by J. R. Rain
“I hate them,” she said.
I wasn’t sure which them she was referring to. The drug bosses who killed her boyfriend, or the shark hunters who were going to use Junior as bait? Either way, we were silent for another five minutes before she turned and faced me. She took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were red and raw.
“I think we’re going to terminate your employment,” she said.
“Figured you would.”
“It was different when I thought the killers were...”
“The shark hunters?” I offered.
“It was easier to hate them.” She took in a lot of air, nearly broke down, but didn’t. Close call. “I knew Mitch was up to something, though.”
“You didn’t know about the drugs?”
“I knew something wasn’t right. Let me put it this way, I’m not surprised. Often he would come to our meetings talking about a big donation he had secured from a wealthy client. The money always went to the organization, so I didn’t worry about it too much. Now I know where the money was coming from.”
“He picked the wrong guys to steal from.”
“Even though the money was going to a good cause.”
“Drug kingpins probably don’t see it that way,” I said. “For them, it’s just business as usual.”
“It’s weird knowing his killer is out there somewhere,” she said.
“I could look for him,” I said.
“And find what?” she said. “A shooter who was doing his job, ordered by a guy doing his job.”
“Mitch knew the risks,” I said.
“But he did it anyway.”
“All for the little guys,” I said.
She laughed a little, which surprised me. “It’s hard to love a shark,” she said. “But we do. Me and people like Mitch. As dangerous as they are, they are still helpless against man.”
“Little guys with big teeth.”
She turned away and appeared to be looking down at Junior...but with those big shades she could have been looking anywhere. “He was a good man. We lost a hero. A stupid hero, granted, but a hero.”
Junior spied a bee and snapped at it. The bee escaped and for the first time, I think, my little guy might have looked happy.
Chapter Thirty-seven
It was a cool, crisp night at Leisure World.
Sanchez and I were in my crime-stopping van. We were sitting comfortably in the rear swivel chairs with a small light on between us. The small light could not be seen through the heavily- tinted glass. To the outside world, we were nothing more than a biohazard cleanup service.
I had just caught Sanchez up-to-date on the Mitch Golden case. Sanchez nodded. “The moment we hear it’s a drug hit, things change. And a drug dealer who steals from his bosses is low on our priority list. In fact, we’re glad to see them go.”
“Heartwarming story,” I said.
He glanced at me sideways. “What’s eatin’ at you, whitey?”
“The job feels...incomplete.”
“Incomplete?”
“I was hired to find his killer.”
“And you did. His killer was, in essence, himself. He knew perfectly well the risks he was taking. It was business as usual for his bosses. Nothing that wasn’t expected. Nothing that no one couldn’t have seen a mile away.”
I thought about what he said, saw the wisdom of his words, and turned to him. “Thanks, bro.”
“Bro?”
“I knew I couldn’t pull it off.”
“Did you just say bro?”
“Never mind,” I said.
As Sanchez chuckled quietly to himself, I stared silently out my side window and thought about the man who was willing to risk everything for the little guys.
* * *
“No flashers tonight,” said Sanchez. “I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.”
“It’s a thing,” I said.
“So where’s Junior?”
“He’s with Cindy at my apartment. They’re bonding.”
“By bonding, you mean she’s cleaning up a lot of piss.”
“Something like that.”
Sanchez said, “I’ve got movement over here.”
It was the first movement we had seen in nearly an hour. I eased over to Sanchez’s side of the van. And there, stepping away from one of the many single-level apartments, were two people. Two men, actually. One appeared older and one younger. The younger man was a good deal taller. The older man led the younger to a car parked not too far from our van. Sanchez and I watched the scene with interest. Perhaps more interest than the scene warranted. We heard muffled talking, a little laughter, and then the tall guy got in, started the vehicle up, and drove off. Going, no doubt, 15 mph.
The old man paused to watch the car drive off, then slipped his hands in his pants pockets, began whistling, and whistled all the way to his little apartment.
“His son?” asked Sanchez.
“Let’s hope.”
We watched the house some more, until I got bored and headed back to my side of the van. As I settled in, my cell rang. Caller I.D. restricted. In my experience, this usually meant a cop.
“Knighthorse.”
“Mr. Knighthorse,” said a heavily-accented voice. “This is Detective Hermenio, Ensenada Police Department.”
“Good evening, Detective.”
“Thought you might be interested to know that we conducted a raid tonight on the shark fin black market.”
“El negro mercado,” I said.
“What was that?” he asked.
“That was Spanish,” I said.
“It was something, but it wasn’t Spanish.”
I sighed. “You were saying, Detective?”
He continued, “It is as you said it was, Mr. Knighthorse. More shark fins than even I would have believed. As you know, Mexico currently has a moratorium on all shark hunting. Of course, enforcing such a moratorium is another business altogether.”
“I understand.”
