by J. R. Rain
“We weren’t going to hurt you,” he said, shrugging. “We just wanted to talk.”
“So talk,” I said.
“We want you to back off the case,” he said sheepishly. “Of course, it was supposed to sound a little more menacing than that.”
“I’m hard to menace,” I said.
“I gather that.”
“So why should I back off this case?”
“You mind if I sit?” he asked.
“I mind.”
He inhaled and continued standing. “Because I’ll pay you ten grand to drop the case.”
“Does that come out of your election fund?”
“Look, pal, this is serious business, and I don’t want you sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“I make a decent living sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“Decent? Look at this dump. Take the money and get yourself a respectable office.” He paused. His too-tight face was flushed with heat.
“Will you also include a cowboy hat like yours?”
He blinked. “Sure.”
“And the name of your plastic surgeon. He’s done a marvelous job.”
He inhaled. “Will you take the money and go away?”
“No.”
He was furious. Tafford was used to having his way. His sons were agitated, shifting from foot to foot. They were used to their father having his way.
“Taff, did you have one of your boys ambush me in the desert a week ago?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t need any more dead bodies in my town, and I certainly don’t need any more bad publicity.”
Strangely, I believed him. Didn’t seem his style to set me up in the desert, or to ambush me. He was more of the in-your-face, you’ve-been-warned type.
“Of course, getting arrested for breaking and entering wouldn’t help my public image much.”
“No,” I said.
“Pretty stupid, in fact,” he said.
“Yep,” I said.
“Christ, what was I thinking?”
“You weren’t.”
“We just wanted to scare you.”
“I’m terrified.”
He shifted where he stood and looked at his open palms. He looked like a man waking from a bad nightmare. His two sons hadn’t stopped staring at me. Perhaps they were soaking in what a real man should look like.
I said, “Taff, this mess isn’t going to go away by paying me off. Someone killed Willie Clarke, and someone tried to kill me. You have a killer loose in your town.”
Now he looked just plain sick. I almost shoved my trashcan over to him in case he was going to lose his lunch.
“Tell you what,” he said. “You find the killer and I’ll give you the money.”
“Sounds like a job,” I said.
“Consider it one.”
“When it’s over, I’ll send you a bill.”
Tafford nodded. “Can we go now?”
“Yes,” I said.
And they did, although I kept their money. Consider it a retainer.
Chapter Thirty-one
Across the hallway from Cindy’s lecture hall was a classroom that was rarely, if ever, used. Best of all it was rarely, if ever, locked. It was furnished with a dozen or so of those wraparound desks with attached plastic chairs. Wraparound desks and I don’t get along. Mostly because they were made for people half my size.
So I positioned two of them near the classroom door, where I used one to sit and the other to prop my ankles up on. From that position, sitting in near darkness, I could see down the hallway in either direction, and had a clear shot of the elevator that opened onto Cindy’s floor.
It was late, almost 10 PM. My feet were up on the desk in front of me, ankles crossed, hands folded across my stomach. In the hallway next to my door, the drinking fountain gurgled. The gurgling kept me company, like an old friend. An old mentally challenged friend. I had spent the last ten minutes trying to discern the different chewing gum scents wafting up from under the desk, when the elevator chimed open.
A heavy-set, middle-aged woman stepped out, blinking rapidly and peering around. Unremarkable, if not for the fact she was wearing a heavy coat, as this wasn’t exactly heavy coat weather. Hell, this wasn’t exactly heavy coat country. Sensing a clue, I watched her closely.
She came hesitantly toward me. Or, at least, towards my part of the hallway. She had short black hair, perfectly trimmed bangs, and thick eyebrows that needed to be plucked or weed-whacked. She stopped in front of me, her back to me, and gazed up at Cindy’s lecture hall doors as if they were the gates to Heaven.
There was a slight hump in her upper spine, and I wondered if the Humanities building here at UCI had a bell tower. Then again, maybe she was carrying something heavy inside her coat.
The hallway was silent. The fountain gurgled. I could hear her breathing through her nose, saw her shoulders rise and fall with each breath.
And then, amazingly, she turned. I have no idea why. Maybe she heard me breathe. Maybe she sensed my overwhelming manliness. Maybe she had eyes in the back of her head.
Either way, she turned and looked right at me. We stared at each other. Her nose was a little wide, complete with a mini hump. Chin absent. Certainly not beautiful, but neither was she unattractive. I judged her age to be about forty. Didn’t look much like a student, but she certainly could have been. In the least, she looked like she was up to something.
“Hello,” I said.
Her mouth dropped open. Her tongue spilled out over her lower teeth like a pink tide. And then she was moving. Quickly. Back to the elevator. There, she punched the button hard enough to have hurt her hand. The elevator, which hadn’t gone anywhere, opened right up. She turned her face away from me as the door closed around her.
I would remember that face. Especially those eyebrows.
