Billy Straight

38

Petra awoke confused, at 6:30, her head crowded with Ron Banks, Estrella Flores, Ramsey, the boy with the presidents book- she wrapped herself in a robe and collected the morning paper.

There it was, page 3, the drawing smack in the center of the article, no credit given to the artist.

The gist of the article was no progress; the implication, those bumbling police. Salmagundi, the department spokesman, careful not to make too big a deal about the witness angle. The boy was “just one of several leads we're looking into.”

The last paragraph made her inhale sharply.

Twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward to anyone providing information about the boy or anything else that led to the arrest of a suspect. Money put up by Dr. and Mrs. John Everett Boehlinger, all calls to be directed to Hollywood Detectives.

Her extension. Blindsided. They must have gone through Schoelkopf, goddamn him. She couldn't work this way.

All day fielding crank calls- had Stu seen it yet?

Normally, she'd call him. Nothing was normal anymore.

She got dressed in the first thing she pulled out of the closet, took the paper with her, and drove much too fast to the station.

There were already ten messages on her desk: nine sightings of the boy, and a psychic from Fontana claiming to know who'd murdered Lisa. What would the afternoon bring?

Stu hadn't come in yet. To hell with him. Fournier was checked out, too.

She stormed into Schoelkopf's office waving the article. He was sitting at his desk; jumped up and jabbed a finger at her.

“Don't get all pissy with me. The parents blew into town yesterday, went straight to Deputy Chief Lazara- he calls me at ten P.M. I have to come down here to deal with them. The father's an obvious asshole, used to having his way. Who knows what he'll try to do next.”

I tried to warn you, idiot, and you brushed me off.

“You could've called me,” said Petra.

“I could've bought Microsoft at ten bucks- what's the point, Barbie?”

The nickname had never bothered her. Now it was a razor scraping raw nerve fiber. “The point is-”

“The point is I've been running interference on this for you from day one and you've produced squat. I get yanked out of bed, get dirty looks from Lazara because he's working late, he cuts out, leaves me with Mommy boo-hooing, Daddy delivering these fucking speeches: After Menendez and O.J., everyone knows LAPD can't find a felon in the penitentiary. So I give him what I've got, which is this artwork of yours, figuring maybe it'll calm him down. He says okay, what are you doing about it, and I say we're looking for him, Mr. Boehlinger. And he says Doctor Boehlinger, then he tells me it's not enough, he wants some incentives here- post a reward. I try to explain that rewards bring in mostly nuts, and even if we wanted to do that, it would take time. He picks up my phone, calls some lawyer named Hack, and says, Talk to your buddy at the Times and your other buddies at the TV stations. Showing me this Hack's connected. Which he obviously is- it was already eleven and he got the picture in. So sue me, I didn't wake you up at midnight. You think you've got a grievance, file a complaint. Meanwhile, go do your job.”

He waved her out.

A TV cop would have handed in the badge and gun.

A real cop kept her mouth shut. She liked the job and the department was paramilitary, would always be, meaning lockstep rhythm, death of the individual, hierarchies. You pissed down, not up.

Look at Milo Sturgis- she'd worked with the gay detective on one case, had seen him as the ace he was. But before that she'd heard only curses affixed to his name. The highest solve rate in West L.A.; to the department, that didn't make up for sleeping with a man.

She returned to her desk, put aside the ten message slips, and phoned the Nancy Downey Agency in Beverly Hills. A woman with a Latin accent said, “You should talk to Mr. Sanchez. He's at our other office in San Marino.”

San Marino and B.H. Covering the high-priced spreads, east and west.

A man answered there, similar accent.

“Mr. Sanchez?”

“Yes.”

She identified herself, told him she was looking for Estrella Flores.

“I am, too.”

“Pardon?”

“I just got a call from her son in El Salvador. He's worried, hasn't heard from her since Sunday. Is this about Mrs. Ramsey's murder?”

“We'd just like to talk to her, sir. Why's the son worried?”

“Usually she calls him two, three times a week. He said he phoned the Ramsey house but got only a machine. I tried; the same thing happened to me. I left a message, but no one's called me back.”

“Mrs. Flores quit working for Mr. Ramsey, sir.”

“When?”

“The day after the murder.”

“Oh.”

“So she didn't call you about another placement?”

“No.” Sanchez sounded concerned.

“Any ideas where she might be, sir?”

“No, I'm sorry. She worked for the Ramseys for… hold on, let me look… here it is. Two years. Never complained.”

“Where did she work before that?”

“Before that… I couldn't tell you.” Wariness had crept into his voice.

“She wasn't legal?”

