by Dave Daren
“Oscar Wilde, huh?” I said. “You think I could pull off an eccentric top hat?”
“Oh, God,” she rolled her eyes and laughed.
We reached the front door to the police station and walked in. It was always so dark coming in from the outside. Bernice was on front desk duty and greeted me.
“Hello, Irving,” she said as she snacked on an apple. “Good to see you as always.”
“Hey, Bernice,” I said. “You remember Vicki.”
“Yeah,” she smiled. “How you doing, girl?”
“Great,” she said. “Thanks for the recommendation on the nail salon, by the way.”
“Did they hook you up?” she asked.
“They did,” Vicki showed her perfectly manicured pink tipped fingernails.
“I told you my girl, Mai, she knows her stuff,” Bernice said.
“She does,” Vicki smiled and nodded.
“What can we do for you guys?” Bernice asked.
“Judith Klein,” I said.
“Judith,” she whistled. “She’s in a heap of trouble.”
“Is that right?” I asked.
“Yep,” she said. “She’s been arrested for throwing paint backstage at the Ghoti performance.”
“Right,” I said. “There have been several witnesses to confirm it.”
“But,” she continued. “That’s not all. They think they might have it on her for the murder charge. Which will make your lives easier now that you’re defending Julianna.”
“It’s very possible,” I said. “That’s what we want to know, is what she knows, if anything at all.”
“She hasn’t been assigned legal counsel yet,” Bernice said. “She said she wants a public defender, but right now all we’ve got her on is a couple of misdemeanors.”
“Okay,” I said. “I just want to find out if she’ll talk to us.”
“Just wait a few,” she said and got on the phone, “We’ll get you back there.”
“What was that all about, you and her?” I asked Vicki as we sat down and waited.
Vicki shrugged. “She gave me a recommendation on a nail salon not long after we moved.”
“Good thinking,” I said. “Make friends with the cops, find a common interest.”
“No,” she said. “I really just needed a good nail salon.”
“You just randomly asked her about her nails?” I asked. “Why?”
“Ugh,” she said. “Henry, you really need to loosen up.”
“I’m not that uptight,” I said. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Really?” she said. “Name one thing you do that’s not work related.”
I searched my head, and then I gave her a wink, and she laughed. “Other than that,” my girlfriend laughed.
“She’s ready for you,” Bernice called out.
Vicki and I looked up, and Bernice motioned us toward the interrogation room.
“I think you should do this one alone,” I told Vicki. “I think she would respond better to a female.”
“Got it,” she replied.
“Bernice,” I asked. “Could I watch from the other side of the mirror?”
“Officer Thomas, Mr. Irving wants to watch the interview from the other side,” she said. “Would you show him back that way?”
“Sure,” he said. “Back this way.”
I threw Vicki a quick smile and followed Officer Thomas to a small room down the hall. It was a dimly lit room with a couple of chairs and intricate looking surveillance equipment. None of it was currently live.
“You should be able to see anything you want to see from here,” Officer Thomas said. “She’s a live one, best of luck to you both.”
We both laughed, and then the officer slipped out of the room. I sat alone and watched the exchange on the other side. Judith was in the room, and without her cheetah outfit and irate expression, she actually looked normal, attractive even. She was about five foot six, had shoulder length red hair, green eyes, and she had a pretty smile, it seemed. But, under the present circumstances, she had little opportunity to use it.
Vicki entered the room and sat primly at the table.
“Hello, Judith,” Vicki’s voice came into the room through the audio equipment in the room.
Judith didn’t respond with anything more than a scowl.
“I’m Vicki Park,” Vicki started.
“I know who you are,” she said. “You were there that night.”
“If you are referring to the dance performance after which the murder occured, yes, I was there,” was Vicki’s curt answer.
“How could you do that?” Judith protested. “How could you support that kind of garbage?”
“Well,” Vicki said. “Judith, you’ve got bigger problems than that. Aside from the trespassing and assault, you are being implicated in a murder.”
“What’s it to you?” she said.
“I’m an attorney representing the person they currently have charged for this crime,” she said. “If you know of anything that could lead us to the real killer, then we could work with your lawyer in getting the prosecutor to reduce the punishment.”
“I don’t know anything about the murder,” she said.
“Did you ever meet the deceased, Beowulf Vandergarten?”
“That scum sucking gaudy seed bearer?” she spat, “No, I never met him.”
“We have witnesses say that you got into an altercation with him backstage,” Vicki said.
“That never happened,” she said. “I told you, I never met him.”
“So,” Vicki said, “you never got backstage and threw paint on anyone?”
“Paint?” she gasped. “That’s ridiculous!”
“Okay,” Vicki said, “What can you tell me about that night?”
“All I know,” Judith said, “was that I came to protest women’s rights, and to stand up for the rights of the oppressed. I was told to stay in the free speech zone, which is unconstitutional in itself. But I did, and I exercised my constitutional first amendment rights to free speech. There is no crime in that!”
