Fuck it. I turn my face into my pillow. Dave the Muse gets all the blame and none of the glory. Well, that’s how it goes, Dave. Get your own goddamned publishing deal. And next time book me in first class.
CHAPTER THREE
I forgot my sunglasses. I close my eyes against the low, piercing November sun as my taxi curves around the long ramp to get on the 110 freeway. We are headed downtown, to LAPD headquarters at Parker Center. Once the sun is behind us I look ahead at downtown—a cluster of earthquake-safe skyscrapers against the San Gabriel mountains. I can see the foothills just above the neighborhood where Sara and I used to live.
Part of her lay in those foothills for a season, until the rains came. Maybe part of her still does.
My plan is to meet with the police, then rent a car from the rental agency two blocks from Parker Center. I will then drive to San Gabriel, to the storage facility where Sara’s things have rested for five years. I will pick up the boxes I have already bought over the phone from the storage office, and I will pack Sara’s things. There isn’t much. Some books, some clothes, and odds and ends I couldn’t bring myself to deal with when I left. I had asked Sara to marry me a year before she died, and she had begun collecting things—bridal magazines, honeymoon travel destinations clipped from magazines, and some photos of homes and gardens she liked. Sara was fiercely independent and I had teased her about becoming so domesticated so quickly. She would make a face at me and say, “I am a girl, you know. Did you forget?”
“Never,” I would say, and then we would wind up making love. We did this so often that the bridal magazines and the travel magazines became props in our foreplay. She would come home with a new Architectural Digest and flash it at me with a sly smile and say, “Got some yuppie porn for ya.” We would ooh and ahh at the Craftsman bungalows and post-and-beam ceilings as if they were centerfolds and I would slowly remove her clothes…
I found the magazines after she died, stuffed in the back of her closet. She had saved them all.
How do you throw away things like that?
I look up at the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains again.
Why did you do it, Sara?
I force the question away, out of reflex. I know that, if I let it, the question will haunt me right back to thirst for my own oblivion. And yet, after all this time, I still feel selfish for wanting to go on living.
I have arranged with the storage people to have the boxes sent to me in Vermont, and I will decide what to do with them from there. I haven’t been back to L.A. for five years and I don’t want to come back again. The charge that appears on my Amex statement from the storage place is a monthly reminder of the final loose end, the last piece of a life that hangs unfinished. I have put this off long enough, and I am ready to face the ghosts in the small storage space—they are free to reside in my attic in Vermont, or to be given away, to whom I don’t know. Sara’s father abandoned them when she was a toddler. Sara had no siblings, and her mother, who never left Pittsburgh, retreated from life after Sara’s death. She wants nothing to do with me and I don’t blame her. But maybe she will accept these things of Sara’s if I simply send them to her. I will decide later. For now it is enough to muster the wherewithal to take this one step. I will pack up Sara’s things, then drive to the airport for a midnight flight and never return to this hateful city.
The cab barrels down the ramp and onto the clotted downtown streets. After a brief, lurching ride, we stop in front of Parker Center and I go inside. I am waved through metal detectors and wanded and when I tell the cop at the end of the security line who I’m supposed to see he directs me to the elevator. Third floor, Robbery-Homicide.
After writing four books about a serial killer I have had plenty of experience around cops and Homicide Divisions. I have bought drinks for uniform cops, veteran detectives, prosecutors, even a couple of FBI agents, and I have pried them with endless questions about the true-life secrets of their trade. I have met with them in their offices, shot with them at ranges, sparred with them at the gym, gone on ride-alongs—including a couple of roller-coaster nights in NYPD choppers. I have jumped out of cruisers and followed cops into dark alleys and tenements, ignoring their orders to stay back and pressing to the front to feel what they feel and see what they see, beyond the bravado and the hard shell of silence.
There was always some kind of unspoken test—in order to get closer access I would have to participate in something dangerous or horrifying. The things hidden from civilians are jealously guarded secrets by those on the front lines. Not because of procedure or rule, but simply because civilians are not in the club. Cops are a tight lot, and they routinely have difficult encounters with civilians in the course of duty—a problem they refer to as “the asshole factor.” Civilians are unpredictable, emotional, abusive, and prone to prevarication. As a civilian, I would have to prove my mettle before I would be allowed in the club, even as a guest. I would have to tour morgues and see the week-old infant that had been cooked in a microwave. I would have to spend hours in a forensics lab watching them painstakingly match shattered jaws with shards of gunshot teeth. I would have to watch the skin peeled back from a dead grandmother to count exactly how many stab wounds there were, which organs they pierced, and which were the fatal wounds. I would have to watch for hours through one-way glass while ignorant, impoverished murderers were angered and manipulated and worn down by detectives until they confessed or gave it up on their best friends or family or feared enemies. I would have to sit through endless courtroom proceedings, watching the professionals grind the wheels of their trade relentlessly, until the final verdict was reached. I have done all these things and never stepped back or flinched and have thus been allowed glimpses into What Really Goes On in order for we good citizens to feel safe—and for me to write my books with some sense of authenticity.
