Serpent's Tooth (9 page)

Cindy said. “Yes, I
am
impulsive. But this wasn’t an
impulsive
decision. It’s really what I want.”

“How could you know?” Decker retorted. “You haven’t the slightest notion what it is to be a cop.”

Both women turned around as if he had intruded in their conversation. Fine with him! Let Rina handle it! Tempted
to escape and go burn the Porsche out at 120. Instead, he sat back down on the couch, rubbed his temples.

“How about this? We talk this over calmly. I tell you what being a cop is all about. You ask me questions. If you’re still gung-ho…after I get done with you…then you can go ahead and join.”

“What happened to
you
in ten minutes?” Cindy asked.

Rina said, “He overheard me talking about how much I loved him and it made him feel guilty for his outbursts.”

Decker grumped, “Got it all figured out.”

“True or false.”

Decker ignored her, turned to Cindy. “Well?”

Cindy said, “Daddy, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to talk to you about my decision. I’d love to hear about your experiences and your insights. But I’m in the Academy regardless.”

“That’s being very pigheaded.”

Rina interjected, “Peter—”

“She’s acting like a mule.”

“There’s no reason to name-call—”

“Why is she afraid of hearing the truth?” Decker said.

Cindy said, “Listen, guys, I’m really tired. I want to go home.”

“You tell your mom about this?”

Cindy sighed.

“You haven’t
told
her?” Decker began to pace. “Great. I don’t have enough garbage in my life dealing with friggin’ mass murderers—”

“Dad, I’m really sorry about that. It must be terrible. And I certainly don’t mean to add to your stress—”

“But you’ll do it anyway.”

No one spoke. Cindy sighed. “I’m going. We’ll talk later. When everyone’s calmer.” She smiled at her father. “Good night.”

Abruptly, Decker stopped walking, plunked himself down in a chair, and stared out the window, his eyes a thousand miles away.

“She said good night, Peter.”

“Good night, good night,” he muttered.

“Give her a hug, for godsakes.”

Cindy waited a beat. When Decker didn’t move, Rina said, “Peter, did you hear—”

“Yes, I heard you.”

Cindy felt her eyes start to moisten, but quickly she held back the tears. “That’s okay, Rina. Everyone needs their space. Even parents.”

Again, she waited a moment. When Decker didn’t move, she bade Rina good night and left quietly. Soon the car’s engine faded to nothingness. Rina broke the silence.

“You should have given her a hug, Peter,” Rina rebuked him. “Your intransigence was nasty. God forbid, suppose she has an accident or something. How would you feel?”

“Horrible. I’d never forgive myself.”

“So how could you let her leave like that!”

He turned to her, his own eyes moist. “Because…I was afraid if I hugged her, I would have never let her go.”

The temperature in
the office was arctic. Why did the city feel it necessary to keep the station house in a deep freeze? Or maybe it was just Decker’s mood. Because things weren’t going well. He sat at his desk, looking out at a wall of eyes. His Homicide team arcing around him. Protective. Like a moat. His brain pounded. With any luck, ibuprofin would work its magic. He nodded for Oliver to begin.

Scott scanned his notes, hand raking through his black hair. “Loo, we’ve gone through Estelle’s room to room, wall to wall, floor to floor, ceiling to ceiling. Neither Dunn nor I could find enough empty magazines at the scene to account for all the bullets and casings.”

Decker’s eyes glanced at the newspaper on his desk. A couple of days had passed, but Estelle’s was still front-page news. He spoke quietly. “Would it help if you looked again?”

“We were very thorough.” Marge smoothed out the leg of her beige pants. She wore lightweight fabrics today—white cotton shirt, viscose pants. But if the weather continued its cooling trend, it would be time for the wools. “I’ll show you our grid maps if you want. Right now it doesn’t look like much…a mass of dots.”

“We marked every place where we extracted a bullet or found an empty casing,” Oliver explained.

