Pacific Homicide

by Patricia Smiley

  Bell leaned back in the chair. “Depends what you mean by problems.”

  “It means anything you want it to mean.”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m a whiner.”

  “I’d never think that, Mr. Bell.”

  He smiled. “Okay. Cool. So here’s the deal. Andre has visitors that come to the apartment at all hours of the day and night. It’s annoying because they park in my space right in front of the No Parking sign. I’ve complained to him a million times that I need that space for official apartment visitors but nothing changes.” Bell leaned toward Davie with an earnest look on his face. “You’re an expert on the law. Isn’t that harassment? Maybe we could have dinner some night and talk about my options.”

  Davie ignored the lame come-on. “What kind of cars?”

  He sighed, frustrated that his Don Juan routine wasn’t scoring points. “Expensive ones. BMW. Mercedes. You name it. Anyway, it happened again last Saturday night. When I got back from the market there was a black Lexus SUV parked in my space. I was about to use my cell to call a tow truck when some guy walked out of Andre’s apartment and got into the driver’s seat.”

  “Who left first?” Davie asked. “The driver or Ms. Nosova?”

  Bell closed the lid of his laptop. “Anya.”

  “So you think the Lexus driver was in the apartment with Anya before she got into the cab?”

  “He had to be.”

  “Did you notice which direction he took when he drove away?”

  Bell seemed confused by all her rapid-fire questions. “Same direction as the cab.”

  “Could you identify the driver from a photo lineup?”

  Bell told her the man was of medium height with a thin build but added, “I didn’t see his face, only his hair. It was shoulder-length. Sort of golden blond. Curly.”

  “Did you notice the license plate number?”

  “Actually, I wrote it down—you know, for the tow truck driver.” Bell gazed at Davie. “Hey, I made you smile. That must be worth at least a coffee date.”

  5

  As soon as Davie and Vaughn returned to the station, her partner began writing a search warrant for Anya Nosova’s cell phone records. The telephone company didn’t have to return the warrant for ten days, but homicides were usually given priority. She hoped to have the information back by the following day.

  “Bell is weird,” Vaughn said over the partition wall. “All that shit pasted on his walls.”

  “He definitely has a thing for colored note cards and cop trivia.”

  “And why did it take him so long to tell us about the last time he saw Nosova?” Vaughn said. “I think he had a thing for her. Maybe he wanted to take it to the next level and when she told him to take a hike, he killed her.”

  “Maybe.”

  “He seemed to have a thing for you too.”

  “He’s worth looking at,” she said, “but I’m guessing he’s just a horny screenwriter who needs to get a life.”

  While Vaughn drove to court to find a judge to sign the warrant, Davie ran a criminal records search on John Bell. His name popped up several times—but as a victim, not a suspect. He had filed half a dozen 459-burglary reports for break-ins at the apartment’s swimming pool cabana and also at his personal storage unit. Other than that, his record was clean. She found that Bell had a driver’s license and confirmed he had no vehicle registered in his name.

  At nine that night, eleven hours after she had closed the Hyperion crime scene, Davie was still at her desk in the squad room. Earlier in the day she had called every cab company on the Westside and finally found the cabbie that picked up Anya the night she disappeared. All he could tell Davie was that he had dropped her off at a street corner in Hollywood but he had no idea where she’d gone after that.

  For the past several hours, Davie had focused on the license plate number Bell had scrawled across one of his three-by-five cards. When she didn’t get a hit on the first try, she realized he had made a mistake somewhere in the alphanumeric combination. She started over, substituting the letter T from Bell’s version for a J and then an I and so on. She was beginning to worry she would have to repeat the process for every letter and number on the seven-digit plate, because no matter how many ways she manipulated the data, she could not locate the registered owner of the black Lexus SUV that had been parked near Anya Nosova’s apartment the night she disappeared. The effort had made her vision blurry and her fingers stiff from pressing the computer keys.