Despite all of this, after everything I’ve seen, I am still struck by the banality of it all. This is why, when I get out on the third floor, I am disappointed—instead of finding a bustling hive of colorful TV detectives with .38’s in shoulder holsters, I find an empty hallway. I walk down the hall, looking at the unmarked doors. Where are the cheap suits? The sullen perps? The sassy hookers?
I come upon a set of double doors and open them to find a warren of tiny offices. A guy in the first little office looks up from a computer screen.
“I’m looking for Detective Marsh,” I say.
“Who are you?”
“Jack Rhodes, he’s expecting me.”
He punches a button on his phone, says my name to someone, then tilts his head toward the deep end of the maze of offices.
“At the end. On the left.”
I follow the tilt of his head, past one deserted office after another, thinking there is either a lot of crime today or none at all. At the last office on the left, I find a fit guy in his forties with premature gray hair and—at last—a shoulder holster. He looks up as I stop at the door.
“Detective Marsh?” I extend my hand. “Jack Rhodes.”
Marsh rises and shakes my hand. “Thanks for coming out, Mr. Rhodes. Can I get you anything?” He is already on the move, leading me out the door. I turn to follow, but before I leave I notice a dog-eared copy of Killer on the credenza behind his desk.
I follow Marsh back through the office rabbit-hole and out into the empty corridor. He walks down the corridor and stops and unlocks a door and opens it for me to enter ahead of him. The door has a small window at eye level which is reinforced with steel wire, and when it closes behind us I hear the bolt sliding back automatically, locking us in.
“Have a seat, Mr. Rhodes.” Marsh indicates a metal chair at a metal table with a faux walnut top. There are two other chairs across the table. There is nothing else in the little room. No phone, no clock, not even a wastebasket.
Marsh takes one of the chairs across the table from me. He has a manila folder in his hand, which he places on the table between us. He pulls a piece of paper from the fold
er and reads it for a moment. His eyes are small and gray and his face is smooth and hairless, with a preternatural tan. The silence becomes uncomfortable.
“So how can I help you, Detective?”
Marsh sits back and looks at me. We both let the moment play out until he puts the piece of paper down and squares it carefully against his manila folder and decides to speak.
“Do you know a woman named Beverly Grace?” he asks.
The name is familiar. But from where?
“…No,” I say. “I don’t think so.”
Marsh looks at me with what I realize is his poker face. His interrogation face.
“You sure?”
Then it hits me: Beverly Grace was the name I chose for the murder victim in my first book. But I changed her name…
“I’m sure,” I say. “What’s this about?”
Marsh leans back and laces his hands behind his head like he’s shooting the breeze with his buddies: “They’re building a bunch of condos out near Temescal Canyon, in the Palisades. Fucking developers just won’t stop, you know,” Marsh smiles, his eyes not leaving mine, looking for my response. “Four months ago, a backhoe digging the sewer lines dug up a woman’s body.”
Marsh reaches into the folder and takes out a photograph and slides it across the table to me: a nude, headless woman’s body in a hole in the ground. What’s left of her skin is shriveled around her bones like wrinkled, rotted brown wrapping paper and her arms end in handless stumps.
Jesus. That’s how I killed the victim in the first book. Decapitated. Hands cut off…
I push the photo back across the table and Marsh is watching me. I know I am one of hundreds of people who have sat in this chair in this little room and looked across this table at this man with the small gray eyes. I am one of hundreds of suspects, victims, witnesses, snitches, bystanders, dead-ends, and liars of every stripe.
“Took forensics forever to figure out who the woman was. Then one of our Assistant DA’s mentioned the case to his wife, who happens to be a big fan of yours, and she gave me your book. Killer, it’s called?”
“That’s right.”
“In your book, the killer murders a woman with a similar name. Cuts off her head and her hands and buries her in Temescal Canyon, right?”
I feel the blood drain from my face. I had forgotten that it was Temescal Canyon in the book. A shallow grave…
Arnie was right. I don’t need this.
“That’s right,” I tell him.
Marsh just sits there. He lets the silence fill the room again.
“So you think this is some kind of…elaborate copycat…” I begin, then I hear a key unlock the door and in walks my old friend, Cloudy Necktie. From the Infirmary. Five years older, and a much more somber necktie.
“I asked my associate to join us. You’ve met Detective Larson,” Marsh says.
Larson looks at me and nods. I nod back, noticing a manila folder in his hand. Nobody says anything. I turn back to Marsh.
“So you think this is somebody copycatting the murder in my first book?” I intend it as a statement but it comes out as a question. I notice the small of my back becoming damp.
“Well, we just have some questions for you, Mr. Rhodes,” Marsh says casually, tipping his chair back on its rear legs. Just a couple of guys shootin’ the shit.
“Sure.”
“In your book, a woman named Grace Beverly is decapitated, her hands are cut off, and she is buried in Temescal Canyon.”
“That’s right.”
“Now we find a woman named Beverly Grace decapitated, hands cut off, buried in Temescal Canyon.”
