Pacific Beat, page 16
“Innelman?”
“Yeah. He rubbed me the wrong way. His whole attitude was I was a useless bum who doesn’t even know what he sees. He treated me like I was having visions or something. I’ve been down here for forty years off and on, even when I had Lynette … and I’ve been rousted and busted and booked and beat up and pushed around and taken in and let out and … hell, I’ve been through more cops in my life than’s good for anybody. So, I know who I am. I know where I stand. Some cops, they’re okay, like you guys. Some are just assholes, like what’s his name. Guys like that don’t get anything from me.”
Raymond pushed off and came forward, lifted Mackie by the front of his shirt, clear off the ground, and pressed him against the big Coast Highway pylon. Weir noted the sureness with which Raymond pinned him there, so he wouldn’t fall.
“You ought to talk to him,” said Jim. Mackie’s feet were dangling in midair. The angle of the embankment was steep: A fall would be wicked. Mackie glanced down, then at Jim.
“I think he’s ready to talk, Ray. Let him go and let’s see.”
Rather than dropping him, Raymond set Mackie back on his feet and straightened his shirt for him.
Ruff raised his hands as if calling for a time-out, then squatted in the dirt and unlaced his right shoe. When he took it off, Weir saw that Mackie’s filthy brown sock didn’t go past his ankle: It was a sock dickey. Ruff’s foot was a translucent white. Mackie gathered up the flimsy canvas tennis shoe and started prying around under the rubber patch that covered the toes. He lifted the rubber, held up the shoe toward the light of the bay, and looked in. “Got it,” he said. A moment later, he had worked it out, cupped it in his fist, and held his hand out to Jim. “Found it down by where she screamed before the cops came. They treated me so bad when they woke me up, I figured they could just do without this. That was before I knew it was Annie Weir. Swear.”
Jim felt the small, smooth object drop into his hand. He stepped out of the shadow and into the hazy sunshine. The surface against his thumb felt hard, specific. Something sharp prodded his palm. He looked down at a clear, marquis-cut diamond—half an inch long, a quarter wide—with a small bezel around its perimeter and a bent gold post protruding dead center from its back. The surface was smeared with blood.
“We got the tie tack,” he said.
“Something that big’s got to be fake,” said Mackie. “But I still coulda got twenty for it.”
Raymond reached into his coat and pulled his wallet. He slid out some bills and handed them to Ruff.
“Thanks, Lieutenant.”
Ray said nothing as he walked by Mackie, but he trailed a hand against the man’s shoulder. He stood beside Weir and looked down at the mounted stone. “How many cops you know wear half-carat diamonds to hold their ties?”
“None, offhand. But I know what kind of guy wears this. The same kind of guy who lives in a glass house on an island and answers his door in a black silk robe. Same kind of guy who left twenty minutes dangling between midnight and one.”
“Kearns was in uniform.”
“He changed into street clothes, then changed back. It would take about six minutes.”
Raymond looked at Weir, then started off toward the truck.
Mackie tossed his bottle down the embankment. It chimed and bounced against the earth, leaping in a graceful arc before landing in the mud. “This is Newport Beach, boys. Cops can do anything they want. Don’t forget that.”
CHAPTER 15
DENNISON AND DWIGHT INNELMAN MET THEM AT THE county impound yard. The yard was ten miles from the coast, and the late-morning haze had metastasized into a suffocating, corrosive smog. The four men stood looking at Ann’s old Toyota as if a moment of silence was called for. Beside it stood Emmett Goins’s Chevrolet.
Raymond gave Dennison an evidence bag with the tie tack in it, and told his chief the story. Brian held the bag up to the polluted light and jiggled it, then handed it over to the detective.
Innelman took off his aviator shades and studied the tack, probing at it through the plastic. “How come he was so eager to give it to you, but not to me?”
“He doesn’t like your attitude,” said Jim.
Smile lines formed at the corners of Innelman’s mouth. “Guess I’m losing my touch.”
“Plus, we plied him with truth serum.”
“Now I see.”
