Billy Straight

24

After Breshear left, she called Empty Nest and asked for Kelly Sposito, the current flame. Things going well with the wife meant only one on the side?

Sposito was in, had a high, unpleasant voice that got shrill when Petra identified herself and explained the nature of the call.

“Darrell? Are you for real?” But a moment later, she verified Breshear's alibi.

“So he was with you all night?”

“That's what I said- listen, you'd better not put this in the paper or anything, I don't need the grief.”

“I'm a detective, not a reporter, Ms. Sposito.”

“I see my name in the paper, I sue.”

Paper tigress. What was with her?

“Why are you hassling Darrell? Because he's black?”

“We're talking to people who knew Lisa, Ms. Sposito-”

“Everyone knows who did it.”

“Who?”

“Right,” said the woman. “Like you don't. And he'll get off because he's rich.”

Petra thanked her for her help, hung up, and drove the five blocks to the studio, used her badge and a combination of firmness and charm to get in. She got directions to Empty Nest from a guy with long hair who looked like an actor but wore a tool belt.

The production company occupied several white clapboard green-shuttered bungalows scattered between whitewashed soundstages and office buildings, the entire place spotless, with that too-perfect Potemkin village look. Billboards for TV shows and movies stood on metal towers. A field of satellite dishes resembled a giant crockery collection.

A woman in Bungalow A told her Breshear worked in D. Petra walked into a small, empty reception area, brass and glass and black wood floors, three phones, no typewriter or computer. More movie posters, cheapie flicks she didn't recognize, the smell of fish. Through a door she heard voices, and she opened it after the merest knock.

Breshear and two women in their twenties were sitting at a long table mounted with several gray machines- products of a mating between a film projector and a microscope. In an open Styrofoam takeout box were three sushi rolls.

One woman wore an oversized black sweater over skintight black leggings, had a sharp pretty face, bronze skin probably from a bottle, and a mane of big black curls that trailed down her back. The other was arctic pale and had thin blond hair held in place by a pink sawtooth clip. Pleasant-looking but not the buxom looker Curly was. Breshear, sitting between them, started to shift his body backward, distancing himself.

“Detective Connor,” he said. Steaming mug in his hand, Gary Larson cartoon silk-screened on the side. The guy claimed he didn't dope, but like many ex-alcoholics he had a caffeine jones.

“Hi,” said Petra. “Ms. Sposito?”

Curly said, “What?” and stood. Tall, five-nine, terrific curvy body evident even under the baggy sweater. Her dark eyes were ten years older than the rest of her. She wore so much mascara her lashes resembled miniature wiper blades. Too hard-looking to be a model or an actress but definitely someone who'd turn heads. A lioness, with that mane.

“Just thought I'd drop by and talk to you in person.”

Breshear's head swiveled fast as he looked at his girlfriend. Trying to figure out what she'd said over the phone that had complicated things.

Sposito glared as she walked toward Petra with big fluid steps.

The blond girl watched the whole thing, baffled.

When she was two steps away, Sposito said, “Let's talk outside.” To the blonde: “We're gonna use your office, Cara.”

“Oh, sure,” said the blond girl. “Should I just stay here?”

“Yeah. It won't take long.”

Out in the front room, Sposito put her hands on her hips. “Now what?”

Your fault, Jungle Girl, all that out-of-proportion anger.

“You had some pretty strong opinions about Mr. Ramsey,” said Petra.

“Oh, for God's sake! Opinions is all they were- everyone's saying the same thing. Because Mr. Ramsey was abusive. It's nuts to even consider that Darrell had anything to do with Lisa just because the two of them dated a couple times. But okay, you asked where he was, I told you. And that's all there is. I take enough crap for being with Darrell, I don't need this.”

“Crap from who?”

“Everyone. Society.”

“Racism?”

Kelly laughed. “Just a few weeks ago, we were at the Rose Bowl swap meet and some idiot made a rude comment. You'd think it'd be different, L.A., the nineties. I mean, who's the richest woman in America- Oprah.” She frowned and lines formed around her mouth. “What Darrell and I have is good and I don't want anything messing it up.”

If you only knew, honey.

“I understand,” said Petra. “Any other opinions you'd like to share? About Lisa's murder? Lisa, in general?”

“Nope. Now, can you please let me get back to work? We do work around here.”

Why were movie people so defensive about doing honest labor?

“How long have you been working here, Kelly?” Kelly, not Ms. Sposito, because this one would always try to dominate.

The wiper blades opened and shut. “A year.”

“So you worked with Lisa.”

“Not with her, like on the same project. She needed training, so Darrell worked with her. I've always been on my own.”

