The Crime Writer (9 page)

T
hey kept me alone in that interrogation room for an hour and forty-five minutes. For the first while, I sat on the chair with the crime-scene photo, which they’d thoughtfully left behind to keep me company. On the back was printed
Kasey Broach, 1/22, 2:07
A.M.
The detectives had wasted no time in getting to me. When I couldn’t take the gruesome picture any longer, I had little to do but stare at my warped reflection in the mirror. The distortion amplified the way my hair bristled above the scar line, or maybe that was how it really looked.

My camcorder was digital, with a 120-hour memory, which meant that it had been recording seamlessly since I’d set it up, capturing me snoozing, changing, gargling. For better or worse, it would hold the answer. Me, dozing peacefully. Or sleepwalking into a murder.

After a while I moved the table and chair back to the middle of the room. As I paced, I caught myself inadvertently running the pads of my fingers along the line of my hidden scar. At the hour mark, I told the mirror that I was going to urinate in the corner if someone didn’t take me to a bathroom. A moment later the door popped open and a sullen rookie led me down the hall, then brought me back.

Kaden and Delveckio finally returned, carrying chairs and looking dyspeptic. At least Kaden did; from what I knew of Delveckio, that was just his normal expression. Reading their faces, I felt nothing short of elation.
Wudn’t me. Wudn’t me.

They sat opposite. The folder in Kaden’s lap carried a sweat mark from his hand.

“We saw the footage,” Kaden said. “The lab seems to believe it wasn’t doctored. No glitches in the continuity.”

I blew out a breath that kept going. The relief was so intense it made me light-headed.

Kaden was talking. “But you could’ve had an accomplice. Or maybe the coroner’s time of death was inaccurate. You were off the tape for just about all of the afternoon and the early part of the night.”

“I have alibis. I was at a friend’s for the afternoon, then my editor came over.”

“This still doesn’t play right,” Kaden said. “Why’s an innocent guy—an innocent guy that all the evidence at the crime scene just weirdly happens to nail—set up an airtight alibi?”

“Because I thought I might have chopped my own foot in my sleep, and I was worried I was losing my mind.”

Kaden laughed. “‘Losing’?”

“Let’s start this over.” I extended my hand. “Drew.”

Kaden stared at my hand like he was about to spit on it, but after a moment he nodded. Delveckio grudgingly followed suit.

“Okay. You don’t like me, and I’m not particularly fond of you guys.” I glanced at Delveckio. “Especially you.”

“Why especially me?”

“That insult-to-injury thing was lame. Kaden may posture more, but he cuts a more impressive swath, so I figure he’s entitled to it. But”—I paused for effect—“you’ve both got a case weighing on you. Maybe two. I’m stuck in this investigation. Uniquely so. I’m here, and I’m not lawyered up. So take advantage of the situation.”

“You know what I like even more than smart-ass Hollywood types?” Kaden asked. “Reopening cases I already closed.”

“If my case is closed, who killed Kasey Broach?”

My using her name set him back a moment, but then his eyes pulled to the crime-scene photo between us. “I don’t know, Danner—someone who has your exact hair, exact blood, and uses your trash can. So guess who we’re coming after when we figure out this digicorder crap and have probable cause again?”

Probably not the guy who framed me.

I stared at Kasey Broach’s corpse, wondering what, if any, was her connection to me. Or to Genevieve. Maybe there was a connection between Broach and the surviving Bertrands. Or maybe she’d been killed merely to set me up. Who had a motivation to see me locked up? That is, aside from the detectives right in front of me.
Had
Genevieve been seeing someone new, who didn’t think I should be driving the streets with impunity? Maybe Luc Bertrand had hired someone to bring me down by any means possible. Hard to believe with his droopy blue eyes, but hey, so was a brain tumor. My mind continued to spin, reeling in an agent I’d fired, a guy whose nose I’d accidentally broken on the basketball court, a bizarre letter I’d received from an anonymous reader after
Chainer’s Link.

“How can I help you look into this?” I asked. “Where do you start?”

Delveckio said, “We don’t have anything we can disclose at this point in time.”

