Killing Hope (Gabe Quinn Thriller) (12 page)

He wondered which would give him the biggest buzz.

The coyote was sniffing the air. He could see it’s hot, moist breath vent from flared nostrils. It had caught the scent of prey. Somewhere beyond the walled estate. Decided the man wasn’t worth wasting any more time over. And departed with a silent skip.

The man checked the radioactive dial on his wristwatch.

They had something in common, he and the coyote.

They were both predators.

Both following primitive pathways imprinted into their hindbrains from generations of survival.

27

^{___________________________}

I woke to the sound of knuckles rapping hard against glass. At first I was disoriented. Thought I was back home, in Tennessee. Twenty years ago. When the Mississippi had flooded overnight. When rescue crews had airlifted families from submerged homes. Ours included.

‘Sir? You okay in there? Please lower the window. Sir?’

But this wasn’t my bedroom of twenty years ago. I was in my car. Slumped in the driver’s seat. With a bib full of broken potato chips and drool dangling pendulously from one corner of my mouth. Embarrassing. How had I got here? I vaguely remembered feeling ravenous. The actual drive down to the convenience store was absent.

‘Sir, do you need medical attention?’

It was coming back to me. In slow-motion flashes.

Danielle had served me at the checkout. Danielle is in her twenties. But bands of wiry grey streak her auburn hair. A sloping chin and eyes that protrude slightly. Danielle has learning difficulties. But she smiles like an angel.

‘Sir, I’m going to have to insist you open the window or step out of the vehicle.’

It had taken Danielle three attempts to scan a carton of milk and a bag of sour-cream-and-chives potato chips. I’d used the time to chat with her about life and its great unsolved mysteries while she’d bagged me up.

Now I could see her standing in the safety of
Ralph’
s entranceway. Wrapped in a coat two sizes too big. A look of concern darkening her snowflake face. She threw me an uncertain wave. I smiled shakily back.

The nuisance rapping on the glass was an Alhambra PD patrolman. Fortyish. A motorcycle cop with a gleaming white helmet and mirrored
Ray-Bans
. Looked like he polished both religiously. He saw me blink against bright daylight and waggled an impatient finger.

‘The window, sir. Now.’

Or else, what? I rolled it down. I could see my reflection in his silvery sunglasses. I looked like something not quite alive. And maybe I was.

‘Can I see some identification?’

I handed over my police ID. Brushed crumbs off my shirt. I waved to Danielle while the patrolman checked me out.

He took his time reading the badge. ‘Senior Detective Gabriel Quinn. What do you know? You’re that celebrity cop. I’ve seen you on TV. I follow your cases.’

It sounded more like an accusation than an observation. Same thing every time. Only this guy had downgraded me to
that
.

He leaned on the rim of the open window. He thought he knew me because he’d seen me on some talk show. Thought he could be overly familiar. They’re all the same.

‘What brings you down here?’ I could smell halitosis or something that had died recently in a tooth cavity. ‘You here on a case? I can help. Show you around. This is my town.’

‘No, thanks.’ I said. ‘I’m local too. Over on Valencia.’

‘That so?’ The patrolman seemed interested. Like he’d come pay me a surprise visit just to see if I was telling the truth. Go in my fridge and help himself to one of the year-old beers. ‘I’m up and down Valencia all the time. Live just up the ways. On Kendall?’ He waited for my response.

‘Kendall, yes.’

‘Maybe we can get together for drinks sometime? Crack some cases together. Yeah, you and me. The Alhambra connection.’

‘I don’t think so.’

Hapless street cop with high hopes. No chance. My coat tails were threadbare as it was.

The patrolman straightened himself up to his full height. Six feet and a bit. His black short-sleeved shirt looked one size too small. Muscles bulging. Sleeves so tight they looked like they were cutting off the blood supply to his lower arms.

He adopted a defensive posture. ‘I see how it is. You think you’re better than me because you’ve been on TV.’

‘It’s not like that.’

‘Yes, it is. I get that. You’re out of my pay grade. You’re a celebrity and I’m just a street cop. And you don’t want to mix it with the ignoble.’

I frowned on two counts: one, because of his misuse of the word
ignoble
and two, because he even knew it existed.

 
‘For the record,’ he said as he handed back my wallet, ‘you look shitter in the flesh.’

He turned and walked away. Leather riding boots creaking over pants as tight as his shirt.

My cell phone rang. The time read: a quarter after 7 a.m.. The name on the tiny screen said:
John Ferguson.
There were a dozen missed calls all queued up behind it.