  Dinner had consisted of a bag of M&Ms from a vending machine and a cup of bitter coffee she found reducing to sludge on the warmer. Vaughn had left hours before. Except for two blue-suits watching a high-speed freeway chase on the squad room television set and a night detective auditing a stack of arrest packages, she was alone.

  Heavy footsteps fractured her concentration. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Detective Giordano lumber through the door of the squad room, rubbing his hands, warming them from the cold.

  “What are you doing here so late?” she said.

  “A good Homicide detective has no life.” He removed his overcoat and slung it across a chair. “I just left Sergeant White’s retirement party. Bunch of maudlin shit. It was pitiful. Reminded me of a funeral.”

  Giordano was on the verge of retirement and Davie sensed he was not looking forward to his last end of watch.

  “How many days before you pull the plug?”

  “Ninety or so. I don’t keep track.” Giordano glanced around the room. “Where’s your partner?”

  “He went home to catch some Zs.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Around sixteen-hundred hours.”

  Giordano glanced at his watch. “That was five hours ago. Not even a two-year-old needs that much sleep.”

  She didn’t like having to defend somebody else’s work ethic, but Vaughn was her partner, so she cut him some slack. “He signed in at oh-dark-thirty this morning. He’ll be back in the morning.”

  “He damn well better be.” Giordano lowered himself into a chair across from her and stretched out his bum knee. “Any leads in the Nosova case?”

  “The boyfriend wasn’t home and so far he isn’t answering his phone. I’ll keep trying.”

  Giordano leaned back in the chair, which groaned against his weight. “What else?”

  “I found the cabbie who picked up Nosova last Saturday night, but it wasn’t easy.”

  “Nobody said it would be.”

  “He claims he dropped her off at the corner of Santa Monica and Las Palmas in Hollywood but he didn’t pay attention to where she went after that. Most of the businesses in the area are closed now. I’ll canvass the neighborhood tomorrow.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The apartment manager saw a white male leaving the victim’s apartment Saturday night. He wrote down the license plate number of the guy’s SUV, but it’s no good.”

  Giordano glanced at her computer screen and frowned. “You can always send the information to DMV headquarters in Sacto and wait till some computer nerd sends back a phone book–sized list of possible license numbers, but it’ll take you until the next millennium to check it out.”

  “I don’t have time for Sacramento,” she said. “There has to be a smarter way to do this.”

  “Sometimes lucky is better than smart.” After a period of silence, he continued. “So how’s it going for you at the division? Any problems?”

  Davie interpreted his concerned tone as an invitation to confess something. She just didn’t know what. If he knew she had come to Pacific riding a beef, he also knew those troubles involved Spencer Hall. The department had already ruled her shooting within policy, but the Police Commission hadn’t cleared her of wrongdoing. To complicate matters, the mayor had just appointed a new Inspector General of the Police Commission, a man with
an old grudge against her father. She worried he might reopen her OIS case, which could put her job in jeopardy. She appreciated Giordano’s concern but he wasn’t allowed to ask about the details, and she wasn’t supposed to volunteer information until the case had been fully adjudicated.

  “Things are fine,” she said.

  Giordano leaned on the workstation desk for support and stood. “Just so you know, I support my peeps even when they screw up. Anybody needs to talk, they can call me twenty-four/seven.”

  He put on his coat and limped toward the squad room door. Before stepping into the hallway, he turned toward her. “Good work today, kid. Congratulations.” Without waiting for a reply, he ambled toward the back door.

  Davie heard the patrol officers groan and then laugh. She glanced at the TV and saw the suspect’s car roll over and skid into the center divider like an overturned turtle. The man climbed out of the driver’s-side window and ran down the carpool lane followed by at least twenty black-and-white patrol cars. Davie wanted to tell the guy, When the hole gets too deep, stop digging.

  She continued entering more combinations into the license plate database until the characters on the screen seemed to float like letters in a bowl of alphabet soup. She wondered if her vision would ever recover.