Bert Martinez twirled the ends of his bushy mustache,
his stocky frame bowing the seat of the folding chair. “Whole damn case is starting to smell fishy. Anyone show the Loo Harlan’s autopsy report?”

Decker sat up. “When did that come in?”

“You were in a meeting with the mayor, city council, and Strapp,” Marge said. “We tried paging you…”

Decker grimaced. He’d forgotten to pick up a new pager.

“How’d that go?” Oliver was concerned. “Are our asses on the line?”

“Why should our asses be on the line?” Martinez asked. “We’ve got the perp…of sorts.”

“Lawsuits, right?” Oliver said. “Police should have showed up sooner, right? If they had, more lives would have been saved, right? What was time of arrival on that one? Something like two minutes?”

“First cruiser arrived in two-twenty-eight,” Webster said.

Oliver said. “Am I right, Deck?”

“Close.”

“No matter what happens, we’ll get blamed. Earthquake could drop the city into the center of the earth, it would be our fault.”

“For the time being, the Detective division isn’t a point of concern.” Decker paused. “But if this turns out to be…how should I say this? If this is something more than a straightforward mass murder, the focus will shift to us. Who has that autopsy report?”

“That would be me.” Webster handed the folder to Decker, his blue eyes focused, alert. Today, Tom was dressed in a black suit, sunglasses dangling from his jacket pocket. Looked more FBI than LAPD with his perma-pressed Anglo good looks. Suave manner. But Decker didn’t hold it against him. Webster was a damn good cop.

Decker thumbed through the pages, eyes working like strobes. “What should I be looking for?”

Webster drawled, “The bullet that killed Harlan Manz. It was fired at a range consistent with a distance of around two to two and a half feet—”

“
What
!” Decker raced through the report. “Where?”

“Page eleven or twelve. I marked it with a pencil.”

Decker fast-forwarded to the paragraph. Read it once, then read it again. He sat back in his chair, ran a hand down his face.

Martinez said, “I called up the morgue…asked if they were sure about that distance.”

“And?”

“They were sure. Said that if the gun had been fired at a closer range, more damage would have been done to the brain.”

Webster said, “Bigger entry and exit holes, more tearing and ripping, more extensive powder burns on the hands and temple.”

“So when Harlan fired, he looked something like this?” Oliver made a gun with his fingers, extended his arm from his shoulder, then flexed his wrist so that his fingers were pointing back to his temple. “What’s this, guys? About three feet?”

“Anyone have a measuring tape?” Marge asked.

Decker pulled one from his desk, gave it to Marge.

Marge measured. “Thirty-seven inches. Bend your elbow a little bit, Scotty.”

Oliver complied, his elbow making a hundred-and-fifty-degree angle. “Now I’m pointing over my head.”

“So lower your arm.” Martinez got up, positioned Oliver as if he were a Gumby. “There. About like this. That looks like two and a half feet.”

Marge measured. “Thirty-one inches to be exact.”

Webster said, “Now point to your head.”

Oliver did so, maintained the pose. They stared at him.

Marge said, “Might be me, but I think he looks awkward.”

Martinez said, “He looks ridiculous. You want to pop yourself, you put the gun to your temple. You don’t hold it two feet away.”

Marge said, “You know, I could understand someone holding the gun away from his head if he had doubts or wasn’t used to a firearm. Almost like an avoidance thing.”

“Maybe at a little distance,” Martinez said. “But not in
the position Scotty’s in. Unless you like contorting.”

“Maybe he had short arms,” Marge suggested.

“Not that short,” Martinez answered.

“Could it have been a misfire?” Oliver asked.

Martinez made a face. “You mean he was aiming for someone and caught himself in the
head
?”

“No. I mean the gun just accidentally went off.”

“Catching him square in the temple?” Marge was dubious.

“Excuses, excuses.” Webster shook his head. “Why aren’t we saying what we’re all thinkin’?”

