Outside the Wire

by Patricia Smiley

As soon as Dr. Dimetri removed Hootch from the crate, the cat stopped howling. He remained docile as the doctor looked inside his ears and mouth and poked at his stomach. After finding nothing suspicious, he kneaded the bump on Hootch’s neck.

  “Is he okay?” Davie said.

  He smiled. “It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just a microchip. It’s inserted under the skin and programmed with information to help return Hootch to his owner in case he gets lost.”

  She knew about microchips, but she’d never had a pet so the mechanics were unclear to her. “What sort of information?”

  The doctor pulled a small white instrument from a bank of drawers. “This is a universal scanner. It reads the chip’s radio frequencies. In a minute we’ll see which pet registry the owner used.”

  Dimetri swept the scanner over the cat’s neck. He frowned and repeated the maneuver a second time. Hootch froze, stiff and wild-eyed, staring into space like a zombie waiting for the apocalypse.

  “Something wrong?” Davie said.

  “I’m not sure. The chip usually lists a phone number for the pet recovery agency plus the owner’s personal identification number. This one looks different.” He held up the scanner so she could read the narrow display panel.

  He pointed to a series of numbers. “The first few digits might be the agency’s phone number, but the other information looks like gibberish. Maybe the chip is defective.”

  Davie studied the display. There were ten numbers. They weren’t separated by dashes but appeared to be a telephone number in the 310 area code. If so, the pet recovery agency was located somewhere on L.A.’s Westside. The other entry read: A 1 € > ? 2 ¥ $ * > €. Davie had no idea what it meant. In fact, she didn’t recognize several of the symbols in the sequence.

  Dr. Dimetri ran his hand over Hootch’s coat. “I would normally call the registry to let them know the cat is here and ask them to contact the owner, but since you said the man is dead—”

  “I’ll handle the notifications, but thanks for your help.”

  Davie wasn’t sure she could accurately transcribe the strange sequence into her notebook so she snapped a cell photo of the display panel while Dr. Dimetri guided Hootch inside the crate and escorted them out to the lobby. On the way, he grabbed a brush from a display of pet supplies and handed it to Davie.

  “Your boy has some mats. You should brush them out. He can groom himself, of course, but you don’t want him to swallow all that hair or you’ll be stepping on hairballs in the middle of the night.”

  She’d heard a million jokes about hairballs but had never actually seen one, nor did she want to. “Thanks. Where do I pay?”

  “The brush and the visit are on the house,” he said. “It’s our way of saying thanks for the work you do. Next time you bring him back, you pay.”

  He smiled again and shook her hand. She appreciated the gesture, but didn’t have the heart to tell him there would be no next time for her and Hootch. As soon as she located Zeke’s family, the cat was moving on.

  Back at the car, she strapped the crate into the back seatbelt and slid into the passenger side next to Vaughn.

  “What’s the verdict?” he said. “Is the cat out of lives?”

  She pulled a bottle of sanitizer from her pocket. “The lump was a microchip with some sort of code and the number to a pet recovery service. I’m going to call to see if Zeke filled out an application with actual information. If so, Hootch just gave us the first break in the case.”

  “Seriously?” His tone was skeptical. “So, what’s next?”

  She squirted a dab of sanitizer onto the palm of her hand and rubbed it in. “The lieutenant’s adjutant loves animals. Maybe she can babysit while we follow up on the lead.”

  “April Hayes?” His tone was skeptical. “She’s cool but what makes you think she’ll do it?”

  “Because she has a framed picture on her desk of her pug sitting on Santa’s lap.”

  Vaughn smiled. “Perfect.”

  Her partner maneuvered out of the parking garage and headed toward the station. Without Dr. Dimetri’s gentle touch, Hootch’s howling resumed until it reached a dangerous decibel level. The cat was still protesting his incarceration when Vaughn finally turned into the station’s driveway.

