Fade Route (Burnside Mystery 2)

by Chill, David

  I shook my head. "No. I just wanted to talk with you for a few minutes."

  "Oh look, is this about that business up at the Center? Because if it is, I can't help you. I don't know who killed Wayne or that guy Raff, but if it's all right with you, I'd simply like to forget about it, you mind?"

  "I'm afraid it's not that simple, Amy. Too much has happened. And you're part of the package, like it or not."

  She stared at me. "Just how do you mean?"

  "You weren't just volunteering your time out of the sheer charity of your heart. You and Wayne were involved. That is, until his wife learned about it."

  "Good heavens," she said, looking stunned. "How did you find out about this?"

  "Just doing my job," I said casually. "Did you kill Wayne Fairborn?"

  "No!" she cried, her mouth twisting in agony. "I loved him! I had no reason to hurt him!"

  "But you had reason to try and run his wife off the road," I answered evenly. "The touch up paint on your truck only covers up the evidence. It doesn't remove it. Nor does it take away an eyewitness to the crime."

  "Oh no. It was an accident. I mean, nobody got hurt! There may have been a little damage to Crystal's car but it wasn't severe. And anything can be fixed."

  "And you left the scene of an accident."

  Amy said nothing, but took a long drag on her cigarette.

  "Tell me about the DVD," I continued.

  She turned her eyes skyward and blew out some smoke. "Oh God, you know about that, too?"

  "Uh-huh. Care to tell me about Jackson Taylor's role?"

  "Who?"

  "T & R Development Company?" I reminded her.

  "I'd rather not get into it," she said hoarsely.

  "Would you rather tell it to the police? They might be very interested in what happened along Sunset Boulevard that night. Just because no one got hurt doesn't mean a crime wasn't committed."

  She took a deep breath and looked like she was about to spill some tears. "Look. I was approached by those two guys, Taylor and Rubin. They said they knew I was involved with Wayne and maybe we could help each other. They wanted a property from Wayne and he wouldn't sell, I guess because he had taken some sort of political stand against that. They figured the best way to get this property was to convince him to drop out of the mayoral race. Once out of politics, he would have no reason to hold onto the land."

  "And your reason for going along?"

  "I guess I thought Wayne wouldn't have to worry about how a nasty divorce would affect his image with the voters. He had been talking about divorcing his wife for months, but I've heard that line before. I decided to help him out. This way, I could have Wayne, T & R could have their business park, and we're all happy."

  "So they set up a camera and recorded you and Wayne doing it."

  "In one of those sleazy hotel rooms along the coast highway," she said with a sad laugh. "Wayne liked to go there because he assumed we'd never run into anybody. Taylor hired some guy to set up a camouflaged camera and we just had a blast. Believe me, we put on a show."

  "And Crystal found out."

  "Yes, they sent it to Wayne but Crystal opened the package. The whole thing backfired. Crystal demanded we stop seeing each other. I don't know what she thought she'd accomplish. He started in with Nina a little while after he broke up with me. I finally figured out Wayne was going to sleep around no matter what. He just couldn't say no when it came to women. It was like he was in a big candy store and he could get lots of free samples whenever he wanted. The guy just had a way about him. He'd never stay faithful."

  "But you didn't shoot him."

  She shook her head vehemently. "I was talking to people outside of Second Chance the whole time. They'll back me up. Plus, I passed the lie detector test."

  "Why did you say Crystal was in the alley, then? Was this just revenge on her?"

  Amy sighed. "I honestly thought I saw her coming out of the alley. But again, it was dark out. I can't be totally sure. It did look like her. And there were a couple of other people, like Nina and that guy Raff who left the building through the alley."

  I looked into the moist brown eyes. "If you're lying to me, I'll see to it you're put away for that stunt you pulled against Crystal. The D.A. can sell it as attempted murder. And I'll also make sure that DVD gets a much wider range of distribution than you ever dreamed possible. The internet's a big place."

