Never Fear

by Scott Frost

  As the image of the car began to appear on the screen Harrison tried to explain what was I seeing and how many pixels it took to create but it still made little sense to me.

  “This was the first generation,” the kid said.

  I stared at the image of the car passing the garage entrance.

  “I’m interested in the windshield. It looked like there was something visible in the shadows,” I said.

  He nodded, hit a few keys. “That’s what I thought at first, but this was all I got.” He hit a few more keys and the dark shadows began to lighten.

  “I don’t see anything,” I said.

  The kid nodded. “There’s nothing there to see in the shadows. We’re looking in the wrong place.”

  He hit a few more keys and the image began to refocus. “What you were seeing wasn’t in the shadows, it was in the glass of the windshield.”

  “A reflection?”

  He nodded.

  “I think this is what you were looking for,” he said.

  The whiz kid’s eyes darted back and forth between us, and a faint smile appeared on his face. “I solved something, didn’t I?”

  I let the idea settle, trying to understand what exactly we had found and what it meant—how it fit into the puzzle that now covered twenty years. I pointed at the screen just to the right of center on the windshield. “What is that?”

  The kid did his best to hide his excitement at having solved God knows what in his imagination.

  “Yeah, this is really cool,” he said.

  He worked the mouse and the keyboard again and the image on the screen shifted and gradually came into focus. The distinct shape of a hand appeared to float in the darkness, the thin white line of an unlit cigarette dangling between the fingers.

  I stared at it for a moment and imagined the same hand picking up the gun that was placed against the side of my half brother’s head.

  “What does the cigarette say to you?” I asked Harrison.

  “He’s nervous. He could be trying to calm himself with a smoke.”

  I stared at the fingers. The cigarette dangled loosely, the way it might if the person had a cocktail in the other hand.

  “That doesn’t look like nervousness to me,” I said.

  Harrison nodded in agreement. The kid shifted in the chair and cleared his throat to get our attention.

  “You see something else?” I asked.

  He stared at the screen as if trying to decipher an image of a distant planet. “It’s just an idea.”

  “Go on.”

  “It’s not lit. When my father quit smoking, he’d hold a cigarette like that for hours sometimes.”

  Harrison looked at me in surprise. “The first meeting with Hazzard, when he was standing outside watching the fire approach.”

  “He had a cigarette in his fingers,” I said.

  Harrison nodded. “It was unlit.”

  “Would you put that image on a disk?” I asked, and got up from my chair.

  The kid nodded and slipped a disk into the computer.

  “It’s a murder case, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  He looked us both over and smiled. I got the odd sensation that I was being dismantled and put back together like I was part of an equation.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” he said.

  A flash of understanding way beyond his years played out in his eyes, then he turned back to the computer.

  Obvious, I thought silently to myself.

  We carried death in our eyes, the way we moved, our language, even our dreams. And the more we tried to disguise it, the more obvious it became.

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what it is.”

  37

  Outside Harrison and I sat in the car for a moment, neither of us saying what we were now clearly thinking. A cop killed my brother, Detective Williams, and Dana Courson. The same cop who set my father up for a series of murders he didn’t commit. And the only proof we had was a file that no longer existed, and an image of an unlit cigarette on a security camera.

  “What do you want to do?” Harrison asked.

  “You mean short of taking Hazzard’s confession?”

  In the rearview mirror I saw the same dark sedan that had followed us pull away from the curb and drive toward us.

  “I think we must have hit a nerve,” I said.

  I lowered my hand to my waist and rested it on the handle of the Glock as the sedan approached from the rear, pulled alongside, and stopped. The tinted passenger-side window slowly opened, and I saw Cross sitting behind the wheel.

  “I don’t like being followed,” I said.

  “We’re on the same side, Lieutenant. I’m just covering our backs. We need to talk.”

  “Something wrong with the phone?”

  Cross nodded. “You bet. There’s a parking garage up ahead on the left. Follow me.”

  I glanced at Harrison, then did as Cross said, following him into the dark garage.

  We wound our way up to the third level and parked alongside Cross. The rest of the level was nearly empty. He slid across to the passenger seat and rolled down the window.

  “You were outside the courthouse,” I said.

  “I’m not the only one.”

  “LAPD.”

  Cross nodded. “I don’t make a habit of sitting in parking garages.”

  His face was lined with exhaustion. The hair under the baseball cap he wore was streaked with sweat.

  “You tell me what you think you know, and I’ll tell you if you’re on the right track,” Cross said.

  “IA investigated Hazzard for the killing of a suspect when you were both in patrol; you were his partner.”

  Cross nodded. “He was cleared.”

  “Did you ever see the final report?” I asked.

  “No, I was a rookie. Back then you did your job and shut up.”

  “You were questioned as a witness.”

  “I was handed a statement and told to sign it. I never even read it.”

