The 3rd Woman

by Jonathan Freedland

  ‘Well, the most obvious category is anything to do with kids. You prove your opponent failed to do enough to prevent or prosecute the killing of a child, you’re home. But it can be tricky: families don’t always like it, media accuse you of exploitation. Gets messy.’

  ‘So therefore?’ The candidate was smiling, the straight guy feeding the comic his cue.

  ‘So therefore,’ Bill went on, ‘I’d suggest we focus on crimes with adult, female victims. Women identify with such cases, obviously. That’s a given. But, if you pick the right victim – ideally one that stirs the same kind of outrage as the death of a child – then male voters get mobilized too. The polling is very consistent on this, has been for years.’

  ‘How do you mean, “the right victim”?’ It was the woman, Head of Media, who didn’t want Sigurdsson wearing red or canary yellow. Probable feminist. Bill would have to word this carefully.

  ‘I mean, it helps if the female victim is young and, so to speak, blameless.’

  ‘Blameless?’

  He could sense his questioner bristling. Get this wrong, and his misstep would be on Weibo before the meeting was over. He paused, trying to find the right form of words. Into the gap stepped Sigurdsson herself.

  ‘Yes, blameless. I learned the same lesson myself. If you’re prosecuting a man for the rape or murder of a woman, you need to know there are no flies on her. Not one. OK, these days not many people will actually come out and say, “Wearing that skirt? She was asking for trouble.”’

  ‘And those that would are members of the Republican congressional caucus.’ Bill’s joke lowered the temperature, not least because it was at his own expense: famously he had been the campaign manager for a Republican senate candidate who lost a highly winnable seat by suggesting certain types of rape were approved by the Bible.

  Once the laughter had faded, the candidate resumed. ‘OK. So not many will say that out loud, but on a jury there’ll be three or four thinking it. And not just men. You need there to be not so much as a shred of blame attached to the victim. But if you’re lucky enough to get that – to get a woman beyond criticism as your victim – well, that’s the jackpot.’

  ‘In the courtroom and at the ballot box,’ Doran added. ‘Both.’ He watched the staff take notes, keying the main points into their sleek, Lenovo tablets and phones. Norman was still nodding. ‘Then all you have to do is remind the voters who was the public official who dropped the ball. The politician who failed to find the villain. Not because the villain was hard to find. But because the establishment, politics-as-usual insider was weak—’

  ‘—and soft on crime,’ said Sigurdsson, completing his sentence.

  As the meeting broke up, Doran felt better than he had in weeks. The double act he had just staged with the candidate had not only shored up his position against the Stanford twentysomethings – proving that he was not a dinosaur just because his career spanned the age of the fax machine – it had also injected him with confidence that he and Sigurdsson would work well together after all. He listened happily as the staffers set to work on how best to saddle Richard Berger with an emotive and unsolved murder case, the tactic tacitly approved by Ted Norman, general of the army of footsoldier volunteers.

  In the post-meeting chatter, Doran was about to mention Abigail Webb by name but, better still, Sigurdsson got there first, repeating to members of the team the same instruction she had given him earlier: find out what they could, be sure the sex-game theory had been eliminated entirely, then begin discreet focus-grouping.

  And yet, while he started shutting files on his screen and packing up, two thoughts nagged. The first was a matter of tradecraft. Although he was glad they at least had a plan of sorts, his gut knew it was not enough. California was a Democratic state. A few ads smearing Berger were better than nothing, but they wouldn’t truly move the needle. For that, they still needed something larger, a cause. If they still had not divined such a driving purpose by now, one that might rally the people of the state to their flag, where on earth were they likely to get one?

  The second was guilt. Politics was a rough old trade, he knew that. Still, there were rules. Call him old-fashioned, but he happened to believe that dog doesn’t eat dog. The candidates were fair game: you’d say and do whatever it took to destroy them. But you never went after your fellow professional. And Leo Harris, he knew, had a connection with this Webb girl, via her sister. If they used the case, was that crossing the line? He wasn’t sure. But the fact that he even had to ask himself the question made him uncomfortable.

  Another question intruded, unbidden, related to what they had heard about Berger’s pressuring the LAPD. Was this all about Leo and his ex – or was there some other reason why the mayor was taking such a close interest in the case of Abigail Webb?

  Chapter 19

  Jeff Howe looked at his phone again. Nothing from Madison, nothing from Barbara. He knew what he wanted from one, but not from the other. From his fellow detective, he was hungry for whatever crumb of information she could supply him with. He wanted it so that he could, in turn, feed it to Maddy.

  He understood Maddy’s craving for knowledge, he had seen it in so many loved ones of the murdered. But he also knew that whatever appetite those other bereaved had had, Madison Webb’s would dwarf it. Howe had known journalists before. As a detective of his rank, he’d dealt with crime reporters often. But Maddy was different from the rest. In a different league professionally, no doubt about it. But different in her motivation. Sure, she was ambitious. But it was more than that. She seemed to burn with curiosity. She would not rest until she knew everything. Until you had told her everything. That hunger was one of the things about her he found hard to resist.

