Redemption

Chapter 57

When Decker pulled up to the Gardiners’ home, the gate was open, so he pulled through. This time a man answered the door. He was in his forties, tall, broad-shouldered, and good-looking, and dressed in a suit that might have cost more than Decker’s entire wardrobe. No, there was no might about it.

“Yes?” said the man.

“I’m here to speak to Mitzi Gardiner.”

“What about?” the man asked suspiciously. “This is a no-solicitation area,” he added warningly. “How did you even get inside the gate?”

“It was open.” Decker took out his creds. “But I’m not selling anything. She’ll know about this. I’ve been by before.”

The man looked puzzled. “Here? You’ve been here?”

“Yes. Are you her husband?”

“I’m Brad Gardiner.”

“Is she in?”

“She’s not up yet. In fact, she’s not feeling well.”

“I can wait.”

“No, that doesn’t work. She... she’s ill.”

“Mr. Gardiner, I can understand that, but the fact is, this is a murder investigation. So time is of the essence.”

“Murder! What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s okay, Brad.”

Decker looked past Gardiner to see his wife standing there in a bathrobe and slippers. She scowled at Decker. “I can handle this. Why don’t you get to work? You have that meeting.”

“But, Mitzi.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “It’s okay, sweetie, I’ve got this. Trust me.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I am very sure.”

After her husband left, Gardiner looked at Decker. “You just won’t leave it alone, will you?”

“I’m just trying to do my job.”

“Isn’t that what all cops say?”

“I don’t know. I’m just one cop.”

She led him back to the conservatory, where they sat down across from each other.

“What?” she said expectantly.

“Some recent developments I thought you might want to be made aware of.”

“Such as?”

“Someone tried to kill Rachel Katz. Took a shot at her through her condo window.”

To her credit, Gardiner didn’t visibly react to this. “Is she all right?”

“She was shot with a sniper round. She’s out of surgery and is critically stable. Another inch to the right and they’d be making funeral arrangements.”

“Well, I’m glad they’re not.”

“The man who tried to kill her was then killed by police.”

“Do they know who he is?”

“Yes.” But Decker would go no further.

“What does any of that have to do with me?”

“You have the picture I left you?”

She appeared startled by this and sat up. “Um, no, I think I threw it away. Why?”

“Good thing I took a picture of it.” Decker took out his phone and held it up.

She looked at the screen. “But that’s the wrong side. That’s the back of the picture.”

“Well, for my purposes, this is the relevant side.” He pointed at the writing. “Daddy’s little star. He was a very proud papa.”

Gardiner looked up at him from under hooded eyes. “That was a long time ago.”

“Yes, it was. Things change. People change. I have another picture to show you.” He flipped through the screens. “This is a picture of your father’s forearm taken during the autopsy.”

“Oh, please, God, I am not looking at that,” she said in disgust. “There’s nothing gruesome about it, Ms. Gardiner. I just want you to look at the tattoos on the forearm.”

“My father did not have tattoos.”

“He got these after he went to prison.”

She became subdued. “After?”

“Yeah. Here’s the first one. A spiderweb.” He explained the symbolism.

“I’m sure lots of prisoners get that one because even though they’re guilty they can’t accept what they did,” she said defiantly.

“Here’s the second one.” He showed her the teardrop and looked at her expectantly.

“What does that one mean?” she asked dully.

“Travis Correctional is an all-male facility. And some of the men there get... lonely. And they take out that loneliness on other men, like your father.”

She blinked rapidly as she processed this. “You... you mean?”

“Yes. I do. Now, here’s the third one. And this is the one I really want you to focus on.” He brought up the screen with the arrow through the star. “I’ve seen a lot of prison tats. I’ve never seen that one before.” He looked at her for a reaction.

For a moment it looked like the woman had stopped breathing. Then she licked her lips, dabbed at her eyes, and looked away.

“Any idea what that might mean?” he asked.

“I know what you’re getting at.”

“What’s that?”

“The photo! The writing on the back.” She waved her shaky hand at the photo of the tattoo on his phone screen. “And... that.”

He sat back and studied her.

She dabbed at her eyes again with her sleeve. Finally, she looked up at him. “What exactly do you want from me?”

“The truth would be fine.”

“I’ve told you everything.”

“No you haven’t.”

“This happened a long time ago. What the hell does it matter? Everyone has moved on with their lives. I know I have.”

“Tell that to Susan Richards and Rachel Katz... And your father.”

She shook her head and looked down.

“I’m not here to send you on a guilt trip, Ms. Gardiner.”

