The Crime Writer (13 page)

“T
his is a fingerprint lifted off a piece of evidence found at the Kasey Broach crime scene. It belongs to a convicted felon, Richard Collins. As a free citizen, I am going to his residence to ask a few questions. I think you should accompany me.”

Cal stared back at me through his screen door, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He wore a wife-beater that showed off thick shoulders marked with Calvin and Hobbes tattoos that had probably been a good idea when he was eighteen and drunk. The tape lift and computer disk, visible through an evidence bag, made a far more dramatic impression than the Spago take-out bag had the last go-round.

He palmed the screen open. “You out of your fucking mind?”

“Pronounced so by a jury of my peers.”

“You have no peers, asshole. Talk.”

I gave him a full account, leaving out Lloyd. His silence indicated his interest. Or he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open.

When I finished, he asked, naturally, “How’d you run the print?”

“I just recognized the whorl pattern. Don’t you?”

He grimaced, entertained by my wit. “You sure you didn’t leave that fingerprint yourself? In a mystically induced trance, of course?”

“I’m currently certified one hundred percent brain-tumor-free.”

“Aside from your overactive imagination.”

“My overactive imagination didn’t produce this.” A shake of the bag, in case he’d failed to notice it.

“The chain of custody is shot—”

“Fuck chain of custody. It’s been blowing around there all week because your colleagues didn’t find it. This isn’t about making a case right now, it’s about asking some questions. Which I’m going to do.”

He tried to take the Ziploc, but I pulled it back.

He said, “Give it to me. I’ll look into it.”

“Look, pal, you had a chance to play RHD detective when I came to you yesterday, but you were too busy bemoaning violence in the media. So this is now a citizen’s investigation. I’m going to visit Mr. Collins, and there’s no law that can stop me from doing so. If you’d like to come, I think it might be beneficial to your career.”

“You said you were a free citizen. Let me remind you, you’re a
relatively
free citizen.” He held out his hand for the bag, but I kept it. “Determined fucker, aren’t you?”

“Are you driving or am I?”

He stared at me for maybe ten seconds. That’s a long time to be stared at, especially when you’re staring back. I bet he regretted not having his tough-guy sunglasses to complete his expression. Finally he stepped aside from the door, letting it swing open in unspoken invitation. On the couch behind him, I could see the well-thumbed pages of my manuscript.

He turned, walking away. “Let me grab my badge. It’ll impress Mr. Collins.”

Christened the Ronald Reagan Freeway in ’94 by nostalgic legislators, the 118 runs unglamorously through the north San Fernando Valley to Simi. Cal stared out his car window as Granada Hills rolled by in a blur of strip malls and tract housing. We’d stopped by the station for him to rescan the print. When Richard Collins and his Northridge address had popped up on the computer screen, Cal had glanced over at me and said, deadpan, “Nice eye, Danner.”

We took in the passing view, indistinguishable from one mile to the next. Away from the city, beyond the fringes of manufactured cool, these neighborhoods lacked even the glamour of the urban wastelands, the Crenshaws and South Centrals and Comptons, where dead presidents change hands and bullets crackle and tricked-out Escalades brighten dingy blocks. I wondered if the people out here resented the blandness. The year-round sun, beach access, and just-right humidity ensure they don’t even get to suffer.

Maybe that’s what had made Richard Collins murderous. An address at Corbin and Parthenia.

After a while I realized that something more than the scenery had soured Cal’s mood. “Why so cranky?”

A pause as he considered whether we were friends again. “Annoying date. This broad could be from one of your books. If you wrote horror.”

“
That
annoying?”

“‘When Patches meows like this, she’s saying she’s hungry. When Patches meows like
this,
she’s saying she loves me.’”

I laughed. He didn’t. “Nothing doing with the ex, huh?” I asked.

“She’s remarried. To an agent. He’s got a punch-me face, and he’s named Jeremy.
Jeremy.
” Cal shook his head.

I decided not to ask any more questions.

We exited the freeway and pulled up on an apartment building that looked like every other apartment building we’d passed. He climbed out, but I sat for a moment, the reality of the situation sinking in. We were going to knock on the door of a man who might have killed two women and set me up. I wondered what was keeping my fingers from the door handle. A cold blade of doubt in the base of my spine. What if we discovered that Collins was our guy but that he’d framed me for only
one
murder? What if the Bertrands’ hateful courtroom stares proved to be justified?

Cal came around the car and leaned over my open window. “Lose your nerve?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe you should. We knock-noticed a guy last year who crapped in his hands so no one would want to cuff him.”

“What gets someone to that place?”

“Daddy put out cigarettes on his forehead. Mom didn’t shower him with affection. Too much Black Sabbath before puberty.” Cal straightened up. “Sometimes there is no good reason. Sometimes people are just fucked up.”

Yeah, I thought, but reasons are more interesting.

He started for the stairwell, and I had to move to catch up. His hand darted inside his jacket, unsnapping the break on his shoulder holster. One of Apartment 11B’s windows overlooked the floating hall. The pane was shoved back a few inches, but the curtains were drawn.

Standing to the side of the jamb, Cal knocked with the butt of his flashlight. “Richard Collins? LAPD. Please open up.”

A clattering inside, perhaps a chair falling over.

“Open up, please. We just have a few questions.”

“The hell you guys want?”

“Sir, open this door
now.
” Thumping footsteps across the room. “Last chance, then I’m sending in tear gas.” Glancing over at me, Cal shook his head reassuringly.

