The Crime Writer (aka I See You) (2007)

by Gregg Hurwitz

  "I got a suspect for you," he continued. "Check your e-mail looks like a spam piece, subject heading 'Real Rolex Watches.' Print the attachments only. They'll be untraceable. Then call me back. At the lab."

  I padded into my office, opened the attachments, and printed a few copies. Leafing through the pages, I dialed the lab on my dead home line before snapping out of it and doing a second take on my cell phone.

  Lloyd said, "Top document gives you registrant information for all hundred and fifty-three brown Volvos with a license beginning with seven that the DMV has on record for L.A. County."

  I scanned the list eagerly, looking for names I recognized. My breathing had quickened. Had one of these people intended to put me away for a murder I didn't commit? Had one of them sunk the knife into the soft flesh above Genevieve's navel?

  "Flip to the next doc," Lloyd said. "Those are photos and rap sheets for the five individuals from the first list who have a criminal record."

  Four men and a woman, all with the pallor and frizzed hair unique to booking photos, gazed from my monitor. None I recognized.

  "Four are just penny-ante stuff," Lloyd continued, "but one I like. I like this guy a lot."

  I knew which one before Lloyd said the name. Morton Frankel. A low shelf of a brow shaded dark eyes. Flared nostrils, angular cheeks, cropped hair. Thin, well-tended sideburns extended past the bottoms of his ears, ending in points. He wasn't smiling so much as baring his teeth, which seemed just slightly too long, as if his gums had receded. Ropy muscle sheathed his neck; he'd flexed as the photo was taken. His bearing and grooming seemed purposely refined to convey menace.

  Who the hell was this guy? And if he was the killer, why had he gone to such elaborate lengths to bring me down? How was he connected to Broach and Genevieve? And what the hell did he have against me?

  "This guy's right off the movie poster," I said.

  "Arrested in '99 and '03 for the rapes. Acquitted once, the other he pled down to a battery he put a hooker in the hospital. Did some time there, his second brief stint. He was a person of interest in another rape investigation in '05, but there wasn't anything to hold him on. Questioned again last year on a missing girl, never held. As you can see, he's got a lot of affection for women."

  I thought about the unidentified hair found on Kasey Broach's body. "No DNA on record?"

  "Just prints. He's a machinist, drawing a salary right now from Bonsky Forge and Metalworks in Van Nuys. But look at his address. He lives downtown, not ten minutes from the Broach dump site."

  "And the electrical tape was bought at the Van Nuys Home Depot, by his work."

  "There you go. He's got the diabolical gleam in the eyes, too."

  "That he does. Rasputin himself."

  Though I had only the thinnest of circumstantial evidence, I couldn't help but put Morton Frankel in Genevieve's bedroom. This was the face that she'd glimpsed through her last panic flash, approaching her in the night? That face in her peaceful bedroom with the vanilla candles and fluffy duvet? It seemed impossible, profane, even. Had he been obsessed with her? Or had he killed her to work out an obsession with me? What continued to plague me most was the thought of Genevieve's fear in that final instant before the knife tip found her heart. A terror that Katherine Harriman, my redoubtable prosecutor, might have called unimaginable. But I could imagine it all too well. Would Morton Frankel have made it worse Genevieve's last moment alive than if it had been me in that room? I prayed that she hadn't suffered at his hands, that the struggle had been as brief and merciful as billed. The thought of him watching me while I slept made me actually shudder. This man, with pointed sideburns, crouching over my sevoflurane-slumbering form with a boning knife?

  Lloyd had been talking.

  "Sorry, what?"

  "I said, this is my ass on the line. I'll deny sending you this to the bitter end."

  "I will, too. Getting it from you, I mean."

  "Hand it off to Kaden and Delveckio. I can't without answering questions of how I closed in on it, which means I would implicate you, which means I would implicate myself. Get it?"

  "I get it."

  "I'm sorry about last night "

  "If there's one thing you don't have to do, Lloyd, it's apologize."

  There was a long silence, and then he said, "I have to go."

  I couldn't take my eyes off the booking photo. There was something unquestionably perverse about Morton. Something unreasonable about his very appearance. He made for much better cackling-villain material than Richard Collins, the Home Depot stoner. Maybe Frankel murdered women for the thrill of it. That would explain the lack of obvious connections between Genevieve and Broach. But it wouldn't explain why a random serial killer would want to frame me.

