Red Light

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "I saw her yesterday," Zamorra said.

  Merci felt her heart rise, settle. "Yesterday. Where?"

  "Some of the vices were huddling with her at Pedro's. I took it she was a call girl they were going to chum with. I sat at the counter, got a number four and didn't ask."

  "Who in vice?"

  "Kathy Hulet and your tall blond friend."

  "Mike?"

  "Yeah. Mike McNally."

  “I’Il be damned."

  "We all are."

  "It's a matter of timing. Let's go see the neighbor."

  On her way out of number 23 Merci asked Lynda Coiner if they'd found any brass. "None yet," she said. "But if it's here, we will."

  The neighbor was Alexander Coates. He lived downstairs, three units over, in number 2. He wore baggy black nylon pants with elastic at the ankles, a scoop-neck T-shirt and a red silk robe. Athletic shoes, new. Short gray hair in a widow's peak, neat gray beard, wide gray eyes. He asked them to sit. In the fireplace, gas flames huffed over ceramic logs. Wooden letters on the mantle spelled NOEL. Merci smelled a familiar green aroma, masked by a floral spray.

  "I'm devastated by this," he said. "Aubrey was such a sweet girl. So young and good and ... oh, I guess you could say mixed-up."

  "Let's start with what you saw and heard," Merci suggested.

  Coates looked at Zamorra. "Can I get you coffee, cocoa, anything?"

  "No."

  Coates exhaled, looked into the fire, began. He was home alone tonight. Around eight-thirty he heard footsteps on the wooden walkway above. He heard a knock upstairs— Aubrey Whittaker's place, number 23. A moment later he heard the door shut. Nothing of consequence, then, until a little after ten o'clock, when he heard Aubrey Whittaker's door shut again, and footsteps going back down the upper walkway in the direction from which they had come earlier.

  "How could you tell her door from number twenty-four or twenty-two?" asked Merci.

  "From living here eighteen years. I've listened to lots of people come and go. You know."

  Yes, she did know. Because she could imagine Alexander Coates. You've waited for lots of dates, she thought. You've waited and listened to their footsteps and wondered how they'd turn out. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he walks.

  "All right. Next."

  "Next, at approximately ten-fifteen, I heard footsteps coming down the walkway again, in the same direction. I heard them stop at Aubrey's. I heard the door open. Then, immediately after the door opened, or almost immediately, I heard a loud thump, like something heavy hitting the floor. Then the door closed. Not a slam, but... forcefully. Nothing for a minute or two. Then, thumping on the floor again. It was like the first thump, but continuous, like moving furniture or a fight or a struggle of some kind. It lasted for maybe a minute. Then quiet again. Then footsteps going back down the walkway toward the stairs."

  "Did you look?" asked Merci.

  "No. I was in the bath."

  "Did you hear a gunshot, a car backfiring?"

  "Nothing like that."

  "Did you think of calling the police ?" asked Zamorra.

  Coates looked at Zamorra with his wide gray eyes, then back into the fire. "No. None of the noises I heard were alarming. None were loud or seemed to indicate trouble. They were just noises. My policy, Detectives, my personal belief on such matters is that privacy should be honored. Unless disaster is... well, you know, happening right in front of you."

  "But when you got out of the bath, you decided to go to her door?"

  "Correct. When I got there—this would have been around ten forty-five, I saw her door was open."

  Coates sat forward, set his elbows on his knees, rested his head in his hands. "I thought it was blood on the door. The door was open maybe ... six inches. I did not touch it or look past it. I literally raced back to my home and dialed nine-one-one immediately. I didn't know what to do with myself. I went back upstairs and looked at the door again. I said her name, foolishly perhaps. I came back down here. I paced the floor for what seemed like hours. The young officers arrived at exactly ten fifty-six."

  Merci watched Alexander Coates weep into his hands. Experience had taught her to keep a witness talking and thinking instead of crying. Tears cleanse the memory as well as the eyes.

  "You did all right, Mr. Coates."

  "Did I really?"

