The Woman Who Stopped Traffic

by Daniel Pembrey

  “We saw everything, with our own eyes: that guy Hunter wave the gun at Jagger, the flash of metal as the Hells Angel security crew piled in – Sweet Jesus, did the curtain come down that night. Like hope was gone, before it ever had chance to take hold. And now it really is gone – forever.”

  She was rocking back and forward on her hands.

  “Star, what happened today, to Jon?”

  She rocked more determinedly. “The lions,” she said.

  The lions? Natalie somehow knew what was coming.

  “Someone let ‘em out. Pulled the fence down. Hadn’t been fed in four days. Someone told them not to feed the lions.”

  “Someone told who, Star? Was there an outside company involved, or something? Did someone give instructions to a pet services company – that the animals were not to be fed? Is that what happened?”

  “They left meat, in the top of the tree, above Jon’s office.”

  Natalie recalled the foreign smell in Vogel’s tree house.

  “The lions tried to get it, but found him and Mysty first,” and she crumpled forward, face in hands. Natalie put a hand on the woman’s knobbly upper-back. Star looked up, direct into Natalie’s eyes: “They were torn apart!” and she gave a guttural wail; “torn to pieces! It took three state troopers with rifles to put those lions down up the canyon!”

  The sense of unreality returned, stronger then ever. “Were others killed, wounded?”

  Star’s head lowered into her hands. It seemed to shake ‘no’.

  “I tried to sleep this afternoon,” she gasped, and Natalie noted the prescription meds at the other end of the table. Most were familiar from her mother’s medicine cabinet: strong stuff. She mustered her clearest voice: “Star, there’s something I need to ask you. I realize this is a terrible time, but –”

  Star continued with her bent-head rocking.

  “– what happens to Jon’s estate now? Do you know who inherits?”

  “The Protectorate.”

  She recalled from her last visit how Star was a trustee of this thing.

  Star: “It all goes to the Protectorate of the Eternal Now. To hold together what’s left,” and a hand waved around them.

  Yes, Vogel and Star had been lovers, Natalie was now sure. Although, logically that was merely an inference – of him appointing her trustee. Perhaps he’d simply trusted her? But something didn’t compute. What? She decided to come at it from another angle:

  “There were no next-of-kin?”

  The older woman kept up her rocking, increasingly pronounced.

  Directly: “Did Jon have any children, Star?”

  “Oh God,” she wailed; “I swore my secrecy to him! At the Biker’s Tavern, up the highway! On New Years Day of, what, shit – nineteen seventy something, I don’t remember! I can’t say!”

  “It’s OK. There, it’s OK. And you’re sure you’re not an inheritor, Star?”

  The elder lady looked at her sharply: “I’ll show you the will! You can see for yourself! It all goes to the Protectorate, to hold together what’s left!

  “That’s OK, I don’t need see the will,” said Natalie, coaxing her back down. But if Star had the will, then that likely made her an executor of the estate – as well as a trustee of the inheriting organization.

  Reflexively, she looked back up at the bookshelves, for the photo she’d noticed when first here, of a young Vogel, with a younger child –

  It had been removed.

  CHAPTER 22

  She thought to call Nguyen on her way back, but decided against. Instead, she called Ben, letting him know the fate of 40% of the company that was going public on Monday morning. Back at the Keaton, Rosanna, the desk manager, approached her:

  “Miss Chevalier, I just wanted to impress upon you how seriously we take the security of our guests here, especially our female guests. I asked the security team to edit together the CCTV footage of your arrival last night, and of Max assisting you up to your room. The camera in the corridor outside is time stamped and shows Max leaving you at your door –”

  “Really, there’s no need.”

  “This is the Keaton. And I understand how upsetting memory loss can be,” Rosanna said sweetly. “My mom has early Alzheimer’s.”

  Refusing to accept any further protests, Rosanna gave Natalie the disk.

