The First Cut

by Dianne Emley

  “Is there anyone else who might be in the house besides John Lesley?”

  “Their housekeeper, Lolly. She’s worked for John for years. Long before John hooked up with Pam.”

  “She live-in?”

  “No. She’s there from seven in the morning until four or so. Monday through Friday. Pam always said Lolly was sort of clueless, or pretended to be.”

  “Do you know where she lives? Her phone number?”

  “I don’t. I know she’s married and has a couple of teenagers. I don’t know her beyond that.”

  Vining handed Rosemary her business card. “If your sister calls you back, please call me right away?”

  AT THE STATION, RUIZ TOOK OFF FOR HOME AND VINING WENT UPSTAIRS.

  Kissick was in the conference room working on the search warrants with Mireya Dunn, the deputy district attorney from CAPOS. Everyone else was gone.

  Vining stuck her head in the door and filled Kissick in on her and Ruiz’s progress.

  On her way to her desk, Vining noticed a new flyer on the bulletin board—a missing person notice issued by the Hermosa Beach Police. Hermosa resident Lisa Shipp was last seen leaving a meeting at Pier Avenue and Tenth Street just over a day ago. A photograph showed a smiling Lisa standing against a tree, long hair pulled over one shoulder. Her eyes were deep-set and sparkling. The description said she was twenty-six years old. Five feet five inches tall. One hundred twenty pounds. Blond hair. Brown eyes.

  “Kinda soon,” she mused aloud.

  Maybe that’s the response he expected.

  She took down the flyer, made a photocopy, and tacked it up again.

  At her desk, she organized for the next day. It was eight p.m. Sixty hours had passed since they’d found Frankie’s body. She had an unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach that wasn’t entirely bad. It was that same tense anticipation and excitement with a hint of dread that accompanies a joyous yet life-altering event, like one’s wedding or a child’s departure to college. Something was about to happen, about to change. She didn’t know what, but she felt it like a breeze blowing past, leaving its mark in her hair and on her skin.

  Her eyes landed on Frankie’s school photo that she had stuck in the corner of a framed snapshot of Emily. Vining plucked it from beneath the frame and again looked at the handwriting on the back, written diagonally across the photo. The script slanted to the left and was done in blue ballpoint with light pressure so as not to damage the photograph: “Frances Ann 11 yrs.”

  That inscription may have been one of the last things that Frankie’s mother wrote. That was why it was the only childhood photo Frankie had displayed. It was her “before” photo. Before, when her life had been normal.

  Vining looked at Frankie’s bright eyes and genuine smile—innocence that was about to be scrubbed. She slipped the photo into her jacket pocket and grabbed her portfolio to leave when her phone started ringing.

  “Detective Vining.”

  “Is this Nan Vining?”

  “This is Detective Nan Vining. How can I help you?”

  “My name is Richard Alwin.”

  She sat. She knew the last name.

  “I saw you on the news tonight. I put off calling, then decided I had to. My wife was Johnna Alwin. She was a detective with the Tucson Police Department.”

  Johnna Alwin. Vining had turned up Alwin’s ambush murder when conducting her off-the-books investigation about female police officers killed while on duty. She’d spoken with the lead investigator at the Tucson Police Department who’d told her the case was closed.

  “I’m calling because of the necklace you were wearing on television. A year before Johnna was killed, someone gave her a necklace very similar to the one you had on.”

  Vining was silent.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m here, Mr. Alwin. Go on.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought anything of it but for the similarities between your story and my wife’s. See, Johnna had been involved in a high-profile shooting while on duty, just like you. It was all over the news. We had reporters camping out in our yard. I’m sure the same thing happened to you. Shortly after, the necklace showed up in our mailbox. It was loose in a manila envelope with a card that said: Congratulations, Officer Alwin.”

  T H I R T Y - T W O

  V INING GOT ALWIN’S PHONE NUMBER AND SAID SHE’D CALL HIM back. She told Kissick good night and left.

  She pulled her car out of the police lot, parked on the street around the corner, and called Alwin on her cell phone.

