Luce’s skin had grayed to the color of bone in the thirty seconds it took to reach her. She lay curled on her side, hands clenched over her abdomen to keep the wet mechanics of her intestines from spilling out, her body trembling in a black slick of blood. The couple I’d seen kissing ran up from the far side of the pier, the woman trying to hold back sobs of panic with the palm of her hand. The drunken revelers had vanished. I put my hand on Luce’s forehead to let her know someone was there even if I was at a loss about what to do for her. She told me she was cold. Help was coming, I said. The man stripped off his jacket and draped it over her. You’ll make it, he said. Just hold on. She was cold, she repeated. We tucked the jacket around her.
“Night,” she said. She repeated the same word over and over, her voice fainter and the word more abbreviated at each repetition, until she whispered no more than the first two letters, as though the word she spoke was swallowing her as she spoke it. Then the word changed, subtly, and she repeated it twice. Nike.
The man who’d given her his jacket leaned closer, said, “Don’t talk now. Don’t worry. Just hold on.”
But Luce didn’t hold on.
She fell.
Twenty-Eight
DETECTIVES DOUGAN and Smalls entered the suspect and witness interview room of the Santa Monica Police Department after I’d given my statement to the local detective who caught the case, a tanned and tired-eyed woman with chopped brown hair and lipstick the color of dried blood. She’d introduced herself as Detective Dabrowski, her handshake as brutal as her lipstick. Before she asked her first question I informed her that I was on parole, not because the law requires such disclosures but to save the time and trouble of additional questioning when she found out later. She led me through my eyewitness statement briskly, then cross-examined me as thoroughly as any prosecutor. Satisfied that my account was consistent in repeat tellings, both in content and with the facts on the ground, she called in Dougan and Smalls.
They did not look happy to see me, not at that hour in the morning and under the circumstances of a cross-jurisdictional murder. They may have headed the investigation into my sister’s murder but Luce died in Santa Monica, an independent city with its own mayor, city council, bus service, and police department. Both departments belonged to the Los Angeles Superior Court system. That made inter-departmental cooperation necessary. More time. More meetings. More paperwork. More mess. Worst of all, more time wasted in traffic, commuting from one city to the other.
“I should have arrested you yesterday,” Dougan said when he walked through the door. He brought coffee for four and that mattered more than civility. He sat directly across the table from me, Smalls to my right and Dabrowski to my left. If they wanted me to feel trapped, they succeeded. “If I had arrested you, maybe this girl would still be alive today.”
I’d been thinking the same ever since the shock of watching Luce die had diminished to trembling hands and a persistent wrenching behind the shield of bone above my heart. Had he arrested me I never would have met her. Had I never met her she wouldn’t have sought out Stonewell and his bodyguard. Had I given Luce’s name and address to Dougan the day before, she might still be alive and I wouldn’t be facing the possibility of arrest. I was guilty not of any criminal offense but of being blind to the consequences of my acts.
Dougan checked the notes on the top page of a legal-sized pad of lined yellow paper. “Lucille Ryan, eighteen years old, employed as a receptionist by Theatrical Artists Group.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I pulled her DMV photo. Good-looking girl.”
“She wanted to be an actress,” I said. “The one time I met her I thought she might be a good one.”
“Doesn’t look like she’ll get the chance, does it?”
I said, “No sir,” and bit the inside of my lip until I tasted blood. Physical pain distracted me. Physical pain was easy to endure.
Dougan pushed a cup of take-out coffee halfway across the table, asked, “When did you meet her?”
I peeled the plastic lid from the cup and inhaled the steam like a drug. “After I left you. I knew where she worked, followed her and a couple of co-workers to a skinless chicken place across from her building.”
“Was she the assignment you talked about, the one you had to do to pay the rent?”
I nodded.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Here I was thinking you were running off to photograph Mel Gibson or somebody and instead you were planning to compromise the investigation of your own sister’s murder while lying to my face.”
“I didn’t lie to you,” I said. “I never lied.”
“You just didn’t bother to tell the truth.”
“Why were you following Ms. Ryan?” Smalls asked, his voice so soft he might have whispered.
I turned to look at him, knowing that line of questioning could lead me to a withholding-evidence charge. “I suspected she was one of the kids who tried to rob Forest Lawn cemetery the other night.” Smalls’s expression betrayed little except watchfulness. I squared my shoulders to face Dougan on the opposite side of the table. “I told you about that yesterday. I never got a clear-enough look to be sure but I thought I saw her at the warehouse in North Hollywood, the one owned by Chad Stonewell’s brother.”
“And you recognized her?” Smalls asked, like he didn’t believe me. “She’d only been in, what, a couple television shows, a small role here and there in films. How did you know who she was?”
“It’s my job to know faces,” I said.
Dougan stopped me with a raised forefinger and flipped back through his notepad. He underlined a penciled entry with his thumb. “The listing you gave me belongs to Sopwell Holdings, registered to Daniel Sopwell.”
“Chad Stonewell was born Charles Sopwell,” I said. “I can show you his bio in my film encyclopedia, if you want.”