He strode down the hall, lifted a fire extinguisher from its mount, and returned. He pulled the pin and tossed it to me across the door, then loosed a carbon-dioxide blast through the window’s gap. A shriek, and then Collins stumbled into the hall, arms raised.

Cal spun him against the wall and frisked him. “Let’s go back inside.”

The apartment smelled of pot. As Cal stood Collins up against the wall, I strolled around the front room. A table had been pushed into the corner by the alcove kitchen. A fork protruded from a pot of reheated SpaghettiOs. A chair lay overturned, resting on the bright orange button-up shirt that had been slung over it.

“I didn’t do anything, man. I can’t have a third strike. I can’t.”

Cal asked, “Where were you the night of January twenty-second?”

To his credit, Collins looked baffled. “I don’t know. When was that?”

In the sink, shoved halfway down the disposal guard, was a dime bag. I glanced up from the sink, and Collins was looking over at me, terrified.

“Thursday, three nights ago,” Cal said.

“I was working.”

“Between ten-thirty and two?”

I walked over and righted the chair, pulling up the still-hooked shirt with it.

“
Working,
man. You can check my time card, talk to my manager. I’m a stocker. I work nights.”

“Where?”

I looked at the familiar logo stitched into the button-up’s fabric at the breast. To say I felt chagrin would have been a significant understatement. Cal looked over and caught sight of the uniform just as Collins said, “Home Depot.”

Cal chuckled once, but it caught fire and he doubled over, hands on his knees, laughing.

Collins said, “Wait a minute. What’s going on?”

From the kitchen I asked what was, in hindsight, a stupid question: “You remember selling anyone electrical tape?”

“I don’t work the floor. I just unload. Electrical tape, sure. Crates of it. Listen, if you talk to my manager, please don’t tell him about my record. I lied on the application. I’m sorry. I couldn’t get a fresh start, not with the drug charges.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Cal said.

Collins was still staring at me. “I’d be so fucked if I got a third strike. Twenty-five to life. I got child support I gotta pay. I been clean for anything that matters. I been clean.”

In my fervor I’d made a big leap, transforming Collins from pothead to savage killer. In doing so, I was ready to fuck up his life worse even than mine, and he didn’t have a handy brain tumor to get him off the hook. Pretending to wash my hands, I let the water push the Baggie of marijuana down into the disposal.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

Cal didn’t talk to me as we walked back down the stairs to the car. Before leaving he’d gotten the Home Depot manager on the phone and confirmed Collins’s hours the night of January twenty-second. I’d taken away one piece of information, but it came loaded with so many variables as to be nearly useless.
If
the wrapping had come from the killer’s electrical tape, then he’d bought it at the Home Depot in Van Nuys.
If
he’d shopped close to home, that would make him a Valley boy. Two
if
s weren’t going to advance the home team’s cause significantly.

We climbed into the car. I expected Cal to yell, but he just looked over and smirked. “Don’t quit your day job.”

Lloyd called me on my cell phone as I was driving home from Cal’s. “How’d it go?”

I told him.

“Ouch,” he said. “Sorry to pile on, but the DNA tests came back from Broach’s body and the drop cloth we found in your trash. It’s yours. Not that it undermines your alibi, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

I thanked him and hung up. Heading home reminded me of my damaged front door and Preston’s note about the dangers it might leave me vulnerable to. I called information and got one of the alarm companies I’d seen advertised on metal posts shoved into neighborhood flower beds.

“Sorry, pal. Can’t get someone in to wire you until Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.”

“You sure you don’t work for the phone company?”

“Sorry?”

“Never mind.”

I gave him my address and made an appointment. Then I called Home Depot, figuring they owed me one or I them, beeped my way through an elaborate menu, and left a message for the door department that of course stood no chance of being returned but left me feeling as if I’d fulfilled due diligence in addressing my editor’s notes.

Richard Collins. Professional electrical-tape handler. Don’t quit your day job indeed.

I decided I’d give myself the rest of the drive home to feel discouraged. But I blew my deadline. I was too worn down for a cigar on the deck, so I plopped into my reading chair, mulling over my missteps. After a while I tired of myself and clicked on the TV.

Humidity was low, terrorist chatter was high. Another day in America. Guess what was reairing on TNT?
Hunter Pray.
Sure enough, there was Johnny Ordean, wearing an ill-fitting priest’s collar and holding a scumbag’s dripping head above a rank toilet bowl.
“Cough it up or we go another round on the baptism.”

Good God.

The resultant gurgling spurred my thumb to action. A seductively named hurricane was ravaging the Georgia coast. Newscasters were emboldening the terrorists. A teen singer had been in a fender bender at Fairfax and Le Brea, and a news unit was there to capture each cracked taillight and curse word.

While I’d been occupied, public attention had moved on.

I punched the button and sat in the relative darkness. There is no silence quite as plaintive as that of an empty house when the television turns off. Now that the media were no longer mistreating me, I felt left out.

The back cushions on the couch, strewn by Preston, jarred loose a recollection of Genevieve. Before we’d watch a movie or an opera on PBS, she’d pull apart the whole damn couch like a kid building a fort, and rearrange it to her liking, which usually entailed transforming it into a faux-suede nest, elevating her like Cleopatra on the barge. From her regal perch, she studied me now with those imploring French eyes.

“I’m working on it,” I said. “Everyone has setbacks. Remember Waterloo?”

She vanished at the ring of my cell phone.

“Who’s the mack daddy?”

“Barry Bonds?” I guessed.

A sound of disgust. “Chic Bales, that’s who.”

I told him about Richard Collins, the innocent, pot-smoking Home Depot felon.