The Blue Hour

Sixteen

The sun was low over the hills when they dropped down into Lake Elsinore. The water was plated in bronze. Merci gave Hess the paper with the address on it and Hess got the map out of the console.

“Take Main south to Pine,” he said. “East to Lakeview.”

At the corner was the entrance to Elsinore Shores trailer park. Merci sized up the place as she made the turn: old trailers, failed dreams and broken lives. It was the kind of place she used to see as a kid and feel afraid that was where she’d end up.

Until she realized, many years later, how powerful she was, how she could make things go the way she wanted simply by using her will. Will. She had created that power herself, bit by bit and over time, but it still astonished her to know how large it was. Once she had understood it, she knew she’d never end up in a spot like this. But it still made her think of all the people who didn’t have the juice to get what they needed out of the world. A lot of them ended up taking it away from someone else and those were the kind of people she threw in jail, which is where they belonged.

Hess aimed a thick finger to the right. “That’s his building, there. He must live in his shop.”

She slowed and studied the little complex as she drove past. Two long cinder-block buildings faced each other across a concrete alleyway. The buildings were divided into workshops. Their doors were all the same aqua blue color, the kind that slide up, wide and high enough to get a small truck in or out.

She came back around and parked a block short of the entrance. She took the H&K nine off the seat and holstered it.

The blue door to Lee LaLonde’s space 12 was closed all the way down. Merci glanced at Hess, then rapped the backs of her knuckles against the metal. She waited a moment and did it again, harder.

“Second,” said a thin voice. “Comin’. Who is it?”

“Deputies Rayborn and Hess. Open the door, Lee.”

“All right.”

“You alone in there?”

“Yeah. Second. The runner on the door’s rusty.”

There was a moment of quiet, but none of the drug addict’s usual scuffle to hide stash, Merci thought. Nowhere for him to go but out the window. Then the clang of metal on metal inside. A padlock. The door began its screeching way up. Merci got her badge holder ready in her left hand and rested the other inside her jacket, on the butt of the nine.

LaLonde manifested, bottom to top. Bare white feet. Baggy, dirty jeans slung low enough to fall off. The bunched elastic of boxer shorts sprouted just above the waistband. Flat stomach with a knife scar on it, narrow chest, thin arms. His face was odd but not particularly unpleasant. His hair long, blond, wavy.

She badged him quickly. “Step back from the door, please. Now.”

“Okay, lady. I’m steppin’.”

“Stop right where you are and turn around,” said Merci. He started his turn. When his back was to her she stopped him with a strong take of his right wrist, a firm twist to bring his arm out with the elbow down. She stepped up behind him and braced the back of his shoulder with her left hand so it was easy to see down the extended arm or to break the elbow. She felt him comply because he’d complied a thousand times before.

“Staying off the meth, Lee?”

She ran her fingers over the veins in his forearm, snapped her nails against them, then angled his elbow into the weak light for a view down the muscles.

“I never did shoot it,” he said slowly.

“Just smoked it by the ton.”

“Yeah.”

“I can tell. It kills brain cells.”

LaLonde stood back. He was shorter and thinner than she’d expected. Speed freaks tend to stay skinny in life and LaLonde looked the part. His long blond hair hung over his forehead. His face was narrow and all of its features seemed crowded down into the lower half. Big mouth, goofy teeth.

“Lead the way.” She let ten feet open up behind him, then followed. The shop was big — sixty feet deep and thirty wide, she guessed. It was lit by fluorescent tubes hung from the ceiling by chains.

There were workbenches along each of the two side walls. Vices. Spools of wire. Indeterminate projects in indeterminate stages of completion or repair. Bench vices, an electric grinder and polisher, a benchtop drill press. Toolboxes. More tools were neatly hung on the Peg-Boarded wall behind the benches.

Merci walked and studied. In the right back corner was a sleeping area, and behind that a bathroom. There was a counter, a two-burner stove and a small refrigerator. LaLonde stood beside a dilapidated plaid couch and gestured for Merci to sit.