  A scrape at the door startled me I'd forgotten I was a proud dog owner. Xena ambled in, squatted, and urinated into a box of Hunter Pray DVDs in the corner.

  I'd let her sleep on a mound of pillows in the kitchen, figuring the flagstones to be impervious to accidents. Then again, glossy jewel cases probably held up pretty well under dog urine, too. I mopped up as best I could and went downstairs, Xena slobbering at my side. Since I didn't have any dog food, I pan-fried some hamburger meat, adding salt, pepper, and a dash of curry as befitted a princess warrior. Xena seemed quite pleased with the results.

  Gus had been MIA for a few days. The coyotes had probably caught up to him at last, poor guy. Before letting Xena out, I checked the backyard one final time, then offered my missing squirrel pal a toast with my glass of pomegranate juice. I went upstairs and showered. Preston arrived just as I finished dressing, and Xena unleashed her inner killer on him, nuzzling his crotch and licking his hands in threatening fashion.

  We made and broke eye contact, neither of us eager to acknowledge my drop-in the previous night. Were we going to discuss it? Discuss what?

  Preston brushed past me, rubbing his palms together eagerly. Business as usual. "Got more pages for me?"

  "Better. I have a suspect."

  He detoured through the kitchen, returned with a rum on the rocks, and plunked onto the couch, oblivious to the two dirty glasses he'd left on the coffee table in his prior house calls. Xena curled at my feet, licked herself vigorously, then fell asleep. As I brought him up to speed, the gardeners arrived. Xena failed to rouse when the team of five masked men, wielding hedge trimmers and weed whackers, carved up my backyard.

  Preston thrilled at the photo of Morton Frankel. "What an antagonist! He even looks like one. But Mort? Mort! Why can't he be Cyrus?

  Or Bart? Who names their kid Mort? Only Jews with a dead Mort somewhere."

  "Like in the attic?"

  "You know what I mean."

  I got Preston my latest pages, and he set them in his lap and leaned back on the couch. I detected an underlying sadness. Or, having seen his digs as lonely as mine was I projecting?

  "Listen," he said. "I, uh . . ." An unusual hitch. He cleared his throat and started again, more formally, "I don't do so well when I'm . . . I suppose I do better when I'm out. And skip the obvious jokes. It's a part-time condo, if that. Just for me, really. I'm not actually here that much that it makes sense to do a whole thing. I don't even take dates back. People pawing around. It just feels too invasive."

  "Invasive," I said. "Right."

  Leaving Preston on my couch reading my latest pages and Xena trying to bite the stream of air from the floor vent, I gathered up my untraceable documents and my various theories and went in search of a detective.

  "Since I wasted your night last time, I figured I'd give you first crack at it."

  I waited through the pause. I'd caught Cal at home, readying to forge into another day of Westside crime. Someone had kidnapped a poodle from a Brentwood nail salon, which meant that Fifi had wandered off but the owner wanted police help in retrieving her. Ethics bow before toy dogs. I looked down to plug in my headset, almost sending the Guiltmobile flying off a Mulholland ridge.

  Cal said, "Listen, as much
as I'd like to get on this fuck, do I want to and as much as I appreciate your cutting me in, you're gonna have to bring it to Kaden and Delveckio. I can't dick around anymore. My captain caught wind of our Starsky-and-Hutch stunt and came down pretty good."

  Thus the poodle assignment.

  "I didn't tell him you were there, though," Cal said, "though it might come out soon. Figured you got enough balls in the air, and I was the dumb-ass with the badge."

  "Shit, I'm sorry. How'd your captain catch wind of it?"

  "Richard Collins is pressing charges."

  "What?"

  "The whole fire-extinguisher thing."

  "I'd wondered whether that was within departmental regs."

  "I saw it on TV once. Aiden's War."

  Johnny Ordean's show. Served us right.

  "Tell Richard Collins that I used my cell-phone camera to take a picture of the pot he was trying to wash down the disposal. And sent it, Web-time-stamped to my computer at the very minute we were inside his place."

  "He was? You did?"

