“You know, Elena, you’re wasting time looking for evidence against Lance when it was obviously a robbery.”
“You mean because of the czar’s medal?”
“Well, that and the fact that it’s not the first time this has happened. Several women from the center have lost their husbands in daylight robberies.”
“They have? Are you saying there’s a connection?”
“I have no idea, Elena, but it does show that older people are being targeted.”
“Well, robberies are hard to solve, but we clear a good percentage of the murders. Much better than most cities.”
“I’m sure you do, dear. I know you’re a great asset to Crimes Against Persons—speaking of which, Lieutenant Beltran should be here any minute. With one of his sons. They’re going to fix my truck and my loom so that I can get the loom to the senior citizens center handily.”
Elena groaned. Just what she needed. Lieutenant Beltran and one of his sons getting chummy with her mother. Before she knew it, she’d have Mrs. Beltran over here complaining and Harmony inextricably entangled with both her case and her colleagues.
“I wonder what sign he is,” mused Harmony.
“Boss. That’s his sign.”
“I meant zodiac sign, dear. I rather imagine he’s a Taurus like your father.”
12
Thursday, September 30, 9:15 A.M.
Because Leo was working another case with Beto Sanchez, Elena and Officer Pete Amador from Central Division arranged a bicycle lineup. Besides Lance’s two bicycles, a Merlin Titanium and a green Cannondale R600, Officer Amador borrowed one from the police bicycle patrol, a repainted blue and white mountain bike confiscated in a drug case. It had belonged to the dealer’s teenaged son. To Elena the cocaine bike looked almost as expensive as Lance’s, but what did she know? She just wrote down the names and descriptions as Amador produced them. He had called on his daughter for the fourth, a pink “ladies’ cruiser” with a basket on the front.
Elena had some reservations about including girls’ bicycles, since she doubted that Boris had been killed by a female, unless it was his wife, Dimitra. However, the coroner, even given the high temperature in the house, put the time of death between two and three, which was when Dimitra had been at the center.
The fifth bicycle, a black Rockhopper, had been taken from a newsboy delivering evening papers after sniffing spray paint. He’d run down an elderly lady and her dachshund. The lineup was still short a bicycle when Manny Escobedo, Elena’s sergeant, said his daughter had one.
“Is it big enough to have been a murderer’s?”
“Girls’ ten-speed Schwinn,” said Manny.
Elena called and got his ex-wife, Marcella, who was home with the flu but agreed to lend the green Schwinn.
“Slick—you not telling her it was my idea to ask,” said Manny, who had been listening to Elena’s end of the conversation. “How come she’s home from work?”
“Got the flu. Isn’t that something? End of September, and we’re already into the yearly epidemic. Maybe Lance really did have it.”
“Don’t write Potemkin off,” Manny advised. “He’s got a good motive.”
Elena sent Amador to pick up the green Schwinn and the Ituribes, whom she entertained with a tour of Crimes Against Persons while Amador wrested the Escobedo bike from the trunk of his patrol car.
The Ituribes were especially fascinated with the departmental computer. They watched with so much awe as a detective from Sex Crimes turned out a Wanted poster that Sergeant Escobedo offered to let them make one. He gave Jose instructions, the result of which was a “want” on Juanita. The crime: serving Jose cold frijoles for dinner on the night of September twenty-ninth.
“Who’s gonna cook for you if I get arrested?” asked Juanita. She was folding up the souvenir poster and slipping it into an ancient brown handbag when Amador popped his head around the corner and motioned that he had the lineup in order. The Ituribes then trooped after Elena to the main interrogation room to look at the six bikes.
“What do you think about this one, Jose?” asked Juanita, pointing to Lance’s green Cannondale.
“It’s too funny-looking,” said Jose. “I’d remember a bicycle that funny-looking.”
Elena sighed.
“How about this one?” Jose pointed to the green Schwinn that belonged to Manny Escobedo’s twelve-year-old daughter.
“Maybe,” said Juanita. “It’s green. Up close I can see that much. What do you think, Jose?”
