Wildcase - [Rail Black 02] Page 2

  So Jake dusted off another of Chuck’s cases, sobered up our mutual friend, the spottily employed, but brilliant screenwriter, Richie Catcavage, and while Paramount was giving everybody the finger, Jake got a script in three weeks and a greenlight from Warners two days later. The picture was called Voodoo Tax, which is cop talk for a senior officer shaking down a crooked underling. As in, “Pay up, motherfucker, or some bad voodoo is gonna come take your pension away.”

  The execs at the mountain logo heard about it when a photo of Chuck shaking hands with the star who was going to play him hit the front page of Daily Variety, and like good studio folks everywhere, the hard talk got in line behind seven-figure incomes and instant tables at the Ivy. And presto! Chuck had two movies, and Paramount sprinted to pay twice what Jake had originally asked. To quote Mr. Praxis, who stole the line from Frank Yablans, “The biggest sin in life is to have leverage and not use it.”

  When Voodoo Tax got nominated for an Oscar, Chuck bought a laptop and started writing his own books. Five best sellers later, he was the richest cop since Wambaugh and playing golf at Riviera. Since he’d joined the Blue Rescue board, Chuck had become our go-to guy. His celebrity status helped raise funds, but he was also a rock for survivors. People revered him, and not without reason. He was as fine a man as any I had ever met, and he and his wife, Lucille, were inseparable. I guess they still were.

  * * * *

  Not too long ago, Victorville was a wide spot in the road where you filled up with cheap gas before running the last two and a half hours to Sin City. Now, it’s the fastest-growing city in California. Affordable housing eighty miles city hall to city hall has also made it a refuge for LA civil servants, including lots and lots of cops. If you’re a home invasion specialist with a death wish, move to Victorville.

  We stayed on the freeway through town, got off at the second exit north, and headed into the desert along Quarry Road. The immediate and total darkness coupled with the occasional sand whorl swallowed my headlights. About five miles in, my escort turned right onto an unpaved road and, off in the distance, I could see the flashing red and blue lights that marked our destination.

  Chuck Brando had used his movie money to buy seventy acres along a stream fed by an underground spring. Over the last several thousand years, the stream had cut a deep enough ravine that Chuck periodically had to chase rock climbers off his property. He told me that every now and then, he caught a good-sized trout down there, but what he really cared about was the two-hundred-yard swatch of thick woods that the water nourished along the sides. “I call it Oregon without the rain,” he’d said. But as I approached it tonight, Oregon looked like a gale-whipped Vincent Price flick.

  Ahead, I saw several LAPD squad cars and crime scene vehicles scattered around a long, low main house and a pair of Los Angeles County ambulances parked nose to nose across the front walk. There was a corral on the right, where two horses poked their heads over the fence, watching the goings-on and, a little farther along, several ATVs and a backhoe parked in a neat line near a whitewashed shed. When I got out of my car, the wind was still stiff but easing, and Yale Maywood was waiting for me on the porch. I didn’t see his plainclothes detail anywhere.

  The deputy chief was wearing a surgical cap, mask, booties and latex gloves. He handed me a set. When I was dressed, he said, “I’m told it’s a little raw in there,” and opened ajar of Vicks. We dabbed VapoRub on our masks, and went inside.

  A dozen men and women, similarly attired, were efficiently going about their business. The place had been trashed. Broken light fixtures. Random chunks of plaster pounded out of walls. Food stuck to the ceiling. A cigarette had burned itself out on the coffee table, reducing a magazine to ashes, but remarkably, it hadn’t spread. This wasn’t a systematic search by professionals looking for valuables, but frenzied, like somebody on drugs ... or kids.

  Yale read my mind. “That’s what I thought too, but wait.”

  We threaded our way past the CSI people and turned left down a long hallway. It had been hot in the living room, but as we walked, I could feel the temperature going up. Each room we passed was a mess, and on the laundry room floor lay a dead beagle, not more than a year old. It didn’t have any marks on it, so I guessed its neck had been broken. Whoever had done this had been filled with, not just violence, but cruelty.

  The master bedroom was starkly illuminated with large, law enforcement spotlights, raising the heat index even higher, and as we approached, I saw camera flashes. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for what was inside.

  Chuck, a handy guy with a welding torch, had constructed an overhead bed frame out of wrist-thick, tempered steel that Lucille had draped with lightweight, ivory muslin. At the foot of the bed, the fabric had been torn down, and Chuck, naked, his hands cuffed behind him, was strung up by his ankles. At least, I assumed it was Chuck, because his welding equipment was also in the room, and it had been used liberally on the body, which was swollen grotesquely, indicating that it had been hanging there a while.

  Despite the Vicks, the smell was overpowering. You can get familiar with the putrefaction of death, but you never get used to it. I felt bile rising in the back of my throat and took a few short, shallow breaths. Yale was a little green too but stepped toward the corpse. As he did, some foul-smelling gas escaped through its mouth, and the change in pressure caused the body to slowly turn forty-five degrees to face us. Whatever the animal who did this was after, there would have been no satisfaction in defacing a corpse, so Chuck had lived through most of it. The thought caused me to shudder involuntarily.