  "Yes. No. But it won't be worth his risking a third strike to call the bluff."

  Cal exhaled a relieved sigh. A lawsuit would've killed his chances of getting to Robbery-Homicide. "You know I love you, Drew. Listen, you're not doing such a shitty job here. About the Richard Collins angle? We all step in it, as I proved. That's how investigations proceed. Like writing, I'd guess. You fuck up and keep trying until something hits."

  "It'll hit for you, Cal. You'll make RHD."

  "Yeah, right after I collar the poodle." He laughed. "Listen, I know I was a dick when you first asked for help. I was pissed I was stuck in West Latte Division and you murdered someone and didn't even call me first."

  "Next time," I said, "I'll be sure to."

  Kaden set a brick of a fist on the papers I'd placed on his desk. "Where'd you get these documents?"

  "They're illegal for you to have," Delveckio said. "This is confidential information. Just like the case files your buddy Cal Unger's been quietly digging around for."

  "Cal has? When?"

  "Right. This is news to you."

  It was. Cal had just told me that since getting busted he'd stepped off the extracurricular investigation. He put in a request for the case files before then and hadn't told me? Or was Delveckio lying? As LAPD detectives, both were certainly in pole position to dick around with evidence. Why would Cal be secretive about seeing the case files? Because he was gunning for a promotion or helping me out but had to cover his ass since he was out of his jurisdiction. Or for more ominous reasons. What had he said to me when I'd first tracked him down? I think guys like you are exploitive bastards. But his name wasn't on the Volvo list I was sure of it. Was I paranoid? Yes. Wrong? Maybe. I made a note to have Chic get Cal's information to the database privacy invader. Next I'd be getting the guy to investigate Chic. And then himself.

  "Now," Kaden said, his tone snapping me back to the cool Parker Center air, "how 'bout you tell us where you got the DMV records?"

  "You know I can't tell you that. So can we skip this part and figure out how to use what's here?" Leaving out Lloyd's involvement, I'd explained to them twice already how I'd arrived at the DMV registration list and the suspect photos. Frustrated, I leaned back in the folding chair before Kaden's desk and peered around the squad room. I'd drawn a few looks of recognition and disdain on my way up and as I'd moved through the halls.

  Kaden angled his computer monitor away from the glare of the bare windows. "What's the witness's name again?"

  "Junior Delgado."

  He hammered on the keyboard, then shook his head as if he'd found what he'd suspected all along. "Kid's got a rap sheet longer than my dick."

  "So does my Aunt Hazel. Come on, Kaden, who do you expect to find wandering beneath the Rampart freeway overpass at two in the morning?"

  Kaden fanned off my comment with a hand. "We'll look into it."

  "When?"

  "We have about a hundred leads, most of them from more reputable citizens than Hoon-yore Delgado."

  "And none of whom were there that night."

  "And none of whom were located and interviewed by a suspect in the case."

  "So my information is tainted."

  "Of course it is, asshole. We've got no corroborating reports of a brown Volvo anywhere in either murder investigation. And this minor" a finger jab at the screen "seems like someone who'd be easily led by the nose."

  I laughed. "Interview him. I beg you."

  "We will."

  "When?"

  Kaden threw down his pencil. "You're an amateur, so you don't see how many assumptions your guesswork rests on. Brown is the second most common Volvo paint job behind that shit yellow. There are a hundred and fifty-three brown Volvos with licenses starting with seven in L.A. County. Great. You know how many there are in the state?" More hammering on the keyboard. "One thousand two hundred ninety-one."

  "How many are owned by convicted sex offenders?"

  "How many of the victims in this investigation were sexually assaulted?"

  "How about your theory that the killer evolved?" I tapped Frankel's sinister booking photo. "The forensics line up. He's a hundred eighty-five pounds "

  "Just like you."

  Delveckio leaned back so his thin shirt stretched across his narrow chest. "And you maintain that Morton Frankel doesn't mean anything to you?"

  "I told you already," I said. "I don't know the guy. I think the question is if I mean anything to him. And it's easy enough for us to find out. One strand of hair from this guy could prove our case."

  "Prove?" Delveckio repeated. "Us?"

