The Little Black Dress

by Linda Palund

  “Well, sir,” I piped up, a sudden thought crossing my mind. “I had kind of been planning to go by and visit him—I was going to tell him that I was writing a story about Carmen’s ghost for the school paper, The Wildcat.”

  He turned in his chair and looked at me sternly. “I don’t think you should go anywhere near that hospital, Lucy.”

  “But, sir, if it could help, I could wear a wire!”

  His expression changed then, and I could see he was thinking about the possibilities, but he didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. “You know we couldn’t let you do that, but there may be other options.” He stared at his telephone for a moment, then looked back at me with almost a smile on his face. “You don’t think he would be suspicious if you visited him? Since you say you don’t really know him at all?”

  “Well, from what I’ve been told, he doesn’t get many visitors. He’s still really bad off, physically. I don’t think he’s going to be a threat to me, and like you say, with his guilty conscience, maybe he’ll want to talk to someone—and I can be that someone.”

  Captain Greenberg sat up straight then and reached for one of the phones he’d been staring at a moment ago, then hesitated, thinking better of it. “Do you have to be anywhere now?” he asked, replacing the receiver. “Can you stay here a while longer?”

  “No problem.”

  “Okay. Do me a favor and go back into the waiting room. Let me talk to my team and the DA. We’ll see what our options are.”

  “Okay,” I answered, getting up and letting myself out while he started punching numbers into the phone and thinking to myself, Oh wow, this is way better than I expected. I couldn’t wait to tell Seth.

  When I got back into the waiting room, the visitor’s section was still empty. I said hi to Rosie to let her know I was there and sat down in my corner with the old magazines. It was a funny sort of office, I guess because it was HSS—a special section for special crimes, serial killers and the like. They had this big waiting room, but no one was waiting. Officers were walking in and out carrying files, showing things to Rosie at reception, and walking back behind the counter to talk with other detectives. I guess it was a detective’s showcase, not really for the public.

  “Would you like something a little more exciting to read?” Rosie asked. She had seen me sit down and pick up that old copy of Reader’s Digest. She was holding a copy of something called New Criminologist in her hand, and she was offering it to me.

  “Thank you,” I said, and took it. It made for some riveting reading while I waited, which was good, as I felt as though I was sitting on pins and needles and had to fight the impulse to text Seth.

  While I sat there, I could see Rosie talking to several detectives, and as I watched, they each grabbed files off their desks and headed through the door to Captain Greenberg’s office. Then an elegantly dressed woman carrying a sheaf of papers under her arm was buzzed in to the waiting room. She walked right up to Rosie, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying to her; then she followed Rosie through the same door into Captain Greenberg’s office, and I suspected she must be an assistant DA.

  Fifteen minutes later, when I was deep into an article on digital forensics, Rosie tapped me on the shoulder. “The captain would like to see you again, Lucy.”

  “Okay.” I handed her back the magazine and followed her through the door into Captain Greenberg’s office. The DA lady was perched on my seat, but there was another chair just behind it, and Rosie pulled it closer to the desk for me and asked everyone if they’d like some more coffee. There were still two donuts on the plate, and now I was hungry, so I said yes, please, and helped myself to a maple bar.

  “Thank you for waiting outside, Lucy,” said the captain. “And now I’d like you to meet Miss Trujillo. She’s an assistant district attorney, and she’s given us some helpful advice.”

  Miss Trujillo was watching me trying to nibble gracefully at my maple bar, but she had a benign smile on her face, even though her figure told me she had probably never devoured so much as a donut crumb in her life. It was delicious, but I stopped eating and set it down on top of a napkin and said hello to her.

  “The captain tells me that you have volunteered to wear a wire in order to vet a potential witness and possible suspect,” she told me, which sounded like an awfully grand plan. I nodded, and she continued.

  “I’ve told the captain that this will not be necessary—and would probably be an actionable offence, as you are both underage and a civilian.”

  I couldn’t hide my disappointment at these words, but she kept talking. “However, if you wish to visit this person without wearing a wire, and he admits to you that he is involved with the murder of your friend, then your testimony, while not admissible in court except as hearsay, would be enough to get us the warrant to extract the suspect’s DNA.”

  “Any statements he makes to you can also be repeated in court, but only as evidence that he made such a statement, not that we believe it to be the truth. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Right now, I think the captain would like to get ahold of a sample of this person’s DNA for comparison, and any information you can get that will enable us to proceed to a warrant will be very valuable.” And she smiled, a tight, restrained, and official smile, but still a smile.

  “I’d like to help. Anything I can do that will help is just fine with me, really.”

  “All right, then.” And Miss Trujillo stood up, all five feet nine inches of educated elegance. She shook hands with the captain, who had risen also. “You’ve had my advice now. I can see nothing wrong if our witness wants to visit a fellow student in the hospital.” Then she turned to me and smiled her elegant assistant-DA smile.

  “Thank you, Lucy. I hope to be seeing you again soon.” And she glided out of the room while we all stood around looking far less elegant.

