The Crime Writer

Chapter 9

The boom jerked me upright with a cry, and then I heard a screech of heavy objects, the shriek of broken glass. A deluge of manpower rushing inside. Pounding boots up the stairs. In my post-slumber haze, the intruders seemed like rising devils, I like a dumbstruck Faust. For a moment I was back in my cell, phantom voices drifting up to me.

Stupefied, I stared at the door, which flung violently open, admitting a stream of figures decked in black and armored with goggles, vests, and assault weapons of some kind. Dark gloves seized my right wrist and ankle and ripped me from bed.

"Stay the fuck down!"

"See the hands, see the hands!"

My limbs spread as if by their own volition, and hands frisked me, not hard to do since I was wearing only boxers. A ghost imprint of white block lettering floated in front of my eyes, though my face was mashed to the carpet. LAPD SWAT.

I jerked my head to the side so I could breathe. Detective Three Bill Kaden appeared offset, Ed Delveckio peering over his shoulder. Kaden pushed a finger into my cheek until it ground against my teeth.

"You're fucked now," he said.

As Kaden led me, cuffed and hastily dressed, past the cops already rifling through my possessions, down the stairs, over the scattered shards in the entryway from the front-door glass insets, I registered a certain foolishness, a retroactive shame about how screwed I'd been before I'd even known it. While I'd drooled obliviously on my pillow, scenarios had been drawn up, positions chosen, a battering ram readied. My heart was still jerking in my chest. Being on the wrong side of a raid? Not as much fun as you might think.

I saw newspapers spinning in to fill the screen, headlines shouting NEW EVIDENCE IN BERTRAND SLAYING. But wasn't I protected under double jeopardy?

I said, "I assume you have a warrant."

Bunched beneath Kaden's fist, the document appeared before my face. I was being arrested for murder, though the warrant didn't name names. That would be, I assumed, my job.

Kaden threw me in the back of an unmarked sedan and climbed into the driver's seat. Delveckio sat in the passenger seat. My neighbors were on their front steps or at the windows.

"You could have just called," I said. "I would've driven in. I've always cooperated." A few more blocks in silence. My alarm was finally ebbing, giving way to outrage. I cleared my throat. "I say, 'What's this about?' and you say, 'I think you know, punk.' Then I say, 'I want to talk to my lawyer,' and you say, 'As soon as you're booked.' "

The backs of their heads did not respond.

We were on the freeway now, flying toward downtown. The first time I'd ever been on the 101 without traffic. The freeway, usually bumper to bumper, was deserted, postapocalyptic.

I was not surprised, some fifteen minutes later, to see the Parker Center through the windshield. Home to Derek Chainer. And to LAPD's elite Robbery-Homicide Division. A glass-and-concrete testament to fifties architectural cost-effectiveness, Parker's rectangular rise blocked out the emerging sun.

I was steered upstairs to an interrogation room. They kept the door open, cops coming and going with papers and whispered updates. Once again I felt disoriented, nervous, shoved out of my rightful place. I knew these halls. I knew this building. I'd researched men like these and written about them in flattering fashion. After my first book came out, I'd taken the buddy-buddy tour with the public-information officer, watched a real-live interview from the other side of the one-way mirror. What a distance between that side of the glass and this.

"Why am I here?" I said.

Kaden said, "Take your clothes off."

"Okay, but it's fifty bucks up front, and I don't kiss on the mouth."

"Off."

I glowered at him. "Not until I talk to my lawyer."

"After we search you."

"In case I'm secreting a bazooka up my ass?"

"You can keep your boxers on."

I kicked off my shoes, and Kaden stared at my bare feet and said, "Stop. Band-Aid off, please."

I complied. He snapped his fingers at the door, and a guy came in with an oversize Polaroid and took a picture of the slice in my flesh while I stood on one foot.

I finished pulling off my clothes, and they made sure I had no other scrapes or slashes. As I dressed, the photographer withdrew and closed the door, leaving me with Kaden, Delveckio, a table and chair, and a shiny mirror on the wall. The lights were hot, and someone had brought me coffee. My job was to drink it and get jittery and have to take a leak and spill all my secrets so I could get to the can. I could've been more compliant if I knew what my secrets were.

Delveckio nodded at my foot. "Looks to be a fresh knife cut, wouldn't you say?"

"You talk, too?"

"Answer the fucking question," Kaden said.

"Yeah," I said. "It looks like a fresh cut. Now, what the hell's this about?"

"Got a little careless?"

"Doing what?"

"You tell me."

I palmed sweat off my brow. The hot overheads were working. "I might have had an intruder two nights ago. I think someone broke in when I was sleeping, cut my foot."

"Sure thing," said Delveckio. "Easter Bunny maybe?"

I glared at him. "Not in January. I was thinking tardy elf."

"Why didn't you call the police?" Kaden asked.

"You guys haven't exactly been sympathetic."

"And this… mystery assailant cut you and you slept through it?"

"I was really out of it. My first night home. I woke up just after, I think. Guy might've even still been in the house, but then I wasn't sure "

Kaden placed a thick hand on my chest and shoved me so I fell back into the chair. He kicked the table so it slid over and stopped right in front of me. I was now seated at the interrogation table. Neat trick.

"Where were you last night between ten-thirty and two A.M.?"

Last night?

"Okay," I said, struggling to keep up and failing. "Okay."

Delveckio handed me my coffee, an oddly civil gesture, despite his motivation.