“When she came to us, she was legal. At least she presented papers. We do our best to-”

“Mr. Sanchez, I have no interest in immigration issues-”

“Even if you did, Detective, we have nothing to hide. Our women are all legal. We place them in the finest homes, and there must never be a hint of-”

“Of course,” said Petra. “Please give me Mrs. Flores's son's name and number.”

“Javier,” he said, reciting an address on Santa Cristina in San Salvador and a number. “He's a lawyer.”

“You don't know of any other places she worked?”

“She told us she worked for a family in Brentwood, but only for three months. No name- she didn't want to use them as references because they were ‘immoral.' ”

“Immoral in what way, sir?”

“I think it was something to do with drinking. Mrs. Flores is a very… moral woman.”

Petra hung up, thought about the maid's disappearance. If Flores had left of her own accord, why hadn't she contacted her son? It didn't take much morality to be repulsed by murder. Had she seen something? Or been seen?

Where to go with it… more calls to substations, to see if Flores had turned up somewhere as a victim? Unlikely. If she'd been eliminated by Ramsey because she could blow his alibi, he'd have made sure to conceal the body.

Better to scope out RanchHaven, talk to the guard service, ask long-overdue questions. While she was there, she could drop in on Ramsey again, slip in some hints about Flores, see how he reacted.

Wil Fournier appeared in the squad room door, beckoning her with a wiggling finger. He looked angry. Something to do with the boy? She hurried over.

“What's up?”

“Got some people can't wait to meet you.” He angled his head down the hall. Petra looked out and saw a couple in their fifties standing at the far end. Well dressed, backs to each other.

“The parents?”

“None other,” said Fournier. “Schoelkopf snagged me as I came in, said they wanted a firsthand report from all three of us. Where's Ken?”

“Don't know.” Her tone made him stare. “What exactly do they want?”

“Info. Got any?”

“Nope, how about you?”

“Talked to a few shelters, churches, some of our Juvey people. No one knows the kid; a couple of social workers thought they might've seen him around, but he hasn't checked in anywhere.”

“Outdoor kid,” said Petra. Thinking what guts it took for an eleven-year-old to go it alone in the park.

“Let's go do some hand-holding,” said Fournier. “Female D and a coal-colored one. These people look like the type who still think lawn jockeys are funny.”

Mrs. Boehlinger was everything Petra expected- petite, perfectly groomed, handsome; long-suffering Pat Nixon handsomeness. A puff of cold-waved hair the color of dry champagne crowned a roundish face. Contoured eyebrows. Trim figure in a conservatively cut black St. John's Knits suit. Black suede pumps and purse. Red eyes.

Her husband defeated expectation. Petra had pictured a big man, hearty, someone like Ramsey. Dr. John Everett Boehlinger was five-five, 140 pounds tops, with narrow shoulders and a homely face full of homely features: fat nose, small dark eyes, rubber-mask looseness around the jowls. Bald on top, thin fringe of gray at the sides. A clipped stainless steel goatee- he could have played Freud in the country club Halloween bash.

He wore a black vested suit, white shirt, gray tie printed with tiny black dots. White silk hankie in the breast pocket. Onyx cuff links. Cap-tip shoes were polished shiny as motor oil.

Two small people in funeral garb. Mrs. Boehlinger remained focused on the wall in front of her, clenching and unclenching one hand. The other gripped her purse. Her french nails were glossy but chipped. She still had her back to her husband, didn't look up as Petra and Fournier approached.

Dr. Boehlinger had focused on them immediately, body canted forward, as if ready to spar. When they were ten feet away, he said to Petra, “You're the one I spoke to on the phone.”

“Yes, sir. Detective Connor.” She extended her hand, and he submitted to a half second of skin contact before withdrawing. Wiping his hand on his suit- oh, for God's sake.

The she reminded herself: The poor man's lost his child. Nothing worse than that.

Nothing.

He said, “Vivian?” and his wife turned slowly. Ravaged eyes, the corneas a scramble of ruptured capillaries. The irises bright blue- like Lisa's. There was more than a suggestion of Lisa in the fine facial structure. Would Lisa have ended up like this- a fashionable matron, buttoned to the neck, all propriety?

“Detective Connor, Vivian,” the doctor singsonged scoldingly.

Vivian Boehlinger's expression said, So what the hell am I supposed to do about it?

She said, “Pleased to meet you,” and profferred an icy hand.

Petra smiled. “And this is Detective Fournier-”

“We've already met Detective Fournier,” said Dr. Boehlinger. “Where's the third one- Bishop?”

“Out in the field,” said Petra.

