Sunset Express

Angela Rossi looked at the floor, then looked at me, as if her energy reserves were so depleted she had to conserve what little remained. She said, “Joe told me about Lester. He told me what you’ve been trying to do.”

  I nodded.

  “I lost it this morning and I want to apologize. You’re caught in this, too, just like me.”

  “Yes, but it’s worse for you.”

  “Maybe.” She looked at the floor again, then looked back. “I want you to know that I didn’t lie to you. I want you to know that everything I told you was the truth. LeCedrick Earle is lying, and so is his mother. I didn’t do those things.”

  “I believe you, detective.”

  When I said it her breath gave and her eyes filled and her face collapsed, but in that same instant she caught herself and rebuilt the calm cop exterior: her breathing steadied, her eyes dried, her face calmed. It wasn’t easy to recreate herself that way, but I imagined that she’d had plenty of practice over the years and that, as with every other professional police officer that I’d known, it had become a necessary survival skill. She had allowed a window to her heart to open, then had slammed it shut the way you take a covered pan off the fire when it begins to boil over, removing the heat so that you don’t lose the contents. “I’m suspended. I’ve been ordered to stay away from all official police business or activities pending an IA investigation. The district attorney’s office is also investigating me.”

  “I know.”

  “The people I work with, there’s only so much they can do.”

  I knew that, too. If Tomsic or the others did anything to find out what was going on, they’d be pounded for obstructing justice and probably accused of trying to cover up Rossi’s alleged crimes.

  She looked at Joe. “You guys offered to help. Joe said that the offer still stands.”

  “Of course.” I glanced at Lucy on the deck. She and Ben were at the rail. Ben was pointing at something far down the canyon and yakking, but Lucy seemed neither to hear him nor to see. As if the other presence were out there, too, and drawing her attention. I felt my own eyes fill, but, like Angela Rossi, I also knew the tricks of survival. “We’re not going to walk away, Angie. We’re not going to leave you hanging.”

  Angela Rossi looked at me for a time, first in one eye and then the other, and then she glanced again at Lucy and Ben. “I’m sorry I intruded.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She put out her hand. We shook, and then Angela Rossi left my home.

  Joe Pike stood in the entry, staring out onto the deck, as if he, too, could somehow sense the tension. Maybe I should just put up a huge sign: DOMESTIC PROBLEM. I said, “What?”

  Pike stared a moment longer, then turned and followed Angela Rossi, leaving me in the shadows.

  I went back into the kitchen, stirred the sauce, then turned off the heat. The spaghetti was limp and swollen. I poured it in the colander, rinsed it, and let it drain.

  I could see Lucy and Ben in the light at the rail, haloed by a swirl of flying insects, Lucy still there but not there, Ben now quiet. The cat door made its clack-clack behind me, and the cat crept in. He moved cautiously, pausing between steps, sniffing the air. I smiled at him. “It’s okay, bud. They’re outside.”

  He blinked at me, but you could tell he was suspicious. He crept to the dining area, still testing the air, then came back and stood by my feet. I broke off a piece of the venison sausage, sucked off the tomato sauce, then blew on it until it was cool. I offered it to him, and as he ate it I stroked him. His fur was flecked with dust and bits of plant matter, and felt cool from the night air. White hairs were beginning to show through the black, and I wondered how old he was. We had been together a long time.

  When he was finished he looked up at me, and I smiled. I picked him up and held him close, and after a time he purred. I said, “Life is complicated, isn’t it?”

  He licked my cheek, then bit my jaw, but he didn’t bite hard.

  After a time he hopped down and made his way through the house. He moved slowly, staring toward the deck for a very long time before finally bolting up the stairs and into my bedroom.

  I told Lucy and Ben that dinner was ready. We ate, and not long after that we doused the lights and went to bed.

  Since Lucy did not come upstairs that night, the cat slept well.

  24

  The next day Lucy and Ben planned to spend the morning in Beverly Hills, then make the drive to Long Beach for what Lucy hoped would be the final meeting of her negotiation. They were leaving the day after tomorrow.

