Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 16 - The Murder Book

by The Murder Book(Lit)

  Now Melinda Kantor was regarding him as if he were brain-dead. 'I was just making a suggestion. What'd she do?'

  'Maybe nothing.'

  'Yeah, right,' said the girl. 'Weird.'

  'What is?'

  'Usually they send over narcs who are young and cute.'

  Ellen Sato produced addresses and phone numbers for the six

  absent Melindas, and Milo and Schwinn spent the rest of the day paying house calls.

  The first four girls lived in smallish but tidy single homes on Hollywood's border with the Los Feliz district and were out sick. Melindas Adams, Greenberg, Jordan were in bed with the flu, Melinda Hohlmeister had been felled by an asthma attack. All four mothers were in attendance, all were freaked out by the drop-in, but each allowed the detectives access. The previous generation still respected - or feared - authority.

  Melinda Adams was a tiny, platinum-haired, fourteen-year-old freshman who looked eleven and had a little kid's demeanor to match. Melinda Jordan was a skinny fifteen-year-old brunette with a frighteningly runny nose and vengeful acne. Greenberg was blond and long-haired and somewhat chesty. Both she and her mother had thick, almost impenetrable accents - recent immigrants from Israel. Science and math books were spread over her bed. When the detectives had stepped in, she'd been underlining text in yellow marker, had no idea who Janie Ingalls was. Melinda Hohlmeister was a shy, chubby, stuttering, homely kid with short, corn-colored ringlets, a straight A average, and an audible wheeze. No response to Janie's name from any of them. No answer at Melinda Van Epps's big white contemporary house up in the hills. A woman next door picking flowers volunteered that the family was in Europe, had been gone for two weeks. The father was an executive with Standard Oil, the Van Eppses took all five kids put of school all the time for travel, provided tutors, lovely

  people.

  No reply, either, at Melinda Waters's shabby bungalow on North Gower. Schwinn knocked hard because the bell was taped over and labeled 'Broken.'

  'Okay, leave a note,' he told Milo. 'It'll probably be bullshit, too.' Just as Milo was slipping the please-call-us memo and his card through the mail slot, the door swung open.

  The woman who stood there could have been Bowie Ingalls's spiritual sister. Fortyish, thin but flabby, wearing a faded brown housedress. She had a mustard complexion, wore her peroxided hair pinned back carelessly. Confused blue eyes, no makeup, cracked lips. That furtive look.

  'Mrs Waters?' said Milo.

  'I'm Eileen.' Cigarette voice. 'What is it?'

  Schwinn showed her the badge. 'We'd like to talk to Melinda.'

  Eileen Waters's head retracted, as if he'd slapped her. 'About what?'

  'Her friend, Janie Ingalls.'

  'Oh. Her,' said Waters. 'What'd she do?'

  'Someone killed her,' said Schwinn. 'Did a right sloppy job of it. Where's Melinda?'

  Eileen Waters's parched lips parted, revealing uneven teeth coated with yellow scum. She'd relied upon suspiciousness as a substitute for dignity and now, losing both, she slumped against the doorjamb. 'Oh my God.'

  'Where's Melinda?' demanded Schwinn.

  Waters shook her head, lowered it. 'Oh God, oh God.'

  Schwinn took her arm. His voice remained firm. 'Where's Melinda?'

  More headshakes, and when Eileen Waters spoke again her voice was that of another woman: timid, chastened. Reduced.

  She began crying. Finally stopped. 'Melinda never came home, I haven't seen her since Friday!

  The Waters household was a step up from Bowie Ingalls's flop, furnished with old, ungainly furniture that might've been hand-me-downs from some upright Midwestern homestead. Browning doilies on the arms of overstuffed chairs said someone had once cared. Ashtrays were everywhere, filled with gray dust and butts, and the air felt sooty. No beer empties, but Milo noticed a quarter-full bottle of Dewars on a kitchen counter next to a jam jar packed with something purple. Every drape was drawn, plunging the house into perpetual evening. The sun could be punishing when your body subsisted on ethanol.

