by Paul Charles
“It was around the time she attacked that poor girl up outside the Town Hall,” Liz continued, still sounding a little hesitant. “I think it was about two or three days after she was let off. That would make it the end of March or early April. It’s in my desk log. So she comes in, asks to see Officer Scott. I say I need to know why she wants to see him, you know, for my log. She says, ‘Fuck that, do you know who I am?’ She thought she’d got swagger. You know, rocking back and forth as she spoke, pointing the horn fingers, the sign of the devil, on you. Giving it lots of major attitude, but designer attitude...”
“I know exactly what you mean, Liz,” Grace said, nodding at her to move on with her information.
“So, I’m not having any of it. She’s with this other girl, Sophia Lawrence; her dad works up at Livingston’s.”
Kennedy and Grace both froze and stared at each other. If there had been a soundtrack running it, would have gone Dang de Dang Dang at that point.
“Anyway, Sophia is saying, ‘Let’s split.’ She was putting on more front than Walmart, but you can tell inside she’s crying for her mommy. Florence won’t budge. She was swearing like a trooper and demanding this and demanding that and saying, ‘Do you realise who I am?’”
“Did she get physically aggressive or violent towards you?” Kennedy asked.
“She was coming over all tough, but I could have handled both of them with one hand tied behind my back.”
“And that’s a fact,” Grace told Kennedy.
“Asher was getting cruder and bluer by the second,” Liz continued, “saying what she and her friend could do to me and Officer Scott. Eventually Officer Scott came out, figured it was nothing more than a bit of trouble-making and said, ‘Okay, Miss Asher, if you need to speak to me, can you please make sure your lawyer is present. Now you both please get out of here before you’re arrested for disturbing the peace,’ and with that he winked at me and strode out of the station house. The girls giggled and swooned a bit, swore at me and then ran out.”
“Did they chase after Officer Scott?” Kennedy asked.
“Don’t know. I couldn’t see, and then I got distracted by something else.”
***
“That meeting wasn’t in the Florence Asher case file,” Kennedy offered as they followed Liz from the interview room. He hung back just enough so she wouldn’t hear them.
“It didn’t need to be,” Grace said, a bit defensively. “It wasn’t part of the case, and the visit was logged in Liz’s desk file.”
By the time they caught up with Liz in the reception area, she had checked her log. The meeting between Officer Steve Scott and Miss Florence Asher took place, or more importantly, didn’t take place, on April 3rd, ten days before he was found face down in the creek.
“I think we need to talk to Florence Asher,” Grace Scott said as she and Kennedy walked towards her patrol car.
“I think we really need to speak to Sophia Lawrence first,” Kennedy replied. “Do you know where she lives?”
“Yeah, they’re in that real nice colonial style house up on Main Street.”
“What does her dad do at Livingston’s?” Kennedy continued.
“He’s an accountant.”
Five minutes and several very beautiful and colourful historical houses later, they pulled up outside the Lawrence house.
“I think you’ll get a lot more from her than I will. You should go in alone.”
“You’re probably right, but we need to do this the right way. What I suggest is you sit with her mother as far away as possible from the girl, but always keep us in view, and then if anything comes out of it, we can rightfully say that a female police officer and a guardian were both present at the interview.”
The mother, who looked too old to be Sophia’s mother, was nervous of the police visit, yet she was friendly, openly concerned, and cooperative.
Grace and Mrs Lawrence went through to the other end of the large, open-plan kitchen cum dining cum lounge area to make tea while Sophia and Kennedy made themselves comfortable in the television section of the room where Sophia had been dallying when they’d arrived. She’d offered to turn it off, but Kennedy suggested they merely turn it down a bit.
“Sophia, do you know why we’re here to talk to you?”
‘That’s a funny accent? Are you Scottish? My friend Lolly, whose parents are divorced… well, her mother has a new boyfriend and he’s Scottish. He likes to drink.”
“Nope, I’m not Scottish, but it is a common mistake. I’m from Northern Ireland.”