“Two shooters,” Oliver said.

“Just what you said yesterday, Loo,” Marge said.

Oliver said, “You did?”

Decker replied, “I was looking over some of the victims’ autopsy reports. Some of the bullet trajectories were inconsistent with a one-killer theory.”

“And you didn’t like the number of bullets we recovered.”

“A lot for one shooter,” Webster said. “Even for someone using a double automatic. What did we recover? Something like two hundred bullets?”

Martinez said, “Two killers means Estelle’s was planned.”

Oliver said, “What do you mean by planned, Bert?”

“Harlan went into Estelle’s with the intention of killing someone specific. He and his cohort masked it by popping others. Like putting a bomb in an airplane to collect insurance.”

“A hit gone bad,” Marge said. “If so, next step is to figure out who the intended target was.”

Webster said, “So y’ all take a look at the victims.”

Decker said, “We need to look at the victims who might have crossed paths with Harlan in other capacities.”

Marge reached into her oversized purse and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Which brings us up to date with my current assignment. Discovering which victims—if any—belonged to Greenvale Country Club.”

“What’s this?” Webster asked.

Decker filled them in on Harlan’s job at the country club, on his conversation with Barry Fine, and on yesterday’s brainstorming with Marge. “Harlan Manz worked at Greenvale about two years ago. You know how snobs can be. Treating the hired help as nonentities. I was trying to determine if Harlan had a long-standing grudge against one of the restaurant’s victims.”

Oliver said, “Deck, if a grudge from Greenvale was the motive behind Estelle’s shooting, why didn’t Harlan shoot up the club?”

“Maybe security was too tight. Look, I don’t know any more than you do. But something’s hinky here.”

Oliver asked, “So you’re thinking that one of Estelle’s victims offended Harlan at the club
and
at the restaurant. And that’s why he went batshit?”

Decker said, “Just trying to find a connection.”

Marge asked, “Maybe you’d like to hear if there
are
any connections?”

Decker laughed. “We’re going on with these flights of fancy and we don’t even have facts. What do you have?”

Marge settled herself. “Okay. Table number twenty-two: People there were from Ashman/Reynard. A Realtor named Wendy Culligan was pitching to a bunch of Japanese businessmen. Some of the businessmen were murdered, but she survived…which made my job of asking questions a lot easier. The firm is a corporate member of Greenvale. Has been for the fifteen years since the club opened.”

“Is she a member?” Oliver asked.

“Through her business. Wendy’s been at the club maybe six times…goes there for power lunches. Theoretically, she could have crossed paths with Harlan.”

Oliver said, “But she’s still alive, Margie. She obviously wasn’t the target of a hit.”

Webster said, “Or maybe Harlan missed.”

“So what does Greenvale have to do with a bunch of Japanese businessmen who probably never set foot inside its doors?” Martinez asked.

Marge shrugged. “Well, they were making deals with Ashman/Reynard, Bert. Maybe Harlan was resentful of
some of the realtors. So maybe he was trying to screw up the agency or block the deal.”

Decker wrote as he spoke. “What else do we have?”

Marge said, “Then we have Walter Skinner, the actor. He was also a member of Greenvale.”

Martinez said, “Now that was a real shame. I used to love him in
High Mountain
. Anybody remember that show?”

“Yo,” Oliver said. “Saturday morning, ten o’clock.”

“You coulda set your watch by me, I was that loyal a viewer,” Martinez said. “Remember the stampedes? Each episode had at least one stampede. All that sand and dirt and stomping hooves. Scared the shit outta me when I was a little boy.”

“Y’all see
The Lion King
?” Webster asked. “Took my son to see it. They had a cartoon stampede. Scared the shit outta him. Had nightmares for weeks.”

Oliver said, “Yeah,
High Mountain
always had a stampede or a twister. Couple times it was both.”

“Yeah, I remember that show!” Martinez said.

“The one where the wagon train stopped in Laredo, Texas,” Decker added.

