Night Moves

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Maillot Bernard shuddered. “I hate them…maybe.”

  A photo of a deer rifle evoked a head shake. “They look the same to me.”

  I said, “Trevor just stood there holding it.”

  “For a long time,” she said. “Not saying anything. Then he left, came back without the gun and said, ‘Time for bed,’ and we went to bed. And that night he—we—he didn’t touch my chest. He used to make sure to do that, being super-gentle. It was like he looked at me different.”

  “Scary.”

  “I couldn’t sleep, terrified he’d bring the gun back and shoot me. I got up twice in the middle of the night. One time, I went to the bathroom and threw up. Trevor slept through totally, he was always a deep sleeper. The next morning, he’s not talking, he goes into the studio and I’m sitting there watching soaps. The day after that, he finally left to buy art supplies. I packed my stuff and got out of there. I didn’t even want to stay in San Francisco so I went to the Greyhound station and bought a one-way to L.A. Because I used to dance here, too. The Seventh Veil, places like that, but I also made it to the Hollywood Bowl stage for their big Fourth of July celebration. I was a stand-in but that was something, we had these star-spangled costumes.”

  “Did you know people here?”

  “I thought I did but the numbers I had for them weren’t good anymore. The only money I had was in my purse, like fifteen bucks. I went to a shelter downtown. It was crazy, full of addicts and psychos. But you know, I felt safer there. A few days later, I remembered my checking account, Bank of America, I’d forgotten about it because Trevor had been paying for everything. I managed to get funds wired and found a room in a motel on Hollywood. That was pretty sketchy, drug dealers out front, all night you could hear sirens. Finally, I located a girl who didn’t dance anymore and worked for a lawyer who did disability. He couldn’t believe I hadn’t applied, got me a doctor appointment and that got me signed up, and that’s where I’ve been since.”

  She smiled. “Stuff happens, right?”

  “Did Trevor try to make contact?”

  “I was scared he would, but no, never,” she said. “Guess he’s not a stalker, just had a moment.”

  “A gun,” I said. “That’s some moment.”

  “I never even knew he owned one, Doctor. That’s what freaked me out, is he telling himself it’s time to kick it up to a new level?”

  She leaned forward. “You can’t tell me? Did he do something really bad with a gun?”

  “All I can say is his name came up.”

  “Wow. I don’t wish him bad,” she said. “But talking to you made me feel a lot better. The police actually suspect him of something. I wasn’t crazy to worry, I was smart.”

  She pretended to object when I paid the check, said, “If you insist,” and squeezed my hand when I got up.

  “Thanks for your time, Mai-la.”

  “Maybe I should be the one thanking you,” she said. “Maybe this was therapy.”

  I phoned Milo at his desk. He said, “You and your hunches, just talked to Braun’s first wife, Barbara from Stockton. Not the sharpest in the drawer and she’s not a legal wife, she and Braun lived together for three years.”

  “How’d you find her?”

  “Masterful detection. I looked up Barbara Braun in Stockton.”

  “They weren’t married but she uses Braun’s name.”

  “It’s her name, too, they’re second cousins, he was an orphan, lived with her family for a while.”

  “So that part of his story was true.”

  “But the part about Barbara’s illness was a mix of truth and bullshit. She had cancer but survived it. Chemo, radiation, she couldn’t even tell me the diagnosis. Apparently, Hal stuck with her every step of the way, a real prince. In terms of why they split up, all she could say was they ended up different and that she was the one to initiate. She didn’t say initiate, just ‘I did it.’ She came across as basic, Alex. Maybe even a little impaired.”

  “Hal was there for her but he claimed she was dead.”

  “I didn’t tell her that, why burst her bubble? She had nothing bad to say about him. Broke down big-time when I informed her. Blamed herself, in fact.”

  “Why?”

  “If she hadn’t broken up with him, he never woulda left Stockton and gotten carried away by big-city sin. I asked her about their years together, the picture I got is a couple of poor kids barely scratching by. Rented trailer, Braun pumped gas part-time, both of them picked crops seasonally.”

  “From that to knight in armor,” I said.