  “Right, then,” said Captain Greenberg, looking over at me. “You’ve probably had a long enough day today. I suggest you go home and think about all this, and if you decide to pay this Jonny Freeman a visit, that would be terrific, but give me a call first. Do you still have my card with my direct line on it?”

  “Actually, no, I seem to have lost it.”

  He took one out of a cardholder on his desk and handed it to me. “You know that we would be really grateful if you did make that visit. You do understand that, don’t you?”

  I nodded and tucked the card safely away in the back pocket of my jeans.

  “But call me first before you go. All right? Don’t pay that visit without calling me first. You said he was at the USC Burn Center? That’s quite a ways away from where you live, but it’s just off the I-10, and traffic might not be so heavy this weekend, if you’re thinking of going soon.”

  “Actually, I was. I was thinking of going tomorrow,” I said. “It’s Saturday, and I thought, the sooner the better. I just hope he’s willing to talk to me. Or that something will come out of it. I don’t suppose you want me to take anything belonging to him away with me, like a hairbrush or toothbrush?” I’d seen detectives doing this on TV shows to sneak out DNA specimens.

  “As much as we would love to have either of those objects, without a warrant and proof of the chain of evidence, we’d only shoot ourselves in the foot if we made it to trial. We’ll just proceed by the book for now.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Thank you again for coming in, Lucy. And you won’t be talking about any of this to Seth, will you?”

  “Oh no, sir. No.” And I started walking toward the door. “I guess I had better be going now.”

  “At least rush hour is over,” he said, looking at his watch. And I glanced at mine. Wow, it was six thirty already. “Drive carefully, Lucy.”

  “Good-bye,” I called as I slipped through the door and up to the counter, where Rosie was ticking items off on a clipboard.

  “Thanks for the magazine, Rosie. It was really interesting,” I said to her, and I was just about to leave the office when I remembered I h
ad no idea how to get out of there and find the entrance to the building again.

  “Wait right there, girl,” she told me. “Civilians aren’t allowed to walk around here without an escort.” She flashed her warm smile at a young officer who had just delivered a file to the in-box on her counter. “Tim here will escort you out, won’t you, Tim?”

  CHAPTER 25

  HERE’S JONNY

  I CALLED Seth from my car even before I left the parking garage. I told him everything that had happened in the meeting, everything his dad told me, and everything I had said to his dad, including the promise I had made not to tell Seth anything about our meeting.

  “Wow, that’s great! My dad’s not such a bad detective after all. He’s put together more than we could tell from reading his case notes. I guess he keeps a lot of this stuff in his head. It’s good to know he’s on the ball in case it starts getting tense in the locker room. At least I’ll know he’s behind me, even though he’d be angry as hell if he knew what I’ve been doing. So, should I drive you over to see Jonny tomorrow?”

  “Oh no,” I answered. “Definitely not! I think you should stay as far away from that hospital as possible. Your dad might have a surveillance team there or something. And also, don’t forget that the coach and Skywalker have been visiting Jonny pretty regularly, and you could really get caught out.”

  “But you’re not going there alone, are you?”

  “Actually, that’s what I had planned, but now that you mention it, maybe it would be good to have someone with me, someone to act as lookout. I think I’ll call Wendy and see if she’s free. I need to talk to her about the cheerleaders anyway, and we can do that on the ride to the hospital. And you know what else I think?”

  “No, what?”

  “I think I should tell Wendy about what we’re doing.”

  “You really think that’s wise? You’ll be blowing my cover!”

  “But I think she can really help us. Wendy’s not actually involved with any of those people. She might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she’s got good instincts—and she hates the social order just as much as we do. She’s just better placed in it, which is a good thing for us because we can use whatever she can dig up. Also, I know she really likes me, and I believe that she’ll do just about anything I ask her to.”

  “Well, that’s something. Okay. If you’re cool with it, I’m cool with it. But you have to be careful. Now that we know we’re probably on the right track, we all could be in real danger, I mean, like, dangerous danger. Do you know what I mean? We don’t want Wendy to get hurt either!”

  I waited until I got home safely and had dinner with the family before I telephoned Wendy. She was home on a Friday night because she wasn’t dating anyone. Actually, I never saw Wendy with anyone at all, except her choreographer and her casual girlfriends from school—and I only saw them on campus.

  Anyway, it was late when we finished dinner, and even though she lived only five houses down the street, I didn’t dare walk down there alone, and I didn’t want to ask Constanza to escort me, so I called Wendy on my cell and talked to her from my bedroom. I told her everything from the start, from when I first met Seth to my visit with Seth’s dad today.

  “Wow! I can’t believe it!” she exclaimed. “But it makes sense. It must all have to do with that creepy coach. I’ve been having this sick feeling that he’s been abusing the girls on the cheerleading squad all this time, and that’s why they’re all acting weird. Christ, and that Jonny Freeman too. It all makes sense.”

  So even Wendy could see it. Of course, she had firsthand knowledge of Jonny Freeman’s bad attitude toward women, so that probably helped. Wendy said she would come to the hospital with me and act as my lookout. So we made plans to meet up right after lunch on Saturday.

  I called Seth’s dad the next morning after breakfast to tell him I was definitely going and what time I would be at the hospital. “Be careful, Lucy. Don’t ask anything too obvious. Don’t make yourself vulnerable. Promise?”