When she was gone, I eased my feet off the desktop and onto the floor. I stood and moved over to the bank of classroom windows. From there, I had a clear shot of the main entrance to the building below.
I waited.
My breath fogged on the window before me. I resisted the urge to write: I Heart Cindy.
The door opened below, yellow light spilling out. A male student exited, followed immediately by Bushy Brows.
A tall man met her outside. He came out of the shadows of the building and the two argued for a bit, and then left together. They headed down a side trail that led to the Staff parking lot, where Cindy kept her Jetta. I watched them go until they blurred into oblivion.
I think I just met her two stalkers.
Chapter Thirty-two
Cindy was attending to a throng of admiring students. I waited in the back of the lecture hall and watched her. She spotted me and beamed me a full wattage smile that sent my heart racing.
When the last of the student groupies had dispersed, I made my way down to her desk and set a polished red apple on the corner of her desk. Cindy, who had been hastily shoving books and scraps of paper into her oversized handbag, paused and looked at the red delicious.
“Is that for me?”
“Call it a school boy crush.”
Tonight Cindy’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She knew I liked her in a ponytail. She crammed the last of her junk into her bag and walked around the desk, looked around her room, saw that we were alone, and kissed me full on the lips.
“Mrs. Franks never did that,” I said.
“Who’s Mrs. Franks?”
“My fifth grade teacher.”
“You had a crush on her, too.”
“Yes,” I said. “May I carry your oversized handbag?”
“Would be a shame to waste all those muscles.”
Outside, I draped my free arm over her small shoulders. Because I was a foot taller than she was, holding hands was difficult. She was, however, the perfect height for hugging, and so we worked with nature rather than against it.
“Have you ever noticed that you were naturally selected
to be the perfect height for me to hug?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’m nearly certain that’s what nature intended when I grew to be five foot five, on the off chance of meeting you someday.”
“Nature works in mysterious ways.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“A Darwin quoting the Bible.” I said. “What is the world coming to?”
We were walking through a verdant, tree-filled section of the campus the students called Middle Earth, although I had yet to see a hobbit. Beyond, the sun had set, although the sky was still alight with its passing. Our smog-enhanced sunsets, with their pinks and oranges and purples, are out of this world.
Along the way to my car, I described my encounter with the bushy-browed woman. Cindy, amazingly, knew of her, flunking her last semester.
“You think she could be one of the vandals?”
I shrugged. “No way to know. Tell me more about her.”
Cindy frowned. “Well, she was an older student, very opinionated. Outspoken Christian. Seemed to take it as a personal affront that my great grandfather was the evil Charles Darwin.”
“For some, akin to Hitler.”
“I’ll buy that, at least on the hate-o-meter.”
Now we were driving west along University Way, wending our way between stately trees, behind which were dormitories. The Mustang’s windows were down. The evening air was laced with a 50/50 mixture of nature and exhaust, which, out here, is a pretty healthy percentage. Cindy looked good in my car. Her brown eyes were watching me drive. She often watched me while driving. I think she might have thought I was cute. With her ponytail, and in the old Mustang, we could have been two teens back in the sixties out getting milkshakes.
“She ever threaten you?” I asked.
“Never.”
“Why did she flunk?”
“Failed every test.”
“On purpose?”
“Hard to say,” said Cindy.
“If so, maybe by failing the tests, she was refusing to allow a Darwin to influence her thinking. Thus keeping her spirit pure.”
“I think you might be right.”
There was something in her voice. I glanced at Cindy. There were tears in her eyes.
“You okay?” I asked.
“You don’t think I’m the devil do you?” she asked.
Cindy was a rational person. Intelligent, maybe even brilliant. Athletic and beautiful. And she was a Darwin. But she was a person with feelings, and she was hurting.
“Only in the bedroom,” I said.
She laughed and I pulled her over on the bench seat, stretching the seatbelt to the max. She put her head on my shoulder, and I took my little Darwin to dinner.
Chapter Thirty-three
On a chilly Tuesday morning, with the sun hidden behind patchy fog, I parked in front of a single story house in Buena Park, near Knott’s Berry Farm. It was seven in the morning, earlier than I am accustomed to working, but sometimes I don’t make the hours. On the seat next to me were two ventis, which, when translated from Starbucks to English, means two large coffees. Lots of cream and sugar for me, of course.
Retired Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective Bert Tomlinson was waiting on the cement porch, sitting in a wicker chair. Twenty years ago, he had been the original homicide detective assigned to my mother’s murder.
As I approached, he smiled warmly, stood and shook my hand.
“Right on time, kid,” he said. He checked his watch. “I head out to yoga in thirty minutes, and after that my day’s booked with grandkids. And yes, I am the oldest one in yoga.”
“You look younger than me,” I said.
He laughed. “I’ll accept fifty, but certainly not thirty-ish.”
I wasn’t too sure about that. The man seemed to defy the aging process, and should probably write a book on how he did it. Bert’s face was line free, despite the fact that I knew he was over sixty. He weighed maybe a buck fifty, but looked strong enough to pull a people-powered rickshaw.