"Getting smarter, aren't you?" Kaden said. "Moved the body this time. Washed it down with a bleach solution."

I believe that anyone is capable of anything.

I felt a flutter-beat of panic. "Is it April? Is she all right?"

They stared at me, arms crossed, spread stances, Delveckio a skinnier version of the big guy.

"Tell me she's okay," I said. "You already dragged me here. No need to add insult to injury."

Delveckio reached over and cuffed my head. Openhanded but hard. "You're a piece of shit," he said. "That's insult to injury."

My chest felt tight. I couldn't move enough air through it. "Just tell me this isn't about April."

Kaden set down a crime-scene photo on the table in front of me. I shuddered so hard that coffee spilled over the Styrofoam lip and scalded my knuckles. Woman on a coroner's slab, familiar deep gash in the pit of the stomach. But not April.

A great hope fell over me like a blanket of light. Two bodies, same MO. If I hadn't killed this woman, I likely hadn't killed Genevieve. My name could be cleared. My relieved exhale was cut short by a renewed understanding of my situation. Interrogation room. Parker Center. Logically, the prime suspect.

"I didn't do this. No way. You think I… what? Slipped while stabbing her in the stomach and cut my bare foot?"

"You undressed to make sure you didn't get any spatter on your clothes," Delveckio said. "Manipulating the body, holding the knife, mistakes happen."

"Come on. That's hardly concrete evidence."

"Oh, you want evidence?" Kaden asked.

Here we go again. Deja fucking vu.

"We found a plastic drop cloth in your trash can. Like for, say, the trunk of your car."

My breath left me in a silent cough. I didn't know anything except to keep fighting. Blindly. And take it on faith that I wasn't a murderer, let alone twice over.

"Why would I leave it in my own trash can?" I said.

"You wouldn't," Delveckio said, "You burned it first. But you missed an edge. And it's sporting residue matching the adhesive from the electrical tape binding her wrists."

I couldn't manage a response.

Kaden laughed at my stunned expression, though there was no amusement in his eyes. "Framed again, huh? One-armed man on the grassy knoll?"

"I didn't do this," I said quietly.

"That's odd, because the killer duplicated every specific. The precise angle of the stab wound. The positioning of the body. The way the head was turned, hair down over the right eye. Not exactly the level of detail we put out for the six o'clock news."

My thoughts bled one into the next.

"Here's the kicker," Kaden continued. "That little piece of unburnt plastic drop cloth we found in your trash can? It had some more surprises for us. The victim's blood. Your blood. And as for your bleach bath? Missed a few spots. Your hair under a fingernail. Traces of your blood on the pad of her foot."

I cannot have done this. It's impossible that I did this last night.

"As far as we can determine, there is only one connection between the victims," Kaden said. "And that's you."

I pointed at the body in the photo. "I don't know who that woman is. Why would I kill her?"

"You're trying to tell us you didn't do this, and you've spent the thirty-six hours since your release digging around in the mud of the case you were just acquitted for? Stalking Katherine Harriman. Trying to get ahold of the key criminalist from the investigation. You're giving new meaning to returning to the scene of the crime."

He nodded at Delveckio, who walked to the corner, reached up, and unplugged the security camera pointing down at us. Kaden set both hands on the lip of the table, leaning over so his face was a few feet from mine. He shoved until the ledge of wood struck my lower ribs and sent me and my chair skidding back with it. The table hit the walls on either side of me, trapping me in the corner. "Decent-sized fella like yourself might be feeling a touch cramped right about now. Get used to it. Because that's your cell size for the rest of your life."

Kaden stepped back. Pacing, he cuffed his sleeves up past his wide forearms. "Let's pretend I'm playing bad cop. But see, this game is different. There is no good cop. This is bad cop-bad cop. Delveckio and I, there's no one we hate more than killers of women. We watched you slip off once. We're not gonna do it again."

I glanced at Delveckio. Considerate of Kaden to make room for him under the macho umbrella. With his thin frame and watery eyes, Delveckio was not the most threatening figure. Kaden, on the other hand, looked ready to jam his fingers through my face and use my head as a bowling ball.

He continued, "We're willing to rough you up. We're willing to snap fingers. We're willing to crack ribs. And we're willing to testify how we had to because you were belligerent and violent. We'd rather not, but we will. You can go through it or you can skip it, but either way you're talking, and you don't have a brain tumor to save your murdering ass this go-round."

The crime-scene photo had skidded off the table into my lap. Upside down, it looked even more grotesque. Blood and severed flesh, without orientation.

The familiar sickness started in my stomach, dampening my skin. The sweat-stained hospital sheets. The voices echoing off my cell walls. The scabs had lifted to reveal the same horrible scene. Where was I? What had I done? I felt a sudden caving-in of my resolve. The utter demoralization of long-awaited defeat, of laying down arms and giving in to the inevitable. Maybe I had done it. I could not exactly claim to remember the last time I'd encountered a body under similar circumstances. The evidence, Genevieve, my mental lapses it was too much.

Where were you last night between ten-thirty and two A.M.?

Home alone. Out cold. Yeah, right.

Bill Kaden, looking none too affable, advanced on the table, and I opened my mouth to offer a shaky admission of I-knew-not-what when like a thunderbolt a realization rocketed down, straightening my spine, jerking my fists against the pitted wood.

"The camcorder!" I cried. "I recorded myself sleeping!"