Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 12

by Stalker

  She started wiping the counter with the dishtowel, but it was sodden by now, leaving streaks across the Formica. She draped the cloth over the faucet, and released a couple of sheets of paper towels from the dowel. Thinking as she wiped, she concluded most stationhouses were quiet over the weekends. Detectives tried to work a schedule of weekdays, nine to five. Not that they weren’t available, but it was an on-call system, and if the case could wait until Monday, it did.

  Cindy threw away the wet paper towels and went to the fridge. Pulling out a cluster of grapes, she popped one into her mouth, the sweet, fleshy explosion drowning out a sour taste that had previously languished. She sank into her couch, put up her feet, and thought as she ate.

  Hollywood had to have some rudimentary file system on its cops. After all, there were attendance records, requests for vacation days, accounting of sick days, and leaves of absence. Roll call was usually done by hand by the watch commander, but Cindy figured that the handwritten information probably got logged into a computer by a civilian, someone who was now home watching the game or planting flowers or out for the day. Perhaps she’d have some luck gaining access to the stationhouse’s local computer software. Certainly she’d have an easier time getting in the building.

  But if the stationhouse were less populated, would her presence there attract more or less attention?

  Finishing the grapes, she held the empty branches and turned them over in her hands. The fruit was a meshwork, a system. Just like everything in life, one had to know how to work the system. If someone asked, she could always say she was catching up on report writing, or helping out Tropper because he had been swamped with paperwork. People knew she’d been doing that, so no one would doubt her in that regard.

  The downside was that it would take time to break any kind of software code. And there was the possibility that she couldn’t break it at all. And if she did break it, what was she looking for? Still, she got off the couch and picked up her bag. It was better to be doing something than to wonder if you should be doing something.

  She unlocked the door, stepped outside her apartment, and then bolted the door shut. She looked around, her eyes scanning the walkways, the stairs, the street, the rooftops…all that was about her.

  By now, vigilance had become habit.

  First, she changed into her uniform because she thought she’d fit in better. Then, she went to the report room and pretended to be tidying up the loose ends of her paperwork. She was lucky. The stationhouse was quiet, and those that were there didn’t seem interested in a rookie typing up forms. Beyond a few passing glances, she moved about either unnoticed or disregarded.

  When the timing seemed right, she got up and moved down the hallway to where the stationhouse’s records were likely to be kept. Getting into the cubicle turned out to be a snap. The lock was minimal, and she penetrated it with a simple credit card. Why bother with a dead bolt because who would steal stuff from a police station? Except that stuff did have a way of disappearing: pencils, pens, paper, pads, envelopes, folders, Post-its. Cindy figured it was like people in a hotel room, taking stationery not because they needed it, but because it was there.

  Breaking into the computer was as complicated as turning on the switch. Within seconds, she faced around two dozen window options. She checked them out, one by one, until she came to a sheet program that listed the daily assignments—rotations, car assignments, street assignments, court dates, days off, days on, who patrolled with whom, which detectives were assigned to what details. The schedules were filed by date; the cops were filed alphabetically. It wasn’t hard to find out Bederman’s daily assignments over the past few years, but it would be time-consuming.

  She did have the time, but what was the point? Finding out Rick’s attendance record told her nothing about the man. But it was better than pacing the floors of her tiny apartment, jumping up at nonexistent sounds, peeking through the curtains every five minutes, and checking the locks, doorjambs, and windowsills for pry marks, pick marks, or other scratches.

  Her favorite computer key turned out to be the Backward one. Going back, date by date, month by month. It was boring, it was stupid, and it accomplished nothing. Rick was there at roll call by six-thirty, he logged out by three-thirty. Six days on, three days off. Sometimes he took longer shifts to get more days off in a row.

  Two months into the past, then three months, then six months. The flesh beneath her eyes began to twitch as she scaled through the massive piles of small print. There was nothing subjective on these charts, no comments good or bad about any individual. Just record keeping.