  She looked helplessly at me, her pink cheeks becoming stained with tears and mascara. "I honestly don't know who shot Wayne. I don't! Please believe me, but I had no use for a dead Wayne Fairborn."

  It would be a stretch to believe anything a car salesperson said, but right now I didn't have anything to prove her wrong. In fact, I didn't have anything at all.

  "The problem is," I finally said, "that I don't know who shot Wayne either."

  "Maybe we never will," she said wistfully.

  My soul ached when I heard the words; I was almost ready to accept them. I had unearthed a lot of suspects, many of whom could have had a reason to kill Wayne Fairborn. And the more I dug into Wayne's personal life, the more I was discovering a person I hardly knew. His marriage was a facade and his relationships with women were wholly dishonest. My initial motivation to find Wayne's killer had been based to my friendship with him, and a desire to see justice served. While I would always maintain the need to see a criminal put away, at this stage I was wondering if that would ever happen here. There comes a time when you have to put a case aside if there doesn't appear to be much hope of cracking it. The clock on this one was ticking away.

  Chapter 20

  I stopped for an early lunch at the Bay Cities Deli and put away a large Godmother sandwich. It was loaded with Italian cold cuts and I hoped -- without success -- that it would fill some void deep within. Afterwards I walked across the street to a diner and drank some coffee until I felt like going back to work. After the sixth cup and the third dirty look from the stodgy waitress, I tossed five dollars on the table and paid a buck and a half to the cashier.

  It was a few minutes past one when I walked into the T & R office. The receptionist was still out at lunch, so I walked down the hall unimpeded to Jackson Taylor's office. A familiar face sat outside his office, pulling papers from a filing cabinet.

  "Hi, Alexa," I said. "How's tricks?"

  She looked up at me and promptly dropped the file she was holding. "Oh not you again," she sighed. "Must you harass me at work? I didn't get a wink of sleep the other night after you came by. Thinking about Wayne again, oh I really don't want to keep dredging things up."

  "Then don't," I said.

  "But why are you here?"

  "I'm picking up something from Taylor."

  She looked down at her desk. "There's nothing here for you. Your name's Bernstein, right?"

  "Burnside, actually. And the package may be listed for Crystal Fairborn."

  "Oh," she said, lifting a brown manila envelope and thrusting it to me. "I didn't realize you were a courier."

  "And I didn't realize you were a blackmailer."

  "What?! That's insane!"

  "Is it?" I asked. "Weren't you the one who told Taylor and Rubin about Amy Flanders? The girl they recorded in bed with Wayne in some beachside motel?"

  "That's not true!" she protested.

  "The hell it's not," I rejoined sharply.

  Alexa slumped in her chair and took a deep breath. "You've done some digging."

  "Tell me about it."

  Alexa gave a resigned shrug. "My bosses own a number of hotels near the beach. One of them was the Sail n' Surf. I was talking with the manager about a month ago; she and I are friendly, and I learned Wayne was playing around again. I was a little irritated, the jerk tells me he would never cheat on his wife after me, and what do you know, there he goes again. I knew about Jackson's connection with Mayor Callison and after I passed this on to him, he and Maury hatched a plan. But I didn't blackmail him. My bosses may have, but I'm no blackmailer."

  "
Of course not," I sneered. "You just let other people do your dirty work for you."

  "Look, the guy hurt me! I wanted to get even. I'm entitled, aren't I? Why should he get off scot free?"

  "Looks like he didn't." I snapped.

  With that, I tucked the envelope under my arm and left the office. Once I reached my Pathfinder, I shuffled through the documents which confirmed Virgil's hunch. With a little luck, this journalist might win a Pulitzer prize one day.

  I drove eight blocks up Colorado and pulled over into the Tribune's parking lot. The difference between the Tribune's office and T & R's was striking. The furniture, the appointments, even the smells in the air were noticeably older, mustier, and more decayed at the newspaper's headquarters. But all the paper did was inform and educate the public. T & R's charter was much simpler. Make money. Lots of it.