  Yale pointed to a spot on the white comforter where there were two dirty marks like somebody had knelt there while he worked or perhaps where an accomplice had positioned himself to ask questions. Here was the only blood I could see. Large dried spots the size of silver dollars had been sprayed around near the body’s head, then a small puddle had formed between the two depressions.

  “Looks like Chuck got his teeth into somebody,” I said.

  “Chief, you might want to see this,” said a diminutive female technician squatting on the other side of the bed.

  Yale and I bent over her and looked. On the carpet was a piece of white fabric, about three inches long, soaked in blood. Using a pair of tweezers, she carefully unfolded the material revealing what looked like a chunk of jerky. Chuck had indeed bitten one of his killers, right through his shirt.

  Yale stood up. “Somebody left here with a permanent reminder.”

  I needed some air and said so. Outside, the wind had calmed a little, so we dropped one side of our masks and stood on the porch, letting the hot breeze cleanse the stench in our nostrils.

  “I didn’t see his wife.”

  Deputy Chief Maywood shook his head. “We’ll take ATVs to where she is, but first I want to go over a couple of things.”

  “Like why you brought me out here?”

  “It was my idea. When I suggested it, the chief almost had to be restrained.”

  I wasn’t surprised. I’d filed a lawsuit against the department last year, and it hadn’t left me on very good terms with Yale’s boss. It had only been a ploy to get some homicide people off the dime, but because I’m a quasi-celebrity, basically for no other reason than having a lot of money, the media ran it up everybody’s ass for a few weeks.

  I said, “He’s a big boy. Tell him to get over it.”

  Yale grunted. “He’s a hothead, but once he got a grip, he agreed.” He stopped, shifted his weight a couple of times, then spit it out. “Rail, we need a favor. We want you to keep Jake Praxis on a short leash on this.”

  I don’t know what I’d been anticipating, but this wasn’t it. “You find somebody Jake listens to, let me know. But why would he get involved anyway? Looks like one of Chuck’s old collars came back to settle a score. Or somebody didn’t like the way he was portrayed in a novel. You’ll have a short list in twenty-four hours. At least, that’s what all the books say you guys do.”

&
nbsp; He looked uncomfortable. “We’re not going to tell anybody. At least not right away. This gets out, no matter how it happened, it starts the clock on a whole lot of shit we don’t need.”

  He must have seen the look on my face. “We’ve got a little time. Chuck didn’t have any family, and far as we know, Lucille’s people are all in China ...”

  I’d had enough and cut him off, “What are you talking about? Not tell anybody? Jesus Christ, Yale, you want eyeballs on this. You want tips.” I paused. “Unless you already know who did it.”

  “We don’t, but Chuck was handling something sensitive. Other lives might be at stake. That’s why we need you to intervene with Praxis. If that fuckin’ lawyer you guys are so in love with starts making noise, it. ..” He stopped. “Look, I can’t get into it. I need you to trust me.”

  He was making absolutely no sense. Cops don’t cover up murders. Especially when it’s another cop who’s dead. “I think you picked the wrong guy. You should have brought Jake out here himself.”

  “I suggested that, but the chief said you were the right guy.”

  “Meaning there are more ways to fuck with a civilian than a member of the bar.”

  “You said it, I didn’t.”

  “Then there’s that messy business that as an officer of the court, Jake would be obligated to report a crime—including the ones you’re committing.”

  “You want to stand around moralizing, I’ll catch a nap and come back when you’ve blown yourself out.”

  Police chiefs aren’t cops, they’re politicians. That goes double for deputy chiefs. My father used to say that we ought to take politician out of the dictionary and replace it with “coconut.” That anybody willing to be called a coconut for a chance to serve his community is exactly the kind of civil servant we want. The older I get, the more I agree.

  “Coconut,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Private observation.” I changed the subject. “So what about the locals? And the San Berdoo D.A.? This is on their doorstep.”

  He jerked his head toward the house. “They’ve each had a guy in there, so they’re covered...and cooperating. And they don’t know any more than I’ve told you.”

  I watched a tumbleweed blow across the front yard. “If you want me to even try, you better give me something with a little more heft to it, because what I’ve got now won’t even slow Jake down.”

  “Let’s go see Lucille.”

  * * * *

  3

  White Napkins and Red Roofs

  More crime scene floods outlined one end of the structure. We’d run a couple of miles over a fairly rough piece of desert with the wind at our backs, and now the sand smoothed out like it had been graded. I couldn’t quite make out what we were coming up on, then I recognized the shape. A Pullman railroad car. Probably from the thirties. Painted a shiny, dark green with fancy, gold script above the row of windows...

  New Orleans and San Francisco Railway

  And in bold letters below the glass...

  THE LADY LUCILLE

  We parked next to two ATVs on the right, away from the yellow tape at the car’s other end. A pair of LAPD Ford Explorers sat a few yards away. Through the Pullman’s rectangular, curtained windows, I could see a brass lamps sitting on white-clothed tables. The Lady Lucille was a restored dining car, and, from the looks of her, first-class.

