Hello, Darkness (27 page)

“Paris?”

With a start, she looked behind her, toward the studio door. Dean was standing there, as though he had materialized from out of her memory.

She’d been so lost in thought, it took several seconds for her to process that this was the here and now, not an extension of her reverie. She swallowed thickly and motioned him in. “It’s okay. My mike’s not on.”

“Crenshaw said I could come in if I didn’t make any noise.”

He sat on the stool beside hers, and for one insane moment, she felt like throwing herself at him, taking up where they had left off in her recollection. His scruff that night had left whisker burns on her skin. Within a few days they had faded. But the sensual imprints made on her mind had never gone away. Last night’s kiss had revealed how vivid and accurate they were.

“Nothing yet from Valentino?”

She shook her head to answer him, but also to clear it of the persistent sensual tweaks. “Did you get Gavin home all right?”

“With orders that he’s not to leave, and I don’t think he’ll disobey me tonight. It shook him up to be questioned at the police station today. He was certainly on his best behavior tonight. Of course, he was trying to impress you.”

“Well, he succeeded because I was impressed. He’s great, Dean.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah.”

She watched him for a moment, noticing the worry line that had formed between his eyebrows. “But?”

He brought her into focus. “But he’s lying to me.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

S
ergeant Robert Curtis was working overtime. He was ensconced in his cubicle inside the CIB, where only one other detective was burning the midnight oil, on a robbery case.

The radio on Curtis’s desk was tuned to FM 101.3. He was listening to Paris Gibson’s voice while reading the information he’d gleaned about her suspended television career and departure from Houston. His friends in the HPD had been thorough, faxing him everything that had ever been printed about Paris, Jack Donner, and Dean Malloy. It was interesting stuff.

The search of Lancy Ray Fisher’s, aka Marvin Patterson, apartment had yielded some surprises, too, specifically, a box of cassette tapes, all of Paris Gibson’s radio program.

Now, why, the detective asked himself, would a con cum janitor have such a burning interest in Paris that he would collect recordings of past programs when he could listen to her live every night?

Lancy’s mother hadn’t provided any insight.

An intelligence officer, having weeded through miles of red tape and reams of records, had located her. Currently she lived in a mobile-home park in San Marcos, a town south of Austin.

Curtis himself had made the thirty-minute drive there. He could have dispatched another detective to conduct the interview, but he’d wanted to hear firsthand why Mrs. Fisher’s son, Lancy, living under the alias Marvin Patterson, was seemingly obsessed with Paris Gibson.

The interior of Mrs. Fisher’s domicile was even worse than the exterior portended, and she was as untidy and inhospitable as her home. When Curtis showed her his ID, she was at first suspicious, then belligerent, and, finally, abusive.

“Why don’t you take your sorry ass outta here? I got nothing to say to no goddamn cop.”

“Has Lancy been to see you recently?”

“No.”

Curtis knew she was lying, but he got the impression that there was no love lost between mother and son and that she would welcome a chance to air her complaints. Rather than challenge the truthfulness of her reply, he remained quiet and tried to pick the cat hair off his trousers while she sucked on a cigarette and he waited until she decided to unload.

“Lancy’s been a thorn in my side since he was born,” she began. “The less he comes around me, the better I like it. He lives his life and I live mine. Besides, he’s gone and got uppity.”

“Uppity?”

“His clothes and such. Drives a new car. Thinks he’s better’n me.”

Which wouldn’t be saying much,
Curtis thought. “What make and model is his car?”

She snorted. “I can’t tell one Jap car from another.”

“Did you know he was working at a radio station?”

“Sweeping up is what he told me. He had to take that job after getting fired from his other one on account of stealing. That was a good job and he went and blowed it. He’s dumb as well as no’count.”

“Did you know he used an assumed name?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me what that boy did. Not after he was a cokehead and all.” Leaning forward, she wheezed in an undertone, “You know, that’s why he did them dirty movies. To get dope.”

“Dirty movies?”

“My neighbor lady? Two rows over? She come running over here one night not long ago, says she’s seen my boy, Lancy, wagging his thing in some nasty movie she rented at the video place. I called her a fuckin’ liar, but she said, ‘Come see for your ownself.’”

She sat up straighter, striking the righteous pose of a recent convert with only contempt for the unshriven. “Sure enough, there he was, nekkid as a jaybird, doing such as I ain’t never saw did before. I’s embarrassed to death.”

Curtis feigned sympathy for a mother whose son had gone astray. “Does he still work in the, uh, film industry?”

“Naw. Don’t do drugs no more either. Leastways he says he don’t. It was a long time ago. He was just a kid. But still.” She lit another cigarette. Curtis would leave there feeling and smelling like he had smoked three packs himself.

“What name did he use when he made the movies?”

“Don’t remember.”

“What were the titles of the movies he was in?”

“Don’t remember and don’t want to know. Guess you could ask my neighbor. And how come an old lady like her is watching trash like that anyway? She ought to be ashamed of herself.”

