Mind to Mind: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (13 page)

Cochran left his untouched beer at the bar
and went to join her. They conversed briefly in the doorway, then
departed together.

I followed, without a word to Alison, and I
doubt that she was even aware of my movement. Cochran and the woman
were rounding the corner into the lobby as I came out of the
lounge. I caught just a glimpse, and he was shielding against my
point of view, so again I could not ID the woman.

They were hurrying across
the parking lot when I reached the main entryway. I had to stand
back and let a large group file in through the tandem doors. By the
time I got outside, the pair were entering a car that was parked
about fifty yards away. There was a light standard there, and I
could see pretty well, well enough to stand up the hairs at the
back of my neck.

They drove away, moving uprange and out at
the top of the lot.

There was no reason that I could think of
why Jim Cochran should not drop into Sportsman's from time to time
for a beer. It was not that far from the home turf; Hollywood lay
just over the hill. That did not stand my hairs up.

A cop, on duty or off, sometimes has
occasion to meet a lady at a bar. Even a married cop, when the lady
is not his wife—and, after all, this is the real world. So that
would not stand my hairs up.

But the lady he met was a dead ringer for
his adopted daughter. That... yeah, that stood my hairs up.

Chapter Seventeen: Special
Effects

The band was on break, and
Twogether was encamped at my table when I returned to the lounge.
Jennifer was even lovelier close up, younger than the stage
lighting made her, very real and warm, greatly expressive eyes that
fairly crackled as we shook hands. Michael was warm and friendly,
too, laid-back with an easy laugh, a powerful- looking guy but with
gentle eyes. He moved on to continue the break-time ritual of
mingling, gripped my shoulder in a friendly gesture as he
departed.

I was watching the interaction between the
women, liked what I saw, decided I would not mention the latest
craziness to Alison. They excused themselves to the ladies' room. I
wandered down to the bandstand to check out the instruments, just
a couple of keyboards and drums, but I have a fascination for the
new electronic keyboards and the sounds that can be produced with
those things.

Michael came up to check me out, I guess,
while I was thus engrossed. He showed me a nice smile, though, and
asked, "Are you a player?"

I admitted that I was just a fancier. We
talked briefly about the instruments, then he told me, "You're with
a nice lady. Just, uh, hope you know that."

I assured him that I did and asked him,
"Known her long?"

He smiled and replied,
"Just in the clubs. You develop a following, you know." He jerked
his head toward the crowd. "Most the people in here go with us
wherever we go. It's nice. Every night is like a party at home with
friends."

I tried a shot. "Jim Cochran too?"

"Who?"

I said, "A cop I know. Saw him at the bar a
few minutes ago.

He said, "Don't recognize the name," He
turned on a keyboard, said, "Let me show you some of the effects on
this little honey."

Ever notice how talent seems to flow in
clumps? I could tell just by the way this guy's hands found the
keyboard that they knew what to do once they got there. He was more
than a singer. Effects, yeah, that's what he was demonstrating, but
I'd give a few ounces of left-brain tissue to be able to elicit
those sounds from that instrument.

I told him so. He laughed, turned it off,
said, "It's the dirtiest business in town."

I knew that. And I was thinking how tough it
must be for people like this to stand up there night after night
beating their brains out for a thousand or so a week in
smoke-filled rooms while lesser talents frolicked in an avalanche
of riches. Every time I turned on my radio I was reminded of the
success of mediocrity, and that is giving a kind name to much of
what you hear under the guise of music these days.

Jennifer returned to the
stage, dazzled me with a smile, said to Michael, "Get the guys,
honey. Let's spread some sunshine here."

Michael ambled away to
collect the musicians. Jennifer busied herself at a stack of music,
I guess setting up the numbers for the next set. I was impressed by
the professional poise of this young lady. As an impulse I asked
her, "How long have you been at this?"

"We start at nine," she replied absently,
absorbed in her task.

I said, "I meant, in show business."

She raised luminous eyes
to give me a measuring look, smiled, replied, "I started studying
at fourteen."

I asked her, "How long have you known
Alison?"

“
Isn't
she a
dear
,” she said. "With some people it seems you've always known
them. How 'bout you?"

"About a day, I guess. Do you know Jim
Cochran?"

“
The policeman? We see him
now and then.”

"With Alison?"

She gave me a rather stiff look, replied,
"Shouldn't you be asking Alison about that?"

I shrugged and said, "I could ask Jim, for
that matter. We're old friends. I just..."

"He was just here," she said, primary
attention once again on the stack of music.

I said, "Yes, I...did you happen to notice
the woman who came in just behind him?"

She put down the music, turned to me with a
smile of forbearance, told me, "We see a lot from up here. But we
don't usually talk about it. What is this all about?"

I grinned. "Just trying to get your
attention. You have gorgeous eyes."

She said, "Yeah, yeah—tell it to Michael,
please. Pardon me. I need to set up the music for the band."

The guys were straggling back to the
bandstand. Alison had returned to the table. I headed back by way
of the bar, paused beside Cochran's untouched beer. The bartender
came over, a question in the eyes. I asked him, "Didn't I see Jim
Cochran here?"

The bartender replied, "Yeah. I guess duty
called." He retrieved the beer, dumped it. "Can I get you
something?"

"I already fixed," I told him. "Did you see
the woman?"

The guy showed me about one half a smile,
replied, "I see lots of women. You will, too, if you just stake it
out."

I asked, "You get hookers in here?"

He said, "We get everything in here. What's
you preference?"

I said, "About five-five, short blond hair,
supertight designer jeans, spike heels."

He said, "Yeah, we get those. But not
usually this early. Just keep the eyes open."

The bartender went on
along the bar. I went on back to the table. Alison asked me,
"What's going on?"