  Eight months, nine months, eleven months…right around the time Cindy became a part of Hollywood. Prior to her arrival, Graham Beaudry’s assignments had him riding solo. A few flips back in time, then, to Cindy’s amazement, she found out that Graham had been partnered with another woman named Nicole Martin. As she looked backward in the files, she discovered that Graham had worked with her for over a year.

  That was odd. Everyone talked about Graham and Rick being former partners, but no one had mentioned Nicole Martin to Cindy. Not even Graham had spoken about her. Cindy followed Martin’s path for a while. Further hunting showed that Nicole had been transferred to Pacific—specifically into Detectives, Juvenile Detail. To verify, she called up Pacific and asked for Detective Martin’s voice mail. When the machine kicked in, she hung up.

  Okay. Graham’s last partner got the gold. Maybe that’s why Graham never mentioned her, too embarrassed because Martin had gone on to bigger things. Still, even Hayley never mentioned her. Maybe Hayley was embarrassed as well, because Martin went gold and she was still pounding the streets.

  It was all very odd. Or, rather, it could be that Cindy didn’t understand the organization. There were so many unwritten rules and laws and the only way to learn about them was by breaking them unwittingly.

  It made for very nervous rookies.

  Before Nicole, Graham had been with Bederman.

  So what was Bederman’s history after he and Graham had split? Going into this thing, Cindy had assumed that Bederman had immediately hooked up with his current partner, Sean Amory. But looking over the roll call sheets, she was reminded once again why she never went to Vegas. Her assumptions were always wrong.

  Not only had Bederman not been partnered with Sean, but also he had not been partnered with anyone. Plus, Bederman had transferred to the Evening Watch. No, not the Evening Watch—the Night Watch. Wee hours in the morning. The least favorite shift of most officers because the calls were usually serious ones. Shunned by those who would prefer normal working hours unless you just happened to be hooked on vices.

  Which of course wasn’t fair at all. Plenty of decent officers worked the watch. Some of them just liked being free during the daylight hours, some were single mothers and fathers who liked the hours because it allowed them time with the kids—breakfast before they went to school, then dinner before they went off to work, and the kids went to bed.

  But being on the night shift also meant getting away with the hanky-panky and not having to explain anything to the wife. Being on the night shift meant easier access to the dark side—literally and figuratively. Because there was that element, those cops who thrived on thrill, who got their kicks out of skirting the boundaries, hanging around the sleaze—the hookers, the pimps, the pushers, the punks—thinking that they’d never be affected, that they’d never succumb. But they always did. Many past news items were testaments to cops who had fallen from grace.

  But Cindy had no indication that Rick had been one of those. He could have had a very legitimate reason for wanting the night shift. She knew he had young children. Maybe his wife had to work days, so Bederman worked nights to be with the kids. He didn’t impress her as being domestic. But then again, didn’t he say something about leaving early to be home with his wife? So maybe she had him all wrong. Maybe he was a straight shooter.

  Her logic was objective, but her gut feeling was skeptical.
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  Rick had spent about two years on the dark side. And those same two years just happened to be the same two years of Armand Crayton’s greatest financial success. It was during those specific two years that Crayton was throwing parties, buying Rolls-Royces, making plans, and dealing with Dexter Bartholomew.

  Coincidence?

  Again, Cindy scrolled through the assignment charts—backward, then forward, then backward again, charting the Beaudry/Bederman progression. A half hour later, she felt she had it down, surprised by the results.

  Beaudry and Bederman had been partners for nearly ten years. They had started right around the time Oliver had remembered Bederman coming into Hollywood. Right around the time that Oliver had left and gone to Devonshire.

  Partners for ten years.

  If Bederman had been leery of Beaudry’s physical ability to catch criminals, he certainly took his time doing something about it.

  Scott was right on. Something wasn’t making sense.

  Okay, Cindy told herself. They had been partners for ten years. Then what? Then they split up, Beaudry riding with Nicole Martin, and Bederman working nights by himself.

