Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries) (8 page)

Chapter 9

I was
curious how the official investigation into Krystal’s murder was going, but if
I called Fulton or Harrison I knew that they wouldn’t tell me anything, and the
minute either of them hung up the phone they’d go tell Dan about it. Dan was a
good boss, and a fair one, but if anyone got caught colluding with me he was
going to come down hard on them. That also held true for Sarah, of course, but
he’d already put her on a desk. Benching a detective due to psychological
issues was a serious step. It didn’t mean the end of her career, but it wasn’t
something anyone wanted in their file.

It had
only been a day since I’d spoken to Sarah, though, and I’d given her a big job
to do. I had no idea how many unsolved murders there had been in San Diego or
exactly what time frame we were dealing with. They’d have had to been spread
out over a long period of time, though. Three murders in a week, or even in a
month, would have raised some eyebrows. Three in a year might go by without
anyone making a connection between them. Draw the time frame out longer than
that and unless there was something singular about them, like the smile the
Laughing Man cut into his victims’ faces, and it would be like looking for a
needle in a haystack.

I spent
a minute sitting in my car looking through the business cards Rick had given
me. The one for the urgent care clinic he’d referred her to stood out. That had
been six months ago, and whatever had happened to her was probably unrelated to
her murder. Probably. I couldn’t rule it out, though, and it wasn’t far from
where I was now. Given that I really had nothing better to do, there was no
reason not to check it out. I put the Mustang in gear and headed out.

Fifteen
minutes later I was stepping into the clinic’s waiting room. The place was a
few years past its prime; the once-padded chairs were now thin and worn, and a
fresh coat of paint on the walls would have worked wonders on the interior.
There was a stain on one of them that I recognized as dried blood that hadn’t
been cleaned up well. I wondered how old that was and decided I’d rather not
know.

A
receptionist sat behind a glass partition like the ones they use at gas
stations that are open all night so the clerks don’t get robbed. She was
middle-aged and wore a brightly-colored pink headscarf that concealed her hair.
If she had any hair, that was. I was guessing cancer, but that isn’t really a
question you open conversations with.

She
looked up at me as I approached and hit a switch so she could talk through a
speaker. “I can tell you right now it’s too early to get those out,” she said.
“You need at least another week, and stop picking at them.”

For a
moment I was baffled, but then I realized she was talking about my stitches. I
hadn’t been picking at them. Well, I
had
, but how did she know that?
“I’m not here for that,” I said, pointing at my face. How many times was I
going to have to say
that
in the next week or so? “I have a few
questions about someone who was a patient here about six months ago.”

She
shook her head. “I can’t give you any information about other patients.”

I
brought up Krystal’s photo on my phone and showed it to her through the
partition. “Well, she’s dead now,” I said, “so I’d think HIPAA wouldn’t apply
here.” I had no idea if that was true or not, but maybe it would work.

“I still
couldn’t tell you anything,” she said. She couldn’t help but look at the photo.
She shook her head. “I’ve never seen her before, though.”

“She
would have been here around six months ago. You sure?”

“We have
two other receptionists,” she said. “Either one of them might have seen her. Or
maybe they didn’t. We can’t talk about patients, though.”

I put
the phone down and looked past the receptionist. There was a large, open area
visible with a number of machines whose purpose was unknown to me. Diagnostic
equipment, maybe. I could see some sections were blocked off with curtains;
those probably had patients in them. I didn’t see anyone else back there.
“Maybe one of the doctors would recognize her?”

“Ma’am,
I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” She crossed her arms in front of her
and gave me a stern look.

I
sighed. There was a time I’d have handled this situation differently, but I was
really trying to give people the impression I
wasn’t
an unstable
psychotic with a propensity toward violence. “I’m sorry,” I said. I held up the
phone again. “Take another look. You see her?”

Her eyes
avoided the phone now. Nobody liked looking at the dead. “Yes.”

“She was
a police informant,” I said. “I’m investigating her murder, but I don’t exactly
have a lot of leads. But I do know she was in here. She’d been attacked and
needed help. Six months ago, more or less. All I need to know is if she said
anything about what happened.”

The
receptionist looked skeptical. “You’re a cop? You don’t look like a cop.”

Normally
I hated being recognized, but this was one of those rare cases where it would
have come in handy. “I'm Nevada James. SDPD, Homicide Division. Formerly.” I
said that last word more quietly than the others.

