Copp On Ice, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (6 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN
 

Though
I
had been absent for nearly an hour
, I arrived back on the scene at 726 Craggy Lane in the midst of a growing police presence, which seemed a bit odd. A police line had been marked and the street secured a hundred or so yards south of the property, a half-dozen or so uniformed cops on hand and conducting activities on the street, two ambulances in the drive and a swarm of plainclothes cops on the floodlit grounds.

      
Pappy McGuire stepped forward to greet me. "Dispatch said you were on top of this," he complained. "Where've you been?"

      
"Out and about," I replied, still trying to get a feel for the situation. "Isn't this a heavy response for a dog?"

      
"I don't know what you're talking about," McGuire growled.

      
"So maybe I'm not on top of it. What's the story here?"

      
"They had a prowler. This joint is a fortress, you know, security devices all over the place. Also a twenty-four-hour guard force. One of the guards is dead."

      
I said, "Well, shit."

      
He said, "Shot three times in the chest. What were you saying about a dog?"

      
"I was told that a dog had been shot."

      
"You were told?"

      
"By the shooter." I told him the story, wondering how much of it he already knew anyway. It certainly was no secret that I'd requested a spot on Lila Turner's car moments after the shooting. Thinking back on it, though, it occurred to me then that Turner had not actually said that she'd shot a dog, not even in response to a direct question from Murray, she'd merely created the impression that she'd done so as an explanation of the shooting.

      
Now I had to wonder about it, and I said to McGuire, "Three bullets in the chest, eh?"

      
"Why would Turner tell you something like that?"

      
"You know her better than I do," I replied suggestively.

      
"Right, and I just can't hear her saying it. I also can't see her pumping three bullets into someone and then leaving the scene without calling it in. Anyone else hear this story?"

      
"Tim Murray heard it," I told him.

      
"What does Murray have to do with it?"

      
"I followed her to a joint in Helltown, the Delight Zone or whatever. Told me he's managing the place now. We sat and talked, the three of us. He heard the story just before he tossed me out."

      
"He tossed you out?"

      
"Symbolically, yeah. Turner walked me outside. I put her in her car and said goodnight. Said she was going home. Why don't you check that out?"

      
McGuire said, "Yeah..." and went off to find a telephone.

I nosed around and watched the homicide team at work, took a look at the victim, went back down by the vehicle gate to run some mental calculations, decided the timing was off a bit or else my memory of it was off. The body of the guard lay where it had fallen, twenty paces uprange toward the house from the gate, yet I'd heard Lila starting her jeep almost immediately after the shots sounded, hadn't even had time to get out of my car before she backed clear and went down the hill.

Time in the mind can be tricky. But if my memory of it was accurate, Turner would need to have been standing nearly alongside the jeep, which was outside the gate, when those shots were fired. And the angle was wrong for that. She could not have even seen the man from outside the gate.

The homicide lieutenant in charge at the scene, guy named Ramirez, told me that Schwartzman was not at home and that so far he'd not been located. Four domestic employees, all young women, lived in the house and were then being questioned by a member of the homicide team. A gardener lived in a cottage on the property, and he was being questioned. No one else was on the premises.

I asked about the dog.

Ramirez told me there were two dogs in a kennel near the gardener's cottage; both appeared hale and hearty, mean as hell.

No dead dog?

No dead dog, no.

I went inside the mansion, then, and took the measure of that. Some measure. Art treasures all over the place. Full-scale ballroom, complete with bar and bandstand, study, library, rec room—a kitchen capable of state banquets. Who was this guy Schwartzman? I'd never heard of him until that night. Upstairs and upstairs again were

bedrooms all made up as master suites with Jacuzzis and the works.

I had no right to poke around that way, I knew it but did it anyway. Schwartzman's personal suite was fit for a monarch, his clothes closet as large as my own bedroom at home and I'd always prided myself on its size, maybe a hundred suits and that many pairs of shoes. In the midst of all that, the man slept in a waterbed— admittedly, though, a hell of a waterbed with a built-in footboard displaying a twenty-seven-inch combo TV/VCR and a library of videocassettes. Checked those out too. None were packaged products but had been labeled by hand. I tried one just for size and found that it met my expectations: amateur porn. Watched it for a minute, saw nothing recognizable except the action itself, which beat the hell out of some of the professional stuff I'd seen.