  Then Martin was promoted to Detective, and Beaudry rode solo for six months. Back at the ranch, around the same time, Bederman switched to the day shift once again, where he rode solo for three months. Finally, his assignment sheet showed him with current partner Sean Amory.

  Amazing what you can find out by perusing simple assignment records!

  Doing the math, Cindy noted the three-month period where both Bederman and Beaudry were on the day shift together, but riding solo. Which meant that if they had wanted to partner together, they could have.

  Obviously, they purposely chose not to do it.

  Why?

  Who didn’t want whom? Or was it mutual?

  Or was she just doing mental pyrotechnics to make sense out of her own disorganized life?

  And what, if anything, did it have to do with Crayton?

  She logged off the computer, took her handwritten material, and stuffed it into her bag. She looked around, then sneaked out of the office, down to her locker to change, then out to the parking lot. As soon as she hit the outside air, she exhaled deeply. She hadn’t noticed how tense she had been. It felt good to get out of there.

  Looking around, she opened her car door and slipped behind the wheel, locking her Saturn before she started the motor. Her mind had turned to errant cops, thinking about the most recent scandals that had been plaguing the LAPD. How could she not think about them? It was an old story: cops being corrupted by money. She couldn’t help but wonder whether or not Bederman had been living the fast life for those two years he had worked the night shift during the peak period of Armand’s glory. She tried to recall hers and Armand’s conversations, all his dreams and his schemes. Mostly, she’d listened with half an ear because she’d thought Armand a big scamster. That he was trying to get money from her…trying to get into her pants.

  Since he wasn’t successful at any of those endeavors, Cindy wondered what he got out of their casual relationship. Maybe it was just an ear. Still, he seemed to listen intently when she talked about the academy and her dreams of being a cop.

  Could Armand have possibly viewed her as an “in” on the force? Did he think that she was corruptible? Was he throwing out lures to see what would bite? And wasn’t that how it worked for Lark Crayton as well? Throwing out ideas to Stacy Mills to see what would catch?

  If Armand were going to catch a big fish, he’d have to use bigger bait than just promises. Cindy thought about how everyone had been concentrating on Crayton’s carjacking. Maybe they should have been concentrating on what led up to the jacking, namely what Armand did for a living.

  What did Cindy’s father say Crayton had been involved with? Something about land swapping down near Palm Springs. What town was it? Something with flowers in it…a foreign name that didn’t describe the place at all. Something like Las Flores, only it was in French. Les Fleurs? Belle Fleur?

  That was it. Belfleur. One word. They couldn’t even get the French right.

  She started the car’s motor, but didn’t head home.

  To her shock, she found herself going southeast until she hit Arlington. Then, as if hit by forces beyond her control, she was going east on the 10 freeway.

  But the forces weren’t beyond her control. She knew what she was doing. She was taking a ride out to Belfleur in the hopes that maybe some local could give her a hint as to what went wrong with Armand Crayton’s schemes.

  It was a long shot, but hell, maybe just this once, her bet would pay off.

  31

  It was Sunday, with temperatures hovering in the seventies, so it should have been a beautiful afternoon. But the morning coastal fog had refused to burn off, turning the heavens an insipid milky blue, as if the ether was suffering from anoxia. The travel was ugly as exhaust from the cars, trucks, and buses enveloped the buildings, making everything appear washed out. But traffic was light, and that was a joy. Even Cindy’s worn Saturn seemed to be chugging along at a decent speed, enjoying a rare moment devoid of snarled lanes and sig-alerts.

  The drive east took her past downtown L.A., past towering commercial buildings, business hotels, the spanking new sports arena, and convention centers. Beyond them stood the older mercantile buildings of East L.A. and the City of Commerce—miles upon miles of tired structures. A few were being renovated, but too many had been left to rot. As she continued east, she eventually hit the refineries, the factories belching out crud through smokestacks, reminiscent of the old-fashioned locomotives, except that the illusion carried none of the romance. There were also dozens of car dealerships, each announcing a sale of the century, using bloated balloon cartoon figures—obese Tweety birds and Sylvesters wafting in the light breeze, frozen smiles on their faces. This was the SoCal that everyone would just as soon forget.

