It's Not a Pretty Sight

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  “Where was Bascomb?” Gunner asked.

  “In the bedroom. Asleep,” Serrano said. “That was apparently his pattern. Drink heavily, beat Doreen silly, then pass out.”

  “They take him in?”

  “Yes. Of course. It was either that or kill him. Those cops were almost as furious as I was, and that was before they woke him up and he started acting like he hadn’t done anything wrong. Like it was the most natural thing in the world for a man to beat his wife with a stereo speaker before retiring for the evening.”

  “He do any time?”

  “Three months. He was sentenced to twelve, but nine were suspended.” Serrano hesitated, having reached the part of the story she was most reluctant to tell. “We became friends, Doreen and I. I liked her. She wasn’t very smart, but she was sweet. Very kind, very generous. I devoted a whole section of one of my books to her. But then Alvin got out of jail.”

  “And she took him back.”

  “Yes. It was crazy. Insane. I tried everything I could to talk her out of it, to persuade her to leave him before he was released, but she wouldn’t do it. They had three underage children in private school, and she was only working part-time. She needed his financial support.

  “When he came back, I tried to spend as much time with Doreen as I could, thinking he wouldn’t touch her as long as my camera and I were around. And for a while, I was right. He didn’t like my being there, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He knew if he ever messed with me, I’d have the pictures to prove it. Then one night—he’d been home about three weeks, I think—he lost it. Big-time. Something at the garage he owned in West L.A. had set him off and he came home already drunk and in a rage. He walked through the door and went straight for Doreen, too angry and shitfaced to even notice I was there. He had her down on the kitchen floor before I could blink, choking her with one hand and punching her with the other. When I tried to pull him off, he turned on me. He threw me backward and I fell. He came after me and I reached out for something to hit him with …”

  “And found a knife instead.”

  Serrano nodded. “Yes. I’d knocked down an open drawer when I fell and spilled utensils all over the floor. I grabbed a knife and I stabbed him, once, in the chest. I didn’t think about it, I just did it. It was instinctive, not premeditated. We called the paramedics for him, but he died before they could get there.”

  “Where were the kids?”

  “‘The kids weren’t there. They were over at a neighbor’s that night.”

  “So they didn’t see anything.”

  “No.”

  “Whose idea was it to let Doreen take the blame for Bascomb’s death?”

  “It was hers. I know you won’t believe that, but it’s true. She’s a very beautiful person, like I told you. She knew I might have trouble getting the police to believe I’d killed him in self-defense, so she offered to tell them she’d done it. She had the bruises to prove he’d attacked her. I didn’t.

  “At first, I was against the idea. I didn’t like the thought of lying to the police about a homicide. I wasn’t afraid anything would happen to her—one look at her and I knew they’d accept her story without much of an argument, especially considering Alvin’s long history of abusing her—but I was worried there could be complications later, our lie was ever discovered. So I told her no, let’s just tell the truth. Say what really happened, and take our chances.”

  “But that’s not what you did.”

  “No.”

  “You changed your mind.”

  “Yes. I changed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “Because at the last minute, I thought about my career. I considered what might happen to it, word got out I’d killed the abusive partner of one of my photo subjects. Self-defense or no self-defense.”

  “You mean that you’d be ruined.”

  “I don’t know about ruined. But getting the same access to people I’d been accustomed to getting would have certainly become more difficult for me, if not outright impossible. I get invited into the homes of abused women because they trust me to record their lives, Mr. Gunner, not interfere in them. If I’d admitted to killing Alvin, I might never have been trusted by anyone that way again. So I decided to go along with Doreen’s suggestion. We told the police she’d killed Alvin, not me, and they believed it. They had no reason not to.”

  “Any regrets?” Gunner asked.

  “To tell you the truth? No. Not until this very moment.”

  She shook her head and smiled.

  “How did you end up telling Nina all this? What made you decide to confess to her?”