“I’ll stand. You’ll sit. Tim, make yourself comfortable.”

Hess waited for LaLonde to take one end of the couch, then he sat in the middle. Merci crossed her arms and stared down at LaLonde without comment. LaLonde looked at his hands. She let a long moment pass.

“Lee, look at me,” she said. He did. She thought he looked like a parrot fish. She remained standing a few feet away from him, leaving some slack to take up if she needed to.

“Janet Kane was murdered week before last. We know you knew her. We got your prints out of the back of the BMW. Those are facts. Now, we can talk about her here or we can take you back to Orange County with us. If we talk here and you lie to me I’ll have you cuffed and stuffed in about thirty seconds.”

He looked at Merci, then at Hess, then at Merci again. She watched his face hard because that first denial was sometimes the hardest one a creep would make. Half the fuckers couldn’t even lie right. They giggled or blushed or started crying. The better ones broke a sweat or their faces twitched and if you saw it you had them. The rest could tell you a lie you might believe the rest of your life if you didn’t know better. She saw no trace of guilt or dishonesty in LaLonde’s face yet.

“I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Get one.”

“If I knew a woman who’d let me in her BMW, I’d marry her, not kill her.”

He grinned, lips spreading tight, teeth amok.

“What were you doing in her car?” she asked.

“I don’t even know her.”

“I don’t care if you knew her. I care if you killed her.”

“I didn’t.”

“Where were you last Tuesday night? Don’t think, just tell me.”

“My girlfriend was here.”

“What did you do?”

“Watched TV. Ate. She drank some beers.”

“Name and address.”

LaLonde gave her name; didn’t know her address.

“Then what about the fuse — the little 20-amp auto fuse that had your thumb and index prints on it? The one we found in Janet Kane’s car.”

He looked at her with deep suspicion and his eyes gave him away. Something wrong. Scrolling back. A hit He looked away with a nonchalant shrug and she knew she had him. Hess glanced up at her with a questioning expression on his face. He missed it, she thought — but I didn’t.

“I’ve worked with fuses in my life, Sergeant. I use them in my inventions sometimes. I used to do some electrical stuff down at the marina here. Yeah, I’ve worked with 20-amp fuses, but I never killed anybody.”

“When’s the last time you touched one?”

“The last time? I wouldn’t know the last time exactly.”

“When? When’s the last time you personally touched an automobile fuse, that you can remember, Lee?”

“That would have been about... maybe... three months ago.”

He was ad-libbing now, and she knew it.

“You’re shittin’ me, Lee. You sit there and think about what lockup’s going to feel like again. All the boyfriends you can make. Maybe think of a way to stay out of it. I’m going to take a tour of this shitheap you call a shop.”

She looked over the kitchen and little bathroom, checking the magazine rack by the head because she’d found an automatic in a rack once before, hidden between the curling covers of nudie magazines. Hobby Magazine. Arts & Crafts. American Inventor. No automatic. LaLonde didn’t strike her as violent and his sheet wasn’t violent, but that didn’t mean a thing to Rayborn because there was a first time for everything and a creep was a creep pure and simple.

She toured the workbenches. The closer she studied what she found on them, the less sense they made. For instance: umbrellas with inverted domes and hollow tubing that led to detachable plastic bags. A collection of mouthpieces with rubber teeth protruding. And an odd contraption involving a small gyroscope and a large outdoor patio lamp. A set of large concave plastic circles, like giant contact lenses, connected with what looked like a headband. And a collection of wooden cigar boxes with metal antenna protruding from their backs. She opened one and looked at the bird’s nest of batteries and chips and solder and circuitry inside. No fuses that she could see.

“What are these for?” She waved one of the cigar boxes.

“Those are for jamming eavesdroppers on a cell phone.”

She turned and studied him. From a distance he looked less like a fish and more like a regular guy with a not-very- good face.