“Nevada
James?” She thought that over. “That does sound familiar.”

“It’s
not exactly a common name. But here’s one I bet you know. You remember the
Laughing Man?” That was a name
everyone
in San Diego knew.

“Of
course.” Her eyes widened and she looked around as if she was expecting to see
him here. “My god, is he
back
?”

Somehow
I doubted the Laughing Man was in the waiting room behind me. “No,” I said. “I
was the detective whose name was in the news back then. That’s why you’ve heard
it before. I was the one who…” I hesitated. This story didn’t have the ending
I’d have liked it to. “The one who didn’t catch him and wound up in the
hospital because she went kind of crazy.”

She
looked at me for a long moment. “Okay,” she said. “But I still don’t know what
to tell you. I guess I could look her up and see if she was ever treated here.”

I
doubted Krystal had given them her real name, but it couldn’t hurt to check. I
told her. The receptionist worked on her computer for a moment and then shook
her head. “No.”

I looked
back at the room behind her. “Do you mind taking my phone around there? Show it
to the doctors who are here now and ask if they know who she is?”

She
looked like I’d just asked her to name the capital city of Azerbaijan, but
after a moment she slid open the glass partition and took my phone. She stood
up and went into the back, quickly moving out of my sight. I looked around the
waiting room. I expected curious looks from the other patients, but none of
them appeared to have even noticed me. I supposed they had other things to
worry about. Or maybe they preferred
not
to notice. Maybe in this
neighborhood that was a safer way to go.

The
receptionist came back after about five minutes with a white-coated doctor in
tow. She handed my phone back to me. “Thanks,” I said.

The
doctor was tall and looked vaguely of Middle-Eastern origin. I was no expert.
He had salt-and-pepper hair and his eyes looked ten years older than the rest
of his body. “You’re Nevada James?” he asked.

“Yes.
Did you treat Krystal?”

“Her
name wasn’t Krystal,” he said, “but we get any number of people who don’t use
their real names here. Usually it’s the ones who are going to leave without
paying.”

“Yeah. She
wouldn’t have had much money. What was she here for?”

“How did
she die?” the doctor asked.

I
blinked. Didn’t he know it was rude to answer a question with a question? “She
was shot,” I said. “I’m looking for whoever did it.”

The
doctor nodded. “It’s not really a surprise. She was here. Probably six months
ago. I couldn’t give you the date.”

“What
was going on?”

“She’d
been assaulted. Beaten up, I suppose. It wasn’t all that serious. It was just
very bloody.”

“Do you
know what happened to her?”

He
sighed and looked out at the waiting room. “Well, I guess there’s no reason not
to tell you now,” he said. “She was evasive, but what I got out of her was that
she’d gone to buy drugs and it didn’t work out so well for her.”

I stared
at him. “And she just…she
volunteered
that information to you?”

“Not at
first,” he said. “Everybody lies at first. But she wanted to know if I could
give her anything for the withdrawal she was in. She’d been counting on that
fix to make the sickness go away. I wouldn’t say she
meant
to tell me
much of anything, but she was…I don’t know what the kids say. Tweaking pretty
hard?”

“I have
no idea what the kids say,” I said. “I get the meaning, anyway.”

“Her
mouth was going a hundred miles an hour. We don’t stock anything like that here
and honestly I don’t know what the treatment for methamphetamine withdrawal is,
anyway. I gave her the address of a drug treatment clinic. It’s over on…” his
brow creased as he thought. “I don’t know what street it’s on, actually. We had
a card.” He looked at the receptionist. “Do we have any of those cards?”

I went
into my pocket and took out the cards Rick had given me at the food bank. “This
one?” I asked, holding one up.

He
leaned forward and squinted so he could read it. “That’s the one.”

“Do you
know if she went?”

“I have
no idea,” he said. “Maybe. She was pretty desperate, but most people in that
kind of need are.”

I
nodded. I knew something about it. Drugs had never been my thing, but there was
a time I’d needed alcohol every few hours. If I didn’t get it I’d start shaking
so badly I was barely functional. “Okay,” I said. “One other thing. I doubt
it’s related to whoever killed her, but I’m curious. Do you have any idea who
beat her up?”

“None.”
He shook his head. “Honestly, I’m not sure she even knew the man.”

“You’re
sure it was a man, though?”