  He asked, “Where did you get your necklace?”

  She deflected the conversation. “I’d rather talk about what happened to your wife.”

  He told her how Johnna was found stabbed multiple times in a storage closet of a medical building.

  “Detective Owen Donahue was in charge of the investigation,” Alwin said. “He was only too happy to hang Johnna’s murder on her informant Jesse Cuba and call the case closed. No doubt the evidence pointed to Cuba. Johnna had enlisted him as a confidential informant a couple of years before her murder. He was on parole for heroin possession and she caught him with drug paraphernalia. He said he could help her out, claiming he knew about illicit activities in the medical building where he was a part-time janitor. He got the job through this do-gooder, help your local ex-con program. To Cuba’s credit, he stayed clean the whole time he worked for Johnna, passing all his drug tests. Johnna felt she had a role in that.”

  Vining found something soft and too willing to please in Alwin’s voice. In her experience, that indicated a passive-aggressive personality.

  “Johnna had a big arrest based on Cuba’s information about the owner of a medical equipment supply store in the building who was selling stolen wheelchairs. Then Cuba tipped Johnna off about an internist in the building. The good doctor was in over his head, selling prescription drugs to cover his lifestyle. When Cuba called Johnna that Sunday and asked her to meet him, she had no problem going to the medical building alone. She’d worked with Cuba for years by then. It bothered me, but I knew that Johnna didn’t take unnecessary chances. She told me sports gambling had replaced Cuba’s heroin addiction. He probably wanted twenty bucks to bet that day’s game.”

  “So why did he stab her seventeen times?”

  “Good question. Cuba had never been arrested for a violent crime. Not even a fistfight. Detective Donahue brushed it off, saying, ‘Guess that was the day he snapped.’ But I always felt it went deeper than that.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve heard of Louie Louie Lucchi.”

  “The Mafia turncoat.”

  Louie Louie Lucchi was the underboss of a New York mob family whose testimony brought long prison sentences for the family’s leaders, including the Don. At the time, Lucchi was the most highly placed mobster the FBI had flipped. The once publicity-shy gangster came out of the shadows of the Witness Protection Program to write a book and make the rounds of talk shows. Charming, handsome, and oozing bravado, Lucchi enjoyed celebrity and the public couldn’t get enough of him.

  Vining didn’t have a fascination with the Mafia like many people did. She had never seen The Sopranos and thought The Godfather movies repulsively glorified what she considered to be a bunch of thugs.

  “After Louie left Witness Protection, he came to Arizona because of the weather and because it was relatively mob-free. The mob never got a foothold here and considered Arizona open territory—not belonging to any of the families. Lots of associates and exiles moved here and made new lives, but they were still dangerous people. Louie bought a house in a nice development in the Catalina foothills and lived there with his wife, daughter, and her husband.”

  “Wasn’t the wife’s nephew one of his hits?”

  “Yeah, and she still stuck with Louie. She opened a beauty supply store and Louie started a company that installed swimming pools. From all appearances, they were businesspeople. Citizens. I’m the assistant manager of the Arizona Inn and Louie drank in
our bar a couple times a week, holding court at a corner table. He loved it when people came by to shake his hand or ask for an autograph.”

  Vining shook her head.

  “It was because of Louie that I met Johnna,” Alwin said. “This all happened about five years ago. She was working vice undercover with another TPD detective, posing as students at the UA. They were living in the dorms and attending classes like real students. Plan was to entice Louie into a deal to distribute Ecstasy at the university.”

  Vining remembered that Louie was now back in prison, charged with operating an Ecstasy drug ring.

  “The police and feds had the Arizona Inn under surveillance and we had no idea. Johnna spent a lot of time at the hotel bar, hanging with Louie. He liked her. Johnna had a wonderful personality. I told Louie that I thought she was great. He kept pressing me to ask her out, so I did. I thought she really was a UA student. Was that a shock when I found out her real job.