  “What happened?”

  Cross shook his head. “I don’t know, I wasn’t there.”

  “I think the document that Victoria Fisher found had something to do with that investigation.”

  He nodded.

  “We need to see it,” I said.

  Cross suppressed a nervous laugh. “It’s gone, whoosh, into the ether. It never existed. It won’t help, forget it.”

  I looked at Cross for a moment. “What haven’t you told us?”

  Cross took a breath. “I think you would be better off just walking away, Lieutenant. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Why?”

  “Hazzard killed Victoria Fisher, then pinned it on your father and made sure he disappeared so no arrest would ever be made. No arrest, no questions, it all ends.”

  “He claimed the body of a transient on the railroad tracks was my father?”

  Cross nodded. “The investigation ended, nothing is provable. A perfect crime.”

  “Except it isn’t perfect,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Thomas Manning didn’t kill Victoria Fisher.”

  “Without proof it’s meaningless.” He looked at me for a long moment. “What do you know?”

  “Thomas Manning couldn’t have killed Victoria Fisher because at the time of her death he was inside his apartment raping a young actress.”

  Cross stared at me in shock, then sank back into the seat.

  “Two places at once can’t be done.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’ve talked to her.”

  Cross stiffened and sat forward. “That leaves only one possible scenario for what happened to your brother.”

  I nodded. “Hazzard.”

  “Can you prove any of this?” Cross asked.

  I shook my head. “Not without the fax my brother sent me the night he was killed.”

  Cross sat back. “Wh
at are you doing here at Caltech? ”

  “We have an image of the car my brother’s killer was driving the night he died.”

  “Plates?”

  I shook my head. “Just a make and the killer’s hand holding an unlit cigarette.”

  Cross looked at me for a moment then stared out into the darkness of the garage.

  “That’s not enough,” he said.

  “It’s almost enough.”

  Cross began to shake his head.

  “Almost can’t do nothing but get you killed,” he whispered. “You think LAPD is just going to walk in and let you gut them like this?”

  He took a deep breath. “You never talked to me, we never met, and I’ve never heard any of the things you just said. If asked under oath, I’ll put my hand on the Bible and swear to it.”

  He slid behind the wheel and sped the length of the garage and disappeared down the ramp.

  A moment later the sound of squealing tires came roaring around the corner behind us. We turned, reaching at the same time for our weapons as an SUV drove past us, the front seat full of college students. My hand relaxed around the handle of the Glock, and I took a breath.

  “You want to try pushing Hazzard?” Harrison said.

  I shook my head. “Not until we have somewhere to push him.”

  I drove back down the ramp, stopping the car as we emerged onto the street. There was no sign of Cross. Across the commons, clusters of students walked to and from class.

  “What are you thinking?” Harrison asked.

  “Science,” I said, as two clusters of students walking in the same direction became one group, then split into three groups, each heading in a different direction.

  “How do you find structure in events that appear unrelated?” I said.

  I looked at Harrison, who glanced over at the groups of students I had been watching.

  “In bomb disposal you work backwards from a presumed point of detonation. Make connections that must be present for the device to work even if they aren’t visible.”

  “If the fax was the page from the report, let’s say that’s the point of detonation. Where do you go from there?”

  “You work back from the last point of contact, or in this case anyone who’s seen it.” Harrison played it out in his head for a moment. “Hazzard, your brother, your father if they talked to him, Gavin, possibly Detective Williams, and Danny.”

  “I wouldn’t count on Hazzard coming forward.”

  “Which leaves Danny or your father.”

  I let the idea settle for a moment, or tried to.

  “Which one?” I said. “The hapless bicycle salesman, the love-struck Indian, or the Cyclops victim?”

  Harrison looked at me, doing his best imitation of understanding.

  “There’re some things I haven’t told you about my father and me.”

  “I imagine those are private,” Harrison said.

  “If my father had wanted to come to me with this, or was capable of coming to me with this, he would have by now.”

  “You’re still a cop,” Harrison said. “He’s spent the last eighteen years hiding from them.”

  “And the eighteen before that hiding from me,” I said.

  Harrison turned and watched an intense young student walk by, lost in conversation with himself.

  “Which leaves Danny,” Harrison said.

  “Something’s happening, probably right now, and we’re missing it.”

  “We could bring Hazzard in, hold him for as long as we can.”

  I shook my head.

  “It wasn’t Danny,” I said.

  “You lost me,” Harrison said.

  “Danny may have seen the file, but he wasn’t the one who requested it at the DA’s office.”

  “Why?”

  “You have to be of age to receive records like that. He wasn’t lying, it wasn’t him.”

  “He was a juvenile.”

  I nodded.

  “His grandmother requested the file,” Harrison said.

