Laying Ghosts (Dolly Games)

by Derek Murphy

  * * *

  Carl, watching Julie walk away with a slight switch of her hips, felt that the moment of danger had passed. It bothered him that he had been prepared to manhandle her, and the most disturbing part was the semi-erection he felt in his pants. His face felt hot as he turned distractedly toward Ike. His partner’s eyes were on him.

  “I think you’ll both feel better if you two just get away for a while and fuck each other’s brains out.”

  Carl sighed, “That’s not going to happen, Ike. I’ve still got Jan working on finding Marta.”

  Ike shook his head. “Man, that woman’s dead. He already told you that. When are you going to give up on that idea? Those phone calls you’ve been getting are just her family trying to screw you up. I think I see now why they didn’t attempt to take her in when her mother died. I think her mother was probably estranged from them and her father knew it. With a better right to her, he was able to keep her away from them and there went their chance at controlling at least a small part of his fortune. Now they’re trying to get back at everybody involved.”

  Carl started toward the house, leaving Ike to hurry to catch up with him. He said, “I’m not giving up on her, Ike. That’s all there is to it.”

  Ike resigned himself to watching his partner keep on hurting himself over a dead woman and kept up with him the rest of the way to the house. Once inside, they followed the sound of demolition and found three forensics techs tearing into the dry-wall ten feet from the fireplace in the library. As they watched, a large piece was removed, showering chalky bits and dust on the hardwood floor, revealing yet another wall. The men started working at it and uncovered a dark, wooden door. Within a minute, the rest of the portion of the wall was down and one of the officers knelt at the doorlock with a set of picks in his hand. Everyone became quiet as he worked and Carl caught Steve Thomas’ eye. Jerking his head toward the exit of the room, he walked slowly over there, followed by the police detective. When they were more or less out of earshot, Carl spoke.

  “This throws the case in a different light, doesn’t it?”

  Nodding, the detective said, “Yeah. It begins to look more and more like it was all three of them. And they did it for the express purpose of driving Webster out of the house so they could have a free hand at tearing this wall out. I just can’t figure why they didn’t do that the night they killed Mrs. Webster.”

  Carl shook his head. “I still don’t think Erica Nelson had anything to do with it, Steve. You saw the surveillance footage, but have you ever seen Mrs. Nelson? She’s a good four inches taller than either of the women we saw in the footage. And she’s the one who brought us in on her husband’s trail.”

  Ike turned from watching the officer work at the door and came to them, catching the last of Carl’s words.

  “After some of the stuff we’ve seen over the years, I’d bet the old lady is trying to throw the blame on the girl. I mean, what better way to get out of town with the loot than to throw someone under the bus? Remember, she came to Carl with the story of her son’s girlfriend.”

  His eyes narrowing, Thomas said, “I’d like to hear that story. There seem to be some things you guys have left out.”

  Carl sighed and looked down at the floor for a moment. “Since the cases have turned out to be related to an actual crime, we’ll have the files ready for you whenever you want to pick them up.”

  Thomas nodded. “I know you will, Carl. If not, then I’ll have to see if there are some charges lyin’ around that we can use because you’ve hindered and impeded an ongoing investigation.”

  Ike said, “Aw, c’mon, man! It’s not like we were trying to hide anything from you! As soon as we figured out they were related, we called you! Keep in mind that you guys wouldn’t even know about the hidden rooms and passages in this house without we told you ‘bout ‘em!”

  Turning red in the face, Thomas began walking back to the demolished wall and the door it had hidden. Keeping his eyes on them, he pointed a finger at them as he walked.

  “I’m watching you guys. I want everything you’ve got on these cases tomorrow morning.”

  As Ike made to follow him, Carl stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You sure it was a good idea to rub his nose in the fact that we found more than the ‘professionals’ could? Besides, we still have to copy the files. If they pick them up in the morning, we’ll have to burn the midnight oil just to get that done.”