  Once Hayes had taken charge of Hootch and all his supplies, Davie hurried back to her desk, brushing cat hair off her black pants and rubbing the welts on her shoulder. She used her desk phone to punch in the telephone number for the pet recovery agency listed on the microchip.

  “Hello.” It was a woman’s voice. She sounded anxious. The woman hadn’t mentioned the name of the pet recovery agency as businesses usually do, so Davie checked the number to make sure she hadn’t misdialed.

  “This is Detective Richards from the Los Angeles Police Department. Who am I speaking to?”

  There was a moment of silence before the woman answered with a sob. “Shannon Woodrow. Is this about my father? He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  7

  It was technically the coroner’s job to notify a decedent’s next of kin if they lived outside the city of Los Angeles. Santa Monica was an upscale beach town that bordered L.A. but still a separate city. It was hair-splitting but nonetheless Davie made a courtesy call to let the coroner’s office know she and her partner were on their way to interview Zeke’s daughter. Twenty minutes later they parked the detective car at Shannon Woodrow’s condominium in the downtown area, three blocks from the palisades overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

  An elevator lifted them to her fourth-floor unit. A middle-aged Filipina in a colorful nurse’s uniform met them at the door with eyes that were swollen and red. The woman ushered them across travertine marble tiles into a living room bathed in light from two large windows flanking a gas fireplace. Soft blue paint on the walls made the space seem serene. The art was modern and the carefully placed sculptures on the fireplace mantel suggested Shannon Woodrow either had a gift for decorating or the money to pay someone who did.

  The nurse nodded toward the couch. “Please sit. I’ll get Miss Shannon.”

  Before the woman left the room, Vaughn said, “Mind if I look around?”

  Even during interviews with cooperative witnesses, detectives had to stay alert. Until they’d cleared the house, they didn’t know if anybody else was inside the residence or have any clue to their state of mind.

  The woman nodded her consent and disappeared down the hall. Davie walked toward an off-white chair that matched the couch, inhaling the aroma of roses in a vase on the coffee table. A moment later, Vaughn reappeared.

  “Dining room leads to the kitchen, but nobody’s in there.”

  “Take a look at that,” Davie said, pointing to an end table next to the couch.

  On it was a photograph of a bare-chested young man wearing olive green military fatigues and hugging an M-16 rifle. He was standing alone in a field, a skinny kid with a mop of dark hair and a cocky grin. Behind him was a mountain range, the peaks brushed by a swath of dark clouds.

  “You think it’s her old man?”

  “That’s my guess,” she said.

  The photo had been taken in Vietnam. Davie was sure of that. There had been a similar shot of her uncle Rob in a silver frame on the fireplace mantel at her parents’ old house. He wore those same military fatigues draped over his thin frame. A cigarette dangled from his lips as he grinned at the camera. Not long after the photo was taken, her uncle had been killed in the battle of Duc Lap, near the Cambodian border. Her brother Robbie had been named after him. The conflict ended long before she was born, but even after all these years, her mother and grandmother were still hollowed out by her uncle’s death.

  Davie heard sounds coming from the hallway. She saw a woman in her early thirties sitting in a wheelchair, rolling herself toward them. Hot-pink sweatpants could not hide her withered legs. Whatever had happened to her,
Davie guessed it hadn’t been recent. The nurse followed a discreet distance behind her.

  Shannon Woodrow’s skin was pale but her nose looked red and swollen from crying. Her facial features and the cloud of short dark hair confirmed that the man in the photo was her father. Shannon stopped the chair near the coffee table. The nurse set the brakes with her foot and walked toward the dining room. Vaughn leaned against the fireplace mantel as the afternoon sun blazed through the window.

  Shannon clenched a wilted tissue in her fist. “You told me on the phone my father had been shot, but I didn’t think to ask for details.”

  Davie flashed back to the gunshot wound in Zeke Woodrow’s head and felt a familiar sense of guilt. “His body was found in a parking garage at LAX. Was your father planning a trip?”

  Shannon shook her head. “He traveled a lot, but he always told me when he was going out of town.”