“Out in the field- sounds like he's planting vegetables.”

“Actually, sir,” said Fournier, “it's kind of like that. We cultivate leads-”

“Wonderful,” said Boehlinger. “You know what a metaphor is. Now eliminate the chatter and tell us what you've cultivated about Ramsey.”

Mrs. Boehlinger stared, turned, showed him her back once more. He didn't notice. “Well?”

A detective named Bernstein stepped into the hall, coffee cup in hand, started forward, returned to the squad room.

“Let's talk somewhere private,” said Petra.

All three interrogation rooms were horrible- smaller than jail cells, no windows, the obvious wall of one-way mirror that most of the idiots brought in for questioning took early note of, then promptly forgot.

Bad smell in all three: sweat, pomade, cheap perfume, tobacco, hormones.

She chose Interrogation One because it had three chairs instead of two. Fournier fetched a fourth and they crowded around a tiny metal table. Forced intimacy. Mrs. Boehlinger kept looking at her nails, her knees, her shoes, anywhere but at another human being. The surgeon looked ready to slice flesh.

Petra shut the door and let in some claustrophobia. Mrs. B. was picking at her knit skirt. Boehlinger was trying to stare down Fournier.

Trying to dominate. To what end? Force of habit?

She remembered what Ramsey had told her about both parents trying to run Lisa's life. “Let me start by saying how sorry we are for your loss. We're doing everything in our power to find Lisa's killer-”

Mention of her daughter made Mrs. B. weep. The doctor made no effort to comfort her. “We know who the killer is.”

“If there's anything you can tell us to substantiate that, sir-”

“He beat her up, she left him. What more do you need?”

“Unfortunately-”

“This boy, the potential witness,” said Boehlinger. “I'm sure there've been responses to our reward.”

“A few calls have come in,” said Petra.

“And?”

“We haven't gotten to them yet, sir. Been following up other leads.”

“For Christ's sake!” Boehlinger's hand slammed the table. His wife jumped, but she didn't look at him. “I dip into my own damn pocket, do your job for you, and you don't have the decency to follow up-”

“We will, sir,” said Petra. “Soon as we're free to do so.”

“Why aren't you free?”

“We're here, sir,” said Fournier.

Boehlinger's hand rose again, and for a second Petra thought he'd try to strike Wil. But the fist froze in midair. Slight tremor. Surgeon past his prime, or the stress?

“We're delaying you? We're the problem-”

“No, sir,” said Fournier. “We appreciate all your-”

The hand slammed again. “You,” he said very softly, “are a very rude man. You're both rude.”

“John!”

“Typical,” said Boehlinger, glaring at Petra and Fournier in turn. “Civil servants. So you know nothing about this boy. Priceless, just priceless. Affirmative action at its finest- I believe we're going to have to take this one step further, Vivian. Hire our own-”

“Stop it, John. Please.”

Boehlinger laughed derisively. “We will most definitely hire our own investigator, because these two obviously aren't-”

“Shut up, John!”

The shriek filled the room. Boehlinger turned white and clawed the tabletop. His fingers failed to find purchase and his hands flattened. Without facing his wife, he said, “Vivian, I'd appreciate it if you-”

“Just shut up, John! Shutup shutup shut up!”

Now it was her turn to raise a hand. It sailed through the air like a flesh airplane, landed on her bosom, over her heart. She ran out of the room, swinging the door open, not bothering to close it.

Fournier's eyes begged for Petra to follow. Even Dr. Bile was preferable to a grieving mother.

Petra caught up with her at the end of the hall, in the stairwell, sitting on the top step, forehead to the wall, the champagne puff bobbing with each sob.

“Ma'am-”

“I'm sorry!”

“No need to apologize, ma'am.”

“I'm very sorry, very very very sorry!”

Petra sat down next to the woman and chanced putting her arm around the heaving shoulders. Beneath the knit fabric were small bones. Petra smelled makeup, breath mints, Chanel No. 5. “Let's find somewhere to go.”

Vivian Boehlinger straightened and pointed at the interrogation rooms. “Not with him!”

“No,” said Petra. “By ourselves.”

No one was in the vending machine room, so she guided the woman in and closed the door. No lock. She placed a chair against it, sat down, motioning for Vivian Boehlinger to choose one near the folding table that served as the D's snack center.

“Coffee?”

“No thank you.” Subdued voice now, that post-tantrum shame/fatigue. Small hands folded in a black-knit lap. Under the fluorescence, Petra could see hints of deep facial lines, muted expertly by makeup. The eyes were tormented, devoid of hope. So disturbing in contrast- everything else about the woman was so well put together.