Dennison told his detective to take the diamond into evidence, get it to Robbins for blood and latents, then run a trace with the local jewelers. Innelman set the bag carefully in the briefcase that stood at his feet. Brian turned to Jim. “Brief me on Blodgett and Kearns. You can talk in front of Dwight—he knows the … situation.”
Weir glanced at Innelman, who, still kneeling with his briefcase, regarded him deadpan from behind his sunglasses. For the first time since he’d taken on Dennison’s task, Jim felt a tug of diminishment. The men were the men, and the blue was the blue, and quitting to do something else hadn’t fully released him from that bond. But things were priorities now, and the first priority was Ann.
He told Dennison about Blodgett’s fifty-minute “coffee break” with the whole north-end patrol, the out-of-beat squad car that came off the bridge at midnight and headed south, the aborted fishing expedition of the night before. Then Kearns’s twenty minutes off-radio between 12:30 and 12:50 A.M.
Dennison shook his head slowly and muttered, “Jesus.” His eyebrows furrowed and rose; then, an odd smile as he turned to Ray. “You wouldn’t spend an hour at the doughnut shop, would you?”
“The Whale, maybe.”
The chief chuckled. Weir realized how hard Dennison had to work to legitimize himself to his men: His rise from captain to interim chief to leading mayoral candidate had been too quick for anyone’s comfort but his own. “He’s sure that unit coming off the bridge was one of ours?”
“No. He’s not sure.”
Dennison stared off into the hovering smog. “Too bad the chopper was down. Those guys see everything. Now, about Blodgett. He’s some kind of fishing freak—spends every spare minute out in his boat. I wouldn’t make too much of that. He might have been shaking down some new gear.”
“Was he on patrol?”
Dennison looked at Weir, then Ray. “No. But I’m sure he’s got a reason.”
Weir was surprised to see Dennison defending Blodgett, the only officer on his force actively working to defeat him in the election. Brian has a thin line to walk, he thought: Be thorough, be fair, but convincingly kick Becky’s ass on June 5. Maybe the sheer publicity of Blodgett’s dissension was what kept Dennison on the level—anything less than fair play on the chief’s part would alienate his men, and make good fodder for the press. “Blodgett wasn’t out long enough to shake much down. Fog. Middle of the night, out on the same bay where we found Annie. Why?”
Dennison considered, his eyes again moving from Jim to Raymond. “That’s all, Weir.”
“That’s enough, isn’t it?”
“You don’t understand me. You’ve done your part. It’s over. You’re done.”
Jim felt sucker-punched, a little rush of breath leaving his chest. “Kearns and—”
“You’re done, Weir. That’s all, and that’s it. You got enough for me to think about, so I’ll think about it, right?”
“Kearns and Blodgett have a lot of answers to give,” said Jim. “I can get those answers. Give me a few more days. I can—”
“You can’t do a goddamn thing that Internal Affairs can’t do better.” Dennison smiled at Jim with a wicked little nod that Weir supposed was to underscore the cunning of bringing in Internal Affairs. “That’s right. I’m taking this to them. It’s in our lap now.”
Raymond stepped back and looked down, nudging at something with his shoe. He glanced up to Jim with a look that asked for caution.
Dennison clapped his hand over Jim’s shoulder. “Nice work, Jim, Look, we had a go at Goins’s bedroom in Costa Mesa. There are some things you should see. Dwight?”
Innelman knelt again, pulled an envelope from his briefcase, and handed it to Raymond. Jim looked over his shoulder as Ray opened it and took out the photographs. The top two were of the peninsula ferry, the next of Poon’s Locker— taken early morning, Jim could tell from the angle of shadow—then a picture of Ann’s Kids taken after closing. The last shot was of the preschool during an outdoor break, the play area filled with toddlers on the move. Among them, bending over slightly to help a boy onto a rocking horse, her hair spilling down around her face, her smile calm and lovely, was Ann.
Jim felt a warm flush come to his face. He heard Raymond’s breathing deepen and slow.
“It’s a telephoto shot,” said Innelman. “She doesn’t know he’s out there, is my guess. He sniped her. Robbins ran the originals and got what you’d expect—Goins’s fingerprints on the edges. These are copies.”
