I held up the card he’d given me. “And for women who look like they’ve been in a fight…”
“Yes. I’m sorry if I offended you earlier. It’s just…well, it was just more likely than not.”
He hadn’t needed to apologize. I was the one with the hair trigger. “No, it’s good to know. Do you mind if I show you a picture?”
“Go ahead.”
I took my phone out of my pocket, pulled up Krystal’s photo, and showed it to him. “Have you seen her in here before?”
Rick looked at the photo for a moment and then got a look on his face like he was going to be sick. “She’s…she’s dead, isn’t she?” His voice was a whisper.
“Yeah. Sorry, I probably should have said that up front.”
“My god.”
“Did you know her?”
Rick put a hand on the counter to steady himself. If he passed out on me I didn’t know what I was going to do. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never actually seen a dead person before.”
“I’ve seen lots of them.” I didn’t tell him that seeing Krystal’s face again just now had made me feel like I’d been punched in the stomach.
“Um…yeah,” he said. He stared at the picture. “What happened to her?”
“She was murdered. Someone shot her.”
“Oh, god.”
“So I’m trying to run down some leads, and this was one of them. What can you tell me about her?”
Rick thought about that for a moment. “She came in here…maybe every three weeks. Maybe more than that, when she thought she could get away with it. All our staff are volunteers so we don’t work long shifts. Just a couple hours at a time. And it’s not like they’re taking down the name and social security number of everyone who stops by. We don’t really have records.”
“Sure. But you saw her in here more than once?”
“Oh, yeah. She always took a box of groceries and left.”
“You referred her to the soup kitchen on Lemon?”
“Of course, but we can’t make people go there, and I’m not going to turn anybody away if they need help. Hungry people need food. They don’t need to have a door shut on them.”
“True.”
“I probably gave her one of every card we have, to be honest.” He rummaged around under the counter for a moment and came up with another half dozen or so business cards. I watched as he laid them out in front of me like he was dealing a hand of poker. “Domestic violence, the women’s crisis center, Planned Parenthood, urgent care…”
I raised a hand to stop him. “Urgent care? Was she hurt?”
“Once,” he said. He frowned. “Maybe six months ago? She said she fell down, but I’ve seen those kind of marks before. She’d been beaten.” He paused. “Come to think of it, that was the day she asked about the drug treatment program.” He tapped another one of the business cards. “She’d never actually asked for anything specific before.”
“Do you know if she ever went?”
“No. She never mentioned it again and we don’t ask. We’re not supposed to play amateur therapist, although I want to sometimes.” He sighed. “I’d really hoped she was going to make it. She seemed nice. She was just a lost soul.”
Krystal had been a lost soul. She’d gone looking for someone to find her. Unfortunately, she’d chosen me. I’d failed her. I decided not to tell Rick any of that. “Do you mind if I keep these?” I held up the cards.
“Sure.” He nodded at me. “I’m glad you’re a cop again. The city is better off for it. I hope you catch whoever did this.”
I decided Rick didn’t need to know I wasn’t actually a cop, either. That would raise more questions than it would be worth. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Anything else I can help you with?”
I looked around. “Honestly, I’d say you’re doing pretty well here. Keep passing out those cards. You never know when somebody will use one.”
“Sure thing, Detective.”
“I’m not a…” the urge to correct him was automatic, but I held it back. “Thanks, Rick. I’ll see you around.”
Chapter 9
I was curious how the official investigation into Krystal’s murder was going, but if I called Fulton or Harrison I knew that they wouldn’t tell me anything, and the minute either of them hung up the phone they’d go tell Dan about it. Dan was a good boss, and a fair one, but if anyone got caught colluding with me he was going to come down hard on them. That also held true for Sarah, of course, but he’d already put her on a desk. Benching a detective due to psychological issues was a serious step. It didn’t mean the end of her career, but it wasn’t something anyone wanted in their file.
It had only been a day since I’d spoken to Sarah, though, and I’d given her a big job to do. I had no idea how many unsolved murders there had been in San Diego or exactly what time frame we were dealing with. They’d have had to been spread out over a long period of time, though. Three murders in a week, or even in a month, would have raised some eyebrows. Three in a year might go by without anyone making a connection between them. Draw the time frame out longer than that and unless there was something singular about them, like the smile the Laughing Man cut into his victims’ faces, and it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I spent a minute sitting in my car looking through the business cards Rick had given me. The one for the urgent care clinic he’d referred her to stood out. That had been six months ago, and whatever had happened to her was probably unrelated to her murder. Probably. I couldn’t rule it out, though, and it wasn’t far from where I was now. Given that I really had nothing better to do, there was no reason not to check it out. I put the Mustang in gear and headed out.
Fifteen minutes later I was stepping into the clinic’s waiting room. The place was a few years past its prime; the once-padded chairs were now thin and worn, and a fresh coat of paint on the walls would have worked wonders on the interior. There was a stain on one of them that I recognized as dried blood that hadn’t been cleaned up well. I wondered how old that was and decided I’d rather not know.