  “Louie was close to Crispin Oakley, one of the founders of a white supremacist gang here called the Devil Dogs. Louie put Oakley in charge of distribution of his drugs. Oakley started coming on to Johnna. He thought she was a student, right? She tried to keep her distance but he wouldn’t back off. One night he nearly raped her in the parking lot across the street. Businessmen leaving the hotel happened by, giving Johnna an opening to kick Oakley in the nuts and get away.”

  Vining recalled her solo confrontation with Lonny Velcro in his library.

  “Oakley later showed up at Johnna’s dorm room and forced his way inside. In the struggle, she grabbed a gun she had hidden and shot him. Louie later claimed that Johnna called Oakley, asked him to come over, and killed him to keep him out of the picture and throw the mob into turmoil, making it easier for the law to sweep in. The story was ridiculous. All Johnna wanted was to keep a low profile and her cover intact. Instead, she ended up in the news for weeks.”

  Like me, Vining thought.

  “Johnna was exonerated, of course. No one gave a rat’s behind about Crispin Oakley. Everyone in Tucson was glad he was gone. Johnna made a lot of fans. And she made enemies, not the least of which was Louie Louie. Oakley was like the son he never had.”

  “You think Lucchi orchestrated Johnna’s murder.”

  “Jesse Cuba was found dead in his motel room on Miracle Mile, which is Tucson’s skid row. The coroner said the death was due to an accidental overdose. He had a packet of high-grade heroin in his room. He also had Johnna’s purse with her blood on it. She usually carried about a hundred bucks in cash and it was gone. Cuba had been clean for over a year. One day, he decides to use again and slaughters my wife for a hundred bucks?”

  “When does the necklace come in?”

  “A few months after Johnna shot Crispin Oakley, things settled down. Louie and his gang were in prison. The story faded from the news. Johnna and I got married. One day, the necklace showed up in our mailbox.”

  “Did she have any idea who might have given it to her?”

  “She thought maybe a local businessman who had been shaken down by Oakley’s gang was being generous.”

  “What was the card like?”

  “It was one of those panel cards people have done up for announcements or receptions. The message was handwritten in ink. It’s been a long time, but I remember what it said.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “I threw it out.”

  “Where’s the necklace now?”

  Alwin had been animated during his recitation of the events. Now Vining sensed him withdrawing.

  “The police have it. She was wearing it when she was murdered.”

  Vining was dubious. “She was wearing an expensive necklace on duty.”

  “She wasn’t on duty. We were heading out for dinner. It was her birthday. Johnna was ready to go when Cuba called. She told me, ‘I’ll just be a few minutes. I’ll meet you there.’ She left and…” He let out a long sigh.

  Vining thought of the necklace she’d kept yet had never considered wearing, finding the idea repellent without knowing why. “She was wearing that necklace to a birthday dinner. Sounds like it had meaning to her. Sentimental value.”

  It clicked into place. “You gave it to her as a birthday gift from you.”

  He let out an exasperated huff of air. “I know how this looks.”

  She hadn’t liked him from the moment he’d called. Her instincts had never led her astray. Too bad she hadn’t learned to pay attention to them earlier in her life.

  “Let me get this straight. You steal your wife’s mail and present it to her as a birthday gift from you.”

  She heard rustling noises as he squirmed.

  “I was jealous, okay? After the Oakley shooting, Johnna received a lot of attention. It hadn’t blown over. It looked like it would never blow over. Johnna was a local hero. Girl detective takes on the mob. Guys sent drinks over to her when I was sitting right there. She was even on TV talk shows. That necklace wasn’t the only gift she’d received, but it was the most expensive. I thought about not giving it to her at all, and then thought that would be a waste.”

  “Your marriage was already on the rocks.”

  “We’d been happier.”

  Vining pressed on. “The case is closed. You never requested her effects?”

  “Sure I did. I have her wedding rings and the earrings she was wearing. I didn’t ask for the necklace. Didn’t want it. I always felt creepy about it.”

  She appreciated how he felt, but it did nothing to melt her opinion of him.