“He shot from the water,” said Jim.
“Used the ferry,” said Ray.
“That’s our guess, too,” said Innelman. “Or he could have rented one of those little motor dinghys. Goins couldn’t have much money unless he’s been pulling some local jobs, so the ferry seems most likely.”
Raymond stared at the last picture. The silence widened. Ray looked first at Jim, then to Dennison and Dwight. “Where the fuck is this guy? How hard can it be to—”
“We’ve got extra men on a door-to-door right now,” said Dennison. “The newspapers will help. We’ll get him, don’t worry.”
“Who developed the originals?” Raymond’s voice had taken on a calm that Weir could vividly recall—the adrenaline cool of pursuit.
“He did. He moved out the hardware when he left the Island Gardens.”
Weir asked about a hair sample to match the one found on Ann’s blouse.
“No match. Robbins already tried. But that hair could have been a floater, we know that. It doesn’t let Goins off the hook—not even a little.”
Innelman gently took the pictures back from Ray. “I’m having Robbins run my hair, and Roger Deak’s. We contaminate things sometimes, no matter how hard we try. You and Jim ought to give him a sample, too, just to save time. But the other physicals match up, Ray—blood type B positive, right-handed, same weight as the guy who left the prints at the crime scene, same size feet. We’ll run genetics as soon as we have him. I talked to Mrs. Connaught—the old woman that Kearns kicked up. I looked out her bedroom window. Where she saw the car was where someone would park to take the path down. She looked at a picture I shot of Goins’s car—from above—and she says it looks the same. We took soils from some of Goins’s shoes— Robbins says one pair has some salts and silicas that indicate a saltwater estuary. He was down there, we just haven’t established when. We’re building, we’re getting closer.”
Dennison took Raymond’s arm and moved off to Goins’s car. They stood examining the primer patch on the driver’s door, but Weir couldn’t hear what they were saying.
Innelman checked his watch, looked over at his boss, then came closer to Jim, His voice was flat and quiet. “You should know this. Blodgett got drunk at a party a few weeks back and said he’d seen someone dumping in the bay. He couldn’t catch up, or lost them, something like that. I know Ann had been out with him on Toxic Waste. Blodgett’s got a terrible temper. There were rumors he burned out a gill netter last year, just for the fun of it. At the party, he’s drunk and he says if he catches the dumpers, he’ll sink their boat with them in it. He hasn’t done that, yet, so far as anybody knows. But maybe Ann saw something. Knew something. I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this, I’ve known Blodgett for eight years and I don’t know him at all. Internal Affairs is a joke. Got me?”
“Got you. Why would a cop burn out a commercial fisherman?”
“Blodgett’s a fascist sportsman. He and the tree huggers don’t like the netters taking out so many fish, choking all those sea lions in the mesh. He volunteered for the Toxic Waste job. Blodgett’s got the same attitude about the water that all these so-called environmentalists have—he thinks it’s his.” Innelman glanced over toward the chief. “None of what I just told you is Dennison’s favorite topic, because if he gets in Dale’s face, it makes Brian look bad. Politics. Personally, I think Dale’s a loose cannon.”
“Thanks, Dwight.”
“There are people who know more about all that than I do. Your mother, for instance, or Becky Flynn. Just so you know, we haven’t kicked up Ann’s journal yet. Love to get my hands on that thing.”
Innelman turned and headed for the Crime Lab. Dennison left Raymond with a handshake and came back over to Jim. “Thanks, Jim. You helped me out—helped us all out.”
“Let me stay on Kearns and Blodgett for a few more days. No charge.”
“No way. It’s in our court now. Trust me, I’ll get the answers we all want.”
He walked off toward the helipad. A moment later, the NBPD chopper lifted into the air and angled west.