  Davie heard dishes rattling. She looked up to see the nurse carrying a silver tea set and a plate of cookies on a large tray. She set it on the coffee table, squeezed Shannon Woodrow’s hand, and left the room. Shannon poured tea into one of three dainty china cups and offered it to Davie.

  “It’s Darjeeling,” she said. “I think you’ll like it. It’s my favorite.”

  Davie usually didn’t drink anything offered by citizens because there was no guarantee it was safe to drink, but she accepted the cup anyway, because she appreciated what it must have taken Shannon Woodrow to serve tea and cookies after just learning of her father’s death.

  “When was the last time you heard from your dad?” Davie said.

  “He called me yesterday afternoon.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  Shannon gestured toward the plate of cookies on the tray but both Davie and Vaughn declined. “He had something to tell me, but he didn’t want to discuss it on the phone. He said he’d drop by later that night, but he never showed up. I kept texting and calling him but he didn’t respond. That’s when I knew something was wrong.”

  That explained why Shannon had seemed upset when she answered Davie’s call. She had been expecting bad news. No phone had been found on the victim’s body, which meant the killer had likely taken it from the scene.

  “Any guess what he wanted to talk about?”

  Shannon closed her eyes, searching for strength. “I thought he might tell me he planned to retire and how that would impact me.”

  Vaughn shifted his gaze toward Shannon. “Why would his retirement make a difference to you?”

  She poured herself a cup of tea. “I publish online newsletters for a couple of clients. It doesn’t pay much but I can work from home. My dad still insists on paying all my expenses and that adds up. Once he retires, he’ll be living on a fixed income. I love Lita, but I’ve told him a million times I don’t need a caregiver.”

  If Zeke had driven to the airport to take a flight somewhere, it seemed odd he hadn’t told his daughter. Maybe he intended to tell her when he dropped by the day before he died, but why not just tell her over the phone? Obviously there was something more consequential about the trip that he needed to explain face-to-face and Davie guessed it had nothing to do with his retirement.

  “He’s always been my protector,” Shannon continued, “even more so after this.” She pointed to her legs.

  Vaughn walked to the couch and sat on the arm. “What happened?”

  “A drunk driver crossed the centerline and hit me head on. I was in the hospital for months and in rehab for months more after that. When I got out, my father bought this condo for me so I could be close to my mom without actually having to live with her.”

  Davie noted the hint of dysfunctional family dynamics in her comment. “I assume your parents are divorced.”

  Shannon nodded and reached for the pot to refresh Davie’s tea, but she put it down when she saw that the cup was still full. “I stayed with Mom for a while after I got out of rehab, but she and her husband entertain a lot. My disability was difficult for them to manage.”

  “We went to your dad’s house in Topanga Canyon,” Vaughn said. “It was empty. Did he tell you he was moving?”

  “No, but that wasn’t really his home,” she said. “He leased the place from his employer. They kept the cost low because they wanted him to be close to a major airport. Even the furniture was rented.”

  A respectable time had passed, so Davie drank a courtesy sip of tea and set the cup on the coffee table. “Then where did he live?”

  “He split his time between the house in Topanga and a small cottage in Santa Barbara that’s been in the family for years. It’s in my name, but it was his place. I never lived there.”

  Davie had no idea the military was such a lucrative profession. She wondered how Zeke Woodrow had accumulated enough money to buy real estate in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, two of the priciest cities in Southern California. Even if the Santa Barbara house had been in the family for decades, real estate there had never been cheap.

  “When did your father retire from the military?” she said.

  “The Army forced him out when he turned sixty. That was three years ago. After that he went to work for a private sector business.”

  Davie leaned forward. “What’s the name of the company?”

  Shannon dabbed at her eyes with the tissue. “TidePool Security Consultants, but he never talked about his work. My impression was he didn’t like the job much. That’s why I thought he was going to retire. He loved Santa Barbara, and he loved his little cottage. He called it his hootch. That’s what soldiers in Vietnam called the bamboo shelters they made in the jungle.” Her face drained of color as if she’d just remembered the cat and felt guilty about that. “Where’s Hootch?”