“Oh, where U2 come from?”
“No, that would be the other side of the border. They’re from Dublin. Van Morrison is from Northern Ireland,” Kennedy offered hopefully.
“Who?”
“Ah, I think he’d be to your mum and dad what U2 are to you.”
“What are you talking about!” Sophia whined loudly. “U2 are sooooooo yesterday. Jay Z and Beyoncé, now they’re truly wicked.”
Kennedy was still having trouble hearing street slang from a middle-class white girl, in her parents’ beautiful house, but he kept his own counsel.
“Sophia,” Kennedy began again, realising that trying to talk her language would not work, “I’ve something very serious I need to talk to you about...”
She froze.
“Oh shit, nothing’s happened to my dad, has it?” she said with such genuine concern and fondness that Kennedy was heartened.
“Goodness, no; nothing like that, Sophia,” Kennedy said compassionately. “No, what I need to talk to you about is the evening you and Florence Asher visited the Half Moon Bay police station on Kelly Street.”
“Yeah, that was just a bit of fun,” she said, the wind back in her sails of bravado again. “Well, it started off as a bit of fun.”
Sophia signalled the end of each of her sentences by raising her voice slightly and making it sound like a question. He could hear a muttering from the TV, and he could hear a conversation from Sophia’s mother and Grace, but he could not make any of it out. Sophia should feel she could enjoy the privacy both he and Grace felt she would need. Even so, she dropped to a whisper for her shocker statement:
“Ever since the time, you know, where she beat up that girl over the boy?”
Kennedy nodded that he knew exactly what she was referring to.
“Well, Flo had the hots for,” and here she paused to mime the words, Officer Scott. “She thought he was just... just awesome.”
When Kennedy didn’t make any observation, she obviously thought she was on safe ground, because she continued, “Well, he was hot, wasn’t he? Flo has been having sex for longer than any of us, and she’s mad for it. My other best friend, Carrie - she lives two houses up - she says she thinks Flo is a nymphomaniac.” Sophia broke into a large knowing smile.
“She was after everyone,” she continued, and then she dropped to yet another conspiratorial whisper. “I know three teachers she’s been with, and only two are male.”
“And Officer Steve Scott?”
Pointing her right hand in the shape of a gun at Kennedy, she pulled the trigger twice and let the hammer of her thumb fall, saying in time to the beat of her thumb, “Bang! Bang! He shot her down. Man, did he ever shoot her down.”
“Was this outside the police station?”
“Yes, first off, Miss ‘I’ve got so much long black healthy hair I don’t know what to do with it’ wouldn’t let us in to see…,” and then she paused to mime the word Steve again. “Eventually he came out, and then we didn’t want to make it too obvious. I mean, he was married and all, so we hung around the reception winding up Miss Long Black Hair again, then we split. Steve was still out in the parking lot. We wandered over, you know full of attitude, giving it loads, like you do, but Steve’s not biting. Flo takes the lead. She says, ‘You’re fit, I’m fit, are you fit for it?’ He blanks her; she says something about him going to the gym. He hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. It’s just downright sad how quickly men
go off when they get married. Are you married?”
“No,” Kennedy replied.
“Divorced?”
“No,” Kennedy replied, desperate to get back to the main topic.
“Gay, are you gay? That’s cool. Flo says gay men are very fit.”
“No to that one too.”
“At least you didn’t say, ‘But some of my best friends are.’ I can’t stand that ‘Look how liberal I am’ shit.”
She paused to look over at Grace and her mum again. Good. Kennedy thought, she’s going to get back to Flo and Steve.
“Are you a widow hag? You know, you like them in mourning?”
“No,” Kennedy hissed. “For goodness sake, her husband’s only dead.”
“I didn’t mean Officer Scott’s wife, I meant generally, but you meant her, didn’t you? Awesome. That shows you’re thinking about her. What the hell is it about her? What exactly is it that she’s got that you’re all after?”
“How do you mean?” Kennedy replied evenly, hoping they might return to the subject at hand.
