by Maria Walton
“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.”
“So 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 nights 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.
“What? Oh. I was lost in thought. Just trying to figure it all out. I don’t get it though. You’re implying that it was Richardson that murdered his wife but what was his motive? Hell, what was Esteban’s motive? You said nothing was fucked up at the house right?”
“Right. The cops said that Esteban’s motive was sexual. That he wanted to have sex with her. Richardson said he’d seen Esteban leering at his wife before.”
“But you said there was no sign of struggle. If Esteban really wanted her he would have forced himself, or at the very least have touched her somehow, somewhere.”
“Well he had the gloves on.”
“Right. But wouldn’t there have been DNA or something? Some other scraps of his clothing on her.”
“That’s what I think too.”
“What about the dirt? You said the gloves were dirty. Did she have any dirt on her body?”
“No. No dirt on the body. Like I said before there were no signs of struggle.”
“Fuck. I don’t get it,” Vi said. He leaned back in his chair and began to pick at the salmon in front of him. Katie hadn’t touched her duck. She looked away then back at him.
“Well there’s Mr. Richardson still.”
“But what was his motive. You said that a lot of men kill their wives but that doesn’t mean he did it.”
“It didn’t mean he didn’t do it either.”
“But where’s the proof? Where’s the motive? Does he even have any?”
“I found her phone.”
“You found her phone? It wasn’t there at the scene?”
“No.”
“How did you find it?”
“Well after I left the jail I went to the Richardson’s and I waited.”
“Ah a stake out! How exciting. Was it everything like I expected? Like everything I’ve seen in the movies?”
“Yeah and more. I sat in my car for 6 hours. Richardson watched a football game. I could see it through the blinds. He was rooting for the 49ers. Ugh.”
“Not a big fan of San Francisco?”
“The city, it’s okay. A bit overrated. All the techies, all the new money, it’s driving people out.”
“People who own their houses are getting better money though. Their property values go up.”
“Hardly anyone in the bay owns their houses, just rich folk in Berkeley. Most of West Oakland got bought out by REO homes. When all the houses got foreclosed on a few years back they just swept in and bought out all the houses.”
“That’s how capitalism works. If the owners had managed their money better they wouldn’t have their homes foreclosed on.”
“They were given subprime loans.”
“What?”
“Subprime loans. You didn’t know about this? There was the housing bubble that increased all the prices of all the real estate in the Bay. People took out loans they couldn’t pay for. Houses were foreclosed.”
“So they were unable to pay for their homes.”
“They were unable to pay them because they’d taken out faulty loans.”
“Maybe they shouldn’t have bought the houses then.”
“Everyone dreams of a house.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Well then how can everyone dream of a house?”
“Do you want to hear the rest of the story?”
“We’ve gone this far.”
“I watched him watch the game and then I watched him leave. He got into his car. I followed him. It surprises me how often people are oblivious to being followed. It’s not like in the movies where the driver immediately recognizes that they are being followed. Rather it’s they are oblivious, they don’t pay attention to what others around them are doing.”
“Maybe he’s bad at recognizing cars,” Vi said.
“He’s a cop. They look at cars all day. Fast cars, slow cars, cars that don’t stop for signs, cars that weave and swerve drunkenly, cars that are in accidents.”
“Where did he go?”
“He went to a flea market. The one in East Oakland. It’s not far from
my place.”
“You followed him?”
“Of course.”
“What did he do?”
“He pulled out a phone. Then he sold it to one of the stall workers.”
“Melanie’s phone.”
“Yes. His wife Melanie’s phone.”
“Did you get it?”
Haggling at the flea market had taken her a half an hour. The market was large and following Richardson had been annoying. He’d made a bee line for the stall that he sold the phone at but Katie had to mosey her way through the crowd. She didn’t want to be spotted. The stalls sold all sorts of knick knacks and paraphernalia form keychains to socks to switch blades. When she reached the fence she knew she’d have to fork over some money. She’d seen the man Richardson had sold the phone to before. Tony had dealt with him, although Katie never had. The two had haggled for 15 minutes. Katie was nearing the end of her nerves and was ready to punch the fence for it and just steal it when the man finally agreed on five hundred dollars.
“Yes. I paid a pretty penny for it. I had to haggle for a half an hour for it. I paid $500 for it.”
“Did you unlock it? Was it wiped?”
“It wasn’t wiped. Her code was her birthday. It opened up. Having her phone was like having her diary. People’s phones are part of their bodies now. It’s like having their limb, or a piece of their brain.”
“What was on it? Did you find anything out?”
“Yes and no.”
“Yes and no?”
“Yes I found out that she was going to leave.”
“Where was she going?”
“She’d decided to sell the house. She’d been talking to a realtor. The house was in her name. She had a flight just a few hours before her death to Los Angeles. Her family lives down in Orange County.”
“Did the family know that she was coming to LA?”
The funeral was held in Piedmont at the cemetery at the end of Piedmont ave. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Melanie Richardson was dead. Katie had arrived late, although she suspected the viewing had been closed casket, who wants to see a bruised body jaundiced with fruit sized bruises. In the photographs even Melanie’s face had been damaged. Nothing had escaped Richardson’s wrath. He was all smiles though at the funeral. The widower gave an emotional speech about how Melanie was the first and only real love of his life. The other men in the crowd nodded their heads in silent agreement while Veronica, Melanie’s sole sister shook her head.