by Maria Walton
Katie didn’t say much at the visit. She just watched as Anita cried and Esteban looked forlorn. The meeting was a quick thirty minutes. The guards pushed them out almost as soon as they got in.
“Business has been slow for me lately. All the new tech money comes with problems but it doesn’t come with problems that like to be solved with the hard work of a PI like me. In case you haven’t figured it out I’m a bit on the fringe for this sort of work,” Katie said.
Katie pointed at her breasts and pursed her lips. Vi laughed. He waved the waiter over.
“What would you like?”
“You can order for me,” Katie said.
“I’ve never been here though.”
“I’m feeling adventurous.”
The waiter came over and Vi ordered. He decided on the salmon and the duck breast. The first would be served on a salad with bacon, red onions and cherry tomatoes. The latter with toasted almond shreds on a bed of lettuce.
“I’m sure it will be good,” Katie said. She blew a kiss at Vi.
He laughed.
“So how did you get into it?”
“Into PI work?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I grew up here in Oakland. I wasn’t in Fruitvale. I lived in north Oakland, over by where Emeryville is. My parents had lived there for ages. Tony, I mentioned him before, he was my next-door neighbor. He was a crotchety old white man. He used to be on the force but he quit.”
“Really why?”
“He said that being a cop changed him too much. He began to think that everyone was a suspect. He didn’t live in the neighborhoods that he worked in and treated everyone like a criminal… because they were. He only interacted with lawbreakers.”
“Sounds like the Stanford prison experiment.”
Katie raised her eyebrow.
“You’ve never heard of it,” Vi asked. He took a sip of his wine. The tannins of the red liquid drying out his mouth. “All these college students took part in it. Half were prisoners, half were guards. Everyone ended up internalizing their roles. The prisoners stayed in the experiment even though they were being tortured by the guards. Some of the guards even attacked the prisoners with fire extinguishers. Everyone was just a student though, they were doing the experiment for a little extra money.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s sort of how Tony felt. He was just policing too much. He quit. People in the neighborhood would come by and ask him for advice though. Where to find their missing brother, if their wife or husband was cheating on them… A lot of time he would go after missing pets.”
Tony had been generous with the locals. The generosity endeared him in the neighborhood. He would sit for hours casing out a house trying to find a missing relative. The tall white man would have looked out of place in most of Oakland if he hadn’t driven a beat-up car and dressed poorly. He didn’t get busy much and since Katie had taken over his business neither had she. Occasionally she would get a caller but things had slowed down. It was easier to track people with phone apps, infidelity wasn’t an issue as everyone had become adulterous, and people were more concerned about paying for their rent than finding their lost pussy cats. A missing cat, a missing dog, meant saved money in dog food.
“And that’s where you come in, you were the best at finding lost cats,” Vi said with a chuckle.
“Yeah,” Katie said. “I’m a real pussy hound.”
“We have a lot in common then.”
Katie laughed and her eyes danced along Vi’s body. “Tony hired me to sit in places and watch then tell him what happened. He would make me take notes. Who was driving what car, what people looked like, then he would drill me with questions. He said half of solving a case was is looking at the details and the other half was getting the suspect drunk and have them confess. He always said that justice was something you have to wait on. A good detective knows how to have patience.”
“Do people confess a lot?”
“Everyone confesses if they are put to it. Even if they have nothing to tell. They keep talking and talking and talking until they say what you want to hear, if you are putting it to them enough.”
“Putting it to them enough?”
“We should change the subject to something a little nicer.”
“Katie, do you play rough? Is that what you are implying?”
“I’m saying that people will say whatever they think you want to hear if they are getting beaten.”
“Like Esteban?”
“Yes. Just like Esteban.”
“So, you went and saw him in jail?”
“He was being held at Santa Rita. It has a two-and-a-half-star rating on yelp. Although it is ‘environmentally friendly.’ In 2002 the prison had solar panels installed that provide half the energy during the day. It is a bay area prison for sure.”
“It also has that hit song – ‘Santa Rita Weekend.’”
“Yeah. So, you know the jail?”
“Not intimately. But I do know the Coup.”
“I went to the jail to see Esteban. It’s not the best of places to be and for the accused murderer of a cop’s wife. Things did not look good for Esteban. He was a bit of a hero with the other prisoners but they had no say about how the guards treated him. He’d been worked over when we saw him. His tan skin had dark bruises everywhere. His jaw was a mess. The punches and kicks the cops had given him left marks the same color as bruised plums. He put out his hands immediately for Anita. His nails though, they were dirty. Soil and dirt were lodged under his fingernails and his index finger had a slight nick on it.”
“But didn’t he wear gloves?”
“Exactly,” Katie said pointing at Vi. “When you get your nails done as often as Esteban did, you wouldn’t have dirty nails.”
“So, you asked him about the gloves, right?”
“Of course I did. He said that he’d left the gloves at the Richardson’s house the day before. The last time he had been there. The day of the murder. He had to have worked on a garden in the morning.”
“When did she die?”