  So he was eager to feed her, to give her what he knew she craved. Anything he could get from Barbara, any update would do. Was that desire entirely for the enhanced wellbeing of Madison Webb? No. He wanted her to think well of the department. Not to think they were jerking around, but to think they were doing their jobs and doing their best. More to the point, he wanted Maddy to think well of him. To be grateful to him.

  Jeff Howe was not used to rejection. The legal documents said he and his ex-wife had parted amicably, but they both knew it was his decision. Even in high school, the only time he ever said goodbye was when he chose to. People did not spurn the captain of the football team. Not at college either. But Maddy had ended that run. The novelty of it did not appeal to him. It confused him. He did not understand why she kept rebuffing him. So, yes, that was also on his mind. He wanted to give her reasons to think she was making a mistake. Because she was.

  His own work was finished for the night. He had been assigned a gang killing that – and it surely offended no one to say this – was not exactly urgent. Young hoods in South Central, fighting over turf. Started with a knife, graduated to a gun. Same old, same old.

  His partner, a decent enough cop, had gone. For him, there was no one to go home to. He had time to kill.

  He glanced back at the phone. It was Maddy he wanted to hear from. A reply to the several messages he had sent, asking how she was doing. Anything which would acknowledge his concern for her. Even an update of her own investigative efforts would be welcome. She hadn’t told him what she was doing – but he had no doubt she was doing something.

  Idly, he moved his chair closer to the computer, logged in and entered the sealed area open only to the homicide department. He found the search menu, choosing ‘overdose’ as his key word.

  The page filled with file names, ordered by victim. He narrowed the dates, asking to be shown only homicides of the last year. Now the page filled again. He paused, knowing the computer would record this little unauthorized expedition and betray him without hesitation. His electronic fingerprints would be all over it. He would have to explain why he was pursuing a case that was not his, that had not been assigned to him, possibly for the good reason that someone had decided he had an emotional attachment – or desired attachment – to a me
mber of the victim’s immediate family. What would he say? That these were his off-duty hours and he was just trying to help in a case everyone knew was now a must-solve for the entire department. It wasn’t much, but he could say it if he had to – and say it with conviction.

  Abigail’s file was there but he avoided it, clicking instead on the most recent of the earlier cases, a death that had taken place nearly three weeks ago. The page that resulted was one he had not seen before on the LAPD system.

  File not found.

  He clicked on the file below, recording a homicide dated from the previous month.

  File not found

  Now he buckled, knowing that his next move would increase the risk he was taking: he checked Abigail’s file. And saw the same message.

  But when he took his cursor further down, to a fatal overdose a full year earlier, the file opened immediately, yielding a full set of police papers, including the initial report from the officer who had found the body, photographs from the scene, the coroner’s findings, witness statements, memos from the Assistant DA; everything, in fact, that he would have expected to be there. It meant the system worked. There had been no general malfunction. The problem was very specific. Only those overdose cases from the most recent period were unavailable.

  Jeff Howe tried to open them one last time, just to be sure. But he was not wrong. Only one conclusion was possible. Those files which simple logic suggested were at least of potential relevance to the case of Abigail Webb were missing, and not through a technical failure, either. Someone had removed them.

  He logged out and checked his phone once more. Still nothing. He thought back to his conversation with Barbara Miller, outside in the yard. She had told him about instructions from above, her finger pointing skyward. That suggested she was referring to orders from the Chief of Police himself. This case is being handled in a particular way.

  At the time, Jeff had understood that to be a statement of priorities. The Webb death was to be the homicide department’s number one case. He got that. The politics of it were obvious. A young, pretty schoolteacher, the very picture of innocence; sister in the media, with something of a following. Election year. It made sense to get a result and fast.

  But now he heard the words, relayed by Miller, differently. A particular way. If Jeff was not mistaken, this was not an edict about what needed to be investigated hard but its very opposite. What he had seen on the computer was the proof. Someone very high up, perhaps at the very top, was not prepared to leave this as a matter of guidance. A string of cases had not merely been stamped with a ‘No Entry’ sign. They had been hidden from view, to shut out those who might discover their secrets.

  Chapter 20

  Instinct told Maddy to keep what she knew to herself. As she drove, she listened, rather than spoke, the car filling up with the sound of Barbara Miller on the speaker, giving what purported to be an update on the police investigation into the murder of Abigail Webb.

  ‘It’s all about the CCTV footage just now, sweetheart. I know how frustrating this is for the family, but—’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You said you know how frustrating this is for my family. Do you really?’

  There was a silence, a pause in which, Maddy suspected, the detective collected herself, bit her lip and suppressed the urge to tell Maddy where to get off. ‘All right, no, I don’t know, Madison. You’re right. I’ve never been in your position. But I have investigated a lot of homicides. I think you know that.’

  Maddy said nothing, waiting for Barbara to come up with more.

  ‘And I know that these delays can happen. Investigating a crime like this is long, hard work.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I know you know. Outside the police department, probably no one knows that better than you. And I gotta tell you, Madison – it’s still not even been two days. Remember, this crime is logged as having occurred yesterday.’