I handed him the coffee. “Almond mocha easy on the cream, large. As requested.”
He sniffed the container. “My one and only guilty pleasure.”
“I have too many to count. Oreos being high on my list.”
“I refuse to acknowledge the existence of Oreos. It’s easier for me that way. As far as I’m concerned, Oreos and Nabisco went belly up.”
“What about the Oreos you see in stores?”
“As far as I’m concerned the bags are empty.”
“You have a vivid imagination,” I said.
“Comes from being a homicide investigator. You think like the killer. Some you even think like the victim. Both of which can steadily drive a man crazy.”
“I do the same thing,” I said, sipping from my coffee. “When I look for a missing cat, I try to think like a missing cat.”
He chuckled. “You live in Huntington Beach?”
“Yes.”
“My boy lives there with his family. Owns and operates the Huntington Beach Surf Museum. He’ll be here any minute with his three kids. We get them every Tuesday and Thursday.”
I heard noises from within the house, the creaking of floorboards, the bang of pots and pans. The neighborhood was nice, but not great. Above the rooftops, rising up like the mother of all phallic symbols, was the Knott’s Parachute Ride. At the moment there was no one parachuting. The park opened later.
“I remember you,” said Bert. He spoke softly. I had the impression he had once shouted a lot in his life, and now he was making up for it. “You were just a kid. Although granted you were the size of most adults. Anyway, I would never forget your mother. I followed your career here and there in the papers. You did well in high school and even better in college. You were one of the best.”
That meant a lot to me, coming from a man who had left a lasting impression on me. We shared one experience: we both had seen my mother’s body that night. And after his investigation, Bert knew more about my mother than any other living soul on this earth. Probably even more than my father, who was a grade-A asshole.
We were silent. Bert sipped his coffee. A car drove slowly by. In the car, a woman was talking animatedly on a cell phone, and, I think, putting on make-up. Yikes.
The screen door opened behind us, and a slender older woman came out, carrying a tray of homemade cinnamon rolls. She left the tray on a potholder and smiled kindly down at me. She patted me on the face and went back into the house.
“Even Gerda remembers you, kid. Anyway, she made these for you. They’re lowfat, made with applesauce instead of oil, and Splenda, instead of sugar.”
“Um, sounds good,” I said.
He grinned. “Try one
I did. At least it was hot.
“Very good,” I lied. “Please thank Mrs. Tomlinson.”
“I will,” he said. “So you are a detective now.”
“Yes. Perhaps it was inevitable.”
“How’s that working out?”
I shrugged. The cold from the concrete porch was seeping up through my jeans, numbing my buttocks. “It’s still a new agency. I like what I do. I seem to be good at it.”
“You’ve got the instincts, then.”
“I suppose.”
“So you waited before looking into your mother’s murder.”
I nodded. “I wanted to know what I was doing before I looked into it. Didn’t want to screw things up. Just wasn’t ready yet, I suppose.”
“So do you know what you’re doing now?”
“Yes.”
I took a deep breath and told him about the day my father arrived with the pictures. Bert listened without comment, sipping from his coffee, which he cradled in both hands.
When I finished, Bert frowned. “I know about your parent’s last day. Went over it in some detail with your father. However, he never mentioned the pictures.”
“My father had them developed and forgot about them.”
Bert set his coffee cu
p down, put his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers in front of his face. He contemplated his steepled fingers.
“Your father admitted to having numerous affairs. Would have been high on our suspect list had he not been out with you at the time of her death. Excuse me if I offend, but I didn’t like him. There was always something different about your dad, something off. Something cold and calculating. Everything added up to him being the killer.”
“Except for the fact that he was with me.”
Bert nodded. “Except for that.”
I took in a deep breath, filling my lungs to their max, and just held it. How could my father keep those pictures from me? How could he not care? My father, I knew, was a different sort of killer. He had been a sniper in the military, with many confirmed kills to his credit. A hair’s breadth away from being a sociopath, he held little regard for things living, and even less regard for things dead. In my opinion, he was a hell of a dangerous man to have loose in our streets. But there he was, out in LA, running one of the biggest detective firms in the city, and making a shit load of money at it, as well.
Bert was no slouch. “Obviously something was in the pictures.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Tell me about them.”
I described them in detail, especially the three photographs of the young man.
Bert was looking at me. “Sounds like he took an interest in your mother.”
“Yes.”
“It’s not much,” said Bert. “But it’s something.”
“Yes.”
“Any idea who the young man is?”
“No, but I will.”
“The picture’s twenty years old. Might be hard to find him.”
“For a lesser human being maybe,” I said.
“But not you.”
“Nope.”
“You’re going to bring her killer to justice if you find him?”
“No. I’m going to kill him the same way he killed my mother.”
“Slit his throat?”
“From ear to ear.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“Good.”