King City (15 page)

He began by photographing everything within the perimeter of the police tape from a variety of angles. He’d moved on to photographing the corpse when Billy returned.

Wade turned as Billy approached and he saw that the crowd had swelled even more, people arriving in cars to catch the show. One of the cars was Fallon’s Mercedes, parking on a side street, giving whoever was behind the tinted glass a clear view of the crime scene.

But Wade couldn’t worry about getting shot right now. There was too much he had to do and not enough time to do it.

“Billy, I want you to position your car so the headlights and spots are aimed on the scene—we’ll be losing the light soon,” he said. “Then I want you to start bagging and tagging whatever you see on the ground. Photograph everything before you pick it up.”

“Isn’t that what the forensics guys are supposed to do?”

“Yes, it is,” Wade said and began dusting for fingerprints on the gate.

For the next forty minutes, the two officers silently and methodically gathered evidence, working quickly against the clock and the setting sun. Wade dusted for prints on the car carcass until the only illumination he had left came from the headlights on the squad car.

It was dark. It was time to give up.

In a little over an hour, they’d managed to take a couple hundred photographs and fill two moving boxes with bagged items and dozens of fingerprint slides.

They put the boxes in the trunk of Wade’s squad car and pulled down the yellow tape around the crime scene.

All that was left now was the woman’s body.

Wade picked up the roll of plastic sheeting. He’d bought it to protect the floors while he painted the station walls. But the sheeting had other purposes too. He unfurled it over the backseat of his squad car and cut the sheet from the roll with a box cutter. Then he walked over to the junked car and rolled out another sheet of plastic beside it, Billy watching him as he worked.

“I need you to give me a hand,” Wade said.

“With what?”

“We’re going to lift the body out of the car and place it on the plastic sheet on the ground.”

“This isn’t right, Sarge,” Billy said.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Wade said, angling himself into the car.

The woman’s body reeked, not so much from early decomposition as from the postmortem evacuation of her bladder and bowels. Her body was stiff with rigor mortis.

Wade placed his hands under her shoulders, Billy took her legs, and they eased her out onto the plastic sheet.

“Now what?” Billy asked.

“I want you to go back to the station,” Wade said. “Before you send the photos to headquarters, make copies for us and print them out. Stay put with Charlie until I get back. If anything comes up, you go with her. I don’t want either one of you going out alone.”

“Where are you going?”

Wade bent down, slid his hands under the plastic, and lifted the body up in his arms.

“I’m delivering the body,” he said.

Illuminated by Billy’s spotlights, Wade faced the crowd on the street like an actor on a stage as he carried the corpse to his car and laid her down gently on the backseat.

When he rose again, he looked at the crowd. Everybody he’d met so far was there. Claggett, Terrill, Friar Ted, and Mrs. Copeland. Timo and the crew who’d trashed his Mustang. Mandy and her father.

And Duke Fallon, the window rolled down in his Mercedes so Wade would see him and know that he was there.

Friar Ted, clutching a tattered Bible, crossed the street and approached Wade.

“May I?”

Wade nodded. Friar Ted peered into the backseat, swallowed hard, then recited a blessing, the Lord’s Prayer, and a psalm, then leaned forward to make a cross on her forehead, but Wade stopped him before he could touch the corpse.

“Thank you, Padre,” Wade said.

“No, thank you, Sergeant.” There were tears in Friar Ted’s eyes.

Wade got into his car and drove away.

____

There were no hills in Meston Heights. The only elevation was a social one, an aura of wealth and power the developer had conjured up in 1910 as an advertising ploy to add prestige to what otherwise would have been just one more tract of subdivided ranchland.

As a marquee, and to bestow class on the patch of dry dirt, the developer built an outrageously ostentatious gateway modeled after the Arc de Triomphe, only on a much smaller scale, and stuck a big fountain with a marble nymph in front of it.

The initial homes behind the gateway were architecturally diverse but uniformly grandiose in square footage and pomposity, establishing a template that still endured to this day.

The Spanish Colonial home on Mantley Drive evoked the style of an old California mission, with its red‐tiled roof and towers, monumental wood door, and the arched, covered balcony that ran along one side of the house.

Wade laid the woman’s body on a plastic sheet on the front doorstep and placed the boxes of evidence down beside it.

And then he got back into his squad car and called Police Chief Gavin Reardon on his private office line.

“Yes?” the chief answered.

“Good evening, Chief,” Wade said. He could hear the hum of conversation, some piano music, and the clatter of dishes. The chief was at a restaurant or perhaps attending a party. “It’s Tom Wade.”

“How did you get this number?”

“Roger gave it to me,” Wade said. “For emergencies.”

“You’re on your own down there,” the chief said. “I thought I made that very clear.”

“Oh, you did,” Wade said. “Nobody cares about the crime in Darwin Gardens unless it shows up on their doorstep.”

“So why the hell are you calling me?”

“Because it just showed up on yours,” Wade said. And then he hung up.

When Wade got back to the station, he found Charlotte at Billy’s desk, the two of them sorting through the crime scene photos.

“Thanks for sticking around, Billy,” Wade said. “You can go home now.”

“What did you do with the body?” Billy asked, getting up from his seat.

“He took it to the morgue,” Charlotte said irritably. “Where else do you think he’d take it?”

Billy shrugged and glanced at Wade, who took his seat and began going through the photos. Wade had to give the kid credit. Billy’s instincts were sharp. It was an encouraging sign. The kid might actually become a decent cop if he learned to trust his gut.

“You did some real good police work today,” Wade said.

“Thanks,” Billy said. “It was fun.”

“Fun?” Charlotte asked. “A woman was murdered.”

