She cast a wary eye through the partition.
“I’ll need someone to feed him, take him for a walk.”
“You’ll have to ask the detectives that, too,” she said.
Eleven
THEY TOOK me to the Hollywood station, a low brick building on the corner of Wilcox and Hollywood Boulevard, swinging the cruiser through the lot to a rear entrance reserved for officers, prisoners, and special guests like me. The prisoner containment area was relatively quiet at that hour, just one drunk cuffed to a long wooden bench running the length of an open-air bullpen. The Latina and her partner handed me over to the duty officer, who told me to sit in a chair along the wall in a tone of voice that meant stay out of the way. The last time I’d been taken to the Hollywood station, after an arrest on a parole violation, they’d cuffed me to the bench with the drunks. I was moving up in the world.
The detective who claimed me from the duty officer a few minutes later looked like the human equivalent of a walrus, his massive chest and belly leading his feet as he waddled through the bullpen. He opened the door to a small room with beige metal walls, centered by a square wooden table with chipped edges. He motioned me toward the chair facing away from the door and sat at the opposite end of the table. The chair he’d offered me was a reject from the bullpen, one leg shorter than the other three and the seat worn to a hard bowl by years of sitting. The detective absently thumbed the fringe of his moustache as he glanced through the contents of a blue notebook, paying no attention to me. He seemed to be waiting. The moustache was a big one; if you stuck a handle into the back of his neck you could have used his face as a push broom.
“Do I have the right to call my lawyer?” I asked.
He looked up as though surprised I’d spoken. “I thought you were here voluntarily,” he said. His tone was aggressive, daring me to contradict him.
“Two officers hammered on my door at five this morning and told me to get in the patrol car.” I carefully folded my hands in front of me and compressed my emotions into a tight little ball hidden behind my rib cage. Anger doesn’t play well with cops. “I wasn’t given the chance to volunteer.”
He slapped the notebook shut, said, “You’re not under arrest. You don’t have to tell us anything. You don’t want to say anything, don’t say anything. You’re here because you volunteered to help.” He made a big show of glancing at his wristwatch. “If you want a lawyer present I guess we can hold everything until he gets here. Is that what you want?”
“I want someone to take care of my dog,” I said.
He pulled his face back as though I’d slapped him. “What does your dog have to do with anything?”
“He’s stuck in my apartment without anybody to feed or walk him. I didn’t realize I’d be volunteering to come to Hollywood at five o’clock this morning.”
“You want to call somebody to take care of your dog?” he asked, wanting to make sure he had it right.
I nodded.
“And if we manage that, will you still want your lawyer?”
Good question. I still owed my lawyer five grand from the last time I’d been arrested and the money I was planning to use to pay him was gone. A detective in a suit from Brooks Brothers strode into the room and shut the door, a gold badge pinned to his belt, just to the side of his zipper. I guessed that meant he was proud of the thing. He seemed young for the badge, no more than thirty-five, and his face looked as fresh and unlined as his suit.
“She wants someone to look after her dog,” the one with the moustache said.
“Not a problem.” His partner gave me a cursory scan and hitched up his belt, no doubt so I’d notice the badge. “But let’s ask a few questions first, okay? We hope to get you out of here so fast you won’t need someone to look after the dog.”
I said that would be fine. I could change my mind later if the questioning dragged on. The first detective introduced himself as Dougan and the flashy one as his partner, Smalls. Dougan asked the questions while Smalls paced the length of the interrogation room. I got the feeling he had a lot on his mind. Dougan started with the simple ones, like my name, occupation, and address, then asked me to account for my time between late afternoon of the day before to the early hours of that morning. The question confirmed my suspicion that I was one of the usual suspects and nothing more. I figured the interrogation would end as soon as they confirmed my story. Not many ex-cons can present as her alibi a night of drinking with a retired sheriff’s deputy. The only problem with my alibi was that it ended before midnight.