“Well, Flo eventually came out and said it to Steve. She said, ‘We’ll blow you in the back of your car if you want.’ I mean, she didn’t actually mean ‘we’ as in me and her. She just said it that way so if he didn’t go for it, she could save face. I mean, I would never ever do that, never,” she said, shuddering. “Ask my boyfriend.”
Kennedy nodded that he accepted that it wasn’t something Sophia would ever do.
“So what did officer Scott say?” Kennedy whispered.
“His actual words were, ‘I see what you’re after. Let me tell you something. I have the greatest wife in the world. She is an absolute goddess. And I am so in love with her it’s a daily joy to me. You’re nothing more than a teeny-bopper, and you insult my wife by coming on to me. If you don’t crawl back under the rock you came from, I’m going to arrest you for impersonating a member of the female species!’ With that he slammed his car door closed and drove off.”
“What did Florence do?”
“She ran after the patrol car shouting, ‘Jerk,’ ‘Boring old fart,’ and screaming curses like you’ve never heard. Like I’d never repeat,” she added demurely as her mother and Grace Scott walked across with tea, coffee, and cookies for all of them.
Before Officer Grace Scott and Inspector Christy Kennedy had left the Lawrence household, Mrs Lawrence declared that her daughter was banned from ever seeing or fraternising with “that Asher tramp” again. If she ever caught Sophia with Florence again, her daughter would be grounded forever, or at least until the arrival of her daughter’s first-born.
“But mum, if I’m grounded, I’ll never ever meet a boy, and so there never ever will be a first-born.”
“Exactly,” her mother replied firmly.
***
“She said he said that?” Grace cried, barely managing to get the words out.
They were a few streets away from the Lawrence house, and Kennedy was recalling what Sophia Lawrence had told him in the course of the interview. Grace had been so overcome with raw emotion she had to pull over.
“I’m good, Inspector,” she eventually managed to say through her sobbing. “Tell me again, please, exactly what Steve said.”
“He said, ‘Let me tell you something. I have the greatest wife in the world and she is an absolute goddess. And I am so in love with her it’s a daily joy to me. You’re nothing more than a teeny-bopper and you insult my wife by coming on to me. If you don’t crawl back under your rock this very moment I’ve going to arrest you for impersonating a member of the female species!’”
She leaned over and hugged Kennedy and whispered, “Thank you. Thank you, thank you, Inspector, that means so much to me. I mean, I believed he was faithful to me as I was to him, but when I hear someone tried to tempt him away and he, he... he just didn’t.”
She broke down and started to cry again.
“This is stupid. But... I’m just so happy,” she began, composing herself again, “Look, Inspector, I think I would like to take some time out to be by myself ... by... myself with my thoughts about Steve. I need some time for him,” she said, struggling to find some words to capture what was in her heart. Eventually she said it very succinctly, “I’d like to take some time out to be with my sweetheart.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
So tell me this, Inspector,” Mactoo announced, as they cruised along Highway 1, forty minutes later, “how many bullets are there in the cylinder of a six shooter?”
“That’s obviously a trick question, but in the spirit of cooperation, I’ll still go with six.”
“Some of the time, but not all of the time, Christopher. If we’re talking about a true gunslinger, he would only use five. And do you know what he would save the spare chamber for?”
“I’m still biting: what would he save the spare chamber for?” Kennedy asked, now slightly regretting having to have a driver take him up to the Asher property.
“He saved it for a twenty dollar bill,” Mactoo continued, happy to have a new audience for his material, “and the twenty dollars was there so if the gunslinger should lose the draw and meet his maker, there would be twenty dollars for liquor at his funeral to make sure he got a good send-off.”
“I wonder,” Kennedy said after a few moments consideration, “how many times sacrificing that sixth bullet would have cost a gunslinger his life?”
“Now that is a good question, Inspector. Let me get back to you on that one,” Mactoo mused, looking as if he’d have taken a puff on his pipe at that point, were one available. “In the meantime, here’s the Triple W Ranch.”