‘Don’t you ever answer your house phone?’ The Captain demanded as I answered.

‘Only when I’m home. What’s up, John?’

‘How soon can you be at Saint Cloud Road?’

I thought about it, ‘Bel Air? At this hour of the morning – fifty minutes?’

‘Make it thirty.’ He said. ‘It’s the big place overlooking the County Club. It looks like your boy just struck again.’

28

^{___________________________}

The big place overlooking the Bel Air Country Club was one of those sprawling mansion houses they use in movies as the lairs of drug barons or corrupt politicians. You know the kind: where rock stars share needles with the Hollywood jet-set over caviar and
Dynasty
reruns.

I drove along the tree-lined driveway at a crawl. New England shingle rattled around the wheel wells. I could see armies of flower pots and nicely-tended lawns. Ivy-covered walls. Wondered if it was Evian water spurting from the marble fountains.

I parked alongside a shiny black Crime Scene Unit van. Got out. There was about a dozen other vehicles snuggled in the shade of the stately oaks.

‘Nice morning for a murder.’

The comment came from a chubby guy wearing a Coroner’s Office vest. He was perched on the hood of the mortuary car. Enjoying a cigarette in the sunshine. I knew him by sight, but we’d never been introduced. It didn’t smell like regular smoke.
 

Captain Ferguson was waiting beneath the impressive pillared entranceway of the main house. He looked pissed. I’d made good time in spite of the morning traffic. But not quite his thirty minute deadline. Not sure if that’s why he was pissed.

‘You’re a hard man to get hold of.’ He said. He nodded towards my feet. ‘What happened?’

I glanced down. There were spatters of dried mud up the ankles of my pants and more of it caked around the edges of my shoes.

29

^{___________________________}

It was cool inside the mansion. Mausoleum marble cool. We entered a spacious atrium decked out with a black-and-white checkerboard floor. Oversized chess pieces standing to attention on either side. Big old portraits on white-washed walls. A black wrought iron staircase swirling upwards to loftier landings. Deathly silence. For some morbid reason, I liked it.

Ferguson pointed to the painting of a young blonde-haired woman as we crossed the vestibule. It reminded me of Greta Garbo in her heyday.

‘That’s the old gal when she was young.’ He said. ‘The victim. Marlene van den Berg. She was quite something, wasn’t she? I met her a few times. She was a sweet old thing.’

We worked our way down a long corridor filled with black-and-white photographs. Snapshots of happy, hard-working men leaning on shovels, mopping sweaty brows. Construction and haymaking.

‘The van den Bergs were old lumber money from Québec.’ Ferguson explained as we headed out back. ‘Helped build the railroads up and down the Pacific Coast.’

We passed through a pair of French doors. Out into bright sunshine. This was the back of the eastern wing. A pleasant suntrap filled with potted plants and flowering vines. It was also crawling with Crime Lab people. I nodded morning greetings to the boys and girls from Forensics. Three times in as many days.

‘Who’s the wailer?’

A lean young man in a long red bathrobe was blowing off steam down by a diamond-shaped swimming pool. He was barely in his twenties, I reckoned. Shaggy bleached hair. The inklings of a goatee. He had a deep Californian tan and good teeth – the kind of kid who’d look right at home in
The
Partridge Family
.

‘That’s Richard Schaeffer.’ Ferguson said as we climbed terracotta steps towards a tiled patio area, which seemed to be the hub of all the police activity. ‘He’s Marlene’s live-in butler. Probably had a thing for the old gal. She was gold-plated. She could have her pick of male courtiers. They say we get a hankering for salt as we get older.’

I licked at the dry insides of my mouth. These things happened – especially when money was involved.

‘Where was he when she needed him?’

‘Handcuffed to the bed – or so he claims.’

‘Kinky. Do we believe him?’

‘He’s got the mashed-up wrists to prove it.’

I glanced back down to the pool area. The shaggy-haired butler was waving his arms around like a windmill. I caught glimpses of reddened wrists and reddened eyes.

‘Doesn’t look like your regular Jeeves.’ I thought out loud. ‘More like a surfer dude from Huntington Beach.’

‘Coming through.’ Ferguson said, parting the troops.

CSU techies drew back as we approached the body.

The killer had left Marlene van den Berg on the lovely, south-facing sun terrace in the customary pose of interment. There was a familiar ragged ring of rose petals around her. And a cross of ash drawn on her brow.