  “Yes, I promise. I’ll just ask my school paper questions and hope he wants to open up to me.”

  “Good. That’s great. Good luck, then, and don’t forget to call me as soon as you get home. Okay?”

  “Right, chief,” I said, half joking, and then, at just after 1:00 p.m., I picked Wendy up at her house, and off we went to the USC Burn Unit in deepest downtown LA. We had already decided that, after we got parked up, we would scope out the hospital, locate the cafeteria, have a cup of coffee, and then have Wendy wait there while I visited Jonny. She had brought her Kindle to read while she waited, so she was all set. She was pretty excited to be part of Seth’s and my investigation, and just as I thought, she was just terrifically pleased to be doing something with me besides algebra.

  I had already downloaded a map to the burn unit. USC had a huge medical center, so I wanted to be prepared. It took us over an hour to drive there, but Wendy kept up a string of questions about what Seth and I were doing, and we were talking so much that before I knew it, I was turning my car into the parking lot and looking for a space.

  We made our way to the hospital entrance, where we were greeted by one of those pretty young candy stripers who was about our age, all smiles and good teeth, so to make her happy and our lives easier, we asked her where the cafeteria was. She gave us directions, and we found it without too much trouble by following a green stripe she showed us that was painted on the floor. It took us down the stairs and around a bend until we found the cafeteria overlooking the back of the hospital, with a broad sunny terrace where the nurses and interns could take their lunch out in the sun.

  We chose a table inside, and Wendy sat with her back to the window, facing the entrance to the cafeteria. I didn’t know why we chose the cafeteria as our lookout point. It probably would have been sensible to wait in the entrance lobby of the hospital where we could keep our eyes on anyone entering the building, but that seemed so uncomfortable and too conspicuous. I didn’t really think I needed a lookout, anyway, but it was nice to have the company. I bought the coffees for Wendy and me, and I sat down just long enough to realize the coffee tasted like crap, and I should have ordered a cappuccino. Then we synchronized our cell phones, and I left, making my way to the elevators that would take me to the fourth floor.

  The burn unit was a big deal. State of the art and one of the best in the country, so there were lots of signs pointing the way, and I had no trouble finding it, as it took up more than half of the fourth floor. On the way up, I managed to get a good look at myself in the elevator mirror and decided to stop off at a restroom as soon as I got off to straighten myself out a bit. Fortunately, there was one right alongside the elevator, so I made good use of it and emerged looking like what I imagined a high school girl who worked on the school newspaper should look.

  I made my way to the unit’s reception desk and asked where Jonny’s room was. They seemed surprised to see me, and I remembered that Jonny didn’t get many visitors, so I just smiled and said I was from the school newspaper. One of the nurses escorted me down the hall, through what looked like the patients’ lounge, where several patients sat wrapped in bandages that made them look like mummies. They were attached to IV trolleys and seemed to be watching sports TV. Nobody looked very happy. I steeled myself for my meeting with Jonny. A little farther down the hall, we came to what must have been his room because the nurse knocked on the door.

  “Jonny? You have a visitor.”

  There was something that sounded like a moan coming from behind the door, so the nurse opened it a crack and peeked her head around. “Oh, hi, Jonny. Hope I’m not disturbing you. Are you all right?”

  I heard another moaning kind of sound and wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into, but the nurse kept on as if everything was perfectly normal. “There’s a girl from your school here to see you. Can I bring her in?”

  It had never occurred to me that he could refuse to see me, but then, I hadn’t known just how bad of
f he was.

  “It’s all right. You can go in,” she said to me, and she held the door open for me to slip past her.

  The first thing I saw upon entering was some festive-looking flowers in a big vase on the nightstand, and the thought flashed through my mind that I should have brought some flowers with me, and then I looked over at the bed and there he was.

  He was a shock to see. He seemed to be completely wrapped up in bandages like the invisible man, including his face. He was looking in my direction but with only one eye, because the other was still half-shut from the burn scars. His hands were wrapped up too, and he still had an IV feed. And this was seven months since his accident! I was so stunned I just started rambling, saying anything plausible that came into my head to explain my being there.

  “Hello, Jonny,” I began. “You don’t know me, but my name is Lucy and, uh, I’m majoring in journalism and we, umm, are doing a story for The Wildcat, that’s the school newspaper. Anyway, we’re doing a story about the school being haunted and, uh, we thought we should ask about your seeing Carmen’s ghost in your car the night of your accident. Do you mind talking about it?”

  As I talked, Jonny just collapsed back against his pillows and closed his one good eye, and I thought, well, that’s that. But then he must have pressed a button that raised the top end of the bed higher so he could be in a sitting position without straining. He turned his head slowly to look at me, a movement that looked terribly painful, but he still didn’t say anything.

  I had taken a notepad out of my handbag in the restroom to make me look very efficient, but now I started stuffing it back in my bag.

  “Look, if this is a bad time, I’ll just come back….”

  He shook his head with what looked like great effort, and then he finally said something. His voice was so soft and so low I could hardly make out the words. “It hurts to talk” was what I figured he said.