“Shutting down the black market is a good step. Except...”
I finished his sentence: “Except another will soon replace it.”
“No doubt, my friend. But, like I said, it is a step. There is one other thing.”
“Yes?”
“There were a handful of American buyers at the market during the time of the raid. One of them was a name you gave me.”
“Trujillo.”
“Raul Trujillo. Apparently, he is a well-known buyer in the states. Selling shark fins is illegal in California, no?”
“Yes. Until just recently.”
“That’s what I thought. He is being held here, and authorities in the US will be contacted. More than likely he will only be fined.”
“It is at least something,” I said. “This will be good news for someone I know.”
“I expect so.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“It is a nasty business,” he said, “and I’m happy to help.”
When I clicked off, Sanchez said, “He say what I think he said?”
“He did.”
Sanchez held up his fist, and as I bumped it with my own, he said, “Good work...bro.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
The next morning I called Heidi Mann and told her the good news: Raul Trujillo was currently in a Mexican prison, and his days of importing illegal shark fins—at least from Mexico—were over.
“Thank you,” she said. “It makes me think that Mitch...” but her voice trailed off in a choking sound on the other end of the line.
“That maybe Mitch didn’t die in vain?”
“Yeah. Something like that. He’s still stupid as dirt for doing what he did, but he started all of this, you know. Everything. The website. The organization. The demonstrations. The high-speed boat chases.” She laughed a little.
“And you will continue it?” I asked.
“Until my last breath.”
“Be careful,” I said.
“I’ll leave th
e high-speed boat chases to the boys.”
“Remember...these guys play for keeps,” I said.
“So do we,” she said, and thanked me again and hung up.
* * *
I looked out across the empty cemetery.
Well, empty of anything living. It was midday, and somewhere out there on a slope that descended down toward the Pacific Ocean, was my mother’s grave.
I was sitting on a bench in the shade of a wide oak tree. Sitting on my lap was a criminal report I had purposefully delayed getting. Delayed for no good reason. Delayed because I was not in the right frame of mind to rush this investigation.
After all, Gary Tomlinson wasn’t going anywhere.
Earlier, I had printed out the report without reading it. Now, sitting near my mother’s grave, I decided it was time. Perhaps I was disrespecting her by bringing this here, but I doubted it. My mother knew perfectly well who her killer had been. She had looked into his eyes, spoken to him, yelled at him, cursed him, fought with him.
I opened the report. Although not quite as thorough as police rap sheets, this was close enough. It hit the highlights, and sometimes the highlights were all that you needed to hit.
There were two arrests in the report.
Gary Tomlinson, who may or may not have murdered my mother, had been arrested twice for rape. Or, as the report puts it in politically correct terms, criminal sexual assault.
The first offense had been when Gary was in his late teens. The victim had been a girl under the age of sixteen. Under the “Outcome” heading was a single word: “Dismissed.”
A small wind rattled the report in my hand. The wind brought with it a hauntingly familiar scent. A flower scent. I glanced around the cemetery. No surprise there. Flower bouquets, in various stages of decay and propped against headstones, dotted the landscape.
I glanced down at the second arrest. Same outcome.
Dismissed.
A homicide investigator in good standing with the Los Angeles Police Department had a son who was arrested not once, but twice, and both cases had been dismissed.
I rubbed my jaw, ran my fingers through my hair.
Sandwiched between those two arrests was the date of my mother’s murder.
The rest of the report was clean. No other arrests and certainly no other convictions. Had the kid seen the error of his ways and cleaned up his act?
Or had he gotten better at covering up his crimes?
How many more victims were out there? How many cases were unsolved thanks to Daddy sweeping shit under the rug?
I didn’t know. I also didn’t know how much pull a homicide investigator had. There was, after all, only so much he could do, right?
Unless he worked the case, I thought.
Unless he worked the case, he could certainly manipulate facts and make evidence disappear. A homicide investigator also works closely with the district attorney’s office, whose job it is to convict. A district attorney could decide to drop a case if he or she felt so inclined, especially if there wasn’t enough evidence to convict.
Or if he didn’t want to convict.
Was it a coincidence that Bert Tomlinson, Gary Tomlinson’s father, had been assigned to my mother’s murder case? Or had he pushed for the case, knowing full well that his son was responsible?
I didn’t know, but I was going to find out.
Chapter Thirty-nine
I was in my father’s immaculate office in downtown Los Angeles.
My father was easily six inches shorter than me, but looked twice as mean. Or twice as psychotic. People talk about dead eyes. My father had them. Or they talk about glassy eyes. My father had those, too. Mostly, there was nothing behind them. They were devoid of any warmth or friendliness. Mostly, though, they were devoid of compassion. These were the eyes that looked down upon you from the chopping block or the gallows or, in his case, stared at you from behind a sniper’s telescopic lens. If someone were to tell me that my father was a serial killer, I wouldn’t blink twice.