“What about the hours between ten last night and two this morning?” Dougan asked.
“Like most honest citizens I was home in my bed,” I answered. “Though I may have been a little more drunk than most.”
“Can anybody confirm you were there?”
“Just my dog. He’ll vouch for me.”
I was trying to be funny.
Nobody smiled.
“If your dog can talk, you shouldn’t have a problem, then,” Dougan said.
Smalls walked out first. Whatever he seemed to be thinking about consumed him. I’m not sure he even heard what I’d said. Dougan promised to let me call somebody about the dog soon and left, careful to lock the door behind him. I’d spent no minor part of my life in similar small and windowless rooms. My brushes with various law-enforcement agencies had taught me how to wait, if nothing else. The only thing I feared was a hangover that, blunted by the ibuprofen, still sent exploratory jabs from the far side of pain. I counted the holes in the acoustical ceiling tiles for a few minutes, then tried to multiply the result by the number of tiles from wall to wall, but that made my head hurt even more. When Dougan and Smalls returned, I was dead asleep, the sign of a clear conscience and bad math skills.
“Can I call someone about the dog now?” I asked, lifting my head from the table.
“In a minute,” Smalls said, and this time sat at the table, around the corner to my right. Dougan pushed something small wrapped in a clear plastic bag across the surface of the table. A driver’s license of some kind. I squinted, trying to see through the sleep in my eyes. A driver’s license from Oregon, issued to someone named Sharon Bogle. The thumb-sized photograph depicted a petite woman with bleached-blond bangs and a face masked by makeup.
“Do you know the woman on this license?” Dougan asked, his voice carefully neutral.
“It’s my sister,” I said. “At least I think it is.”
Dougan glanced at Smalls, who raised his eyebrows.
“What do you mean, you think it is? If she’s your sister you should know. It is or it isn’t.”
“Two days ago I saw my sister for the first time in twenty-five years. Her hair was strawberry-blond and she said she was living in Seattle.” I poked my finger at the license in the bag. “She wasn’t a bleached blond from Oregon in pancake makeup.”
Dougan slipped another object from the blue binder and pushed it across the desk with the eraser end of a yellow Ticonderoga pencil. “Can you identify this for us, please?”
The object was similar to the first, except from California, and the face staring back at me from the evidence bag was mine. “It’s my driver’s license,” I said.
Dougan made a note in the binder, asked, “Can you tell us what it was doing in the possession of the woman you identified as your sister?”
“Did you find my checkbook and money, too?”
“Why should we have found your checkbook?”
“Because she stole my ID and checkbook yesterday morning, just before nineteen grand went missing from my bank account.”
Dougan’s glance was hard and sharp. “You’re saying your sister forged your signature and cashed a check on your account?”
“I reported the theft yesterday,” I said. “Not here, but the station in Venice. Check it out.”
“Give us another couple of minutes,” Smalls said, and stood.
“Did you find my money?”
Dougan wedged both evidence bags into his blu
e binder and joined Smalls at the door.
“My sister’s already in trouble, isn’t she?”
“We’ll make this as fast as we can,” Dougan said, and shut the door on their way out.
“Hey, what about my dog?” I called, too late. Not that asking any earlier would have gotten a different reply. They didn’t want me making any phone calls, not until they’d finished talking to me, and certainly not when the person I wanted to call to take care of the dog was providing my alibi for whatever it was my sister had done. It seemed pretty obvious Sharon had been unable to resist one last scam before fleeing town. Her luck hadn’t held and she’d been caught. The search at her arrest had turned up my driver’s license. The police had run my ID through the computer and scored a series of hits. Bingo. Initially, they had to suspect me of being complicit in my sister’s criminal enterprise, only they hadn’t known we were sisters, and they hadn’t heard about the complaint I’d lodged against her. I silently blessed Ben for pressuring me into doing the right thing in reporting the theft. Without that report, my liar of a sister could have blamed everything on me. The police might have believed her for a time. It felt great to do the right thing for once. I was going to have to try to do it more often.
