Hangman

by Faye Kellerman

  “A big city and parts of it are very tough. Lots of migrants, lots of day laborers.”

  “Lot of construction people who probably like to go out drinking…like our friend Mr. Tinsley.”

  Decker studied the picture. “How’d you get hold of this?”

  “I ran through statewide homicides linked with jewelry. This popped out.”

  “Did anyone find out the name of Tinsley’s mother?”

  “I did. It was Julia.”

  “Interesting. Have you contacted Oxnard PD?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first. I can do that right now, if you want.”

  “Right now, what I want is an increased watch on Tinsley.”

  “Done. Sanford and Wainwright are on him.”

  “Good.” He drummed the table. “Okay. Playing devil’s advocate for the defense, I would say that there must be hundreds of necklaces out there like this one. Just because Tinsley has the jewelry doesn’t mean he killed anyone.”

  “But it makes him a liar since Julia doesn’t start with an R.”

  “It’s also possible that Tinsley’s just a thief. He stole a necklace that looks like the one Roxanne wore. He could be a fence.”

  “If he’s a fence, why is the necklace still in his possession and he’s still holding on to eight pieces of jewelry?” Wanda licked her lips. “I’m not locked into anything, but we’d have to be idiots not to consider that these are trophies.”

  “We could bring Tinsley in. And we could question him.” Decker’s head was spinning. “But it would be hard to hold him on something.”

  “What about the marijuana you found in his apartment?”

  “That’s a misdemeanor possession. He’s out in an hour. When I say ‘hold him,’ I mean hold him. He gave us a buccal swab. Let’s get a DNA profile. Is this the only piece that you found on the computer?”

  “So far, yes.”

  “All right.” He thought a moment. “Has Tinsley lived in the area all his life?”

  “I have him paying taxes in California for the last ten years.”

  “So look at all unsolved strangulations in the region. Call up the detectives on the open cases you find and ask if there was any missing jewelry associated with any of the victims. Since this one was found in Ventura County, direct the search up and down from L.A. If we find that Tinsley has another piece of jewelry that’s linked to another murder victim, we’ll talk to the D.A. and I’m betting that would be enough for us to hold him for a while. Tinsley could explain away one necklace as a coincidence. But it would be hard for him to explain away two.”

  “Do you want me to call up Oxnard?”

  “Yeah. Ask them if we can get the file and a DNA profile of the victim. Tell them we’re investigating a strangulation—a hanging specifically—and we’re going up and down the coast. Don’t tell them about the necklace yet. I want to keep a tight lid on this.”

  Wanda wrote down his instructions. “You know the business card that Marge and Oliver found in his apartment? That could have been the trophy.”

  “Maybe.” Decker tried to organize his thoughts. “Let’s send the necklace to the techs. If Tinsley yanked it off Roxanne’s neck, he could have broken her skin and there may be blood on it. Also, let’s swab the chain for DNA. The neck area is a prime sweat location. Skin cells slough especially in the heat and Oxnard can get very hot in the summer. If, by luck, the victim’s DNA happened to be on the jewelry, Chuck would have some major explaining to do.”

  “I’M IN THE lobby.”

  Silver’s voice. He had called just as Marge was toweling off her chlorine-saturated hair. “Be right down.”

  “See you then.”

  Marge checked her watch. It was close to five. She knocked on the door that joined her room with Oliver’s. “You there?”

  She heard muffled footsteps and then the door opened. There was a wide smile on Scott’s face. “I’m here.”

  “Silver’s downstairs, waiting for us.” She regarded her partner’s face. “You won?”

  Oliver stuffed a wad of money in her hand. “In keeping with what we did before, this is half of it.”

  Marge fanned the bills. “There’s over a thousand dollars.”

  “One thousand two hundred seventy-eight, to be exact. How about dinner tonight, Ms. Dunn? I’m nothing if not a gentleman.”

  “Sure.” Her smile was genuine. “Good for you, Scott. If I keep what you gave me, even if you spend the rest, you’ll still leave with a profit in your pocket.”

