The Murder Book

Drivers sped by honking. Someone yelled, "Idiot!"

That felt right.

It took miles before I was able to conjure up Janie Ingalls's corpse and relax.

When I got back to the house, the front door was ajar- I'd neglected to shut it- and leaves had blown into the entry. I got down on my knees, picked up every speck, returned to my office. The phone remained on the floor. The answering machine had tumbled, too, and lay there, unplugged.

But the machine in the bedroom was blinking.

One message.

I ignored it, went to the kitchen, got the vodka out of the freezer. Used the bottle to cool my hands and my face. Put it back.

I watched TV for hours, ingested hollow laughter, tortured dialogue, commercials for herbal sexual potency remedies and miracle chemicals that attacked the most hideous of stains.

Shortly after midnight, I punched the bedroom machine's PLAY button.

"Alex?… I guess you're not in… we were supposed to fly to Canada, but we've been held over in Seattle- doing an extra show… there were some equipment modifications that needed to be done before the concert, so I was tied up… I guess you're out again… anyway, I'm at the Four Seasons in Seattle. They gave me a nice room… it's raining. Alex, I hope you're okay. I'm sure you are. Bye, honey."

Bye, honey.

No I love you.

She always said I love you.

CHAPTER 17

At 1 A.M., I called the Four Seasons in Seattle. The operator said, "It's past the time where we put calls through, sir."

"She'll talk to me."

"Are you her husband?"

"Her boyfriend."

"Well… actually, it looks like you're going to have to leave a message. I've got her as out of her room, her voice mail's engaged, here you go."

She put me through. I hung up, trudged to bed, fell into something that might've been called sleep had it been restful, found myself sitting up at 6:30 A.M. dry-mouthed and seeing double.

At seven, I phoned Milo. His voice was fuzzy, as if filtered through a hay bale.

"Yo, General Delaware," he said, "isn't it a little early for my field report?"

I told him what I'd learned about Caroline Cossack and Michael Larner.

"Jesus, I haven't even brushed my teeth… okay, let me digest this. You figure this Larner did a favor for the Cossacks by stashing Caroline and they paid him back- what- fifteen years later? Not exactly immediate gratification."

"There could've been other rewards along the way. Both Larner and the Cossacks were involved in independent film production."

"You find any film link between them?"

"No, but-"

"No matter, I'll buy a relationship between Larner and Caroline's family. She was a screwy kid, and Larner ran a place for screwy kids. It says nothing about what got her in there in the first place."

"The behavioral warning on her chart says plenty. My source says Caroline was the only one tagged. Anyway, do what you want with it."

"Sure, thanks. You all right?"

Everyone kept asking me the same damn question. I forced amiability into my voice. "I'm fine."

"You sound like me in the morning."

"You rarely hear me this early."

"That must be it. Behavioral warning, huh? But your source didn't know why."

"The assumption was some kind of antisocial or aggressive behavior. Add to that Dr. Schwartzman's dead Akita, and a picture starts forming. A rich kid doing very bad things would explain a cover-up."

"Your basic disturbed loner," he said. "What would we homicide folk do without them?"

"Something else," I said. "I was thinking maybe the reason Caroline never got a social security card was because eventually she did act out and ended up in-"

"Lockup. Yeah, I thought of that right after we talked. Stupid of me not to jump on that sooner. But, sorry, she's not in any state penitentiary in the lower forty-eight, Hawaii or Alaska. I suppose it's possible she's stashed at some Federal pen, or maybe you were right about them shipping her to some nice little villa in Ibiza, sun-splashed exterior, padded walls. Know of anyone who'll fund a fact-finding Mediterranean tour for a deserving detective?"

"Fill out a form and submit it to John G. Broussard."

"Hey, gosharoo, why didn't I think of that? Alex, thanks for your time."

"But…"

"The whole thing is still dead-ending, just like twenty years ago. I've got no files, no notes to fall back on, can't even locate Melinda Waters's mother. And I was thinking about something: I gave Eileen Waters my card. If Melinda never returned home, wouldn't she have called me back?"

"Maybe she did, and you never got the message. You were in West L.A., by then."

"I got other calls," he said. "Bullshit stuff. Central forwarded them to me."

"Exactly."

Silence. "Maybe. In any event, I can't see anywhere to take it."

"One more thing," I said. I told him about Willie Burns, expected him to blow it off.

He said, "Willie Burns. Would he be around… forty by now?"

"Twenty or twenty-one, then, so yeah."

"I knew a Willie Burns. He had a baby face," he said. "Woulda been… twenty-three back then." His voice had changed. Softer, lower. Focused.

"Who is he?" I said.

"Maybe no one," he said. "Let me get back to you."

He phoned two hours later sounding tight and distracted, as if someone was hovering nearby.

"Where are you?" I said.

"At my desk."

"Thought you were taking vacation time."

"There's paper to clear."

"Who's Willie Burns?" I said.

"Let's chat in person," he said. "Do you have time? Sure, you do, you're living the merry bachelor life. Meet me out in front of the station, let's say half an hour."

He was standing near the curb and hopped into the Seville before the car had come to a full stop.

"Where to?" I said.

"Anywhere."

I continued up Butler, took a random turn, and cruised the modest residential streets that surround the West L.A. station. When I'd put half a mile between us and his desk, he said, "There is definitely a God and He's jerking my chain. Payment for old sins."

"What sins?"

"The worst one: failure."

"Willie Burns is another cold one?"

"Willie Burns is an old perp on a cold one. Wilbert Lorenzo Burns, DOB forty-three and a half years ago, suspicion of homicide; I picked it up right after I transferred. And guess what, another file seems to have gone missing. But I did manage to find one of Burns's old probation officers, and he came up with some old paper and there it was: Achievement House. Willie'd finagled a summer placement there, lasted less than a month, and was booted for absenteeism."

"A homicide suspect and he's working with problem teens?"

"Back then he was just a junkie and a dealer."

"Same question."

"Guess Willie never told him about his background."

"Who'd he kill?"

"Bail bondsman name of Boris Nemerov. Ran his business right here in West L.A. Big, tough guy, but he sometimes had a soft heart for cons because he himself had spent some time in a Siberian gulag. You know how bail bonds work?"

"The accused puts up a percentage of the bail and leaves collateral. If he skips trial, the bondsman pays the court and confiscates the collateral."

"Basically," he said, "except generally the bondsman doesn't actually pay the initial bail with his own money. He buys a policy from an insurance company for two to six percent of the total bail. To cover the premiums and make a profit, he collects a fee from the perp- usually ten percent, nonrefundable. If the perp goes fugitive, the insurance company shells out to the court and has the right to collect the collateral. Which is usually a piece of property- Grandma letting her beloved felon offspring tie up the cute little bungalow where she's lived for two hundred years. But seizing the cottage from poor old Grandma takes time and money and gets bad press and what do insurance companies want with low-rent real estate? So they'd always rather have the perp in hand. That's why they send out bounty hunters. Who take their cut."