Half an hour later the duty officer poked his head in the door and said I could make my call. I stood and followed him into the detective bull pen, bustling now with plainclothes cops getting an early start on the day. The duty officer pointed to a phone at an empty desk and told me to punch nine to get an outside line. He hovered at the other end of the desk while I dialed.
“I’m guessing they’ve got you in custody at the Hollywood station,” Ben said when he heard my voice. “If this is your one phone call maybe you should tell me what the hell’s going on.”
“Something to do with my sister,” I said. “The police found my ID when they arrested her. So far they’ve been a little short of talkative. They tell you anything?”
“Not a damn thing, and don’t think I didn’t ask.”
The duty officer leaned forward, said, “Can you complete your phone call now, please?”
“Listen, I’ve got to go. Can you take the Rott today? He’s been stuck inside the apartment since five this morning.”
“Happy to do it. He can help me varnish the deck. Hey, those detectives, they working the robbery desk?”
“They didn’t say.” I thanked him for his help and hung up.
Dougan and Smalls were waiting when the duty officer returned me to the interview room, Dougan’s face slack with fatigue but Smalls’s still tautly energetic as though he was working his first hour and not pulling a double shift. “When was the last time you visited Hollywood Forever Cemetery?” Dougan began. It took me a moment to recognize the place he meant. Hollywood Forever Cemetery occupied a fifty-plus-acre plot of land next to Paramount Studios, walking distance from the old movie mecca of Hollywood and Vine. Among the celebrity set of the early twentieth century it had been the place to be buried.
“Did you see it, for example, last night?” Dougan asked.
“I already told you, I went drinking with a friend last night.”
Smalls tapped his pencil, said, “We’re more interested in what happened after he dropped you off.”
“I already told you that, too. I took my dog for a walk, then showered and went to bed. I was asleep by midnight.”
“When was the last time you were there?” Dougan asked.
“There was no last time. I’ve never been there.”
“Never?”
“Never, never.”
“But you know the place, what’s there.”
“It’s a cemetery. Dead people are what’s there.”
Smalls’s forefinger inscribed a quick circle in the air.
Dougan spotted the gesture, asked, “Did your sister ever mention Hollywood Forever Cemetery to you?”
“Never.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Dead sure.”
Dougan and Smalls exchanged glances. Smalls nodded.
“Did she mention anything about her plans last night? Where she was going, what she was doing?”
“Wouldn’t matter if she had.”
“Why not?”
“My sister is a liar and a thief. How can you possibly think she’d tell me the truth about anything? She ripped me off for nineteen grand. Nineteen grand! You think she’s going to leave me her forwarding address? She didn’t tell me the truth about anything. I wish I could help you because I suspect you’ve arrested her. She belongs in jail. How can anyone with a shred of conscience rob her own sister? You’ve picked her up, right?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Smalls said.
“Did you find my money on her?”
“Not nineteen grand. Not even close.”
“That money’s mine when you find it. I have no idea what kind of a scam she was running and you know what? I don’t care. I hope I never see her again. All I want is my money back. My sister is dead to me.”
Dougan leaned forward abruptly, asked, “Why do you say that? Why do you say she’s dead to you?”
“Because I have no feelings for her anymore. I don’t care how desperately she needed the money. She killed whatever sisterly affection I had for her when she robbed me.”
“Try to help us here.” Smalls propped his chin on clenched palms, his glance aggressively intelligent. “Why would your sister be in Hollywood Forever Cemetery at two in the morning?”
“Stealing pennies from the eyes of the dead, probably.”
“You can’t think of any other reason?”
“You don’t understand anything I’ve told you,” I said. “My sister is a stranger to me. She could be dancing naked in Satanic rituals and it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Why Satanic rituals?” Dougan asked.
“Why not? Why not digging her way to China dressed in a Donald Duck costume? Nothing she does makes any sense to me.”