  “Speaking of which, Braun had hero fantasies way back. Talked to Barbara about joining the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service. Only place he actually applied was the Coast Guard but they turned him down. Something about allergies.”

  “Any attempts to be a cop?”

  “Nothing she was aware of, though in high school he’d been a police cadet. She does recall him participating in a search party for a missing kid. Nothing obviously creepy about his motives, the whole town turned out and the kid was found safe.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t drawn to the city by sin,” I said. “More like expanding his altruistic horizons.”

  “Being a big-time hero but he ends up selling shoes and then messing up his leg? Sure, but it doesn’t explain how he ended up on the Corvins’ hardwood. I asked Barbara if Hal had spent any time in San Francisco, trying to connect him to Bitt. It’s not far from Stockton but she said she never knew him to go there.”

  “Speaking of Bitt.” I told him Maillot Bernard’s story.

  “A long gun. But he didn’t threaten her with it?”

  “Just held it and stared at her. She can’t tell the difference between a rifle and a shotgun, but wouldn’t it be interesting if what Bitt showed her was a 12-gauge that he still owns?”

  “Easy enough to find out if I could get a warrant to cross his damn threshold.”

  I said, “If Chelsea could be documented actually going into Bitt’s house, could you make a case for a welfare check?”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Mentally impaired minor sneaks into the home of a person of interest in a homicide.”

  “Elegantly devious, Alex. But if she just goes in and comes out, iffy…maybe a coupla nights’ surveillance will help. I get lucky, see the two of them actually make inappropriate physical contact, I can go in there with no paper.”

  * * *

  —

  Night one, he parked a block from Evada and watched through binoculars from the far end of the block. Chelsea Corvin never left her house. Bitt’s lights were out.

  Night two, just after ten p.m., Bitt’s front door opened and the artist, carrying something, got in his pickup and drove away. Too dark to make out details. By the time Milo made it back to his car, the truck was out of sight.

  He enlisted Binchy and Reed for two more nights. Nothing on Binchy’s Sunday watch. Two weeks had passed since the murder. The Corvins didn’t go out for dinner.

  On Monday night, when Reed arrived, Bitt’s truck was already gone. No spotting of Chelsea.

  Tuesday morning, both of the young D’s were pulled from Milo’s supervision, Reed handling a bar fight in Palms, Binchy catching an armed robbery in Pico-Robertson.

  Milo said, “So much for that. Nguyen says it woulda been doubtful without an obvious felony.”

  * * *

  —

  I worked long days on two custody evals but found time to recheck social network sites for anything on Hargis Braun and the three women who’d lived with him.

  Barbara Braun’s Facebook page was a skimpy thing. A few relatives, no human friends. The only posted photographs were her and a massive black Newfoundland.

  Wally was certified as a therapy dog and demonstrated his interpersonal skills by never leaving the side of a small, pinched-faced woman.

  Barb Braun was dependent on a pair of forearm crutches. Add that to EmJay’s arthritis and you didn’t need to be Freud.

>   Mary Ellen Braun had seemed healthy. I Googled her anyway. Her LinkedIn listing reached out to retailers, said nothing about health problems. But her name showed up in a support group for women with chronic fatigue syndrome.

  A man attracted to disability.

  The impulse was to tag that as pathological. My training leads me to avoid dime-store diagnosis.

  Joining search parties. Planting unsanctioned trees. Butting in during a domestic.

  Saving a snake.

  For all I knew, Hal Braun’s taste in women spoke to a rare nobility. A man with ideals and goals, however absurdly romanticized.

  A poster boy for No Good Deed.

  * * *

  —

  Voicemail on all of Milo’s lines. I left messages but he didn’t call back. Maybe sixteen days of nothing on Braun had put him in a funk. Or his attention had shifted to a more manageable crime.

  That night, Robin and I had a late dinner at the Grill on the Alley and were walking to the Seville when my cell chirped.

  Ten ten p.m.

  He said, “Sitting down, amigo?”

  “Upright.”

  “Then maybe you should brace yourself. You’re not gonna believe this.”

