by Chris Frank
Lisa raised her coffee cup in the air, Jim politely followed suit and they tapped their cups together as though it were New Year’s Eve. Jim had not told her yet of his suspension but he was certain the meal would not end before that fact reared its ugly head. He put down his cup and smiled.
“You’re very welcome.”
“I don’t know how much you know about Artridge, but he was a big deal. He had been on the defense side of every huge case in L.A. for the past 20 years. His firm has represented the governor’s office, the mayor, and even the Catholic Church. There was a rumor that he was the brains behind O.J.’s defense. Supposedly, he was the one who told Johnnie Cochran to say that if the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit. Plus, Artridge never hid his homosexuality. He didn’t just leave the closet, he broke down the door. He helped give the gay community in L.A. a powerful voice in politics; he not only raised awareness of gay issues, he got a significant amount of public money directed to AIDS research. His death is a big blow to the gay cause in town; they’re going to have a hard time replacing a man like Paul Artridge.”
Lisa had impressed Jim with her recitation of the facts and the depths of her research. She was obviously good at what she did. But Jim shrugged.
“I honestly never heard of the guy. You and I must run in different circles.”
“It’s the job.” Lisa confessed. “So… what do you think?”
Jim looked at her.
“About what?
“The case, the tree, Paul Artridge, the situation in the Middle East, all of it. Do you think this was a hate crime? What do you think about the number one in the tree?”
Lisa seemed very excited.
Jim sat back and thought out loud.
“Well, if it was a hate crime, according to you, our killer could not have chosen a more public figure in the gay community on whom to direct his attention. But hate crimes are not usually this well organized. They always seem to be more urgent and rash, fueled by either liquor or drugs, more often than not the end result of an insult or a dare. This was carefully planned, premeditated, and deliberate. And the killer is absolutely trying to not only get our attention, but to make a point. I just don’t know what that point is. About the number on the tree, I don’t know what to make of it. We don’t even know if the killer put it there. The one will only be proven to be meaningful if…”
Lisa finished it for him.
“If there’s a two.”
“That’s right.”
Further conversation was halted as their waitress neatly placed the omelets before them. As Jim poured some Killer Habanera sauce generously over his eggs, Lisa got back on track.
“I know you’re going to think that this is strange, but every time I think of this case, I think about Hannibal Lecter.”
Jim chuckled.
“Hannibal Lecter. The fictional killer from Silence of the Lambs.”
Lisa grinned.
“I really loved that movie. Anthony Hopkins was spectacular in it. I think it was his best work.”
“I agree,” said Jim, “…but…”
Lisa cut him off.
“Do you remember when Lecter told Clarisse that Buffalo Bill weighed his first victim under the water so that she would appear to be the third victim? Do you remember the question he asked her?”
Jim shrugged and took a bite of his omelet.
“Lecter looked at her and asked Clarisse, ‘What do we covet?’”
She looked to Jim for recognition.
“Anything, hello?”
Jim sipped some coffee and gave her a questioning look.
“I guess. I haven’t seen that movie in a long time.”
“We covet what we see. We covet what we see.”
Lisa accentuated the see on her second recitation.
“The first kill is the most important. That has to be true in this case as well. If our guy is ready to start a series and Paul Artridge is first, there has to be a reason. He was a public figure, openly gay. Maybe he was the attorney in a case that hit our killer close to home. The killer may have seen Artridge on the news, in the paper and he starts to covet, until…”
“Until?”
“Until he could come up with a plan. If Artridge is the first victim of a set, then he is the centerpiece, the focal point.”
“I can see why you got into television; you have a very dramatic mind.”
Lisa laughed, “I do the news; it’s more than just TV.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re forgiven.”
Lisa paused long enough to swallow a forkful of egg.
“I just don’t understand why the killer would pick West Covina? Artridge lived 30 miles away. Why drive him to West Covina to kill him?”
“I have no idea. If our killer wants to show that he has a flair for the dramatic, the Santa suit accomplishes that. Hanging him from a tree has to mean something. What, I don’t know. West Covina. Maybe he lives in the area, maybe something happened to our killer in that neighborhood. Who knows how this guy thinks?”
Jim chewed on a healthy piece of tofu and salmon. Lisa put down her fork and squinted at him, frowning.
“Anything new happen at the station last night, that you could tell me without jeopardizing your position on the case?”
She batted her eyes playfully.
Jim looked down at his plate. Here we go, he thought. “I didn’t go to work last night.”
“But you said on the phone…”
“I got suspended.”
Lisa sat back slightly.
“Why? What did you do?”
Jim stared at Lisa, thought about his options and decided to tell the truth. He told her of the car alarm, of the handprints on the Civic and the conversation with Captain Jones.
Lisa choked on her food as she tried to digest this new piece of information.
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah,” replied Jim.
Inwardly, he felt a jolt of buoyancy. It seemed like she genuinely cared for him. Nice.
“There was a witness,” he added offhand.