“I understand. So you think someone has used my book as a…to copycat the murder in the book.”
Larson sits on the edge of the table too close to me, his arms crossed, facing me.
“Can I ask you something, Mr. Rhodes?” Larson’s voice is harsher, raspier than I remember. “Where do you get your ideas? For your books.”
Again that question.
“I make them up,” I reply. The two detectives look at me, allowing the silence to swell.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Some nut decided to mimic a murder in one of my books. This is why you wanted me to come out here?” I look at both of them, getting irritated with the silent treatment.
Larson looks down at his shoes. I notice he wears no wedding ring. Maybe I was wrong about the Father’s Day necktie. His jacket sleeve is stained at the cuff and there is a button hanging loose. Divorce is more likely.
“Your first book, Killer, was published in 2002?” Marsh asks me.
“That’s right, in February.” 2/2/02 was the day Arnie called to tell me the book was going to press, the date fixed forever in my memory.
“Beverly Grace was reported missing in 2001,” Marsh says.
I stare at Marsh, trying to comprehend this. I can’t.
“A year before your book came out,” Larson helps me with the math.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“We’re a little confused about it, too,” Marsh says. “That’s why we wanted to talk to you. See if you had any ideas.” Marsh rocks further back on two legs and laces his fingers behind his head again, looking at me steadily.
“I have no idea…” I shake my head. “There must be some mistake.”
“Do you remember where you were or what you might have been doing back in the summer of 2001?” Larson asks.
“No. I don’t.”
“You were drinking a lot, weren’t you?” Larson has a slight smirk now. I resist the urge to get up and twist his face into a different expression.
“At least, that’s what we know from the file we have on your arrest,” Larson adds, opening his manila folder. “The murder charge? Richard Bell?”
“Right,” I say. “You charged me with a murder I didn’t commit, I do remember that.”
“And the juvie arrest, in West Covina,” Larson says, reading my file. “Assault and battery on one Carlos Vasquez, age 19. Wanna tell us about that?”
“I grew up in a bad neighborhood. I blame the schools.”
“You put a gangbanger in the hospital.”
“And this is the thanks I get.”
“So you’re a badass,” Larson gives me the hard stare. In a weird way it calms me down. Guys like Larson are easy. Their only weapon is fear.
“I don’t like bullies,” I say.
“That why you broke Vasquez’s jaw?”
“The only way to quell a bully is to thrash him,” I say.
Larson glares at me, his face getting pink. He reads from my file again. “Third place Golden Gloves regional welterweight…”
“Second place. If you’re gonna intimidate me with expunged juvie records, at least get your facts right.”
Larson’s jaw muscles start flexing. He wants to hit me so bad I can taste it.
“Alright, take it easy,” Marsh lets his chair down on all four legs and leans toward me, his elbows on the table, his steady stare unchanged. Guys like Marsh are harder to deal with. They don’t rattle. They don’t try to intimidate. If Marsh boxed he’d be an out-fighter, keeping his distance, controlling the pace of the match and methodically wearing his opponent down.
“Let’s take it a step at a time,” Marsh says. “You published your book in February of ‘02. But you obviously wrote it before then.”
“Of course.”
“When did you write it?”
“A year or so before. I don’t remember the exact date I finished.”
“Do you remember when you submitted the manuscript to a publisher? Did you give it to a friend before then, or an agent? Another writer, maybe?” Marsh asks.
“My agent read it and he submitted it to several publishers. If you want names and exact dates you’ll have to ask him. Or my attorney,” I add, just to say the word aloud in the room. “But I finished it in the spring.”
“In 2001?” Marsh asks.
“Yes.”
Marsh
nods slightly. Then we go back to the silence. I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.
“Was your book based on any…personal experience?” Larson asks.
“Of course not. It’s fiction.”
“We recognize that,” Marsh says affably. “We just have a set of unusual circumstances here and we’re covering all the bases.”
“You said she was reported missing in 2001,” I say.
“Right,” Marsh says.
“Was that when she was killed?” I ask.
“Hard to say,” Marsh admits. “Forensics is still breaking it down.”
“Well, all I can tell you is I wrote the book and sent it off to my agent sometime in the spring of 2001 and it was published in February ‘02 and that’s it,” I say. My shirt is sticking to my back and I want out of this little room with these two men. “Is that it? Because I have some other business in town I need to deal with before I go back to Vermont.”
They glance at each other.
“We’re just trying to put together a time line,” Marsh has left the crime scene photo turned toward me so I can look at it: a headless, handless corpse these men have to account for. A real woman who had family and friends and boyfriends, a young woman living her life until…
Then Marsh does something I have seen detectives do before. He slips out another photograph: an 8x10 of Beverly Grace, alive and happy. He places it right next to the police photo of her decayed, mutilated corpse so I can see them side by side.
I open my mouth to tell them I know this trick. I have the words already formed in my head: I know what you’re trying to do, Detective, but it won’t work on me because I don’t know this woman—
Killer: A Novel Page 3