  “I don’t know, really. It just happened. We were close, like I told you earlier. I trusted her. One day we were going over one of my books together, and she was asking me to talk about each segment. You know, give her some background on the people involved—who was who in this shot or that, what was going on at the time it was taken, et cetera, et cetera. Anecdotal stuff, in other words.”

  “And when you got to the segment on Doreen Bascomb …”

  “I told her how Alvin had really died. Yes.” She shook her head, recalling her folly. “It was a stupid thing to do, of course. But I wasn’t really sorry I did it. Not until—”

  “Until you found out she was keeping a diary,” Gunner said.

  “Yes. I never knew. She never had it out around me. I didn’t know she had one until one night out at the house, I caught her writing in it. I’d gone up to her room to say good night and surprised her. She rushed to put it away, but it was too late; I’d already recognized it for what it was.

  “I didn’t think anything of it at first, but then I remembered what I’d told her. About Alvin Bascomb. And I began to worry. I knew she’d never tell anybody about it, but if she’d written about it in her diary, and somebody at the house happened to get their hands on it … The thought of that started to frighten me.”

  “Did Nina admit she’d written about Bascomb’s death in the diary?”

  “No. She wouldn’t admit anything. She wouldn’t even admit she had a diary, even though I told her I’d seen it. All I wanted her to do was promise me she’d destroy any entries she might have made mentioning the Bascomb affair, but she wouldn’t do it. She denied everything.”

  “Leaving you no choice but to find the diary and delete the offensive entries, if they even existed, yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s what you were looking for in her room when she caught you. Not the bracelet you told me about, but the diary.”

  “Yes.”

  “The bracelet never actually existed. Did it?”

  “No. I’m afraid it didn’t.”

  Gunner didn’t say anything for a minute. “You want to tell me the rest of the story now?”

  Serrano looked at him, her eyes blank. “The rest of the story? I don’t—”

  “When you couldn’t find her diary, and Nina wouldn’t agree to edit it, that left you in kind of a tough spot. Didn’t it? I mean, what you said earlier is true: Word gets out you took an active role in the affairs of a photo subject like Doreen Bascomb, nobody’s going to trust you to be nothing but a sideline player ever again. And if they can’t trust you to stay on the sidelines … you probably don’t get in the front door. And if you don’t get in the front door—”

  “What are you trying to say, Mr. Gunner? Spit it out, please.”

  Gunner waved a hand around the room, said, “Well, this is your livelihood we’re talking about, isn’t it? All of this isn’t a hobby of yours. So you lose your ability to do this kind of work, you’re not just losing a little. You’re losing a lot. You’re losing damn near everything, I’d imagine.”

  “And that leads you to conclude what? That I murdered Nina to keep her silent?”

  “You make it sound like an impossibility.”

  “It is impossible.”

  “Not from where I sit.”

  “Then you’re sitting on your brains. I co
uldn’t have killed Nina even if I’d wanted to.”

  “And why is that, Ms. Serrano?”

  “Because I was in Eugene at the time, Mr. Gunner. Almost a thousand miles away.”

  “Eugene?”

  “That’s right. Eugene. It’s in Oregon. Ever hear of it?”

  “But you told me it wasn’t true. That what Wendy Singer and the others at Sisterhood said about your being out of town at the time of Nina’s death—”

  “I told you that that wasn’t the reason I was no longer spending time there, Mr. Gunner. That’s what I told you. I also said I hadn’t been anywhere on the East Coast, which I hadn’t. That was the specific question you asked me, had I been anywhere on the East Coast when Nina died? Had you asked me simply whether or not I’d been out of town at the time, I would have told you yes, I was. I was in Eugene, Oregon, for six days, starting the Friday before Nina was killed, to the Wednesday afterward, and I have the photographs to prove it. But that’s not the question you asked. You check your notes again, I believe you’ll see that.”

  Gunner did.

  And she was right.