Lisa’s eyes widened. She sat silent, looking overwhelmed. Jim sat quietly, as though all the air had been sucked from the restaurant. Was she changing her mind about him?
“Did you talk to her?” Lisa asked. “This lady…”
“Alice Edwards.”
“Alice Edwards, right, right. Did you talk to her?”
“On the phone that night. Roy interviewed her yesterday afternoon. I did drive by the house. It was no more than a hundred yards from the scene. The one goddamn time she should have been taken seriously… she’s what we call a ‘constant caller’ or a pain in the ass, take your pick.”
Lisa could see that Jim was upset, but she knew she had to interview Alice Edwards and get her story. The follow up was crucial for momentum. She resolved to finish her meal and politely excuse herself so that she could get Milt on the phone. She was so excited she could not sit there comfortably. She was about to ask another question when her cell phone rang. The caller ID showed Milt. Wow, the fucking guy can read my mind. She held up the phone and gave Jim an apologetic look.
“Excuse me, I have to get this.”
“Sure, no problem.”
Jim returned to his breakfast.
“Milt, what’s up? I… what? Where? I’ll be right there.”
She closed her phone and reached into her purse as she stood up from her seat.
“Jim, I’ve got to go. They just found some socialite dead at the L.A. Zoo and I’ve got to get down there.”
“Okay. I understand.”
Lisa threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table and Jim protested but she insisted.
“I asked you out, this is on me. You get the next one. I’ll call you later, got to go.”
Lisa vanished, leaving Jim to sit alone as he had on all too many occasions, finishing his meal, craving a toothpick and thinking of the future. Yesterday, he had no girl, but at least he had the job. Now, he had neither. Or
did he? Maybe she would call later. Maybe he would get a chance to pick up the next meal.
Who knew?
Day 2: 10:28 a.m.
Alice Edwards stood in her living room and stared out the window upon the green lawn that welcomed visitors to her home. She had been born in Bloomington, Minnesota but had lived in West Covina most of her adult life, having settled in southern California after her husband Mark returned home from Korea. Alice sent their three kids, all boys, to West Covina High School, sat on the school board at West Covina Community College, and buried her husband in the West Covina Memorial Cemetery when he lost his long battle with colon cancer six years earlier. The boys were all married now and scattered throughout the southwestern states. Alice lived alone in the house on Peach Street that she and her husband bought in 1953. She was very protective of her home and her property. She was not mean by nature, but when someone infringed upon her space, which was all too often to suit her, she had no tolerance for it. If the neighborhood kids were playing their radios too loud, Alice would call the police and complain. If one of the local canines left a fecal calling card on her lawn, Alice would call the police and demand action. When a drunken Santa fell against her Honda Civic and set off the alarm, Alice got on the horn and let the officers know about it. Maybe she called too often, she sometimes thought, maybe that’s why the police rarely responded to her requests. They had come by yesterday, yes indeed, after they found that man hanging from that tree.
They should have come that night when I called, Alice thought. Lazy, they are, sitting in the warm station house, eating their donuts.
She told them everything she could remember, but there was something about the man who stood next to the Santa that was familiar; something she could not quite put her finger on.
Something about the way he walked.
Alice’s thoughts were broken when she saw Fluffy, the Doberman Pinscher from across the street, make his way onto the middle of her lawn and prepare to empty his bowels dangerously close to her favorite yard gnome. Alice Edwards grabbed her phone, hit speed dial 911, and raced to the front door.
Day 2: 1:07 p.m.
A crime committed inside a reptile exhibit, which is buried deep within the confines of a zoo, gives the police a natural barrier to the prying eyes of the media. Forensics had been able to process the scene and remove the body without giving the press a photo opportunity that the police would most likely deem inappropriate. Lisa sat in her car, waiting for Milt to return with the footage. The press was allowed into the reptile house only after the police had cleared out. Milt was to grab some stock stuff, the pond, and the tortoise, whatever the hell else was in there. She hated the zoo; she wanted to get her shots and leave. She wanted to grab Milt and find this Alice Edwards, see what the woman had to say. No one would have that angle.
She saw Milt come running to the van, open the passenger side door and jump in.
“You got enough?” she asked.
“I think so. Some dude I went to school with, works for Telemundo, got me in before the cops. Apparently, he’s the janitor’s cousin; the janitor calls his cousin before the police, cousin calls me, I give him fifty, yada, yada, yada. I know it sounds crazy, but I think every person in Mexico is related to each other. It’s unbelievable, he’s my cousin, she’s my cousin, everybody’s my cousin…”
“Milt, please.”
Milt continued.
“Anyway, my friend says that his cousin found the lady dead, underneath a 200 year-old turtle. That’s fucked up. Couldn’t see her face, but her hair framed the turtle nicely.”
Lisa seemed uninterested.
“Good work. Listen. We’ve got to go to West Covina again. There’s a lady who might have witnessed the Santa Claus killer.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. You take the van and follow me. I don’t have an address but I have a pretty good idea where to go.”
Lisa left the van and ran to her car. They sped out of the parking lot, a two-vehicle caravan, each determined to make more news.