  At eight forty-nine p.m., Hollywood Division patrol officers finishing their dinner at Tio Taco had responded to an anonymous report of a “415”—unspecified disturbance—and driven to the Sahara Motor Inn on Franklin Avenue just east of Western.

  Parking in the mostly empty lot, they knocked on the door of room fourteen. After receiving no reply, Officer Eugene Stargill pretended to peer through a slit in the plastic vertical blinds and see nothing out of order.

  “Bogus,” he pronounced. “Let’s book.”

  His partner, a gung-ho kid fresh out of the academy named Bradley Buttons, insisted on having the manager check.

  As Stargill figured out ways of getting back at the pain-in-the-ass rookie, the manager, Kiran “Keith” Singh, unlocked the door.

  At eight fifty-four p.m., Stargill phoned in a dead body, making it sound as if he’d been conscientious.

  Hollywood detectives Petra Connor and Raul Biro arrived on the scene at nine eighteen. By nine forty, a coroner’s investigator had gone through the DB’s pockets and produced I.D.

  During the brief drive from Wilcox Avenue, the victim’s name had sparked Petra’s memory but she couldn’t get a handle on it. One of those tip-of-the-mind things.

  Just as Biro turned off the ignition and she saw the motel, she figured it out. Scanning the homicide list and checking out the details of weird ones was a daily habit for her, though it rarely paid off.

  This time it did.

  She called Milo. He called me.

  * * *

  —

  I arrived at ten forty-eight, spotted both of them just inside the yellow tape, bootied and gloved. The air smelled of cheap gasoline and fried food. The motel layout was basic: fifteen green doors arrayed to the right, a pitted but generous parking lot. The building was sad gray stucco with a matching warped roof. If the east end of Hollywood ever really got renewed, the value was the lot. The obvious replacement, yet another strip mall.

  Milo was facing away and didn’t notice me. His clothes were rumpled, his hair ragged. Petra stood next to him, slim, elegant, black wedge cut swept back from a finely molded ivory face. She looked like a socialite hanging with the uncle who’d blown his inheritance.

  She waved. He turned and said, “As promised, insane.”

  By ten fifty, I was looking at the prone form of Chet Corvin, facedown on a pink, blood-soaked polyester carpet.

  * * *

  —

  For a hot-sheet Hollywood motel, not a bad room. Management here utilized something minty-fresh to disinfect. The fragrance failed to compete with the copper of fresh blood and the sulfurous emissions from relaxed bowels.

  Walls covered in flesh-colored vinyl were freckled with red halfway up and to the right of the corpse. A royal-blue velveteen spread that looked cheap but new lay smoothly, neatly atop the queen-sized bed. A pay-by-the-minute vibrating gizmo, complete with credit card reader, gave off a chromium glare.

  The thirty-inch flat-screen facing the bed was tuned to a pay-per-view menu. Adult Entertainment. Men’s clothing was draped over a chair, calfskin loafers lined up neatly, each stuffed with a precisely rolled argyle sock. Chet Corvin wore nothing but boxer shorts, now soiled, as were his thighs. His bare back was broad and hairless, bulky muscles padded with fat. One hand was concealed under his torso. The nails of the other were manicured and glossy.

  Two ruby-black holes formed a neat colon on the back of his neck, visible in the thin strands just above the hairline. One wound placed precisely above the other.

  I said, “Skillful shooting.”

  Milo nodded. “C.I. says the first woulda likely put him right down—straight to the brain stem. After that, the shooter could take time lining up the second.”

  “Maybe a statement,” I said.

  Petra said, “Such as?”

  “I’m proud of my work.”

  Both of them frowned.

  My gaze shifted to the wood-aping plastic nightstand bolted to the wall left of the bed. A man’s alligator-skin wallet sat next to two water glasses and a bottle of Chardonnay. Sonoma Valley, Russian River, three years old. A label that looked high-end but I’m no expert.

  I said, “Date night?”

  Milo said, “Heavy smell of perfume in the lav says some kind of party. Petra informs me it’s Armani, probably sprayed—aqua what?”

  “Acqua di Gioia,” she said. “I sometimes use it myself.” Smiling. “When I need to wake Eric up.”

