MOSAICS: A Thriller (25 page)

“I’m liberated, you know? All that sexual angst—I’ve always thought it was all religious crap, instead—I mean, abstinence can be quite cathartic once you get used to it. You should try it.”

Surfers came out of the water and propped their boards against the palm trees. Tanned kids played Frisbee on the beach. They looked young and healthy.

I felt neither.

“Track?”

“Hmm?”

“I broke up with Gary.”

“I figured.”

Hortensia shook her head and her hair fanned in the breeze like red sails. “All that sex. I mean, it was exhausting. And
after all, it’s just sex, you know? Just another addiction.”

She beamed, the sun glimmering off her sunglasses.

A puzzled me stared back from her lenses. “Yeah. No. I think you’re crazy.”

A lady in a camping chair and a strip of cloth barely covering her underwear waved a manicured hand at me. “Your future for ten bucks, handsome,” she said.

“I already know my future.”

Hortensia clinked the ice in her cup. “Have you told her?”

“Told who?”

“Your girl. Don’t you have a girl?”

I didn’t reply. My legs kept walking.

“She’ll want to know.”

“Know what?”

“What you jus
t told me. What your doctor said.”

I said nothing. She sipped her drink until there was nothing more to sip and dumped the empty cup in the first trash bin. A bum
s sitting next to it gave her a toothless smile.

“So? Are you gonna tell her?”

“Jeez, Hort. What’s there to tell? Docs say all sorts of stuff. Doesn’t mean they’re always right.”

She stopped to pull a hairpin out of her skirt pocket. She held the pin between her lips, gathered her hair up and collected it at the nape of her neck. Her hair smelled warm under the sun. Her white hands still carried the scent of acrylic paints and turpentine. “Your doctor told you what he should’ve told you from the beginning: you’ve got a genetic condition and nobody really knows what’s going on. That’s all there is. Now, if you’d listen to me, you’d turn vegetarian, do yoga, and go see a homeopathy practitioner.”

I laughed. “Right. And convert the Pope to Islam. Anything else?”

The hair bun c
ame undone and she didn’t bother pulling it back together. “You should quit your job. That life style of yours—it’s just insanely stressful. Think of all the toxins it adds to your system. Go on a detoxifying diet. I have a friend who drinks a gallon of cranberry juice every day. It’s done miracles for her.”

I acted on instinct as soon as it
darted past my peripheral vision. I grabbed her arm, pushed her away, and caught the Frisbee midair, half a second before it would’ve split her forehead.

One of the tanned kids
playing on the beach came running toward us. “Hey, that was a great catch! Wanna join us?”

Hortensia beamed. “Why not?” She shook the flip-flops off her feet and stared at me.

I gave her the Frisbee. “You go ahead. I’m not in the mood.”

She stepped closer and brushed her lips against mine. I felt like basking in that kiss a minute longer but she didn’t let me. “You’ll be fine,” she said. She picked up her flip-flops and ran in the sand, red hair fanning and skirt flapping in the breeze.

I watched her play for a couple of minutes, then left.

You’ll be fine
.

The tarot lady had found a client with matching piercings and complementary tattoos. She held his hand while talking around an unlit cigarette. Whatever his future held, it must have been hilarious, because they both laughed heartily, their faces golden in the afternoon sun.

The rappers had started their show, the line at the hotdog stand had doubled. The sun was coming down, blinking through the frazzled tops of the palm trees, and yet the evening was still young, naïve, and careless.

I thought of going home, but my car thought otherwise.

And cars are like women. You can try and say no, but once they make up their mind there’s nothing else you can do but tag along.

*  *  *

Diane didn’t answer the door right away. The house was dark and silent, but I knew where she was and what she was doing. I could smell her from the door, in her white jogging sweats, nursing a tub of ice cream in front of the TV.

I rang the doorbell again. A couch spring sighed. Fuzzy socks brushed on wood floors. I stared
at the shut door, waiting. A bolt turned, once, twice. The security chain slid and dangled with a clink against the jamb. She opened slowly.

“Hey,” I said.

A smile cracked through her shell and tinged her voice. “Hey,” she replied.

