J. Rain: Hail Mary

I opened the report. Although not quite as thorough as police rap sheets, this was close enough. It hit the highlights, and sometimes the highlights were all that you needed to hit.

There were two arrests in the report.

Gary Tomlinson, who may or may not have murdered my mother, had been arrested twice for rape. Or, as the report puts it in politically correct terms, criminal sexual assault.

The first offense had been when Gary was in his late teens. The victim had been a girl under the age of sixteen. Under the “Outcome” heading was a single word: “Dismissed.”

A small wind rattled the report in my hand. The wind brought with it a hauntingly familiar scent. A flower scent. I glanced around the cemetery. No surprise there. Flower bouquets, in various stages of decay and propped against headstones, dotted the landscape.

I glanced down at the second arrest. Same outcome.

Dismissed.

A homicide investigator in good standing with the Los Angeles Police Department had a son who was arrested not once, but twice, and both cases had been dismissed.

I rubbed my jaw, ran my fingers through my hair.

Sandwiched between those two arrests was the date of my mother’s murder.

The rest of the report was clean. No other arrests and certainly no other convictions. Had the kid seen the error of his ways and cleaned up his act?

Or had he gotten better at covering up his crimes?

How many more victims were out there? How many cases were unsolved thanks to Daddy sweeping shit under the rug?

I didn’t know. I also didn’t know how much pull a homicide investigator had. There was, after all, only so much he could do, right?

Unless he worked the case, I thought.

Unless he worked the case, he could certainly manipulate facts and make evidence disappear. A homicide investigator also works closely with the district attorney’s office, whose job it is to convict. A district attorney could decide to drop a case if he or she felt so inclined, especially if there wasn’t enough evidence to convict.

Or if he didn’t want to convict.

Was it a coincidence that Bert Tomlinson, Gary Tomlinson’s father, had been assigned to my mother’s murder case? Or had he pushed for the case, knowing full well that his son was responsible?

I didn’t know, but I was going to find out.

I was in my father’s immaculate office in downtown Los Angeles.

My father was easily six inches shorter than me, but looked twice as mean. Or twice as psychotic. People talk about dead eyes. My father had them. Or they talk about glassy eyes. My father had those, too. Mostly, there was nothing behind them. They were devoid of any warmth or friendliness. Mostly, though, they were devoid of compassion. These were the eyes that looked down upon you from the chopping block or the gallows or, in his case, stared at you from behind a sniper’s telescopic lens. If someone were to tell me that my father was a serial killer, I wouldn’t blink twice.

I know, I couldn’t be prouder.

But you don’t pick your father, right? Mine just happened to be a sneeze away from a nationwide killing spree.

For now, though, he ran one of the biggest P.I. agencies in Los Angeles. The original Knighthorse Investigations. My agency, to be clear, was called Jim Knighthorse Investigations. A subtle, yet, important difference.

My father sat behind his desk, staring at me. Even when blinking, he still appeared to be staring. My father never seemed to master the social protocol of not looking too hard or too long at his subjects.

“ What can I do for you, Jim?”

“ I’m here for our weekly, father/son get-together.”

“ We don’t have a weekly father/son get-together.”

“ You think?”

“ You’re being facetious.”

“ I’m being something.”

“ What can I do for you, Jim?” he asked again.

“ I’m here about Mom’s murder.”

He nodded. No expression. Nothing. I could have said that I was here to sell him a subscription to Psychopath Today. I fought to control myself. I knew this about my dad. His lack of empathy was nothing new. One percent of the world’s population are certified psychopaths. I was looking at one of them.

“ I think I know who killed her,” I said.

Still no reaction, although he did cock his head slightly to one side. For my father, that was the equivalent of a “Holy shit!”.

“ And who do you think it is?” he asked.

I told him about the age-progression photo experiment I had done, and about how the man in the photograph greatly resembled the lead homicide investigator’s son.

“ Did you run a background check on him?”

“ Two sexual assaults that were dropped.”

“ Dropped why?”

“ No clue.”

“ I’ll look into for you,” he said. “I’ve got friends at the DA’s office.”

“ Thanks,” I said.

“ What are the dates of the assaults?”

“ Bookended around Mom’s murder.”

“ A pattern of violence.”

You should know, I thought.

Instead, I said, “My thoughts, too.”

“ Could have been a coincidence that the father got the case.”

“ Or not,” I said.

“ The father somehow knew about the crime?”

“ Maybe,” I said. “Hard to know at this point.”

“ So what’s your next step?”

“ I figure it’s time to talk to him.”

I was back at Leisure World.

Sanchez had the night off from private investigating to work his real job as an LAPD detective. Slacker.

Admittedly, I hadn’t been in the mood to come tonight. After seeing my soulless father, I had been in the mood to drink the night away, with occasional respites for puking up my guts.

Except I wasn’t expecting to get a call from Tony Hill, head of park security at Leisure World. There had been another flashing. I’d asked if anyone had been blinded, and he told me to not be a smart ass and to swing by tonight.

So I swung by, and now we were in my crime fighting van. There’s nothing I like more than sitting in a confined space with a hard-ass rent-a-cop with control issues.

So I offered him a beer.

“ I can’t drink when I’m on duty. And I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be drinking in this van.”

“ So arrest me,” I said. I reached inside the mini-fridge and pulled out a Miller Lite.

Tony Hill looked at it long and hard, then looked around as if anyone could see us, then said, “Fine. I’ll take one. But just one.”

I grinned and handed him an ice-cold can. We sat back in the built-in swivel chairs. Like with Sanchez, we each covered one side of the van.

“ Tell me about the flashing,” I said.

“ Do I have to?” he said. He stared at the can of beer as he spoke.

“ I’m afraid so.”

He sighed and sat back, although his eyes did go back to scanning the big tinted window. As he spoke, he drank often. So often that he soon finished the beer. “Happened two nights ago. In fact, it happened the last time you were here with your friend. Maybe ten, twenty minutes after you left.”

“ Could he have known I was here?”

“ Don’t know, but I doubt it. Your van looks like any number of maintenance vehicles. Did you see anything strange that night?”

“ Nothing strange enough for me to think a flasher was on the prowl.”

Tony Hill held up the empty can. “Got another?”

“ Got lots.”

I opened, reached, grabbed, shut, and handed him another cold one. He said, “I could get fired for drinking on the job, except I kind of make the rules for our department.”

“ Maybe you should make the rule that on nights of flasher surveillance, you can knock back a minimum of two.”