In the Guise of Mercy (Maggie Macgowen Mysteries)

by Wendy Hornsby

  In the Guise of Mercy

  A Maggie McGowan Mystery

  Wendy Hornsby

  Perseverance Press / John Daniel & Company

  Palo Alto / McKinleyville, California / 2009

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, companies, institutions, organizations, or incidents is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright (c) 2009 by Wendy Hornsby

  All rights reserved

  A Perseverance Press Book

  Published by John Daniel & Company

  A division of Daniel & Daniel, Publishers, Inc.

  Post Office Box 2790

  McKinleyville, California 95519

  www.danielpublishing.com/perseverance

  Distributed by SCB Distributors (800) 729-6423

  Cover design and illustration by Peter Thorpe

  ISBN 978-1-56474-704-4

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Hornsby, Wendy.

  In the guise of mercy : a Maggie MacGowen mystery / by Wendy Hornsby.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: [first print edition] 978-1-56474-482-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: [first print edition] 1-56474-482-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. MacGowen, Maggie (Fictitious character)--Fiction. 2. Women motion picture producers and directors--Fiction. 3. Cold cases (Criminal investigation)--Fiction. 4. Street life--California--Los Angeles--Fiction. 5. Los Angeles (Calif.)--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3558.O689I6 2009

  813'.54--dc22

  2008055728

  Paul Robinette

  Always

  Chapter 1

  Monday began as an ordinary day. I won't say perfectly ordinary because we had long ago given up on perfect and, considering the circumstances, were happy enough to get just an ordinary day now and then.

  Shortly after dawn I opened my eyes to find Mike watching me.

  "How are you?" I asked.

  "So far, okay," he said, holding out his arms to me. "How's my girl?"

  "You're here, I'm fine." I moved against him and rested my head on his shoulder. There, with my eyes closed, still sleepy, listening to his heartbeat, I could pretend for just a few seconds that the latest round of chemo he had endured to earn a few extra decent months had worked some miracle and Mike was actually okay again.

  Mike broke the spell when he spoke. "Maggie, who's coming over this morning? Rich?"

  I had to think for a moment. Mike's friends took turns keeping him company during the day while I was at work; Mike had a long list of friends and a full calendar.

  I said, "Yes, it's Monday, so it's Rich."

  "Good, I want to talk to him about something."

  "Nick is coming around noon," I said. "I'll be home by four."

  "So I'm covered," he said.

  "You're covered."

  We got up and showered. I helped him dress in sweats and a T-shirt. Mike picked out a baseball cap from his collection, Cardinals that day, to keep his bald head warm and to cover the dent in his cranium where a piece of skull was missing. Last thing, he slipped on his wedding ring, putting it on his middle finger because he had lost so much weight that it slipped off his ring finger.

  Rich Longshore was already in the kitchen when we got downstairs, standing at the stove stirring a pot of oatmeal. Rich and Mike became good friends years ago when they worked together on a serial murder case, Rich for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau, and Mike for the LAPD, Robbery-Homicide Division.

  Rich retired from the County Sheriffs a year ago, but the department hired him back to work cold cases. On Mondays he went in late so that he could cover a shift with Mike.

  "Good morning," I said, kissing Rich's freshly shaved cheek.

  "Morning, Maggie. Hey, Mike, how does oatmeal sound?"

  "I'll give it a try." Mike sat at the kitchen table, pale from the effort it had taken for him to walk down the stairs.

  While I set out bowls, brown sugar, raisins, butter, and milk, Rich and Mike discussed the cold case Rich was currently working on, an unsolved murder, one they had both worked on at its beginning and had re-examined from time to time over the years.

  All detectives, when they walk out the door for the last time, leave behind a few open cases that continue to haunt them. This was one that Rich was happy to have another chance at.

  After a few minutes, Mike turned the conversation to one of his own troubling unsolveds, the one that most frequently kept him awake during the darkest hours of the night: About a decade ago, a teenage boy named Jesus Ramon got out of the backseat of Mike's official car at high noon in downtown Los Angeles, and was never seen again. Not dead. Not alive. Jesus just vanished.