“The autopsy said that she died in the late afternoon.”
“Well, he still had time to go and murder her after his morning job.”
“True, and he didn’t have a solid alibi for his time in the afternoon.”
“Well, what did he say that he was doing?”
“He didn’t.”
“He didn’t have a good alibi?”
“No. Anita though, she said he didn’t do it.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he didn’t do it. Anita is a manicurist. She’d give him more hell about his nails being fucked up than the murder of a white lady.”
Vi laughed. “Well, if Esteban didn’t do it, who did?”
“I have a suspect.”
“Who? You have to tell me.”
“You.”
“Me?”
“No. I’m kidding. Although I think you play a part in this,” Katie said. She kept her voice level and her eyes on Vi as he took a sharp gasp of air in.
“How so?”
“We’ll get to that later. After I went and saw Esteban in prison I decided to check on the other suspect.”
“The other suspect?”
“The other suspect is always the loved one. Most crime is committed between two people that know each other and at least a third of all women in the US are killed by their male partners,” Katie said.
“Maybe we shouldn’t fall in love.”
“You were planning on murdering me?”
“Better safe than sorry,” Vi said with a shrug.
“Anyways, if Esteban didn’t do it then Mr. Richardson probably did.”
“Do you have any proof? Did he have an alibi?”
“Proof, no… He had an alibi too.”
“What was it?”
“He was said to be drinking at this cop bar in downtown Oakland.”
“Did anyone see him there?”
“The bartender said he
was there.”
“He was drinking in the middle of the afternoon?”
“One thing I’ve learned in dealing with cops, when they are putting a donut in their mouth they’re putting some sort of alcohol in it. Mr. Richardson was a drunk.”
“A mean drunk?”
“That’s what I think. He is a cruel man.”
“You knew him from before? I’m sorry. I keep asking all these questions. I’m so curious though. Is this inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate? No. Curiosity is never inappropriate and I don’t mind. It’s helping me think things through. To go over things. And yes, I knew Mr. Richardson. He is a real bastard. Tony, a few years back when he was still alive, offered me a job. Richardson had contacted him asking if he knew of any girls, working girls, that would want to be part of a sting operation.”
“Why would they want to do that? It would ruin their business.”
“Exactly, Tony volunteered me though. I was legal enough to do it. Tony said it would be a good experience for me. I would learn what cops were like. I would learn how criminals thought.”
“You’d be part of a Stanford prison experiment.”
“Something like that. So, I went to International Ave. and started walking. I walked with a few other girls. They didn’t say much to me. Richardson drove up after a while in an unmarked car to pick me up. Made it seem like I was a legit worker. He laid it on real thick. ‘Hey honey how about a blowie.’ He even got out of the car and squeezed my ass. I rode around the block with him. We parked for a few minutes and then went back. He kept talking about how I was dressed, how much I wanted it. It made me want to barf. He talked about his wife, what a ‘nasty woman’ she was. How she didn’t give it to him proper. How he needed a sweet young thing like me to make him feel right. Real fucking bastard.”
“Then what you went back and they picked up the other girls for soliciting?”
“Yeah. We went back and picked up the girls. Some of them were young, some not. A few weren’t even legals. One girl, I found out later, Richardson and the others coerced into having sex with them after the operation was over.”
“What was the point? Rounding up a few hookers isn’t gonna do much. Did they go after the pimps? Or, if the girls were young, go after the traffickers.”
“Richardson and them hoped that one of the girls would talk, or would lead them somewhere for something. Nothing ended up happening.”
“And you? What did you get out of it?”
“$150.”
“That’s it?”
“No. I spent the night in the jail as well. Richardson wanted to make me seem even more legit. He groped my ass too. Kept groping me. Fuck. That. Bastard.”
The cell had been cold. Night had passed into day with the other working girls crying. Their make-up ruined quickly under the torrent of tears that rained down. Most of them had no one to call. A few thought to call their pimps, others to call their families. None of the girls were bailed out by the time that Katie left the prison at 4pm the next day. Twelve girls had had to share a single cell with a single toilet. One of the girls had started to menstruate. The guards laughed when Katie demanded that they bring pads, or tampons, or something to allow this woman some dignity. The cell filled with the scent of defecation, urine, and menstruation as the hours passed and the women were given nothing but to sit in their own filth.
Katie didn’t know when she would be let out. The guards would occasionally come by to harass them. “Sluts, whores,” they said.
Richardson had come once. He asked Katie to come to the bars. She complied. He pulled her to the bars and licked her face trapping her arms against the bars.
His breath smelled like moldy bread and when she gasped from the sudden jerk her nostrils filled with his stench. The white veneers of his teeth did nothing to hide the disgust of his face. His forehead pulsed red and a thin vein pushed its way to the surface above his right eye. It was a caterpillar of tension that wanted to explode out of its cocoon.
“Dirty girls like you,” Richardson said. “Deserve to be in jail.”
He grabbed her ass and laughed. His hand was cold and clammy like the steel bars she was held against. His fingers grabbed her as if she was a plush teddy bear, a toy doll that he was strangling.