“Did Genevieve and Kasey Broach have anything in common?”

“Grieving parents. Devastated younger sisters.” He shook his head. “I did the advise-next-of-kin for Adeline. I wish I’d borrowed your camcorder first so I could make you watch her reaction.”

I resisted giving him the reaction he was looking for. “So you haven’t found
any
connection between the victims?”

His grin faded, and the skin tensed around his eyes. “Just you.”

Kaden stood to leave, Delveckio rising on a slight delay.

“You find anything unusual in her bloodstream?” I asked.

They halted. Kaden pivoted, slowly. “Why would you ask that?”

“Two nights ago I felt really hazy when I woke up. I thought it was brain-tumor fallout or stress. But maybe I was drugged so someone could cut my foot.” I leaned back in the chair, folded my arms. “Take my blood.”

Delveckio raised his eyebrows at Kaden, who took two solemn steps back to his chair and sat. “Why’d you wake up so quickly, then? If you were drugged?”

“Dunno. I have a pretty good tolerance from my misspent youth. Can we run my blood?”

Kaden fished a cell phone from his pocket and dialed. “Kaden here. Get me Wagner.” He rose and walked out of the room.

“Lloyd Wagner’s on this case?”

Delveckio looked peeved to be stuck with me. “Of course. He worked the first murder, didn’t he? Isn’t that why you called him? You knew him from your trial and figured you could harass your way in?”

“I knew him before. He’s helped me on some projects.”

“Yeah, well, I think it’s safe to say he’s not interested in helping you anymore.”

Kaden’s voice hummed through the walls, but I couldn’t make out the words. Delveckio did his best not to make eye contact with me.

I asked, “On the footage did you notice…did you see me move anything from the nightstand?”

“Huh?”

“Something in a jar?”

“I was hoping this could get weirder.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

So my tumor had already crawled off by the time I set up the recorder. Which meant it had likely vanished around the time my foot had been cut. Another oddity to toss on the heap.

Kaden returned. “Would’ve cleared your bloodstream by now.”

I asked, “What would have?”

Kaden shifted from one foot to the other, giving me the stonewall.

“Come on. If I may have been drugged, at least tell me what I could’ve had in my system.”

“Xanax and sevoflurane. Alprazoblah-blah—that’s Xanax—is shorter-lasting. The other, too. It’s a knockout gas. ‘Rapid elimination from the bloodstream,’ the man says.”

“So how’d you catch it in Broach?”

“Quick response. Patrolman radioed in the body. We heard that it looked similar to Genevieve Bertrand, called in the cavalry so no one would trample evidence. Our criminalist had dropped a trace-evidence report at Rampart, was just a few blocks away having a burrito. Hot-assed it over to the crime scene. They always draw blood right off.”

Delveckio licked his dry lips. “Plus, Broach’s metabolism wasn’t working so fast when we found her.”

“Why give someone Xanax if you’re gonna knock them out?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t,” Kaden said. “We’re thinking she took it before bed.”

“So she was grabbed in her sleep?”

“Signs of a struggle.”

“The sevoflurane didn’t do the trick?”

“Or was given to her later.”

“Take her kicking and screaming and subdue her after?” I asked. Kaden shrugged, so I added, “What kind of struggle?”

“Sheets dragged off the mattress, stuff knocked from the nightstand, alarm clock lost its battery at ten twenty-seven.”

“How old-fashioned.”

“A battery-operated alarm clock?”

“The clue.”

“You have a suspicious mind.”

“Let’s make use of it.”

“We’re not gonna invite a key suspect to dick around in our investigation.”

“You don’t need to invite me anywhere. Just let me look at photos from the scene. See the body, how it was left. Maybe something’ll trip my memory.”

“Memory of
what
?” Kaden eyed me, then tapped Delveckio on the knee with his file. “Let’s go.”

“Whether you believe me or not, I don’t know what happened the night of September twenty-third. And whether you believe me or not, I want to know if I did it. You need answers. You’re professional interrogators. I assume you’re capable of getting what you want from me without giving up what you don’t want to.”