She stood there, chewing the inside of her cheek, making me want to chew the other side. And then she opened the door all the way, and when she did, I inhaled her fully, her clothes, the familiarity of her pheromones, the intimacy of her body. I stepped inside, closed the door behind me and pulled her to me. She didn’t hold back, not when I kiss
ed her, not when I slid my hand inside her shirt. The scent of her naked skin enveloped me, snippets of me entangled in it.

Her voice crooned in my ears, her words mingled into a melody of verses, was it real? Or was I dreaming, when I heard her whisper,
I want to be part of you, part of your thoughts, your gestures, the funky way you raise your brow and tilt your head whenever I say something you don’t approve of. The way your jaw tightens when you feel strongly about something, the way you fiddle with your fingers when something’s bothering you.

I want to be part of every nook in your brain, every breath you take
.

Every one of my breaths... If only sh
e knew… How densely she inhabited every breath I swallowed…

I can smell everything of you: the root of your hair, the arch of your eyebrows, the locks tucked behind yo
ur ears, the flesh of your lips. I can smell the air you breathe in and breathe out, the different gradients of your skin, like different textures in a quilt, salty on your face and lips, sweet between your breasts, and spicy on the inside of your arms.

I watched her make breakfast the next morning with a strange lightness in my head, a forgotten familiarity encoded in her gestures. How long have I been lost in my Odyssey before finding home in this one moment?

TWENTY-FOUR

____________

Sunday, July 19

I stepped out of the shower, stuck my nose into my armpits and grinned. I’d used Diane’s body wash and now I smelled like her. I towel-dried my hair, wrapped the towel around my loins and
walked to the bedroom. Diane’s voice rang from downstairs. On the phone, I thought. I picked up my pants from the chair and slid them on.

“Can you call him, Ma’am? We really need to talk to him
now
.”

I froze. Male voice. At the door. Too far away to smell him. The way he said “now”…
A cop
. I ran to the window and looked down. A gray sedan was parked in the driveway, behind my Charger. A plainclothes cop stood by my vehicle and leaned to peek through the windows.

“Hey!” I yelled.

He looked up at me. “This your car?”

“Fucking is!”

“Can you come down and unlock it?”

What the hell
?

I clipped the pancake holster to my waistband, slid in the Glock, and took a peek down from the top of the stairs. I could only see Diane’s back, at the door. She hadn’t let them in. The guy she’d been talking to was still holding his badge.

Diane protested. “It’s Sunday. And he’s not even on call.”

“Sorry, Ma’am. It’s an emergency.”

She sighed, asked them to wait, and closed the door. Her temper preceded her up the stairs in angry whiffs. “You didn’t tell me you were on call!”

“I’m not. Where are they from?”

“Pacific Community.”

I stormed back into the bedroom, grabbed my shirt, back-up and extra mags.

“What happened?” Diane asked.

“No idea. But they didn’t call my cell phone or my watch commander. I don’t even know how they found out I was here. They just showed up—
something’s wrong.”

“So then you don’t have to go.”

“You don’t get it, D. If they wanted to call me on duty, they’d call the watch commander. There’s something else going on, and it doesn’t look good. I’ll call you when I find out,” I said, and kissed her.

*  *  *

“Sorry to ruin your party, pal.”

Detective John Sakovich smelled of menthol aftershave and Kool Blues. His hair was wavy, prematurely white, and disguised in a light blonde dye. He had a dull nose, equally dull eyes, and curly lips—lovely feature on a woman, disturbing on a man.

He said sorry again without meaning it and shared a sneer with his partner, Detective Chris Lang, a kid’s face on a short, burly body. They were both wearing plain clothes—shorts and polos—the butts of their firearms bulging underneath their shirts.

Lang
was driving, Sakovich attempting civilized conversation without trying too hard.

As I rode along, I stared at the back of their heads and simmered.

“I wish you’d tell me what this is about,” I said. 

“You’ll see when we get there.”

“I could’ve followed you with my own vehicle.”

“No worries, no worries,” Sakovich reassured me. “We’ll drive you back to your girl.”

Lang snickered. “Which one, the gal or the car?”

They laughed. I didn’t share their sense of humor.

It was a hazy morning. Traffic into town was fluid until we hit the Ten westbound and merged into the crowds of beach fanatics and Sunday surfers with their boards piled up on the car roofs. The skyline of downtown came in and out of the haze and was soon forgotten. For a long stretch of time there was only the intermittent blabbering of the radio and the monotone views of the Ten: billboards, gas stations, frazzled trees, electricity poles, more billboards, more gas station signs, sprawling malls, clustered apartment buildings, more billboards, and more gas stations.