I told her, "Thought I saw Jim Cochran."

She said, "Really!"

"Yeah."

"Well, wouldn't that be a coincidence."

"No coincidence at all," I replied. "Seems
everybody in here knows him."

She wondered, "Would this be on his
beat?"

"He's Hollywood Division. Know him
socially?"

"Me? No, I—well, we had a drink once."

"Here?"

"Gosh, no. I was here for a wedding
reception once, years ago. That was the only time before now. What
are you...? Hey, buddy, you brought me here—remember? What are you
suggesting?"

I said, "Suggesting nothing. Just wondering.
I hate coincidence."

She said, "Well, you're in for a rough life,
then. There's a coincidence around every corner."

I said, "Let's get out of here."

"You've hardly touched your drink. Jennifer
promised to do some Barbra Streisand for me."

I said, "Only Streisand can do
Streisand."

"You won't say that after you've heard
Jennifer."

I said, "Hate to be a party pooper, but I
really think we should get out of here."

She gave me a moment of speculative
attention, then pushed back her chair, waved toward the bandstand,
said, "Something else happened, didn't it."

But I did not tell her about that "something
else" until we got back to our room. Had to tell her then. Because
that "something else" was occupying the overstuffed chair at the
patio door. It had a bullet hole between the eyes.

Jim Cochran was dead in my room.

Chapter Eighteen: A
Reconsideration

Along about this time you are probably
starting to wonder, as I was, if someone had been playing games
with me. I get as upset over that sort of thing as any normal
person does. Hate to be a patsy or a pawn. And I needed to
reconsider the entire march of events from that point of view, if
only to dispose of it and get on with the problem.

The most obvious starting
point in that reconsideration was the question: Is there more than
one "Jane Doe?" That is, had I been dealing with two natural
versions, two separate and distinct persons?

Had the one Jane Doe died in her hospital
bed and had the corpse been stolen?—for whatever convoluted
reason.

And had the other Jane
Doe—not a "copy" but another whole person in her own right—been
rung in on me, and for God's sake why? And how would this play to
the mental phenomena?

See, the trouble with
trying to rationalize the irrational is that the rational
explanation is usually the most irrational. It was easier for me to
buy ghosts and hobgoblins than to try to swallow a deeply contrived
conspiracy for which there is no obvious cause or goal. The cause
would have to deal with a problem, the goal with the solution to
that problem. What sort of problem could warrant such a contrived
solution?

I had to haul the whole thing out and look
at it again. But I really could not do that in any systematic way,
not at the moment, because at the moment I was primarily trying to
deal with the moment itself.

So I called in the report,
then immediately tracked down Jim's superior, a Captain Valdiva, to
be sure that Georgia would not get the news from a TV reporter. And
I was trying to prop up Alison, who appeared to be in danger of
coming totally unglued. She had seen the unpretty sight before I
could shoo her out. I just pulled the door closed and we went
directly to the lobby to call the cops. We had a response inside of
about two minutes, I think, and then it was stunned confusion for
the next two hours. I was trying to keep Alison viable during all
that—and working a bit at myself, in the bargain, so I was really
in no position for a quick systematic analysis of the events of the
previous thirty-six hours or so.

Complicating the whole thing, of course, was
the fact that both Alison and I knew the victim, the fact that we
had all been seen in the lounge just prior to the murder, and—of
course—the fact that the corpse was in our room.

The evidence indicated, however, that the
shooting had occurred elsewhere and the body dumped in our room.
He'd been shot once with a powerful steel-jacketed bullet that had
passed through and exited at the rear of the skull. It was a
contact wound, meaning that the barrel of the weapon was pressing
against the base of his nose when the shot was fired. A careful
search of the room did not produce the lethal bullet.

So the logic seemed to
suggest that we had nothing to do with the murder. Surely we would
not have shot him, then brought him to our room to report the
event. But the L.A. cops are very thorough—and, after all, this is
the land of make-believe with tons of creative imagination in the
atmosphere. So I had to go through the Q&A routines, account
for every minute of my evening, over and over it. I held back
nothing except the occult stuff; also, I just gave a general
description of the woman who met Jim in the lounge. The rest I told
pretty much like it was, including the fact that I had been working
with Jim on the Jane Doe case.

Alison, on the other hand,
having no experience in these matters and cautious as hell about
being a possible suspect in a murder case, refused to give them
anything but her name, rank, and serial number without a lawyer
present. While this did not necessarily prejudice her standing with
the investigating officers, it would most certainly have insured
her a free ride to the police station had it not been for the
arrival on the scene of Captain Valdiva some fifty minutes
following the first response.

Valdiva and I were not on
a first-name basis, but we were not strangers, either. He knew of
my past work with the department, and he knew that Jim and I were
friends. He also had rank enough to disregard some of the standard
procedures of a murder investigation. I took him aside and
explained that Alison was distraught over Jim's death; even though
she had known him only slightly and professionally, that she had
been to Jim's home with me earlier in the day, had met his wife and
kids; that she was having a hard time handling the shock of walking
into her motel room to find Jim seated in a chair with a bullet
hole between the eyes.

Valdiva is an intelligent
guy. He also knew that Alison and I were registered together at the
motel, so he was probably reading some female sensitivity over
that situation. I told him about the "mix-up" at the morgue and the
strain of searching for the Jane Doe corpse, about our decision to
drive up to Ojai on a possible lead toward Jane Doe's identity,
the subsequent decision to check in at Sportsman's to give Alison a
needed break, the coincidental spotting of Cochran while we were in
the lounge.

Other officers had
collected statements from the employees; the bartender, a cocktail
waitress, and the entertainers confirmed my statement.