Dougan’s walrus moustache fluttered above the gust of an exasperated sigh. “I hate movie-star cases,” he said.
“Why?”
Dougan shrugged, glanced at Smalls.
“Juries never convict,” Smalls answered. “We know more about celebrities than our relatives. You’d do better to ask a jury to convict their own brother.”
“Maybe you can cut a deal with Stonewell’s bodyguard, get him to testify, convict Stonewell that way.” I’m no cop but it seemed like a reasonable suggestion.
Dougan pressed steepled fingers to his lips, his stare aggressive and pitying, as though he both hated and pitied me. “Stonewell’s bodyguard has an alibi for the night of your sister’s murder.”
“Alibis can be faked.”
“He accompanied Stonewell to a film premiere that night and later to a private party.”
“You know how Hollywood types stick together,” I said, angry that he wasn’t seeing it. “And Stonewell can’t be considered a legitimate alibi. He’s just as guilty as his bodyguard.”
“How about Hugh Hefner?” Smalls’s voice bumped up an octave, as though amused. “Is he guilty, too?”
Nobody likes to be laughed at. The chair squeaked against the floor when I pushed back from the table. “I don’t see what’s so funny about that.”
“Stonewell and his bodyguard were at the Playboy mansion the night your sister was killed,” Dougan said, watching me. “The bodyguard lost his head, tried to pick up one of Hef’s girlfriends.”
Dabrowski snorted into her coffee, said, “Which one? I hear he had seven so-called girlfriends at last count. The man must order Viagra by the ton.”
“Stonewell and his bodyguard were both at the party,” Dougan said. “I have a dozen witnesses. So maybe we should go over your statement again, see if we can figure out the difference between what you saw and what you think you saw.” He walked me through the events of the previous night, starting with the limousine at Bar Bar, Dabrowski dipping her head at each declarative point to check that this telling conformed with the previous statements. He flipped back through his notes, asked D
abrowski, “Do you have confirmation on the time of attack?”
“One twenty-eight,” she said from memory. “One of the witnesses looked at his watch just before he heard screaming.” She glanced at me. “That screaming would be Ms. Zero here, reacting to what she saw through the camera.”
“Twelve minutes difference,” he said to me. “You called and left a message at the station at one-sixteen. Why did you call me then and not before? Did you know she was going to be killed?”
“When else was I going to call you? She went to a club, slipped out the back and into a limousine. I didn’t know where she was going, who she was with, or what she was doing. Young, attractive girls go to clubs and get laid by famous, rich men. That’s the way this town works.”
“You thought you’d photograph her with Stonewell,” Smalls said.
I shrugged, a gesture that confirmed his suspicion without specifically admitting it. “I’m a tabloid photographer. I make my living photographing celebrities. When she went alone down to the pier I thought I should call. She had to know my sister was murdered. She had to know what she was doing was dangerous. I was afraid what might happen to her.”
“Why not call 911 then?”
“Because she welcomed the guy like a lover.”
“Who you identify as Stonewell’s bodyguard.”
“That’s right.”
Smalls asked, “How do you know it was Stonewell’s bodyguard?”
“I’d seen them together. At a restaurant in Santa Monica.”
“And on the pier, did you get a clear shot of his face?”
I said I didn’t think I did, that he was too distant, the light too dim, and he wore a baseball cap. As I spoke Smalls watched me above hands clenched at his lips. The hands were fastidiously manicured and his eyes gleamed, sharp and mechanical as a pair of scissors.
“Then how do you know it was Stonewell’s bodyguard?”
“The way he moved, his hair, his clothes—”
“Describe them.”
“Black windbreaker, blue jeans, Timberland half boots.”
“But the girl said Nike.” Smalls dipped his head at Dabrowski.
“Nike, that’s right,” she said. “We have two other witnesses to that. Sounded like she was saying night at first, but then she said Nike.”
“Why would she say Nike if he was wearing Timberland?”
“Maybe Nike, then.” Maybe they just looked like Timberlands.
“Last words are meaningless,” Dougan said, fingers thrumming the tabletop in a riff of exasperation. “You know the most common last words in all of recorded history?” He tipped his head back and gurgled—his imitation of a death rattle.
“He’s right, even if someone talks, it’s nonsense,” Smalls said. “Case in point, why would she mention his shoes?”
“Her eyes were closed when I got to her. His shoes might have been the last thing she saw.”
“That’s pretty pathetic, don’t you think? Beautiful young girl like that, whole world, bright future ahead of her, and the last thing she sees before she blinks out is a pair of Nikes? Doesn’t that strike you as pathetic? Or do you have celluloid and cheap newsprint for a heart, don’t feel things like normal people?” He dropped his hands to the table with a sharp slap.
I flinched. Dabrowski and Dougan didn’t.
“Show her the photograph,” Smalls said.
Dougan reached toward the back of his blue notebook. I expected a crime-scene photo showing Luce’s death in all its ugly anguish. Dougan flicked his wrist and a color printout of a DMV photograph skittered across the surface of the table. The face in the photo—a muscular, thirty-something white male—looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place it, not immediately.
