Hard Prejudice: A Hard-Boiled Crime Novel: (Dan Reno Private Detective Noir Mystery Series) (Dan Reno Novel Series Book 5)
Page 5
“Nope,” I said.
“One more thing, then, before I go. Whatever you do, don’t embarrass the department. We’ve got enough issues as it is.”
I shrugged. “Do my best.”
“Let me make this a little more direct. You’ve been involved in a number of shootings and deaths since you’ve worked here. As district attorney, I’ve looked at each incident and decided no charges were warranted. But there’s been plenty of gray area, and some in my department who disagreed with me. Am I making myself clear?”
“You’re a guy I want to keep on my side.”
“Exactly. So proceed with caution.”
“Understood.”
“Good,” he said. He climbed into his rig and hit the starter, and the motor turned over a dozen times before it fired and choked a cloud of white smoke into the morning air. He glanced at where I stood, and I gave him the thumbs up. He grimaced and drove away.
I headed out to 50 and stopped at the Safeway to pick up eggs, bacon, a box of donuts, frozen hash browns, orange juice, and a loaf of bread. I don’t usually eat a big breakfast—haven’t since my hard-drinking days—but Cody was a different story. I figured he would want to head out to a restaurant as soon as he woke up. It would save time to have food at the house.
When I got home, Cody was sitting outside at my picnic table in camouflage print shorts, flip-flops, and a gray Utah State T-shirt. A lit cigarette smoked in the ashtray, and he held a cup of steaming coffee. His eyes were closed, his face tilted back to take in the sun. He opened one eye. “Where you been?” he asked.
“I just had a chat with Tim Cook.” I set the bag of groceries on the table.
“What’d he have to say?”
“South Lake PD is giving polygraphs to everyone who may have had access to the key to the evidence locker.”
“Interesting. What else?”
“We talked about why Darrian Bannon would represent Tucker. Cook said Bannon took the case pro bono. Bannon was going to declare the DNA inadmissible.”
Cody opened his other eye and dragged off his cigarette. “Based on what?”
“Procedural technicalities. But Cook said that both San Jose PD and South Lake did everything by the book.”
“Bannon’s involvement doesn’t jive,” Cody said. “I spent some time researching him last night. He markets himself as a defender of the downtrodden, but he’s really just a money-grubbing maggot. There’s nothing charitable about him. He’d only take a pro bono case if he thought the publicity would pay off.”
“I was beginning to get that impression.”
“He graduated top of his class at Columbia, and he’s made a shitload of money in the last ten years. He’s considered one of the five top African-American attorneys in the US. But his personal life’s a train wreck. He’s still paying off two expensive divorces, and the bank foreclosed on his mansion near Atlanta. I don’t think this dude is in a position to do anything for free.”
“So how could Duante Tucker afford him?”
Cody leaned forward, stamped out his butt, and swigged the rest of his coffee. “We need to look into Bannon. He’s moved to SoCal. Got an office in El Segundo.”
“I think first we should go find out what Duante Tucker is up to. That’s the most obvious starting point.” I picked up the grocery bag, and Cody followed me inside.
“What’s cookin’?” he said.
“The works.” I turned on the griddle atop my stove, cracked eggs, and laid out strips of bacon. Then I microwaved the potatoes until they were thawed and added them to the griddle.
“Tucker was a juvie gangbanger in Compton,” I said. “He moved to San Jose three years ago.”
“Right. But he has no reported gang affiliation in San Jose. No job, either.”
I pushed the eggs aside to make room for more bacon. “So what’s he do for money?”
“That’s what we’re gonna find out, partner.”
“You ready to head to San Jose?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he replied. “There’re things we should look into here first, don’t you think?”
I turned away from the sizzling griddle. “I think looking into Duante Tucker should be our first priority.”
“Yeah, but we’re here. So let’s do our due diligence. We can drive to San Jose tomorrow morning.”
I looked at Cody out of the corner of my eye. “I’d hate for you to miss your date with Cassie, the uppity assistant.”