  And the disk gave Natalie an idea. She arranged to meet Detective Pulver early the next day. She felt a rush of euphoria as she drove up to the front of the Silicon Bean café: her memory had been accurate. She parked and walked round to the rear – there was another.

  Pulver was waiting in his cruiser. She had on tan-leather sandals, beaten-up True Religion jeans and a lilac polo top. Her hair was in a loose ponytail and she wore tinted sunglasses. For his part, Pulver looked like he’d stepped out of a 1950s Sears Roebuck catalogue. He chewed his gum, taking it all in.

  “Smile,” she said. “Look: you’re on camera.”

  His eyes flicked up to the eaves of the building. The camera was tiny. But it was there.

  They found Josie, the owner. She was a big girl, all in black with lots of rings – including two for her nose. Down one shoulder ran a tattoo of a tarot card called the Hangman: bad boyfriend break-up perhaps, but an eerie coincidence nonetheless.

  Pulver started to reprimand her for not mentioning the CCTV cameras during their interview two days prior. Josie explained that her building insurer had required them to bring her deductible down: she hadn’t revisited the system once since installation. Pulver was mostly angry at himself, Natalie knew.

  “Could we take a peek?” she said.

  “Sure,” Josie said, and led them into a small office-cum-stock-room filled with towers of paper cups and sacks of lids. “I guess this is it,” she said, more as a question than a statement.

  It was a VICON VDR-204 digital video recording machine: standard, closed-circuit surveillance kit. Input for four cameras, set to record at five frames-per-second. On that setting, the 300-gig hard drive would go for months before needing to be backed up. The machine was operated by simple front panel controls. You could search by time, date or alarm – the alarm being redundant in this case. Natalie also liked the ‘JOG/Shuttle’ dial that afforded quick and responsive playback and frame-by-frame viewing. Pulver would no doubt have preferred the whole shebang to be bagged, logged and turned over to the forensics. But against that, Natalie knew, he had to weigh investigative velocity.

  The machine had apparently come with a flat screen monitor, which Natalie now unpacked and switched on.

  “What’s the time range we’re looking at?” she asked.

  “Monday 11pm to midnight – give or take three hours.”

  “8pm to 3am,” she said. “That’s a lot of frames.”

  It soon became apparent that the scene shot from the back of the Bean was one of almost total darkness. Just a dim pool of phosphorescence at the bottom of the screen, from what may have been a down light above the rear exit: whatever it was, the camera was angled to look over it, out into an undisturbed grade of black.

  “Josie, could you leave us be for a moment?” Pulver said.

  “Sure. I should open up. D’you guys want coffee?”

  Both hesitated. “No thanks,” they said together, Natalie smiling thankfully.

  Pulver waited for the door to close. “There was a stun gun. It emits a light arc.”

  “I see,” and Natalie sped up the shuttle.

  The time field whirred through the minutes and seconds, the image unchanging: nine o’clock, ten o’clock – “There!” Pulver said.

  Natalie shuttled back: 22:10, 22:09, 22:08, manipulating the sensitive control just so. Sure enough, there was a splash of white at 22:08:32.

  The image was vexingly low resolution. That was the trade off for such small cameras – and of course the settings, allowing so many months’ of recording time.

  “Can we intensify it or something?”

  “I can zoom in…”

  Bet
ween the white arc and the surrounding darkness, one or two elements became distinguishable. It was like a flattened sand tray that had been nudged just so, the grains minutely reorganized. Now discernible were branches, maybe – or stems? – of the bushes behind. There were also two vertical forms, more solid, in the middle.

  “That’s him,” Pulver said, his plump fingernail hovering over a pattern of pixels, right above the white splash.

  “Where? Move your finger –”

  Natalie could just make out a triangle of black dots, each one barely more than a pixel’s-breadth. She zoomed in as far as she could. Sure enough, the dots appeared to be the underside of a nose and two eye sockets – like a skull, up-lit by the white light.

  “That’s the killer’s face,” Pulver said. “Can I get a print?”

