by Dianne Emley
In closing statements, Holcomb’s defense presented a different chain of events.
Awakened by noises, Holcomb had slipped into the barn and hid behind the old car. A fully clothed man whom Holcomb had never seen before was leaning over Cookie, tying her wrists behind her back. She was limp on the ground, lying on a patchwork quilt. The Coleman lantern was lit. The man tied her ankles with a cord. His back was to the Model T and to Holcomb.
Cookie awakened then and began hurling insults, though not at Holcomb, at the man, calling him a freak and a psycho. He threw the cord over a rafter, hoisting Cookie up by her ankles. He cut a length of duct tape from a roll and put it over her mouth. He then grabbed her from behind and slit her throat.
Holcomb screamed and jumped up from behind the Model T. The man turned and saw him. He ran, the knife in his hand. The knife was not found.
Holcomb rushed to Cookie, seeking to help her.
She was thrashing wildly. He couldn’t find anything to use to cut her down. Blood flew everywhere, including onto Holcomb. Soon, it was over and Cookie was still. Terrified, Holcomb ran back to his room.
The defense claimed that Betsy Gilroy and Colina Vista P.D. sergeant Ernie Bautista, who was also in the interview room, intimidated Holcomb into signing a confession that they wrote for him. An attorney was not present. Gilroy said that Holcomb didn’t request one.
The Pasadena Star News printed the composite sketch of the man Holcomb said he’d seen fleeing the barn. Holcomb described him as about six feet tall, medium build, twenty to twenty-five years old, with light brown hair. The composite sketch showed an apple-cheeked man with narrow eyes and a thin upper lip. It was a miserable piece of work, minimalist to the point of absurdity, yet Vining saw the essence of T B. Mann.
Was Caspers correct? Was she so obsessed with T B. Mann that she was seeing him everywhere?
She needed more information. She wanted the details that had never made it into the newspapers. She wanted to talk to Betsy Gilroy but not yet. Right now, she would search out Mike Iverson and Ernie Bautista, the Colina Vista P.D. sergeants involved in the case. She had many questions, but one in particular dogged her. Why did Holcomb confess?
THIRTY-EIGHT
COLINA VISTA P.D. SERGEANT MIKE IVERSON WASN’T HARD FOR Vining to track down. The Pasadena P.D. had close ties to the Colina Vista P.D. Vining found a veteran PPD officer who told her that Iverson had retired and was living in Montrose, a small city near Pasadena. She didn’t have the same luck finding Sergeant Ernie Bautista. She’d had to call the CVPD for information about him. She learned he’d also retired but had moved to New Mexico. The staff assistant she spoke with wouldn’t reveal his phone number. Vining would track him down later.
Shortly, she was on the 210 freeway heading west, making the quick trip to Iverson’s house in Montrose. He was home and willing to see her now.
Montrose was another bedroom community of Los Angeles that was desperately trying to hang on to its small-town flavor, fighting off chain restaurants and big-box stores. Vining exited the 210 at Ocean View and headed south. She finally found Florencita Court. She spotted Iverson’s house by the pickup truck parked on the curb in front that had his business name painted on the door: Waterscapes. Custom ponds. Fountains. Water features. The PPD officer had told her that Iverson had started the Waterscapes business after retiring.
The Iversons lived in a well-maintained 1970s ranch-style house on a spacious corner lot surrounded by a white picket fence. At one time, the large front yard had probably been a lush grass lawn. Today the grass was restricted to a small corner and the rest of the ground was planted with drought-resistant native plants in large amoeba-shaped beds. A natural-looking stream flowed beneath a willow tree, burbling around rocks and boulders before spilling into a pond. It was an excellent advertisement for Iverson’s water feature business.
Vining admired the rambling stream as she walked up the flagstone path to the front door. Upon a closer look, she saw that the rocks and boulders were cleverly constructed fakes.
She rang the doorbell and Mike Iverson answered, greeting her with a hearty handshake.
“Detective Vining. Nice to meet you. Come in.”
“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”
“Don’t mention it. Would you like a cup of coffee? I just made some.”