Dougan’s eyes rose toward the ceiling, as though my answer exasperated him, then drifted down to Smalls, who subtly tilted his head to the side. Dougan pointed a stubby finger at my chest. “What you said earlier, about your sister being dead to you?”
“What about it?” I said.
“Looks like you got your wish.”
Smalls pulled his hands from his chin and looked at me as though I was an extraordinary species of bug. “Your sister was beaten to death last night,” he said. “We found her body near the Douglas Fairbanks memorial at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.”
Twelve
ISTARED at the back of Smalls’s neatly shaved neck while Dougan drove to the morgue. After being informed of my sister’s death, I’d answered their questions monotonously, repeating either “Don’t know” or “No idea” until I began to doubt the extent of my own vocabulary. I’m not a bad liar, particularly when lies are needed to protect myself or others I care about, but nothing convinces like the truth. I hadn’t a clue. The detectives questioned me for another half hour before leading me out the back of the station to an unmarked brown Chevy sedan. They needed someone to identify the body. Neither my brother nor my father could do it—they hadn’t seen her since the day she’d left home. I hadn’t been able to tell Dougan and Smalls much about my sister but they had revealed even less to me. “What happened to my sister?” I asked when the car stopped at a light.
“Already told you. She was beaten to death.” Smalls didn’t bother looking back at me from the front seat when he spoke, his mind on other things.
“Why?”
“We don’t know. We were hoping you could tell us.”
“My sister is a complete blank to me. Her driver’s license told me more than I learned in two days talking to her, unless the license was a lie, too.”
“The license is legit. The name was one of several she used but I guess you’d call it her legal name. We’re still working on a viable address.”
“Her name was Sharon Bogle?”
Smalls nodded, watching the street as Dougan accelerated.
I wanted to be helpful, said, “She told me her second husband worked in a bank.”
Smalls tipped his head back and shouted a laugh to the roof. “Worked in a bank? Dougy, you hear that?”
“I wonder if he listed that on his job résumé?”
“She told me her first husband had been a butcher,” I said.
The cruiser swerved from side to side, Dougan doubled over the wheel and Smalls slapping the dash, their laughter the release of men who’d worked too many hours under too much pressure.
I didn’t get it. I said, “What’s so funny?”
Smalls breathed deeply to calm himself. “It’s been a long night,” he said, trying to force the smile from his lips. “We don’t mean to be disrespectful to your sister. You really don’t know anything, do you?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Smalls caught Dougan’s eye in the rearview mirror. Dougan nodded. “Your sister’s second husband robbed banks for a living. He’s in the state pen in Oregon right now. Your sister drove the getaway car on his last job, did three years on the conviction.”
He turned his eye out the window.
“The first husband?” I asked.
The smile was gone from Smalls’s lips by the time he turned to me and said, “A meth dealer who went off his nut and hacked two people to death in a drug deal down in Texas. They executed him last year.”
My criminal record paled in comparison to my sister’s. She’d begun her career as a prostitute in Las Vegas, where youth and beauty had served her well enough to keep her out of jail until a couple of birthdays made her a less desirable commodity. By the age of twenty-four she’d been booked in four states on charges of solicitation. In her mid-twenties she learned the arts of check kiting and insurance fraud from a meth-addicted boyfriend and began to rely on her wits more than her body. The bunko squad in Phoenix arrested the boyfriend for selling retirees fictitious memberships in an equally fictitious private golf course. My sister negotiated a deal with the district attorney, aided by medical records that portrayed her as the victim of domestic violence. In exchange for immunity she gave evidence against her boyfriend and soon after the trial married his meth dealer. He beat her badly enough that she required hospitalization on two different occasions, though charges were never filed. She turned state’s evidence again five years later, this time to avoid being charged with accessory to murder when her husband used a samurai sword to behead a couple of his dealership’s slow-pay accounts.
Digging James Dean Page 8