He had a cluttered desk in there, too, but I didn't even approach it, went on back downstairs and got in on the end of the interviews with the household staff. Two were Asian, one was Latino—the cook—and the other looked born and bred in Iowa or Minnesota, a chesty blonde, the kind who triggers male fantasies of being smothered in soft flesh. Turns out she was the housekeeper and personal secretary, and the only one of the four who spoke coherent English.

The story from inside fit, more or less. They'd heard gunfire and a car in the driveway. The alarms started ringing. The blonde dialed 911. That was it.

No, she had not heard any yelling or cussing immediately following the shooting.

No, there was but one security guard on duty at a time and all lived off the premises.

The gardener was Japanese and rarely left the property

except on weekends; he was "aged" and probably slept through the entire disturbance.

Mr. Schwartzman had not been home all day, and she did not know when to expect him.

Nothing appeared to be missing from the house.

That was it, in a nutshell.

Problem was, I was beginning to feel like the nut.

Captain McGuire had
been unable to locate Detective Turner at her home or at any of her alternate numbers. She had a widowed mother living in the area, a married sister, and a close female friend with whom she occasionally spent time; none had heard from her that night and none could offer a clue to her whereabouts.

I wanted to locate her, and quick, but I did not want to put out a formal APB, and McGuire agreed with that. Instead, we issued a soft watch and put a detective on the phone to call every cop on the force for information which could lead us to her.

"I don't believe she's running," McGuire insisted, "and I don't believe she's guilty of any misconduct."

"If you're right on both counts," I told him, "then it's even more important that we find her."

He gave me a searching look and asked, "How is that?"

"There's a pattern here, Pappy," I explained. "Turner was involved in some off-duty shenanigans with Manning and Peterson shortly before they were killed. I know she didn't pull the trigger on those two because she was at my side inside the building when they were shot. She came straight up here, though, spent about ten minutes inside these grounds, and left another dead man behind her when she left here. I found her minutes later in a sober conference with Murray. Why was your chief fired?"

      
McGuire looked at his feet as he replied, "Incompetence, they said."

      
"Was he incompetent?"

      
He looked at me then. "Aren't we all?"

      
"Now and then, sure," I replied. "How incompetent was he?"

      
"Enough to get himself canned, I guess."

      
"You supported the firing?"

      
"I was never asked."

      
"Suppose you'd been asked."

      
"Look, he just didn't grow with the department. I didn't support his promotion to lieutenant and I was mad as hell when they made him a captain. As for chief. . ."

      
"Then you did not protest the firing."

      
"Hell no, I did not."

      
"The other captains?"

      
"Relieved to see him go. Murray did not build this department, Copp. We built it. He merely kept out of our way, rubberstamped our recommendations, played politics for us. He was good at that."

      
"How so?"

      
"Part of the clique, the ruling clique. How do you think he became chief?"

      
"Tell me how."

      
McGuire seemed to be warming to the conversation, almost enjoying it. I saw a lot of bitterness surfacing there. "He and Harvey Katz—that was our esteemed mayor— were buddies, grew up here in Brighton together, were best buddies all through school. Katz was a jerk but he went into politics early, and I guess he was in a great position to capitalize on the growth of the city. His old man was a farmer, owned hundreds of acres close in to town, so Katz did well off the development boom. Meanwhile Murray had become a deputy sheriff, switched over to Brighton as a sergeant ten years ago—which, incidentally, was during Katz's first term as mayor. He—"

"You were here then?"

"Sure. So was Williamson, so was Ralston. All three of us were lieutenants then."

"And Murray was a newly made sergeant."

"Yeah." The captain shrugged: "Way it goes sometimes. What the hell, you can't fight city hall."

"When did all the city's political problems start?"

"Oh, hell, there have always been problems. But they began for Katz in a big way only a couple of years ago. He lost control of the city council, thanks mainly to the new voters who've been moving in steadily for ten years now. Couple of his buddies were voted out, and the new boys haven't always seen eye to eye with the mayor. Brighton is beginning to grow up, that's why all the trouble. I don't believe Katz would have been re-elected to another term."

"Has his killer been caught?"

"No, and probably won't. Some transient, we feel, an opportunistic robbery that turned into a killing. Don't quote me on this, Copp, but it was almost poetic justice for the guy to go that way. Did you know? He was with a cheap hooker in a by-the-hour motel room. The assailant apparently broke into the room, shot them both, took everything of value including Katz's car. The car was found abandoned up near Stockton several days later. A watch and a diamond ring Katz had been wearing turned up in a Sacramento pawn shop. It was almost poetic, yeah. Guy has a really nice wife, a class lady all the way, and two nice kids, and he spends his time with trash."