“I would, thank you.”
“Come inside.”
Iverson had lost most of his hair, making his face appear even rounder. His remaining hair was sprinkled with gray and cropped short. He had a broad, rectangular smile that seemed to take up the lower half of his face, and animated blue eyes, the bright whites exuding vigor. He was about five-eight and was trim in clean Dickies dungarees, blue-and-yellow windowpane-print Oxford cloth shirt, and heavy work boots. He radiated good humor.
To Vining, he seemed to be one of those people possessed of preternatural good spirits. She’d come across a few such souls in her life. She wondered how they did it. Everyone had their share of hard knocks in life— some more than others— but certain people seemed to take them in stride and to keep smiling. Vining didn’t consider herself a morose person, although she’d had her moments over the past two years. Still, she was a bit in awe of the happy people. What was their secret? Perhaps it was just a different form of neurosis.
She followed Iverson into the kitchen. The house was neat and well appointed, but neither fancy nor fussy.
He grinned as he poured coffee into mismatched mugs— one from the New York New York hotel in Vegas and the other decorated with an infant’s photo and “I Love Grandpa.”
“How long have you been retired, Mike?”
“About seven years now.”
“Do you ever miss police work?”
“Sure, there are parts about it I miss. Cream or sugar?”
“Black.”
“Me, too. Well, you have a ways to go until you turn in your badge.”
Vining knew that one day she would retire and that also one day she might feel differently about this job she loved, but right now, she couldn’t imagine doing anything other than what she was doing— good crime fighting.
Grinning, he handed her the “I Love Grandpa” mug without thought. “Let’s go out back. I’ll show you my garden. Do you like peaches and plums? I’ll pick you some. My wife used to make jam, but ran out of time this year and the fruit’s falling on the ground.” He grabbed a paper grocery bag and led the way from the kitchen through the dining room and out sliding doors to the patio.
The large lot had an old-fashioned kidney-shaped swimming pool that had been updated with colorful tile and a dark gray lining. It was surrounded by a child-protective fence. There were fruit trees on one side of the long yard: peaches, apricots, plums, and lemons. Tomatoes, summer squash, chilies, cucumbers, and Japanese eggplant grew in raised beds. The rest of the yard was planted with California natives and a small patch of grass.
Vining sipped coffee and followed Iverson as he picked the last fruit of the season and talked about Axel Holcomb.
“I grew up in Colina Vista and knew Axel and his brother from when we were little kids. I was in the same class as his brother, who was on the high school football team with me. Axel was three years younger.” He handed her a ripe, black-skinned plum. “That’s a Santa Rosa. Delicious.”
Vining took the fruit and held it to her nose. “This smells like an actual, bona fide plum. Not like the ones you find in the supermarket.”
“Wait until you have one of these peaches.”
Vining handed the plum to Iverson and said, “Newspaper articles around the time of Cookie’s murder had stories about Axel getting into trouble and the locals being afraid of him.”
Iverson laughed dismissively. “Axel was a child in a big man’s body. He used to get into trouble because he didn’t realize how strong he was. He thought he was one of the kids, but he was a grown man. He had a temper, but only when provoked. Some of the local jerks— teenagers, college kids
— would bait him. Make fun of him. Play mean jokes. Over the years, I pulled Axel off some guy or another on numerous occasions.”
Vining had thought the newspaper stories had been hard on Axel. “There’s a story about Axel as a teenager having almost drowned a girl at a public pool.”
Iverson shook his head. “He didn’t almost drown her. Axel was horsing around with some girls at the pool and he held a girl’s head under water a little bit. Axel’s brother, who was working as a lifeguard, got him to let her go. Axel wasn’t trying to hurt her. He just didn’t know when to stop. The part that no one remembers is that after Axel realized what he’d done, he sobbed like a baby and couldn’t stop apologizing to the girl. She was fine. It was over in a minute.
“Because of things like that, he got an unfair reputation in town. He was a sweet guy at heart. Not a sicko. What was done to Cookie, that was a whole other kind of sick. Hanging her upside down, slitting her throat, and letting her bleed out— that’s evil.”