“Lisa was inexperienced?”

Kelly snickered. “She was a rookie. Darrell was always picking up her slack.”

“The whole six months she worked here?”

“No, she learned, she was okay, but to tell the truth- no, forget it, I don't want to put her down.”

Petra smiled, and Kelly bared her teeth. Petra supposed it was a return smile.

“Okay, I opened my big mouth. I was just going to say editing jobs are hard to come by, you pay dues. Lisa was totally green. I figured she had to have connections.”

“What kind of connections?”

“Don't know.”

Something else Darrell hadn't shared with the Lioness. Suddenly, Petra felt sorry for her. “What'd you think of her as a person, Kelly?”

“She did her job, I did mine, we didn't socialize.”

Petra said, “Did you like her?”

Kelly blinked. “Honestly? She wasn't my favorite person, because I don't think she treated people well, but I really don't want to speak badly about her now.”

“Didn't treat who well?”

The dark eyes narrowed. “I'm talking in general. She had a sharp mouth, that's probably what did her in.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was sarcastic. Had a way of saying something without saying it, know what I mean? Looks, tone of voice, the whole body language thing.” She rubbed her hips, bent one leg, ballerina-style, flexing, then straightening. “Lisa thought a lot of herself, okay? And if someone didn't measure up, she'd be sure to let them know one way or the other. You want my opinion? Maybe Ramsey was trying to get her back and she shut him down. Aren't those abusers always obsessed?”

Out of the mouths of hostile babes. “They can be,” said Petra, looking as fascinated as she felt.

“So Ramsey could have still been into Lisa in a big way,” said Kelly, “and let's say they got together and he tried to make it with her but couldn't get it up or whatever, and she let him know what she thought about that in that Lisa way of hers, and he freaked.”

Petra hid her amazement. The woman had gone from hostile resistance to criminological theory in five minutes- offering a theory that buttressed Petra's final-date scenario.

“What makes you think Ramsey was impotent?”

“Because Lisa said so- at least she hinted at it. It was about three, four months ago. We were eating lunch- all of us, Darrell, Cara, me, Lisa, and another editor who works here, Laurette Benson, she's gay. And the topic came up about actors, how they get all the glory and how so many of them have totally warped personalities, are totally screwed up, but the public never knows it because everything they hear is bullshit created by the media and publicists. Anyway, we started talking about how actors become sex icons, bigger than human- like Madonna having that baby and everyone's treating it like she was the other madonna and this was some kind of sacred birth, right? Like all those idiots still looking for Elvis or thinking Michael Jackson's gonna stay married. We editors look at these people day after day, scene after scene, through the window of a Moviola. You see enough rough cuts, see how many takes you need to get them to look good and sound smart, you realize how few of them are even talented in the first place. Anyway, we were talking about that and we got into all the sexual fantasies that the public develops about people who probably half the time can't even cut it in bed. Then Laurette started in about how many actors were gay, even the ones who the public thinks are hetero sex gods, how sexuality and reality are like two completely different planets. And Lisa rolled her eyes and said, ‘You have no idea, guys. You have no fucking clue.' So we all stare at her and she cracks up and says, ‘Take it from me. You go in thinking you're eating at the Hard Rock Cafe and it turns out to be the Leaning Tower of Overcooked Pasta.' Then she laughs even harder, then her face takes on this whole different expression- really bummed, angry- and she just stomps out and goes to the bathroom and stays there for a while. Laurette says, ‘Boy, someone's shorts got yanked.' Then Lisa comes back and her nose is red and she's in a too-good mood, know what I mean?”

“She got high.”

Kelly pointed a finger gun. “You must be a detective.”

“Did she do that a lot?”

“Enough. Not that I paid attention.”

“So the topic of impotence upset her.”

“Wouldn't it upset you?” said Kelly Sposito. “Life's tough enough, all the crap you get from men when they're at their best. Who has time for limp spaghetti?”

It was after five when Petra left the lot, and she wouldn't have minded a long, hot bath and a good meal prepared by someone else, maybe some torture at the easel. But she still needed to trade notes with Stu, and if he suggested they make their move on Ramsey tonight, she wouldn't argue.

She called the station. Stu wasn't back, but Lillian, the civilian receptionist, said, “Some stuff came for you from the coroner, Barbie.”

“Big envelope?”

“Medium big. I put it on your desk.”

“Thanks.”

She ate a tuna sandwich at the Apple Pan, washed it down with a Coke, scanned the paper- nothing on Lisa- drove back to Hollywood as quickly as the traffic would allow. By the time she arrived, the night shift had come on, but most of the D's were already out serving warrants and looking for bad guys and her desk was clear. Stu still hadn't checked in.