  His notes weren’t detailed enough to reflect that, but the more he thought about it, the more he seemed to recall that it had happened just the way she described it. He’d asked the wrong questions, and she’d answered them. Nothing more, and nothing less.

  “Guess I owe you an apology,” he said.

  Serrano folded her arms across her chest and waited for him to get started.

  sixteen

  LOOSE ENDS. THAT WAS ALL GUNNER HAD LEFT TO WORK with now.

  Back in his office at Mickey’s, sitting behind his desk like the despondent CEO of a bankrupt savings and loan, he sorted through the pieces of his investigation, looking for some clue as to what direction he should move in next, and found not a one. Discovering Nina’s diary had given him the idea he had found the mother lode, the key, central piece of evidence around which every murder investigation revolved. Who better to tell him who might have wanted Nina dead than Nina herself?

  But the diary had been a false lead.

  Reading it from cover to cover two more times had convinced him of that. With the exception of Nina’s account of the Alvin Bascomb killing, the book neither enhanced his knowledge of the people in her life he was already acquainted with, nor introduced him to any he had not previously been aware of. The diary confirmed and explained a number of things he’d had lingering questions about, yes—such as the nature of her relationship with Trini Serrano, which had, apparently, been sexual only in Nina’s rather paranoid imagination—but other than that, it was useless to him. Just a sad reminder of what a hodgepodge of confusion and disappointment Nina’s life had been toward its final days.

  So he tossed it, reviewed what remained of his hand, and saw nothing. Nothing but discards and jokers. Serrano was out of the picture, having motive but no opportunity; Causwell and Singer had opportunity, but no clear-cut motive; Stanhouse had motive and opportunity, but hadn’t yet shown Gunner the backbone of a murderer; Felker had a weapon, but only a water-thin motive at best; and Glass had neither motive nor opportunity. Put them all in a lineup, and what did you have? A rogue’s gallery of unlikely suspects, with the emphasis on “unlikely.”

  Gunner called Matthew Poole, unable to think of anything better to do.

  “Well. The mountain comes to Mohammed,” the police detective said, surprising Gunner by actually answering the phone himself.

  “That doesn’t mean what I think it means, I hope,” Gunner said.

  “Please. You’d be eating dinner on the county right about now, that was true. I was just making a joke.”

  “A joke by definition is funny, Poole. Better not tell any more until you can remember that.”

  “State your business, Gunner. I’m busy.”

  “I’ll do that in a minute. But while I’ve got you on the phone, you might as well tell me what your intentions are. Just so I’ll know.”

  “My intentions? You mean for you?”

  “I figure it’s been half a day now, you wanted to hold me accountable for Pearson, you would’ve picked me up by now. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  “You want me to tell you you’re in the clear? That what you want?”

  “Only if it’s true, Poole. If it’s not—”

  “I’ll put it to you like this, Gunner: You wanna make plans for dinner tonight, go ahead. Same for lunch tomorrow, ’less I miss my guess. Beyond that, I can’t tell you. The DA’s office has been talkin’ like they might be interested in prosecuting, but it’s probably just talk. I won’t know for sure until sometime tomorrow.”

  He waited for Gunner to comment, but all he heard coming back over the line was silence.

  “Hey. You still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Thanks, Poole.”

  “You’re welcome. That all you wanted to know?”

  “Actually, no. You never called me back about the gun. When I called you yesterday. You didn’t get my message?”

  “I got it. But here’s the problem: This ain’t a goddamn research library. It’s a police department. So it’s not my job to hop to every time you call looking for information. Especially if it relates to an ongoing homicide investigation.”

  “I had a reason for asking the question, Lieutenant.”

  “I’m sure you did. But so what?”

  “Listen. Enough with the snappy dialogue. I found out yesterday one of Nina’s old girlfriends out at the shelter happens to own a shotgun. I know, because I saw it. Up close and personal. It looked like a Browning, single-barrel pump action, but I’m not sure. I thought if Nina was killed with something similar, you might want to check it out.”

