Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

“Take me home,” I said.

Mike and I were both feeling the loss of two nights’ sleep. Ever macho, Mike said he was fine to drive, but I had to keep him talking all the way up the freeway. He gave up the effort just about the time the first orange glow of dawn lit the sky over the San Gabriels. He pulled off the freeway in downtown L.A., weaving like a drunk up Figueroa, and parked in the lot across from the Original Pantry. The Pantry never closes – it can’t, even in a riot, because there’s no lock on the door.

Mugs of coffee helped a little. Looking without interest at a plate covered with eggs, bacon, hash browns, I suggested we get a room at the Hilton and crash for a while where the telephones couldn’t reach us. Elizabeth was due to be brought in sometime during the midmorning, and there wasn’t time to go home, sleep, and come back.

Instead, we went to Parker Center, where there are a few cots stashed around so that morning-watch troops – the patrol shift on duty from midnight to eight – can get a little sleep when they have court scheduled during the day.

Mike found me a cot in a sort of closet behind the third-floor offices. The bed was narrow and hard, and had a tiny hard pillow, like the headrest in a coffin. My sleep was as close to death as I think I’ve ever gotten. At least it felt that way. I wasn’t out very long, two hours at the most, before I was awakened by the morning sounds of working people. I was sitting on the edge of the cot, running my fingers through my hair, when Mike came in to get me. I was rumpled and grouchy and in dire need of repair. Mike, on the other hand, had shaved and put on a fresh shirt.

“Feel better?” he asked, damnably chipper.

“I think so. You wouldn’t just have another clean shirt in your locker, would you?”

“I might.”

I went into the closest rest room and did the best I could with the materials I had to work with, liquid soap, water, and a borrowed comb. Mike knocked on the door and handed through a red cotton golf shirt with “Robbery-Homicide” and a cartoon gangster with a tommy gun embroidered on the left breast. I traded my wrinkled oxford-cloth for his shirt, tucking it into the top of my 501s as I opened the door.

Everyone I saw in the hall wore regulation button-down and flannel and had a gun riding a belt holster. I felt conspicuously civilian.

Mike said, with a gleam in his eye, “Elizabeth Ramsdale is on her way up.”

“Her way up from where?”

“Guest registration. I want to talk to her before they book her.”

“I want to be there,” I said.

Mike took my arm. “I think you’ve earned that privilege. Just stand at the back and look menacing. For some reason, some women are more intimidated by another woman than by a man. Just go along with everything I say and don’t ever look surprised. And for God’s sake don’t ever contradict me. Got it?”

“Got it.” I felt suddenly energized.

We were waiting in an interrogation room when Elizabeth was led in, handcuffed, by a pair of uniformed women officers.

After a night in the Cabo jail, followed by an escorted flight north, Elizabeth was a bit mussed, though her expensive haircut was money well spent, and she had enough tan that she didn’t need makeup. For a monster, she was very nice-looking, and smaller, more slender than I had expected. There was something about her that put me off, as if the exquisite frame beneath her face had been formed out of stainless steel instead of ordinary bone. She was slender inside a blue jail-issue jumper. She had turned up the collar, rolled the cuffs, pushed up the sleeves. With her haughty carriage, she could easily have passed among the yacht-club set. Except maybe for the handcuffs.

Mike pulled out a chair for her.

“I’m Detective Flint, Mrs. Ramsdale. We spoke night before last. And this is MacGowen. Have a seat.”

He left the cuffs on her.

I leaned against the wall, maybe three feet to her side, with my arms crossed, doing my best woman-officer impression. Mike stood, too, facing Elizabeth across the table. First thing, Mike dropped the doctored photograph of Ricco Zambotti onto the table in front of her. I watched her face fade about two days’ worth of tan when she saw it. She didn’t say anything.

“Coast Guard flew in Mr. Zambotti last night, Mrs. Ramsdale.”

“Did you say flew him in? Where’s my boat?”

“Afraid you have to write off the boat.” Mike shook his head, sympathetic. “Ricco’s quite a talker when he gets going. You want to hear about it?”

“I want my attorney.”

“Sure thing.” Next to Ricco’s picture, Mike laid down the enhanced image Guido had made of George. Elizabeth’s big eyes grew wider. She drew her full bottom lip between her teeth and bit it.

“You should be more careful about the friends and enemies you make, Mrs. Ramsdale,” he said, his voice friendly. He was being Uncle Ned out on the front porch. “You hooked yourself up with some real conversational folks. Now, I personally cannot see how one little bitty woman could have pushed around two great big men. So, I thought maybe you would like a chance to make your own statement. You know, correct any errors or false impressions they may have given.”

“I want my lawyer,” she said.

“No problem,” he said. “Let’s just clear up a few details while we’re here. The big picture is obvious enough, it’s just that I don’t have a real good handle on who did what and when they did it. Goes around and around in my mind, stuck. That ever happen to you? You get something stuck in your head? I do, all the time. This ditty is stuck in there right now, going round and round:

“About the Shark, the phlegmatical one,

Pale sot of the Maldive sea,

The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,

How alert in attendance be.

“That’s Melville,” he said. “Herman Melville. You ever have to memorize little poems like that in school? Boy, I did. Every time I try to sort out this case, I start thinking about that poem. In a way, I guess it is like a bunch of fish swimming around down there. Only, you can’t tell one fish from the other. Except for the shark. Even that is pretty murky, Mrs. Ramsdale. Maybe you can help me out. The waters are so stirred up, I can’t tell for sure which one of you is the shark.”

Elizabeth looked away from him, saw me, dropped her eyes. She said, “I won’t talk to you.”

“That’s fine,” he said, smiling. “Long as you don’t mind listening. Too bad you’re all alone, because the way I read it, the three of you are going to take the fall together. What you need to start worrying about is special circumstances. We have a multiple-murder situation here. Add to that a couple of counts of conspiracy, assault with intent, child-selling, abuse, and neglect. I could go on for a while, but you know what went down. In the end, it adds up to three lifetime passes with a mileage bonus upgrade for seats on death row.”

Elizabeth had been biting that big lip during Mike’s entire speech. I saw blood around the small, even teeth. She didn’t say anything, and Mike went on:

“The state hasn’t executed a woman for a lot of years.” He was slipping away from Uncle Ned. “But the environment is getting ripe for it. Seems to me the murder of an innocent little girl by her stepmother might be just the case the public and the courts decide to jump on.

“There are a lot of ways this could go down, Mrs. Ramsdale. Make it easy on yourself, give the state a hand. Usually, the DA wants to fry the triggerman. Or, in this case, the slasher. My take on this is that you’re the shark and the other two danced attendance. But they did the dirty deeds, not you. So do yourself a favor. Tell me a story.”