A Passing Curse (2011) (30 page)

She looked at the doors, no handles. Well, Ajax was certainly putting on a show. “Let me tell you about the third skeleton,” she said, wanting to move on. “It’s still encased in dirt.”

His head came up. He smiled. He looked somewhat rational. He was coming back. His medication must be kicking in. “But you already told me.” He put a piece of sausage in his mouth and chewed softly. She smelled rottenness that a gallon of perfume could not mask. “I didn’t know that you were attached,” he said. Blood from the sausage smeared his teeth.

“Attached to Reese Tarrant?” she asked. “We’re friends.”

“I see. Friends? I hope I’m not being presumptuous, but over the brief time I have known you I feel protective. I would hate for anything to happen to you.”

“You don’t like Reese?”

“Unpredictable my dear, that is all I am saying. We’ve spoken, he and I, only yesterday. Did you know he resigned from the Los Angeles Police Department before they could fire him?”

“He told me he’d retired.”

“Of course he did, but did he tell you he tried to sell me a gold cross? Maybe when he retired he decided to go into the antiquities business.”

“What?”

“A solid gold cross. I didn’t buy it. I was afraid it was stolen. You never can tell in the business of artifacts. I’ve been burned so many times I always demand an adequate provenance.”

“Did he say where he got it?”

“He said it was his mother’s. He said that his mother had received the cross as a baptismal gift from the archbishop of Los Angeles. He did not have paperwork to support his claim.”

“I didn’t know he had a mother,” she said, wondering why Reese would come up with a crazy story like that. He was nothing if not creative.

Ajax nodded. “He is a man, if I were you, to be wary of.” He filled both of their glasses and pushed away his plate. He had only eaten the one bite. “That is what I want to discuss with you, Penelope. Your future. Yes. I can see that you are surprised. We hardly know each other, you are thinking, but I’m sure as time passes you will come to feel like I have…that I have known you for quite some time.”

Ajax’s voice had slipped into an uncomfortable, almost seductive, tone. She pushed the plate away. “I have to get back to work,” she said. “I have a few things to take care of.” Number one would be asking Reese for her cross back. Number two, she thought, would be to get out of town. Leave Ajax and Reese to play their games. They certainly deserved each other. She was almost to the door when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

Reese parked the Mustang in the car port, went inside his apartment, and lay down. The fog had partially burned off. Misty sunlight through the flimsy curtains made the room too bright for sleeping. He stuffed the corners of a blanket around the curtain rod. The rest of the blanket hung over the curtain, darkening the room, but still he could not sleep.

He stared at the ceiling. Father Ramon’s killing was no typical whodunit. The door had been locked from the inside. The method of death was by sickle. Ramon had been hung by the feet. In fact, in all his years in homicide, he’d never seen a murder like this. Even the Anaheim Vampire’s killings were more straight forward.

If you just looked at the physical evidence, Rusty was the prime suspect: her sickle covered with her fingerprints. Her threatening Ramon. If he had not alibied her out, she’d still be in jail. He’d been a cop too long to trust people. He was sure that Rusty had not killed Ramon simply because he was sure that she could not hoist a three hundred pound man without help. And, while very adept at most things, she could not walk through walls.

Next question: Who’d framed her? Ajax? And why? It made no sense, unless Ajax had planned to play the hero in getting Rusty out of jail. But then Ajax had not lifted a finger to help her. Or had he? And used a retired LA cop as his helper.

He was sure Ajax was the killer, but there was also the slight chance it was a priest or a group of priests, the slight chance that Ramon had been the centerpiece in a three ring sex orgy.

On the other hand, he was nearly certain the priests knew nothing, simply because there had been no cover-up. If Ramon’s death had been a sex accident, the priests would have gone to great lengths to hide the facts. There would have been huge explanations and lengthy denials, but the priests seemed as shocked as everyone else.

And since he was positive both murders were connected, had the priests also killed Cheevy? No. It was Ajax.

The only one on the police force he could get information from was Thomkins, and only because Thomkins was gullible, naive, and in awe of a slightly broken down ex-homicide cop from Los Angeles. It was a hell of a life.

The Chief was having Thomkins watch him, that was a given. He could trust Thomkins, but only because he could manipulate him.