A receptionist sat behind a glass partition like the ones they use at gas stations that are open all night so the clerks don’t get robbed. She was middle-aged and wore a brightly-colored pink headscarf that concealed her hair. If she had any hair, that was. I was guessing cancer, but that isn’t really a question you open conversations with.
She looked up at me as I approached and hit a switch so she could talk through a speaker. “I can tell you right now it’s too early to get those out,” she said. “You need at least another week, and stop picking at them.”
For a moment I was baffled, but then I realized she was talking about my stitches. I hadn’t been picking at them. Well, I had, but how did she know that? “I’m not here for that,” I said, pointing at my face. How many times was I going to have to say that in the next week or so? “I have a few questions about someone who was a patient here about six months ago.”
She shook her head. “I can’t give you any information about other patients.”
I brought up Krystal’s photo on my phone and showed it to her through the partition. “Well, she’s dead now,” I said, “so I’d think HIPAA wouldn’t apply here.” I had no idea if that was true or not, but maybe it would work.
“I still couldn’t tell you anything,” she said. She couldn’t help but look at the photo. She shook her head. “I’ve never seen her before, though.”
“She would have been here around six months ago. You sure?”
“We have two other receptionists,” she said. “Either one of them might have seen her. Or maybe they didn’t. We can’t talk about patients, though.”
I put the phone down and looked past the receptionist. There was a large, open area visible with a number of machines whose purpose was unknown to me. Diagnostic equipment, maybe. I could see some sections were blocked off with curtains; those probably had patients in them. I didn’t see anyone else back
there. “Maybe one of the doctors would recognize her?”
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” She crossed her arms in front of her and gave me a stern look.
I sighed. There was a time I’d have handled this situation differently, but I was really trying to give people the impression I wasn’t an unstable psychotic with a propensity toward violence. “I’m sorry,” I said. I held up the phone again. “Take another look. You see her?”
Her eyes avoided the phone now. Nobody liked looking at the dead. “Yes.”
“She was a police informant,” I said. “I’m investigating her murder, but I don’t exactly have a lot of leads. But I do know she was in here. She’d been attacked and needed help. Six months ago, more or less. All I need to know is if she said anything about what happened.”
The receptionist looked skeptical. “You’re a cop? You don’t look like a cop.”
Normally I hated being recognized, but this was one of those rare cases where it would have come in handy. “I'm Nevada James. SDPD, Homicide Division. Formerly.” I said that last word more quietly than the others.
“Nevada James?” She thought that over. “That does sound familiar.”
“It’s not exactly a common name. But here’s one I bet you know. You remember the Laughing Man?” That was a name everyone in San Diego knew.
“Of course.” Her eyes widened and she looked around as if she was expecting to see him here. “My god, is he back?”
Somehow I doubted the Laughing Man was in the waiting room behind me. “No,” I said. “I was the detective whose name was in the news back then. That’s why you’ve heard it before. I was the one who…” I hesitated. This story didn’t have the ending I’d have liked it to. “The one who didn’t catch him and wound up in the hospital because she went kind of crazy.”
She looked at me for a long moment. “Okay,” she said. “But I still don’t know what to tell you. I guess I could look her up and see if she was ever treated here.”
I doubted Krystal had given them her real name, but it couldn’t hurt to check. I told her. The receptionist worked on her computer for a moment and then shook her head. “No.”
I looked back at the room behind her. “Do you mind taking my phone around there? Show it to the doctors who are here now and ask if they know who she is?”
She looked like I’d just asked her to name the capital city of Azerbaijan, but after a moment she slid open the glass partition and took my phone. She stood up and went into the back, quickly moving out of my sight. I looked around the waiting room. I expected curious looks from the other patients, but none of them appeared to have even noticed me. I supposed they had other things to worry about. Or maybe they preferred not to notice. Maybe in this neighborhood that was a safer way to go.
The receptionist came back after about five minutes with a white-coated doctor in tow. She handed my phone back to me. “Thanks,” I said.
The doctor was tall and looked vaguely of Middle-Eastern origin. I was no expert. He had salt-and-pepper hair and his eyes looked ten years older than the rest of his body. “You’re Nevada James?” he asked.
“Yes. Did you treat Krystal?”
“Her name wasn’t Krystal,” he said, “but we get any number of people who don’t use their real names here. Usually it’s the ones who are going to leave without paying.”
“Yeah. She wouldn’t have had much money. What was she here for?”
“How did she die?” the doctor asked.
I blinked. Didn’t he know it was rude to answer a question with a question? “She was shot,” I said. “I’m looking for whoever did it.”
The doctor nodded. “It’s not really a surprise. She was here. Probably six months ago. I couldn’t give you the date.”