The WWW Ranch was in fact named after the worldwide web and was run on money rather than ingenuity. It had more of the feel of a corporation than a farm. Quickly checking all the vehicles in sight, Kennedy couldn’t find one that was as much a crock as Green Hat’s pick-up that had nearly run him over. All these vehicles were pristine, aqua in colour, with the WWW Ranch logo displayed in white on the doors.
As Kennedy went up to the front door of the grand, white wooden house, he regretted that Grace wasn’t with him. The house, which looked like it was repainted at least once a week, was like the setting for a Ralph Lauren photo-shoot. It was set into a big bank of trees, and Kennedy figured the rooms at the back were probably very dark. He much preferred Chief O’Donohue’s less cultivated landscape and house.
Mactoo rang the doorbell. The door was opened by a uniformed maid who looked as if she’d come straight from duty at the Ritz Carlton a little further up the coast.
“We’ve come to see Mr Asher,” Mactoo announced.
“He’s up in San Francisco today,” the maid answered. She was about to say something else when she was interrupted by another voice coming up behind her.
“I’ll deal with this, Ellie,” the girl said dismissively as she swaggered up to the two police officers, literally shooing the maid away. “I haven’t seen you around before,” she continued, looking directly at Kennedy.
“Miss Asher, this is Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy, who is helping us on one of our current investigations,” Mactoo announced.
“And which particular investigation would that be?”
“We’re looking into the death of Officer Steve Scott,” Kennedy said, and he was just about to add, “but we’ll come back when your parents are here,” when she said, “I thought that investigation was all over. Anyway, it had nothing to do with me. I’d a rave here that night. It was an awesome party. There must have been over a hundred people here. I got so out-of-it, totally hammered and off of my face. We wrecked the place. My dad grounded me for a day. He said the clean-up and repair work cost him $50,000.”
As Kennedy considered how bizarre this statement was in light of his unobtrusive introduction, he studied the girl. She was really well developed for a sixteen-year-old. She wore skin-tight jeans, which looked as if they’d been pulled on over a red one-piece bathing suit. Her ensemble left absolutely nothing to the
imagination, which Kennedy realised was her desired effect. The “putting it all on a plate” jailbait effect had never done anything for Kennedy, but he noticed she was most certainly ringing some of Mactoo’s bells. Her make-up was generously applied, and she probably visited her hairdresser once a day. The overall effect was picturesque but soulless.
Kennedy experienced a shudder of extreme sadness when he wondered what the wee girl beneath all the make-up and swagger was really like. She was trying too hard to either please her dad or, perhaps for her dad, trying to emulate her mother.
“We need to examine the bank of the creek on your property, please?” Knowing he couldn’t get permission from a minor, Kennedy added, “Who’s in charge of the ranch in your father’s absence?”
“I believe you’ll find you need a warrant for that, Mr Kennedy,” she replied cockily, proving she wasn’t as immature as Kennedy had assessed.
“Nonetheless, we need to officially ask whoever is in charge,” Mactoo said, allowing his brain to reactivate again, “and then, if we’re turned down, we have to go to the courts and seek a search warrant.”
“Gee, I’d really like to help you,” she said in her best Marilyn Monroe whisper, “but if I let you on the property, my dad would go totally ape shit with me and probably ground me for... oh... maybe as much as ten minutes.”
She laughed loudly at her own attempt at humour.
“Florence, we’ll be back, don’t you worry, and I can personally see you getting grounded for ever,” Mactoo said in as serious a tone as Kennedy had ever heard from him.
“Yeah, bring it on, big boy, but I’ve got over one hundred witnesses who will cover for me,” she snarled as she slammed the door in their faces.
“Mactoo, can we drive around, pretending to find our way off the ranch. Green Hat and his mate’s beat-up truck must be around here somewhere.”
“No, Inspector, we need to do this very officially and by the book. We need to be seen to be leaving here the very second we were refused permission. The chief will never forgive me if I mess this up.” Then he added as an afterthought, “And Grace will never forgive you.”