  Either Schwinn had developed an instant dislike for Eileen Waters or his bad mood had intensified or he had a genuine reason for riding her hard. He sat her down on a sofa, and began peppering her with questions.

  She did nothing to defend herself other than chain-smoke Parliaments, was easy with the confessions:

  Melinda was wild, had been wild for a long time, had fought off any attempts at discipline. Yes, she used drugs - marijuana, for sure. Eileen had found roaches in her pockets, wasn't sure about anything harder, but wasn't denying the possibility.

  'What about Janie Ingalls?' asked Schwinn.

  'You kidding? She's probably the one introduced Melinda to dope.'

  'Why's that?'

  'That kid was stoned all the time.'

  'How old's Melinda?'

  'Seventeen.'

  'What year in school?'

  'Eleventh grade - I know Janie's in tenth but just because Melinda's older doesn't mean she was the instigator. Janie was street-smart. I'm sure Janie's the one got Melinda into grass... Lord, where could she be?

  Milo thought back to his search of Janie's room: no evidence of dope, not even rolling paper or a pipe.

  'Melinda and Janie were a perfect pair,' Waters was saying. 'Neither of them gave a damn about school, they cut all the time.'

  'What'd you do about it?'

  The woman laughed. 'Right.' Then the fear came back. 'Melinda will come back, she always does.'

  'In what way was Janie streetwise?' said Schwinn.

  'You know,' said Waters. 'You can just tell. Like she'd been around.'

  'Sexually?'

  'I assume. Melinda was basically a good girl.'

  'Janie spend much time here?'

  'No. Mostly she'd pick up Melinda, and they'd be off.'

  'That the case last Friday?'

  'Dunno.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I was out shopping. Came home, and Melinda was gone. I could tell she'd been here because she left her underwear on the floor and some food out in the kitchen.'

  'Food for one?'

  Waters thought. 'One Popsicle wrapper and a Pepsi can - I guess.'

  'So the last time you saw Melinda was Friday morning, but you don't know if Janie came by to pick her up.'

  Waters nodded. 'She claimed she was going to school, but I don't think so. She had a bag full of clothes, and when I said, "What's all that?" she said she was going to some party that night, might not be coming home. We got into a hassle about that, but what could I do? I wanted to know where the party was but all she told me was it was fancy, on the Westside.'

  'Where on the Westside?'

  'I just told you, she wouldn't say.' The woman's face twitched. 'Fancy party. Rich kids. She said that a bunch of times. Told me I had nothing to worry about.'

  She looked to Schwinn, then Milo, for reassurance, got two stone

  faces.

  'Fancy Westside party,' said Schwinn. 'So maybe Beverly Hills -

  or Bel Air.'

  'I guess... I asked her how she was getting all the way over there, she said she'd find a way. I told her not to hitch, and she said she wouldn't.'

  'You don't like her hitching.'

  'Would you? Standing there on Sunset, thumbing, any kind of pervert...' She stopped, went rigid. 'Where was - where'd you find

  Janie?'

  'Near downtown.'

  Waters relaxed. 'So there you go, the complete opposite direction. Melinda wasn't with her. Melinda was over on the Westside.'

  Schwinn's slit eyes made the merest turn toward Milo. Bowie Ingalls had seen Melinda pick up Janie on Friday, watched the two girls walking north toward Thumb Alley. But no reason to get into

  that, now.

  'Melinda'll come back,' said Waters. 'Sometimes she does that. Stays away. She always comes back.'

  'Sometimes,' said Schwinn. 'Like once a week?'

  'No, nothing like that - just once in a while.'

 
'And how long does she stay away?'

  'A night,' said Waters, sagging and trying to calm herself with a twenty-second pull on her cigarette. Her hand shook. Confronting the fact that this was Melinda's longest absence.

  Then she perked up. 'One time she stayed away two days. Went up to see her father. He's in the Navy, used to live in Oxnard.'

