Scavenger hunt

Chapter 18

Helen Katz was on one knee by the curb, lifting the sheet that draped a body. The draping was unusual for the big rawboned detective, who didn't care enough about spectators to shield them from the sight of death. A bicycle lay in the street near the body, a new red mountain bike with a bent front rim. Bright yellow police tape ringed the crime scene. Two units had blocked off the street, light bars flashing, one of the uniforms redirecting traffic. "Just another drive-by," the dispatcher had told Jimmy when he called looking for Katz. Another drive-by, not even worth a TV news crew.

Jimmy inched his way through the crowd of onlookers to the edge of the crime scene tape, surrounded by tourists on their way to the nearby entrance to Disneyland, and locals caught up with curiosity. A fat man with mouse ears had a camcorder out, documenting the moment, whispering commentary into the built-in microphone. Closer now, Jimmy could see that the victim was a Hispanic boy with the top of his head torn away, his shiny black hair matted with brain tissue. He watched Katz work, noticed the care with which she examined the body, her pink surgical glove flecked with blood. She glanced at the street, then at the surrounding apartments, trying to gauge where the shooter had been and who in the vicinity would have had a clear line of sight from the front window. She was good.

Katz looked even angrier than usual. Her face was flushed, and her thick jaw clenched whenever she spied the two women across the street: an older Hispanic woman wearing a supermarket clerk's uniform, and a teenager in orange soccer shorts and a white jersey, the two of them clutching each other. Standing on the grass behind them was a huge glowering young man, his arms folded across his chest. He wore knee-length cutoffs and a buttoned-up Pendleton, his neck and forearms laced with tattoos.

Jimmy had decided to find Katz as soon as he left the Starlight Arms Motel, sitting in his car, working it out. Time to call in the professional. Shafer had probably been used as a stalking horse, a decoy to gain access to Walsh. The two of them would have been murdered shortly thereafter, Shafer's body dumped somewhere like a bag of rotten oranges. A murder to cover up a murder, to cover up a murder- an infinite series, backward in time. Perhaps forward too. Jimmy was going to keep looking for the good wife, but he needed Katz's help. Somebody had to find her before she disappeared too or drowned in her bathtub.

Katz stood up, peeled off her gloves, and tucked them into the back pocket of her trousers. She beckoned over the photographer and directed him to take pictures, barking out which shots and angles she wanted. Her short dirty-blond hair was limp from the heat. She caught sight of Jimmy on the fringe of the crowd and brightened, then walked over to him. The people beside Jimmy took a step backward as Katz ducked under the police tape, and he knew just how they felt. "Glad to see you," Katz growled. "A stringer from the Times showed up, took a look around, and drove off. How did you catch the call?"

"I need to talk with you."

Katz noticed the tourist with the mouse ears videotaping their confrontation. "Excuse me, sir," she said to him, "but if you don't cease your taping, I'm going to have to confiscate your equipment as potential evidence. It should be returned to you in three or four months."

The tourist gulped, put the camera down, and retreated back into the crowd.

Katz took Jimmy by the elbow and led him back under the tape, the two of them walking toward the body.

Jimmy's whole arm was numb in her grip. "Ouch," he said quietly.

Katz looked at her hand as though she hadn't realized her own strength. "Sorry," she said, releasing him. "I'm in a bad mood. I knew this kid."

A uniform walked up to Katz, a full-gutted veteran keeping his head tilted so he didn't have to look at her directly. "Beaners don't know nothing," he said, jerking a hand toward the nearby apartments. "Ten to a room, but they don't see nothing, they don't hear nothing. 'No hablamos ingles,'" he singsonged.

"I wouldn't talk to a puto like you either," Katz said. "Relieve Simmons on traffic control, and send him over to talk to me. He's better looking than you, and he doesn't slur the people he's asking for help."

"Hey, detective," sputtered the uniform. "I know my job better-"

"You don't know shit, Wallis. That's why I just told you to send Simmons over."

Wallis slunk off, cursing softly. Dyke, cunt, bitch floated on the breeze like dandelion seeds.