“I don’t know,” said her brother-in-law. “The more I look, the more confused I get.”
“Hey, look at this one, Jose. Cute, huh?”
“Pink with a basket? Yeah. The basket rings a bell,” said Jose. “And the wheels look right to me. Fatter.”
“Isn’t it too small?” asked Juanita.
“How would we know? Neither one of us can see too good. Maybe it just looks small now because it’s not so far away.”
Elena winced. If the Ituribes thought things looked smaller close up, they were going to make rotten witnesses.
“But didn’t you say green yesterday?” asked Juanita.
“Not yesterday, Monday.” Jose scratched his chin. “I think I did. The green one’s got a basket too.”
Neither Ituribe had paid the slightest attention to Lance’s Merlin Titanium. “You didn’t say anything about a basket before, Jose,” Elena pointed out.
“Didn’t I?” He was studying the girl’s green Schwinn. “I think it’s this one, don’t you, Juanita?”
“That or the pink one,” Juanita agreed.
Elena thanked them and sent them home with Patrolman Amador. They’d just identified his daughter’s bicycle as the suspect vehicle. That or the Escobedos’ daughter’s green ten-speed. Great! When Amador returned, Elena, who had been making phone calls, said, “Where was your daughter on the afternoon of September twenty-seventh?”
Amador grinned. “In school. Where the hell else would she be?”
“You’re saying she’s got an alibi?”
“Yep. ‘Cause if she wasn’t in school, her mother’d have told me about it.”
“So much for that,” said Elena. “Thanks for the help.”
“Sure,” said Amador. “Makes a nice break from chasing convenience-store robbers, and it’s less dangerous than breaking up domestic brawls.”
Elena drifted back to her desk, thinking about Omar and T. Bob Tyler, Dimitra’s admirers. Time to run a computer check on them, she decided, and discovered that there was nothing on Omar except a few traffic tickets. On T. Bob Tyler, if he was the Thelonius Robert Tyler she found in the LSPD files, there was an assault charge. Three years ago Tyler had attacked some young guy in a bar. The responding officer reported that the victim had been making unpleasant remarks about old folks. Tyler had taken offense and knocked the young man down with an ashtray to the forehead. However, the victim turned out to have a want on him for aggravated robbery. He was hauled off to jail and evidently never filed charges against his assailant. Nothing else on Tyler in the LSPD files, but if he was easily offended, maybe there’d be something in Otero County, New Mexico, where he lived before he moved to Los Santos.
Elena telephoned the Sheriff’s Department and asked if they had anything on T. Bob Tyler, maybe Thelonius Robert, giving his age and saying that he’d been a rancher there. The deputy transferred her to Sheriff Blankenship, who said, “Who wants to know about T. Bob Tyler?”
“I’m a detective with the Los Santos Police Department, Sheriff,” said Elena and explained her case.
“Don’t recall T. Bob ever shootin’ anyone.”
“Mr. Tyler was friendly with the victim’s wife,” said Elena, “and the victim didn’t like it. We’re exploring every avenue, and I wondered whether Tyler had a record in Otero County.”
“Well,
T. Bob was a feisty cuss,” said the sheriff. “I got me his folder right in hand, covered with dust. Thelonius Robert Tyler. He musta took a poke at half the males in Otero County one time or another. Liked bar fights. Nothin’ come of it, though. Ever’body’d sober up, an’ nobody’d bring charges. But I gotta say, since you mention some fella’s wife, T. Bob was a ladies’ man. His
own wife died—oh, musta been in the sixties, an’ after that ole T. Bob was chasin’ ever’ skirt who showed up at an Otero County bar.”
“Married women? Did he ever fight with any husbands?”
“Oh yeah. Nothin’ serious like murder. A husband’d come along and take a poke at T. Bob, or T. Bob wouldn’t like the way the fella was treatin’ the wife, so he’d knock him down. Jus’ yer usual stuff. T. Bob, he might be cussed with men, but he knew how to treat a woman. Reckon that ole boy got more ass in his day than anyone ‘round here. Still, I can’t figger him shootin’ nobody over a woman.”