“Do you recognize the man in this photograph?”
“I’ve seen him before but I don’t know his name, who he is.”
“Look again.” Smalls’s voice cracked across the table, sharp and contemptuous. “You don’t remember where you’ve seen him before?”
I stared at the photograph, mapping the features of the man against the men I’d seen recently but not coming up with a match. “I’ve seen him, I just don’t remember where. Maybe it will come to me later.”
Smalls shook his head, said, “Be sure to tell us if it does.”
I looked at Dougan, confused why the man in the photograph was suddenly so important, asked, “Who is he?”
“Stonewell’s bodyguard,” Dougan said.
Twenty-Nine
AFEW hours before noon I walked into the church around the corner from what had once been my apartment and beneath the smiling portrait of St. Anne lit one candle for my sister, one for my mother, and one for Luce. The photographs I’d taken the night before, developed by a police technician, had provided basic corroboration of the story I’d told to Dabrowski, Dougan, and Smalls, but little else. The limousine shots were badly exposed because of my unfamiliarity with the night-vision lens; I’d never gotten close enough to clearly photograph its license plate. The man who killed Luce had kept the brim of his cap low over his forehead and never turned his face fully toward the camera. The shots I’d taken of Luce’s fatal dance with her murderer were front-page images worthy of a Pulitzer in tabloid news reporting—if only such a prize existed. Publication would have solved my money troubles for months had Dabrowski not confiscated the negatives as evidence pertaining to an ongoing homicide investigation. The lawyers at Scandal Times would fight to get the negatives released. I wouldn’t. Sometimes it’s better to go hungry.
I knelt before the altar to say a short prayer for my dead. I felt odd kneeling and I didn’t say much of a prayer, rest in peace and all that. After I finished I stepped back and noticed a candle burning before the next altar down from St. Anne’s. The candle cast a flickering, amber light upon two objects mounted to the wall behind a protective guardrail. The object on the left was a portrait of an old woman praying, her haggard and sorrowful face framed in the black-and-white habit of a nun. Beside the painting the convex glass of a gold oval frame bowed over an aged heart. The heart had been shaped from rolled, gilded paper and pearls set on a red velvet background. On the front rail a worn brass nameplate read in a cursive script, Santa Monica.
“That’s not what she really looked like,” said an old voice behind me. “St. Monica, that was more than fifteen hundred years ago.”
The old priest shuffled one pew over. He waved a brown, rootlike hand at the painting. “This is just what the painter, what he thought she looked like. But he got it wrong.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve seen her,” he said.
I said, “Oh.”
“I know that must seem strange for you,” he admitted.
“A little. How did you see her?”
He pointed to a spot on his forehead, a few inches above the middle of his brow. “Like this.” He smiled at me, as though knowing I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about but it didn’t really matter. “St. Monica is very special to me, you see. She helped me find God.”
I remembered our conversation from before, asked, “So she’s your patron saint?”
“She’s the patron saint of many troubled people. Alcoholics, those in difficult marriages, widows, victims of abuse…”
“Sounds like my kind of saint.”
He nodded his head as though he agreed.
I leaned over the railing to inspect the sculpted heart behind the convex glass. Gilded paper had been cut and rolled in a floral design to encircle the heart and at the base the flowers swirled around a grayish-white object no larger than a fingernail. I’d never seen anything like it before. “What is this?” I asked.
“A reliquary,” the old priest answered.
“That thing at the bottom?”
“A relic.”
The old priest shuffled toward the front altar, his back bent, the palm of his hand cupping the back of each pew for support. He looked at least ninety years old. Maybe he meant he
’d seen St. Monica in person. When he turned from the pews and tottered toward a confessional along the side wall, I followed, stooping into the black-curtained booth opposite his. The sweat smell of penitents clung to the curtain, wood-paneled walls and ceiling like the ghosts of sins confessed. The grayish-white thing at the base of the frame beside the portrait of St. Monica, what the old priest called a relic, had looked like bone. I said, “I’m not Catholic.”
“Tell me what’s on your heart,” the old priest said. “That you are sincere of heart is more important right now than being Catholic or not. We call this the sacrament of penance. If you sincerely confess your sins the forgiveness God grants is sacred.”
I could smell his breath through the slot, musty and sweet as an old closet. I asked, “How can one confess a lifetime of sins?”
“A good question. How can one climb a mountain?”
“One step at a time?”
His silence confirmed the answer. And so I began. The old priest wouldn’t live long enough to hear me recite all my sins and so I concentrated on my most recent ones. I wasn’t sure what properly constituted a sin in the Catholic sense so I talked mostly about my regrets. Most of all I regretted not saying good-bye to my mother and I regretted my part in the web of events that had led Luce to her death. Things I’d done that most people would consider sins but that I didn’t regret I didn’t confess, no matter how violent. Maybe those sins would keep me forever from the grace of God. Maybe my chief sin was not being sure such a grace existed. “This girl I saw killed, she wore something around her neck encased in silver, a bone, I think.” Luce’s pendant still troubled me. “Could it have been something tied to her religion?”
The priest said, “You mean a relic.”
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