  As Mike and Rich plumbed the intricacies of evidence and witnesses, color came back into Mike's cheeks. There was a terrible thing growing inside Mike's head, but that Monday morning all the synapses in his brain were firing. Maybe he would manage to keep down some of his oatmeal, I thought, hopeful.

  With Mike in Rich's care, I felt no guilt that Monday morning when I left for work. Indeed, when the two men started talking about detective work I was a bit of a third wheel. Besides, there were medical bills that had to be paid, a pile as big as the Ritz, and the only way we were going to chip away at them was if I kept showing up at the studios of the television network that pays me to make pithy documentaries, and somehow managed to finish my next project on deadline. On that Monday morning I did not mention to Mike that, though the network's deadline loomed this side of the near horizon, I had made no progress on a coherent film.

  As it began, that Monday wasn't exactly an ordinary day, after all; I hadn't seen Mike in such a happy frame of mind for months. When I kissed Mike good-bye and walked out the door, I had no presentiments about the day ahead.

  • • •

  Sometime during the morning Mike called his afternoon companion, his last partner in Robbery-Homicide, Nick Pietro, and told Nick that he had a doctor's appointment, told Nick not to come over until two o'clock. Then he told Rich that Nick would be a few minutes late, and that he would be fine alone for a bit after Rich left. In fact, he said, he would be taking a nap; what could happen?

  Rich Longshore left at noon. Sometime between noon and two when Nick arrived, during that interim when Mike was alone, Mike laid out some files on his desk, banded together with a note on top, and a stack of letters addressed to his near and dear. He opened a very good bottle of pinot noir that we had saved for a special occasion, and poured himself a glass.

  Carrying the wineglass in one hand and his service Beretta in the other, Mike went out to the backyard and sat down on the ground under our massive old avocado tree. There, under a magnificent leafy green canopy, on a beautiful spring afternoon, Mike Flint once again took control over the course of his life.

  Mike sipped the wonderful wine. Then he set the glass safely aside before he leaned his head back against the tree, put the business end of his Beretta into his mouth, and kissed the world good-bye.

  Chapter 2

  I knew the news was bad when a brace of gray-suited homicide detectives came to call on me at work. When I saw that one of them was the chief of LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division, Lt. Kenny Noble, Mike's boss, I knew the news was dire.

  Guido Patrini, my production partner, escorted the pair into my cubbyhole of an office at the studio. One look at Guido's ashen face told me all that I really needed to know. He dropped to his knees beside my chair, wrapped his arms around me, and began to weep softly against my shoulder.

  "Mik
e," I said, not a question, though I had many. I was fairly certain I knew the ultimate answer, whatever the details. In the past, if Mike had a medical emergency when I was at work, he was taken to the hospital and I got a phone call. No one needed to tell me that this time any emergency had passed and a phone call wasn't within protocol for delivering information of a certain gravitas.

  "Maggie," was all Kenny managed to say before he choked up.

  The second detective, Harvey Bing, a good friend, clapped a hand on the boss's shoulder as he tried to compose himself enough to deliver the message, but couldn't.

  "Where is Mike?" I asked, patting Guido on the back--something to do with my hands.

  The detective pair did some foot shuffling and exchanged panicky glances before Kenny cleared his throat.

  "He's still at the house, Maggie," Kenny managed to croak. "In the yard."

  "Did he..." I couldn't finish the question; a very vivid image flashed behind my eyes.

  Kenny nodded. "He did."

  Guido took my bottle of medicinal scotch out of the bottom drawer, uncorked it and handed it to me. I swallowed a dose. The shock and burn of it reminded me to breathe.

  "Mike seemed so fine this morning," I said, fighting against the black fog swirling at the edges of my vision. My little office was so full of gray worsted and starched white shirts that there didn't seem to be enough space for light to get in, let alone air. "I should have known. I should have stayed home this morning."