  Hinges creaked as she leaned back in her chair. She closed her eyes and thought about the driver of that SUV. He obviously didn’t believe the rules applied to him. Not only did he ignore the No Parking sign but he also left his vehicle unattended for at least half an hour, according to Bell, as if any consequences were worth the risk. In her experience, older people were less likely to flaunt laws, so she guessed the driver was younger than sixty, especially since Bell described his hair as long and blond.

  Bell had also told her there was a constant stream of people driving expensive cars who had visited Andre Lucien’s apartment. The Lexus might have been in the neighborhood before that night. She checked for parking citations, but no massaging of the information produced results.

  Fighting exhaustion, she stepped outside, hoping the cold night air would revive her. At the far side of the parking lot, the garage was dark. The mechanics had gone home hours ago. Her gaze swept the area to the two rows of detective cars on her left. Directly below the overhead light was a Crown Victoria. She remembered the first time she used the car. The tag on the keys identified it as green. After spending fifteen minutes looking for the ride and passing it multiple times, she realized the green was so dark the car looked black, even in daylight. Maybe Bell had misjudged the color of the SUV. He told her it was so dark that night, he couldn’t tell the color of the taxi that had picked up Anya Nosova.

  She jogged inside to her computer and opened the vehicle description database. A partial plate number was enough information to conduct a search, so she entered the first two letters from Bell’s three-by-five card into the plate sequence, followed by a series of hyphens, representing unknown data. The known sex of the driver was male. Davie estimated the age range as 25 to 55. She entered the LAPD reporting district assigned to Bell’s address, and the make of the SUV. Bell had been sure the Lexus was new, so she also entered the age of the vehicle as the current year. Instead of black, she entered the color as green. The search netted nothing. She repeated the process, substituting any primary color that might have a dark hue until she got to blue. A moment later, she got a hit.

  She studied the plate number and saw where Bell had gotten it wrong. He had recorded one of the numbers as a six instead of a nine. Before she could celebrate her success, she entered the plate number in the DMV database and waited until the name of the registered owner appeared.

  Davie stared at the screen. Her sense of unease had turned the M&Ms and coffee in her stomach into battery acid. She searched the Internet for the telephone number she needed. It wasn’t hard to find. She punched in the numbers on her desk phone keypad and left a message she knew nobody would return. She paused to consider her next move.

  Then she grabbed the Jetta keys and hurried toward the back door. Traffic should be light at this late hour; it wouldn’t take long to get where she had to go.

  6

  Ten minutes later Davie stepped out of the Jetta onto the small parking lot next to the Lucky Duck bar, inhaling the aroma of greasy fried tortillas from the Mexican restaurant across the street. She drew her suit jacket around her neck to block the chilly air, trying but failing to stave off the anxiety she had carried with her from the station.

  The Duck sat on not-quite-prime real estate in a section of Culver City she thought of as “hip adjacent.” The building was a windowless box, its dark wood exterior bathed in white light from the neon sign above the door.

  Three teenaged girls sauntered along the sidewalk, arm in arm, all wearing black skinny jeans and gray hoodies—a trio of pigeons huddled against the wind. They were singing and laughing. Davie thought back to her teenage years but could not recall ever feeling that carefree. There had been too much drama back then with her father’s legal troubles, her mother’s affair, the divorce, her subsequent remarriage, and her brother’s betrayal, which had shattered Davie’s trust in him. At times, Davie felt as if the entire weight of preserving the family had rested on her shoulders and she had failed in her duty.

  Rusty hinges groaned as she nudged open the door with her shoulder. Inside, cool air blunted the odor of spilled beer and ancient dust. As she crossed the threshold, she glanced at the familiar sign near the front door: Was a woman who led me down the road to drink. I never wrote to thank her. One of the regulars, a woman in her fifties with a weathered face and lowered expectations, was playing pool in the adjacent room with three men who looked like insurance agents out for a night of slumming.