“Even if the husband had done the wife serious injury, and Mr. Tyler felt somewhat responsible?”
“We-ell. Serious injury, huh? T. Bob sure as hell wouldn’t take to nobody doin’ a woman serious injury. I recollect now he put Pete Dominguez in the hospital for three, four weeks one time. Le’s see, that’d be back in—ah—’65, ‘66. Pete, he done broke his wife’s jaw. Wife had it comin’, but T. Bob, like I said, didn’t hold with that stuff. Yeah, I s’pose he might kill someone if it was real serious an’ he couldn’t do nothin’ else fer the lady in question.”
“Thank you, Sheriff.” Elena hung up and mused on what she’d heard. Now they had two good suspects and one not so good. Compared to Lance and T. Bob Tyler, Omar Ashkenazi, the self-proclaimed pacifist-vegetarian-yoga freak, didn’t look particularly dangerous or motivated.
13
Thursday, September 30, 1:00 P.M.
When Leo returned to headquarters, Elena told him that the bicycle lineup hadn’t worked out.
“Couldn’t they pick one?”
“Oh yeah—a pink ladies’ cruiser and a green Schwinn—both with baskets. The suspect vehicles belonged to Pete Amador’s daughter and Manny Escobedo’s girl,” said Elena dryly.
“Well, both of them admitted they couldn’t see well. Even if they’d identified one of Potemkin’s bicycles, they wouldn’t have made good witnesses. So let’s check into the son’s background. Where do you want to start?”
“How about with the people who live downstairs? See if his alibi checks out.” Leo agreed and they headed for the first floor of the prairie bungalow, where a bleary-eyed woman came to the door. They identified themselves, and Elena’s first question was, “Are you ill, ma’am?”
“Don’t I look it?” said Carlene Whittier. “If I didn’t have the mother of all flus, I’d be at work. And if I were you, I’d stay down the end of the walk.”
Elena and Leo cast startled glances at one another. “Do you think you could have caught it from Lance Potemkin?” asked Leo.
“Are you asking me if I’m having an affair with Lance?” said Mrs. Whittier, amazed. “I gotta sit down.” Waving them in, she staggered back to her living room and sank into a large, pillowy orange recliner. “He’s gay, and I’m happily married.” She began to cough.
“Yes, ma’am, but he’s your tenant,” said Leo.
“Right. Best tenant we ever had. Pays on time. Isn’t noisy. Doesn’t have pets.”
“We’re interested in the period from September twenty-sixth to September twenty-ninth, particularly the twenty-seventh. Did you see him then?” asked Elena.
Mrs. Whittier fell into a coughing fit, then gasped, “Would you hand me that brown bottle on the coffee table?”
Elena gingerly picked the cough medicine up, glanced at it, and passed it to the woman. The label, sticky with spilled liquid, said “Phenergan with codeine.”
“Haven’t seen him in a couple of weeks,” said Mrs. Whittier after drinking straight from the bottle.
“Did you hear him moving around upstairs?” Elena pressed.
“That’s—ah—Sunday through Wednesday, right? Hand me that appointment calendar.”
Leo passed Mrs. Whittier the notebook, and she thumbed through. “I was in Houston on business Monday. Probably where I caught the damn flu. Can you believe this? Flu in September? Anyway, I didn’t get home till—I don’t know—eleven-thirty Monday night. Didn’t hear anything. I was at work Tuesday and Wednesday. Didn’t hear anything those nights—or Sunday, and I was home all day getting ready for the trip.”
“You didn’t see or hear him on the steps?”
“Nope.”
“Do you usually?”
“Nope,” said Mrs. Whittier. She plucked two Kleenex from the box beside her chair, blew her nose, and tossed the used tissues on the floor.
Elena winced, picturing little flu viruses crawling across the carpet in her direction. “What about your husband? Did he mention seeing or hearing Lance?”
“Call him.” Mrs. Whittier gestured toward the telephone. “The number is 555–7955.”