“That’s the one!” Oliver said, bringing his hands to a clap. “God, that brings back memories. Man, wind was whooshing all over the place. And there was Walter—aka Cattle Foreman Kirk Brown—riding high in the saddle, barking orders, doing a jig with his horse, trying to bring in all those raging dogies while a tornado was blowing everything to shit.”

Marge said, “Maybe we could get back to the business at hand?”

The men stared miserably at her. Decker held back a smile. “So Walter was also a member of Greenvale?”

“Yes. A founding member,” Marge said. “Both he and his companion were murdered in their seats.” She looked at Decker. “Their table was right next to the Garrisons’.”

“Ah, interesting.” Decker took notes. “I haven’t gone over their entrance and exit wounds. Be interesting to see if it matches the patterns of the Garrisons.”

“Skinner and his companion…” Webster paused. “As opposed to a wife. By any chance, is there a wife?”

Marge said. “Yes, there is. Adelaide Skinner. I haven’t talked to her yet.”

The room went quiet.

Oliver grinned. “So the old goat was stepping out on her.”

“It doesn’t mean he deserved to die,” Marge said.

“Certainly
I
don’t think so. But his wife may have had other ideas.”

“So she hired someone to whack him by shooting up a restaurant?” Webster made a face. “How old is she anyway?”

“Seventy-seven,” Marge answered.

“Y’all picture a little seventy-seven-year-old lady telling someone to massacre thirteen innocent people just to get to her old man?”

“Maybe she hired out without knowing what the killers were going to do,” Oliver said.

Martinez said, “So they decided to execute the hit by attacking an entire restaurant? Pretty clumsy.”

“Worked in the past for the Mafia,” Oliver said.

Martinez added, “Then, for a topper, one of them decides to whack the other?”

“More money for himself,” Oliver said. “Plus someone to pin the blame on.”

Webster said, “Is Walter’s wife a member of Greenvale?”

“Yes, of course,” Marge said.

“Let’s slow it down,” Decker said. “We’re getting wild with our speculations. Any other connection, Marge?”

“Linda and Ray Garrison. From the people I’ve talked to, it’s clear that the couple was worth beaucoup bucks.”

“So who inherits the estate?”

“Don’t know for sure, but they have two adult children, a son and a daughter. David Garrison is twenty-six. And guess what? He has a record. Drug arrests. First time was probation. Second time, he served two years. He’s now out on parole. I’ve got a call in to his officer.”

“Good going, Dunn,” Webster said.

“Daughter Jeanine is completely different. Twenty-eight. A patron of the arts and theater and ballet. Very big in society events…raising money for charities. Now get this, guys! She specifically raises charity money with
tennis
matches.”

Oliver said, “Didn’t you say that Harlan taught tennis at Greenvale?”

“Yes, I did.” Decker’s intercom rang. He excused himself, took the call. A rape. Everyone from Sex Crimes was busy in the field. Did he want to send down someone from CAPs? Decker turned to Marge. The woman had been a top-notch Sex Crimes detective for six years. He had almost felt guilty when he pulled her away from the detail to follow him into Homicide. After the call was completed, he looked at Marge. “I need someone with experience, Detective Dunn.”

Marge checked her watch. “Sure, I can catch it.”

“Thanks.”

“Are we done here?”

“For the most part,” Decker answered. “Just let me get a couple of assignments out. Bert, you remember Walter Skinner as Walter Skinner the actor. Why don’t you go out to his house and feel out the wife?”

“Feel her up?” Oliver said. “Feel
who
up?”

“
Out
,” Decker said. “Feel her
out
. What are you doing now, Scotty?”

“I got a court case in a half hour. Meryl Tobias.”

Martinez groaned. “Mr. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ What a stupid shit!”

“At least he was sorry,” Marge said.

“Don’t help Mrs. Tobias.”

Decker said, “What’s the DA going for?”