by Dakota Kahn
“Sometimes toys just seem to show up out of the blue,” Xena said. “And I don’t know where they came from.”
“Car,” Maybell said, slipping out her mom’s arms and crawling, like a little turbo dynamo, across the carpet. She raced back where she’d come from, saying a couple more times, “Car, car” then “Monkey, monkey.”
Xena followed her girl, and called back, “Thanks. Larry’s been sick for a couple of months, actually. It’s been a real trial. He looks fine, but in truth… here it is.”
Just behind the door, Xena leaned down, and picked up a little monkey. “Oh, does this have a pin on the back of it? Where could you have gotten this?”
“He looks like he could tear phone books in half with his pinkie fingers,” I said.
Xena, no slouch herself, swooped down and grabbed her child with one hand, effortlessly lifting her onto her shoulders, and handing her up her monkey.
“Oh, yeah, and normally he’s always up for a run or for going to the gym. But with this sickness, I don’t know if it’s mono, heh, the kissing disease,” and she giggled just like a young girl, and her own little girl, holding up her prized shiny monkey pin, giggled too.
“For the last six weeks he’s been weak as a kitten,” she said in a confiding tone.
Weak as a kitten, I thought. That huge man? But I’d never even seen him actually do anything strong… except for the visions, in my mind’s eye, of him hauling poor James Wendover up onto those gallows. Something only a strong man could do…
“But I saw him lift up Rip Chiaki like it was nothing,” I said. “At the presentation Friday.”
Mrs. Greene nodded, shaking her head. “And after that he was in bed for 10 hours, barely able to move. Even with what happened, he had to see a chiropractor the next day. He should have handled the dismantling of the gallows himself, but he wasn’t up to it. That’s why James went with him that night. If only…”
But if only what, I’d never know. Her daughter decided to chime in, proclaiming loudly.
“Monkey,” the girl said, holding out her pin proudly.
I looked at it, smiled, and then fought like a lioness to keep from gasping, screaming, reacting with all the shock and horror I felt.
I wasn’t just a pin. That was a cufflink. A monkey with his paw’s over his ears. Hear No Evil. Rip Chiaki’s missing cufflink.
Chapter 18
There are plenty of advantages to not being a cop - people don’t think you’re investigating things when you’re not a cop. A lot of people, even people who aren’t doing anything, get suspicious and wary when a cop is around. Friends of Blake’s will sometimes talk about some adventure they’ve gone on, and even if it’s as innocuous as drinking a beer can in public, and they start to get cagey and look at Blake like he’d suddenly sprout sirens and red lights and finally caught them.
But a cop has the backing of other cops. He can yell, “Backup!” into a radio, and he will be backed up.
Even the threat of backup is enough so that if, say, Blake had seen a potentially life-or-death piece of evidence sitting in a kid’s hand, he can say, “This is evidence!” and with a phone call have a bunch of people drive up, and nod, sagely, as he steals a toy from a kid.
I cannot do that. I’m just a lawyer, and not one who’s actually working for anybody right now. All I could do, when I saw Rip’s missing cufflink, was to say something lame about having to go, and then head downstairs, barely seeing where I was actually going while I thought through the implications of what I’d seen.
So, the kid had the cufflink. (My first thought was not that the little Greene girl was culpable - though who knows. Kids are very crafty these days.)
But the event I had reconstructed in my head was thrown for a one-two loop that I needed time to recover from.
That’s what solving a crime really is - you put together a picture in your head, like a movie clip, of just what happened. And in my head, even when I was talking to other people I saw big Larry Greene lifting up the squirming James Wendover, wrapping his tie around the hanging beam, and leaving him there until his life kicked out of him.
But, the truth is, however big and strong he looked I never even saw him do anything big or strong. He didn’t even lift his child into his lap at brunch yesterday. I thought it was because he was a mean old murdering sourpuss. He might have just been too weak to accomplish the task.
Which means, unless James Wendover weighed a lot less than he looked, Lawrence Greene almost certainly wasn’t my murderer.
But it doesn’t mean he didn’t have anything to do with the crime. I was in the lobby before I came up with anything like an idea. I went to the receptionist with that same bored, unfriendly scowl on her puss and said, “I’d like to see the manager.”
The scowl scowled, and she cocked her head to the side like she was trying to roll her brains around. Maybe they were liked old batteries, and needed some shifting around before they get started.
“She’s not here?” she said, like she was asking me.
“Okay, then the head of security.”
Her eyes moved just a little shy of a roll, so I couldn’t really say that she’d been intentionally disrespectful. But she picked up her phone, pushed a couple of buttons, then said, “Mr. Chang, please come to the front desk. There’s…” She paused, as if she was going to ask my name, which I’d already given her just 10 minutes before, then she just continued. “Someone here to see you.”
She hung up the phone, and turned away from me to poke at her computer.
I had nearly picked up a business card dispenser and hurled it at her head when a man, I presume Mr. Chang, came up to the desk with a very serious expression on his face.
“Ma’am, how can I help you?”