  We made banana pancakes and eggs and coffee, and ate together, but Lucy still seemed pained and distracted as she readied to leave. I found that I was thinking more about her and less about me, but neither of us seemed to be making much progress toward a resolution. Of course, maybe this was because we had so far successfully avoided talking, and maybe the time for talk-avoidance had passed. The ducking of communication rarely leads to a resolution. I said, “What time do you guys expect to be home?”

  “Sixish.” Lucy was replacing her files in her briefcase. “I don’t expect that anything will hang us up in Long Beach.”

  “Good. I’m going to take us someplace special for dinner.”

  She smiled at me. The soft smile. “Where?”

  “Surprise.”

  We held each other’s gaze for the first time that morning, and then Lucy put out her hand. Her skin was warm and soft, and touching her made me tingle. “A surprise would be nice.”

  “Leave everything to me.” Elvis Cole, Master of the Universe, turns on the ol’ charm.

  They left the house at ten minutes before nine, and then I phoned my friend at the coroner’s office. The autopsy of James Lester had been completed, and when I asked after the cause of death, he said, “The guy took a header through the glass, and he was still alive when he made the fall. You want to know just what was severed and how?”

  “Not necessary. Was there an indication that he might’ve had help going through the glass?”

  “You mean, like, did someone beat the hell out of him first, then push him through?”

  “That’s one way to put it.” I could hear papers rustling in the background, and laughter. Someone sharing a big joke to start the day at the morgue.

  “Nah. No sign of blunt-force trauma. No bruising, cuts, or scrapes that would indicate a physical altercation.”

  “Hm.” So maybe it wasn’t murder. Maybe James Lester was just clumsy.

  “But we did find one thing that was odd.” Maybe James Lester wasn’t just clumsy after all. “There’s a pattern of subcutaneous capillary rupture over the carotid area on his neck.”

  “That sounds like bruising.”

  “It’s not the kind of bruising you’d ever see, and it wasn’t caused by impact trauma.”

  “So no one hit him.”

  “You see stuff like this when someone vomits or has a coughing fit. Coughing can do stuff like that. You’d be surprised what coughing can do.” These medical examiners.

  I was thinking about the carotid artery, and I was trying to imagine a type of force that might rupture microcapillaries without creating an impact bruise. “Are you saying that he was strangled?”

  “Nah. Bruising would be severe.”

  “Could he have been strangled in a way to avoid the bruising?”

  He thought about it. “I guess he could’ve been strangled with something soft, like a towel, or maybe choked out, like with a police choke hold. That might show a rupture pattern like this.”

  “So he could’ve been choked out, then tossed through the glass.”

  “Hey, you’re saying it, I’m not. We’re just speculating.”

  “But it’s possible.”

  “It’s possible the guy swallowed wrong, started coughing, then lost his balance and went through the glass.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “But, yeah, he could’ve been choked out, too.”

  I hung up, then called
Mrs. Louise Earle. Her answering machine answered, and I said, “Mrs. Earle, this is Elvis Cole. If you’re there, would you pick up, please? We need to talk.” I was hoping to catch her before she started her day. I was hoping to convince her to see me.

  No one picked up.

  “Mrs. Earle, if Angela Rossi or any other police officer threatened you, I wish you would’ve told me. I’d sure like to hear about it, now.”

  Still no answer.

  I hung up, then once more made the drive to Olympic Park. If I couldn’t get her on the phone, I would try to see her in person. If she wasn’t home, I would wait. What better way for an unemployed detective to fill his day?

  The streets were still heavy with morning traffic, and the day was bright and hot, but a marine cloud cover had rolled across the basin that made the light seem sourceless and somehow disorienting and had charged the air with a kind of vague dampness. It was as if the sun had vanished and the landscape was lit by a weird kind of indirect lighting that made Los Angeles take on a 1950s tract-home fluorescent reality.