  "Absolutely. Now, when you went up to number twenty-three the first time, was Aubrey Whittaker's porch light on or off?"

  The sniffling stopped. "On."

  "And the second time?"

  "On as well."

  "Did you hear cars coming or going from the parking lot during this time?"

  "Yes. But there's the Coast Highway traffic, so the sounds get mixed up. I can't really help you there. You learn not to hear cars, after eighteen years on Coast Highway."

  Half an hour later they were almost finished with Alexander Coates. He said that Aubrey Whittaker rarely had visitors that he noticed. He said that he and Aubrey sometimes talked in the laundry room by the office, because neither worked days, so they washed their clothes in the slow hours. She had gorgeous sad eyes and a sharp sense of humor. She never mentioned irate boyfriends, stalking ex-husbands or enemies of any kind. She was not, in his opinion, hard or mean-spirited. However, in his opinion, she was alone and on a journey, searching for something in her life she had not found yet. It was Coates's impression that Aubrey was an escort of some kind. She drove a dark red, late-model Cadillac.

  Merci nodded at this summation, again wondering her way into Alexander Coates. Years ago, a wise old mentor had told her that putting herself in another's shoes would make her a better detective and a better person. She had absolutely no knack for it, and she didn't believe him then. She'd never seen a reason to try to understand people she didn't like in the first place, which was almost everyone. But the old guy, Hess, had been right: In the two years, three months and twenty-two days he'd been dead, Merci had worked hard at this, and she'd learned a few things she might not have learned otherwise.

  Such as, if you spent eighteen years in the same apartment, listening to your neighbors and their lovers come and go, you got good at it.

  "Mr. Coates, those two arrivals you heard upstairs, they were the footsteps of men, correct?"

  "Yes." A confessional glance and nod.

  "The same man, or two different ones?"

  "Oh, different men, certainly. I was going to tell you that if you didn't ask."

  "How sure are you of that?"

  "Well, if you hear two voices, you know there are two people. Same with footsteps."

  "What else about them, by the sound of them?"

  Zamorra aimed a look her way but said nothing.

  Coates settled his bottom into his chair, readying himself for his presentation. Eighteen years of anecdotal data, Merci thought, about to find its way into a thesis.

  "The first? Heavy, but not overweight. Not in a hurry. He was light on his feet, but you can't fool the boards. Pounds are pounds. Young and probably athletic. And familiar. Familiar with the area. He was wearing hard-soled shoes or boots. Not cowboy boots, they have an entirely different sound. I pictured a young businessman coming home from work, happy to be home, eager to see his wife or his lover. When he left he was ... reluctant. He wished he wasn't leaving, but he had to."

  Zamorra was staring at the floor, his pen in his hand.

  Coates looked at Zamorra with concern, made an internal decision, turned his attention back to Merci.

  "The second? A much lighter man. He was young also, light on his feet, quick. Soft shoes. In somewhat of a hurry. I couldn't tell if he was familiar with the area or not. He left much more slowly than he came. He sounded .. . unsteady. Uncertain. I think I remember him pausing, about halfway down. I may have imagined that. I can't swear to it. I pictured him as a young man eager to see someone. Eager to get there, get what he wanted, then eager to leave. You know, an impatient young buck on his way to the next thing. When he paused,
I saw him realizing he'd forgotten something. But he didn't go back."

  Coates sighed and looked into the fire.

  Zamorra abruptly shut off his tape recorder, cast his black eyes on Merci, then the man. "How much pot did you smoke in the bathtub?"

  Merci had smelled it very faintly, too, when she had first sat down. It hadn't seemed relevant, yet.

  Coates's face took on an expression of blank defiance. "One half of one joint."

  "Strong stuff or cheap stuff?" Zamorra asked.

  "Very strong."

  "There're other people to talk to," said Zamorra. He stood and walked out.

  Merci finished her notes. The door slammed.

  "That man is unbelievably angry," said Coates.464

  "Believe it. Thank you."