  She cranked up Sheryl Crow on her CD player, the singer’s low-key but bruised voice chanting the vagaries of life. She advanced the disc to selection number eight, never tiring of the line about being a stranger in one’s own life—the ultimate statement of alienation. Precisely why it was good for her to be doing things, be they as mundane as looking up attendance records or driving one hundred miles with no concrete goal in mind. Action was always better than rumination.

  As she moved out of the big city and its woes, she drove by dozens of bedroom communities that lined the freeway. The developments looked identical—two-story town houses with peaked, tarpaper roofs and white siding. In an inspirational quirk, a few developments dared to have blue siding. Older cars were parked in driveways, lawns were studded with bikes and balls. An occasional tree swayed in the breeze produced by a steady stream of high-speed cars. One home right after the other. Servicing the local residents were monstrous malls—marooned islands in asphalt seas.

  Not the scenic route, but Cindy didn’t mind. It was wonderful to be out of the city, away from the malevolent forces that had been plaguing her. Not that she was carefree. Constant checks in her side and rearview mirrors reminded her that those naïve days were gone. To draw out possible tails, she sped up, she slowed down. She changed lanes frequently. She felt around in her purse for her gun, she made sure her cell phone was on. She switched radio stations constantly to prevent her mind from going into freeway hypnosis. She opened the window, she closed the window. She turned up the volume of her stereo. Anything to keep her active and alert. Still, there was residual fear, that nagging sensation that she was missing something.

  As she approached hour number two on the road, she once again looked into her rearview mirror. Out of all the cars she had started with, there remained a blue Lexus driven by a lone white male, a white Ford Explorer occupied by two twenty-something women, an army green Range Rover occupied by two forty-something women, and a silver Volvo that housed a family. The vehicles were traveling at a steady rate, but they had kept at a sizable distance behind her. Plus, they didn’t switch l
anes when the Saturn did. Cindy figured she was safe for the moment.

  Her stomach rumbling, she reached into her purse and brought out an apple. Thirty minutes later, she ate some grapes.

  The terrain had turned from cityscape to landscape. A panorama of virginal scrubland as she headed east into the inland valley, into the edges of the Mojave Desert. Plains of sand-washed acreage pushed against granite, snow-tipped mountains. There was no lead-up to this change in geography; the ground was flat and arid until it abruptly hit the foothills of piled rock. But the air had turned crystalline. No industry around to pollute it, no shoreline fog to obscure it.

  Cindy was surprised to see actual exit signs for such a small community like Belfleur, one of them boasting the town to be the antiques capital of the Inland Empire. From the edge of the freeway, Cindy actually spotted several antiques stores. As soon as she could get over to the right-hand lane and exit, she did. She was relieved that none of the four cars behind her had followed her lead. A moment later, she was riding down Main Street—a four-lane band of dust-coated asphalt that paralleled the freeway. Since there didn’t seem to be any centralization of business, she parked when the mood hit. She pulled up curbside, got out, and peered over the monotonous topography—level and tan.

  The area was a pinch shy of ghost-town status. There were no other pedestrians, and few signs of life. Belfleur was small, and while it made a pretense at being quaint, it couldn’t pull it off. The compact stores were erected slapdash from grainy stucco, streaked gray from either rain or plumbing problems. On one side of the street, Cindy passed a deli, a coffee shop, and a market—all closed. The other side held a secondhand-clothing store—which was also closed—but lining the sidewalk were a hardware store and a liquor store, both of them open. A hundred feet later, there was only open space with a clear view of the mountains. Five more minutes of walking led her to another coffee shop, also open and with people inside. Cindy had a talk with her stomach, and decided that at the moment, she was more curious than hungry. She’d grab some grub on the way back.