“I'm sorry,” she repeated.

“It's really okay, ma'am. Situations like this-”

“When all this is over, I'm going to leave him.”

Petra didn't speak.

Vivian Boehlinger said, “I was going to do it this year. Now I'll have to wait. Thirty-six years of marriage, what a joke.” She shook her head, made a terrible sound, more parrot squawk than laugh.

“He has affairs with sluts,” she went on. “Thinks I'm stupid and don't know.” Another bird sound. It made Petra's flesh crawl. “Cheap, slutty affairs. And now Lisa's gone.”

Odd juxtaposition, but maybe not. Tabulating her miseries. Petra waited for her to take it further, but all she said was “My Lisa, my pretty Lisa.”

Several more minutes of silence, then: “Ma'am, do you think Cart Ramsey did it?”

“I don't know.” Quick answer. She'd thought about it. She gave a pitiful shrug and sniffed. Petra fetched a paper napkin. Dab, dab.

“Thank you. You're very sweet. I don't know what to think.” She sat up straighter, higher. “John thinks he can buy everything. He offered Lisa money not to marry Carter and, when that didn't work, even more money to divorce him. So idiotic- Lisa was going to divorce Carter anyway. She told me. If John had ever communicated with her, he could have saved himself the offer. Which is all it was. Lisa divorced Carter, but did John keep his end of the bargain?”

A scary smile spread across the thin lips. Lipstick and liner had been used to extend the coral borders and radically change the mouth's contours. Without her morning routine, this woman would be unrecognizable.

“He didn't pay up?” said Petra.

“Of course not. He didn't give Lisa one dime. Said he hadn't been serious, it was for Lisa's own good anyway, she had nothing to complain about. Lisa didn't care, she knew who she was dealing with. But still. Don't you think that's terrible?”

“How much did he offer Lisa?”

“Fifty thousand dollars. So now he comes up with half?” She shook her head. “Don't expect him to pay any reward, Detective. I feel sorry for anyone who thinks they're going to get paid by John- do I think Carter did it? I don't know. To me, he always seemed civil. Then Lisa told me he hit her, so I don't know.”

“How many times did she say he hit her, ma'am?”

“Just the once. They had a tiff, Carter lost control and hit her. More than a slap- her eye was blackened and her lip was split.”

“Just once,” said Petra.

“Once was too much for Lisa.” That sounded boastful. Daughter asserting herself in a way mother never could? “She told me she wouldn't tolerate it. And I agreed with her. For all the things her father did over thirty-six years, he never laid a hand on me. If he had, who knows what I'd have done.” She lifted her purse, hefted it like a weapon. “Of course, I didn't know Lisa was going to go on television. If she'd told me about that, I probably would have advised against it.”

“Too public?”

“Tasteless. But I'd have been wrong. Why keep it all inside? What's the point of being quiet and pretty and tasteful?”

She cried some more, dabbed. “Do I think Carter did it? Why not? He's a man. They're responsible for all the violence in the world, aren't they? Am I as sure as John? No. Because no one's ever as sure as John.”

She got up. “I know you're trying your best, Detective. John wants blood, but I only want… something I'll never get- my little girl back. Now, if you'd be so kind as to call me a cab.”

“Certainly, ma'am.” Petra stayed with her, holding the door. “Here's my card. If you think of something, anything, please let me know.”

The two of them returned to the hallway. The door to Interrogation One was still closed.

“Your poor black friend,” said Vivian Boehlinger. “John's prejudiced- I really despise him.”

“I'll call that cab,” said Petra. “Where to?”

“The Beverly Wilshire. He's staying at the Biltmore.”

Barely after 9 A.M. and she was exhausted; the time spent with the Boehlingers had sapped her energies. Poor Wil was still in there.

What a pair, even allowing for tragedy. No marital role model for Lisa. How much free will did any of us have?

The message stack had grown; four more tips on the boy. She dreaded Dr. B.'s follow-up calls.

In some cases, you bonded with the victim's family. Here she was, wanting to punch Dr. B.'s lights out, creeped out by Mrs. B.'s avian laugh. Not good at all. And Stu still hadn't arrived. Obviously, he didn't give a damn anymore. Which didn't fit a career opportunity thing. So maybe it was marital.

She did some fruitless follow-up with Missing Persons on Flores, was putting down the phone when Stu said, “Good morning.”

Freshly shaved, every hair in place. He wore a beautiful slate-gray gabardine suit, pearl-gray shirt, smoke-and-red paisley tie. So perfectly composed.

It pissed her off.

“Is it?” she said.

He turned around and left the squad room.