  At least Davie knew how the cat had come by his name. “He’s fine. Someone is watching out for him at the police station. Would you like us to drop him by later?”

  She rested her head in her hands. “I’m so sorry but I have asthma. The doctor won’t allow me to have pets. Maybe my mom …”

  Davie didn’t want to compound Shannon’s grief by pressing her about Hootch’s future. She would have to figure that out later. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him a good home.” She pulled out her cell and held up the photo she’d taken at Dr. Dimetri’s clinic. “I found this on Hootch’s microchip. It looks like some sort of code. Do you have any idea what it means?”

  Shannon studied the symbols for a moment and shrugged. “I’ve never seen it before. Do you think it’s important?”

  Davie returned the cell to her jacket pocket. “Maybe. Did your father ever mention a man named Alden Brink?”

  “Not that I remember. Who is he?”

  Davie wondered if the Topanga house had been cleared out and sanitized in order to remove evidence of something. If her hunch was right, she had to prevent that from happening to Zeke’s other residence.

  “He’s the lawyer that managed the Topanga lease,” Davie said. “Does anybody else know about your dad’s Santa Barbara place?”

  Shannon sipped her tea. “We’ve owned it for years so my mother knows, but I doubt he told many other people. My father guarded his privacy.”

  Vaughn was staring at the cookies, probably wondering what kind of caffeine rush he could get from the chocolate chips.

  “Did you know any of your father’s associates?” Davie said.

  “He didn’t have many close friends, except for a few guys from his military days. My mother could probably tell you more about them. I’ll give you her phone number, but just so you know, she doesn’t like to talk about my father.”

  She sensed Shannon had a difficult relationship with her mother, possibly because of the divorce and her mother’s new husband. Davie hesitated to project her feelings onto Shannon but if that was the case, she could identify. Her mother had left her father for another man during a particularly dark ti
me in her dad’s life. Davie and her brother were just kids at the time, but they’d split their loyalties—she’d gone with Bear, her brother stayed with their mother. Even after all those years, Davie still wasn’t close to her mom or brother.

  “What about enemies?” Vaughn said. “Was there anybody who’d want to hurt your father?”

  Shannon stared at the tissue in her hand. “No.”

  “We’d like to have a look inside the Santa Barbara house,” Davie said. “Do you have a key?”

  “It’s in my bedroom. I’ll get it.”

  Vaughn went out to the car to get a Consent to Search form. After Shannon had signed it, she reached back to unlock the brakes of her wheelchair. Davie got up to help but Shannon brushed away her hand. She felt embarrassed by her misplaced assumptions. To change the subject, she gestured toward the photo on the end table.

  “Your dad was a handsome man,” she said, realizing immediately how inadequate those words were as tools of comfort.

  Grief had etched lines across Shannon Woodrow’s forehead. She spoke softly, almost to herself. “My father was a strong man, physically and mentally. He would expect no less of me.”

  Davie’s training and years as a cop had taught her to control outward displays of emotion. So she did the only thing she could do to comfort Shannon Woodrow in the only way she knew how.

  “I promise you,” she said, “I’ll find the person who murdered your father.” In her mind she added, however long it takes and wherever it leads. Right now, it led to Shannon Woodrow’s mother. Davie suspected that interview might not come with tea and cookies.

  8

  “What are you going to do now that Shannon can’t take the cat?” Vaughn said as he closed the car door.

  Davie steered into traffic. “I’ll just have to find him a home with somebody else.”

  “Just don’t pawn him off on Woodrow’s ex. From the sound of things Hootch would be better off at the pound.”

  “I’ll ask Hayes if she can take him home until I figure it out,” she said. “She and Hootch seem to have a groovy kind of love. For now, let’s drive to Beverly Hills and talk to Zeke’s ex.”