“Does Lancy have a lot of girlfriends?”

“You don’t listen too good, do you? He don’t tell me
nuthin’.
How would I know anything about girlfriends?”

“Has he ever mentioned Paris Gibson?”

“Who? That a boy or a girl?” Her puzzled reaction was too genuine to have been faked.

“Doesn’t matter.” He stood up. “You know, Mrs. Fisher, that aiding and abetting is a felony.”

“I ain’t aided or abetted nobody. I done told you Lancy ain’t been here.”

“Then you won’t mind if I look around.”

“You got a warrant?”

“No.”

She blew a gust of smoke up at him. “Oh, what the hell. Go ahead.”

It wasn’t a large place, so except for having to avoid hissing cats and their droppings, his walk through it didn’t take long. Nor did it take him long to determine that someone had slept in the spare bedroom. The narrow bed had been left unmade and there was a pair of socks on the floor beside it. When he knelt down to pick up one of the socks, he noticed the loose floor tile beneath the bed. It came right up with a little nudge of his pocketknife.

Replacing what he found there exactly as he’d found it, he rejoined Mrs. Fisher in what passed for the living room. He asked who the socks belonged to.

“Lancy must’ve left them last time he was here. Long time ago. He never did pick up after hisself.”

Another lie, but he’d be wasting his time to dispute it. She would continue lying. “Do you know if Lancy has a computer?”

“He thinks I don’t know about it, but I do.”

“What about a cassette recorder?”

“Don’t know about that, but all them modern contraptions are a waste of good money, if you ask me.”

“I’m going to leave you my card, Mrs. Fisher. If Lancy comes here, will you call me?”

“What’s he done?”

“Avoided questioning.”

“’Bout what? Can’t be anything good.”

“I’d just like to talk to him. If you hear from him, you’d be doing him a favor to notify me.”

She took his business card and laid it on the cluttered TV tray beside her reclining chair. He didn’t quite catch what she muttered around the cigarette dangling from her lips, but it didn’t sound like a promise to do as he asked.

He was anxious to get into the fresh air and away from the potential of being blown to smithereens when her oxygen tank exploded, but at the door he paused to ask one further question. “You said that Lancy got fired from a good job for stealing.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Where was he working?”

“The telephone company.”

As soon as he got into his car, Curtis contacted the San Marcos PD, explained the situation, and asked them to keep surveillance on Mrs. Fisher’s mobile home. He then got another detective in his own unit busy running down Lancy Ray Fisher’s employment record at the telephone company.

Traffic on northbound Interstate 35 was reduced to a crawl because of road work, so by the time he reached headquarters, the information he’d sought was already available. Fisher’s employment records at Southwestern Bell were in his real name. He’d been an excellent employee until he’d gotten caught stealing equipment.

“High-tech stuff at the time,” the detective reported. “More or less obsolete now because the technology changes so quickly.”

“But still useable?”

“According to the expert, yeah.”

Armed with that information, Curtis bumped Lancy Ray Fisher up to the viable suspect list and turned his attention to the materials he’d been faxed from Houston.

Included were copies of newspaper articles, transcriptions of TV news coverage, and materials printed off the Internet. They told a tragic story and filled in some of the gaps that Malloy had been averse to filling.

For instance, Curtis now understood why Paris Gibson wore sunglasses. She had suffered an injury to her eyes in the same auto accident that had robbed Jack Donner of his life—except for a beating heart and minimal brain function.

Paris had been riding on the passenger side of the front seat, with her seat belt buckled. When the car struck the bridge abutment at a high rate of speed, air bags deployed. But they weren’t any help against flying glass from the windshield, which was supposed to have been shatterproof, but wasn’t, especially not when the 185-pound driver of the vehicle was catapulted through it.

Jack Donner was not wearing his seat belt. The air bag retarded his ejection from the car, but didn’t prevent it. He sustained severe head trauma. The damage was irreparable and extensive. He was rendered physically helpless for the remainder of his life.

His mental capacity was limited to reacting to visual, tactile, and auditory stimulation. The responses were feeble, on the level of a newborn, but enough to prevent him from being classified as brain dead. No one could pull the plug.

Reportedly, his friend Dr. Dean Malloy of the HPD had been first on the scene. He had been following Mr. Donner in his own car, had witnessed the accident, and had made the 911 call from his cell phone. By all accounts, he was a caring and self-sacrificial friend, who for days following the accident kept vigil outside Ms. Gibson’s hospital room and Mr. Donner’s ICU.

The last follow-up story on Jack Donner’s tragic fate reported that Paris Gibson had recovered from her minor injuries and, having resigned from her position at the TV station, was moving Donner to a private nursing facility.

She was quoted as thanking all her friends, associates, and fans who had sent flowers and cards wishing her and her fiancé well. She would miss her job and all the wonderful people in Houston, but her life had taken an unexpected turn, and now she must follow a new path.

There was no mention of Dean Malloy in the final story, an omission that practically screamed at Curtis. When one disappears from the radar screen of a strong and lasting friendship, there’s got to be a good reason.