Day 2: 1:37 p.m.
He stepped gingerly out of the shower like always, careful not to put too much weight on his right leg. His hip had been a problem all his life and all the braces and expensive operations that tapped most of his parents’ financial resources had, in the end, been futile. Just as there was no helping his crooked soul, he still had the horrible limp and, after the strain of lifting the queer into that tree, excruciating pain.
He had stopped taking his psychotropic meds long ago, but he could not go two hours at this point without the narcotics. He looked at his twisted body, naked and wet from the shower, and cursed. He grabbed the bottle of oxycontin and shook some into his mouth. The pain in the hip was dwarfed by the pounding in his head, which never really went away with the pills; they could only dull the severity for a few hours before it came thundering back with a vengeance. But the pills were essential to his dream and gave him an outside chance at completing his mission. He needed to get the day started; that French cunt was as flighty as a kite in a cyclone and he did not want to allow number ‘three’ to slip away.
Day 2: 3:40 p.m.
Audrey La Pense was a rising star in the world of food. She had received her formal training in the culinary arts at the Sorbonne in Paris, France and although she was adept at most dishes, her specialty was dessert. She had won many awards and platitudes from the food cognoscenti and had parlayed her skills into ownership of the Michelin two-diamond restaurant in downtown Los Angeles that bore her name. La Pense had a two-month waiting list for dinner and if you preferred one of her signature confectionary masterpieces after your meal, you needed to request it at least a week beforehand. Audrey’s creations and her reputation for excellence were second to none, which left her in the most unenviable of positions. As a result of her extraordinary cooking skills in combination with the air of effortless natural condescension that she inherited from her French heritage, Chef La Pense had become arrogance personified. Nature and nurture melded into a perfect storm that tsunamied the wizardress of food into a first class bitch. She had no friends and, quite frankly, she did not want any. The only living creature that she ever loved was her poodle, Franck.
Audrey La Pense was a creature of habit; she explored the fresh produce market near her home in Santa Monica each morning, concocting the evening’s menu as she shopped. This was followed by a roll, a latte, and Le Monde at the Quotidian Bakery on Santa Monica Boulevard, where she would sit with Franck in the corner, laughing to herself. From noon to one, she would walk the poodle along the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, then complete an hour of yoga at a local spa before preparing for the journey to her downtown atelier. She never really liked Los Angeles but she was able to tolerate Santa Monica, with the sole exception of the bums. Santa Monica has no vagrancy laws per se, so the combination of warm weather and California liberalism had essentially transformed “the People’s Republic of Santa Monica” into the playground of the homeless. She found them to be filthy and disgusting; sleeping on the sidewalks on Montana Avenue or begging for a handout.
That night, after she kissed Franck good night and closed her back door, she was appalled to see one of these bums picking apart the trashcan in her driveway. She ran at the vagrant, cursing at him rapidly in French. The bum stood frozen in his place, inches away from her new Quattroporte. She stood before him nose to nose, berating him wildly in her native tongue. Had she been less angry, she might have noticed that although his clothes were shabby, his face was clean-shaven and he had the smell of strawberry in his longish but not unkempt black hair. She also might have noticed the chloroform-drenched rag in his right hand. But she did not, so she was unable to prevent the cloth from reaching her nose, causing her to choke, then faint, and finally fall limp into the unknown attacker’s arms.
He smiled at his captured prey, with one thought on his mind. Gotcha, bitch. The word was the same, in English or French.
Chapter Four: The Squawking
Continues
Day 2: 6:42 p.m.
They had the goods and it made the work easy. Lisa and Milt pieced together a compelling story for the late night telecast, excited at their exclusive interview. Thanks to Jim, she had stumbled onto the only witness in the Artridge case and would be airing the comments of one Alice Edwards on the Ten O’clock News. No one else had this, she was sure of it. She loved having the power over the other stations, if this story continued it could get her into the big leagues, CNN, prime time. She did feel sorry for Jim - the poor bastard was in danger of losing his job - but she had already compromised enough with her material and there was no way anyone could trace the leak back to her… new friend.
Apparently, Alice Edwards liked to call the police a lot. If asked, Lisa would say that after the murder, Alice grew frustrated with her calls falling on deaf ears, so she changed her tactics and called the press, too. That would be Lisa’s story and she would stick with it.
They had finished the Artridge piece and could now turn their attention to the zoo footage. This one was another beauty, but certainly not as sexy as the dangling Santa. The police had released the name of local real estate agent, Janette McDermott, who left her family on Christmas day to show a house. Yeah, right. She was probably going to see her boy toy, Lisa figured, and they got into an argument, sex got a little kinky and voila, one dead cheating mommy at the zoo. It was a cynical dismissal, but short-lived. Milt got as much as he could from the reptile cage and was showing it to Lisa when she saw the rocks. She played with the zoom and focus, but there it was as clear as day, proudly displayed in the water. She fumbled for her phone and punched in a few numbers, waited a second and then moved away from Milt.