Then the curbsides became high
er and greener and Detective Lang merged into the right lane and onto the Lincoln exit ramp and suddenly it was clear where we were going. I still didn’t know why but I had a hunch it wasn’t to throw a surprise party.

Henkins’s apartment building looked grayer than I remembered and the “Luxury” word in the wooden sign
saying “Sea View Luxury Apartment” looked even more concocted. Two LAPD cruisers were parked along the curb, and two officers stood at the bottom of the stairs to Henkins’s apartment. I looked up and a streamer of yellow tape hung from the doorjamb, gently flapping in the breeze.

Damn it
. 

I’d just been hit by a full load of shit.

*  *  *

Henkins was still where I’d left her, on the couch, hands wrapped around the glass of
Jameson. The glass was empty and the dog was gone. She was smiling. A strange, you-think-you’ve-fucked-me-but-I-really-fucked-you smile. There was a hole in the middle of her forehead, about half an inch in diameter. Small caliber, certainly not a hollow point, which would’ve blown her face off. She went peacefully, in a way. Probably saw the gun but was too drunk to react. Or maybe she no longer cared.

The glass I’d used was where I’d left it, with my nice set of prints and DNA. The kitchen was in the same mess
as the day before. The carpet stunk, the cabinets reeked, the place was a shack. Yet, I couldn’t see a sign of a struggle, forced entry, fight—nothing.

Killer comes, killer smiles, Henkins smiles back, killer shoots, killer leaves. The neighbor’s NASCAR speed race covers the blast of gunfire
(or maybe a silencer does, if the killer’s that conscientious), and the crowds coming and going from the beach camouflage him as one of many—the best disguise of all. And if said killer doesn’t make mistakes, he even has a nice scapegoat who’s happened to leave fingerprints and DNA on the scene.

Great
.  

“When?” I asked.

“Sometime yesterday,” Sokavich replied. “She’s already as stiff as a board. Couldn’t get the glass off her hands.”

Within character. Not even
when dead she’d let go of the booze.

“You’ve called the M.E., I suppose?”

“On his way.” He leered, I leered back.

Henkins didn’t smell too bad—all the alcohol she’d downed must’ve preserved her well—just ripe enough to be one day old, as Sakovich had guessed. I smelled the dog, the alcohol at the bottom of the empty glasses,
and the menthol of Sakovich’s Kool Blues impregnating his clothes.

“Damn,” I said. Maybe she wasn’t one of our finest, but she was still a cop.
One of ours
.

Sakovich
narrowed his eyes. “Always fucking enraging when a cop killer walks away like this.” He sat on the recliner, crossed his legs, reached for his breast pocket and produced a cig. He stuck the cig in his mouth and stared at me. “Have a seat.”

Lang
grabbed a chair from the kitchen. I could’ve grabbed the other chair but I didn’t want to get too cozy with these two. So I leaned against the wall next to the window. “Thanks, I’ll stand.” At least I could peek a strip of ocean from the window.

Sakovich nodded and lit his cig.

“You guys aren’t gonna call the SIDs?”

“In due time,” he replied
and puffed out smoke. The acrid reek of burnt menthol filled the room.

“When did you find her?”
I asked.

Lang
’s chair squeaked. “Hey, partner,” he said. “I thought
we
were gonna ask the questions.”

Sakovich pushed smoke out of his nose, lips curled around the cigarette butt. “My partner’s right, Presius. We’re gonna ask a coup
le of questions, you’re gonna answer, and if we like the answers, we’re done. If not, we go on asking more questions.”

“What do you want to ask?”
Like I didn’t know
.

I’d called the watch commander yesterday, ri
ght after leaving David’s house to get Henkins’s address. From there, how many people got ahold of the fact that I’d seen her? From the looks of it, the killer and I were the last ones to see her alive.

I thought of the anonymous call I’d received yesterday morning.
Your genes are going to kill you
. Was I being stalked, framed, targeted, or all of the above?

“When did you last see her?” Lang asked, baby face bobbing over a taurine neck.