Judith pounded the table. “Show me where there’s a crime! What have I done wrong, huh? What have I done wrong?”
“Well,” Vicki said, “According to the police report--”
“The police report is wrong,” she said. “I have done nothing wrong, other than represent the rights of oppressed women everywhere! Voltaire said ‘I may not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it!’ That’s the spirit of America! That’s what the founders of this country, the revolutionaries, that’s what these brave soldiers gave their lives for, to throw off the chains of oppression and tyranny from Great Britain with their rules against everything from tea to postage stamps to making cotton from your own field!”
She stood and raised her arms as if it was fifty years ago and she was giving the I Have a Dream speech.
“And rest assured,” she bellowed, “there were women in their ranks! It wasn’t just the men. And it wasn’t just white men either. The black women, and white women, and the Native Americans were out there with the American revolutionaries and the French soldiers fighting against the British. Don’t believe the history books, they won’t tell you. They’re written by misogynistic bigots that would prefer to rewrite history like some dystopian George Orwell novel.”
“Really,” Vicki said, “We need to get back to the--”
“And then the women get written out of history texts,” Judith continued. “Do you know that Thomas Jefferson’s wife actually wrote the Declaration of Independence?”
“I think we’re getting off track here,” Vicki said. “What I wanted to ask you about was--”
“Do you know that in the original signing of the Declaration, that there were just as many women as there were men? But the women were not allowed to sign?” Judith went on.
“I am not sure that that’s accurate,” Vicki said, “but what I wanted to ask you about--”
; “What you wanted to ask me is if I committed the murder,” she supplied. She stood and raised her arms in indignation, and her whole body shook with the movement.
“Well?” my girlfriend asked.
“No, I did not commit the murder!” she yelled and pounded the table. “And I resent the question. All I was doing was exercising my rights given by the Constitution.”
“I understand that,” Vicki tried. “But, we have witnesses--”
“Witnesses!” she said. “So, all I was trying to do was use my given right to free speech and now there are witnesses that I committed a murder?”
“No one is saying that you committed a murder,” Vicki said. “We are just merely asking if you could provide us any details about that night--”
“Why?” she asked. “So that you can use them to pin the murder on me? Have you ever read the Constitution of the United States?”
“Yes, ma’am, I have,” Vicki said.
“Have you really read it?” Judith insisted. “Not just read it, but made it part of your soul?”
“I’m a lawyer,” Vicki replied. “Defending it is part of my life’s work. But we’re getting off track here.”
“I didn’t kill the bastard,” Judith yelled. “But I wish I had! Is that all here? Are we done?”
Vicki sat back in her chair and stared off in thought for a second. Then she said, “Yes, we’re done, Mistress Kat.”
Judith looked about as shocked as I was. Her mouth dropped open, and her face was pale.
“Nice cover,” Vicki said, “by day you are a raging feminist that ignites the feminine mystique for all the bored housewives, and by night, you entertain their philandering husbands in harmless games of desire and seduction.”
“How did you know?” she choked out.
“I have my ways,” she said. “Look, your secret’s safe with me. But, I’ll ask you to do me a solid right back. Tell me what you know about the night of the murder.”
“I don’t know anything, I swear,” she insisted, and this time her tone was genuine. “All I know is that after the show, I saw the redhead get into a car with a man.”
“Was this before or after the murder?”
“It was before I knew about the murder,” she said. “But I don’t know if he was already dead or not.”
“What kind of car?” Vicki asked.
“It was dark,” she said. “But it was a blue one. Prius, maybe?”
I texted AJ and asked if she knew what kind of car Gabriel drove.
“How did she exit the building?” Vicki asked.
“I didn’t see her exit,” she said. “I just saw her outside.”
“What area of the building?” Vicki asked.
“It was near the east entrance,” she said.
“Can you describe the man she was with?” Vicki asked.
Judith shook her head. “I didn’t get much of a look at him. He met her outside the vehicle, and then they got in together. I mainly just saw her.”
“And you are sure the woman you saw was the redheaded dancer from the performance?”
“It was Julianna Spencer,” she said. “I recognized her immediately from the photo on the program.”
“And did she look disheveled at all?” Vicki asked.
“Disheveled? No,” Judith answered.
“How did she look when you saw her?” Vicki asked.
“She looked happy,” Judith said wistfully. “She looked really happy.”
“Thank you,” Vicki said. “That’s all we need.”
“And about the reduced sentencing?” she asked.
“We’ll need you to testify what you saw in court,” Vicki told her. “You’ll need a lawyer. And when you get one, they can work out a deal with the prosecutor on the misdemeanor charges of assault and trespassing in exchange for a testimony on the felony case. Is this a first offense for you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then you’re likely to get the misdemeanor charges dropped altogether,” she said. “You’ll need to get a lawyer as soon as possible.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Vicki rose to leave, and then Judith piped up.
“One more thing,” she said.
“What’s that?” Vicki asked.
“I don’t know if it’s important,” Judith said. “But for what it’s worth, when they were leaving, I saw a man watching them in a red Escalade.”
