.”
“Creek,” Chris said.
“Fuck you,” Dale said, but it was good-natured, and the guy clearly took his job seriously, which you had to appreciate.
Chris said, “There was a case up north.” Catching himself, since he wasn’t in southern California currently. “The Bay Area I’m talking about . . . The Zodiac mother-frigger. You ever heard of that one?”
“Course. The movie for one. We also studied it in the academy.”
“Really? Like -- what not to do, in 50 years, to solve 5 connected homicides?”
“That should have been part of it too,” Dale said. “3 or 4 jurisdictions with their own ideas what happened, not sharing the potentially significant shit . . . But in our case it was to study the psychological components of serial killers, and we had to create our own profile.”
“Not a bad assignment,” Chris said. “What’d you come up with on that guy?”
“Power-assertive all the way . . . except one of the crimes, can’t remember which one, there was some possible hedonistic-sadism mixed in.”
“The Lake Berryessa one? Where he wore the Zodiac costume?”
“Could be it. The bottom line with psychopathic thrill killers like him -- the process leading up to the act of murder is what they derive the most pleasure from.”
“Ah,” Chris said.
“Course that profile’d be in contrast with your Jeffrey Dahmers, your Son of Sams, your Dennis Raders.”
Chris didn’t know enough about those three guys, so don’t get Dale going on them. He said, “Well you’re already over my head. You’re good at your job obviously. Very conscientious.”
“Thank you my friend, I try. Always grateful for that.”
Chris figured what the hay, they were fooling around here, right? So he said, “In another lifetime, if I did something, I can see how I wouldn’t want you on my case. My goose’d be cooked, I reckon.”
“Now you’re giving me too much credit,” Dale
said.
“The thing about the Zodiac,” Chris said, “why I brought it up -- they worked it that night as a cab robbery gone bad. Like the driver resisted and the gun went off. The San Francisco one, is what I’m referring to. The guy’s final appearance, possibly.”
“I see what you’re driving at . . . They worked it casual, figuring the guy’ll surface soon enough, as connected to other cab robberies. Or they’ll simply find the MF next couple hours hiding in the bushes somewhere.”
Chris wouldn’t be able to speak like this on many other cases -- in fact no other ones.
But he’d been a fan of the Zodiac case and had followed it in the online forums -- not to mention tried to track the fucker down himself, with Kenny, and the verdict was out on the end result -- so why not, it wasn’t the worst thing shooting the breeze with this guy, some knowledge behind it, at least on the one topic.
“Right,”Chris said, “no one secured the scene, the body’s flipped over and back a few of times, you got everyone and his brother touching the cab including the neighbors.”
“I hear you . . . What’s the current status on that? Still nothing?”
“Nah. SFPD closed the case about ten years ago. They were getting too much action on it, tips from all over the world, nothing amounting to much.”
Dale said, “I can understand that, priorities and manpower issues these days in our cold case divisions . . . But you kinda got me wanting to go up there and have a look around, to be honest.”
“You should. Fresh set of eyes.”
Dale said, “But our deal here, I get your connection. We got Eclipse PD, same thing, assuming it’ll resolve itself, but they don’t always play out so simple . . . See you at the courts tonight?”
Dale and his buddies’ tee time was finally available, they were signalling him, and Chris said you might.
***
Karolina wasn’t around tonight and apparently the round robin option under her guidance was Monday through Thursday, and Sundays.
So tonight everyone self-round-robined it, meaning rotated as best they could but it wasn’t the same as the pro moving you in and out of doubles teams and giving you some tips and ‘nice shots’ and otherwise challenging you a bit along the way.