  I parked two houses down from Louise Earle’s, walked back, and rang her bell exactly as I had done yesterday. Still no answer. I stepped through the dozens of plants and peeked through the gap between the curtains of the same front window. What I could see of the room appeared unchanged from yesterday. Hmm. It was twenty-five minutes after nine, and I stood at the edge of Louise Earle’s porch and wondered what I should do. The neighborhood looked calm and ordinary; maybe Louise Earle had simply run to the market and would soon be back. Of course, even it she wasn’t back soon, it didn’t matter a whole hell of a lot. Such are the joys of unemployment.

  I went out to my car, put up the roof to cut the sun, and waited. It was hot, and, as the sun rose, it grew hotter. Sweat leaked out of my hairline, and my shirt stuck to my chest and back. A couple of Hispanic kids pedaled by on mountain bikes, both kids sucking on Big Gulps. A thin brown dog trotted behind them, the dog’s tongue hanging from its mouth. The dog looked hot, too, and was probably wishing one of the kids would drop his drink. A Carrier Air Conditioning van pulled into a drive on the next block. Probably making an emergency call. An elderly man came down the sidewalk a few minutes later, covering his head with a Daily News the way you would if it was raining and you were trying to stay dry.

  Two of the three girls showed up in their Volkswagen Beetle, pulled into their friend’s drive, and honked. Guess it was too hot to go to the door. The third girl came out with her bag and an orange beach towel and jumped into the Beetle. As they drove away, they waved, and I waved back. Guess the third girl had noticed me when she was watching for her friends. People came and went, and when they did they raced between air-conditioned cars and air-conditioned homes at a dead run. No one stayed in the heat any longer than they had to, except, of course, for displaced private eyes working on a slow case of dehydration.

  Louise Earle still had not returned two hours and twenty-one minutes later, when a very thin white woman wearing an enormous sun hat emerged from the house next door and crossed her yard to Louise Earle’s porch. I made her for her late seventies, but she might’ve been older. She rang the bell, then peered through Louise Earle’s window just as I had done. She tromped around to the side of the house, came back with a watering can, and began watering the plants. I got out of the car and went up to her. “Pardon me, ma’am, but Mrs. Earle doesn’t wish to be disturbed.” The detective resorts to subterfuge.

  She stopped the watering and squinted at me. “And who are you?”

  I showed her my license. You show them a license and everything looks official. “The news people were bothering her, so I’ve been hired to keep them away.”

  She made a little sniff and continued with the watering. Guess she didn’t give too much of a damn whether I was official or not. “Well, my name is Mrs. Eleanor Harris and I can assure you that Louise Earle does not consider me a bother. We’ve been friends for forty years.”

  I nodded, trying to seem understanding. “Then you must’ve seen how awful the news people were.”

  The stern look softened and she resumed the watering. “Aren’t they always, though. You watch the way these people on television act and you wonder how they can live with themselves. All that smug attitude.” She made a little shiver. “That Geraldo Rivera. That horrible little man on Channel Two. Ugh.” She shook her head in disgust and the stern look came back. “You should’ve been here yesterday. Yesterday is when people were trying to bother her.”

  “They were?”

  She squinted harder. “You know, one of them looked an awful lot like you.”

  “I came by yesterday to introduce myself, but she wasn’t home. I came with my partner, a tall man with dark glasses.”

  The squint relaxed, and she nodded. “Well, you and your partner weren’t the only ones. There were others. One of them even tried to get into her house.”

  I looked at her. “Who tried to get into her house, Mrs. Harris?”

  “Some man.” Great. “I remember him because he came three different times. You and your friend came the once. All the different press people came the once.”

  “What did he look like?”

  She made a waving motion. “He was pretty big. You’d better watch out.”

  “Big.” I put my hand a couple of inches above my head. “Like this?”

  “Well, not tall, so much. But wide. Much wider than you.” She gave me a just-between-you-and-me look. “His arms were so long he looked like a monkey.” Kerris.

  “And he was here three times.”