  'Where's he live now?'

  'Turkey. He's at a naval base there. Shipped out two months ago.'

  'How'd Melinda get to Oxnard?'

  Eileen Waters chewed her lip. 'Hitched. I'm not going to tell him. Even if I could reach him in Turkey, he'd just start in with the accusations... and that bitch of his.'

  'Second wife?' said Schwinn.

  'His whore,' spat Waters. 'Melinda hated her. Melinda will come home.'

  Further questioning was futile. The woman knew nothing more

  about the 'fancy Westside party,' kept harping on the downtown murder site as clear proof Melinda hadn't been with Janie. They pried a photo of Melinda out of her. Unlike Bowie Ingalls, she'd maintained an album, and though Melinda's teen years were given short shrift, the detectives had a page of snaps from which to choose.

  Bowie Ingalls hadn't been fair to Melinda Waters. Nothing chubby about the girl's figure, she was beautifully curvy with high, round breasts and a tiny waist. Straight blond hair hung to her rear. Kiss-me lips formed a heartbreaking smile.

  'Looks like Marilyn, doesn't she?' said her mother. 'Maybe one day she'll be a movie star.'

  Driving back to the station, Milo said, 'How long before her body shows up?'

  'Who the fuck knows?' said Schwinn, studying Melinda's picture. 'From the looks of this, maybe Janie was the appetizer and this one was the main dish. Look at those tits. That'd give him something to play with for a while. Yeah, I can see him holding on to this one for a while.'

  He pocketed the photo.

  Milo envisioned a torture chamber. The blond girl nude, shackled... 'So what do we do about finding her?'

  'Nothing,' said Schwinn. 'If she's already dead, we have to wait till she shows up. If he's still got her, he's not gonna tell us.'

  'What about that Westside party?'

  'What about it?'

  'We could put the word out with West L.A., the sheriffs, Beverly Hills PD. Sometimes parties get wild, the blues go out on a nuisance call.'

  'So what?' said Schwinn. 'We show up at some rich asshole's door, say, "Excuse me, are you cutting up this kid?" ' He sniffed, coughed, produced his bottle of decongestant, and swigged. 'Shit, Waters's dump was dusty. Ail-American mom, another poor excuse for an adult. Who knows if there even was a party.'

  'Why wouldn't there be?'

  'Because kids lie to their parents.' Schwinn swiveled toward Milo. 'What's with all these fucking questions? You thinking of going to law school?'

  Milo held his tongue, and the rest of the ride was their usual joyfest. A block from the station, Schwinn said, 'You wanna go snooping for Westside nuisance calls, be my guest, but I think Blondie was lying to Mommy like she always did because a fancy Westside party was exactly the kind of thing that would calm the old lady down. Hundred to one Blondie and Janie were fixing to thumb the Strip, score some dope, maybe trade blow jobs for it, or whatever. They got into the wrong set of wheels and ended up downtown. Janie was too stupid to learn from her past experience -or like I said, maybe she liked being tied up. She was a stoner. Both of them probably were.'

  'Your source mentioned a Westside party.'

  'Street talk's like watermelon, you got to pick around the seeds. The main thing is Janie was found downtown. And chances are Melinda's somewhere around there, too, if a scrote got her and finished with her. For all we know, he kept her in the trunk while he was setting up Janie on Beaudry. Got back on the freeway, he could be in Nevada by now.'

  He shook his head. 'Stupid kids. Two of them thought they had the world in their sweet little hands, and the world upped and bit

  era.

  Back at the station, Schwinn collected his things from his desk and walked off without a word to Milo. Not even bothering to sign out. No one noticed: none of the detectives paid much attention to

  Schwinn, period. An outcast, Milo realized. Did they stick me with him by

  coincidence?

  Pushing all that aside, he played phone poker until well after dark. Contacting every police entity west of Hollywood Division in search of 415 party calls. Throwing in rent-a-cop outfits, too: The Bel Air Patrol, and other private firms that covered Beverlywood, Cheviot Hills, Pacific Palisades. The privates turned out to be the worst to deal with - no one was willing to talk without supervisory clearance and Milo had to leave his name and badge number, wait for callbacks that probably wouldn't happen.

