The Night Detectives

by Jon Talton

  I remembered a case in Scottsdale years ago, where a man cut the throats of his family, shot them, set the house on fire, and blew it up. They never caught him.

  Detective Sanchez also didn’t know that our names had been written in blood on the apartment wall. Tim Lewis didn’t do that in the seconds before his carotid arteries bled out. Then there was yesterday’s phone call, Mister UNKNOWN saying he had detonated the Claymore and with his aerial theater implying he either had the baby or had murdered it.

  “Tim was genuinely torn apart when I told him Grace was dead,” I said. “And remember, the pimp was beating him up when I got there. And if Tim was Grace’s killer, who took the baby?”

  She sighed. “I wish I could keep things simple. Occam’s Razor, right? My ass is on the line for this now, and there’s a hundred local, state, and federal investigators living in my shit because of that explosion and kidnapping.”

  I appreciated a woman who could quote the classics, but this was one instance where the least complex hypothesis wouldn’t do.

  “The pimp is Keavon William Briscoe,” she said, spelling the first name. “He’s middling, not a big player. This is a guy who provides prostitutes for sailors and Marines on leave and runs streetwalkers, not escorts for big-time executives and legislators.”

  “He claimed Grace worked for him.”

  “Maybe she did. It wouldn’t be the first time a coed made some money on the side. The reason I don’t like Briscoe for this is that he was in jail on the night of April twenty-second, a parole violation. He had a baggie of pot in the car. He’ll probably go back to prison but it gives him an alibi for the one-eighty-seven.” The homicide.

  “How did he find where she lived?”

  “That’s the thing,” she said. “He was cruising O.B. on April twenty-first and said he saw her, followed her home, and was driving around the block for a parking space when a marked unit stopped him and arrested him. His sister didn’t bail him out for several days.”

  “Did you execute a search warrant?”

  “Don’t piss me off, Mapstone.” The dark eyes deepened. “I usually don’t fuck up cases. Yes, we gave his place a total colonoscopy and didn’t even find a cheap gun, much less explosives. That brings me back to Zisman. If Zisman found out that Grace was tricking on the side, he would have even more motive to kill her. Maybe it’s his baby. Maybe he has access to military explosives.”

  I nodded, but I had seen this so many times: a detective latches onto a theory and does whatever it takes to make it stick and clear the case. Back when I untangled cold cases for the Sheriff’s Office, this was often the original sin in what turned out to be an unsolved case, or worse, one that sent an innocent person to prison.

  I also appreciated the heat she was feeling from the brass.

  Sanchez didn’t know the full extent of Grace’s entrepreneurship. It sounded as if she was unsure if she had even been a real prostitute or only a wild child.

  “What about her friend, Addison?”

  “Addison Conway,” Sanchez said. “Jones talked to her. She went back home to Oklahoma at the end of the semester. Grace hadn’t made a call to her since March.”

  “So did Zisman and Grace have contact the day of her death?”

  She sighed. “It’s not in the LUDs. I went back through two years of records and didn’t find his number. Grace called her mother on the twenty-first. She received a call from the human resources department at Qualcomm that same day. She called your office on the twenty-second. That’s the only call she made on the day she died. The other thing is, the semen inside her doesn’t match Tim’s DNA. In fact, it shows evidence that she had sex with three different men, but none of them her husband.”

  The information exchange was definitely working in my favor. I was processing it, thinking out loud. “Grace had gone to a lot of trouble to drop out and get away from guys like Larry Zisman…”

  A big smile played across her face. “Until she needed him. Come on, Mapstone, don’t be naïve. Babies are expensive and there’s college coming right up on a parent. You probably have kids, so you understand. She hadn’t even started her job at Qualcomm. Her bank account was drawn way down, only six hundred dollars.”

  I wondered if they had checked all her bank accounts, but said nothing.

  Sanchez continued: “What if she showed up at Zisman’s condo unannounced and wanted money? Former pro football player—she’s got to figure he’s loaded. Pay up or I’ll tell your wife. Better than that, pay up or I’ll tell your wife I had your baby. Zisman loses it and tosses her off the balcony, goes to his boat, and has his friends cover for him.”

  “Wouldn’t Grace have been seen coming into the lobby? Or him going?”

  “The night concierge didn’t come on duty until eleven,” she said. “Nobody was at the front desk for eight hours that day. They’ve been having staffing problems. In San Diego, ‘sunshine dollars’ only go so far.”

  I thought back to our visit to the condo. “But the building has a card-key entrance. Nobody could get in without using the card.”

  “Unless somebody coming in held the door for them. Anyway, after the body hit the concrete, the concierge runs out to the pool area. So if Zisman left, nobody would see him.”

  “Cameras?”

  She shook her head. “The lobby cam was broken all week.”

  It didn’t seem so neat to me. But the former football hero was in her radar lock.

  “Have you interviewed Zisman again?”

  The luminous black hair shook. “He’s not answering his phone. But I’ve got a lot of questions when he resurfaces.”

  I still wondered about the missing hours in Grace’s day. I said, “Why would she leave the apartment without telling Tim?”

  She shrugged. “Men aren’t the only ones who lie about sex.”