Vining observed, “It does take a certain kind of bad man to pull that off.”
“Axel wasn’t like that,” Iverson said. “The couple who run the Foothill Museum gave Axel that job as a favor to his family. It worked out great for a couple of years. Axel took care of the place. Opened and closed it. No problems until Cookie decided the barn was a good place to meet her boyfriend.”
Vining said, “When the murder was discovered, Axel was brought in for questioning. He was released for lack of evidence. A week later, Betsy Gilroy hauled him in again. That time, he confessed. What happened?”
Iverson twisted a plump peach so ripe it easily released its grip from the branch. He held the fruit in his palm and studied it, his mind seeming to travel as he gently ran his thumb across the fuzzy skin. He let out a long sigh.
Vining realized that in spite of his cheerful demeanor, the ghosts still haunted. Every cop who’d been around the block a few times had them, the one or two cases that stood out from the thousands he or she’d been involved with, the ones that didn’t sit right and that never would. Justice had not been done. The bad guy had gotten away.
Iverson gently placed the peach inside the bag on top of the others. He looked at Vining. His eyes were still bright blue, but darkness had crept in behind them, a darkness that hadn’t dimmed the hue, but had dimmed his spirit.
“When we first interviewed Axel, the day we found the body, both Betsy and I believed Axel was telling the truth about having seen an unidentified man kill Cookie. Given the evidence, we could paint a picture of Axel having done it, but …” Iverson’s voice trailed off.
Vining said, “So Gilroy agreed that Axel didn’t have it in him to do something like that.”
“She told me so. Killing someone accidentally in a fight, maybe, but not that. Betsy and I agonized over it. Plus, Axel liked Cookie. Everyone liked Cookie. You wanted to wring her neck sometimes, but she was a very engaging, lovable girl.” He made a quick movement with his hand and modified his comment. “Woman.”
“Did anyone other than Axel know that Cookie met her boyfriend in that barn?”
“It came out later that one of the younger officers who used to go out drinking with Cookie knew. He got into trouble for not having said anything.”
“I’ve heard Cookie described as headstrong,” Vining said. “Gilroy mentored her to help straighten her out. She secretly met her boyfriend in that barn, but she must have done things that people knew about.”
Iverson smirked. “Yes, she did. Cookie was a lot of fun and generally was a good cop, but her mouth got her into trouble. She liked to pretend that she was a rebel. She had a couple of adverse comments in her files for conduct unbecoming. Once she was smart-mouthed with a man after she’d pulled him over for rolling through a stop sign and he got testy with her. Another time, she made a crack about another officer in front of a citizen. I’d heard that she’d talked herself out of a DUI in Pasadena once.”
Vining rolled her eyes.
“Cookie probably would have washed out if it hadn’t have been for Betsy. Their relationship went beyond the professional. Betsy said that Cookie reminded her of herself when she was young. I’d heard stories from PPD guys who knew Betsy back in the day about how wild she was. I don’t know what kept Betsy going during those first days after we found Cookie. She was … crushed.”
“Gilroy was the deputy chief then. Didn’t the chief give her any heat for shielding a problematic officer?”
Iverson made a face like the notion was ridiculous. “Watching out for your friends was the status quo under Ben Stevens, who was the chief then. Stevens was an old-school small-town police chief. He fixed parking tickets. Got friends and friends of friends out of scrapes. He was thick with the movers and shakers in town, playing golf, going fishing, and drinking at the country club. Rumors were that they greased his palms. I never saw it. That said, Stevens lived in a very nice house and he and his wife had a brand-new Cadillac every year. One of his buddies owned a Cadillac dealership. Chief Stevens was not into rocking the boat and he didn’t like being bothered with day-to-day police business. He’d been talking about retiring for years. When the then-deputy chief retired before he did, he was annoyed that he had to actually work and recruit someone.
“So in comes Betsy Gilroy, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ambitious. She took over. Chief Stevens couldn’t have been happier. She’d only been on the job a few months when Cookie was murdered.”