Sitting in the driver’s seat of his sister’s car, amidst the faintly lingering scent of her perfume, Jim was drawn into memories of Ann so specific and immediate, they frightened him. The all-night talks they’d had, when Ann dispensed her greater wisdom—greater by two entire years—regarding girls, guys, parents and how to get around them, school and how to keep it easy, church and how to get out of going. He could see a picture of her taken when she was a few days old, wrapped in a pink blanket with a bow taped to her bald head, and he could remember being astonished that his older sister could ever have been so young; he could see her in a pair of overalls sitting in her wagon, grinning with two front teeth bucked enough to open a beer bottle on; could see her waddling down to the water of the bay with a green plastic shovel in her hand; see her on that same beach a few years later, thin and dark and hard as a piece of wood— much the envy of Jim’s younger friends; see her on roller skates, flying down the peninsula sidewalk with a book in front of her face; see her tearfully boarding the plane one summer, bound for France, to, as Poon had put it, “get some Frog culture”; see her coming down the stairway in the big house in a blue dress for the junior prom—it was the first time that Jim realized she wasn’t actually a girl any longer, or perhaps that he was no longer actually a boy— and Raymond there at the bottom glowing with unabashed pride at this, his undeserved princess; he could see her folding helplessly into Virginia’s arms when they heard about Jake; could see the sudden fury in her that night she pushed Ray off the pier, then, in shock at her own act, jumped in after him; could see her later that same night wrapped in blankets in front of the fireplace in the big house, her hair slicked tight against her head and her eyes filled with a profound distance, as if she was still in France, and yes, there was something different about her when she came back, something experienced but unspoken; he could see her just a few nights ago standing at Virginia’s table in her silly, frilly skirt, bringing her own special class and dignity to a job that required neither; see her … see her … see her … fragments from the parade still going on inside him, if nowhere else.
In Virginia, he thought.
In Ray.
In whoever last touched her, took her life and left his seed, arranged the roses for her final journey into the un-redemptive waters of the Back Bay.
A shiver rocked through Jim’s body, all the way to his feet. His eyes were filled with heartbeats. The sound of Raymond’s voice penetrated the reverie.
“… I said, what the hell is this?”
“Huh?”
“You all right?”
“I’m all right.”
“You don’t look all right.”
Weir took a moment to bring it all together and try to make sense of it: this car smudged with fingerprint dust and festooned with impound tags, this smell of perfume, this absent woman who was his sister, this blood of hers—and his—spilled so generously on a ground that neither deserved nor wanted. “It comes out of nowhere,” he said.
Raymond was quiet for a moment.
“I hate it, Ray,” he said, staring through the windshield, through the poisoned atmosphere of inland Orange County. The air looked like smoke. The car parked across from them was a red Porsche with bullet holes in the windshield and headrest. “I hate what he did to her.”
“I do, too, but there’s no time to hate, Jim. We have to find him. And when we find him, we kill him—like I said.”
“You know, that’s actually starting to make sense.”
“Of course it does. You’re not a treasure hunter. You’re not a brother. I’m not a cop, or a husband, or a law student. Look down on us like God does, and what you see is just two men who have to kill someone. Because he deserves it, and because he’s asked us to. It’s simple.”
Weir regarded Raymond’s calm face. He could almost believe him. He had tried his best to keep away from this kind of thinking, tried to keep his head clear, tried to act in a way that would lead him to the truth about Ann. But the grief would hit him without warning and he would realize how present it was, how small was the distance at which he managed to keep it. And the grief was married to the anger.
Raymond looked down at his hands. “I sat in my study the other night and looked at all those beautiful law books. I love the law. I love the way it defines and clarifies. I love the way it’s always ready to be more defined, more clear, more fair. But I realized what a gap there was between that law and what happened. You see, those are just ideas. Ann was real. Our baby was real. When I looked at Ann lying on the ground down there, it changed everything I believed. The law, and what I’ve stood for? It’s an illusion. These ideas—that we’re a nation of laws, that God in heaven watches over us like he does the sparrows—they’re illusions. The only things that aren’t are flesh and blood, and what we can feel and touch and see. What I’m going to do is take vengeance. You can hold vengeance in your hand. It’s real. They could strap me into the chamber for it, and I wouldn’t blink. I promise you, Jim, I wouldn’t blink, not once. And don’t tell me what Ann would have wanted me to do, how Ann would have wanted me to carry on and forget someday. That’s the biggest illusion of all.”
