by N. M. Brown
Moving toward the shelf, like a holy man reaching out to some profound relic, he brought his hand up close to where the small box sat. He was careful not to let his hand touch it, because then he would have to open the box and entire days might be lost to his labyrinth of memories. Instead, he gently placed a new memento on the shelf and took a step back to look at it.
The small red tin of lip gloss was circular and featured a garish cartoon of two cherries. The previous evening he had momentarily considered leaving it behind, on that dusty dead-end street, when he’d disposed of the remains, but he’d held on to it – as well as his other small trophy. During the trip, the body was sitting upright in the backseat of the car, held in place by a seatbelt, appearing to the naïve world to be a sleeping passenger. This had been much easier than placing it in the trunk, which was fine when his captive was alive, whimpering and praying, but not when he had finished with them. He had discovered on previous occasions that rigor mortis would set in soon after death, and a previously soft body would set hard like marble, locking the body into shape. Steel-like limbs, set hard at strange angles, made it difficult to remove the remains from the trunk. However, with his upright corpse, Michael could simply unclip the seatbelt, pull the body over, and let it tumble easily from the car.
He had removed the faux fur jacket from the body to make applying the seatbelt easier, but, as he pulled the body from the car, the red tin of lip gloss had rolled like a small wheel from the folds of the garment. Having deposited the remains amongst some dried grasses on the edge of Carpenter Road, he returned to the vehicle and picked up the small red tin. He was about to launch it through the air, into the arid undergrowth, but something had stopped him. Perhaps the item reminded him of youthfulness, or the softness of a girl’s mouth; whatever it was, a strange flicker of association had made him stuff it in his pocket before driving off to dump the car somewhere far away from the sprawled remains.
Chapter Four
Leighton had only just pulled his car out of the circular drop-off area of Tri City Medical Centre, when the crackling call came through from dispatch on his radio. He had been enjoying the view – the sky above the gleaming, white towers of the hospital was a flawless blue. This was Leighton’s favourite time of year, when the Santa Ana winds would blow any smog out over the ocean, and, for a while at least, the city felt fresh and clean. The air had always seemed to smell like that, years earlier, on the days he had taken his young daughter, Annie, to the beach next to Tyson Street Park. It was their weekend ritual. She had loved the jungle gym there best of all. But that was before Annie had grown up, and Leighton’s ability to parent had suddenly faltered. In recent months, he’d felt like his job was the only part of his life in which he had any clear sense of purpose – and that was wavering.
Leighton’s nostalgic recollections were broken by the message coming through his radio:
‘All units in the Harbour area – we have a report of an alleged assault on a car salesman by a female assailant. Incident is possibly in progress. Address is a commercial business: Rollins Stock Cars, 118 Connor Street.’
As he picked up the black handset, Leighton turned to his imaginary partner and nodded, as if in confirmation.
‘Ten-four dispatch,’ he said, ‘this is Leighton Jones, me and Danny are in the area. We will take it – en route.’
Leighton knew from experience that a minor incident like this would probably involve nothing more than an unhappy customer getting revenge for being sold a pile of junk. Therefore, the situation was unlikely to escalate to the point of requiring back-up officers to arrive at the scene and ask tricky questions regarding the whereabouts of Officer Daniel Clark.
Less than five minutes after he received the call from dispatch, Leighton pulled up outside the Rollins Stock car lot. He switched off the engine and reached for the radio to call in his position.
‘Dispatch, this is Car B33 at location on West Visa Way.’
As he stepped out of the vehicle, Leighton felt the warm air on his skin and heard the distant sound of the ocean waves – it was a calming, reassuring sound. Mixed with this, was the jagged sound of raised voices. The antagonism was loud enough to be heard over the rushing sounds of the freeway, as well as the distant thunder of the ocean. Pausing for a moment, Leighton sighed and dragged a hand over his face. The argument reminded him a bit too much of home.