  Harvey shook his head. "You had to leave the house sometime, honey. He would have waited you out. He didn't want you to be the one...."

  At the thought of what had happened, Harvey choked back a sob.

  Kenny took the bottle from me and handed it to Harvey, who threw back a goodly slug before returning the bottle for Kenny to have a shot, too.

  "Who found him?" I asked.

  Harvey shuddered. "Nick Pietro."

  "Poor Nick. How cruel." I disentangled myself from Guido. "I need to get home."

  "I'll drive you," Guido said. "Harvey said he'll follow us in your car."

  I thought I was in better shape to drive than Guido was, but I didn't argue; when I stood, the room suddenly, unaccountably, tipped onto its side and bucked me off my feet.

  • • •

  Mike and I lived in a tall, narrow house built into the side of a mountain, overlooking a treacherous and primal canyon deep inside the Santa Monica Mountains about equidistant from the movie star beaches at Malibu and the 101 freeway that runs through the San Fernando Valley. An island of wilderness surrounded by LA sprawl. The road in is a winding, twisting, curvy tribute to engineering and plain chutzpah, and is just wide enough for one car to travel at a time.

  For the last quarter mile up the hill, Guido had to navigate an obstacle course of official vehicles parked higgledy-piggledy along the steep edges of the road. Probably a dozen black-and-whites from the LAPD, a phalanx of the dark Crown Victorias detectives drive, a goodly representation of County Sheriff's SUVs--we lived in the sheriff's jurisdiction--and in the driveway, a van from the county coroner. Guido managed to squeeze past the cars and make it up the steep driveway. Next to the horse corral we shared with the neighbor he found a flat spot big enough for us to park.

  Our house was isolated enough that we didn't get much traffic. The appearance of one strange car made the horses--Mike's big gelding, Duke, my little quarter horse mare, Rover, and the neighbor's sorrel, Red--a little nutty. Not knowing what to make of this police armada, they ran in erratic figure eights from one end of their enclosure to the other, colliding, bucking, throwing off sweat and spit, crying out, nipping at each other, stomping their hooves. I was afraid they would hurt themselves.

  When bad things happen, you deal with what comes your way in layers as they present themselves. The horses presented first. I got carrots out of the tack shed, fed them chunks off my palm, as did Guido, scratched their forelocks, talked to them. Distracted by their treats, they let us lead them into their stalls and lock them down. There was some muttering and stomping, some conversation among them before they settled their muzzles into the bundles of alfalfa hay we dropped into their feeding troughs.

  "I know how they feel," I said to Guido, looking past the corral toward the house and the gauntlet of policemen, all eyes on us, that we would have to walk through to get inside. The officers didn't intend to be rude, I'm sure, but they are observers by nature, professionally nosy, trained to intimidate. I heard the crisp sibilance of their whispered conversations about what had happened and who I was, wafting my way like a noxious plume, a chorus of "Mike Flint, Maggie MacGowen," and wished I could buck and run from what certainly lay ahead.

  I gripped Guido's arm for support.

  Guido is a spare, wiry man, all sinew-wrapped bone, nothing cuddly about him. He is dear to me; we had worked closely together for many years. I let myself relax against him for just a moment, drew some support from him, before I took a deep breath and straightened up, mustering the courage to walk that path through Mike's colleagues.

  Guido put a reassuring hand over mine and looked at me with such concern in his beautiful brown eyes that I teared up, finally.

  "You'll get through this, Maggie," he said. "I know you, no matter what it is, you'll be okay, and I'll be here with you."

  Guido has a face chiseled out of pure Italian marble, square jaw, high forehead, ridges for cheekbones, an anvil of a nose. Yet somehow, set into all that stone are big, lush Bambi eyes framed by long, curly black lashes. Doesn't matter what Guido is saying, when he turns his eyes on you, you have to believe him.

  "I need a tissue," I said, drawing my shoulders back.

  "Let's go in," he said, handing me a handkerchief that still had a dry corner.