  “Too late. I blew it all.”

  She laughed. “On what?”

  “Two premium tickets to Cirque du Soleil’s O and a new pair of Gucci loafers. Plus, we are going out to dinner and it’s all on the house.” He pointed to himself.

  “Thank you, my man. Let’s go see what Detective Silver has to say about Garth Hammerling.”

  “Probably something good.”

  “I like your unexpected optimism, Scott. Stay that way.”

  “Sweetheart, the way I’m feeling, I could turn Detective Silver into Detective Gold.”

  THE ONLY PATRONS of the motel coffee shop were two middle-aged men dressed similarly in short-sleeved white shirts, dark slacks, and loafers. The men were average build and weight, with one having slightly more hair than the other. Marge waved at the men and they waved back. Introductions were made all around.

  Lonnie Silver was the bald one in blue pants. He was drinking coffee and working on a piece of apple pie. Rodney Major had a bald dome surrounded by gray, curly hair. He was in the brown pants, wolfing down a chicken sandwich with fries. As soon as Marge and Oliver sat down, a stick-thin waitress with bouffant gray hair came over and brought them menus. Marge and Oliver ordered coffee and a blueberry-bran muffin at Silver’s suggestion.

  Small talk ensued.

  How was the ride over? How long you here for? Gonna see any shows? Go to Delucci’s for dinner. All the chitchat allowed them time to finish the food and get down to the real reason for meeting. Silver spoke up first.

  “When you called a couple of days ago and asked about Garth Hammerling, frankly, I didn’t give it much thought. Lots of people run to Vegas to reinvent themselves. Maybe your guy is here and maybe he isn’t. One thing’s for certain. It’s gonna be hard to find him. You want to hide, you come to Vegas, although if this guy is truly a bad guy, we can track him down. Problem is, you don’t know if he’s a bad guy, so it’s hard to justify resources on a maybe.”

  Marge said, “That’s why we came down in person. We figured we could do some legwork. All we’re asking for is a little direction.”

  “We can help you there.” Major spoke up.

  “Yeah, way more than I thought,” Silver said.

  “I like the sound of that,” Oliver said.

  Silver said, “See, once I get a bug in me, it’s hard to let go. So I get to thinking on how to look for this guy. We obviously can’t go knocking on hotel-room doors in the big casinos. And I can’t ask them for guest rosters. We’re dealing with thousands of people and you don’t even know if this Hammerling guy actually did anything. Besides, I know all the homicides on the Strip and none of them sound like your guy.”

  “What kind of homicides?” Marge asked.

  “Bar fights, gang fights, robberies gone bad,” Silver told them. “And none of them took place in the big hotels. The big hotels police their clientele way better than we could do with our budget. They got the money, the motivation, and the manpower to keep the crap out. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen…it has happened…but the hotel corridors are patrolled pretty well. Someone screaming or someone dragging a body out of one of the rooms would likely be noticed.”

  “They got more security cameras than the Pentagon,” Rodney Major said. “They got people looking at them night and day. Funny stuff goes on between individuals behind closed doors, they don’t bother with that. But if the powers that be see any hint of a prostitution ring or drugs being dealt out of a room, they’
re gonna bust it up with their own people and keep it quiet. The owners aren’t gangsters anymore, haven’t been for forty years. They’re savvy businessmen. Why would they want the illegal crap when they can rake in billions doing legal gaming?”

  “I’m not saying that Garth ran a prostitution ring,” Marge said. “But we did hear from his friends that he goes to Vegas all the time, spending way more money on women than on gambling.”

  Silver said, “You told me that, and it got me thinking.”

  “He’s dangerous when he’s thinking,” Major said.

  “Yeah, you can smell the wood burning.” Silver smiled. “Anyway, a lot of the young bucks who spend a lot of time here, like every weekend or every other weekend, they just don’t have the wallet size to stay at the big hotels. If they want cheap action, they go outside the Strip. From my standpoint, that’s easier to handle because the scale is smaller.”

  Marge and Oliver nodded. Silver had a story to tell and there was no sense rushing him through it.