“Oh,
yes. She kept saying
he
, anyway.”

I put my
phone and the business cards away. “I think that’s all I need,” I said. “Thanks
for the help.” I wasn’t sure how helpful any of that had really been, but it
was a nice thing to say to people. I’d been trying to work on my politeness.

“It’s
not a problem,” the doctor said. “I hope you find whoever killed her. She
seemed nice enough.” He gave me a curious look. “Do you mind if I ask you
something?”

“You can
ask,” I said. “I can always just tell you to fuck off if I don’t like the
question.”

He
blinked. “What?”

“Nothing,”
I said. “Go ahead.”

He bit
his lip. “It’s about the Laughing Man…” My heart froze and I waited for him to
continue. “The thing is, I never heard of a serial killer just stopping. You
always hear that it’s something they have to do, or maybe they
need
to
do. But the fight with you…”

“It
takes two people to have a fight,” I said. “I was out of my league. It was a
straight beating.”

“Okay,”
he said. “I know you were in the hospital for a while. But my question is…well,
he
did
stop. After you were out of the picture he stopped. Why do you
think that is?”

There
was a time I’d have had an easy answer for that question. That for the Laughing
Man, it had never been about compulsion. His war with me had just been a
fantastic game. Once he’d beaten me he had nobody else to play with.

But I’d
been back on my feet for a while now. He’d told me a year ago that he wanted to
play again. But after all this time, he still hadn’t started the game. I had no
idea why.

And that
terrified me.

“Your
guess is as good as mine,” I said. “But if you ever figure it out, do me a
favor and let me know.”

Chapter 10

I lasted
all of three minutes at the drug treatment facility Krystal may or may not have
gone to for help before two burly security guards showed me the door. I was
told in no uncertain terms not to come back. My legendary charisma had failed
me.

I
decided to try the women’s crisis center next. The business card I had told me
its name was Second Star and gave an address near Balboa Park. I found it on
the second floor of an office complex, which seemed like a strange location for
a crisis center, but it seemed I knew very little about these kinds of things.
I’d thought food banks were grocery stores where you didn’t have to pay for
anything, after all. How much sense had
that
made? If that had actually
been true, why didn’t
everyone
shop there?

Second
Star had a small waiting room with a receptionist sitting behind a long wooden
desk. It looked like a standard office setup to me. Maybe they were going to
tell me they didn’t do the counseling
there
, but sent people to some
other facility, much like the food bank did with food. I guess I wouldn’t have
been surprised.

The
receptionist was a young blonde woman in her twenties. She smiled reflexively
when she saw me enter, but her mouth dropped open when she took a closer look.
“Oh, god,” she said, putting a hand to her mouth.

Once
again I’d forgotten what my face looked like. “No,” I said, pointing at my
stitches. “This is from an accident.” I frowned, realizing how that must sound
to her. “I mean, I jumped through a window.” Somehow saying that never made it
sound better. I needed to come up with a better line. “Oh, forget it. I’m
fine.”

She
tapped on her computer. “I can have someone for you to talk to in about…” she
studied the monitor screen. “Ten minutes? Can you wait that long?”

“Sure,”
I said. “I’m not really doing anything. Let me start with you, though.”

“Oh,
no,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not a counselor. I’m not qualified to…”

“I don’t
need counseling,” I said. Well,
that
was a lie. I certainly needed
counseling. I didn’t need it here, though. “My name is Nevada James.”

“I’m
Vanessa,” she said. “Why don’t you have a seat. Would you like a coffee? We
just got a Keurig machine and it has something like eight flavors. I don’t
remember them all, but I’m sure there’s something you’ll like.”

I’d been
hoping she’d recognize my name. Things went so much easier when that happened.
“No,” I said. “I don’t need any…”

“It does
hot cocoa, too. And chai, I think. Or maybe you’d like a soda?”

“No,” I
said. “Well, I guess I’d take a Diet Coke, if you have one.”

She got
up from her desk. “I’ll be right back.” I watched as she disappeared through a
nearby door, probably heading for a kitchen or break room. Why the hell had I
asked for a soda? Maybe she’d seemed so eager to do something nice I’d felt the
need to oblige her?