“What are you mad at me for? I didn’t kill her,” Billy said and walked out the back door to his car.

Wade found a close‐up of the dead girl’s face and studied it. People who died a natural death often looked to him like they were sleeping. But he found that it was seldom true when a person was killed. There was no peace in their final expression.

He looked at Charlotte. “What happened to that homeless woman that we brought in last night?”

“I offered to drive her to a women’s shelter on my way home,” Charlotte said. “But she asked me to take her back to Lincoln Park, so I did.”

“You weren’t worried about running into the deputies we arrested or maybe some of their friends?”

“It didn’t even occur to me,” she said.

It was a gutsy move. Or a stupid one. But the same could be said of many of the things that he did.

“I’m sure Billy filled you in on everything. So what are your thoughts?”

“I think that you committed multiple violations of department protocol in your handling of the crime scene,” she said. “It’s not going to make things easy for the prosecutors when this case gets to court.”

“You’re assuming that this crime will be solved and that someone will be tried for it.”

“We always have to,” she said.

“I feel the same way.”

“So you’re telling me that’s why you did what you did,” she said.

“Yes, I am.”

“I think there’s more to it than that.”

“That’s because your father is a shrink,” he said.

“Probably,” she said and gestured to the photo of the victim in his hand. “Do you have any idea who she is?”

“No, but I’m going to find out. Let’s eat before we roll. I’m buying.”

He led her to the front door, locked it behind them, and walked across the street to the Pancake Galaxy. A hush fell over the twenty or so customers in the restaurant as the two cops came in. The loudest sound was Peter Guthrie’s wheezing.

Wade recognized many of the faces from the crowd at the crime scene. He nodded in greeting and made his way to the counter with Charlotte, where they settled onto the stools and picked up menus.

“What do you recommend?” she asked.

“Pancakes and apple pie,” he said.

“That’s an unusual combination,” she said.

He shrugged. “It’s tasty.”

Mandy Guthrie came out from the kitchen balancing several plates of food on her arms. She smiled the instant she spotted Wade, which made him smile too.

“Be right with you, Tom,” Mandy said.

She went off to deliver the food. Charlotte looked after her, then back at Wade, who perused the menu.

“Tom?” Charlotte said.

“That’s my name.”

“She seems glad to see you.”

“Then we must be making progress,” Wade said.

“Is that what you two are making?”

He didn’t comment, and tried to remain expressionless, as if he hadn’t heard what she’d said. But it was obvious to him now that he might have underestimated both of his rookies.

Mandy returned, stood across the counter from them, and held out her hand to Charlotte.

“I’m Amanda Guthrie. My friends call me Mandy.” She tipped her head toward her father, who was sniffing the smoke from the cigarette smoldering in his ashtray. “That’s Peter, my dad.”

“Officer Charlotte Greene,” she replied.

“What can I get you?” Mandy asked.

Charlotte ordered a salad. Wade ordered a cheeseburger and a slice of apple pie. When Mandy went back to the kitchen, Wade told Charlotte about the special neutral, protected status the restaurant seemed to have in the neighborhood.

“This helps,” Pete said, lifting up Old Betty from behind the counter.

Mandy brought out their food and, after attending to a few other customers, poured herself a cup of coffee and hung out at the counter with them while they ate.

Wade’s cheeseburger was as great as the pancakes. He was beginning to understand why everyone in Darwin Gardens shared a common interest in keeping the Pancake Galaxy safe and in business.

“Everybody is talking about you again today,” Mandy said.

“What are they saying?” he asked.

“They can’t figure you out.”

“They aren’t alone,” Charlotte said.

Mandy dismissed her remark with a wave of her hand. “He’s easy to understand. It’s accepting it that’s hard for some people.”

“So did you set them straight?” Wade asked.

“Hell no,” Mandy said. “That’s your job.”

The bell over the front door rang, indicating that a new customer was coming in. Mandy looked past Wade and immediately went rigid.

Charlotte swiveled around on her stool to follow her gaze and saw Duke Fallon coming in with Timo behind him. Fallon was wearing another tracksuit, his sleeves pushed up to show off the Rolex on one wrist and the gold chain on the other.

“Is the pie as good as I said?” Fallon asked as he came up and stood behind Wade and Charlotte.

“Not quite,” Wade said.

“I guess it depends on who you’re fucking.” Fallon glanced at Mandy before shifting his gaze to Charlotte. “Pardon my French.”

“
De rien
,” Charlotte said.

“What’s that?” Fallon asked.

“French,” Charlotte said.

Fallon gave her an icy smile. “Did you read your horoscope this morning?”

“I don’t believe in astrology,” Charlotte said.

“Neither do I, but it’s something to read while I’m taking a crap. Your horoscope predicted that you and Wade would be badly hurt today. But here you two are, feeling no pain.”

“My back is a little sore,” Wade said. “Does that count?”

“That’s what happens when you engage in rigorous activity with your lower back,” Fallon said, giving Mandy a look. She looked right back at him. “My point is, what the moon and the stars tell you don’t mean shit here. You know why?”

“Because it’s ridiculous to think that the alignment of the planets impacts human behavior?” Charlotte asked.

Fallon looked her in the eye. “Because I control the universe on these streets, honey.”

“How much control do you have over this?” Wade took the photograph of the dead woman out of his shirt pocket and set it faceup on the counter next to his pie.

Fallon glanced at it. “I saw you out at the factory today, cleaning up the mess.”

“That wasn’t what I was doing,” Wade said.

“Then what were you doing?”

“I was processing the crime scene and gathering evidence.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because a woman was murdered, Duke, and I’m going to arrest the son of a bitch who did it.”

“You are?” Fallon asked.

“I am,” Wade said.

“What the hell for?”