Katz bent down beside the body again. "Take a look, Jimmy."

"I think there's a misunderstanding." Jimmy bent down beside her. This close he could see a single gold hoop in the boy's ear, the earring gleaming in the sunlight; it made him seem even more innocent. "I'm not here because of-"

"Meet Luis Cortez." Katz gently closed the boy's eyes, her fingers lingering on his smooth brown skin. "Luis was thirteen years old. Good kid, never in trouble, a solid student. He played third base on the Boys Club team. Lousy player, but he loved the game. He just… loved it." She glanced over at the bike lying broken a few yards away. "Police Athletic League bought him that bike not a month ago. You should have seen his face." She chewed on her lower lip. "He hardly got a chance to break it in." She looked at Jimmy. "You put that in your article. He hardly got a chance."

"I'm sorry."

Katz glared at the sullen homeboy watching them from across the street, arms crossed. "That's his big brother, Paulo." She gently pulled the sheet over the boy's head. "Killing Luis was supposed to send a message to Paulo. If you ask me, they should have delivered it direct and smoked his gangbanging ass." She stood up, and Jimmy stood up with her. "You know the thing I hate the most about my job? The wrong people die."

Jimmy looked in her eyes. "That's what I hate about my job too."

"Why aren't you writing this down?"

"Detective?" A young uniform hustled over. "You wanted to see me?"

"Go ring some doorbells, Simmons," said Katz. "They've already been asked once, so try it with a smile. And take off your hat when you talk to the senoras."

"Yes, detective."

"Wipe you feet before you walk inside," she called as Simmons took off at a dogtrot. She stared off into the distance. The tip of Disneyland's Matterhorn ride was visible over the jacaranda trees, the mountain's fake snow glistening in the heat. "The happiest place on earth, my ass."

"Detective, I'm not here to write a story about Luis."

Katz turned to him, her face frozen.

"You told me at the restaurant that you had pulled Harlen Shafer's prints off Walsh's trailer. I followed up on him."

"Luis Cortez isn't worth your time, but Garrett Walsh is?" Katz scowled. "A thirteen-year-old kid gets blown away riding his bike, and it's who-gives-a-shit. A convicted killer drowns in a fishpond, and you treat it like the Kennedy assassination."

It was a good question, but Jimmy didn't have an answer. Instead, he pulled the Gideon Bible out of his jacket and offered it to her.

Katz didn't touch the book. "It's a little late in the game for me to get religion."

"Take it."

Katz took the Bible and flipped it open. One of her eyebrows raised.

"I ran down Shafer to a motel off the Strip. He moved out just after Walsh died. Cleared out in the middle of the night and left the Bible behind."

Katz moved around the Baggies of pot and pills with a fingertip.

"You ever hear of a small-time dealer who loads up his shirts and underwear, his socks and toothbrush, but forgets to take his stash?"

Katz closed the Bible, her expression impenetrable.

"No one saw Shafer scoot," said Jimmy, standing close, not afraid of her. "The motel manager and he were friends. The man was disappointed that Shafer didn't stop by to say good-bye. Detective, I don't think Shafer cleaned out his room. I think he's dead, and whoever killed him wanted to make it look like he had run off."

Katz didn't answer, waiting for more. Like good reporters, good cops knew when to be quiet.

"Walsh was paranoid, listening for the sound of a car on the gravel road, but Shafer made regular visits to his trailer. Walsh wouldn't have thought twice seeing his Camaro driving up some evening. He would have figured the two of them were just going to sit around the koi pond getting loaded and talking about bad times in the joint. I think on that last visit Shafer had company. That's why the crime scene unit didn't find any tire tracks they couldn't account for."

Katz waved the first uniform over, tapping her feet as the paunchy sergeant took his time. "Make sure that Paulo doesn't leave the scene," she told him when he finally arrived. "I want to interview him after he's stewed a while, after he's gotten a chance to see his baby brother's blood leaking into the storm drain. Not yet, sergeant," she ordered, as the man turned to go. "Have someone bring the mother and sister a cold drink, a female officer. Tell Morales to drive to McDonald's, pick up some lemonades, then come back and hold their hands. Now you can go."