Vanessa
was back two minutes later with a clear plastic cup she’d filled with ice and
soda. She handed it to me and I regretted not asking for the can. I was way too
paranoid to drink something I hadn’t prepared myself. “Thanks,” I said, and
started to put the cup down on the desk between us. She snatched a coaster from
somewhere near her telephone and put it in place before it was halfway there.

“No
problem.” She smiled. “So like I said, if you can just wait a few minutes.” She
nodded eagerly at a nearby chair.

I
decided to cut to the chase. “Like I was saying, I’m Nevada James.”

She
nodded. “I remember.”

“I’m
looking into a murder.”

Her eyes
widened. “Oh,” she said. I noticed she’d put her hair back in a bun so perfect
not even one strand seemed out of place. That was more than I’d ever been
capable of. My hair generally looked like I’d walked through a tornado.

I took
my phone out of my jacket and pulled up Krystal’s photo. I turned the phone so
she could see it. “Have you ever seen this woman before?”

Vanessa
looked at the photo and shook her head. “No,” she said.

At least
that was an answer. “You sure?”

“Pretty
sure,” she said. She looked at me. “I mean, we’re usually pretty busy. A lot of
people come in here. You know how it is.”

I looked
around. The waiting room was empty. “I’m not sure I do,” I said.

“This is
the quietest it’s been all day,” Vanessa said. “I’m usually afraid to use the
restroom because I might miss someone who needs help. And we’re actually full
up right now, which is why I said I could probably have someone with you in ten
minutes before.”

She
had
said that. “Okay,” I said. “Fair enough. Is there maybe another receptionist
who might remember her?”

“I’m the
only one,” she said. “Someone else will sit up here when I go to lunch, but
that’s just for an hour.”

“Could I
talk to one of those people?”

Vanessa
squinted at me. “What makes you so sure she came here, if you don’t mind my
asking?”

I
scratched at the stitches in my cheek. The itching came and went, and as much as
the scratching sent shards of pain racing across my face, it was better than
doing nothing. “I’m not exactly sure she did,” I said. “I know she was referred
over here at some point, though. It’s kind of a longshot.”

“Well,
I’m not sure we could tell you anything, anyway,” Vanessa said. “There are laws
about confidentiality.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “I don’t even
understand them all, honestly, but I’m not going to risk getting our license
revoked.”

It probably
wouldn’t have taken much to browbeat Vanessa into showing my phone around, but
I really didn’t want to be that person. I’d done too much of being that person
in the past. “Do you think you could just ask? If nobody can help me, I’ll
understand.”

“Maybe
in about ten minutes,” Vanessa said. “You understand I don’t want to interrupt
anyone who’s with a client now.” She nodded toward the waiting room. “You could
have a seat, if you like.”

I
considered it for a moment, and then went and had a seat near the door. Vanessa
turned her attention back to her computer and I turned mine to a television
mounted on the wall across from me. It was showing something from HGTV, which I
wasn’t familiar with, but I was guessing the H and G stood for home and garden,
as the show seemed to be dealing with both of those things. The host was
showing a couple how to grow tomatoes in their backyard. I thought about
growing tomatoes in my backyard. Then I remembered I rarely cooked, and what
was I going to do with tomatoes, anyway? Make a bunch of salads? I didn’t eat
salads.

Maybe
fifteen minutes passed. Vanessa smiled at me sympathetically from behind her
desk. “I’m sure it won’t be long,” she said. I nodded at her.

Five
minutes later a woman in a denim jacket walked through the door. She looked
around furtively. It was hard to miss the fact that someone had punched her in
the face recently. Bruising was already setting in around her left eye, and
there was probably going to be more of it soon. My hand moved instinctively for
my gun, but I caught myself and made it go back to my lap.

“Ma’am?
I can help you,” Vanessa called. The bruised woman made a beeline for her. I
watched as Vanessa came around her desk, put an arm around the woman, and
escorted her through a door into what I assumed was the main office where the
counselors were. It was difficult to tell without seeing it, but it was the
only thing that made sense.

I waited
another five minutes, but Vanessa didn’t return and my mood had turned dark. I
wanted to find whoever had hurt that woman and put a bullet in their knee.
Maybe both knees. I wasn’t going to get anywhere like this. I knew myself
pretty well by now. I was no good when I was grumpy. I’d wind up lashing out at
someone.

I stood
up and left. There wasn’t anything for me to do here right now. Unfortunately,
unless Sarah or Abercrombie came up with something, I was officially out of
leads.