The Devil's Necktie

by John Lansing

  “Yeah, Kenny?”

  Kenny Ortega chose his words very carefully.

  “Don’t beat yourself up. You were off the clock. You punched out two years ago.”

  “Thanks, Kenny. That means a lot.”

  “Later.”

  —

  Jack was on the run. He took a last swig of coffee, slid the ME’s cleaned sweats and T-shirt into a brown grocery bag, snugged his Glock into his shoulder holster, and threw on a lightweight sports jacket to hide the nine millimeter. He was picking up his keys and heading out the door when he heard his land line ringing.

  “Christ.”

  He hurried across the concrete floor and grabbed for the phone before voice mail picked up.

  “What?”

  “Turn on your computer.”

  And the line went dead.

  It was his son. Jack immediately walked into the smaller of the two bedrooms that he used as an office and opened his MacBook Pro, which had been left on sleep mode. The screen was black for an instant and then light, a jerky image filling the Skype screen and then settling on his son’s very serious face.

  “Hey, Dad. Holy shit, you look like hell.”

  “Thanks, Son. Just what I needed,” he said, trying to downplay it. “Listen, I’d love to talk, but can we do this later?”

  “I really need to talk.”

  His son was the most important person in his life, and he’d already let him down too many times in the past when police work had taken precedence. Life experiences he could never get back. First steps, ball games, choir recitals, and just plain time in. Since his retirement, he’d vowed never to let that happen again, and he’d been trying very hard not to backpedal.

  Jack settled into his chair. He could see his son was worried and instantly shared his concern. “What is it, Chris?”

  “I’m thinking about quitting the team.”

  Wow, Jack thought. Out of all the possible turmoil his son might have been facing in his first semester at Stanford University, quitting baseball would not even have made it onto Jack’s long list.

  His son had played ball since the time he was tall enough to hit one off a tee. He was the captain of his high school team and had been scouted by a few organizations. But his son still wanted an education; he was one smart kid.

  Young Chris’s dream had always been to play hard, win a scholarship, and then if all things were equal, take a shot at the big leagues. Jack had never pushed, or tried not to, but had always been supportive. And now he’d try, damn hard, to think before opening his mouth and saying the wrong thing.

  “Really?” was the best he could come up with.

  “I’m just not happy.”

  “Who is?”

  “Dad . . .”

  “Right. It’s just that, well, you’ve only been practicing for two months now. Don’t you think it might be a little early to make such a drastic decision?”

  His son’s image jerked around in disconnected blurs on the computer screen. They had decided that Skype would allow them to keep in closer contact. Jack had been all for it.

  “I haven’t totally made up my mind yet. I just wanted to run it by you.” His son’s mouth had taken on a petulant stamp Jack knew very well. “I’m not really getting along with Coach Fredricks. It doesn’t look like I’m going to be in the starting lineup, and I know that I’ve got the skills. I think it’s personal.”

  Jack’s heart swelled with pride. How had he gotten so lucky? Even with the contentious divorce, his son had weathered the storm. The boy was so intelligent and thoughtful. Maybe he had gotten it from his mother, because he didn’t think it came from his gene pool.

  “You know what, Chris? Wear him down. Don’t take no for an answer. You never have before. And you’ve never given up before. It’s not in your DNA.”

  “But I’ve been working my ass off.”

  “Christopher.” Jack only called his son Christopher when he was being very serious.

  “Dad,” Chris returned with mock sarcasm.

  “Love you, Son. I’ll stand by you whatever you finally decide, but let’s give this a little more time, huh?”

  Chris stared at his father for what seemed like an eternity and then said, “Later.”

  He clicked off—just like that—leaving Jack Bertolino staring at an empty screen. Teenagers, that wonderful age.

  —

  Jack pulled his Mustang left onto Vista Haven, and when 3468 was just a few houses farther up, he made a hard right turn onto Lisa Place. The ME’s wagon was still out front, and a single black-and-white was snugged up behind it, guarding the crime scene. Both vehicles sat empty. The parade of reporters and vans had disappeared earlier in the day, eager to find the next tragedy to feed the voracious news beast.

  Jack unlimbered his gun and locked it in the trunk of his car in case he had a run-in with the uniformed cop. He walked back up the street and made a right toward the murder scene. As he turned the corner, he could now see the neighbor who lived across the street. He was standing on his front patio, holding a hose and watering his azaleas. The man’s lot was uphill from the crime scene, affording him a bird’s-eye view of 3468 and the yellow police tape strung across the entrance to the driveway.

  “Afternoon,” Jack said.

  “What?” the man shouted.

  Jack could see the man had buds in his ear and a thin set of wires leading into his lime green iPod. The man turned down whatever he was listening to and pulled out one of the buds.

  “Sorry, what?”

  Jack repeated, “Afternoon.”

  “You here for the murder?” he asked, still too loud.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Name’s Mayor.” Better, Jack thought.

  The slight man walked down his flagstone steps toward Jack and reached out a hand. It was a firm, dry handshake. The man was small, couldn’t have been more than five foot four. Thinning close-cropped brown hair and intelligent, lively eyes.