“She wasn’t uppity to me,” Cody said with a smile. He reached over the counter and grabbed the coffee pot. “She reminds me a little of my ex-wife.”
“And you want to go to dinner with her?”
“She also reminds me of this nymphomaniac I knew once.”
“All women remind you of nymphomaniacs. Get a plate, the grub’s ready.”
Cody walked around the counter to the griddle. “Hmm. Looks like your cooking’s improved,” he said. “You go first.”
“It’s all for you,” I said. “I already ate.”
“Ho. My lucky day.”
Cody piled his plate, and I opened my notebook PC on the kitchen table. “I’m a little curious about Tim Cook,” I said. “His suit looked like he bought it from the bargain rack at K-mart, and he was driving a beat-to-shit Blazer.”
“The white-trash-mobile of Tahoe.” Cody sat and forked a huge bite of scrambled eggs into his mouth.
“An assistant DA should make a pretty good living,” I said. “But he looks like he’s on welfare.”
“You think Cook threw his own case?”
“It’s a stretch. But if he’s hard up for dough, who knows? He might have been desperate. I’d like to see his bank records, see if he recently ran into a pot of money.”
Cody put down his fork. “I’ve got a guy at the IRS who does favors for me now and then. But I don’t want to use him unless we really like Cook for this. The guy could lose his job.”
“Don’t call him. I’m just thinking out loud. I’ll ask Grier about Cook.”
“How about the shyster? Did Bannon leave town yet?”
“Don’t know. We can find out.”
“First thing I want to do is go to the crime scene,” Cody said, wiping his mouth. “I always start that way.”
“All right. Eat up, and let’s go.”
• • •
Fifteen minutes later we pulled into the parking lot in front of Caesars. The recession had taken its toll on the casino-hotel, and a new ownership group had bought the property and announced they would rename it. A wall constructed of oversized cinder blocks rose ten stories above the parking lot on the far side. The mortar had decayed, and streaks of grime stained the façade from top to bottom. On top of the wall, the large neon sign advertising loose slots and video poker had become partially detached from its metal frame, and leaned crookedly against the roof.
I parked in a spot near where Lindsey Addison said Duante Tucker had abducted her. The half-full parking lot was large, perhaps the size of a football field. Cody and I stood and looked toward the main entrance. Inside was the VooDoo Lounge and Night Club, where Lindsey and her friends had partied the night she was raped.
“No lights out here. Must have been pitch black,” Cody said.
“She would have walked this line,” I said, pointing to the main entrance, then across the street to Pistol Pete’s. “But she only made it about this far.” We began walking toward the building, where bell boys and valet drivers moved about in the circular drive. I briefly questioned a pair standing at a podium on a concrete island near the glass doors. I didn’t expect to learn anything, but you never know. But neither of them had worked that night.
Inside the casino, the clatter and pinging of the slots was quiet as elevator music. In a business that never closes, dawn through noon is the lull period. We followed a carpeted path to a dark hallway that led to the Voodoo Lounge. The doors to the establishment were locked, as I suspected they would be.
“All right,” I said. We tu
rned and headed back toward the exit. I walked slowly, trying to imagine a boisterous, drunken crowd of twenty-something-year-old partiers. I imagined Lindsey walking in my footsteps. Her friends had left with two men they’d met, leaving Lindsey alone and vulnerable. I wondered if Lindsey felt dejected she didn’t find a man that night. She was a reasonably attractive woman of twenty-three, and during ski season, Lake Tahoe is a boy’s town; single women have to fight off the men. She must have gotten plenty of attention. Maybe she just didn’t find anyone who interested her.
And then I thought of the smitten Leo Rosen, lurking in the shadows, following Lindsey and trying to summon the courage to speak to her. His best opportunity would have been after her friends left. Lindsey abandoned, and Leo to the rescue. But she stayed at the club for half an hour by herself, and Leo never spoke to her. He must have been going crazy, not having the balls to take advantage of the situation. Or maybe there was something else going on.
