by Tyler Dilts
“Should we buzz?” Jen asked.
“Rather not.” On the off chance that something was hinky with the sister, I didn’t want to give her a heads-up. “She’s probably not even home,” I said. “Friday night and all.”
“So what’s the plan?”
I looked at the door. It had seen better days. The glass was scratched and dirty. The metal frame showed signs of corrosion and rust around the edges, but there was still a steel plate over the latch to prevent unsavory types from loiding the lock with a credit card.
I grabbed the handle again and rattled the door back and forth. There was a lot of play in the hinges and locking mechanism. I wrapped both hands around the handle and braced my right foot against the door frame. Pulling gently at first, I slowly increased the force. After a few seconds, the latch slipped and the door popped open. I lost my grip on the handle and fell back, landing hard on my ass. Jen grabbed the open door before the hydraulic mechanism could ease it closed.
I expected a snide comment from her, but none came. We were too close to Beth’s sister now. She extended her free hand and helped me up. We climbed the stairs in silence. On the upper landing, a short hallway formed a T shape with the flight of stairs. Facing the door to unit B, we flipped open our badge holders so that both our shields and IDs would be clearly visible.
If you ask most homicide cops to describe the worst part of their job, they won’t mention the grisly finds at crime scenes that haunt their dreams, or the violent offenders who would just as soon slip a blade between their ribs as speak to them, or the hours spent waiting on courthouse benches for a defense attorney who questions not only their honesty but their humanity, or the toll the job takes on their family, or even the inordinately high rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide among members of their profession. What they’ll most likely tell you is that the worst part of their job is notifying the next of kin. It has to do with pain. When we come upon a fresh crime scene, the pain is just an abstraction, existing only in our own imaginations. The reality for us is that, no matter how horrible a crime, the pain is no longer present. It died with the victim. We only witness it after the fact. But when we look in someone’s face and tell them that their spouse or child or parent or sibling has been murdered, the pain is immediate and palpable—and it cuts deep.
As Jen knocked softly on the door with the back of her hand, I remembered the two CHP officers who had knocked on my door two years before. Somewhere down deep in my gut, I felt a churning sensation, and I found myself hoping that Beth and her sister were not close. Estranged, perhaps. Indifferent. We watched the dim dot of light that shone through the peephole. As it disappeared, a muffled voice spoke from behind the locked door. “Who is it?”
“Long Beach Police Department,” Jen said, holding her badge next to her face so the person on the other side of the door could see both clearly. Two dead bolts clicked open, one after the other, and the door cracked open a few inches, still secured by a safety chain. A woman’s left eye peered around the edge of the door. “Yes?”
“Rachel Williams?” Jen asked, her voice soft.
“No.”
I stood silently behind her, trying to feel detached. My gut was still churning, so I must not have been doing very well.
“Is Rachel at home?”
“What is this about?” the woman behind the door asked. She was slowly coming to the realization that police never come to your door with good news.
“We need to speak to her,” Jen said. “Is she at home?”
“Just a minute.”
The door closed, and we heard the snick of the safety chain being unfastened. The woman opened the door. She was Jen’s height, maybe five-six, late thirties, with her red hair in spikes and no makeup or jewelry. She wore a black T-shirt and faded Levi’s over her Doc Martens.
“I’m Detective Tanaka, and this is Detective Beckett,” Jen said. She looked expectantly at the woman, an unspoken invitation for an introduction.
“I’m Susan.” She didn’t extend her hand. “This is bad, isn’t it?”
We didn’t need to answer. I looked at her, judging her reaction. “Can we come in?” Jen asked.
The main room of the loft apartment was long, stretching the length of the building, perhaps thirty feet. To our right, artificial light trickled in through a row of windows that lined the wall facing the alley, adding to the isolated pools of illumination from strategically placed floor lamps. Above us was a high ceiling with exposed beams and ventilation ducts.