  The woman waved her stick at Davie. “Hey, D-Dogg. What’s shakin’?”

  “Not much, Suzanne. What’s up with you?”

  “Just showing these tadpoles who’s got the balls in this place.” Suzanne laughed as her stick cracked against the cue ball, sending red number three slamming into the side pocket.

  On the far side of the room, Davie saw a lone man perched on a stool at the bar. He was wearing a Metro tux: police boots, a white T-shirt, and the black uniform pants worn by the LAPD’s elite Metro unit. His uniform shirt and weapon were probably stowed in the trunk of his car, but he had come into the bar still wearing his superior attitude. Davie could see the outline of his abdominal muscles through the tight T-shirt. The guy was ripped and he wanted everyone to know it.

  Her father stood behind the bar. A neon Budweiser sign on the wall cast a fitful shadow on the purple XXL Lakers jersey stretched across his broad back. Most of the world called him William Richards. She called him Bear and had since she was a child, after listening to him read her the story of Goldilocks. He didn’t seem to mind the name, so it stuck.

  Bear had a towel draped over his shoulder. One of his hands cradled a dainty glass. The other held a pitcher of frothy liquid that looked like a Pink Lady, probably for Suzanne, who still appreciated a classic drink now and then.

  He looked up and nodded. “Hey, Ace. Be right with you.”

  Davie slid onto a stool at the end of the bar as far away from Metro Tux as possible. She waited on the stool’s cracked leather cushion as her father ambled to the pool table and handed Suzanne the drink.

  “Thanks, Doll,” Suzanne said. “Put it on my tab?”

  “Like always, Suzie-Q.”

  Back behind the bar, he turned to Davie. “What can I get you?”

  “Agua libre on the rocks.”

  “Coming up,” he said, dispensing ice and water into a highball glass. “This one’s on the house. The next one comes out of your allowance.”

  Davie scanned the room. “Where’s PJ?”

  “In the can putting on her game face. She could wipe out the national debt with the money she spends on cosmetics.”

  Peggy June Jor
dan was one of the Lucky Duck’s bartenders. She had worked behind the bar long before her father bought the place and was infamous for the cranky, profane way she had of slicing through trouble with a flick of her sharp tongue. Davie suspected Peggy June had a crush on her dad and secretly hoped she would corner him in the beer cooler one day and make her feelings known. After all these years, she figured that was unlikely to happen.

  “You look tired,” he said. “Job getting you down?”

  “I love my job. You know that.”

  “Like I told you before, Ace—you can love the job, but the job will never love you.”

  She had heard that old saw a million times before and she didn’t want to hear to again tonight. He usually followed that bromide with a lecture about getting a life and settling down. If there was a formula for figuring that out, he hadn’t perfected it.

  “I just stopped by to pick your brain,” she said.

  “Not much left of it, but what I got is yours.”

  At the far end of the bar, Metro Tux picked at the label on his bottle of Miller Genuine Draft. The din in the place would likely scramble their conversation, but nonetheless she kept her voice low. “A witness gave me a license plate number for a Lexus SUV. He wrote it down wrong. I couldn’t match it to a vehicle.”

  Her father dipped a cocktail shaker into the bar sink and swished it around in the soapy water. “Lot of those rigs out there. Keep trying.”

  “I did. The vehicle belongs to Ray Anthony Falcon.”

  Bear pulled the bar towel from his shoulder and wiped the shaker. “That doper movie star?”

  Falcon was an A-list actor known for his big talent and even bigger drug habit. He had been in and out of celebrity rehab centers at least three times in the past several years.

  “He’s high profile. I don’t want to screw up the interview.”

  “You’re not even sure it’s him. I’d guess lots of people have access to his cars.”

  “The witness estimated the guy’s height and weight. It matched information on Falcon’s driver’s license. He also said the driver had shoulder-length curly blond hair. Falcon’s photo showed his hair as brown, but he’s an actor. His hair must change every time he’s cast in a new role.”