Suppose Lindsey had offended Leo by blowing him off when they’d met before in Southern California. What if Leo was angry enough to arrange Lindsey’s rape? The going rate for murder for hire is only about ten grand. Leo could have hired a rapist for less. It was hard to imagine, though. I thought back to two women I’d been infatuated with, one when I was a teenager and another a few years later. Infatuation is a powerful thing, all consuming, more intense than love. Your perspective—hell, every trivial thought—becomes centered on your object of desire. It’s a high that can last for weeks or even months. And when it’s over, the humiliation and hurt can last even longer. But I never felt any inclination to harm the females I fell for. I realized the folly was solely my doing.
But who knows what was going on in Leo’s head? People do all sorts of crazy shit when they’re in love—or when they think they are. One thing though: Leo had been the one who called the cops and reported the license plate of the GMC SUV. I suppose that could have been spur-of-the-moment remorse on his part, but it put him at huge risk for incrimination. The prospect of prison has a way of sobering even the most emotionally wrought individuals. Unless Leo had completely lost his mind, he wouldn’t risk that.
We walked out into the sunshine. It was a stretch to think Leo was behind the rape. For now, I was just mentally throwing theories against the wall to see what stuck. Leo hiring a rapist didn’t stick, at least not very well, but I still wanted to talk to him.
I shared my thoughts with Cody as we headed back to my truck. He grunted and peered out past the highway. We could see a swath of the lake between Pistol Pete’s and a smaller casino. The water was silver with the sun’s reflection, like some sort of cosmic mirage.
I drove us east on Highway 50 a couple miles deeper into Nevada, past a campground to a road that led through a stretch of forest to the lake. I stopped at a small parking lot right on the shoreline. A short trail led to a fifty-foot dock. A windowless, rectangular building sat at the edge of the lot, its wood siding painted a tan color. It was a prefab unit, a doublewide trailer. We walked to a large door on the broad side. It was locked by a pair of deadbolts.
We looked around the building and knocked on the door. There were a couple cars in the lot, but no one was around. A breeze whispering through the pines was barely discernable from the faint whoosh of cars on the highway. The only other sound was the water lapping at the shore.
“What a perfect spot for a rape,” Cody said.
I pointed to the metal cylinders set in the wood. “Those deadbolts must be new.”
“Tucker supposedly broke in by cutting a padlock with bolt cutters.”
“Here comes someone,” I said, pointing to where a motorized dinghy was approaching from up the shoreline. It was towing another dinghy stacked with kayaks.
We walked across the dusty lot to the dock, kicking at pebbles and raising little clouds of dirt. Typically, after the snow melts every year, rains come and wash away the dirt and gravel left on the pavement. That hadn’t happened this year. The sun was hot and bright in May, and the snow melted quickly and it never rained.
We stood on the dock and watched the boat slow until a man stepped into a few inches of water and looped a rope around a piling. Then he waded back to the second dinghy, removed a kayak, and splashed ashore.
Cody and I intercepted him as he hiked across the parking lot toward the building.
“Hey, buddy,” I said. He reached the big door and set down the kayak.
“Can I help you?” He had crew-cut blond hair and the type of suntan that comes from working outdoors.
“Private investigators,” I said. “We’re looking into the rape that occurred here in April.”
“Oh, man,” he said, taking off his sunglasses. “That was ugly, man. And I heard the sick freak got off.”
“Can we take a look inside?” Cody said.
He hesitated, then smiled. “Help me lug the rest of these kayaks?”
We followed him back to the water and waited for him to pull the remaining five plastic boats ashore. Cody lifted one on each shoulder as if he’d been doing it all his life. I tried the same technique and decided it was easier holding them low, as if carrying suitcases. The crew-cut man hauled the last one.
When we got to the building, he unlocked the deadbolts, slid the door open, and hit the lights. The floor was concrete, and the walls were lined with steel racks holding bicycles and canoes and assorted boating gear. In the back were snowboards and skis. The room was dank and smelled of mildewed lake water and melted snow. Directly opposite the door was a workbench, above which hung a pegboard full of tools.