He looked so solemn and sober minded that I wanted to take his hand and tell him that everything was going to be okay. That wouldn’t be appropriate, so I just said, “I wanted information about the security systems here in the hotel.”
Mr. Chang was bald, and had very fine dark eyebrows. They both quickly shot up, then went down again as he tried to mask his puzzlement and alarm.
“I’m sorry—”
“No, I’m not, like, trying to find out secrets, or anything. I just want to know where you have cameras. I want to see footage of some people staying here.”
However I thought that was going to go over when the sentence came into my head, the effect on Mr. Chang was… not useful.
“Who are you?” he said, his courtesy somewhat less than before.
“Oh, I’m Kate Becker. I’m an attorney.”
“Working with?” he said, shaking the hand I held out to him a little limply.
“I’m working with… a secret client. And I need to be able to see footage of when people come and go. Here in your hotel,” I said, with the sensible part of my brain kicking and screaming - stop! You sound like an ambulance chasing weirdo! Talk normal!
“Mm-hmm. Well, if you were with the police, and had a warrant, I might be able to help you,” he said, before lowering the boom: “But we take the privacy concerns of our clientele very seriously, and do not appreciate any attempt to spy on them, or whatever it is you think I would help you with.”
“Wait,” I said. “No, you see, I think some are bad, and—”
“Miss Becker, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. And please, unless you make an appointment with myself or our manager, do not come back on the premises again.”
With that, I was escorted, confused and sputtering, off the hotel grounds, out the door, onto the street.
Two minutes ago, I felt like the case had been handed to me, as long as I acted cleverly, and I could almost see my way to the end of it.
Now, I was out, away from anything useful, still without a car. And barred from the closest thing I had to a lead. And that picture in my head, of what happened that night, was still so fuzzy, like an out-of-focus photograph. I knew I just needed a clearer picture of who did what and when that night t
o make everything just come out right.
Except there was no one who would help me…
Nobody here, anyway.
In two minutes, I was back in the California Gold and back in the security booth with Tyler Zane, him sipping on a way-too-big soda, me trying not to look desperate or crazy while I told him what I thought.
“And I know that something happened with somebody in that hotel, but they’ve kicked me out for no good reason and so I need some other way to get that information.”
“Okay,” Tyler said, sucking on his straw. He seemed to be waiting for something more, so I nodded encouragement.
That wasn’t what he was looking for.
“Forget, for a minute, that we’re looking at me losing my job for showing this stuff to you, Kate. I don’t do security across the street, I do it here.”
“I know, I know, but I’m sure your system is so much better here. And so… what I want to know, need to know, is when certain cars left the parking lot. There’s only one exit from the Whispering Pines Inn parking, right out in front.”
I pointed in the general direction and Tyler, sweet goof, followed where I pointed as if something was going to manifest there. He turned back to me, looking a little disappointed.
“Kate…”
“You have cameras that look at the street. These cameras could see what was going on out there, I know it. A camera monitoring the entrance of the California Gold’s parking lot will also see the exit of the Whispering Pines Inn, yes?”
“Well…”
“And Tyler, you’re a good citizen, right? You’re conscientious and do what’s right?” I said, giving him a sincere look in the eye, don’t you dare lie to me, Tyler Zane.
He blinked, looking a little scared, and nodded.
“Then you’ve got to do this. It will save an innocent man from going to jail, and catch a murderer.”
Tyler blinked, did the minutest head shake, and suddenly his expression was all iron and American strength. You could almost hear the Battle Hymn going in the background as he turned back to his computer.
“What date?” he said.
“Friday night. From midnight to six in the morning. How long would that take?”
“About six hours,” he said.
“What?”
“Six… it’s six hours of footage. If we want to be really thorough…”
“Can’t you speed it up until something happens?” I said, “Like they do on TV?”
“These things don’t work like the stuff on TV. You can’t zoom in and say ‘enhance’ and makes things look better. People have a lot of misconceptions about how these systems work.”
“But you can speed things up, right?” I said, touching him on the shoulder.
“Well… I can give it a try,” he said, and in just seconds the footage we wanted was up on the screen.
It looked like… security cam footage. And the angle wasn’t what I was hoping we’d get. I wanted a big snootful of the Whispering Pines Inn parking lot, with license plate numbers in full view. Maybe a moment where every driver coming out of the lot would stop and present their face upward so the camera could see them clearly.
Instead, we got a weird off angle, where the driver was in view for just a split second because the WP Inn’s lot exit dipped a little weirdly before coming up to street level, which meant the car bounced. So there was no straight-on shot of any drivers, just blurry bouncing heads.
And I realized, just as we were watching the footage, I had no idea what either the Greenes or the Wendovers drove.
“What are we looking for?” Tyler said, all ready.
“Let’s just look,” I said. And we did. We started around eleven o’clock, and from there to midnight only three cars came out, and I couldn’t see a thing on any of them. Just bouncing heads. One was a VW Bug which I didn’t think either of my interested parties would have driven. The next was an SUV - possible, but I couldn’t see the driver well enough to tell anything.