  24

  Peralta still wasn’t at the office when I had finished writing up the notes from my meeting with the San Diego detectives, and I was starting to worry, which was silly given Peralta’s ability to protect himself and others.

  My concern was forgotten when I buzzed open the gate for Lindsey. It closed and locked automatically after she pulled in. Lindsey in a miniskirt would chase away every concern, to be shamelessly shallow about it. She also carried lunch and my new iPhone, which FedEx had delivered that morning. After putting down the bag, she gave me a kiss and a hug that seemed almost normal. Her hand went up inside my shirt across my belly and onto my chest.

  “Was this Robin’s?” She touched the cross of Navajo silver.

  I hesitated, then nodded.

  “May I have it?”

  “Of course.” I removed it and slipped the chain over her head. She bent toward me as if receiving some kind of decoration.

  The Order of the Lost Sister.

  I pulled the cross around to fall above her breasts and fluffed out her hair.

  “Thank you.” She was trying not to cry, so she made herself laugh. “This way it won’t tickle me when you’re on top.”

  I tried to hold her, but almost immediately she dropped to her knees and started unzipping my slacks.

  “Lindsey.” I pulled her up and hugged her. “Just be with me.”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was one notch above a whisper but I heard the sardonic tremolo. She was barely with me. Lindsey’s body was in my arms but Lindsey was somewhere else. This appearance was conditional. She wasn’t wearing her wedding band. It wasn’t her fault. All she had of her child was a tattoo.

  A few days ago I had nearly died, despite the claim by UNKNOWN that he waited before detonating the mine. I remembered the chunk of wall torpedoing into the pool inches from my head. I was living on bonus time but did she care? She had said that she had messed up, but maybe that meant getting fired, not leaving me. Lindsey, just be with me. What a damned fool I was.

  I pushe
d her over to the desk, kissing her, caressing the soft skin beneath the hem of her shirt. After enough kissing to feel her body relax and even wilt, I lifted her onto the desktop, removed her sandals, and slid off her panties. Sitting in the chair, I started sucking her toes and licking her perfect ankles, slowly working my way north with my mouth and tongue. The fabric of her miniskirt tickled the top of my nose. She didn’t resist. I held my arms behind her so she could lean back against my hands. She clutched my head with her hands, bent her knees, and rested her warm feet atop my shoulders.

  Circles and slides and figure eights. Cheerleader legs. I played her, made it go on a long time, loving being so connected to everything she was feeling, loving giving her pleasure. I even knew when she was ready to intertwine her hands in mine, gripping me for the grand last movement.

  Afterward, she slid into my lap and this time didn’t resist being held.

  “I love you.” I couldn’t help myself. It came out involuntarily.

  She didn’t say anything, but nestled closer.

  I was a fool. The Bettye LaVette song played in my head: Everything Is Broken.

  Sex would keep anxiety and time and death at bay. I never have panic attacks if I am getting laid. I had to be satisfied with this eternal truth for the moment. But sex with Lindsey made me lose focus, made me forget, made me fall in love with her again, ensured that I might withdraw my emotional siege machines.

  Steps on broken pavement.

  The sound was so soft I wasn’t sure I had even heard it over the periodic whoosh of cars on Grand. Lindsey noticed my expression and I held up a hand. Someone was walking across the lot, very slowly. It couldn’t be Peralta, whose entrance was announced with the alert of the gate opening, followed by roaring engine and bumping suspension. My blood stopped pumping for a couple of seconds. Someone had jumped the fence, no easy maneuver. It could be anybody. The office door was unlocked.

  Mail, she mouthed?

  I shook my head. The mail lady came later in the afternoon and the gate was locked.

  “Get under the desk.”

  She didn’t question me and scrambled into the cave where my legs would normally go. I pulled out the Python, dropped to my knees, and stayed close.

  “Are you armed?” I whispered.

  She shook her head.

  I slipped the Airlite from my pocket and handed it to her.

  The only fancy furniture in our office was our chairs and the leather sofa. Otherwise, most of the rest was second-hand, including the two heavy Steelcase desks that looked as if they had once been part of a 1960 secretarial pool. You could fire a rocket-propelled grenade at them and barely make a dent.

  I waited for the door to open. Maybe the gate had somehow jammed open, an innocuous malfunction, and the footsteps belonged to a new client, a traveling salesman, or a Jehovah’s Witness who would knock and say, “Hello, is anyone here?”

  The room was silent.

  I didn’t dare move to catch a glimpse. The desk sat so close to the ground, I was confident that if someone did come in he couldn’t see us. That would change if he walked behind Peralta’s desk, or toward the Danger Room. By then, I would have him in my gun sights, unless he was prepared.

  If I get hit, come out blazing, I telepathed to the frightened blue eyes watching me.

  The floor was old and creaked when you walked on it. The hinges squeaked when the door opened. But nobody tried to enter. The sound of footsteps came again, this time from the carport. Whoever had come into the lot was still out there. The palm of my hand was sweating into the custom combat grips of the Python.

  Then, nothing.