She barked, “Oh, just call me Mitzi. That’s all I’ll ever be. Ditzy Mitzi. An addict who was always a disappointment to her father.” She looked up at him and said coldly, “You put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a fucking pig.”

“Turning your life around could not have been easy.”

She waved this off. “Doesn’t matter now.”

“I’m also here to make something as clear as possible.”

“What?”

“People connected to this case are dying or in the hospital fighting for their life. By my count, you’re the only one left.”

“I told you before I could take care of myself.”

“I’m sure the others thought the same. But the guy who shot Katz was a real pro. Ex-Army turned bad guy white supremacist type. Trained sniper. Hired to do the hit. He’s dead, but who’s to say another one won’t replace him? And maybe you go out armed, but a pistol isn’t going to save you from a long-range rifle shot you won’t ever hear or see coming before it kills you.”

“You’re just trying to scare me,” she said offhandedly, though her voice shook.

“I am trying to scare you. For your own good.”

“I don’t see how I can possibly help you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“As far as I know, my father killed those people.”

“How did your father feel about your drug use?”

“He hated it. Why?”

“I understand he was trying to get you into rehab.”

“He’d done it before, but I could never make it stick. He kept trying.”

“So he never did drugs himself?”

“Are you crazy? He was as straight as they came on that. He attacked a guy who came to our house trying to sell me some stupid weed.”

“Okay. Your dad was picked up in a bad area of town. At his trial the defense laid out the possibility that he was there trying to get drugs for your mother’s pain.”

“We’ve already been over this. He might have. I mean, I told you before that he did his best to take care of her.” She unexpectedly smiled. “He could build anything, really. Make anything work. He built a little scooter for me when I was ten, for my birthday. I mean, he made it out of scrap parts. It had a little battery and a motor. He made those too. Only went about five miles an hour but I rode it everywhere.” Her smile faded. “But he couldn’t build anything to help Mom. That was beyond him.”

“How did he know to go to that area to get drugs?” asked Decker. He saw Gardiner flinch slightly.

“What?”

“You just told me that your father didn’t do drugs. Hated them. So how’d he know where to go? Or who to talk to, to buy the stuff? And where did he get the five hundred bucks he had in his pocket when the police picked him up?”

“I... I don’t know where he got the money. And it was pretty easy to tell back then where the bad areas were if you wanted to score drugs. I already told you that. And you know that too from being a cop here back then.”

“Well, Mitzi, the thing is, he didn’t want just any drugs for your mother. He wanted something like pure morphine. Stuff that had been stolen from a hospital or pharmacy, not off-the-street crap. And having worked the narcotics detail as a cop here, I know that there were very few people in that particular market. And you really had to know your shit to get to them.”

Mitzi looked extremely apprehensive in the face of all this. “I... I don’t know what to tell you.”

“And on top of that, your old man was still walking around quite a few hours after allegedly killing four people. You’d think the guy would have been running for the hills.”

She licked her lips nervously. “Maybe... maybe he was confused or shocked at what he’d done. Or he was just trying to lie low. And hope that the police would conclude what you just did.”

“But if he had committed the murders, he would know his DNA was likely to be under a dead girl’s fingernails. It was just a matter of time before we came knocking on his door.”

She let out a quick breath. “I can’t explain it. It’s just what happened.”

Decker rose. “I’m sorry.”

She glanced up at him, trepidation on her features. “Sorry about what?”

“Your life must have truly been in the gutter for you to have done this to your father.”

“I don’t know what—”

He put up his hand. “Don’t bother. I don’t have the patience or time for more bullshit from you.” He lowered his hand. “I think you gave him the five hundred bucks after someone gave it to you. Then you managed to scratch the shit out of him at some point and passed his DNA off to whoever paid you. Maybe your father just chalked it up to you being in a drug-induced fit. He’d probably seen that many times before. And then you told your old man where to go to get the stolen hospital drugs. Only the person wasn’t there because there was no person. You probably told him to keep trying, to go to lots of different places, where there was nobody either. But it was for his wife, after all. And so he did. That way he’d have no alibi for the murders, and we’d end up finding him in a bad part of town with a chunk of money in his pocket. And when we showed up that night, you pretended to be whacked out. You’d probably already been given the gun and stashed it behind the closet wall.”

The whole time Decker was talking Gardiner’s eyes kept widening and her jaw kept falling.

Decker continued, “I can only imagine the look on your old man’s face in prison when he ran into that scumbag Karl Stevens. And Stevens tells him what his ‘little star’ did to her own father.” He took a moment to gaze around at the beautiful room.

“I hope it was worth it, Mitzi. But I can’t possibly see how it could be.”