Scavenger hunt

Chapter 31

"Happy now?" Sugar didn't introduce himself. Old buddies like the two of them didn't need introductions.

Silence on the line.

"I told you not to do anything, didn't I? Let sleeping dogs lie, that's what I said. Now they're up and yapping."

"Who is this?"

"Yeah, okay, this is a wrong number." Smart. At least the man still had his wits about him. "You didn't do the job on your own, I know that much. You always need help. Now I got this fellah showing up at my place unannounced, asking questions. Somebody else to worry about. Somebody else needs quieting down."

"I didn't do anything."

Sugar looked out across the Pacific, the waves the color of blood. " 'Red sky at morning, sailors take warning, red sky at night, sailor's delight.' The question for you, my old friend, is what time is it? Morning or night?"

"Listen carefully. Please. I didn't do-"

"Morning or night?"

"I didn't do anything. I give you my word."

"It was an accident?" said Sugar. "That's what you're telling me?"

"Accidents-accidents do happen. Some men invite misfortune upon themselves…"

Sugar held the phone lightly, watching the sunset. It was his favorite time of day, the stillness filling his chest, quieting his heart.

"The dogs you spoke of-I'm concerned too. I trust you can put them back to sleep?"

On the edge of the horizon, Sugar watched a fishing boat caught in the setting sun, its rigging on fire as it headed home.

"Hello? Are you still there?"

Sugar broke the connection. Let him worry for a change. Holt winced as the dog's howling undulated up from somewhere below. "I thought you said your building didn't allow pets."

"The kids in two-eleven just got a puppy," said Jimmy, not looking up from the papers spread across the kitchen table. "Looks like a dachshund and collie mix. Wish I had been there for the conception."

Holt shut the window, then sat down beside him. She opened one of Brimley's notebooks. "I still can't believe Brimley loaned you his raw notes."

Jimmy flipped through another one, skimming now. He had to strain to read the handwriting. It was a routine interview of one of Walsh's neighbors, a banker who hadn't heard anything the night Heather Grimm was killed. Hadn't seen anything either. There had been a football game on that evening, and he liked listening with the volume turned way up to catch the crowd noise. Brimley must have been bored with the banker-the margin of the notebook was covered in doodles, rods and reels and sailing ships. A sketch of a hooked marlin wasn't half bad, the marlin leaping in the air, an odd smile on its face. Fisherman humor or cop humor, Jimmy couldn't decide.

Holt chewed her thumbnail as she stared at the page. "Helen Katz. She got into an argument at the ME's office with Dr. Boone. Right in the middle of an autopsy. Helen may be the only person in the world to confront a man holding a stainless-steel blade."

Jimmy looked up.

Holt kept reading. "I didn't get any specifics, just that it was something about his findings in the Walsh case. A cop from Anaheim PD said Boone tried to pull attitude, and Katz came back at him so hard he dropped the liver he was weighing."

"How did this cop know to contact you?" Holt didn't answer, but Jimmy saw her smile anyway. "Thanks, Jane."

"Thank Helen Katz. I think she's got a crush on you."

Jimmy laughed.

Holt tapped the open page with her forefinger. "No wonder Brimley didn't like your suggestion that Heather went to the beach to seduce Walsh. This is his second-no, his third meeting with Mrs. Grimm. She had gotten a visit from Walsh's attorneys the previous day. They were intimating the same thing. Mrs. Grimm was very upset, weeping. Brimley jotted down that she was on medication. Tranquilizers." She squinted at the page, tilted it slightly. "Looks like Valium."

"She overdosed on Valium a few months later. Valium and a pint of vodka."

"Brimley was a good detective," said Holt. "A lot of cops wouldn't have noted the medication his subject was taking. You can tell he's angry-the attorneys' business card is clipped to the pages, with a note to himself to call them."

"Since when do defense attorneys pay attention to the investigating officer?"

"You'd be surprised. Sometimes a cop, just by making it clear that he or she is not going to slack off until the verdict comes down, can cause an attorney to shift his strategy. You'd think a DA would carry more weight with a defense team, but it doesn't necessarily work that way, because all a prosecutor has to work with is what the police uncover. A good cop, a dedicated cop, can make a difference."

Jimmy looked at her. He knew why she had a law degree but had never practiced, why she had gutted her way through the Academy, taking flak for her finishing-school manners and accent, finally earning the grudging respect of her colleagues by working harder and longer. She just liked scaring the shit out of bad guys, whether they wore three-piece suits or gang colors. "I love you, Jane."

Holt pretended she didn't hear him, but she was blushing as she went back to the notes. "Remember those transcripts you showed me a few weeks ago? Walsh's defense team had deposed a couple of Heather's classmates who hinted at drug usage and some sexual activity too. They were going to go after her hard, but something dissuaded them, made them come to the bargaining table. I think Brimley paid them a visit."

"Maybe he made them realize that he wasn't going to allow Heather to be victimized again." Jimmy riffed through the stack of notebooks until he found the one he wanted. "Right here. His first interview with the mother, he did a walk-through of the house. He listed all the posters and photographs on Heather's walls, the books on her bookshelf, the stuffed animals on her bed, even the names of them. I passed right over it before, but now I see what he was doing."

"Exactly. Those are the kinds of details that the DA's office loves to present to the jury. It makes the victim flesh and blood again, shows the jury who she really was, not the image that the defense team wants to present. Brimley did right by Heather."

Jimmy read through the mother's first interview again. He could almost hear her voice crack as she told Brimley about the last time she had seen her daughter. Mrs. Grimm had been in a hurry, had been late for work. She didn't kiss her daughter good-bye, didn't even tell her to drive carefully. She always did that too. Not that day.

"Are you okay?" Jane touched his hand. "Why don't we finish this up later?"

"Last week I talked with a woman whose son had been murdered in a drive-by, a kid, barely thirteen. I sat in her living room, and she told me about her boy while her daughter translated. The woman's voice never wavered, never broke, but she kept dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. You would have thought she was made of steel, except for her tears, and when I looked into her eyes, the grief-it was bottomless. Nothing was going to fill the hole inside her." Jimmy fumbled a piece of folded paper out of the notebook. "Now I read Brimley's notes, and I know Mrs. Grimm had the same hole inside her, only she was all alone, without any family to help her through it, just herself, day after day in that house with Heather's things everywhere and TV crews camped out on the sidewalk. Just herself and her memories." He stared at a photograph of Heather Grimm, an eight-by-ten that Brimley had copied and tucked into his notes, her face creased down the middle, right through her beautiful smile.

Holt took the photograph out of his hands and put her arms around him.

Jimmy leaned into her, felt her heart beating against him. "How do you do it, Jane?"

"What?"

"You know what I mean. How do you do it?"

"You get tough, or pretend you have." Holt held him tighter. "Then you go home, have a few drinks, and cry by yourself. Or with someone you trust."

Jimmy drifted, feeling Holt's warm tears on his neck.