Making his way through the maze of gleaming vehicles, Leighton followed the swelling sound until he finally located its source.
When he arrived in the centre of the car lot, Leighton found a young woman standing defiantly in front of a clearly enraged man, on the driver’s side of a silver Ford. More alarming was the fact that the woman was holding a small can of pepper spray. The scene reminded Leighton of old vampire movies, in which a monster could be held back by a glowing crucifix or tiny vial of holy water. An area of red skin on the man’s right cheek, coupled with a watering, bloodshot eye, suggested to Leighton that the woman had already given the can a spray or two.
‘Okay, ma’am,’ Leighton called out to the woman. ‘I’m a police officer, put the Mace down.’
She glanced briefly toward Leighton and dismissed him, and returned her entire attention to the red-faced male.
‘I said, put the Mace down,’ Leighton spoke again – this time in a deliberately calm and clear manner.
‘Not as long as that prick is within grabbing distance of me.’
Leighton nodded to the man. ‘Take a step back, sir. Please.’
Dave Rollins shook his head in irritation but obeyed the police officer’s instruction.
‘Okay, Miss …’ Leighton gestured to the hand holding the Mace. The woman gradually lowered it, but kept it in her hand.
‘That’s good. Now can somebody tell me what’s going on here?’
‘That crazy bitch just tried to blind me with that pepper spray,’ Rollins shouted.
‘Is that true?’ Leighton asked, as he glanced at the young woman.
‘He tried to grab me,’ she shrugged, ‘I was defending myself.’
‘She was trespassing!’ Rollins whined.
‘Sir, do you work here?’ Leighton asked.
‘Of course I do. My name is David Rollins – as in Rollins Stock Cars. I’ve been here for sixteen years. I own all of this.’ Even in this moment of chaos, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to bathe in pride.
Leighton nodded his head and shifted his attention to the woman.
‘What’s your name, Miss?’ he asked.
She shrugged, and brushed at nothing on her shoulder.
‘I need a name,’ Leighton continued.
‘Rochelle,’ she said quickly.
‘Okay, thank you.’ Leighton took a slow and deliberate breath. ‘Now, what are you doing in this used car lot, Rochelle?’
‘I was walking along the street out there,’ she pointed to the highway, ‘when I spotted this car. Some bitch climbed into it two nights ago, along with my jacket and my phone.’
‘That’s obviously bullshit, she’s high on something.’ Rollins shouted.
Rochelle narrowed her eyes and flicked her middle finger at the salesman.
‘Sir,’ Leighton said, ‘you’re really not helping.’
Leighton walked slowly to the rear of the car, crouched down, and made a note of the license plate.
‘Do you own this vehicle?’ he asked Rollins.
‘No, it’s not one of mine. The ones I sell all have blank plates.’
‘Yeah, I noticed that. I thought it might be your own private car, but it’s not?’ Leighton asked.
‘Of course it’s not,’ Rollins said, with a frown like a knife cut between his eyes. ‘Do you think I’d drive that piece of shit?’
Leighton ignored the question. ‘Tell me, do those fancy cameras you have mounted on poles all around here actually record anything?’
‘Of course, we have twenty-four-hour surveillance.’
‘Where’s the recording equipment?�
��
‘Back in my office. It runs on a 48-hour loop.’
‘Mr Rollins, could you please go and check that a recording was made last night?’
When Dave Rollins had skulked away, Leighton’s demeanour softened and he turned to Rochelle.
‘Okay, let’s make a deal. How about you take a walk, I appease Mr Rollins, and we all get to go our separate ways in time for lunch.’
‘That’s my jacket in there,’ Rochelle said defiantly, and folded her arms. ‘I’m not leaving without it.’
‘Okay, ma’am, if it is, could you explain how your jacket got inside this car?’
‘I told you already, I gave it to some girl last night, over on the South Cal Freeway, but the bitch made off with it.’
‘Was she working the streets too?’
‘Oh no, this girl was a regular princess, smoking outside some café place down by the lighthouse.’