Kaden stared at me, then chuckled and tossed the file on the table, the papers spilling out. I spread them across the surface. They were laser printouts, pretty good resolution, with multiple duplicates of each shot.

Kasey Broach’s naked body had been dumped under a concrete freeway on-ramp. She lay on her back, chin tossed up and to the side as if she were trying to flip the hair from her face. A nasty abrasion mottled her right hip, and the skin looked split on her right cheek. Her wrists were bound with tape, her ankles with white rope. Around her, weeds pushed up from cracked asphalt. The skeleton of a fence remained in the background, chain-link sloughed from three remaining posts. A beater of a coupe sagged on slashed tires, windows smashed in, roof dented down to the headrests, hood dense with bird shit. Behind it on the sloping underbelly of the ramp, a graffiti artist had abandoned a work in progress.

A close-up showed Broach’s arms spotted with marks where flies had started their work. For some reason they underscored her death. So helpless, incapable of swatting a bug feasting on her.

I stared at Kaden. “‘The killer duplicated every specific’? Of Genevieve’s murder? Are you kidding me? He kidnapped a woman, drugged her, moved her body, stripped her, bound the wrists and ankles, and dumped her in a public place.”

“There are an alarming number of similarities,” Delveckio said. “As for the differences? We usually see an upward evolution as a killer grows more experienced, learns from prior mistakes.”

“You neglected to mention that earlier, when you were busting my door down. Why do you think she’s naked?”

“Growing bolder,” Kaden offered, studying me closely. “Could be part of a growing fantasy.”

“Or he stripped her for the bleach washdown,” Delveckio added, “which meant he knew we’d analyze the body for trace and foreign biologicals.”

“And? Was she raped?”

Delveckio shook his head.

“What’d you find?”

“Aside from your blood and your hair?” Kaden flipped through his notepad. He tapped his pen to the paper. “Ah, here it is: None of your fucking business.”

“Bruising at the wrists and ankles would indicate she was bound before the fatal stabbing, no?”

The detectives exchanged an irritated glance but didn’t respond. Crafty detective work, keeping me in the dark like this.

“The Sevoflurane. She was kept alive. Unlike Genevieve. Points to sadistic tendencies?” I returned their stares. “Blink twice if I’m getting warm. How about the abrasions on the hip and cheek? From being thrown out of the vehicle?”

Delveckio gave me the sour face, but Kaden just grinned his amusement. “You know, we got some experience with bodies,” he said. “Maybe even as much as you.” His cell phone chimed, and he glanced at it, then nodded at Delveckio and stood. “You’re not our partner. You’re not a cop. You’re a fucking writer. And, according to your
first
verdict, a killer. When we require your help, we’ll question you.”

As they gave me their backs, blocking the mirror’s view of me, I slid a handful of printouts from the table down into my lap. The move was purely, bizarrely instinctual.

Stealing evidence from an interrogation room in Parker Center. I was setting new standards for bad judgment.

Kaden paused at the door, his grand exit stymied, and came back for his photos, minus a few duplicates. He stepped into the hall beside Delveckio and nodded at one of their underlings, out of sight. “Get a full statement. Then kick him loose.”

The door slammed shut, and I was alone with my reflection and crime-scene photos stuffed down my pants.

C
hic dropped me off, nodding and touching the brim of his cap. “Will that be all, Miss Daisy?”

“You people are so well mannered.” I hopped out.

My trash can had been upended beside the house, garbage strewn along the side run. My sneakers crackled across the bits of glass in the entry. Two nights home, two intrusions. In my head I replayed the groggy house search after I’d awakened with the cut on my foot. Had my assailant been in the house with me? Or had he already slipped away? Had he approached from the street or hiked up the slope? I examined the sliding glass door for smudges that I might have overlooked in the darkness, then walked out onto the deck and peered over the railing as if I could distinguish lightly trampled ivy from un-trampled ivy. Back inside, I followed the washed-out blood footprints upstairs. The tape was of course missing from my newly cracked digital camcorder, a disappointment since I’d wanted to preserve for posterity my oh-shit face the instant before I’d been proned out by ninety-seven SWAT members. I guess future Danners would have to content themselves with late-night reruns of
Hunter Pray.