The large room was divided by groupings of furniture. A sofa and two chairs arranged around a coffee table formed the living area near the windows. Along the wall from the windows to the front door were a variety of painting supplies: easels, a worktable, dozens of canvases in varying sizes—some painted, some not. To our left was a kitchen with old appliances and a dining area with new furniture. Directly in front of us, a wall, apparently a fairly recent addition, hung with dark and brooding portraits, was divided by a short hallway, which, I assumed, led to the bedroom and bathroom. The odor of stale cigarette smoke hung in the air, and the dull pulse of amplified blues filtered in through the brick walls.
“I’ll get Rachel,” the woman said. As she walked toward the hallway, I glanced at a painting that was leaning against the wall. In it stood a woman, rendered in harsh, sharp lines of deep grays, blacks, browns, and greens. She seemed isolated, stoically holding forth against a swirling background of deep reds and purples.
“Danny,” Jen whispered.
I turned to see Rachel coming into the room. Although she was taller than Susan by an inch or two, she seemed much smaller. The loose denim overalls she wore over a white tank top accentuated the slightness of her frame. Her fine blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail. As her bare feet brushed across the floor, I could see the fear and trepidation in her green eyes. Beth’s green eyes.
“Rachel?” Jen asked.
She nodded.
“I’m afraid we have some bad news.”
Rachel reached out to her right, and Susan took her hand. “It’s your sister, Elizabeth,” Jen said softly. “She was murdered tonight.”
I’d once recorded a TV documentary that showed the growth of a sunflower in time-lapse photography. In the span of a minute, the flower sprouted, grew to maturity, and bloomed brightly. I had been so captivated by the process that I rewound the tape to watch it again. As I stared at the image, the flower closed in upon itself, the bud tightened into a green knob, and the stalk shrunk into nothingness, disappearing beneath the soil. As the realization grew in her, Rachel seemed more and more like that sunflower. A question began to take shape in her expression, and she looked at Jen, who nodded silently. Susan’s hand tightened around Rachel’s.
Jen spoke before the shock could fully take hold. “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm your sister?”
Rachel looked blankly back at her, barely managing to shake her head.
“Had she mentioned anything to you? Was there anyone she might have had reason to be afraid of?” Jen waited a moment for a reply, but none came. “Anyone at all. An ex-boyfriend? Someone who may have been watching her? Or following her?” Jen asked. “Someone suspicious?”
“Do you have to do this now?” Susan asked.
“Yes,” I said, as gently as I could.
“Was there anyone she seemed concerned about?” Jen tried to hold Rachel’s gaze, but she was drifting away. “Rachel?” She looked back at Jen.
“Anyone at all?”
“No,” Rachel said, her voice barely a whisper. “No one.” She turned to Susan, who took her in her arms and pulled her head into her shoulder. Jen and I looked at the floor.
Susan led Rachel to the dining table and gently sat her down, kneeling beside her. “I’m right here, baby,” she whispered. She looked over her shoulder at Jen and me. I wanted, more than anything, to walk out the door and leave them alone.
Jen moved slowly toward the table and put h
er hand on Rachel’s shoulder. She looked into Susan’s eyes and then inclined her head slightly toward me.
Susan rose, whispering again, “I’m right here,” and started in my direction. Rachel didn’t let go of Susan’s hand. “I’m not going far. I’ll be right over there, and I’ll be back in just a minute, okay?” Susan pulled her hand away from Rachel’s and crossed the room.
“This won’t take long,” I said softly. We moved away from Jen and Rachel and stood near the windows.
“Did you know her sister well?” I asked.
“Very well.” Susan looked back at the table.
“Were she and Elizabeth close?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you and Rachel been together?”
“Three years, next month.”
“Any other family in the area?”
“Their parents live in Arizona.”
“We’ll need their number and address.”
Susan watched Rachel, who was now holding Jen’s hand tightly. Jen kneeled down, placed her free hand on Rachel’s shoulder, and spoke softly to her. I couldn’t make out the words.