  38

  Danny’s grandmother was waiting for us when we pulled into the driveway. I had called ahead but didn’t give her any details except that we had talked to Danny in the hospital.

  She led us back into the house and we sat down at the kitchen table as before.

  “He won’t see me,” she said. “I’ve tried several times, but . . .”

  “He will when he’s stabilized,” I said.

  She took a deep breath and shook her head.

  “I’m sorry about what he did to your house, if that’s what your visit is about. I would be more than willing to pay for any damages—”

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “I don’t understand why he did that to you.”

  “The only suspect in your daughter’s murder ever arrested was my father, Mrs. Fisher. That’s why Danny did what he did.”

  Fisher stared at me for a moment in silence. “Your father?”

  “Yes.”

  She stood up and walked over to the window and looked out.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “I’m here because the private investigator who was murdered was my brother.”

  She turned and looked at me.

  “We believe he found evidence that points to the real killer of your daughter.”

  “And you’re going to tell me it wasn’t your father.”

  “That’s what we think it suggests.”

  She shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Before, I thought it was possible that my father was guilty, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “I don’t want anything to do with this. How dare you come to my house and use a disturbed boy to prove you’re not the daughter of a killer. I want you out of my house.”

  She started walking toward the door.

  “You may already have something to do with it,” I said.

  She stopped at the edge of the dining room and looked back.

  “Who killed my daughter?”

  I glanced over at Harrison.

  “We think your daughter was murdered because she discovered something at the DA’s office involving a police investigation,” Harrison said.

  Mrs. Fisher went over the meaning of the words in her head. “You’re telling me a policeman killed Victoria? ”

  Harrison nodded. “It appears to be the most likely possibility.”

  “Can you prove this?”

  “A year and a half ago you requested your daughter’s personnel file from the DA’s office,” I said.

  She gave a measured nod. “Danny asked for it. I didn’t want to fuel his paranoia, but I thought there might be something in there to help him know his mother, how wonderful she was.”

  “Did you look at it?” I asked.

  “I tried . . . I looked at her ID picture . . . I couldn’t look at the rest.”

  “Did you copy everything in the file?”

  She stepped back over to the kitchen table and sat down. “Yes. Danny was very specific about that. He wanted everything.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  She nodded. “Danny took it into his apartment for a day or two, then gave it back to me. I haven’t looked at it again. It’s in the office in the other room.”

  “We’d like to see it.”

  She nodded and started to get up but stopped. “I don’t understand. What does a personnel file have to do with my daughter’s death?”

  “She may have hidden what she discovered in that file until she could figure out what to do with it.”

  Mrs. Fisher leaned back in her chair and took a breath. “And it’s been there this whole time.”

  I nodded. “Was there. Her file is missing. I’m assuming it’s been destroyed. Your copy is all that’s left.”

  “With whatever evidence was in it?”

  “Yes.”

  Fisher sat in silence for a moment as if trying to digest a new chapter in a book. When she appeared to ha
ve examined it enough, she turned and looked at me with the fierce eyes of a mother still protecting her daughter.

  “What did your father have to do with this? Why was he arrested?”

  “My father abused my mother and had a history of assaulting pretty young women like your daughter. I haven’t seen my father in a very long time.”

  I didn’t add any details about the attacks, though from the look in Fisher’s eyes I doubted any of it would have been a surprise.

  “The detective said he was dead, if I remember.”

  I shook my head. “He’s alive.”

  “I’ll go get the file,” Fisher said.

  She walked out of the room and returned a few moments later with a thin folder and set it on the table. I opened it and began to go through the contents—a performance evaluation, a copy of her employee ID, her employment application, and a tax document.

  “It’s not here.”

  Harrison quickly went through it also, but I hadn’t missed anything.

  “It would make sense that Danny would have removed it,” Harrison said.

  “Is there anywhere in the house or his apartment where Danny may have hidden something—a special place he might have talked about?” I asked.

  Mrs. Fisher looked out toward the darkness of the garage.

  “Danny didn’t share his secrets, at least not with me. I wouldn’t know where to begin to search, but you can try if you like.” She turned and looked at me. “I suspect you may have more experience with keeping secrets than I do, Lieutenant.”

  We walked out to the garage and opened the door to Danny’s apartment. The walls had been stripped of the pieces of newspaper and handwritten notes he had taped everywhere. Every piece of furniture, every possible hiding place had been gone through by crime-scene techs. The room had the feel of a tree that had been stripped of its leaves and branches by a windstorm. All that was left that identified it as a place where someone once lived was Danny’s intricate map covering the back wall.

  “I wish you could have taken that away also,” Fisher said.

  She stared at it for a moment, then turned and walked outside. Harrison and I began to go over the room again, but it quickly became clear that the few possible hiding places left held nothing.

  “We may as well be looking for a needle in a pile of needles,” Harrison said.