He didn’t trust Halloran, who’d acted a little too nonchalant, a little too calm when discussing an unknown drug that killed so quickly. Either Ajax had gotten to Halloran or Halloran was working on his own. And what was that last bit about the curare? Halloran telling him that Cirrus made it was as good as telling him that he thought Ajax had killed Cheevy. It made no sense. Not yet.

Ajax Rasmussen gently held the crystal goblet and looked down into the courtyard: her legs were wobbly, like a new colt, but that was natural. The drug cocktail he’d injected through the champagne bottle’s cork, mostly xanax and acepromocine, had practically hypnotized her. With minimal effort he’d coaxed her back into the room. She’d passed out just as he’d gotten her to the couch.

Her strong mind and will power were no match for his drugs. You could not shrug off drugs. They had proven disastrous to the hardiest minds.

After the guard opened the truck’s door for her, the puff of blue-white smoke signaled she’d started the engine. He tasted the saltiness of her blood and watched her make the first turn. A few minutes later he saw her round the last corner and drive down the straight road that led to the hotel and her room.

She would be shaky for a while, a headache perhaps, but after she napped and had a good meal, she would be fine. She would blame her fatigue on overwork and hotel food. She would remember nothing.

He let her blood linger in his mouth. She was so healthy, that it all seemed a shame.

Thomkins lived in a clump of tract homes called Appaloosa Point, a five-minute walk from the Palms. At the entrance, a wrought iron Appaloosa stood fixed to a cinder block wall.

Thomkins’ house was in the middle of the first block. From behind the black and white Ford parked in Thomkins’ driveway, a trail of oil spots arced into the street. The front yard was mostly dirt and handfuls of crab grass. Stapled to the garage door were two plywood roosters, silhouettes, painted red and peeling.

Thomkins opened the door, smiled, and led him into the living room. “I made coffee after you called.” Thomkins set two cups on the table in front of a stained velour couch that had once been white. In the backyard Reese spotted four leaning, weathered cages made of gray wire, adorned with feathers fluttering in the light wind.

“The Chief’s assigned me to help you with the double homicide,” Thomkins said.

“A double homicide means the killings happened at the same time, in the same place, by the same person,” Reese said. “You know something I don’t?”

“I meant the two killings, sorry. The Chief assigned me to assist you with the homicides.”

“The Chief thinks I rate an assistant?” Reese asked. “That’s nice of him, especially since this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“The Chief said he’d hired you as a homicide consultant.”

“That’s also very nice of him,” Reese said, thinking that the Chief had put someone disposable in charge. A good move if you were covering Ajax’s ass and your own. A great move if you needed a patsy. A fantastic move, considering the Chief hadn’t bothered telling him. “Tell the Chief I’m passing on the opportunity.”

Thomkins seemed disappointed. “We don’t have anyone else.”

Thomkins was right, Reese thought. There was no one else around that was stupid enough. “Do you know Cheevy’s cause of death?”

“No.”

“You didn’t ask the ME?”

“No, I was busy at the crime scene, the dumpster.” Thomkins shrugged, turned red. “I didn’t want to talk to Dr. Halloran after what happened at the morgue.”

“It didn’t do me any good, either.”

“You didn’t hurl over everything. I’m supposed to be a professional.”

“My first murder scene, I threw up on the body. At the crime scene. On the body. They still rib me about it.” Not exactly the truth, but he’d certainly thrown up the next morning from all the vodka he’d drank. Thomkins needed confidence or he needed to find a new line of work.

“Really?” Thomkins said, perking up. “I guess you get used to it.”

He wouldn’t go that far. “Sure you do,” he said. Thomkins was hanging on every word. He’d have to watch it. He didn’t want Thomkins imitating him.

Thomkins suddenly said, “I’ve got my name in at the Los Angeles Police Academy. I sent the paperwork in a few weeks ago. They’re looking for officers.”

“You bet they are.”

“I’m sick of this town.”

“Before you run off to Los Angeles, Thomkins, remember that we’ve got two homicides to solve in Santa Marina. That may yet prove difficult.”

“You’ll help?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“That’s great,” Thomkins said with some enthusiasm. “Once we solve these killings, I’ll have enough experience that the LAPD can’t turn me down. I can make a difference, I think.”

“I can put a good word in for you if you want.”