  “So I start making calls,” Silver said. “I call up downtown…that’s still pretty glitzy and hard to get a fix on. No luck there. I call up Boulder City. They’ve got a small strip there, but I still don’t get anywhere with that. Then I start on the smaller places like the one you’re staying at. These establishments don’t have a posse of soldiers behind them like the big hotels do. They rely on police. I have a good relationship with them. I still don’t get any hits, but I can’t let go. I get that way sometimes…that I’m moving in the right direction, like this invisible hand pushing me. After so many years in homicide, you learn to respect your intuition.”

  Marge said, “Absolutely.”

  The waitress came by and refilled coffee cups. When she was gone, Silver said, “So I’m thinking about where else could this guy have stayed. And then I think of North Las Vegas and my buddy Rodney.”

  Major said, “If you want cheaper thrills, North L.V. is your kind of place.”

  “North Las Vegas isn’t handled by Las Vegas Metro.”

  “Yeah, we’re like the dot over the big I of the Las Vegas Strip. We’ve got our own casinos and they’re cheaper than the Strip in Vegas proper.”

  “I call up Rodney and ask him if he can talk to his people and find out if Garth Hammerling was a regular in one of his places.”

  “I make my calls and guess what?” Major said. “He used to be a regular in a couple of my places.”

  Marge and Oliver exchanged glances. Oliver said, “You found him?”

  “No, I’d tell you that right away,” Major said. “There are about seven major places on my strip and they tell me he hasn’t been around for a while.”

  “Yeah, I was pretty disappointed about that,” Silver said. “So I ask Rodney, you know, I’m not familiar with all of your homicides like I am with my district. Have you had any unusual recent murders…like a hanging?”

  Major laughed. “And I say, if we had a hanging, you’d hear about it.”

  “Yeah, the town’s not that big. A hanging would make the local news,” Silver said.

  “A hanging made our local news,” Marge said. “It’s unusual.”

  “Right,” Silver said. “So then I ask Rodney, have you had any recent murders by strangulation? Because hanging is essentially strangulation.”

  “And I say, not that I can recall.”

  Marge laughed. They had a real comic thing going.

  Major said, “Most of our homicides are from knives, guns, and broken bottles that were smashed over some drunk’s head.”

  Silver said, “So I was about to give up. But then you called and said you were coming down. And then you tell me that Garth might be traveling with a woman named Amanda Kowalski.”

  “That’s what we’re thinking,” Oliver said. “Because she’s missing, too.”

  “Right,” Silver answered. “So I call Rodney back up. Because by now, I found out that Garth likes his district better than mine. So I tell him that Garth might be traveling with a woman. So could he check out any couples traveling together?”

  “I told him I’d do that,” Major said. “His curiosity has become infectious. So I take the picture of Garth and go around the casinos and hotels and motels ask them about couples with this guy. His name is Garth Hammerling, but he could be going under another name. No luck. I call the smaller motels and ask about couples named Hammerling. No luck with the hotels. Then I think a little. Maybe the guy got into a car accident. I call up HP and ask if any bad accidents went down in the area in the last week. Well, I don’t have any luck finding Garth Hammerling. But there was an accident a day ago: a one-car crack-up in the middle of the desert. A couple of boys were dirt-biking and came across the wreck with a body in the driver’s seat.”

  “Oh dear,” Marge said. “That’s not good.”

  “It was a miracle they found the car, but that wasn’t the biggest miracle. When the HP got there and took a pulse of the body, they found out that the passenger—a woman in her twenties—was still alive.”

  Silver said, “The poor woman was a wreck. Burns on her lower body, broken bones, but she was breathing on her own.”

  “Weaving in and out of consciousness,” Major said. “She was rushed to the burn unit at Las Vegas Medical Center. She’s in a medically induced coma. The coroner’s immediate thought is a one-car suicide. But we really don’t know squat because she didn’t have any ID on her. And she can’t talk because she’s unconscious.”

  “What about the car?” Oliver asked.