  INSTEAD OF GOING HOME, VINING GOT ON THE 210 FREEWAY HEADING WEST. At the far end of the Valley, she merged onto the 118 and got off at the exit for the Reagan Library. She retraced her route to Kendall and Rhonda Moore’s home, driving slowly, pulling over to let cars pass, as she tried to remember where she’d tossed the necklace into the meridian.

  Panic welled inside her. It was pitch dark and the streetlights were widely spaced. All she remembered was that the meridian had large oleander hedges. She made a turn and found the hedges, but the boulevard stretched for blocks. Where had she tossed the necklace?

  She decided on a spot and parked in the traffic lanes, turning on the light bar inside the car. Fortunately, the streets rolled up early in that city and traffic was light. With a flashlight, she picked her way through the tall shrubs, moving a block from her car. She returned to it, drove farther, and began searching anew, knowing that her chances were about as good as finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

  A short time ago, Vining had wanted to destroy the necklace, to forget it existed. Now it was precious, a prized trophy that linked the attack on her with the murder of a Tucson detective. She had to get it back. It was proof that the attack on her had not been random. She had not been the first and she probably was not the last.

  She’d walked a good half mile from her car. Burrs and stalks of wild wheat stuck to her slacks and abraded her ankles. She’d knocked so many pebbles from her shoes she’d given up. She was starting to feel desperate and tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that she could get the television station’s videotape of her wearing the necklace. That might be the sole evidence she’d ever owned it.

  The arc of the flashlight hit something that glimmered back at her. She bent double to creep into the bushes, nearly twisting her ankle when she landed on a gopher hole. The faux diamonds glittered under the beam, like a beacon, guiding her.

  She gathered the necklace into her fist and clutched it against her chest.

  EMILY CAME UP FROM HER ROOM AS SOON AS VINING ENTERED THE HOUSE through the garage.

  “Hi sweetheart. How was your day? What are you doing up so late? School project?”

  “School’s out tomorrow, Mom. There’s no more homework.”

  “School’s out?”

  “Tomorrow. You knew that.”

  “Right. Already.”

  “What’s going on? You seem all…distracted.”

  Vining took off her jacket and fol
lowed her nightly procedure of taking off her shoulder holster and storing her Glock. “I am, sweet pea. I’ve had a long day.”

  From the kitchen counter, she picked up a green leafy plant in a small pot. “What’s this?”

  “Basil.”

  Vining pulled out the business card wedged into a plastic spear stuck into the dirt. It was from another local realtor. “I get it. To go with the tomato plant the other realtor left. Not to be outdone.”

  She opened the refrigerator and looked inside. “I’m famished.”

  “I made dinner.”

  “You made dinner?”

  “Lemon chicken cutlets.”

  “Chicken cutlets?”

  “Lemon chicken cutlets.” She moved her mother out of the way and took a covered plate from the refrigerator. “I pounded boneless chicken breasts, dredged them in breadcrumbs mixed with lemon zest, and browned them for a few minutes on each side in a little olive oil. I got the recipe from the Food Network.”

  “When did you start watching the Food Network?”

  “I was channel surfing and saw this guy cooking. He was doing something interesting and I thought I’d give it a try. It’s fun.” Emily warmed the cutlets in the microwave. “I’m expanding my skill set.”

  Vining broke off a sample with her fingers. “This is really good, Em.”

  She shrugged. “Wasn’t hard.”

  “Cooking’s a good skill to have.”

  “I also bought spinach salad in a bag.” Emily retrieved it from the vegetable bin. You should have some. You’re not eating enough vegetables.”

  “Yes, ma’am. This is a feast. What a wonderful surprise. Thanks. You made my day.” Vining felt her eyes glisten. Her becoming emotional over small things was a sure sign she was overtired.

  Emily piled spinach on a plate and sprinkled on the dried cherries that had come with it. With a fork, she laid on two cutlets. “You’re welcome.” She took a bottle of salad dressing from the fridge and plunked it on the table. “Raspberry vinaigrette. I’m going to bed.”

  She put her arms around her mother who held on after Emily tried to let go. She kissed Emily’s head. “Good night. Sleep well.”