Elena didn’t want to pick up that telephone. She turned her back to Mrs. Whittier, surreptitiously wiped off the receiver with her jacket sleeve, wishing she could spray with Lysol, and called Mr. Whittier, who hadn’t seen or heard Lance either, not Monday night when his wife was away, or any other time.
“You didn’t see him leaving for work in the morning?”
“No,” said Mr. Whittier, “but then he leaves before sunrise. Rides a Merlin Titanium. That’s a bicycle,” he added.
“Right. Seems to me you might have heard him taking it downstairs since he keeps it hanging on his wall.”
Mr. Whittier’s answers were somewhat difficult to make out because Elena, virus conscious, was holding the receiver as far away from her ear as she could.
“He’s a very quiet tenant. Is that my wife coughing?”
“Yes, she’s pretty sick.”
“Boy, I hope I don’t get it,” said Mr. Whittier.
Silently Elena echoed that thought.
“Why are you asking about Lance? Is he kin to the Potemkin who was killed earlier this week?”
“His father,” Elena replied.
“And you think Lance did it? Well, everyone knows about the police department. If they can pin it on a gay, they will.”
“Mr. Whittier, I assure you—”
“If you take him to trial, I’ll testify as a character witness. He’s the best tenant we ever had.” Mr. Whittier hung up.
Mrs. Whittier, having finished her coughing spell, took another swig from the brown bottle.
“You can get pretty zonked out on codeine,” Elena cautioned.
“That’s the idea,” said Carlene Whittier. “I’d rather sleep this off than stay awake coughing and sniffling.”
“Do you know anything about Lance’s relations with his family?” Leo asked.
Mrs. Whittier drank some orange juice and replied, “His father’s a troll.”
“A troll?” Leo looked surprised.
“A gnarled little guy with arms down to his knees and hair sticking up in every direction.”
Elena nodded. That wasn’t a bad description of the late Boris Potemkin. “How did you happen to meet him?”
“I didn’t,” said Mrs. Whittier. “He showed up here one evening, stood outside, and yelled at Lance for about fifteen minutes. Lance never even opened the door. I’m not sure he was there, but I gathered that the old man was furious because Lance had visited his mother in the hospital. Is that weird or what?” She plucked another tissue, blew her nose, then leaned her head wearily on one hand. “What’s this about anyway?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“Lance’s father was murdered,” said Elena.
“You’re kidding.”
“On Monday. Do you remember what Mr. Potemkin said—exactly?
When he was in your front yard.”
“He said he’d shoot Lance if Lance ever got near the mother and no flowers. He said don’t send her flowers.”
“And Lance didn’t say anything?”
“Nope. So he’s in the clear. Right?”
Neither Elena nor Leo commented on that dubious conclusion. As they were walking to the car, Leo said, “Now we know the old man threatened the son at least twice. Maybe Lance killed his father in self-defense. Went over to visit his mother, found Boris there instead; they got into an argument—”
“Boris didn’t have a gun at that point,” said Elena. “Lance had the gun. Did he tell us exactly when he took it?” Elena got her case notebook out to jot down the information from the Whittiers and to check Lance’s statement.
“Well, he didn’t say it was the day of the murder,” Leo replied. “And Mrs. Potemkin didn’t mention any other guns at the house. On the other hand, Lance may have really had the flu. Mrs. Whittier does.”
“And Marcella Escobedo.”
“Let’s hope we don’t get it,” said Leo. “So maybe Lance is telling the truth.”
“If he’d been coughing like his landlady, they’d have heard him,” said Elena.
“If they were home. Anyway, we need to find out more about Lance—and his family. I couldn’t pull up anything on them from the computer files.”
“There’s the university,” Elena suggested. “He went to U.T. Los Santos. And we could hit that gay bar he worked at. He told me it was the Gemini Lounge. Maybe he still goes there.”
“Yeah, we’re gonna be real welcome at the Gemini. We might try for people who were taking English at the university when he was a student.”
“Gay bar first. Bartenders know a lot, and it’s easier to get them to talk when there aren’t a lot of customers hanging around. Besides that, in the middle of the afternoon we’re not likely to get mobbed by gays who have quarrels with the department.”
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