“I filled out the preliminary application,” Thomkins said excitedly. “They said they’d get back to me, but if you could help, I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” He might have Carsabi look into it. He’d seen worse than Thomkins make good cops. “Let’s get back to Cheevy. Someone put a needle into Cheevy’s neck and drained his blood. Cheevy was dumped behind his store; he wasn’t killed there. It’s not the crime scene. Don’t waste too much time there, because I don’t think the killers left any evidence. Nothing we can use, anyway. I’m pretty sure Ajax Rasmussen is involved.”

“Ajax Rasmussen?” Thomkins looked a bit confused. “Because he owns all those blood banks? Because Cheevy was drained of blood?”

“Mostly because I last saw Cheevy headed up to Ajax’s castle the afternoon he was killed. Ajax also owns a Packard that is wide enough to make the tracks at the dumpster. I’ll bet if we did fiber analysis on Cheevy’s clothes we’d match the car’s carpeting.”

Thomkins brought out a small notebook and started scribbling. “We could get a search warrant and - ”

“ - And prove that Cheevy was in Ajax’s car. So what? They knew each other. When you go against a guy like Ajax, you know he’ll have the best lawyers money can buy. You need a videotape of Ajax killing Cheevy, you need Jesus Christ as a witness…a confession wouldn’t hurt, signed by the governor.”

Thomkins looked perplexed. “What can we do?”

“We watch Ajax. Keep an eye on him but not too close that he calls us on harassment. We watch every move he makes. He only has to make one mistake.”

“Did Ajax have anything to do with Father Ramon’s killing?”

“I’m sure of it,” Reese said.

“What about the archeologist? The girl? I heard Father Ramon was killed with one of her tools. And I know she didn’t like him.”

“The killer just happened to use her sickle. It wasn’t her. She was with me at the time.”

The young cop nodded, taking it all in, like gospel. At least, the Chief hadn’t brainwashed him. “Have you ever seen Ajax and the Chief together?” Reese asked.

Thompkins thought a moment. He wasn’t considering any allegiance he owed to the Chief, he was sure of that, but actually trying to remember if he’d seen the Chief with Ajax.

“Do you think the Chief might be helping Ajax?” Reese asked, prodding him. “Would he look the other way if Ajax was killing people.”

Thomkins bit his lower lip, thinking. “I never thought about it. I mean. I don’t think so. The Chief is a good man, he’d never - ”

Reese held up his hand. “That’s fine, Thomkins. But if you hear anything about Ajax, anything strange, if you see the Chief and Ajax talking, whatever, tell me, and don’t tell the Chief about our little conversation.”

“Sure, Reese. We’re partners.”

“That’s the first lesson,” Reese said. “Partners first. Now, the problem with Ramon’s case is the iron bolt was shut from the inside. We have to figure out how the killer got out. If we can do that, it might help us find the killer.”

“Find Ajax?”

“If he had access to Ramon’s room.”

“I have an idea,” Thomkins said slowly. “What about a secret door? As old as the mission is I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t have, you know, like the movies, a lot of secret passageways and stuff.”

“I’ve covered a few hundred homicides and I can’t remember one secret door,” Reese said. The first and only secret door he’d ever seen had been inside Ajax’s office. “After Ramon was killed I searched the room. Solid stone. The floor, too. The room below is lived in by a 73 year old monk. He was asleep. His ceiling was untouched. The floor was clean.” Of course, he thought, the walls were thick, there was room for a passageway, but it made no sense, the mission was not a medieval castle.

“I also thought a midget might have jumped through that high window,” Thomkins said. He was serious. “You know, a very small person.”

“Maybe Ajax hired Rumpelstiltskin?” He’d basically told the Chief the same thing, but he’d been joking. The way things were stacking up in Santa Marina, though, a midget might be the least of his worries.

“I guess it sounds stupid.”

“No,” Reese said. “It’s not stupid at all. In fact, brainstorming is how tough cases are broken. Especially something like this, a locked room mystery.”

“What’s that?”

“Just what it says. A murder committed in a room locked from the inside. The perfect murder. Don’t you read detective books?”

“Uh, no. Should I?”

“You might learn something. The first locked room story was probably Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder’s at the Rue Morgue. A series of murders with no possible exit for the killer.”