In my office the cops had left the drawers open, files and bills crammed back out of place or tossed on the floor. My mound of unread mail had been re-sorted, and they’d helpfully opened the items I hadn’t gotten to yet.

I took a steaming shower, the jets doing their best to blast Kasey Broach’s pallid face from my memory. Her curled hands, like fleshy claws. Her exposed arms spotted with insect bites. What would she have thought if someone had pulled her aside in third grade, or tenth, and told her that someday she’d wind up dumped under a freeway in Rampart? I thought about my so-called tough morning compared to the morning her family was still having, and it became startlingly clear that I had little to bitch about. I thought about the hot water I could still feel, the air I could still breathe. About Chic and Angela and Preston. How I had the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney and a jury that intelligently weighed my culpability. I was alive. I was free. I was healthy. What I felt was not guilt—no, not that—but, oddly, gratitude. And the inkling that from gratitude, not from anger or even guilt, could I pull myself out of where I’d landed.

I toweled off. A Post-it note on my mirror, written in Chic’s childish scrawl, quoted Eleanor Roosevelt:
You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.
Chic had sent me home from my newcomers’ meeting with it. It had fallen off and been retaped countless times.

Face everything. One day at a time. I could do that. I could do better than that.

The purloined crime-scene photos, rescued from my pants, sat on the counter beside my toothpaste tube. As I’d pointed out to Preston, I had no official leverage. But I had something in place of that, beyond my peculiar skill at thinking through mayhem, beyond my friends from various bizarre walks of life, beyond my list of contacts oddly suited for…well, this.

I had a story. Or at least the beginning of one.

But—as I’d asked myself last night—where to go from here? I stared at those pictures of Kasey Broach, dimpled from their illicit journey, and wanted to know why her corpse had intersected with my life. I clicked through my PalmPilot’s consultants list, compiled over the course of Derek Chainer’s career—Navy SEALs, cops, deputy marshals, assistant DAs, coroners, hard-boiled PIs, soft-boiled security guards, firemen, criminalists. Grabbing a pad from my nightstand drawer, I wrote down those who could bring relevant knowledge to bear. Beneath it I made a list of all the people who hated me or might want to do me harm.
The Bertrands. Genevieve’s ctional lover. Kaden and Delveckio.
A thought interrupted the scribbling: I’d arrived in this unenviable position because I’d cut a corner. I’d cut plenty of other corners in my life. The question was, which ones could be catching up with me now?

The doorbell rang. In my towel I greeted the messenger from my lawyers’ office, who bore my case files. Amazing the service a quarter mil will buy you.

The discovery process entitled me to the murder book LAPD had assembled in preparation for my trial—full insider evidence for Genevieve’s case. I set it on the kitchen table, which wobbled its appreciation, and flipped through.

The inserts were familiar and foreign at the same time. They seemed from another phase of my life, though my final verdict had been handed down just the day before yesterday.

Dragging his considerable haunches across the deck, Gus paused to point his black marble eyes at me. He disappeared into the ivy an instant before a swooping hawk aborted its dive to land on the deck rail. One squirrel step ahead of the reaper.

You impact the plot. Or the plot impacts you.

I pulled one of my novels of suitable thickness from my vanity shelf and rammed it beneath the kitchen table to even out the legs. I dressed in sweatpants and a ripped T-shirt I’d had since college, picked up the trash that LAPD had left alongside the house, swept up the entry, taped over the shattered panes in the front door, and vacuumed up the broken glass.

I circled my desk, sat down, shoved the armrests of my chair out a click, grabbed a Bic pen and slid it behind my left ear. My notepad I placed to my left. I set the murder book to my right, beyond the mouse pad, and removed the lab records, police reports, investigative notes, and coroner’s report and spaced them evenly across my desktop.

Dirk Chincleft ain’t got shit on me.

I’d done the first wave of research. I knew the characters. I had a premise. I’d unearthed a few leads. So I pulled up to my desk and did the only damn thing I’d ever done passably.

I wrote.