“Susan?” I asked. She looked at me. “Can you think of anyone who might have had cause to harm Elizabeth?”
“No.” She turned back toward the other end of the room.
She answered half a dozen more of my questions, her body growing more tense and rigid, without taking her eyes off of Rachel and Jen for more than a second or two. I slipped a business card out of my pocket and handed it to her.
“We’ll need someone to make a positive identification of the body. Tomorrow, possibly Sunday. If you think of anything that might be helpful, anything at all, you can call me anytime, okay?”
“All right.” Susan looked at me once to be sure we were through and then hurried back to Rachel. I followed. Susan shot Jen a suspicious look as she slipped in between her and Rachel.
“One other thing,” I said. “Did Elizabeth have a spare set of keys?”
Susan hesitated a moment. Then she turned, went into the kitchen area, and took a ring of keys off a peg next to the refrigerator. She walked past Jen and handed them to me. “Anything else?”
“No,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
“I’m just going to show them out and lock up,” Susan said to Rachel, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” She eyed the business card Jen had left on the table before leading us to the door. As I went out, she spoke to Jen. “Those shoes look comfortable,” she said. Was that a twinge of jealousy in her voice?
I stopped, turned around, and looked down at Jen’s black Rockports. “Trust me,” Jen said, her eyes meeting Susan’s glare, “they’re not.” Susan studied her for a moment before closing the door.
In the alley, on the way back to the car, I said, “Well, that was interesting.” Jen nodded just as a plaintive blues guitar riff escaped into the night.
Jen took the LBPD placard off the dash, tucked it back into its slot on the visor, and looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror.
“Do I look gay?” she asked.
“What?”
“Do I look gay?”
“That’s the thing with Susan and the comfortable shoes, right?”
“Is it the hair?”
“You don’t look gay.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” I looked at her and smiled. I wasn’t used to seeing Jen exhibit this kind of insecurity—or any kind for that matter. “Those pants don’t make you look fat, either.”
She looked at herself again and ran a hand through her short hair. “Maybe I should let it grow out.” She hadn’t had a date in months, but it wasn’t for lack of opportunity. Everett, the vice-principal, was only one of many who had eyed my partner and imagined the possibilities. Jen slipped the transmission into drive and pulled out into the street.
Beth had lived in a one-bedroom box of a guesthouse situated behind a 1930s vintage Craftsman-style two-story with a broad porch fronting Newport Avenue. A sign on a metal rod, plunged into the front lawn, announced that the main house was for rent. Well, I thought, I guess that makes two of them now. Jen looked at the sign. “Maybe that number’s for the landlord. Think we ought to call?”
“We’ve got the key.”
Jen and I walked up the long driveway. The back unit sat next to a two-car garage behind the truncated backyard of the front house. I took a good look at the outside of Beth’s place. The porch was clean and recently swept, the bushes were trimmed away from the windows, and a white steel security screen covered the front door. A 100-watt bulb, screwed into a sensor socket that activated the light at dusk, glowed brightly.
I took the key ring out of my pocket and began trying the keys in the screen door’s dead bolt. On the third try, the bolt slid open. The same key unlocked the knob, and the locks on the front door were keyed alike too. As I pushed the door open, I noticed a steel strip that ran down the jamb, providing secure points for the dead bolt and latch to lock into, adding reinforcement against a forced entry.
I showed it to Jen. “Glad we didn’t have to kick it.”
“What do you think,” she asked, “paranoid landlord?”
“Somebody was interested in security.”
I ran my hand along the wall inside the door and found the light switch. I flipped it on and stepped inside. We stood silently and looked at the room.
