Edge of the Knife

by A. D. Miller

  Nyman took a step toward the kitchen, then stopped. A neighbor banged on the wall and shouted at them to be quiet. Nyman’s face as he watched the woman cry was creased and bloodless and uncertain.

  Tentatively, he went into the kitchen and picked up the scattered dishes. He put them back in the box, then started taking plates and cups down from the cabinets and stacking them on the countertop, as if to help her in her packing.

  Gradually her sobs became quieter. She took the hands away from her face and rubbed them on her shirt. With her back against the refrigerator, she sat motionless on the floor and watched him stack dishes.

  After a time, she said: “You’re the private investigator. Nyman.”

  He paused with a dish in his hand. “Tom Nyman, right. I talked to your brother this morning. After he brought you back from the coroner’s office.”

  “I know. Paul told me.”

  “Does Paul know you’re here, Mrs. Bell?”

  “No.” Her voice was weak but more human. “No, I told him I was going home to bed. He didn’t want me to leave, but I insisted.”

  “Getting some sleep might be a good idea.”

  She turned to look at the rest of the apartment. Her gaze moved over the futon, the small bookcase beside it, the framed photos on the walls.

  “I won’t be doing any sleeping tonight,” she said.

  Nyman said that in that case she shouldn’t be alone. “Why don’t you let your brother know where you are?”

  She said nothing in response and went on staring at the photos, absorbed in thought or memory.

  Leaving the kitchen, Nyman walked to the bookcase and took out his phone. He searched online until he found a listing for a Paul Lattimer with an address in Watts.

  Lattimer answered in a voice slurred by sleep. He listened to what Nyman had to say, cursed, said he would be there in ten minutes, and hung up without saying goodbye.

  Chapter 13

  Nyman put away his phone. Valerie was sitting in the same place on the floor, her hands over her face, her shoulders rising and falling as she cried. He looked at her for a moment in indecision, then checked the time on his watch and kneeled down beside the bookcase.

  Taking the books out one by and one, he glanced at the titles and ran his fingers along the pages, finding nothing more interesting than a bookmark. He got to his feet and moved to the closet, where he found nothing apart from clothes and shoes and more books.

  On a shelf beside the door was a bowl filled with junk mail and unopened letters. Under the letters was an address book with names and numbers written in pencil. He was studying the names when he heard footsteps on the outer stairs.

  Paul Lattimer came in a moment later, out of breath from the climb. His eyes had the same scratchy redness as his sister’s and his broad shoulders sagged with exhaustion.

  Without acknowledging Nyman, he went into the kitchen and kneeled down beside Valerie. Taking her hands into his own, he said something in a voice Nyman couldn’t hear. With a sob she fell forward and put her face against his shoulder. Lattimer’s arms came forward to hold her as she cried.

  Nyman left the apartment and waited outside the door.

  * * *

  Leaning against the waist-high wall at the edge of the landing, he took the cigarettes from his pocket and found his lighter. He’d smoked two in slow succession before the door opened and Lattimer came out.

  With a wordless gesture he asked for a cigarette. Nyman gave him one along with the lighter and the two men stood at the wall and looked up at the thinly scattered stars. After a time Lattimer said in a quiet voice:

  “Finally got her to lie down on the couch. Gave her one of my sleeping pills.”

  Nyman nodded and said nothing.

  “I guess I ought to thank you for calling me,” Lattimer went on. “A lot of people wouldn’t have gone to the trouble.”

  Nyman said that it hadn’t been any trouble. “I’ve learned some things, incidentally. About what happened to your niece.”

  Lattimer looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes. “What kind of things?”

  Nyman told him about the people he’d met and the facts he’d pieced together. Lattimer listened with a frown that got deeper as Nyman went on. His eyes lost some of their tiredness and his voice, when he spoke, was more urgent.

  “If these nightclub people didn’t do anything but talk to her, why’d she come away with that bruise?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Nyman said.

  “And why would Freed say she went to Vegas? I never heard anything about Allie going to Vegas.”

  “She didn’t take a lot of trips?”

  “She didn’t have the money for trips. Not unless she was getting it from somewhere we didn’t know about. But it sounds like there were lots of things we didn’t know about.”

  He flicked his cigarette into the alley below and thrust his hands into his pockets. He turned away and stood leaning with his back against the wall, his eyes dark and thoughtful.

  After a silence, Nyman asked him if the family had been contacted by the Vista Hills police.

  Lattimer shrugged. “Couple of men came by the house. Said they found Allie’s car parked on the same street she was killed on. No sign of a break in.”

  “Did they find anything inside?”

  “Not that they told us about.”

  “Which side of the street was the car parked on?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think they mentioned it.”

  “What about witnesses?”

  “Haven’t found any, apparently. A few of the houses on the block had cameras, but nobody had the right angle to catch the accident. Department’s putting up a reward for anybody who comes forward.”

  “And the coroner’s office?”

  Ruiz had advised them not to expect anything till morning, Lattimer said. “She told us she’d be working through the night.”

  Nyman ground out his cigarette. Nodding to the apartment, he said: “There’s an address book in there with the mail.”