  Yesterday. What garbage. What was this woman talking about? Yesterday! No wonder she wasn’t making progress if she didn’t even have a grip on the basic chronol—

  But then Maddy glanced at her phone, lying face up on the passenger seat, confirming that the official day on the human calendar was indeed Tuesday, no matter what the clock inside her head was telling her. She should have learned by now that her internal clock was the most unreliable timepiece in America. Deprived of sleep, it lost track of day and night, turning time into a continuous, undifferentiated mass, not so much a permanent day or a permanent night as a never-ending now. The day before yesterday, the day before Abigail was gone, could have been twenty years ago or it could have been … now. Without the punctuation of sleep, time lost itself.

  ‘I understand. I’m trying to be patient,’ Maddy said now, her fire temporarily doused. ‘Can you at least tell me what’s taking so long?’

  ‘We need to get a positive ID on those pictures from the Great Hall. We very much want to talk to the man seen speaking with your sister.’

  ‘How hard can it be to do that? Why’s it taking so long?’

  ‘If you saw the footage yourself, I think you’d understand, Madison. It’s not a clear image. We’re interviewing everyone we can, taking statements from everyone there. Customers, other staff, everyone. But the bar was very crowded that night. It’s not easy.’

  Maddy gripped the steering wheel, a physical reminder to herself not to blab, not to let on what she had seen and what she knew. Just listen.

  ‘What about past cases? Other deaths in similar circumstances.’

  ‘Sweetheart, believe me. You don’t want us diluting our energies, you know what I’m saying? You want us completely focused, one hundred per cent, on Abigail. That’s what we’re doing. You start running through old files, you’re gonna lose track, waste resources, lose focus. I’ve been doing this a long time, Madison.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I want that to be reassuring for you. And your family. We’re on it, Madison. OK? We’re on it. Now why don’t you take care of your mother and your sister: they need you right now. I mean that. You leave this shit, pardon me, to those of us paid to wade through it. You focus on Abigail and your family now, you hear?’

  Maddy drove on, too fast, she knew, for the smog which had thickened through the day, settling in the bowl of Los Angeles, growing stagnant and somehow greasier as the hours passed. She was driving towards the Padilla house but, checking the time, she became agitated. What were the chances she’d find Mario there? Of course, ideally, they would have this conversation in person. But, judging by the traffic, that could cost her an hour or two, maybe more. She needed to get on. Her finger hovered over the keypad for a minute, then another until, her patience exhausted, she dialled his number. Relieved to hear him pick up, she got straight to it.

  ‘Mario, there’s something I should have asked about your sister. You never told me about her work.’

  ‘Imm thimm smmthimm to dmm wimm whttt—’

  ‘Mario?’

  ‘Ymmm?’

  ‘Have you got your mask on? I can’t hear a word you’re saying.’

  There was a rustle by the mouthpiece and then, ‘How about this? Can you hear me now?’

  ‘Loud and clear.’ This was happening more often. It used to be just the soya latte drinkers and the joggers who covered up against the smog, along with mothers like Quincy who didn’t let their children set foot outside without wearing what amounted to an astronaut’s helmet. But now even regular people like Mario were wearing the mask, even inside their own cars. Maddy’s devil-may-care disregard for the toxic air was becoming ever rarer, an unusual vice, like smoking. She looked guiltily towards the glove compartment which somewhere contained her own face mask, buried and unused.

  ‘So,’ Mario began again. ‘Is this to do with what we talked about? About proving that—’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, cutting him off before he had a chance to go further. No benefit saying anything too direct on the ph
one. ‘That’s right.’ She should have waited and done this face to face. Most people weren’t as careful as she was; or, as Abigail would have put it, most were not as paranoid. ‘Can you tell me where she worked?’

  ‘In accounts.’

  ‘Rosario was an accountant?’

  ‘Yep. Well, a trainee accountant actually. She was learning, doing the books, all that. She worked for a catering company, based in Park La Brea.’

  ‘And two and a half weeks ago? The police estimated the time of death was around ten o’clock, is that right?’

  ‘That’s what they said.’

  ‘And do you know what she had been doing that evening?’

  ‘She’d gone out with some friends from work.’

  ‘OK.’ Maddy had the sensation of lowering a bucket into a well that had run dry. She did not quite know what to ask next. ‘Do you know where they went?’

  ‘A restaurant, Amici. It was near.’

  ‘Near to the office?’

  ‘No, sorry. Near to the job her friends had been doing.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘The catering job that night. Her friends were running it, you know, organizing the waiters, all that stuff.’

  ‘Oh I see.’ She paused, trying to piece together a picture. ‘So she met up with them afterwards?’

  ‘Yeah, she did that sometimes. She might meet them there, after the job. Or she’d tag along for the whole evening, see how it was done. Thing you gotta know about Rosario, she was ambitious.’ His voice contained a chuckle. ‘Real ambitious. She said that maybe she’d open up a restaurant of her own one day. She wanted to see how it worked.’

  ‘And she did that that night?’

  ‘Remember, I only got this second hand. But I think what happened, what her friends told the police, is that she worked in the office till late, finishing off the books. Then she headed out to meet them.’