  Virgil Hairston was in his usual repose, feet up on the desk, computer keyboard on his lap and an empty wrapper of an In-N-Out Double-Double burger crumbled into a ball on his desk. Some people had everything.

  "You look like you're having the time of your life," I said. "Not a care in the world."

  "Yup," he replied. "I have a steady income, money in the bank, and lots of strange people seem to mysteriously know who I am."

  "You're living the life."

  "Especially when I want a good table at a good restaurant," he smiled.

  "For you, that's either Fat Burger or Roscoe's."

  Hairston put the keyboard back on the desk. "Don't insult my religion. Tasty food has helped me through more deadlines and more crises than the man upstairs ever could."

  "Keep eating that stuff," I said, "and you'll get to meet him real soon."

  Hairston slapped his belly and rubbed. He was a big man, but he wore his weight well. The stomach never hung over his belt, and his clothes were invariably the proper size. Some overweight people deserved the name slobs; Hairston was just a guy who was rather big.

  "How'd our plan work?" he asked.

  "Like a charm," I said and tossed the offer sheet on his desk. He opened it and quickly looked for the signatures. I knew he found them when his eyes lit up and his mouth broke into a broad grin.

  "Pay dirt!" he exclaimed. "There's going to be some changes around here when this hits the fan!"

  I sighed. "Who'd have thought that the Mayor himself would be a part owner of a syndicate trying to buy the final piece of land to build a business park."

  "And all that stuff he was spewing the other day about it being for the betterment of the city. The only thing getting better was Mayor Callison's bank account."

  "So it looks like we won a round," I said. "As Yogi Berra once said, I'd like to thank everyone who made this night necessary."

  "Yogi Berra," he pondered. "Rumor had it Yogi used to toss pebbles into the shoes of batters from the other teams. Just to slow them down around the base paths. Easy to do when you're crouched next to them"

  I nodded. "And to think people called him dumb."

  "Dumb like a fox," he smiled.

  "Things are starting to take shape."

  "Took a while. But not everything is crystal clear at first."

  "Sometimes you just have to wait for the dust to settle."

  "Which it has," he smiled. "And which is why I'm a little surprised that you don't look a little happier. This is good news, man! C'mon, smile!"

  I did so, albeit weakly. The frustration of the case that would not be solved had been wearing thin on me.

  "I'm glad we got something on Callison," I said softly. "Hypocrisy is one thing the world can have a little less of. And with less freewheeling development, we'll have a more livable city. But I got into this mess for one reason. To find out who killed Wayne Fairborn. And I seem to have discovered damn near everything about the guy except for that."

  Hairston nodded. "Sometimes the most obvious clues are right under our noses. We just have to step back to focus on them. Don't give up. Everything I've learned about you indicates you're a first rate detective. And you used to be a first rate policeman."

  I looked up at him, surprised. "Sounds like you've done some research on me."

  "Sure have," he said proudly. "Thirteen years on the beat. For twelve of them you were a model cop. A genuine hero. Till you helped out some girl just a little too much. Judy, I believe her name was."

  I stared at him. "You've got it," I whispered.

  "They busted Judy, a runaway, for prostitution and to beat the rap she turns you in as her pimp. That about right?"

  "Yes," I said, my voice barely audible.

  "And the moment they turn her loose, she skips town, figuring they won't be able to make anything stick on you, so there's no harm done."

  "Except," I murmured, "to my reputation."

  "And to the way you handled your job after that. You began meting out your own brand of justice. Perps that you figured would be out of jail in twenty-four hours got a few extra smacks with the baton. Drug dealers' sports cars got left in the middle of the street with the keys dangling from the lock. And any superior officer that suggested you refrain from this type of behavior got a not-so-friendly retort from that acid wit you so liberally apply."

  "I don't deny any of it," I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "I regret some things, I guess. I only wanted to help Judy out. Put her back where she belonged, which was in high school not out on the streets. I've seen what happens to kids that get sent to Juvenile Hall and then to some camp. They bide their time till they're eighteen and they can go back on the street again. I tried to make a difference and got burned."