No deep, dark mystery there. He’d seen the way Malloy looked at Paris Gibson and vice versa. With I-want-to-see-you-naked lust. But it was also the care they took
not
to look at each other that gave away a yearning that went deeper than just the physical. It was the avoidance that incriminated them. If this was visible to him after having known them for only two days, it must have been glaringly obvious to Jack Donner.

Conclusion: In a love affair, three was one too many.

As he listened to Paris’s program, his anger mounted.

She made no mention of him, of Valentino.

But she talked endlessly about Janey Kemp. She went on about how badly her parents wanted her to be returned to them unharmed. Told about her friends, who were worried for her safety. Extolled her virtues.

What a farce! Janey had told him how much she despised her parents, and the feeling was mutual. Friends? She made conquests, not friends. As for virtues, she was without them.

But to hear Paris tell it, Janey Kemp was a saint. A beautiful, charming, friendly, kind American ideal.

“If you could only see her now, Paris,” he said in a whispered chuckle.

Janey disgusted him so much now that he had stayed with her only briefly today. She didn’t look beautiful and enticing anymore. Her hair, once bouncy and silky, had looked like old rope coiled about her head. Her complexion was sallow. The eyes that could be sultry or scornful at will were now dull and lifeless. Barely acknowledging his presence in the room, she had stared vacantly and unblinkingly, even when he snapped his fingers an inch from her nose.

She seemed half dead and looked even worse. A shower would improve things, but he just couldn’t be bothered with carrying her into the bathroom to wash her.

He couldn’t be bothered with much of anything except dealing with this jam he’d gotten himself into. Time was running out for him to arrive at a workable solution. He had extended to Paris a seventy-two-hour deadline, and if he had any character at all, any sense of pride, he really should stick to that timetable.

Janey had become more of a liability than he had anticipated. There also remained the question of what to do about Paris.

He really hadn’t looked beyond bringing Janey here and using her the way she begged to be used. She was a whore who advertised her willingness to try anything. He had called her bluff, that’s all. Her boasts hadn’t been empty ones either. She’d proved herself to be a gourmand of debasement.

He hadn’t seriously planned on this ending with her demise, any more than he had planned to kill Maddie Robinson. That’s just the way his relationship with Maddie had evolved. She’d said, “I don’t want to see you anymore,” and he had made certain that she wouldn’t. Ever. When you looked at it that way, she had decided her fate, not him.

As for Paris, he hadn’t thought much beyond placing that first call and telling her that he had taken action against the woman who had wronged him. He had wanted to frighten her, rattle her, and hopefully make her aware of her intolerable smugness. Who was she to dispense advice on love and life, sex and relationships?

What he hadn’t anticipated was that his phone call to her would launch a police investigation and become the media event that it had. Who would have thought everyone would get so uptight over Janey, when she was getting exactly what she had asked for?

No, it had grown into something much larger than he had bargained for. He felt himself losing control of the situation. To survive, he must get back that control. But where to start?

One way would be to release Janey.

Yes, he could do that. He could dump her near her parents’ house. She didn’t know his name. He could clear out this room so that if she ever brought the cops to the “scene of the crime,” he would be long gone. He would have to stop going to the meeting places of the Sex Club or risk being seen by her, but finding action was never a problem. The Sex Club was only one resource.

It wasn’t a perfect plan, but probably the best course of action left to him. He would call Paris tonight at the appointed time and tell her that he’d only wanted to toy with her, make her realize that she shouldn’t play with people’s emotions and hand out glib advice.
I never dreamed you would take me seriously, Paris. Can’t you take a joke? No hard feelings, okay?

Yes, that was definitely a workable plan.

“…here on FM 101.3,” he heard Paris say, interrupting his thoughts. “Stay with me until twoA .M. I just got a call from Janey’s best friend, Melissa.”

Melissa.

“Melissa, would you like to say something to the listening audience?” Paris asked.

“Yeah, I just, you know, want Janey back safe,” she said.

“Janey, if you can hear this and you’re okay, come home. Nobody’s gonna be mad. And if someone out there is holding my friend against her will, then I have to tell you that’s totally uncool. Let her go. Please. We just want Janey back. So…I guess that’s it.”

“Thank you, Melissa.”

Wait, was he supposed to be the
villain
of this piece? He hadn’t done anything to Janey Kemp that she hadn’t wanted done. And Paris wasn’t the snow princess she wanted everyone to believe either. She was no better than anyone else.

He dialed a number he knew by heart, knowing that this call couldn’t be traced to his cell. He’d made certain of that.

“This is Paris.”

“The topic tonight is Dean Malloy.”

“Valentino? Let me speak to Janey.”

“Janey is in no mood to talk,” he said, “and neither am I.”

“Janey’s parents wanted me to ask you—”

“Shut up and listen to me. If you and your boyfriend don’t move quickly, you’ll have
two
deaths on your consciences. Janey’s. And Jack Donner’s.”