  Natalie hooked up a printer sitting at a nearby desk. The printer whirred. Pulver snapped out the image and scrutinized it in the light of a high window.

  Meanwhile, Natalie played back the sequence leading up to the light arc, slowly, at three frames per second. It was like watching a very early, silent movie.

  “What’re you looking for?” he said.

  “Here,” and she pointed to the bottom right of the screen.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “A small wand of light moving. See?”

  He wasn’t sure.

  She said: “Let’s go check something out.”

  He followed her through the coffee shop, out back. To the right was a pile of broken down boxes depressed in the center. Surrounding it on the ground were cigarette butts.

  “Would you mind standing beside the building over there, where Yuri would’ve walked by?”

  Pulver did so. She sat down, recreating the view of the smoking witness.

  “Where would you say that up-lit face was?” she said.

  “Right about where that snapped-off branch is,” and he pointed to a bush in the middle of the eucalyptus row. “Or a yard in front, I guess.” From their respective positions it formed the apex of an isosceles triangle.

  “I reckon that’s fifteen yards away from each of us,” she said.

  “Give or take,” he agreed.

  “So the person sat here couldn’t help notice the people go past, and what happened.”

  “A material wit. No question about it.”

  “Thing is, I’m sat here smoking.” She turned towards him. “Surely the killer would’ve noticed me?”

  “That depends,” Pulver said, “on how experienced, calm and collected the killer was. It was dark. This was a pursuit. Adrenaline does strange things to a person’s senses. And there are few higher doses than when you’re taking another man’s life. Playing God. He might have gotten tunnel vision.”

  Could he really not have seen the smoking witness? It was possible. “Not a professional killer then.” She didn’t want to let on that she’d seen the 51s.

  “Judging by this and other aspects of the case, he or she most assuredly was not.”

  Pulver looked back and up. Natalie tried to guess what the detective was thinking. The camera was discreet, beneath the eaves, but still visible. If the killer had cased the route at night, it would have been hard to spot, but it did seem unlikely that this was the work of a professional killer – unless it was an incredibly rushed job.

  “And the killer was known to Malovich?” she asked.

  Pulver didn’t reply. But he didn’t deny it.

  They kept looking at the triangulation of the path by which Malovich and the killer had entered the camera’s view, the arc of the stun gun and the fleetingly lit skull – then the location of the mystery witness, known only by his cigarette wand. The sky was sultry, slightly overcast. With her sunglasses on, it made it easier to imagine the scene at night.

  “Of course!” she snapped her fingers, as she was apt to do on such occasions. “Let’s go look at the VDR again.”

  Camera 3, covering the inside seating area, showed a Hispanic-looking man walking out through the fire escape at 22:06:47, and re-entering with faster motion at 22:08:30 – two seconds before Malovich was stunned. It looked like he had something to hide too.

  “Josie, could you come in here for a moment!” Pulver hollered.

  “Shoot, that’s Sal!” she said, staring at the frozen figure. She shook her head.

  “Who’s Sal?”

  “Sal Polanco. Used to work here. Took off Wednesday, the day after someone – I’m guessing him! – cleared out the cash till.” She looked closer: “What’s he doing? Casing the place out?”

  “Salvatore – Polanco.” Pulver wrote it in his notebook. “OK: address?”

  “Like I said, he took off. I called his place Wednesday morning when he didn’t show up for the early shift, and his housemate said he’d left.”

  “Did you report the cash theft to the police?”

  “No, for a coupla reasons.”

  “Which were?”

  “The float was a few hundred bucks, well below my insurance deductible.”

  “And the second?”

  “His housemate said that he’d left for Mexico.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Bill Pulver’s departing cruiser passed Adam Lau as the federal agent pulled into the parking lot, the front grill of his Acura dipping and rising. Lau had texted Natalie to see whether they could grab a few minutes together. Meeting FBI agents in their cars was fast becoming routine.

  “The Pulverizer,” Lau said, inviting comment, as she got into the passenger seat. She didn’t know what level of cooperation was occurring between the local police department and the federals; certainly, she didn’t want to become a go-between.