  I had to let a good five minutes pass before I dared slither out on the far side of the desk, ready for action. But no one was there. Waiting was the safe way. But it also ensured that I couldn’t see if our visitor had a vehicle. For that matter, I also couldn’t get a license tag number. We waited. Finally, I stood and locked the door. Peering out the blinds, I could see the gate was indeed shut.

  25

  Not long afterwards, Peralta arrived, sweeping into the room like a parade.

  “Lindsey.”

  “Sheriff.”

  She was sitting on my desk. I stopped stroking her knees, said nothing, and resolved to avoid his glance.

  “Lindsey!” Sharon’s voice. I looked up, and she walked in carrying a bag of hot dogs from Johnnie’s on Thomas. This was fun food.

  As Lindsey and Sharon embraced, Peralta’s eyes found mine, and he knew what we had been doing, and his eyes actually twinkled like a tough Saint Nick of nooners. I felt my face flushing.

  “We’re all here together, like it should be,” Peralta announced like the paterfamilias. As if anything were settled. “So let’s eat and get to work!”

  Lindsey had fixed us healthy salads, to which I added a Chicago dog from Johnnie’s.

  “He’s too gaunt,” Sharon whispered to Lindsey.

  I told Peralta about the visit from the San Diego cops and the mystery guest who had been in the parking lot but never came in. His forehead tightened as he listened, but he only dived into lunch.

  Peralta, with his mouth full: “Sharon talked to Tim Lewis’ parents,” which I translated from shawob awked a wimoois barents. It had taken many years of listening to Peralta over breakfasts at Susan’s Diner and lunches at Durant’s to master this particular dialect.

  I said, “They talked to you?”

  “I used my winning people skills,” she said, pulling a chair closer to his desk as she ate her salad like a lady. “Empathy, trust, respect…”

  “She flashed her credentials,” Peralta said, amazingly pausing in his eating. “Show them.”

  She held a wallet identifying her as a police psychologist for the San Francisco Police Department.

  “After being married to him for thirty years, who could be more qualified?” She winked at him.

  “Plus, Tim’s mother had all of Sharon’s books,” he said.

  “As I was saying…” Sharon reclaimed the floor, and Peralta, uncharacteristically, shut up. “The mother’s name is Vicki, father named Mike. They were both there, a nice couple, and were very generous with their time considering all they’ve been through. They’re devastated by Tim’s death and sick about their grandson. The police have tapped their phones, but they haven’t heard anything, much less a ransom demand. They don’t understand why anyone would have killed Tim or Grace.”

  I actually swallowed my food before speaking. “So they knew Grace?”

  Sharon nodded. “They met her when she and Tim first started dating. After they got together again, they saw her more than a dozen times, including at their wedding, which was held in Riverside, and when she gave birth. They loved her. That was the word each one used.”

  I listened to Sharon and was so glad to see her. She was a couple of inches shorter than Lindsey’s five-seven, but was still in great shape with the black hair and angelic face off a tapestry in a Mexican church. In a way words couldn’t describe, she centered our world. I had known her when she was a young, uncertain mother, then as she put herself through college and graduate school, not always with Peralta’s emotional support. This had been one of the old battlegrounds between Peralta and me. Then she had hit it big and finally she had divorced him. But apparently “finally” had a second act.

  She said what we had heard before: Grace was stable, not suicidal, and had no enemies. Tim’s childhood sounded suburban normal, the kind that produced golf pros or lone mass shooters. And Grace had done a very good job of keeping people from knowing how she had made money working through college.

  “They didn’t have a clue,” Sharon said. “But the world of high-end call girls can be very different from the sexual exploitation you find with streetwalkers or immigrants from Eastern Europe who thought they were getting a trip to America for a job in a factory and it tur
ns out to be a very different kind of assembly line. What Grace was doing was even more specialized, working on her own. Most work for agencies. But powerful men will pay very well for the services.”

  “I bet.” Peralta licked his fingers. Sharon shot him a civilizing glance and he stopped, using his napkins instead.

  “These men pay for the sexual skills, no question. The more versatile, the better. They think they have a woman in her sexual prime who really wants to have sex and enjoys it. Many of them are narcissists who want a beautiful young woman on their arms. It’s a prestige thing. If he’s an executive, it’s gotten too risky to hit on subordinates. So a discreet hooker is the thing.”

  Lindsey said, “Is it only about the prestige and the sex?”

  Sharon shook her head. “Many of the johns also want an emotional connection that they feel they aren’t getting from their wives. If Grace was all these things, plus polished, cheerful, intelligent, sophisticated, and romantic, then she could get top dollar. In San Francisco, I met call girls who were getting more than five thousand an hour.”

  “An hour?” Peralta raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes.”

  “Considering she was their daughter-in-law,” I said, “it’s better that they didn’t know her past.”

  I certainly didn’t know Lindsey’s recent past.

  Sharon said. “They liked being a family to her. It sounds as if Grace’s mother was totally self-absorbed and her father was even worse. Tim’s parents went to her graduation last year. Neither of Grace’s parents did. Her father was at a golf tournament with his buddy, some washed up pro football player.”

  I stopped in mid-bite and pushed the hot dog away.

  “Larry Zisman?” I asked.