  Back on the upstairs walkway, Merci stood aside for the coroner's people to wheel Aubrey Whittaker past. She thought that Aubrey Whittaker would most likely have been wheeling around in her red Cadillac if she hadn't answered the door for the wrong guy. She looked out to the sparse 2 a.m. traffic on Coast Highway. Zamorra was already interviewing another neighbor.

  Inside she was greeted by the green eyes and wide smile of Evan O'Brien. The CSI held up a small paper bag. Merci took it and looked in at a cartridge casing that had rolled into the bag's corner.

  "The forty-five caliber Colt," said O'Brien. "Load of choice for many in law enforcement."

  Merci Rayborn looked at the CSI with a hostility that could overtake her in a heartbeat. Jokes about her profession were never funny.

  "Hey, Sergeant, don't rain on me for some of the best physical evidence you can ask for. Lynda found it."

  "Raped?"

  "Apparently not. And no signs of forced entry. Looks like some kind of scuffle or something in the kitchen."

  "How many shots?"

  "Probably just one. There's a hole up in the corner of the slider. Your bullet is out there in the ocean somewhere."

  "Find it."

  "Yes, Sergeant."

  CHAPTER TWO

  Merci met Mike for breakfast at seven in the courthouse cafeteria.

  She'd had three hours of sleep and now seemed to have feathers between her brain and her thoughts. Tim, Jr., had awakened when she went into his room. She had held him until he fell back asleep. He was just a year and a half old now, her little man, her reason for everything.

  Starved as usual in the mornings, she got the big-eater's plate. Mike set down his tray of yogurt, fruit and coffee with envy. He had a file under one arm, and he handed it to Merci.

  "Copy of Whittaker's jacket," he said. "Thought I'd save you some time."

  She scanned the top sheet: one drunk driving conviction two years prior; one arrest for pot, pleaded down to a misdemeanor for her attending a drug diversion program; one pending charge of solicitation for prostitution—to be dropped for her cooperation in a vice-squad investigation of outcall sex-for-hire.

  "We'd finally talked Aubrey Whittaker into helping us go after the outcall service," he said unhappily.

  Mike had a pleasant face and a serious disposition. It seemed to have gotten more serious during the last few months. But he'd been there for her, off and on, for over a year now. She liked him and trusted him, and he let her keep a little distance between them, a little padding. Marriage: no, not now. Cohabitation: no. Innermost feelings and secret confessions: not yet. The future: later. The insulation seemed to be part character. Mike understood this, even if she didn't at times.

  "That was just two days ago," said Mike.

  "Which outcall?"

  "The Epicure."

  "Is that the Italian prince?"

  "He's a YACS thug."

  YACS was a new term in law enforcement, a new threat to the innocent. It stood for Yugoslavian-Albanian-Croatian-Serbian, who---in spite of littering the aisles of history with each others' dead---were lumped together for ethnic reasons. They'd mostly stayed East Coast, but Southern California was getting its share.

  "I thought the YACS were supermarket robbers, truck hijackers,” said Merci.

  "Well, this one peddles flesh and calls himself an Italian prince.

  Mike peeled his banana without desire, bit into it. She thought this was emblematic of him: His whole life was a should instead of a want. That was part of what made him Mike, what made him good. Sometimes, actually noble. Two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle, a boy's smile and blue eyes clear as a desert sky, for whatever that was worth. Worth quite a lot, sometimes. Other times she thought it was vanity.

  "Priors?"

  "Stateside he's got pimping, pandering and some assaults. Woman, of course. Back in YACSville, who knows?"

  "I hope you get him."

  Mike shook his head slowly. "She . . . Aubrey Whittaker, tried stand up for the guy at first. Said if we wanted a bust just bust her. Wouldn't admit that he was taking almost the whole outcall fee, which he was. Wouldn't admit she was encouraged to keep her 'clients' satisfied, whatever that took. Wouldn't admit that she was working for tips, which she was. He's a pig, selling nineteen-year-olds to rich old and high-tech nerds with million-dollar companies and no morals. You do that to a girl, you're stealing her soul. I'll get him. And you'll nail the shit who killed her."