  For the number of people milling around outside, the house, inside, was oddly quiet. As soon as the front door closed behind us, Nick Pietro, Mike's partner, good friend, the man Mike set up to discover him in the yard, stepped out of Mike's home office. His eyes were red and swollen.

  "I'm sorry," I said, walking into his outstretched arms.

  "Me, too," Nick said, patting my back. "How you doing, honey?"

  "I don't know yet," I said. "I'm numb."

  "I understand that." He blew his nose into a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

  "I'm ashamed to say it," I said. "But I'm angry with Mike for putting you in this awful situation."

  "No shame." He hugged me tightly for just a moment; his body quaked with profound emotion. "Sitting here waiting for folks to show up, I've had a little time to think things over. Mike left me a letter, and I think I understand. Some of it, anyway. I guess I should be proud he trusted me to..."

  Nick's voice faltered.

  "Where is he now?" I asked.

  "Out back still. They're waiting for the coroner to sign off before they transport him." Nick held my arm as I turned to go. "You don't want to see Mike that way. Mike didn't want it."

  Our backyard was a patio with a terraced mountainside behind it. I could hear people out there, voices and footsteps on the patio's stone pavers, something with wheels bumping along. I didn't need to see what was happening to know.

  Guido excused himself and went off toward the back of the house. I knew he couldn't stay away. I also knew that Guido, the filmmaker, had a couple of cameras in his shoulder bag. If I ever wanted to see them, there would be pictures.

  Kenny and Harvey arrived just as Nick began showing me the papers that Mike left for us on his desk. There was a stack of neat files banded together with a note addressed to me, and a rank of envelopes addressed to various people. I saw one for Mike's son, Michael, and had to sit down. How was I going to tell Michael, a captain in the army, deployed to Afghanistan?

  Mike left funeral instructions for Kenny. He had made arrangements with a cremation society. He asked for a simple service in the rock garden at the old Police Academy in Chavez Ravine followed by a send-off lunch at the banquet room where he had received his badge twenty-
five years before. No bagpipes, no cortege of cop cars. No fuss. Drinks on Mike.

  We all agreed that the funeral would take place the following Saturday morning. The police chaplain would officiate; Nick had already called the chaplain, who was on his way over. With my blessing, Kenny and Nick would take charge of arrangements.

  I held the letter addressed to me, weighing it for a while before I could open it, curious but wary.

  The bread-and-butter estate issues had long ago been taken care of. Mike and I had put the major part of our assets, this house and our cottage in Humboldt County, up on California's Lost Coast where we had planned to retire one day, and various bank accounts, into a living trust so that there would be no need for probate or a waiting period before assets could be tapped. He knew I would look after his father, Oscar, now resident in a VA care facility in Sonoma. I already had a copy of Mike's pour-over will and his power of attorney so that I could take care of anything else that arose.

  With all the details covered, I expected that the thick letter in my hands would be a heart-wrenching, heartfelt outpouring of his grief over departing this life too soon and leaving me with so much to handle. I was surprised, when I began to read, to find instead that Mike had handed me one last job to take care of. A big one.

  Mike asked me to find Jesus Ramon.

  I picked up a little figure Mike kept on his desk, a netsuke no more than three inches tall, carved from ivory, that I bought him when I was on an assignment in Japan. Malice in the guise of the Goddess of Mercy, it was called. The top part of the figure was a beautiful rendition of Kuan Jin, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, but peeking out through her graceful silk robes was the hideous face of Malice, pocked, weeping pustules, teeth like daggers.

  With the figure in my hand growing warm, I sat down behind the big desk Mike had lugged home from a flea market one Sunday afternoon and read through his instructions. Mike wrote that he believed he was close to finding an answer, but that he had run out of time. Maybe, he wrote, fresh eyes, mine, would find that which had eluded him. Maybe people who wouldn't talk to a cop ten years ago would talk to me, a civilian, now. And there was a new lead, a potential bomb, to pursue, he said.