  “It’s a Toyota Corolla—older model—’02 or ’03. It’s a tangle of metal and burned at spots, but it hasn’t been gutted by fire. It’s at the forensic lab. We haven’t been able to get an owner off of the VIN number, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Marge spoke up. “What about burns on her face?”

  “As far as I know, it was just her legs. She was wearing her seat belt, so she’s got some bruises from the air bag deploying. But she’d be recognizable. Do you know what Amanda Kowalski looks like?”

  “We do,” Oliver said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Silver said. “So I called up one of the doctors this morning and asked about her. She was still in a coma, although the doctor—her name is Julienne Hara—is optimistic. Then she tells me that the woman had Xanax in her system, enough to cause death. So it’s beginning to look like a suicide. She took a fatal dose of Xanax, put her foot on the accelerator, and that was that.”

  “We think our murder victim was drugged before she was hanged,” Marge asked.

  “We haven’t gotten the complete tox back on her yet,” Oliver said. “But she didn’t have any defensive wounds. It looks like she was sedated before she was strung up.”

  “Interesting,” Silver said.

  “Really interesting,” Major said. “Because then the doc tells me a ‘by the way.’ I like ‘by the ways.’ It’s always something juicy. The doc says that someone might have attempted to strangle her. Since some of the swelling went down, she might have seen bruises around the neck. She said we should come over and take a look. She said, if it wasn’t an accident or it wasn’t a suicide, it could have been an attempted homicide.”

  “Meaning the police should be involved,” Silver said. “We figured you should come with us to the hospital. Ordinarily I’d ask you to send a picture of Kowalski. But you’re here and she’s bruised up. You could make a better ID.”

  “It may not be anything,” Major said. “But if so, you can stick around and ask your own questions about Hammerling. I can help you out with the local hotels here.”

  “Hey, even if this doesn’t pan out, we owe you one,” Marge said.

  “How about Delucci’s tonight?” Silver said. “I’m in the mood for Italian and the place is open until one.”

  “Sounds good,” Oliver reached into his pockets and pulled out two tickets. “We were supposed to see O tonight. That’s not gonna happen. You want the tickets?”

  “O’s terrific,” Silver
said. “Don’t miss that.”

  Major said, “Yeah, you gotta see O.”

  Silver said, “Do the ID—either yes or no—and then just make the time for it. Your questions will hold for a couple of hours.”

  Major said, “Yeah, the gal in the hospital isn’t going anywhere soon. It’s Vegas. You ever notice the casinos don’t have clocks? That’s because the city never sleeps.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  TYPING THE PARAMETERS into the computer—“homicide,” “female,” “strangulation”—Decker, Wanda, and Lee Wang pulled up a dozen unsolved but currently open cases within the jurisdiction of LAPD. When Wang entered the data into the files of the Cold Case Homicide Unit, the numbers climbed significantly. And that didn’t even factor in cases from other nearby police departments: San Fernando, Culver City, Beverly Hills, Oxnard, Ventura, San Bernardino, San Diego, and a slew of other smaller departments up and down the state. There were no shortcuts. Cases had to be reread, lead detectives had to be contacted, questions had to be asked.

  Among the things they were hunting when reading the files were: Chuck Tinsley’s name as a witness or a suspect, and jewelry associated with the victims. Decker didn’t need Sherlock Holmes. He needed detectives like Wanda and Lee who could read for hours and focus on details. It was tedious work, which generally produced more headaches and eyestrain than results.

  By five in the afternoon, Decker was ready to pack it in when his cell rang. Restricted number and that made sense. No one he knew well would call him on Saturday. “Decker.”

  “It’s Eliza Slaughter.”

  “Hey, Detective, how’s it going?”

  “Nothing big. I just wanted to tell you that the techs went through the car that Donatti rented. We sprayed luminal throughout the car and the trunk and under the carpet in the trunk, in the wheelbases, under the carriage. There’s no evidence of blood. The car was cleaned by the rental company, but not immaculately. We picked up a lot of hairs and fibers. We’ll check them out to see if any belonged to Terry, but honestly, I don’t expect much.”