“Get me out of here. I don’t belong here. You know it,” Katie screamed.
The words fell on deaf ears.
Tony came later. He thought Richardson had already let her out. When she didn’t show up the next day he came calling at the prison.
“I didn’t know,” he told her when she cried into his arms. “I didn’t think they would be so cruel. They can be good men. I’ve seen it.”
“They can also be bad. They can be very, very, fucking bad, Tony,” Katie said.
The candlelight flickered on the restaurant table. It was a low flame. It could still be dangerous if next to flammable material, Katie thought. Right now, though there was no danger, later, maybe.
“I’m sorry,” Vi said.
“Don’t be. Tony taught me a good lesson.”
“What?”
“That all cops are bastards. You sign up to be a cop, you are making a choice to punish people.”
“Oh. I guess I’m glad I’m not a cop.”
“Yeah. It’s a deal breaker for me.”
“But as a private investigator don’t you have to deal with the cops all the time?”
“Yeah, and they are bastards all the time too. I try not to deal with them too much. When I do I make sure to make things swift and efficient.”
“You let them know that you think they are bastards, that’s quite bold,” Vi said. His voice wavered with indecision. The surety of his attraction was sliding.
“It slips out from time to time.”
“Okay, so Richardson is scum bag number 1. That doesn’t mean he did it. Plus, he had the alibi.”
“He did. The bartender said that he even had footage of Richardson at the bar.”
“Did you get to see it?”
“No. Not at first.”
“No one checked?”
“Well, the other cops trusted the bartender. I didn’t. I snuck into the bar. It’s an old dive in downtown Oakland. Getting in wasn’t hard. I just waited until the bartender left at 3 am and I broke in.”
“Should you be telling me this? You broke the law.”
“Being a snitch is also a deal breaker.”
Vi laughed again. “I’ve lived in Oakland long enough that I’ll let this one pass. Maybe don’t break the law that much.”
“If I hadn’t though I wouldn’t have gotten a chance to look over the tapes.”
“What was on them?”
“The tapes? It was a bunch of drunks sitting around the bar. The bartender shooting the shit. Nothing exciting.”
“So, Richardson was there? He was in the tapes?”
“No.”
“Then where was he?”
“He wasn’t at the bar. That’s for sure.”
The bar had smelled of stale beer. The well that sat behind a beaten wood bar was a twenty-four-hour hotel for bar flies. They came in and out between the bottles of cheap liquor. They loitered around like bums on the street. Jimmying the lock had been easy. Tony had taught her how to pick locks when she was just a kid. There were just a handful of different variations and everything else was just a matter of time. The bar didn’t have any security. The cops didn’t bother trying.
She put on her flashlight and let it linger on the few tables. One of the bar stools wobbled as she walked into the main bar area. She swung the light around looking for the office. The smell of piss and disinfectant came out of one corner of the room. The stink wafted in from the men’s bathroom. It was mixed with the latex smell of her gloves that she put on before entering the bar to hide her prints.
The office was small and off to the side of the walk-in cooler. Katie could feel the chill of the refrigerator leaking out into the office. She was glad that she’d worn a
dark hoodie. Goosebumps rose on her flush as she searched the office for the surveillance video. It was an old system made with videotapes. One camera pointed outside, a second pointed into the bar. It looked like the tapes were reused. She pulled up the tapes and fast-forwarded it to when Richardson came in. Melanie had been murdered around 3pm. He showed up at 4. She rewound the tape to look at the car that brought him in. It was a blue Volkswagen bug. Richardson wasn’t driving. It was someone else. She noted down the license plate number. Then went back and erased the night’s break in. She needed to cover her tracks.
Outside the bar, it had started to rain. The drops splashed on the road. A constant pitter-patter followed Katie as she started her car and drove away. Tony had died on a similar night. She remembered getting the phone call. For some reason, she was the first of kin for Tony although she hadn’t talked to him in years. They’d had a following out. It wasn’t about money. It wasn’t about love. It was about stubbornness. He wouldn’t relent. He was too cranky. Too ornery and too judgmental. His days as a cop had still made him too black and white. Everyone was still too good or too evil. Katie couldn’t take it.
They’d parted ways for good after Tony had gotten too drunk and too angry. He just saw things in two categories. He didn’t understand that in a world where everyone was a part of a Stanford experiment there was no good or evil – just choices. Anyone at any time could turn bad if they were in the wrong situation.
Vi sat back in his chair. He tried to take it all in. The murder, the glove, the body. It didn’t add up though. Sure, Richardson was a bastard but that didn’t mean he murdered his wife. It just meant he was a fucking asshole. Where was he though when the murder happened? Where was Esteban? There were too many missing pieces and, most importantly, there was no motive. Vi had seen enough murder mysteries in the past that he knew there had to be motive. A reason for all of this to happen. He knew that he didn’t like the way this conversation was headed though. He pushed around the food on his plate and then put the plate to the side. He doubted that they would have dessert.
“Cat got your tongue,” Katie said.