  I said, “Expensive?”

  “I get mine at the outlets but even with that, not cheap.”

  Milo said, “Rounding out the picture, we’ve also got some longish brunette hairs that aren’t Chet’s on the bathroom counter. The kid at the front desk claims the room was cleaned a few hours before Corvin checked in at eight eleven, no one else used it in the interim, hopefully he’s being straight and we’re not talking leftover debris.”

  “I think he is, nice kid,” said Petra. “Goes to college during the day, just started working here. We’re not talking some street-smart compulsive liar.” To me: “Anything else occur to you?”

  I said, “Corvin drove a Range Rover. Didn’t see it out front.”

  “Wasn’t here. We’ll check local CCTV, see if we can pick it up.”

  Milo said, “No video here except behind the desk, good shot of Corvin checking in. He looks relaxed. Used his real name, paid with a company credit card.”

  I said, “Someone else who was proud of himself.”

  “Fits with what we’ve seen of ol’ Chet.” To Petra: “Like I told you, guy was a blowhard.”

  I said, “Shot dead thirty-eight minutes after he got here. He check in alone?”

  “No one else on the video,” said Milo. “Whether his amusement for the evening was waiting in the car or she arrived separately is impossible to know at this point. The setup is everyone pulls up to their own door and for obvious reasons there are no cameras in the lot except for one at the far end with a view of the rear alley.”

  Petra said, “Monitoring the dumpsters, God forbid someone should hijack the trash.”

  I said, “His clothes are off and most of the wine is gone but the bed doesn’t look as if it’s been used.”

  Milo said, “We’re figuring they were warming up and it never got to the next stage.”

  “Is that wallet full?”

  Petra said, “Three hundred and some change, plus all his credit cards. Pictures of his kids, too. But not his wife.”

  “No surprise,” said Milo. “Like I said, disharmony ruled his roost.”

  I said, “So not a robbery.”

  Petra said, “Unless the Rover was the target.”

  “Take the car and leave all this money? Line up those bullet holes and clean up the casings? Looks more like an execution
.”

  She shrugged. “In view of the body in his den, you could be right. But the car was taken.”

  Milo said, “Maybe as a bonus—spot the keys, book.”

  “So how did the murderer get here?”

  Silence.

  I said, “Are you looking at the woman as a suspect?”

  Petra said, “Could be. Or she and Corvin got invaded, he got shot, she escaped.” Frowning. “Or she didn’t. If I find out a female called it in, she gets lower priority as a suspect.”

  “No 911 tape?”

  “No, it came to us on the non-emergency line as a nonspecified 415. We’ve got civilians working the desk, I’ll talk to whoever took the call. The body was warm when patrol got here so whoever it was called pretty soon after.”

  I said, “Not using 911 could’ve theoretically slowed the process and given the caller time to gain some distance from the scene. That could fit with Corvin’s companion escaping but not wanting to get involved.”

  Milo said, “That, long hair, perfume, this neighborhood, a lady of the night is a decent bet. Easy to see why she wouldn’t wanna be involved.”

  I said, “A Hollywood hooker using Armani?”

  Petra said, “You’d be surprised, Alex. I’ve seen girls come into the jail soaked in really good stuff.”

  “The wine doesn’t look cheap, either.”

  “You know it?”

  “Nope, but Russian River’s a prime Chardonnay region.”

  Milo said, “See why he’s so useful?” He peered at the label, ran a search on his phone, whistled. “That particular year, seventy-nine bucks a bottle.”

  I said, “So maybe it wasn’t a commercial transaction.”

  Petra said, “A tryst with a girlfriend? He’s got an expense account and platinum cards and brings her here?”

  I pointed to the porn menu. “A little bit of sleaze to spice things up?”

  Milo grinned. “There’s a psychological insight…yeah, why not.”

  Petra’s slim fingers drummed her forearm. “Slumming for fun? Okay, I can see that.”

  She looked at the body. “Talk about a party with an unhappy ending. We’ll do a neighborhood canvass, try to find out if anyone remembers seeing him with a female.”