Leighton nodded, a non-committal expression on his face, and looked through the window at the raggedy faux fur jacket, raising his eyebrows.
Rochelle followed his gaze and felt the need to explain. ‘Look, I know, it’s a shitty jacket, but I think she was probably more interested in the forty bucks in the inside pocket.’
Leighton sighed and walked over to the driver’s side door and tried the handle.
‘It’s locked, Sherlock,’ Rochelle said, with one hand on her hip. ‘Don’t you think I would have tried the door already?’
‘All of them?’ Leighton asked, as he moved purposefully around the car.
‘No but I fig—’
There was an audible click as Leighton opened the rear door. He reached into the Ford and cautiously pulled out the worn garment. He would normally have checked the pockets but he didn’t want to risk a needle-stick from a hooker’s jacket, so he was happy to let this one slide.
‘Okay,’ he said, as he handed Rochelle the jacket, ‘seems like you’ve got what you wanted.’
But Rochelle wasn’t listening: she was frantically checking her pockets.
‘Looks like the bitch got my cherry lip gloss, but at least the cash is here. You want to make a poster or something, telling people to watch out for a coat-stealing bitch with a flame tattoo on her scrawny little neck.’
She pulled out a thin roll of notes and counted them, her lips moving silently in time with her fingers. ‘All here,’ she said with a satisfied smile.
‘Look,’ Leighton said quietly, ‘if I were you, I’d clear out of here pretty quickly. That guy could insist that I charge you with assault.’
‘You’re not taking me in?’ she said, sounding genuinely surprised.
‘Nope.’ Leighton said dismissively.
‘What, not even for the power trip?’
‘No power trip required.’
‘Are you sure you’re a real cop?’ she asked.
‘Sometimes I ask myself the same thing,’ Leighton said with a wry smile, but Rochelle had already turned around and was moving through an aisle of cars.
At that moment, Leighton heard Rollins returning from his office. He turned to greet and also divert him. ‘Any luck?’ he asked.
‘There was nothing recorded last night, camera must’ve been acting up. Where the hell’s she going?’ Rollins asked.
Leighton was unsure if Dave Rollins was the kind of petty man who would demand that he drop the full weight of the law upon a poor girl who clearly had enough problems to deal with. He suspected that he was.
Therefore, he said the one thing that he knew would get Rollins off the subject.
‘Hey,’ Leighton said, whilst rubbing his neck thoughtfully, ‘I was thinking about getting a run-around for my daughter. She’s seventeen and almost ready to sit her driver’s test. Do you have anything like that?’
‘I sure do!’ Dave Rollins said with a wide grin.
Chapter Five
After he had left Dave Rollins’ car lot, Leighton spent three hours in a meeting room at the back of the station, delivering a Driver Awareness class to a group of seven people. Each of them had been involved in a minor traffic collision or had been caught DUI. Even with the windows open and the ceiling fan on, the afternoon session had been long and hot. Leighton had felt increasingly tired as he’d explained the difference between thinking distance, stopping distance and breaking distance. Eventually he wrapped up the theory, and led the party of offenders outside where they had each been required to lay out coloured cones to mark out what they estimated the stopping distance of a car being driven at 60mph to be. Each person had placed a separate cone to show their guess. As was always the case, all of their guesses were vastly underestimated. When they were all finished, Leighton took a mangled licence plate from a cardboard box that was on the concrete steps of the meeting room entrance. He then asked the group to pay close attention as he walked across the parking lot. Once he had covered the distance of seventeen cars, he placed the plate down on the ground.
‘This,’ he called back to the assembled group, ‘is how far your car would travel after you had decided to stop.’ He then waved the unsettled party over to where he was standing. Once they had all joined him, Leighton pointed to the ground.
‘Okay, ladies and gentlemen, the licence plate at my feet came from a car that belonged to Mr Larry Spacey. Anyone heard of him?’
The various offenders shook their heads.