  “They call me the Mayor because I’m always around, retired, but my first name really is Mayor,” he shared with pride.

  “Good to know.” Jack smiled. “Jack Bertolino. Listen, I wonder if I might ask you a few questions?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first of the day,” Mayor said as he turned the spray of water onto the ivy that covered the front hillside. “You’re not a reporter, are you? You don’t look like one. You look more like a cop.”

  “I was a cop, retired now.”

  Mayor nodded his head. “Go ahead, shoot.”

  “Did you see a police car parked in that driveway around five forty-five yesterday evening?”

  “Police asked me the same question.”

  “And?”

  “I saw twenty if I saw one, and then the helicopters and the emergency vehicles. I couldn’t get out of my driveway to get to the movie theater. We had six-thirty reserved seats for Another Earth.”

  Jack had a hard time empathizing with the loss of movie tickets when a woman had been brutally butchered a hundred yards away, and his emotion wasn’t lost on Mayor.

  “Oh, I must sound terrible. The poor woman. I apologize. I’m just not used to the . . . to the violence. It’s got me and Marilyn shaken up.”

  That was more than Jack expected.

  “Understood. Did Marilyn see or hear anything?”

  “She was playing bridge with the girls and the plan was to meet at the theater.”

  “And nothing before that? A single car? A sound? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “I saw a gray Mustang in the driveway, and then the noise from that damn party forced me into the house. Had to close the windows. College kids. Their family owns five cars, and they never park in front of their own house, so we have the joy of looking at their kids’ vehicles.”

  Jack shifted his weight fro
m one foot to the other, and Mayor finally understood that he was going on for too long about something off the point.

  “What’s your interest here?”

  Jack leveled his gaze and stared straight into Mayor’s eyes. “The cops think I did it.”

  Mayor reflexively took a step back before recovering. “Oh, you’re the one they led out in handcuffs. I can see it now. It was dark, and I was looking down, I couldn’t see your face.” He scrutinized Jack’s face. “You don’t look like a killer.”

  “Good to know,” Jack said.

  “I’m a good judge of character, and I don’t think you’d be standing here asking these questions if you’d done it. Doesn’t track.”

  Jack nodded his head in agreement, trying to develop a rapport.

  “So what are your plans?” Mayor asked.

  “I’d like to take a look around the property when the police finish up. See if they missed anything.”

  Mayor shot a furtive glance toward the county vehicles and gave the request some serious thought. He turned the sprinkler nozzle to stop the flow and set the hose down on the walkway.

  Jack prayed he hadn’t made a mistake confiding in him. The last thing Jack needed was for Mayor to call the police if he detected movement in the house without knowing who it was.

  “I won’t stop you,” Mayor said, adding, “I’m supposed to lock up after they leave. No hurry now. The owner won’t be back for two weeks. He’s in Greece, on a cruise.” Mayor lowered his voice conspiratorially, and Jack stepped in closer. “Michael, the owner of the house, is a real estate agent. Very nice man, good neighbor. I called him on his cell. Anyway, they had a mutual friend in Miami, the dead woman and Michael did. It’s how they met.”

  Mayor tilted his head in the direction of 3468. “I guess they got along because when he heard the woman was headed to L.A., he offered her the use of his house until she got on her feet. He’s got an extra room set up for guests and loves company. Big heart, that Michael. Didn’t work out very well for the woman. Michael was devastated. I think he said her name was Mia.”

  “It was,” Jack said. Using the past tense made him angry. “Did Michael mention the name of his friend in Miami?”

  “Just a first name, Greg. He’s with Michael on the ship and I think they work for the same real estate organization.”

  Jack was about to ask a question when Mayor all but read his mind.

  “If you wait a second, I’ll jot down Michael’s cell number. I don’t think he’ll mind one bit. Just keep the number to yourself.”

  “Did you give the police this number?”

  “They already had it,” Mayor said as he walked into his carport and opened the door to his white Lexus. He pulled out a pen and pad and in seconds handed Jack his first real lead.

  “Thank you, Mayor.”

  “You’re very welcome. And watch yourself. It’s still a city.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Look around,” Mayor said as he extended one arm expansively. “It only looks like suburbia. Don’t let it fool you.”

  8

  Jack stepped under the yellow police tape that was stretched across the driveway entrance and retraced his steps to the rear of the house. He walked past the sliding glass door that led into the bedroom. The screen door the perpetrators had kicked in to gain entry was bent and leaning at a strange angle, propped up against the side of the house.

  Jack peered around the corner and saw that a narrow concrete path ran alongside the house and the detached garage, through to the street beyond. Spindly oleander bushes obscured the path from the road.

  The sliding door had been pulled shut but not latched. Mayor would be locking the house down later that evening when the police had finished their work.

  Jack knew he was flying blind, trying to clear his name and find the killers. This was the first time since he had retired that not being in uniform was a profound negative. His access to information would be limited, and working alone was not the most expedient way to cover a sprawling city like Los Angeles.