  “Chuck bought it for Lucille,” Yale said, answering my unspoken question. “Usually, it’s guys who have a train jones, but Lucille wouldn’t fly and got hooked on railroads. Was a walking history book on the subject. Once Chuck had some cash, he surprised her. Spent a goddamn fortune finding just what he wanted and having it rebuilt.” He pointed to the track. “This siding’s one of the reasons he bought the land. Practically the whole department came out the day it rolled in from Chicago. Never saw anybody so happy as that lady.”

  “I noticed a couple of horses on my way in.”

  “You know anything about Arabians?”

  “That they’re expensive.”

  “ ‘Bout all you need. Except that sometimes people don’t take care of their animals, and the ASPCA don’t have a pot to piss in.”

  “So Lucille did horse rescues.”

  “To quote Chuck: ‘It’d be cheaper to take in lonely 747s.’ I figure since Lucille couldn’t have kids, she compensated. My wife would say I don’t know shit about women.”

  There was a uniformed officer at the foot of the steps. “We need to suit up?” Yale asked.

  The officer shook his head. “No, Chief, they’ve already vacuumed and dusted for prints. But if I was you, I’d sure use some Vicks.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I took the jar from Yale and dabbed a healthy dollop under each nostril. We mounted the steps and entered.

  The workmanship inside was beautiful. Mahogany and brass with thick, dark green carpeting. Two rows of green leather booths ran its length, and the starched tablecloths looked even more formal than they had from outside.

  A sound system was thumping away with something I’d heard before but couldn’t place. It wasn’t abrasively loud, but it was jarring, and the guy singing pulled you right into the song.

  “ ‘Red Right Hand’ by Nick Cave,” said Maywood. “An Aussie. My kids used to play it when they wanted to creep out their mother. Didn’t do much for me either. It was on when she was found. Endless loop. Either part of some ritual or somebody messing with us. I told them to leave it on until we can get a tech in here to see how the system was programmed. Maybe pick up a print.”

  I gave up trying to figure out murderers after my parents were killed by a guy my father made rich. “It will have been burned off something. You might want to check the source code.”

  He looked at me like a turd on his arch supports. “No shit, why didn’t I think of that?”

  The ceremonial dressing-down of a civilian out of the way, he got back to business. “Lucille used this place for an office. Quite a businesswoman. Had their money invested all over the place. Not like Chuck. Long as he had ten bucks for a pastrami sandwich and a cup of Joe, he didn’t give a shit if he slept in his truck.”

  Most of the CSI people were at the other end. A few more stood between us and the tables, and as one shifted, I saw the back of a woman’s head and a bare right shoulder in one of the booths. Lucille had coal black hair, and I recognized the Pleshette cut. I also noticed a phone and a stack of papers. She’d apparently been working.

  “Any idea how long she’s been here, Phil?” Yale asked a lanky, older man in a brown suit and Hush Puppies.

  “Not ready to make that assessment yet, Chief. But I’d say forty to fifty hours give or take.”

  “What’s the give, and what’s the take?”

  “I gotta check the weather service’s hourly temperatures for the last few days. The air conditioner’s running, and the thermostat’s set to sixty-eight, but just to be sure, I’m gonna need a chart and a calculator.”

  “Don’t jack me off, Phil. If it’s sixty-eight now, it’s probably been sixty-eight the whole time. Give me your best guess.”

  Phil shifted his weight, squinted, and stroked his chin in the practiced way they teach at functionary school while you’re thinking up a way to dodge going on the record.

  “Phil, give me a fuckin’ time. Now.”

  “Tuesday afternoon,” he finally drawled. “Between three and four. But that’s not when they started working on her.” He shook his head. “That was about five hours earlier.”

  He stepped aside giving me a full view, and I saw what he meant. One of the table napkins had been rolled into a kerchief and tied at the back of her neck. A wooden spoon had then been slotted through the knot so the noose could be tightened and loosened to alternate suffocation with breathing. The technique probably goes back as far as human conflict, but it was perfected by Torquemada.

  The instructors at Delta Force’s interrogation school had put each of us through on
e round, just to give us the feel of it, and I still remember how glad I was when it was over. Done by an expert, the subject can be taken into unconsciousness and back indefinitely. It’s a gruesome way to extract information, requiring a steady hand and a dulled sense of empathy, but it’s almost one hundred percent effective. Given a choice, you’d run to be waterboarded.

  Yale walked beyond the table, and I moved to the body’s front. In some ways, this was worse than Chuck. At least he was a cop. Violence was in the job description. Healthy, handsome ladies in their thirties aren’t supposed to die. And they certainly aren’t supposed to die this way.

  The USC cheerleader Lucille had been was still evident, and her trillion-cut diamond earrings of a couple of carats each were still in place, so any lingering idea of robbery was put to rest. She had always drawn admiring looks from men—me among them—which made her current nakedness all the more disconcerting. But when I finally registered what my eyes were seeing, I had to force my analytical brain back into service.