  "The unidentified hair found on Broach's body might have nothing to do with anything," Kaden said. "Dumped bodies pick up hairs. Or it could be a plant, like your hair supposedly was. That's what you don't get. It's never neat. And even if it is, it's not just about evidence. It's about building a case."

  "Look at the guy. A jury'll hate him."

  "Not probable cause for a seizure warrant to force him to surrender a DNA sample. Frankly, there's not much from a legal perspective to differentiate him from the other satisfied Volvo owners on that DMV list."

  "Morton Frankel is a felon."

  "Let's just forget the nonfelons who drive Volvos," Delveckio said. "Guys too smart to get caught, we ain't interested in them."

  "I assume you have to start somewhere. And a car registered in L.A. County to a felon who lives around the block from one of the crime scenes seems like not a bad place."

  Kaden settled back in his chair and said, "Oh. I get it."

  Delveckio: "What's that?"

  "This isn't a real conversation, Ed. We're in a script. Characters."

  Kaden feigned amusement. "We're the cops who bumble around with their bureaucratic agendas and investigative oversights so the vigilante hero, the average-guy-in-peril, can pursue the clues and solve the case without the inconvenience of competent law enforcement sharing a city with him." He leaned over his desk, anger rising to the surface. "What you found was a felon who drives a Volvo. Congrats. I must admit, a rare demographic. You know why you like that lead? More than, say, the all-cotton rope found on Kasey Broach's wrists that only ships to three erotica and I use the term loosely stores in Los Angeles? More than the two thousand one hundred and sixty hours three months, right? of security footage we're reviewing from one store? More than the credit-card transactions we're sorting through from the other two? More than the shipping records from those dildo shops? You know why you like your brown Volvo more than the electrical tape on Broach's ankles, which was part of an irregular lot sold discount to Home Depot and shipped only to the Van Nuys store and one on Cave Creek Road in Phoenix? More than Broach's and Bertrand's phone records, which, cross-referenced, reveal overlaps to at least two establishments? More than the FedEx guy who delivered packages to both women two months apart? More than the pool guy who services a complex two blocks over from Broach's place and did a dime at San Quentin fo
r slitting his sister's throat? You like Morton Frankel more because he's yours. Because you found him. Now, despite the questionable combination of Junior Delgado and Andrew Danner as generators of this particular trail, we will look into it, certainly and absolutely. This and the other hundred and fifty-two Volvo owners on the list, which you're right is where we should and will start. But we're not gonna drop everything we're working on this instant because we're so darn bowled over that you found a clue."

  His anger, cold and rational, had put me back in my seat. "Did you do that before?" I asked. "Check messengers to Genevieve's house? See if any of her neighbors had criminal records?"

  Kaden glared at me. "We knew you did it. We didn't give a shit to beat the bushes. We gave a shit to convict."

  I stood, leaving them the documents, pissed off at Kaden for his last crack and for raising so many goddamned good objections before it.

  Kaden reached across the desk and grabbed my arm. "You're in the real world now," he said. "Watch that you don't get yourself killed."

  I pulled my arm free.

  Delveckio swiveled in his chair to watch me pass. "Oh and, Danner?" He met my look evenly, his red-rimmed eyes detached and calm. "Don't leave town."

  Chapter 25

  I eased my car through the packed parking lot of Bonsky Forge and Metalworks, up one row of vehicles, down the next. In the market for a brown Volvo. My tires rattled across the plane of crumbling asphalt, faded back to dirt in patches. Pollution smudged the building's concrete blocks. The only windows were casements set high under the eaves, but from the edge of the lot, through a fence and a rolled-aside warehouse door, I could see the men inside. They labored over blade wheels and soldering torches, curved masks shielding them from sparks fanning up at their faces. The whine of machinery, even at this distance, made my dashboard rattle.

  Kaden had been right about one thing: My guesswork did rest on too many assumptions. I needed to gather more facts.

  Like, say, whether Frankel's brown Volvo had a dent in the right front wheel well.

  I finished my second tour through the lot no Volvos of any color then drove the surrounding blocks to see if Frankel had parked off site. No better luck there. Maybe he'd left the state. Maybe he'd burned his car to eliminate evidence. Maybe he'd sold his Volvo four months ago to his poker buddy, the Zodiac Killer.