  Terry Molloy, the ME, walked into the bedroom and was startled when he saw Jack standing outside the door holding a brown paper bag. He blocked Jack’s entrance into the house, and the two men stepped out near the pool, where he thanked Jack for the quick turnaround on the sweats. He was tight-lipped about the case in general and whatever physical evidence he had turned up. Jack did get him to admit that Mia’s wallet, with her ID and cash, and her iPad, were found at the scene, but not her passport or cell phone. Molloy had no trouble sharing that the district attorney’s office was still weighing its options on filing charges against Jack.

  The uniformed LAPD officer came striding out of the rear of the house, interrupted their discussion, and told Jack that he was illegally trespassing on an active crime scene, and to beat it. Jack didn’t have to be told twice.

  He looped his car around the corner and up onto the ridge of Vista Haven and parked under an old-growth canyon oak with a narrow, protected view of the ME’s truck and the police car. He sat there for three and a half hours, until Molloy and the uniform ducked under the yellow tape, mounted up, and drove out. Jack knew he had to make short work of this expedition. It was too late to poison the crime scene. The technical work had been done, videos and digital pictures taken. Blood samples, hair and fiber samples. The bedroom and bathroom had been vacuumed for trace everything, the drains cleaned. But it was still the scene of the crime, and as far as Jack knew, he was the only suspect. Not comforting, he thought as he pulled on white disposable rubber gloves and blue paper booties.

  He had lucked out keeping his face and name out of the media. Tommy being an ex-district attorney hadn’t hurt. Tommy still had some juice and had immediately gotten on the horn and raised such a stink, the Los Angeles DA’s office thought it might not be prudent to drag a decorated ex-NYPD inspector through the mud just yet. They would hold up on that until the DNA came back.

  Jack pulled the sliding door open, and the coppery, acrid smell of dried blood overwhelmed him. That third cup of coffee, which he had drunk sitting in the car, made him edgy. He pushed the door the rest of the way open to air the place out and make it almost bearable. He sucked in a deep breath, walked into the bedroom, and took in the bed where he had spent time less than twenty-four hours ago.

  The ME had bagged the duvet cover, the sheets, and the pillowcases. Jack knew his trace elements would be all over them. The mattress had bloodstains, and the blood on the wall behind the bed fanned out like a Rorschach test. The brown carpet in front of the bathroom was stained a dark purple where Jack had lain facedown, waiting to be cuffed.

  The blood had pooled in his lap while Jack cradled Mia’s body. Jack prayed that some of the blood would be the killers’. He walked the few steps to the bathroom and turned on the light. Even if a police car did a drive-by, the light wouldn’t read from the front of the house. If the cop came around the back, he’d be fucked.

  The white shower tiles and floor tiles were stained a thick dull brown, a crazy amount of blood. Jack held on to the doorjamb for support. His pulse started racing, his breath staggered, his stomach soured. If any prints had been found on the showerhead, they’d be his.

  Jack didn’t expect to find anything of substance in the bathroom. The technical team was skilled and thorough. He just had to see where she was killed. One last time. Get a feel for the kind of men who could snuff out a life with such cruelty and so much precision.

  Jack knew if he didn’t keep moving forward, he’d shut down. Luckily, something Mayor had said brought him out of his stupor. Mia had been invited to stay at Vista Haven, and the guest room would be hers until she got on her feet.

  He hadn’t taken particular notice of any guest rooms yesterday. He walked out of the bedroom past a second bathroom on the right. It was empty. No toiletries or anything of Mia’s on the soapstone count
er. Just striped guest towels and a dish of small multicolored soaps shaped like seashells that had never been used and probably never would.

  He stood still for a second to listen for any unwelcome sounds, but the only noise was the traffic bleed coming over the ridge from the San Diego Freeway.

  The small bedroom directly in front of him appeared to have been turned into an office. There were a few framed real estate platinum awards on the wall behind a modern glass-and-steel desk, a phone, a printer, a computer. Jack walked in and pocketed one of Michael’s business cards from a holder on the desk. He took a silver-framed picture down from the white bookshelves built against the side wall. The man with the big smile in the center of the photo was clearly Michael. He wondered if the man sitting next to him, obviously lit, drinking a large margarita, was Greg. Attractive, happy people. It pissed him off. He would have Kenny Ortega meet the cruise ship when it docked in the Port of Miami in two weeks and interview them both.

  Jack continued up the hallway toward the kitchen and living room and discovered the second bedroom on the right. It was a small, nicely appointed room with three orange pastel walls and a full wall of glass that opened onto a private garden protected from prying eyes by the detached garage and a six-foot wooden fence. The room was far enough away from the master suite for privacy.

  The queen-size bed had been dressed in high-end Calvin Klein linens and pillowcases that were stripped back, exposing the mattress. They now lay in a heap at the bottom of the bed. This was to have been Mia’s room. She might have enjoyed it with the garden and all.

  A large Louis Vuitton suitcase was laid open on the carpet in front of the closet, along with a smaller carry-on. Mia had been traveling light. The closet itself was an architectural detail, raised off the floor, creating the illusion of a floating box with sliding white panels to gain entry.

  Jack rifled through the suitcase. The handle and locks had black fingerprint dust on them, as did the sliding glass door handle. The tech had already worked it over and was obviously satisfied that there was nothing more of interest, just a few nightgowns and delicate undergarments.