  Lattimer looked at him in surprise. “Allie’s address book?”

  “Seems to be. I was wondering if you’d go through it and tell me who the names belong to.”

  “I doubt I’d recognize any. Allie kept her social life to herself.”

  “Anything would help.”

  Lattimer nodded and led Nyman back inside. They found Valerie lying on the futon in an awkward, propped-up position and gazing intently at one of the photos on the wall.

  Taking the address book into the kitchen, Lattimer leafed slowly through the pages, pausing over each name. After he’d been through the book two or three times he tapped one of the entries.

  “This guy. Patrick Choi. I think he might’ve been one of her friends at Pacifica. Seems like I remember her talking about him.”

  Beside Patrick Choi’s name was a phone number with an L.A. area code. Nyman was copying the number into his notebook when Lattimer said:

  “You intend to keep working on this, I take it? On what happened to Allie?”

  “Yes. Unless your family has any objection.”

  Lattimer leaned back against the counter and shook his head, looking down at his feet. “It doesn’t seem right, though. You working on this and not getting paid.”

  “I didn’t come here to ask for money, Mr. Lattimer.”

  “I know you didn’t. My sister and I didn’t ask for your charity, either.”

  “It wasn’t intended as charity.”

  “Let’s forget what you intended. I’m asking what kind of fee you’d charge for a job like this.”

  “Working full time, you mean?”

  “Working as much you need to.”

  Nyman told him his hourly rate and the amount of a typical retainer.

  Lattimer nodded. “I can give you a check for the retainer tonight. The rest might take a while.”

  Nyman eyed him carefully. “Would I be working for you personally, or for the whole family?” />
  “Does it make a difference?”

  “Not to me, but to other people it might. It helps to be able to say exactly who’s paying me.”

  Lattimer’s response was cut short by Valerie Bell, who looked over from the futon and said:

  “Whatever you’re whispering about, you might as well say it out loud. I’m not a child.”

  Lattimer, handing Nyman the address book, went back into the living room and kneeled beside her. They talked in hushed voices while Nyman paged through the book and copied down names and numbers. Then Lattimer got to his feet and left the apartment; from the street below came the sound of a car door opening and closing.

  When he came back in he was carrying a checkbook. He took a pen from a drawer, filled out the check, and put it on the counter in front of Nyman.

  “You’ll be working for all of us.”

  Chapter 14

  The coroner’s office, late at night, was a black shape against the gray darkness that hung above Mission Road. Nyman climbed the front steps and went into the lobby, where he told the overnight guard that he needed to see Ruiz.

  “Name?”

  “Tom Nyman.”

  The guard picked up his phone and had a brief, murmuring conversation. Then he put a hand on the mouthpiece and said: “Unless this is an emergency, she says you can come back tomorrow during normal hours.”

  “Tell her I’m here at the request of Alana Bell’s family. They hired me to investigate her death.”

  The guard murmured into the phone, nodded, hung up, and rose from his chair. “She’s on the security floor. I’ll take you down.”

  The elevator took them to an anteroom that ended in a pair of locked steel doors. Ruiz was waiting at the doors, wearing a white mask over her nose and mouth. Her makeup had been sweated or scrubbed away; lines of age and exhaustion made her look older than she had that morning.

  “I told the family not to expect anything until tomorrow,” she said.

  “They’re not doing very well at the moment. I thought some news might help them through the night.”

  “I don’t have much news to give them.”

  “But you have some.”

  Ruiz glared at him, then looked at the clock beside the elevator. Saying that she could only give him a few minutes, she handed Nyman a mask like her own, told him not to touch anything, and led him through the doors into a wide, brightly lit hallway.

  Here and there along the walls were gurneys on which corpses lay, most of them naked and wrapped in clear plastic sheeting. Plexiglass windows gave views of the autopsy suites that ran along either side of the hall.

  Most of the suites were darkened for the night. In the suite nearest Nyman, a woman in scrubs stood beside a slab on which a naked dead man lay. Deep incisions ran from the man’s shoulders to the center of his chest and on down to his pelvis; the skin had been pulled aside and the breastbone removed, revealing the crimson interior. Buzzing in the woman’s hands was the Stryker saw she was using to open the man’s skull.

  Following Ruiz, Nyman went past the autopsy suites and through another locked door, coming at last into a series of interconnected rooms filled from floor to ceiling with sheeted corpses on steel shelves.

  “Here you go,” Ruiz said, stopping at a shelf and pulling aside the layers of sheeting that covered the body of Alana Bell.

  Nyman stepped forward. Alana’s eyes and mouth were open. A blow of some kind had left the side of her head pulpy and misshapen, with dried blood running in a jagged seam above her ear. Bruises and livor mortis made her skin a patchwork of green and purple.

  “We did the photographs and x-rays a few hours ago,” Ruiz said. “Clothes are bagged up and waiting for chemical analysis.”

  “What did the x-rays show?”

  “About what you’d expect. Skull fracture, broken pelvis, bumper injuries to the right leg. Car hit her from behind—probably as she was walking along the side of the road. No signs that the car tried to brake.”

  “Which means she was hit intentionally,” Nyman said.