  “Who’s this girlfriend we’re talking about? Give me a name.”

  “Her name’s Felker. Agnes Felker.” Gunner spelled it. “And guess what, you lucky bastard?”

  “What?”

  “She used the gun in question to kill a man last night. Her boyfriend Otha. He put her in the hospital, and she put him in the morgue. Seems she shot him after he beat her half to death, she’s out at County-USC as we speak.”

  “Then there ought to be an open ticket on her somewhere.”

  “Yeah. And with the gun being held in evidence—”

  “I get it, I get it. I get with ballistics, see if we can make a match between this weapon and ours.”

  “Right.”

  Poole said he’d see what he could do. Coming from him, that was like a guarantee in writing.

  “So what else you got going, cowboy?” he asked.

  “Plenty. I’ll be filling you in later, don’t worry.”

  Poole laughed, said, “You’re full of shit. You’ve got nothin’ going, Gunner, and you never will. Because the man who killed Nina Pearson is dead. All this runnin’ around you’re doin’ trying to find another perp is a big waste of time. Yours and mine.”

  “I don’t think so, Lieutenant. But I want to thank you for sharing that opinion with me,” Gunner said.

  “Don’t mention it. Have a nice day.”

  And with that, Poole was gone.

  It took some doing, but he found a number for one of the detectives working the Roman Goody murder case, the brother named Bunche, and called him, just to let him know Russell Dartmouth had been in the neighborhood earlier. Bunche said thanks for the info, he and his partner Bertelsen would get right on it.

  After that, Gunner drove over to the Acey Deuce for a drink. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon, but that was too bad; he was down and he was tired, and he needed something to take the edge off his self-deprecation.

  “You start any shit in here today, boy, you’re gone for good,” Lilly said, soon as his ass hit a stool at the bar.

  Gunner looked around for the barkeeper’s benefit, first over one shoulder, then the next. His entrance had brought the number of patrons at the bar to a whopping five.

  “You see anybody in here to start any shit with?” he asked.


  “I don’t care if there ain’t but you an’ me in here. I catch you sayin’ an unkind word to your shadow on the wall, you gonna be lookin’ for someplace else to do your drinkin’. Try me an’ see.”

  She poured Gunner his usual and went away, confident nothing further needed to be said.

  For the next fifteen minutes or so, Gunner sat there alone, ruminating. Thinking about Stanhouse, mostly. Trying to decide how much sense it would make now to put a tail on him over the weekend. It was still the only thing left he could think to do, but he couldn’t see how it would accomplish anything. Even if Stanhouse didn’t know it was coming, the chances that he would do anything to incriminate himself—like lead Gunner to the weapon he’d used on Nina—were almost nonexistent. With the lawyer expecting to be put under surveillance—as he’d practically come right out and said he was when the two men had spoken earlier in the day—the odds became greater still that Gunner would learn nothing whatsoever from watching him. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

  When Lilly inevitably came back around to check on him, Gunner asked her to hang for a while, he had a question he wanted to ask her.

  “What kinda question?” the ruby-lipped giant wanted to know.

  “I was just wondering whether or not you’ve ever been with somebody who liked to slap you around,” Gunner said.

  “Slap me around? What, you mean a man?”

  “A man, yes. What the hell else would I be talking about?”

  Lilly laughed. Not at his sorry wisecrack, but at the question he was asking. Like she hadn’t heard anything so stupid all day. “Lemme ask you somethin’, Gunner,” she said. “You was my man, would you wanna try slappin’ me around?” She threw her head back and laughed again, genuinely amused.

  And hell if she didn’t have a point. Lilly was bigger than half the men Gunner had ever seen in his life, and meaner than all but maybe a dozen. Any man who put his hands on her, she didn’t want his hands on her, was playing with his life.