  She was nodding. “The first time was before you and your friend, then he came back in the afternoon and once more at dusk. When he was here in the afternoon he tried the door and he went around back. He was back there for quite a while, and for all I know he got in. For all I know he did all manner of horrible things in there.” She made the little shudder again, equating all manner of horrible things with Geraldo Rivera and the little man on Channel Two. “It’s a good thing Louise went away.”

  “No one told me that she’d gone away.”

  Mrs. Harris continued with the watering. “Well, no one told me, either, and that is highly unusual. We’ve been friends for forty years and I always water her plants when she’s away. We watch out for each other. Older people have to.”

  I looked more closely at the plants. Some of the leaves were wilting and the soil was dry and beginning to crack. “Do you know where I can find her?”

  Mrs. Harris continued with the watering and did not answer.

  I said, “Mrs. Harris, I can’t keep people away from her if I’m here and she’s somewhere else. Do you see?”

  The water can wavered, and then Mrs. Harris looked around at the drying plants and seemed lost. She shook her head. “She always calls when she goes away. Why wouldn’t she call?”

  I waited.

  Mrs. Harris said, “I saw her leave and it just wasn’t like her, let me tell you. It was the day before yesterday, the evening after all those horrible people were here, and she just walked away.”

  I thought about it. “Could she have gone to visit Mr. Lawrence?”

  “Not walking. Mr. Lawrence would always come in the car.”

  “Do you know where Mr. Lawrence lives?” I thought I might drive over.

  “I’m afraid I don’t. I saw her from the window, dressed very nicely and carrying her bag, walking right up this street, and in all this heat, too.” She made her lips into a thin, wrinkled line. She was holding the can with both hands, and both hands were twisting on the handle. “I came out and called after her. I said, ‘Louise, it’s too hot for all of that, you’ll catch a stroke,’ but I guess she didn’t hear.” The thin lips were pressing together. Worried. “People our age are very sensitive to this heat.”

  “Yes, ma’am. And she didn’t call.”

  Mrs. Harris looked at me with wet, frightened eyes. “You don’t think she’s mad at me, do you? We’ve been friends for forty years, an
d I just don’t know what I’d do if she was mad at me.”

  “No, ma’am. I don’t think she’s mad.” I was wondering why she might be in such a hurry that she would just walk away.

  “But why wouldn’t she call? I always water her plants.”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Harris. Maybe she was just trying to get away from the press. You know how horrible they are.”

  Her eyes brightened a bit, drawing a little hope. “Yes. Yes, I’m sure that must be it.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”

  The ancient eyes finally smiled, and she turned back to the plants.

  “When you find her, you’ll keep them away from her, won’t you? It must be awful, having people like that around.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll take good care.”

  I helped Mrs. Harris water the remainder of Louise Earle’s plants, and then I went back to my car, wondering why Kerris had come three times, and wondering if his coming around had had anything to do with her going away. If he had come here three times, that meant he very much wanted to see Louise Earle. Three times was a pattern, and if the pattern maintained, he might return again today. Of course, he might not, but I still didn’t have a whole lot else to do.

  I went back to my car, drove four blocks to a 7-Eleven, bought two large bottles of chilled Evian water, then drove back to Louise Earle’s, parked on the next block behind the Carrier van so that Eleanor Harris couldn’t watch me, and continued to wait.

  Exactly twelve minutes after I pulled up behind the van and turned off my car, Stan Kerris returned, but did not stop. He was driving a Mercedes SL300, and this time he slowly cruised the block, peering at Louise Earle’s house, maybe hoping to see if she was home. I copied his tag number, then pulled out the little Canon and took four quick snaps just as he turned the corner.

  The Mercedes was small and black, and I was hoping that Jonna Lester would recognize it.

  25

  I drove south to a Fast-Foto in a minimall on Jefferson Boulevard about six blocks west of USC. A Persian kid was alone in the place, working at the photo processing machine. He said, “I’ll be with you in a moment.”