  “Or that the driver didn’t see her. There aren’t any street lamps on that road.”

  “But if you hit something, your first instinct is to stop. At least for a moment.”

  “Assuming you’re sober enough to realize what you’ve done. I’ve seen guys so drunk they drive through buildings without noticing.”

  Nyman said that an intentional hit-and-run seemed like the simplest explanation.

  Ruiz smiled and folded the plastic sheeting back over the body. “With all due respect, you don’t have the training to make a judgment like that. Or the information. We’ve hardly started our analysis.”

  “The D.M.E.’s planning a full autopsy?”

  “And toxicology. Results will take over a month to get back. I suggest you go home and let Vista Hills handle things. This isn’t the kind of work you’re used to.”

  Nyman’s gaze remained on the sheeted corpse. “How would you know anything about my work?”

  “I’m an investigator, Tom. Your business card was in the decedent’s pocket. It’s my job to check up on you.”

  Nyman turned to look at her. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Nothing I wouldn’t expect from someone who worked for Moritz. The coroner’s always had a good relationship with your agency.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “And as a matter of fact I remember you from your visit last year.”

  The skin of Nyman’s face, already pale, turned a sickly shade of yellow.

  “It was O’Bannon’s case,” Ruiz went on, “but I helped him out. He said you handled it as well as anybody could’ve.”

  From the autopsy suites came the shrill, buzzing whine of the Stryker saw. The whine was accompanied by the blast of air conditioners and the sudden pounding of blood in Nyman’s ears. Turning to one side, he put a hand on the wall to steady himself.

  “I see,” he said.

  Above her mask, Ruiz’s eyes narrowed. “Sorry,” she said. “It was stupid of me to bring that up.”

  Nyman said: “No, it’s all right. It’s time for me to be going, anyway.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. I’ve taken up too much of your time.”

  Without waiting for Ruiz to lead him, he turned and made his way back through the columns of bodies. Half-numb, unwieldy legs carried him into the main hallway, where the bulbs above his head burned with painful brightness.

  Ruiz caught up to him and asked if he was all right. He ignored the question and looked into the lighted autopsy suite as he went past. The Stryker saw was quiet now and resting on a table; its blade was bright and wet and dripping.

  He didn’t say goodbye to Ruiz and didn’t speak to the guard who rode with him in the elevator. In the darkened parking lot he stumbled over a curb, then kneeled for a time on the pavement, as if he were going to be sick.

  Then he rose to his feet and climbed into the car.

  * * *

  Glass tubes glowing green with neon gas outlined the door of a small building on Culver Boulevard. Nyman passed through the doorway into a dark, low-ceilinged room crowded with tables, red-leather banquettes, a stage, and a bar at which a dozen or more people were sitting. On the stage a man was playing “Alfie” on a keyboard.

  Sliding into an open space at the end of the bar, Nyman made eye contact with the bartender and smiled. His face was still yellow; the smile failed to extend upward to his eyes. The bartender returned the smile, reached for a bottle, and poured gin into a shaker.

  Nyman took the notebook from his pocket. He was staring absently at one of the pages when the bartender set the Gibson in front of him and said:

  “You didn’t come in earlier, I said to the guys: ‘He finally got a client.’”

  Nyman took a long drink. “A dead client.”

  “Well, better dead than none at all.”

  “Maybe.”

  The bartender’s face—a dark brown reddened to ma
roon at the nose and cheeks—lost its smile and became serious. “Not so good night, Tom?”

  “A night is a night.”

  At the middle of the bar, a woman detached herself from a group of drinkers and made her way over with steps that were carefully controlled. She was a decade older than Nyman and elaborately made up, with a tight white blouse and tanned skin just starting to be discolored by liver spots. Her nails were long and artificial and she pressed them into Nyman’s back as she put an arm around his shoulder.

  “You missed the dancing, Tom, but maybe we can get it started again.”

  Nyman finished the gin in his glass and said that he couldn’t dance.

  “Course you can,” the woman said thickly. “Anybody can.”

  “Having a nice time, Laura?”

  “Well,” the woman said, tilting her head at a thoughtful angle, “it was a little boring, to be honest, before you got here. But now you’re here and we’re going to dance.”

  “Let’s have another drink first.”

  “All right,” Laura said, squeezing in beside him at the bar. “But only one.”

  They had another round of Gibsons, then switched to Irish Coffees. At Nyman’s request the man at the keyboard played “My Funny Valentine.” Nyman gave Laura a dollar to put in the fishbowl beside the keyboard.

  When she came back along the bar a small man climbed off his stool and told her he was going home. She said she was going to stay. He said she was his wife and she ought to come home with him. She patted him affectionately on the cheek and said she’d be there soon enough. The man shrugged and rubbed a hand over the spot where she’d touched him and, walking past Nyman on his way to the door, said in a friendly voice:

  “Nice to see you again, Tom. Sorry you missed the dancing.”

  After the Irish Coffees Nyman and Laura drank scotch. Customers drifted away from the bar and went out the green-lighted door. The piano player, packing up his keyboard, paused beside the bar to say goodnight to the bartender. When he turned away, Nyman stopped him with a hand and asked if he ever gave private lessons.