  “You heard about Jon Vogel?” he started over.

  “Yeah – bizarre. Unbelievable.”

  He shook his head in agreement. “Bizarre, and at the same time meaningful.”

  “How so?”

  “This makes it the more likely that other people connected with Clamor will be targeted. You need to take precautions. I’m guessing you don’t have a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Well you need one.”

  “Well, I’ll bear that in mind.”

  She thought of the gun rituals cherished her by mom’s hunting-and-fishing side of the family, down in South Carolina.

  “Natalie – Jesus. Look, I’m going to give you my spare service weapon. There’ll be some re-registration paperwork, but we have to secure your safety – now.”

  “Agent Lau, that hardly seems necessary –”

  “Call me Adam. I already ran your background. No mental health issues or criminal convictions on record, you’ll be pleased to hear. Now, reach into that glove compartment and pull out the box.”

  She did, and handed it him. It was a moulded plastic case filled with textured grey foam, holding a boxy looking piece.

  “This is a Glock 17C. The bureau swears by them. They’re Austrian made and extremely safe, which is of course our first and last concern with any firearm.”

  She stared at the foreign-looking object resting in his hand.

  “You ever used a handgun?”

  “No.”

  “Any firearm?”

  She shook her head.

  “Never mind,” he said, cupping the gun with one hand while gesturing with the other. “The slide at the top here draws the first round up into the chamber.” And with a supreme economy of effort, he ejected the magazine from the handle, rasped the top slide back and forward and pushed the magazine back in with the heal of his palm, leaving it unarmed. “For your peace of mind, there are two internal safeties: a firing pin safety and a drop safety. They’re disengaged one after the other when the trigger is pulled, re-activated once it’s released.”

  “Wait, run that by me again.”

  “The internal safeties? They allow you to carry the gun with a magazine in, reducing time-to-deploy. They allow you to focus on target acquisition, rather than manipulating the kinds of external safeties seen on other handguns.
OK, the magazine,” and he pointed to the boxy handle. “The Glock 17 feeds from a double column box magazine with a seventeen round capacity. We’re talking nine millimetre parabellums: more than enough to get you out of trouble.”

  She didn’t especially want to hold the gun, let alone fire it.

  “Sighting,” he continued. “Hold the gun with your arms out straight but not rigid. Do not point it up vertical like in Charlie’s Angels. Do not point it sideways like in Lethal Weapon. Keep the sighting arrangement nice and straight between you and the target.”

  “What’s the sighting arrangement?”

  “Here,” and he turned the top ridge towards her. “This ramped front sight at the end of the barrel, and the notch near the back – see? Now, pay attention: there’s a white dot on the front post and a white border round the rear notch.”

  She took the gun and pointed it through the windshield with one eye squished shut, aligning the white markings with the row of bushes behind the Bean. The polymer grip felt warmer to the touch than she’d expected. It occurred to her that only a man would have invented an object like this, designed for such a singular purpose. But she thought too of that light arc and the skull on the CCTV footage.

  “Now, real important: when you squeeze the trigger, do so gently. No sudden or jerky movements. Remember to breath if you can. If you’re ever in a hostile situation for real, your adrenalin levels will be through the roof. Your heart will be banging in your ears. Time will feel totally distorted. You have to remain calm and present – or it may be your last out-breath. Deep breathing’s the only way I’ve found to cope.”

  She was trying to get used to the feel of the gun, but she just couldn’t.

  “The good news is that the 17C is designed to help you out,” he was saying. “It has slots cut into the barrel and slide, to compensate for muzzle recoil and rise.”

  She placed the gun back in the foam cutaway and snapped the carrying case shut. That was quite enough recorded death and anticipated mayhem for one morning.

  “You handle it well – with respect,” he said. “You ever thought about a career in the bureau? Protecting people for real? We need smart people with technology backgrounds. And, you’ve found a fan in Cindy. She doesn’t normally open up with people the way she has with you.”