Inside the brown envelope were preliminary postmortem findings signed by a Dr. Wendell Kobayashi- countersigned as Schoelkopf had promised, by the head coroner, Dr. Ilie Romanescu.

Quick turnaround; usually even preliminaries took a week.

She sat down and read the two typed sheets. Traces of cocaine and alcohol had been found in Lisa Ramsey's body, enough to intoxicate but not cause stupor. Meaning she'd been easier to take by surprise. No final autopsy report yet, but the docs were able to provide a wound count and cause of death. Twenty-three cuts- close enough to Ilse Eggermann's twenty-nine. So far, the coroner was guessing that the fatal one had been the very deep abdominal slash Petra had tagged. Point of insertion just above the pubic bone, continuing eight inches upward- a vertical wound that had sliced through intestines and stomach and liver, bisecting the diaphragm, cutting off respiration.

A gutting. Street fighter's move.

As she drops, he hits her twenty-two more times.

Frenzy or fun. Or both.

Dr. Kobayashi guessed that he'd been standing close to her for that first, lethal lunge. Meaning blood on him, too, and if they lucked out and got an exchange, something he'd left on her. But fiber and fluid analysis would take several days. No footprints, as Alan Lau had noted. Either he'd taken off his shoes or gotten lucky.

She thought about what Darrell had told her about Lisa's sexual proclivities: oral sex in the car. Like a throwback to high school. Had Lisa been fixated at the cheerleader stage? Cheerleaders and older men?

Kelly had described Lisa as full of herself, but she'd ended up ministering to Darrell, wanting nothing for herself.

Sex in a car. The killer taking Lisa somewhere in a car.

Mr. Macho Ramsey, unable to function?

A chronic problem? The date Ramsey's last-ditch attempt to prove himself?

In the car? Because he and Lisa had done it before in cars?

That damn car museum! Had it been more than just a millionaire's trophy thing? Ramsey's marital aid? All that chrome and steel, big engines, reminding him he was rich, handsome, semifamous- a gazillion dollars' worth of toys all so the blood would remain in his penis?

Breshear had said Lisa seemed practiced. With Ramsey? Others? After the divorce- before?

But the phone records showed no contact with other men, no apparent social life. Maybe she'd used her work phone for personal contact. Getting those records would be a major hassle; she was sure the production company was the legal owner. She'd start the paperwork tomorrow morning.

Back to the murder night. Lisa dolling herself up.

The car, in the car, let's do it in the car.

And Ramsey couldn't cut it-

Cut. There it was again.

Unable to cut it, so Lisa unleashes the sarcasm and he cuts her.

After he'd been such a nice guy, forgiving the way she'd blabbed to the tabloid show, getting her the job at the studio, and still sending her seven grand a month.

Twenty-three in cash, a brokerage account at Merrill Lynch- she'd speak to the broker, Ghadoomian, something else for tomorrow.

Sex, money, failure.

Failure in the car, so he'd used the car to kill her?

Driving her to her final destination.

Doing her in a parking lot.

How L.A.

She needed access to PLYR 0 and PLYR 1 and every other vehicle in Ramsey's collection. For all she knew, the death car had been one of the others- that phallic Ferrari, sitting right there in front of them, Stu and the sheriff's guys gawking, unaware they were looking at a slaughterhouse on wheels.

No, too conspicuous, even for L.A. One of the others… her phone rang, had to be Stu.

But it was Alan Lau calling from Parker Center, and the criminalist sounded exhausted. “Got some initial results on those food wrappers and the urine. The food was a mixture of ground beef and ground pork, peppers, onions, a tomato-based sauce, chili powder, garlic powder, some other spices we haven't identified yet. Bread crumbs, too. Not mixed in, separate. Probably the bun. White bread.”

“Chili-burger.”

“Quite possibly. The urine was definitely human, but I hope you don't want any fancy DNA on it, 'cause we barely had enough to do a presumptive type. Even if we did, it would cost a fortune and take a long time.”

“What else did you get?” said Petra.

“Prints off the wrapping paper and also off that book you found. The book was full of them. Fulls, partials, nice ridge impressions. I'm no expert, but it looked like some matches between the wrapper and book. We sent it all to ID and so far no matches to any files. So looks like your reader isn't a big-time criminal or a government employee. Also, from the size of the finger pads, it probably is a woman.”

Bag Lady squatting on a rock, thought Petra. Eating furtively, reading some old library book that probably fed some schizo fantasy- who knew what the presidents meant to her.