I know, I couldn’t be prouder.
But you don’t pick your father, right? Mine just happened to be a sneeze away from a nationwide killing spree.
For now, though, he ran one of the biggest P.I. agencies in Los Angeles. The original Knighthorse Investigations. My agency, to be clear, was called Jim Knighthorse Investigations. A subtle, yet, important difference.
My father sat behind his desk, staring at me. Even when blinking, he still appeared to be staring. My father never seemed to master the social protocol of not looking too hard or too long at his subjects.
“What can I do for you, Jim?”
“I’m here for our weekly, father/son get-together.”
“We don’t have a weekly father/son get-together.”
“You think?”
“You’re being facetious.”
“I’m being something.”
“What can I do for you, Jim?” he asked again.
“I’m here about Mom’s murder.”
He nodded. No expression. Nothing. I could have said that I was here to sell him a subscription to Psychopath Today. I fought to control myself. I knew this about my dad. His lack of empathy was nothing new. One percent of the world’s population are certified psychopaths. I was looking at one of them.
“I think I know who killed her,” I said.
Still no reaction, although he did cock his head slightly to one side. For my father, that was the equivalent of a “Holy shit!”.
“And who do you think it is?” he asked.
I told him about the age-progression photo experiment I had done, and about how the man in the photograph greatly resembled the lead homicide investigator’s son.
“Did you run a background check on him?”
“Two sexual assaults that were dropped.”
“Dropped why?”
“No clue.”
“I’ll look into for you,” he said. “I’ve got friends at the DA’s office.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“What are the dates of the assaults?”
“Bookended around Mom’s murder.”
“A pattern of violence.”
You should know, I thought.
Instead, I said, “My thoughts, too.”
“Could have been a coincidence that the father got the case.”
“Or not,” I said.
“The father somehow knew about the crime?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Hard to know at this point.”
“So what’s your next step?”
“I figure it’s time to talk to him.”
Chapter Forty
I was back at Leisure World.
Sanchez had the night off from private investigating to work his real job as an LAPD detective. Slacker.
Admittedly, I hadn’t been in the mood to come tonight. After seeing my soulless father, I had been in the mood to drink the night away, with occasional respites for puking up my guts.
Except I wasn’t expecting to get a call from Tony Hill, head of park security at Leisure World. There had been another flashing. I’d asked if anyone had been blinded, and he told me to not be a smart ass and to swing by tonight.
So I swung by, and now we were in my crime fighting van. There’s nothing I like more than sitting in a confined space with a hard-ass rent-a-cop with control issues.
So I offered him a beer.
“I can’t drink when I’m on duty. And I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be drinking in this van.”
“So arrest me,” I said. I reached inside the mini-fridge and pulled out a Miller Lite.
Tony Hill looked at it long and hard, then looked around as if anyone could see us, then said, “Fine. I’ll take one. But just one.”
I grinned and handed him an ice-cold can. We sat back in the built-in swivel chairs. Like with Sanchez, we each covered one side of the van.
“Tell me about the flashing,” I said.
“Do I have to?” he said. He stared at the can o
f beer as he spoke.
“I’m afraid so.”
He sighed and sat back, although his eyes did go back to scanning the big tinted window. As he spoke, he drank often. So often that he soon finished the beer. “Happened two nights ago. In fact, it happened the last time you were here with your friend. Maybe ten, twenty minutes after you left.”
“Could he have known I was here?”
“Don’t know, but I doubt it. Your van looks like any number of maintenance vehicles. Did you see anything strange that night?”
“Nothing strange enough for me to think a flasher was on the prowl.”
Tony Hill held up the empty can. “Got another?”
“Got lots.”
I opened, reached, grabbed, shut, and handed him another cold one. He said, “I could get fired for drinking on the job, except I kind of make the rules for our department.”
“Maybe you should make the rule that on nights of flasher surveillance, you can knock back a minimum of two.”
“Four.”
“Or four.”
We both drank to that, and I think I might have just helped to add a new bylaw to Leisure World’s security.
“So who did he expose himself to this time?”
“Three women.”
“Where?”
“They were leaving their singing group.”
“Any other groups going on tonight?”
“More singing lessons, which is why I wanted you to come tonight.”
“Sounds like our boy knows the park schedule.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Who heads the singing group.”
“Mr. Micliwski.”
“Mr. McWho?”
“Micliwski. He’s Polish. Lives right there, in fact.”
Joe Hill leaned over and pointed to the same small apartment I had watched the old man exit from with the young man. A house not very far from Poppie’s. A house in the hub of the flashing hits.
“Oh really?” I said.
“Sometimes his son helps out.”
“I see,” I said. “Can the ladies describe the flasher?”
“The usual. Kind of tall, thin, long dark hair. Wore a bathrobe.”