“What was going on?”
“She’d been assaulted. Beaten up, I suppose. It wasn’t all that serious. It was just very bloody.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
He sighed and looked out at the waiting room. “Well, I guess there’s no reason not to tell you now,” he said. “She was evasive, but what I got out of her was that she’d gone to buy drugs and it didn’t work out so well for her.”
I stared at him. “And she just…she volunteered that information to you?”
“Not at first,” he said. “Everybody lies at first. But she wanted to know if I could give her anything for the withdrawal she was in. She’d been counting on that fix to make the sickness go away. I wouldn’t say she meant to tell me much of anything, but she was…I don’t know what the kids say. Tweaking pretty hard?”
“I have no idea what the kids say,” I said. “I get the meaning, anyway.”
“Her mouth was going a hundred miles an hour. We don’t stock anything like that here and honestly I don’t know what the treatment for methamphetamine withdrawal is, anyway. I gave her the address of a drug treatment clinic. It’s over on…” his brow creased as he thought. “I don’t know what street it’s on, actually. We had a card.” He looked at the receptionist. “Do we have any of those cards?”
I went into my pocket and took out the cards Rick had given me at the food bank. “This one?” I asked, holding one up.
He leaned forward and squinted so he could read it. “That’s the one.”
“Do you know if she went?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “Maybe. She was pretty desperate, but most people in that kind of need are.”
I nodded. I knew something about it. Drugs had never been my thing, but there was a time I’d needed alcohol every few hours. If I didn’t get it I’d start shaking so badly I was barely functional. “Okay,” I said. “One other thing. I doubt it’s related to whoever killed her, but I’m curious. Do you have any idea who beat her up?”
“None.” He shook his head. “Honestly, I’m not sure she even knew the man.”
“You’re sure it was a man, though?”
“Oh, yes. She kept saying he, anyway.”
I put my phone and the business cards away. “I think that’s all I need,” I said. “Thanks for the help.” I wasn’t sure how helpful any of that had really been, but it was a nice thing to say to people. I’d been trying to work on my politeness.
“It’s not a problem,” the doctor said. “I hope you find whoever killed her. She seemed nice enough.” He gave me a curious look. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“You can ask,” I said. “I can always just tell you to fuck off if I don’t like the question.”
He blinked. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Go ahead.”
He bit his lip. “It’s about the Laughing Man…” My heart froze and I waited for him to continue. “The thing is, I never heard of a serial killer just stopping. You always hear that it’s something they have to do, or maybe they need to do. But the fight with you…”
“It takes two people to have a fight,” I said. “I was out of my league. It was a straight beating.”
“Okay,” he said. “I know you were in the hospital for a while. But my question is…well, he did stop. After you were out of the picture he stopped. Why do you think that is?”
There was a time I’d have had an easy answer for that question. That for the Laughing Man, it had never been about compulsion. His war with me had just been a fantastic game. Once he’d beaten me he had nobody else to play with.
But I’d been back on my feet for a while now. He’d told me a year ago that he wanted to play again. But after all this time, he still hadn’t started the game. I had no idea why.
And that terrified me.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “But if you ever figure it out, do me a favor and let me know.”
Chapter 10
I lasted all of three minutes at the drug treatment facility Krystal may or may not have gone to for help before two burly security guards showed me the door. I was told in no uncertain terms not to come back. My legendary charisma had failed me.
&nb
sp; I decided to try the women’s crisis center next. The business card I had told me its name was Second Star and gave an address near Balboa Park. I found it on the second floor of an office complex, which seemed like a strange location for a crisis center, but it seemed I knew very little about these kinds of things. I’d thought food banks were grocery stores where you didn’t have to pay for anything, after all. How much sense had that made? If that had actually been true, why didn’t everyone shop there?
Second Star had a small waiting room with a receptionist sitting behind a long wooden desk. It looked like a standard office setup to me. Maybe they were going to tell me they didn’t do the counseling there, but sent people to some other facility, much like the food bank did with food. I guess I wouldn’t have been surprised.
The receptionist was a young blonde woman in her twenties. She smiled reflexively when she saw me enter, but her mouth dropped open when she took a closer look. “Oh, god,” she said, putting a hand to her mouth.
Once again I’d forgotten what my face looked like. “No,” I said, pointing at my stitches. “This is from an accident.” I frowned, realizing how that must sound to her. “I mean, I jumped through a window.” Somehow saying that never made it sound better. I needed to come up with a better line. “Oh, forget it. I’m fine.”
She tapped on her computer. “I can have someone for you to talk to in about…” she studied the monitor screen. “Ten minutes? Can you wait that long?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m not really doing anything. Let me start with you, though.”
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not a counselor. I’m not qualified to…”
“I don’t need counseling,” I said. Well, that was a lie. I certainly needed counseling. I didn’t need it here, though. “My name is Nevada James.”
Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries) Page 7