“You can buy ’em new for a hundred bucks,” she said.

“Mine go for twenty-five. I do okay with them.”

“Where is it that you do okay with them?”

“Swap meet out here. Sundays, at the Marina Park.”

“Where did you learn electronics?”

“High school. My dad was an engineer. I’ve got a knack.”

“Got a knack for stealing cars?”

“Cars are easy.”

“What about the alarm systems?”

She turned and looked at him again. LaLonde shrugged.

“I didn’t mess with those. If you work with a partner you can pry and clip pretty quick, or use a code cutter.”

“Well, did you or did you not work with a goddamned partner?”

“Right. No. I worked alone, used a slapper.”

She set the cigar box down.

“What do these upside-down umbrellas do?”

“Collect rainwater. It runs down the line into the bag. You clip the bag on your belt or pants.”

Merci picked up an inverted umbrella and looked at the way Lee LaLonde had reconfigured the ribs and nylon. She looked back at him again. “What, because we live in a desert or something?”

“Yeah,” said LaLonde. “We’re supposed to get less water from the Colorado River soon.”

“They say that same goddamned thing every year.”

He shrugged.

She picked up a tooth-studded mouthpiece. The gums were soft and the teeth were firm. “What’s with the mouthpieces?”

“Protect the teeth while eating. Abrasion wears out more enamel than cavities.”

“You chew with these things on?”

“That idea started out as a way to make your own false teeth. Cheap. Different styles. You know, so you could change them around like clothes. Like, different teeth for different occasions. I called them Occasional Smiles. It was one of those good ideas that aren’t so good when you do them.”

She looked at LaLonde, considered his dentition, then dropped the rubbery gums to the bench.

“You’re a real loser, Lee.”

LaLonde said nothing.

“Where’s Janet Kane’s body?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”

“We know about Lael Jillson, too.”

“I don’t.”

She nodded. “Tim, please handcuff this dirtbag.”

Hess looked at her, then stood and helped LaLonde off the couch. Merci watched as he handcuffed LaLonde’s wrists behind his back. Hess guided him back down to the couch.

“Thank you,” said Merci. “Lieutenant Hess, why don’t you step outside, pull that door shut behind you. Have a look around out there.”

She waited by the bench as Hess plodded across the shop. He looked at her once on his way past but she couldn’t read the expression. He pulled the door down behind him and Merci listened to the metallic echo.

“Sounds like lockup,” she said.

“It don’t sound like lockup when you can open it anytime you want.”

“They treat you bad inside?”

“What do you expect, a guy like me?”

“I expect bad.”

He nodded, not looking at her.

“You’re always working on something, aren’t you?”

He nodded again. She could feel his irritation rising, just what she expected in the absence of Hess.

“I don’t think you killed her.”

“I didn’t.”

“Get up.”

He stood and Merci turned him around by one shoulder. She was surprised how light he was. With her arm extended she guided him into the bathroom with the tip of her left index finger.

“Kneel down in front of the toilet. Do it.”

LaLonde knelt and looked back and up at her. Merci looked inside the bowl: pretty bad. The lid was already up.

“Stick your head inside and put your neck on the lip.”

He did.

“Knees together.”

He did that, too.

“Here’s the deal, Lee. You seem like a pretty nice guy to me. I’d hate to arrest you for the murder of Janet Kane, but with your prints on that fuse I don’t have much choice. So spill it — tell me how your prints got on that little glass tube and how the tube got into Janet’s BMW. The reason you’re looking at the toilet is because I want you to think about spending the rest of your life in one. That’s exactly where you’ll be in about one hour if I don’t get the answers I want.”

His head shook back and forth. “I can’t explain it.”

“Broaden your horizons.”

She squatted and used her weight to push his face into the water. He sucked in before he went under, then tried to wait her out. He lasted about half a minute then struggled. She actually imagined Kemp’s head in there, almost smiled. She let him up for one breath then pushed his face back in.

“Lee, you got to tell what you know. I know you’re lying because it was written all over your face.”