  Ike grinned and shook his head. “While you were gone, DeeDee instituted a new policy. We make duplicate copies of every file now. The only stuff we have to copy is the stuff you’ve been working on.”

  As they walked back to the group around the door, Carl muttered bitterly, “Thanks for telling me.”

  Just as they reached the door, the officer turned the doorknob and pushed the door open with a “Voila!”

  Multiple flashlights were flicked on as the group made their way into the room with Carl, Ike and Julie bringing up the rear, mindful of their lower status as ‘civilians’. Julie grasped Carl’s arm, hugging it to her side.

  “This is better than that over-hyped opening of Capone’s vault when I was a little girl! Or, even when they brought up all that stuff from the Titanic!”

  It was difficult for him to resist the urge to smile. She seemed so much like a little girl just opening her presents on Christmas morning. He said, “Relax, Julie! Just think how exciting it will be when they’re arrested and Webster pays us double our fee, plus a bonus.”

  “O-oh! I can hardly wait! We’ll finally be able to hire a receptionist! Then we can get larger offices in another building and I can have an office of my own!”

  Still smiling, he said, “Maybe. I hear the tenants next door are moving to one of the malls. Maybe we can get the landlord to put a door between the offices for us.”

  Lifting one side of her mouth, she squinted with that eye and said, “E-e-ew! He’ll have to remodel the place; or, at least paint it. The color is hideous!”

  Turning, Thomas saw them and stepped briskly toward them, holding his hands out as though pushing them back.

  “Sorry. You’ll have to leave. You’ve been privy to too much information regarding an active case as it is. The Chief would have my hide if I let you stay here. From now on, the case, the house and the Nelsons are off limits to you.”

  As Ike got ruffled and stepped forward to argue, Carl pulled him back, saying, “Mr. Webster is our client. We can’t break our contract with him. What do you propose we do about that?”

  Harried, and wanting to return to the treasures that Ike had found, Thomas pointed a finger at them, saying, “You stay on the edge of the investigation. No more than that. You’ve made the Department look like the Keystone Cops. The Chief is tired of it and you’re cut out. I know you have contractual obligations to Webster and we can’t do anything about that, but if we find you sticking your noses into the case, we’ll arrest you.”

  Carl herded the others out of the hidden room despite their protests and once he had them outside the house, he stopped and stared back at the stream of cops and forensics techs that ran in and out of the house. A grim smile came to his face as the scene’s resemblance to the Keystone Cops struck him.

  “We still have one avenue we can investigate and it doesn’t have anything but the barest connection to the case.”

  Angry at being thrown out of the investigation and not being able to view the treasures under adequate lighting, Ike asked, “What can we do now? Tell me, Carl. I don’t want to quit this thing!”

  Carl grinned and winked, an incongruous expression given the normal deadpan of his face. “Nelson’s mother told me about Nelson’s mistress. I’m going to go pay her a visit, see what I can find out.”

  Still frustrated, Ike said, “At least tell me there’s something I can do!”

  Slapping his friend on the shoulder, Carl said, “Yeah! You can go take care of my god-children! DeeDee could probably use a hand right about now. You know she and her mother don
’t get along that well; they’re probably beginning to wear on each other by now.”

  An expression of shocked consternation came to Ike’s face as he said, “Yeah, they’re so much alike that they butt heads all the time.”

  He looked at Carl as though he wished to ask for help, but thought better of it. Turning toward his car, he said, “I’ll be in the office in the morning. I gotta get over there and referee things!”

  Julie shook her head as she watched Ike hurry off across the yard, leaping over a flower bed in his hurry. She said, “I’ve never met DeeDee’s mother. Is she really that difficult?”