“Do you know who this man was?” Vicki asked.
“No,” she said. “I just saw him. I didn’t think anything of it, there could be a thousand reasons for him to be there. But, later, when I thought about it, I didn’t think there was much reason at all. It was behind the stadium, in a deserted lot. Why would he be there? I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing. But for what it’s worth.”
“Thank you,” Vicki said.
Vicki left, and Judith sat alone in the interrogation room. I thought, for a moment, I saw her cry. Then, a guard came in and escorted her away. I met Vicki out in the hall, and she looked giddy.
“Wow,” I whispered.
“Thank you, Bernice,” Vicki said.
“Anytime, Miss Vicki,” Bernice replied.
We left the police station and headed back to the car. “Mistress Kat? How did you know that?”
“A little recon work, I guess,” she said. “There’s a dominatrix studio on the outer west side that poses as a photography shop.”
“Is there really?” I asked. “What photography shop?”
“It’s called Kat Studios,” she said.
“I’ve never heard of it,” I said.
“They keep a low profile,” she said, “Sessions are ‘by appointment only,’ and they don’t have a sign.”
“How do you know this?” I asked.
“How do you not?” she replied. “I thought everyone knew this.”
“Not me,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “Well, the sign is just their logo in the window, a small black cat in repose. They don’t advertise, they don’t even have their name printed anywhere. The logo is just the shorthand for the place.”
“It sounds like an exclusive club or something,” I said. “There are a lot of places like that in the O.C.”
“Exactly,” she said. “And they try to attract Sedona’s version of the same demographic. Wealthy, bored, and pervy.”
“Which is like, half of our clients,” I quipped.
We both laughed because lately it had seemed to be that way.
“How did you connect Judith Klein with this place?” I asked.
“Well,” she said. “In the jail uniform, things that are normally covered, are brought to light. When she stood and postured in anger, the pants didn’t fit quite right, and they slipped a little. I caught a glimpse of her midriff. She’s got a tattoo of the Kat Studios logo.”
“For real?” I asked. “So she’s really a dominatrix?”
Vicki smiled, ran her tongue across her teeth, and nodded.
“That could have been years ago,” I said. “How did you know it was current?”
“I took a chance,” she said. “With the cheetah thing and all, I figured it was a good guess.”
“Damn,” I said. “Well, that’s some good instinct there, Park.”
“I’d like to think so,” she said.
As we drove back to the office, I unpacked what we had actually learned from the interview with Judith.
“We have a witness testifying that Julianna exited the building and met a man in a blue Prius,” I said. I checked my phone, and the text from AJ had come in.
“Gabriel does indeed drive a blue Prius,” I said. “Now we have a witness to verify that she did get in the car with him.”
“And the entrance,” Vicki asked. “Where is that?”
“It’s problematic,” I said. “Because the east entrance door is still near the window near Beowulf’s dressing room. It doesn’t completely rule out the theory that she came out the window, and without Judith visually conf
irming that she came out the door, we can’t put too much weight on it. But that she didn’t appear distressed or disheveled is helpful, but it’s too subjective.”
“What about that guy in the Escalade?” Vicki asked. “That seems off.”
“I don’t like the sound of it,” I said. “Definitely looks suspicious. I don’t think you can get back to the back of the stadium like that without security clearance.”
“So, security would know who he was,” she said. “If they could remember.”
“If they didn’t tell the police,” I said, “then they didn’t think it was significant. So, the likelihood that they will remember is low. But we need to follow that lead.”
“Right,” she said. “It’s definitely something. But it seems like that’s all we’ve got, are a bunch of somethings.”
“We need ‘something’ to connect them all,” I said. “I feel like we’re circulating around it all, and we’re either not seeing it, or we’re not putting it together right.”
It was at that moment, my phone buzzed. I recognized the number, it was the Sedona prosecutor’s office. I had been dreading this call ever since the case started.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes time is all you need on these things. On another note, we’ve got that thing with your family tonight.”
“What thing with my family?” I asked.
“Oh, my gosh, Henry, I swear,” she laughed. “You never remember these things! Your dad’s concert, remember?”
“Ahh, yes,” I said. “I did completely forget about that.”
My dad has been in and out of bands my whole life. By day, he’s a regional sales rep for a health food distributor, or something like that. I get lost somewhere after the word, “spreadsheets,” so I don’t know exactly what he does.
But in real life, Moondust Irving is a pretty solid guitarist and was almost a legit rock star at one point. In the 1970s, the band he was in got a deal with Columbia Records and were scheduled to tour with Creedence Clearwater Revival. They were a good band. I’ve heard their album, and they were as good as anyone out at that time.
However, mere weeks before their deal was signed, the drummer got offered a job with Led Zeppelin, and he took it. The betrayal effectively dissolved the band, and the Columbia executives walked. The defecting drummer quickly lost his fancy job, the rise to fame being too fast for him to handle, and he crawled back on his knees. But his former bandmates never forgave him.