  "Tough one," he said. "One mistake cost you a career."

  I shook my head. "There were too many rules, too many restrictions for me to stay on the job. That incident didn't change me so much as allow my real attitude to surface. It's better this way. I can do more for people with my own agency."

  "Too bad it took something ugly to show you a better path."

  "Such is life sometimes," I said. "You know, it's flattering you went to all that trouble to find out about me. Why'd you bother?"

  "Oh," he said, smiling. "I thought a column about a modern day Philip Marlowe might be in order. People eat that stuff up."

  "If you write something about me," I said, "make sure the name is spelled right."

  *

  I arrived back at my office at half past three and was instantly reminded of what I had left there. The sight of Raff's belongings strewn about my floor was bad enough but now there was a further inducement to assign the remains to the garbage bin. His things were beginning to really smell.

  Opening a window to usher in some fresh air, I bent down and began poring through Raff's effects, setting up two piles. One was for books and papers that might mean something, the second pile was for everything else. Clothes, half eaten pieces of food, and an impressive assortment of used chewing gum wrappers were assigned to the latter stack. I bundled that one into some old newspaper and dropped it into an orange dumpster in the alley behind my office.

  As Raff was a former political science student, it was no surprise that he had a wide ranging collection of books on contemporary urban issues. Civil unrest, urban riots, and the rise of Communism. There were also books by Plato, Kant, and even a copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, as well as more mainstream novels by Michener, LeCarre, and that towering literary figure, Sidney Sheldon. Raff's taste was nothing if not eclectic. Since the books themselves didn't smell mildewed, there was no reason to toss them, I would certainly be assured of lots of bedtime reading for quite a while. Even if one of Raff's kin did ask for his things, I doubted they'd be intrigued by Robert Conot's "Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness".

  Raff's papers included those he had written for school, a diary that unfortunately ended six months before, and a few unmailed letters he had written to his family over some unpardonable sins they had committed years earlier. There was also a birthday card but when I opened it up, it revealed more than birthday wishes. I stopped and sho
ved everything else aside.

  It was one of those cutesy, amusing little cards you could find at any drug store or supermarket. The type of innocent card which no one would pay much attention. The front cover showed a clump of colorful balloons with a little teddy bear saying he was sorry he had forgotten the birthday. The inscription inside indicated that the bear couldn't believe he'd missed such an important event. Below it, a long, handwritten paragraph went into explicit detail about another matter of regret. But the card was neither sent by Raff, nor was it intended for him. It began "Dear Wayne."

  After skimming through the more personal message, I found my heart pounding and my breath short. I sat down at my desk and practically collapsed into the soft chair. I read the note two more times, and shook my head at the revelation. The possibility that I could have easily tossed this into the trash without perusing it was unnerving to say the least. After the heart palpitations finally stopped I began to giggle, and then I started to laugh aloud. The pressure and frustration of solving the mystery at Second Chance was fading away. Finally, after going down all the wrong avenues, I now knew who had killed Wayne Fairborn.

  Chapter 21

  The sight of Barney Sack's corpulent body hunched over a stack of papers was enough to make me smile. Wearing a pair of granny glasses, Sack wrote feverishly, looking up only occasionally to glance at a thick report. He looked like a man working on a serious deadline.

  "Catching lots of criminals today, Officer?" I asked.

  Sack looked up and let out an exasperated sigh when he saw who was before him. "Budget review," he said. "I just love administrative work."

  "Don't we all," I answered. "That's part of the price for having a nice shiny badge."

  "You come up here for anything besides to bust my chops? I don't have the patience for it, so say what you came to say. Otherwise I'll let Bausch have another go at you."

  "Tell him to wear a cup next time," I said. "And I do have something for you. About the Fairborn case."

  Sack put his pencil down and sat back in his chair. "What?"