  Carl shook his head. “No. She’s just too much like DeeDee. Imagine if DeeDee was fifty years old and carried a wealth of life experience; that’s what her mother is like. From things that she let drop a few times, I know she used to be a stripper, and I have the feeling that she was a hooker as a teenager. Both of them before she married DeeDee’s father, that is. I’ve often wondered how a cop could wind up marrying a girl who worked as a stripper and a hooker; how much ribbing would he get at the Department for it? DeeDee followed her father into the Department and quit after he died. I wondered if she only went to the academy to placate him.”

  Julie shrugged. “I’ve heard her talk about her father; a white cop with a black wife with her background.” Shaking her head, she added, “DeeDee had some racially motivated stuff to deal with as a kid and also had to see some of the crap her dad had to put up with at work because of her mother. I think all of that has something to do with the relationship she has with her mother. She once said that they argued all through her high school years. I think that joining the police department was her way of both affirming her dad’s choices and defending her mother while rejecting her at the same time.”

  Glancing sideways at her as they began walking toward his truck, he said, “You sound like someone who has been in therapy. Is that where you’re getting your insight?”

  Keeping her face in a deadpan, Julie answered, “Partly.”

  When she hadn’t elaborated by the time they reached the truck, Carl decided that was all he was going to get out of her and put the thought aside. His mind had begun working on what angle he was going to use when he interviewed Nelson’s mistress in Glenville.

  * * *

  As Julie sat at the reception desk and went over their files regarding Webster and Nelson to make sure they had copies, Carl sat down at his desk and began searching for information regarding Nelson’s mistress. He typed in the name that Ginny Marshall-Nelson had given him and began sifting through the search results, finding the girl mentioned in no less than ten of them on the first page. All of the mentions were porn-related and he frowned when he clicked on one of them, bringing up a porn-site. The video was centered on the screen but the faces of both the girls in the video were hidden by each others’ bodies and he found that he had to begin the clip of the video to actually see their faces. As it began loading, he lit a cigarette and frowned at the glowing end of the thing; he had to think about quitting again. Glancing back to the screen, he did a double-take when he saw the faces of both girls and his eyes were riveted on one of them.

  Hurriedly, Carl opened the desk drawer in which he had deposited the flash drives and DVDs he had confiscated from the people he had caught at Julie’s apartment and plugged one of the flash drives into his computer. The raw footage cued up automatically and he winced as he saw Julie, barely aware of her surroundings, being put through a rough, lesbian sex sequence by the same girl in the porn flick he still had on his computer. Freezing the action in both as the girl’s face came clear, he compared them side-by-side. Despite concentrating on the identity of the girl, he found himself becoming aroused, not by the action on the screen, or by the girl, but by the views of Julie’s body. The cameraman may be a sleaze-bag, but he knew his stuff when it came to camera angles and lighting. Fast-forwarding through the raw footage, he stopped it every time the girl’s face was in the clear. Yes, it was the same girl. There was no doubt in his mind and he began to wonder if Nelson had sicced her on Julie with the express purpose of blackmailing her into derailing their investigation.

  Working quickly, he removed the flash drive and loaded the rest of the footage on the other drives and DVDs, one-by-one until he had it all on his computer. Going through the footage, he satisfied himself that the girl was indeed, the same girl he had caught at Julie’s apartment. Then he came to some footage that took place in another location and he realized that these people had pulled their blackmail schemes on other women. Carl was a little distracted as he watched a small, attractive brunette, obviously drugged, being raped not only by the girl, but by the same two men he had caught her with. When the woman’s face came into view, he caught his breath in an involuntary gasp. Webster’s wife. The girl was blackmailing Webster’s wife. She had to be. Of what other use could this footage have been used for?

  Distracted, he stopped the playback and went on to the next sequence, finding it to be another of Julie’s night with the girl. He put it into fast-forward to avoid seeing what was done to her in detail but stopped it when he saw the two men come into the scene. As they began manhandling her, he realized that he hadn’t arrived just in the nick of time, after all. Becoming angry, he stopped the footage and closed all the windows, deleting all of it that contained any of what was done to Julie. Separating the drives and DVDs into piles with and without Julie in them, he shoved them into separate envelopes and locked the footage with Julie in it in his safe. There was no need for her to ever know what had happened. When the opportunity arose, he would destroy the footage.