  He kept going, casting his net to Santa Monica and beyond, even including the southern edge of Ventura County, because Melinda

  Waters had once hitched PCH to Oxnard to see her father. And kids flocked to the beach for parties - he'd spent many a sleepless night driving up and down the coast highway, spotting bonfires that sparked the tide, the faint silhouettes of couples. Wondering what it would be like to have someone.

  Four hours of work resulted in two measly hits - either L.A. had turned sleepy, or no one was complaining about noise anymore.

  Two big zeros: an eye surgeon's fiftieth birthday party on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills had evoked a Friday midnight complaint from a cranky neighbor.

  'Kids? No, don't think so,' laughed the BH desk officer. 'We're talking black tie, all that good stuff. Lester Lanin's orchestra playing swing and still someone bitched. There's always some killjoy, right?'

  The second call was a Santa Monica item: a bar mitzvah on Fifth Street north of Montana had been closed down just after 2 A.M., after rambunctious thirteen-year-olds began setting off firecrackers.

  Milo put the phone down and stretched. His ears burned and his neck felt like dry ice. Schwinn's voice was an obnoxious mantra in his head as he left the station just before 1 A.M.

  Told you so, asshole. Told you so, asshole.

  He drove to a bar - a straight one on Eighth Street, not far from the Ambassador Hotel. He'd passed it several times, a shabby-looking place on the ground floor of an old brick apartment building that had seen better days. The few patrons drinking this late were past their prime, too, and his entrance lowered the median age by a few decades. Mel Torme on tape loop, scary-looking toothpicked shrimp and bowls full of cracker medley decorated the cloudy bar top. Milo downed a few shots and beers, kept his head down, left, and drove north to Santa Monica Boulevard, cruising Boystown for a while, but didn't even wrestle with temptation: tonight the male hookers looked predatory, and he realized he wanted to be with no one, not even himself. When he reached his apartment, images of Melinda Waters's torment had returned to plague him, and he pulled down a bottle of Jim Beam from a kitchenette cupboard. Tired but wired. Removing his clothes was an ordeal, and the sight of his pitiful, white body made him close his eyes.

  He lay in bed, wishing the darkness was more complete. Wishing for a brain valve that would choke off the pictures. Alcohol lullabies finally eased him, stumbling, to sleep.

  The next morning, he drove to a newsstand and picked up the morning's Times and Herald-Examiner. No reporter had called him or Schwinn on the Ingalls murder, but something that ugly was sure to be covered.

  But it wasn't, not a line of print.

  That made no sense. Reporters were tuned in to the police band,

  covered the morgue, too.

  He sped to the station, checked his own box and Schwinn's for journalistic queries. Found only a single phone slip with his name at the top. Officer Del Monte from the Bel Air Patrol, no message. He dialed the number, talked to a few flat, bored voices before finally reaching Del Monte.

  'Oh, yeah. You're the one called about parties.' The guy had a crisp, clipped voice, and Milo knew he was talking to an ex-military man. Middle-aged voice. Korea, not VN.

  'That's right.
Thanks for calling back. What've you got?' 'Two on Friday, both times kids being jerks. The first was a sweet sixteen on Stradella, all-girls' sleepover that some punks tried to crash. Not local boys. Black kids and Mexicans. The girls' parents called us, and we ejected them.' 'Where were the crashers from?'

  'They claimed Beverly Hills.' Del Monte laughed. 'Right.' 'They give you any trouble?'

  'Not up front. They made like they were leaving Bel Air - we followed them to Sunset, then hung back and watched. Idiots crossed over near UCLA, then tried to come back a few minutes later and head over to the other party.' Del Monte chuckled, again. 'No luck, Pachuco. Our people were already there on a neighbor complaint. We ejected them before they even got out of the car.'