I smiled, look
ed out the window. Red roofs peaked here and there from a green sea of treetops. “Look. Let’s cut the crap, okay? You dragged me here because you got wind I’d come to see her. I’m no cop killer and I’d be the hell of a stupid killer to let my watch commander know where I was going and then show up and whack her in the head.”

Sakovich’s curly lips stretched. “Things don’t always go as planned.”

Punching him in the face wouldn’t have gone as planned either, yet it would’ve given me a considerable amount of pleasure.

I said, “You really think I’d cold-bloodedly shoot a fellow cop for no apparent reason?”

Sakovich chewed his cigarette butt and said nothing. Lang flexed his biceps underneath his tight shirt, and Henkins sat on the couch, smiling, the cold glass of Jameson snuggled in her hands. Maybe we should’ve asked
her
who the hell did her in.

Down the street, an engine roa
red and then was killed. Lang got out of his chair, pushed the door open, and looked down the landing. “Coroner’s office,” he said.

Sakovich didn’t move.
“Great,” he said, squinting through the last billows of his Newport. “Means we’ll have to take Detective Presius for a visit to Pacific.”

*  *  *

Pacific Station is the artsy station. There are roses in the parking lot, pretty murals in the hallway, and a mosaic along the perimeter wall outside. Built in 2008, the mosaic says, “Through these gates pass great officers.”

Two of those great officers escorted me to the
squad room and had me sit at one of their desks. An officer with a “Hell, it’s Sunday” face came to take my guns for fire testing. The squad room was quiet except for the intermittent ticking of an electric typewriter. A hefty detective was sitting behind it, at an equally hefty desk. He gave me a quick once-over and then went back to his typing. At the end of the room a door with the plate “S.A. Zoltak, Captain III” stood ajar. A quick glimpse of a movement told me somebody was in there, probably keeping an ear on us.

My hosts confabulated while
I sat and twiddled my thumbs. They decided on a Dr. Pepper from the vending machine in the lobby. Sakovich gave Lang a dollar bill and asked me if I wanted one too. I replied I had plenty of dollar bills, I wanted a c-note instead. He didn’t look amused. Lang scuttled off, Sakovich slumped in his chair and stared at the papers on his desk with a face hung somewhere between boredom and annoyance.

My thoughts reeled back to the events of Saturday, searching for a detail I could’ve missed.

I’d seen David Lebeaux in Silver Lake in the morning. He’d given me an enigmatic photo of Charlie Callahan, which had an even more enigmatic story attached to it. The photo was fairly normal—the guy sitting on somebody’s couch and smiling—but what he’d said when he’d given it to David—“In case something happens”—puzzled me.

From Silver Lake I’d gone to Venice to see Henkins. Venice was the usual chaos of people coming and going. Anybody could’ve followed me, anybody could’ve gone up to Henkins’s apartment, anybody could’ve shot her and left unnoticed because that’s what anybodies are—unnoticeable. Sakovich had probably already knocked at every door in the building and come out blank.

The most disturbing part was what I’d learned from my chat with Henkins—likely the reason why she’d been shot. Somebody wanted the Callahan case closed, and closed quickly. How did the Byzantine Strangler fit into this? Was Callahan his first victim, and if so, why the pressure to close the case? Callahan must’ve been a very inconvenient victim, one that was bound to open up an old can of worms. Amy requested autopsy samples from Callahan’s postmortem, and now the request, according to Henkins, had vanished—the only link between Amy Liu and Callahan. So Henkins had thought of reproducing the connection in the form of a faked prescription bottle. She had succeeded, in a way, but it had also cost her life.

I’d despised her actions and now I felt sorry for her.

Lang came back with the Dr. Pepper, dragged a chair closer, uncapped the bottle with a hiss and brought it to his mouth. “So,” he said. “Where do we start from?”

The question seemed to awaken Sakovich from his mome
ntary daydreaming. He rapped a hand on the desk. “From the beginning.” He opened a drawer, retrieved a brand new pack of Kool Blues and unwrapped it, oblivious of the “No Smoking” sign hanging behind his head. “According to the conversation you had with the watch commander, you asked for Henkins’s address on Saturday July eighteen at 1:05 p.m. You said your current location was in Silver Lake. So, assuming Saturday traffic and all that, you should’ve gotten to Henkins’s place between 2:30 and 3:30.”