  Realizing that there was no way to keep the girl’s involvement from her; he called out, “Julie! Get in here! We’ve got something!”

  Smiling, she entered his office after a minute and walked to his desk. Her smile faded to nothing, being replaced by a dead, calm expression. Hooded eyes looked out of the mask at the screen of his monitor and he could feel the tension in her.

  She asked, “Why are you looking at that? Trying to find something to illustrate how shameful I can be?”

  Carl realized that she felt a certain amount of self-loathing because she had gotten drunk and found someone to bury her self-pity with and been caught unaware; trapped in a situation in which someone had tried to control her. Had in fact, succeeded in controlling her; if only for a little while. He suddenly had some insight as to what haunted her from her days in Hollywood. It had taken a murderous stalker to shock her out of the behavior that had made her both a target and a prospective victim.

  Keeping his voice low, he said, “Mrs. Marshall-Nelson gave me the name and address of her son’s mistress and this is what I found. Given her size, I suspect that she was the girl in the video of the night Mrs. Webster killed herself. Notice the other woman in the scene. That’s Mrs. Webster. I believe they were blackmailing her.”

  Julie suddenly let out a long sigh and Carl realized that she had been holding her breath. In anger? Fear? Or, relief that footage such as this, featuring her in the starring role, would never see the light of day.

  After a few long seconds, she said, “This is from several years ago. See the time-stamp? I’m not sure, but I think that’s prior to her marriage to Webster.”

  Thoughtfully knitting his brow, Carl said, “Check the file,” as he leaned back from his monitor and began thinking of what it meant. When Julie came back in just a few seconds, he was still staring at the action on the screen.

  “See how Mrs. Webster is behaving? She’s drugged, but seems to be coming out of it. But she isn’t screaming ‘rape!’ or anything. If anything, she seems to be enjoying herself. Did she know this was going to happen? Was she a willing participant, drugs notwithstanding?”

  Julie said, “This was before she married Webster. Even before she met him. Did the girl and Nelson’s mother plan all this that far back?”

  “If they did, they’re playing out a long game. How did they know she would marry him if she hadn’t
even met him?”

  They were silent for a moment while the action on the screen played itself out and went black. A minute or so after it finished, Carl asked, “Is it possible that they pointed her at Webster? Was she a part of the scheme?”

  Slowly moving to a chair, Julie sat down, a musing expression on her face. “Maybe she double-crossed them and that’s why the attack on her was so vicious. Maybe she fell in love with Webster and they threatened to tell him everything. If she loved him, she wouldn’t have wanted him to know that. She would have done anything to keep him from knowing she married him with the intent of betraying him later.”

  The memory of what he had done while investigating the Dolly Dagger case came to Carl and quietly, he said, “Yeah, I think so, too. We’ve got to get to that girl before she gets out of town. See if you can find out if she’s still in jail. I doubt if she is; indecent exposure and lewd behavior wouldn’t keep her in jail longer than it took to make bail.”

  Moving quickly, Julie walked into the outer office and picked up the phone. As she did that, Carl began to rise from his chair and became aware of the erection the viewing of the raw porn footage had produced. Settling back into his chair, his thoughts went uncontrollably to the footage he had seen of Julie in the same situation and he was very uncomfortable. The thoughts wouldn’t go away by themselves and he tried to think instead of his time with Marta. Since they had a healthy, sexual relationship, spending hours in bed together, he found that his mind kept putting Julie in Marta’s place and he bit his lip, trying to push the thoughts from his mind. Cursing mentally, he rose from his chair and began moving around the office, thinking of what they needed to do next.

  When Julie came back into the office, he had composed himself and was slipping his jacket back on.

  “She made bail last night, Carl.”