There wasn’t much room to move around. I assumed the rape must have occurred in front of the workbench.
“I found her right here, tied to this frame,” the man said.
“You found her?” I looked at the man. His eyes were a lazy blue, and he was about thirty.
“Yeah. Scared the shit out of me. It was like something out of a horror movie. I opened the door, and she was bloody and shaking, and I jumped. I mean, literally, I jumped. Freaked me out.”
“You must have noticed the lock was cut, right?” Cody said.
“Yeah. We used to just have a chain and padlock, and I thought somebody ripped us off. But I never expected to see anyone inside.”
“What’d you do?” I said.
“I called nine-one-one and got her a blanket from my car. She was naked, and it was cold, man. I cut the rope she was tied with, and in a few minutes the cops showed.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, they called an ambulance, and then more cops came. It was dawn, just getting light.”
Cody was looking over the assortment of tools hanging on the wall. “Was anything missing?”
“Any tools?” the man said.
“Anything,” Cody said. “Did the rapist take anything?”
“Well, just one thing. You probably already know this. The screwdriver.”
“What about it?” I said.
“The twelve-inch screwdriver. It used to go there.” He pointed at an empty spot on the pegboard. “But we haven’t got around to replacing it.”
“He took it?” Cody asked.
The man looked down. “No. Not exactly.”
“What then?”
“The police took it. For evidence.”
“Evidence? How so?” I said.
He coughed and scratched his nose. “He stuck it up her ass, man. That’s how I found her. With a bloody screwdriver stuck in her.”
• • •
We didn’t say much as we drove away. Cody’s brow was pinched into a V, and he sat looking out the passenger window. He lit a cigarette, took two drags, and threw it out onto the asphalt.
“I don’t remember anything about a screwdriver in the trial folder,” I said.
“They said something about a foreign object,” Cody said, still staring away. “But I didn’t see anything specific about what Tucker did with it.”
“Now we know.”
Cody tu
rned back toward the windshield. His jaw was clenched, and crow’s feet spread from his eyes. “This guy, Tucker,” he said. “I’d like to meet him, have a philosophical conversation.”
I stopped at the light before Caesars. “I hear you. But stomping his shit into the tar won’t solve anything.”
“Unless we beat the truth out of him. Is it noon yet?”
“No, why?” I said.
“I need a fucking drink.”
I stared at the traffic light impatiently. Cody’s version of philosophical conversation usually meant broken bones. I also knew that, in his case, alcohol and anger were a dangerous combination.
“We’ll get him. But let’s go one step at a time.”
“Always the voice of reason, huh?” His eyes were like slits.
“I try.”
“He beat the shit out of her, raped her, sodomized her, then impaled her. This guy’s a walking plague. He needs to be in a cage, at a minimum. And that’s going easy on him.”
I met Cody’s glare and nodded. He’d worked his share of rape cases as a San Jose cop, and I knew he recognized that while the injury to Lindsey’s body was bad, it was only part of the damage Duante Tucker inflicted. The body would heal and be whole again. But the mental trauma was a different story. The attack might leave no permanent physical scars, but it had robbed Lindsey of a piece of her humanity. That was something she would never recover. The degradation would always be with her.
I wondered if a psychologist or sociologist had ever created a hierarchy of sadistic behavior. It would be a complex job, detailing degrees of pain and suffering and the potential motivation for each act. At the bottom of the chart might be common assholes like abusive bosses, casual racists, and bullies. Another tier could include wife-beaters or punks who beat up homeless people or gays. Move up the ladder, and you get contract killers and gangbangers. At the top of the heap would be a special class, not those who killed for financial gain or revenge or as the result of some dispute, but a different breed: those who take a perverse pleasure in hearing their victims scream and beg while their mental and physical beings are violated and ultimately damaged beyond repair. Unfortunately, there’re more of them out there than most people know. Duante Tucker was a prime example.