Blood Defense

SEVENTEEN

We knocked on the door of apartment 2C, but Sheila Wagner didn’t answer.

I was leaning in, trying to listen for signs of life, when the door to apartment 2D opened and a young guy, barefoot and naked to the waist in low-slung jeans, stepped out. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, and his hazel eyes squinted at us above the smoke. He was hot in that dirty, up-against-the-wall kind of way. Back in my high school days, I would’ve gone for this guy in a fast second. His eyes flicked off Alex and landed on me. I was happy to take my turn to slut it up for the team.

I gave him a smile. “We’re looking for Sheila Wagner.”

“You probation officers?” I started to shake my head, but he laughed. “Joking. Sheila’s, like, a nun.”

In this neighborhood? “A nun?”

He gave a little chuckle. “No. She’s a librarian. But same difference, right? She’s probably just out walking her dog. Give it a few; she’ll be back.”

“Actually, we’re here to talk to people about Dale Pearson.”

“Dale.” He took a long pull from his cigarette and blew it out through the corner of his mouth. “Am I supposed to know him?”

“He’s the one they arrested for the murders.” He still looked puzzled. “Of Chloe and Paige.”

He nodded slowly. “You guys don’t look like cops.” I told him who we were. He nodded. “Nah, I never saw the dude. Saw Chloe, though. We had drinks a couple of times when I first moved in.”

“And?”

He looked out at the street. “She was a nice girl but a mess. There was something, I don’t know… broken about her.” He took another drag of his cigarette. “Like she’d seen too much in too few years.”

It was a much more nuanced insight than I’d have expected from this guy. And I got the reference. “The Stones. ‘19th Nervous Breakdown.’ You a musician?”

He nodded appreciatively as he looked me up and down. “Trying to be.”

I pushed down the electric surge from that look.

A female voice from inside his apartment called out. “Babe? What’s going on?”

He gave me a slow smile. “Duty calls.”

I held out my card. “Just in case you think of something.”

He took the card and glanced at it. “Or in case I get in trouble?”

“Or that.”

As he went back inside, I heard the skittering of dog toenails scratching up the walkway. A medium-size chocolate pit bull on a leash came into view. At the other end of the leash was a slender woman with long, almost waist-length brown hair. “Sheila?”

“Yes. Can I help you?” She looked flushed and a lot younger than I’d expected. Late twenties at most. The name Sheila seemed like it should belong to someone in her sixties at least.

I told her who we were. She gave a little frown. “Didn’t the police put my statement in a report?”

So the cops had spoken to her. I noticed her dog was sniffing at my boots. I took a step back just in case he decided to get a little more intimate. “Not that I saw. I got your name from Nikki.”

Sheila’s frown got deeper. “Don’t worry, Trixie doesn’t bite.”

“I wasn’t worried about the biting so much.”

Sheila nodded and gave the leash a little tug. Trixie backed up and lay down. “I didn’t really have much to say. I was at my folks’ house the night of the… the night they died.”

“Did you know Chloe or Paige?” I was waiting for her to invite us in where we could sit down and talk in private, but she didn’t seem inclined.

“Just to say ‘Hi’ to. But you might want to talk to C.J. I think he went out with Chloe.”

“C.J.’s your next-door neighbor?” Sheila looked over my shoulder at his door and nodded. The way her eyes lingered, I got the feeling she looked at his door a lot. “What did you tell the police?”

“Just that I’d met Dale Pearson a couple of months ago. My car got a flat up in the canyon, and I was waiting for Triple A to come. I had Trixie and Dixie with me. That was before Dixie passed. We were on our way home after a hike in Runyon Canyon, and they were really thirsty. They’re fifteen years old, so I was getting worried. Dale was the only one who stopped to see if he could help.”

Finally some good news. “And did he? Help, I mean.”

“Yes. He was super nice. Changed the tire, gave the girls some water-they loved him, and they don’t usually like men all that much. When I told him where I lived-”

“He asked where you lived?”

“I volunteered.” I guess my expression said more than I wanted it to because she nodded. “I know, dumb move. But he seemed so… safe. Anyway, I said I couldn’t believe I got a flat less than a mile from home, and he asked me if I lived near Chloe’s building. When I told him I lived next door, he asked whether I’d ever been burglarized or if I’d seen anyone suspicious hanging around the night of Chloe’s burglary.”

I liked what I was hearing more and more. And the fact that Sheila’s statement hadn’t shown up in any of the reports less and less. “What’d you tell him?”

Sheila smiled a little. “That the most suspicious people I’ve seen in this neighborhood are the ones who live here.” Her eyes drifted back to C.J.’s apartment. “I’ve never been burglarized, but I have this little motion detector.” Sheila looked down fondly at her motion detector, who seemed to have fallen asleep on Sheila’s foot. “And back then I had her sister, Dixie, too. But I really don’t see much. I work at the library all day, and when I come home, I shut the world out.”

“So you don’t know any of your other neighbors? Other than Nikki and C.J.?”

Sheila shook her head. “Really just C.J. I met Nikki only because I was coming home with Trixie when that police officer was leaving her place. She pointed me out to him.”

“Did you ever see Dale after that day?”

“A couple of times, as he was coming or going. We just waved and said hi.”

“Then you never saw him driving up and down the street at night, looking around?”

Sheila frowned. “No. Never. But like I said, I don’t see much of anything at night. I come home, have dinner, go to bed.”

“Did you tell the police officer that you’d met Dale?”

“Oh yeah. I did. But he didn’t seem all that impressed. He seemed kind of impatient, like, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ You know?”

I sure did. And pretty soon, thanks to fifty-some-odd news channels, so would everyone else.