Then, just after midnight, there was a car, heading out. Tyler, who was good at this stuff, slowed it down right at the right time, so we could see it. One car, I guess you’d call it a smallish SUV, with two blurry faces in the front, bending down just enough.
It was Greene and Wendover, Misters. Just like Mrs. Wendover had said, these two were heading out together just after midnight. Just in case it wasn’t enough proof in seeing their blurry (but, to me, distinct) faces, the license plate said WNDOVR1.
The car disappeared from the camera’s view point heading west on the road.
Corroborating things you already knew was a necessary part of any investigation, I suppose. But it wasn’t much fun. We both watched the car drive by in silence, then Tyler dutifully sent the footage speeding on again. But he had to stop almost immediately. Less than 10 minutes later that night another car had headed out of the lot.
There’s not an enormous nightlife in Whispering Pines. There wasn’t a lot of reason to go heading around in the dark unless you had something very specific in mind.
And whoever this was, they were going out in a dark-colored town car with the license plate WNDOVR2.
“Holy cow,” I said, and Tyler advanced it a few more frames.
I gasped. It was a woman at the wheel. Long hair, a smear of red pixels on the video for lipstick.
“Mrs. Wendover,” I said, and immediately wondered if I was right.
“Maybe not,” Tyler said. “Those could be company cars, I think. Anyone working for Wendover might have the keys for that one.”
That was true. It could be anyone from Wendover’s organization, and he and his wife and the Greene’s were not the only ones from Wendover amusements in town. But I’d bet dollars to donuts (without actually knowing what that means) that it was one of the wives. But who? Why? Going where?
The car turned right, heading east to northeast as the road headed, away from the ghost town, the job site. Out toward the rest of town, and eventually the highway.
What in the world could it mean? Somebody heading that way…
Someone going out of town late at night to do what? If it was innocent they’d want to know why I was asking, and I didn’t have a good reason. If it wasn’t innocent…
That cufflink. The baby saying again and again, ‘car car car.’
“Holy crap on a candlestick,” I said, and turned to go. Running right into the door in the process.
I didn’t completely fall flat on my back, just stumbled. Tyler was there in an instant (though he was perhaps too big to actually get up in an instant - either way, he was there quickly and a total sweetheart helping me to a chair.)
The words Rip Chiaki said to me in the interrogation room came back like he was whispering them in my ear: “Nice cop give me a ride. Nice lady drive me back. Rip’s been in cars a lot lately.”
“What is it? What’d you see?”
“I gotta go. I saw… She went and got him. Oh, heck, she just went and got him.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Tyler said, holding upwards of two fingers swaying back and forth in front of my face.
“Tyler, do you have any footage of the other part of the parking lot?”
He shook his head, looking sad he couldn’t pull more footage right out of a hat, along with a rabbit and my undying fealty.
“Okay, no problem. I gotta figure this out. Do investigating. We cracked it, Tyler!” I said, hugging him.
He hugged back, a little harder than necessary, maybe. But I didn’t complain.
“What did we crack?”
“Nothing yet, but this is the first step toward the final step and… I’ll let you know,” I said, then I was out of there like a shot, on the phone to Blake.
“One of them went and got Rip Chiaki. It was a set up right from the beginning! You gotta find him and talk to him. He’ll talk if he thinks everyone’s not against him!” I shouted the second he picked up the phone.
“Kate, listen. Sit down and listen.”
&n
bsp; Blake’s voice sent chilly little fingers over the line, up and down my spine.
“We’ve found Rip at the bottom of a ravine. He’s dead, Kate.”
Chapter 19
I was too tired to cry, so at least I didn’t get any of that empty stranger sympathy. The kind where people pass by, say, “there, there” and try and make you feel better when nothing will make you feel better. I just sat in the bar with a glass of whiskey in front of me that I could barely sip. I’m not a whiskey drinker, or any kind of hard liquor drinker.
But somebody knocks the world out from under you, darn it, you’re supposed to drink whiskey.
Mine sat amber and kind of beautiful in front of me in a glass that seemed enormous for just a shot. I watched as a little bit of oil from something (maybe the glass wasn’t as clean as it should be?) floated on top of the liquor, and swirled around, and dissolved. With it went all my hopes of getting through this day having made a bit of positive difference.
I’m not mopey by nature, and I knew I’d done some good things… in a universal sense. I’d found that cufflink. I had in my head a scenario (with a lot of empty variables, I’ll admit, but a scenario none the less) that explained a lot of facts and pointed, inexorably, in a lot of places that had nothing to do with Rip Chiaki.
Would anybody care? Blake as much as told me finding the body at the bottom of one of the lower ravines in Crestgold was as good as finding a blue ribbon with the words “case closed” embroidered on it. Rip was a good suspect for the crime, so he must have done the crime. Occam’s Blinders - when you have a simple idea, and evidence that doesn’t fit it doesn’t get seen.
And, though honestly this wasn’t forefront on my mind, that case closed was also the close on any hope I had of getting work with the Landowner. The last two interviews I’d done had proved to me that, without some help I was not going to get to the bottom of this. And no one would help me just make trouble.