“Were you interested in being deputy chief?”
Iverson winced and shrugged at the same time in a gesture that Vining interpreted as a yes.
“I already had a foot out the door,” Iverson said. “I’d already started the water feature business in my spare time.”
Vining nodded as she thought. “So the day Axel confessed, why had Gilroy brought him in for questioning again?”
“I don’t know. I was off that day. She grabbed a sergeant, Ernie Bautista, and picked up Axel. Next thing I hear, Axel’s in jail.”
“How did the confession come about?”
Iverson picked one last peach and moved to the lemon tree. “Only Betsy, Bautista, and Axel Holcomb know what went on in that interview room.”
“Doesn’t the Colina Vista P.D. videotape interviews?”
“Bautista said they couldn’t get the equipment to work.”
“Not even an audio recording?”
“Nope.”
“That’s odd,” Vining said. “Gilroy came up through the ranks of the PPD where making recordings is the norm. Even our patrol officers carry cheap digital audio recorders.”
“All Bautista and Betsy would say is that they’d put Axel through a tough interrogation and finally broke him down. They said that the D.A. forbid them to discuss it.”
“Did Axel ask for an attorney?”
“Apparently not.”
Vining frowned as she followed him into the vegetable garden. “What’s Bautista’s history?”
“He was a twenty-five-year veteran on the force. One of Chief Stevens’s hires. He retired shortly after Axel was convicted.”
“What about Axel’s family? Didn’t they protest?”
“His mother did, but she didn’t have the money to hire a big-gun defense attorney.”
“What about his brother, your old football teammate?”
“He’d been dead for a couple of years. He was an insurance salesman. Had a little agency in town. Had a cerebral aneurysm at his desk.”
“The community?”
“Everyone was glad to have someone in jail for the murder. The city council and the mayor were delighted to put it behind them and to let Colina Vista slip into obscurity again. Few people were sorry to see Axel gone. Like I said, people were leery of him. After Betsy and the chief paraded Axel as their man, the citizens lined up behind them.”
“Chief Stevens was on board?”
“Almost everyone was on board. Let’s be honest. The evidence put Axel at the scene. The circumstances of the confession w
eren’t ideal, but it had been witnessed by two veteran police officers who had spotless records. Chief Stevens could care less about a couple of folks’ misgivings. He was happy to have the pressure off. Closing that case didn’t hurt Betsy any. It made her career. When the chief retired, Betsy was a shoo-in for his job.”
“You told me earlier that you didn’t think Axel was capable of something so evil. Do you still feel that way?”
“Axel was found guilty.”
“But you have doubts.”
He straightened, holding three zucchinis. He placed them inside the paper bag that he’d set on the ground. “Axel said something about that night that I can’t get out of my mind. You won’t read it in any news report, because Betsy and I never spoke of it publicly, and for some reason the defense didn’t bring it up during the trial. Axel told us that when Cookie was hanging by her ankles from the rafters, before the killer slit her throat, he’d unzipped his pants and started masturbating. Axel said that as the guy masturbated, he kept saying, ‘Do you see this, Officer Silva? Look at this.’”
A chill went down Vining’s spine. She flashed back to the kitchen in the house at 835 El Alisal Road. T. B. Mann had peeled a tiny magnet from a set of poetry magnets on the refrigerator, had placed it in his palm, and held it out for her. “Officer Vining, I want you to see this. Do you see this?” Soon after, he’d grabbed the knife from a set in a wood block on the kitchen island and plunged it into her neck, the bullet she fired at him having gone haywire.
Iverson’s story confirmed something about T. B. Mann that she’d suspected. That’s the only way you can get off, isn’t it, asshole?
Iverson gritted his teeth. “Then he went over to Cookie, with his penis still hanging out of his pants. He took a folding knife from his pocket and slit her throat. Apparently, he intended to finish masturbating while watching Cookie die, her blood flying everywhere, probably onto him, too. He didn’t get the chance because Axel said that’s when he screamed and jumped up from his hiding place. The killer went running from the barn with his dick in his hand. Forgive the crass description.