The house seemed bigger than it had from the outside. A fairly large room was divided into living and dining areas by a sofa placed in its center. The sofa faced a coffee table and a large oak entertainment center that held a TV, a VCR, a small stereo, and an array of knickknacks and framed photos. On the opposite end of the room, behind the sofa, was a small round dining table. Beyond the table, two tall bookcases stood against the wall, flanking a doorway.
“Where do you want to start?” Jen asked.
“Let’s give it a walk-through and see what we see.”
A few steps to our left, a door led into the kitchen. An empty coffee cup sat unwashed in the sink. We walked through the kitchen and into a small laundry room, which had a side entry, and then continued straight into the bathroom. A door on our right led us into the bedroom.
Jen crossed the room to turn on the light. A queen-sized bed took up the bulk of the floor space. There was a dresser, a chair, two more bookcases, a small desk with a computer on top, and an oak-veneer file cabinet that served double duty as a printer stand. Jen ran her finger along the top edge of one of the bookcases and held it up to look at it. “No dust.” The bed had been hastily made, and a few articles of clothing—apparently, dirty laundry—sat on the floor in front of the closet, next to another door that opened into the dining area.
I stepped back into the bathroom. In the sink I saw a few stray hairs and a bit of dried white crust caked on the porcelain. I scraped up a bit of the white stuff with my fingernail. Toothpaste. One toothbrush, a blue-tinted Oral B with a blue stripe in the bristles, stood alone in a holder next to the faucet. A few disintegrating bits of unflushed blue tissue floated in the toilet. The peach-colored towel that was draped over the shower curtain rod was dry to the touch.
I used the end of my pen to dig through the dirty clothes in the hamper in the laundry room. Nothing much there. A T-shirt, two bras—one white and one black with a bit of lacey frill around the edges—cotton underwear, panty hose, and a pair of socks. Nothing unusual.
When I arrived back in the bedroom, Jen asked, “Any thoughts?”
“She was neat,” I said. “No recent overnight company. Maybe left in a hurry this morning.”
“That and three-fifty will get you a decaf grande latte.”
“Let’s start digging,” I said.
“Dibs on the bedroom.” As Jen started searching, I went out into the living room—and found myself looking into the blue-steel barrel of a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum.
THREE
“Stop!” The voice was harsh and sharp. My pulse thumped in m
y ears, and I froze, fighting the urge to go for my gun and dive for cover. He stood on the other side of the room, but my tunnel vision made the muzzle of the revolver seem only inches away.
The man pointing the gun at me was tall and lean with a fringe of white hair around his gleaming bald head, steel gray eyes, and a surprising steadiness in his liver-spotted hands. He stood in a textbook two-handed isosceles combat firing stance. I moved my arms out, away from my body, and held them there. Speaking as calmly as I could, I said, “Easy there, partner,” as I watched his eyes for any slight motions. “I’m a cop.”
Something gave in the hardness of his face. His nostrils flared as he released a breath of air, and his shoulders released some of their tension.
“I’m just going to lift open my coat, nice and slow so you can see,” I said, “and take out my badge, okay?”
He nodded. Very slowly and deliberately, I opened my coat with my left hand and reached into my inside pocket with my right thumb and forefinger, maintaining eye contact with him all the while. I let the leather holder fall open so he could see both the ID and the shield.
“Step toward me slowly,” he said.
I did as I was told. A few steps closer and he was able to get a good enough look at my credentials to lower his gun. I took a deep breath and tried to center myself.
“Jen?” I said, without looking behind me.
“Yeah?” she answered. From the direction of her voice, I could tell she was in a low crouch position in the bedroom door. From the surprised expression on my new friend’s face, I could tell she hadn’t yet reholstered her Glock.
“Danny Beckett,” I said, extending my right hand. “LBPD Homicide.”
The guy switched the revolver from his right hand to his left in order to shake. “Harlan Gibbs,” he said. His grip was firm. “My apologies, Detective.”
“This is my partner, Jennifer Tanaka.” She nodded. The three of us stood for a moment in an awkward silence and tried to compose ourselves.