"Whoever killed Walsh used Shafer to help with the job," said Jimmy, trying to regain her attention. "Shafer got him so high he could hardly move. That's why the coroner didn't find any defensive wounds on Walsh's body, no signs of a struggle. Just dope and alcohol. Shafer probably thought he was saving his own life by cooperating, but all he was doing was buying a little time."

Katz checked her watch. "Maybe it was just Shafer and Walsh getting high that last night, so wasted they both passed out." She shook the Bible and set the pills rattling, "Only Shafer was lucky- he passed out in the dirt. Walsh stumbled into the koi pond and drowned."

"Walsh didn't drown."

"A few hours later Shafer wakes up, sees Walsh floating, and he panics," continued Katz, paying no attention to Jimmy's protests. "Shafer knows the drill-he's the one who supplied Walsh with the drugs, he's looking at manslaughter. So he drives back to the motel, grabs his gear, and splits. Unlike you, though, Shafer isn't a deep thinker. He forgets his dope, and by the time he remembers it, he's too scared to come back."

"Boone did the autopsy on Walsh. You told me you were going to make sure that Rabinowitz handled the job."

"Rabinowitz was on vacation when we brought in Walsh, not that it's any of your business." Katz patted him on the cheek; to a bystander it would have looked almost affectionate, but it rattled Jimmy's teeth. "Walsh was a rapist and a murderer, and he drowned with a mouth full of fish shit."

"Somebody took Walsh's screenplay," said Jimmy.

"Maybe Shafer took it."

"Shafer's dead."

Katz laughed.

"The letter Walsh got in prison," said Jimmy, wanting to convince her, needing to convince her, "it was from a woman he had been having an affair with when Heather Grimm was murdered. A married woman. She wrote him, said she had found out that her husband knew about the affair the whole time they were together. She suspected that her husband set Walsh up for the murder."

Katz shook her head. "Your story just keeps getting better and better."

"It's the truth."

"The truth is, we have a missing screenplay you never read. A missing letter you never saw. Written by a married woman whose name you don't know."

"I've got some possibilities on that."

"I'm sure you do." Katz patted his cheek again, and he tasted blood in his mouth. "I did a little follow-up myself after our lunch date. I called around to a few studios, and what do you know? Walsh had hit them all up about his new screenplay. He actually described it as 'the most dangerous screenplay in the world.' You believe that? I'm surprised the studio execs could keep a straight face. Strange thing, though-Walsh wouldn't let any of them read it, either. Not a word. Said it was a work in progress." She grinned those wide, flat horse teeth at him. "See where I'm heading?"

"I believed him."

"Of course you did-that's your job." Katz cocked her head, hearing a siren approaching. "So here's Walsh, getting nowhere with the studios, and suddenly you show up, and he pitches this wild story about a prison letter and a wife and a jealous husband, and you can see the headlines already. Walsh isn't a loser who murdered a young girl, he's an innocent artist wronged by the system. Too bad he died before you resurrected his career." She leaned closer. "The only thing I can't decide is whether he really fooled you, or if you knew it was a scam and were using him too."

A crime scene van approached, the siren turned off now as it moved past the police line.

"What are you afraid of?" Jimmy said quietly, so furious he didn't trust himself to raise his voice. "Did you get all weepy about Luis Cortez because he was an innocent kid, or because it's an easy case? Putting away gangbangers, how hard is that? They don't even try to hide what they've done. They brag about it."

Katz waved to the van. "Go home, Jimmy. Go home, get stoned, get laid, go do whatever it is you do when you're not playing boy detective."

"Whoever killed Walsh knew how to get away with it. He was smart enough to get away with killing Heather Grimm. Smart enough to-"

Katz jabbed him in the chest with a forefinger. "Shoo."

"I'll throw you another steak. Maybe that will get you to do your job."

Katz poked him with the Gideon Bible, poked him hard, a vial of pills falling out and rolling across the street. "We're done here."

"You are. I'm not."