He shook his head again then tried to back out. She used his hair this time, a good wad of it, sitting forward and sitting down hard on him. She wanted to flush it but couldn’t without letting go. When she felt the panic of drowning hit him, she let him up again.

He gulped down a big swallow of air. Then another. But no words.

Down again. She kept her knees pushed up tight against his shoulders and her arms extended and her hands locked hard on his neck. It was easy to keep her weight forward and down.

Next came a long one. His neck was wiry and hot. She felt the panic in him, and the strength the panic gave him. Then she let him up.

He was gasping now. The big overlapping breaths came too fast for a full lungful of air to get in. When they started coming one at a time she waited for him to say something and when he didn’t she drove him back under again.

“Next air’s about sixty miles down the road, Lee.”

He writhed hard but her weight was up over his shoulders and she wasn’t about to let go of his neck. He tried to splay his knees and slide out under her, but her legs kept his arms pinned close and the cuffs kept the wrists tight. His voice echoed up from the water but it was just a kind of scream and no words. She looked back and saw his fingers reaching up for her like a hand in a horror movie. It felt good to dominate a creep this totally.

When she let him up he drew a huge breath and blew it out and took another, then another. “I was at. At the swap meet. Marina Park. This guy said could I. Could I build him a thing. A thing that got around car alarms. Because I had. I had the cigar boxes. For die phones. I said I could. Probably. Figure that out. I made him one. Used two 20-amps. He came two weeks. Later and picked it up. Don’t send me back. Back to prison for his. Lady. Lady, I don’t know what he did with. With it. But he came back again about three. Or four months ago. To see me at the swap meet. I’ll tell you what. He looks like. And I’ll help you get him. Just lemme breathe and don’t send me back.”

Merci let go of him and stepped away. Lee LaLonde slumped to the dirty tile.

She went outside and found Hess leaning against the cinder block.

“Interesting sound effects,” he said.

“Maybe there’s an award in it for me.”

From the car she retrieved the artist’s sketch of Kamala Petersen’s heartthrob at the mall.

Back in LaLonde’s bathroom the young man was sitting on the floor, dazed. Hess stood with one foot braced against the wall and his arms crossed, looking down.

She showed LaLonde the drawing. He stared at it for a long moment. Hess looked at it, then at her, and she saw the look of disappointment cross his sharp face.

LaLonde nodded. “That’s him.”

“Name, Lee.”

“Bill Something. He never said his last name.”

“Clean up,” said Merci. “You smell like a sewer. Then we’ll have a talk. Then I’m going to trash this place and find your little gadget. Because I don’t think you made it for some guy named Bill. I think you made it for you.”

Hess helped him up.

Three hours later Merci called off the search. She’d found out more than she wanted to know about Lee LaLonde — his work, his diet, his old clothes, his piles of magazines about inventing.

The mystery girlfriend even came over, unannounced, at 10 A.M., and unhesitatingly repeated LaLonde’s story about them being together, right here, the night Janet Kane left the living. She gave Merci her sister’s number because her sister sat with the kid while Mom was over here.

Hess ran a sheet on her while Merci interrogated her: two pops for drug possession, two drunk-in-publics, one prostitution charge she pled down to loitering.

He took her aside. “The girlfriend’s got narco and prostitution.”

“I’ll get Riverside to surveil them.”

“Merci, if that fuse is really the one our boy used, what’s that tell us?”

“Tells us the gadget isn’t working.”

Merci went back to the inventor and his girlfriend, now seated side by side on the old couch.

“I’m going to leave you here for now,” Merci told him. “You see Bill, you call me. You remember anything about Bill, you call me. You dream about Bill, you call me. Bill shows up here, wanting you to fix his toy, you call me faster than you’ve ever called anyone in your life. That goes for you too, hot pants.”

She wrote her home and cell phone numbers on the back of a business card and set it on one of the benches.

“I expect to hear from you, Jack.”