Sad. If nothing turned up, it might be worth checking with the park rangers and some Hollywood patrol officers, see if one particular street woman frequented that section of Griffith.

“Thanks, Alan. Anything show up in the vacuum?”

“Just a pile of dirt, so far. For all the blood, this was a pretty clean one.”

Stu came into the squad room at 6:34 P.M., looking like prey. Petra was snacking on her second Snickers bar and wondering where Ramsey was at this very moment, what thoughts were going through his head, did he regret what he'd done or was he exulting in the memory of butchering Lisa?

She asked Stu how he was. He said fine and reported on his day with the dutiful tone of a child giving an oral report. Visits to three studios, three wells dug, wait and see. It didn't sound like enough to turn his normally clear irises rosy pink.

He removed his suit jacket and draped it neatly over the back of his chair. “No one had anything personal to say about him; he doesn't seem to hang with any particular industry crowd. The fact that he beat Lisa up makes them assume he killed her.”

“I've got something personal.” Petra told him about her talks with Breshear and Sposito, Lisa's hints about impotence.

He said, “Interesting.” As if all men went through it. Did they?

“It's a motive,” she said.

“Definitely. Too bad it's tough to verify- you trust Sposito on Breshear's alibi?”

“I called her before Breshear got to her and she wasn't the least bit hinky about it, just p.o.'d at being questioned. You don't want to keep working Breshear, do you?”

“No, I just want to make sure we eliminate him cleanly. Let's keep a nice, neat flow chart on this one.”

He put his palms down on his desk and leaned, stretching his fingers. “Now, about that German girl-”

Petra gave him the fax on Karlheinz Lauch. He read it and put it down.

She said, “So where do we go with it?”

“The Austrian police, again. Other countries where they speak German and have airports, which I guess would be Switzerland. Also Interpol, U.S. Immigration, though with a three-year window, good luck finding anything at passport control.”

“Sorensen already did all that.”

“Three years' time lapse means we do it again. Now that we've found one similar, we need to widen the net, make sure we don't miss others. That means Orange County, Ventura, Santa Barbara, even San Francisco. If we find nothing, I'd feel comfortable putting any notion of a local serial killer to rest. But you never know. There was a guy a few years ago, Jack Unterhoffer- an Austrian, as it turned out- moved between Europe and the U.S., strangling women. Took a long time to see the pattern. If we don't turn up other leads on Lisa and Schoelkopf gets really paranoid, he'll want us to go national, so let's preempt him, run Lauch through NCIC, whatever else the feds have to offer.”

Almost as if he wanted to do scut. That didn't fit her chance-for-promotion theory. Or did it?

“Fine,” she said, surprised at the impatience in her voice. “But Ramsey's still clearly our main guy, and now we've learned something that adds to his motive. I know the impotence thing is hearsay-”

“Less than hearsay. Lisa hinted in general terms.”

“But if we don't follow up on it, it's beyond malfeasance.”

“No argument,” he said, sitting back and playing with his suspenders. “We're not arguing here, Petra, we're prioritizing. There are only two of us, so either we ask for reinforcement, which will mean Robbery-Homicide boots us out, or we split the job. How about I take the whole Eggermann/Lauch thing and you talk to Ramsey? The phone work we continue to divide.”

Petra couldn't believe what he was saying. Giving her sirloin and keeping the gristle for himself. “You want me to do Ramsey alone?”

“It might work to our advantage, Petra.”

“In what way?”

“If Ramsey does have woman problems, your presence could get him antsy, open some cracks.”

Woman problems. Not potency problems. Not man problems.

She said, “Okay, but I don't mind some scut.”

“Don't worry about it, Petra. Tell the truth-” He started to say something, stopped. Falling into something he'd taught her about when they started working together: Watch out for suspects who say truthfully or frankly or to be honest or tell the truth. They're usually hiding something.

“I really think you're the best one to psych out Ramsey,” he said. “Not just the gender thing. It'd be better not to overwhelm him, make it obvious that we're interrogating him. One person rather than two could help with that. Also, back at his house, he seemed to focus on you.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wasn't exactly coming on, but there was interest. At least, I thought so. It tells us something about the way his mind works. His ex has just been murdered, he's putting on the grieving husband bit, and he's checking you out.”

So he had seen it. What else had he kept to himself?

“I'm not talking bait, Petra. If you don't want to do it alone, I understand. But you've got the talent for this one.”

“Thanks.” Why didn't she feel complimented? Was she growing truly paranoid?

She nodded.

“Okay, then it's all set.” He picked up his phone.