‘I didn’t think so.’ Leighton continued. ‘Larry was a local resident who killed two children over on Haymar Drive. The two brothers were aged eight and ten at the time. Anyway, on Thursday, 7 November, last year, the boys had sneaked across the road to get some party balloons from Dollar Tree for their three-year-old sister’s birthday.’ Leighton waited a moment to let the gravity of the situation sink in.
‘It had been a dry afternoon, but as the boys made their way back home it had started to rain, and I guess that meant they had to hurry. They must have figured that Larry’s saloon was travelling at the usual speed for that road – 40 mph. He wasn’t. Our investigation concluded that Larry was driving at 68 mph. When he looked through that rain soaked windshield, and saw the young boys run out in front of his car, he slammed his feet on the brake. The boys must have heard the squeal of Larry’s tyres and froze. After the car had ploughed into the two boys, it continued to travel for another ten car lengths. Larry Spacey is currently serving a sentence of twenty-six years in jail. But, I got to see his eyes in the courtroom, and I can say confidently that his sentence will never end.’ Leighton sighed, and picked up the mangled metal plate. ‘Drive safely, and drive soberly, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes the Driver Awareness session, please ensure you collect any personal belongings, and sign out at reception.’
When he had finally cleared up the plastic cones from the parking bays, Leighton climbed into the Explorer and drove back across the city to the hospital to pick up Danny. Arriving at the vast parking area he found his partner, standing in the visitor drop-off zone, looking weary.
‘Hey,’ Leighton said, as Danny climbed into the car, ‘how’s your pop holding up?’
Danny rubbed one of his eyes. ‘I don’t know. They’re not sure of anything. Apparently, he needs another MRI scan to confirm the scale of the damage.’
‘Well, maybe that’s a good thing,’ Leighton said optimistically. ‘At least you will know what’s going on, right?’
‘I hope so, Jonesy, I really do,’ Danny said with a sigh. ‘How was your day?’
‘Pretty uneventful – just the way I like it,’ Leighton said, and steered the car out of the hospital grounds. He wasn’t being evasive – at that point, the incident at Rollins Stock Cars was still fairly insignificant; as far as he was concerned, the allegedly stolen jacket had been dealt with.
The two officers sped down the baking highway in the black and white Explorer. Leighton had deliberately chosen to visit anywhere that other Oceanside PD colleagues would be likely to see Danny in the vehicle.
For a while they parked in an observation point to watc
h the traffic on the boulevard.
Finally, at the end of watch, Leighton dropped Danny at his small apartment on the east side of Mission Avenue, three streets away from the station.
‘Thanks for today, Jonesy,’ he said earnestly.
‘Forget it, I can cover the shifts easily enough. Just keep your cell phone switched on in case I need to steal you away from the hospital.’
‘You want me to write up some notes with you? We could head over to the station.’
Leighton shook his head. ‘I’ll take care of it. That way I can put in accurate details of when and where things happened.’
‘Well, how about Friday night I buy you dinner? There’s that fancy place you like down at the harbour?’
‘That sounds nice, Danny, but the way I see it, you need to save your cash to pay your old man’s medical bills. How about you buy me a beer sometime?’
‘Sure,’ Danny said, as he climbed out of the car, ‘a crateful.’
As he pulled into the drive of his own small condo, Leighton sighed. A row of empty grey bins stood along the roadside like a guard of honour. The previous evening, Leighton had deliberately reminded his daughter to put out the trash for collection, but his own overflowing trash can remained by the side of the house. It seemed that Annie had forgotten again. This was nothing new. In recent months, Leighton had found that parenting his teenage daughter on his own was about as easy as putting handcuffs on a snake. He regularly found himself veering between being too soft, and overly critical.
When he stepped into his home, Leighton found Annie sitting on the sofa, eating a pretzel, and flicking through a glossy magazine.
‘Hey,’ she said, without shifting her attention from the images of moody, underweight models.