  Mike wore a silver cross around his neck. Merci could see the chain behind the open collar of his blue dress shirt, a glint within a shadow. He'd started wearing it a few months back, when he joined the church. Merci had only gone twice: She would not attend any church where worshipers were forced to stand and greet their neighbors.

  "Good luck on the next-of-kin search," said Mike. "She went to court to change her name, wouldn't tell me what the real one was."

  "Where'd she grow up?"

  "Wouldn't come clean with me. Oregon, Seattle, Texas or Ohio, depending on who she was talking to, Iowa is what she told me."

  "And on to California, to start over."

  "I think it's sad. What do you have?"

  She ran down what she knew. She and Zamorra would do a walkthrough later today, as the early lab work was done. That was when they could really put things together. But for now—one shooter who might have used a silenced weapon; possibly someone Aubrey had known well enough to open her door to; no rape or robbery. Motive—none as yet. Witnesses—one who heard noises. Suspects—none. Unless you wanted to include the johns in her black book, of which there were many.

  Mike listened, his eyes moving left and right. When something was bothering him his eyes got restless and wouldn't land.

  "It doesn't make sense," he said. "A wad of money in her purse, no rape, nothing taken? Why kill her? To hear what a silenced automatic sounds like?"

  "I can't add it up either, Mike."

  "She was ... well, nineteen."

  "I think she knew him. Lynda said the place was crawling with prints, like any domicile. It's just a matter of running some of them through CAL-ID and AFIS, see what pops."

  "Is the black book coded?"

  She shook her head. "Half-assed, maybe. Plenty of initials and names to go on."

  "Some of them get elaborate on their codes. It's more to do with denying the john's individuality than for security."

  "Not her, from the looks of it."

  "Then you might have the key. That and the brass, if you get a suspect and a gun."

  Mike opened the yogurt, looked at the inside of the foil lid. He had long blond eyelashes and when he relaxed and stared at something he looked innocent and bewildered. Sometimes she wanted to hold him close, like she held Tim, Jr. There was something gentle in Mike---she saw it most often when he worked his dogs. Mike ran the bloodhounds for the department. He had told her straight out that he was a dog person, not a people one. He'd been trying hard to change that, for reasons that didn't seem entirely his own.

  "Merci, I'd like to ask Brighton to let me work the murder with

  Brighton was the sheriff; and working the case with her was out of the question.

  "No," she said.

 
"But we've got a big overlap with the outcall op we're running, I can help. Believe me."

  "Then help, Mike, but I don't want anyone assigned to this except me. It's mine and Paul's."

  "Hell's bells, Merci, you could think about it for more than two seconds."

  "Why? I don't have to."

  Through her fatigue and growing anger, Merci saw Mike's face with his disappointment. He looked like Tim, Jr., when he first understood the bottle was empty: crushed in a new way, time after time.

  "Mike, look. I'll share what I have with you. I'll keep you in the loop. But I don't need a vice sergeant in the brew right now. I've got all the help I need."

  " 'A vice sergeant in the brew.' "

  "Right."

  "Is that like a fly in the ointment?"

  "No, Mike. It is not."

  "Are we still on for the movies tonight?"

  "I'm already worn out. Rain check?"

  "It isn't raining."

  He stood and lifted his tray all in one motion. She watched dump the food into the trash can, rack the tray and walk out.

  Melvin Glandis, assistant sheriff, stood over her desk with a stack of tattered files under one arm. He was a big triangle of a man, wide shoulders, narrow hips, short legs, small feet. He was rumored to be an accomplished ballroom dancer. His face was pink and good-humored. It was eight that morning.

  "Here's your Christmas present. Solve it by New Year's Eve, you get a smoked ham."

  "Leave the file. Keep the ham."

  Glandis dropped it to the desktop. "Patti Bailey, shot and dumped, nineteen sixty-nine. Add it to your dead hooker list. Maybe you'll have better luck with it than we did."

  She knew what the file was. At the end of every year, Sheriff Brighton randomly assigned an unsolved murder to each of the investigators in Homicide Detail. It was a way of cleaning house, and every once in a while they got results.