Т Паркер - Pacific Beat

“Who took Ruffs statement?”

“Innelman. I’ve encouraged him to ignore it as the alcoholic bullshit that it probably is. And I’ve ordered him to keep it quiet. Dwight’s a quick study.”

Weir looked again at Raymond, who stared out the window now with dark, unfocused eyes. “Ray, you taking some time off?”

Raymond nodded slightly.

“Three weeks,” said Dennison. “And he’s not touching this case. There are regulations about that — good ones.”

Interim Chief Dennison closed the bulging file that was in front of him and tapped it with a thick forefinger. “Ruffs statement, Innelman’s crime-scene report, and some photographs of... Ann. More to the point, the personnel schedules for my department for the last three weeks. There were thirty-two officers on the street the night that Ann was killed — Robbins says time of death was between midnight and one A.M. So we’ve got two shifts to account for — night and graveyard. We had twenty-four patrol cars out — eight partners, sixteen solos.”

“Night shift ends at midnight?”

“It’s staggered. You’ve got photocopies of the time cards so you’ll know who came and went and when they did it. There’s also a transcript of Dispatch and a copy of the tape — we record everything now because the public is so damned eager to sue. The tapes help us cover our butts.”

“Is the transcript clocked?”

“Fifteen-minute intervals, marked by Carol Clark in red pencil. She came on at four P.M., worked a twelve-hour.” Dennison leaned forward and studied Weir. He tapped the files again. “This is your job, Jim. Your job is not to solve the case. Your job is to clear my men. If you pick up a scent, it’s all mine. You answer to me. You remain silent. You are alone.”

The chiefs phone rang. He picked it up, listened, and thanked somebody. “That was Robbins. He’s finished the autopsy and he’s ready to talk when you are, Jim.”

Weir stood.

“I may as well tell you right now that I had a squad car out myself that night,” said Dennison. His face flushed to a deeper red again, which made his pale gray eyes seem all the cooler. “My old Jag wouldn’t start, so I took home one of the fleet cars with a bad radio. Dobson in Maintenance would tell you the same thing, so I’ll save you the trouble. Here.”

Dennison placed the thick file in a new briefcase and snapped it shut. There was a MAYOR BRIAN DENNISON sticker on the lid, and a GROW, DON’T SLOW! button beside it.

Weir took it. “How much did you drive the squad car that night?”

“Just home. Then back to here. Check the odometer against Dobson’s log. I’ll have my wife call you — I was with her all night.”

“Paris, where were you three nights back?” asked Jim.

“Off shift,” he answered, moving toward the door. “I haven’t driven a beat since eighty-five — wrenched my back in a pursuit.”

Weir studied Paris’s carnivorous face, a series of sharp angles all aiming down.

“Have you found Ann’s car yet?”

Dennison shook his head. “No, but the Harbor Patrol divers found the murder weapon Tuesday afternoon — standard kitchen knife with a six-inch blade. And Innelman found a piece of gold jewelry at the crime scene. It’s the back of an earring, maybe a tie tack. We’re tracing it through the local jewelers, but it’s going to be tough. Everything is in the reports I gave you. You’ve got what we’ve got, Weir. No secrets.”

Weir left and Raymond followed him out. The station seemed taut with some energy that wasn’t there before. Jim noted the pivoting shoulders, the lapsed conversations, the eyes that followed them down the hallways and out the front door.

They walked out to the parking lot. The haze had burned off and left a cool, muted afternoon. Weir looked at all the GROW, DON’T SLOW! and MAYOR BRIAN DENNISON stickers that the PD people had stuck to their bumpers. He wondered whether Becky had a chance.

And he realized fully now why Dennison had recruited him to investigate his own department: Opponent Becky Flynn now had a friend, an old lover, in fact, paid to assure her that nothing of the sort was taking place.

Raymond wiped his eyes and put on a pair of sunglasses. They walked through the parking lot in silence, finally stopping at Raymond’s ancient station wagon. He and Ann had bought it almost twenty years ago, for the family they were going to have.

“What’s the story on Paris?” Jim asked.

“Just a flack, but Dennison relies on him a lot. We call him Parrot because he can make his voice sound like anybody’s. Does these great imitations of Brian when he’s not around. He’s all right.”

Ray had the key aimed toward the lock, but he couldn’t get it in. Finally, it found its mark and the door opened with a grating, metallic groan.

Raymond turned to Weir, took a deep breath, and stood straight. He braced on the door to keep himself up. His eyes were invisible behind the dark lenses. “Jim, I want to tell you something. Sometime not too long from now, we’re going to find the guy who did it. And I want you to know right now that I’m going to kill him. That’s how it’s going to go down. You have any problem with that?”

Weir’s answer surprised him, not because of its black implications, but because it gave him, for the first time since that moment on the bay when he saw the blanket, a glimmer of something that he could substitute for hope.

“Save a heartbeat for me,” he said.

Raymond nodded. “We have to dive again, Jim. Get down there deep and wash all this away.”

“Sure Ray. Whatever you want.”

Ken Robbins, head of Forensic Science Services for the County of Orange, met Weir in the parking lot of the coroner’s building. Robbins was a sturdy man in his early fifties, with gray hair that grew long around his collar and the weathered tan eyes of a sailor. Weir had gotten along with him well in his days with the Sheriffs. Robbins seemed to lack ambition, and because of it he tended his duties with a scrupulous devotion rarely found in public servants. Ken Robbins was always focused. He was carrying a briefcase, which he set on his lap as he sat down beside Weir in the truck.

“I’d ask you in, but tongues would flap.”

“This is better.”

“You don’t want to view her, do you?”

View her. “No.”

“Good to see you again, Jim. You lost some weight.”

“What do you have for me, Ken?”

Robbins took out a file and set it on top of his briefcase as Jim guided the truck out of the lot and down Civic Center Drive.

“Okay. Glen Yee did the work; he’s my best man. Some of what we have is preliminary, some of it’s hard. Yee got her after the other lab work — hair and fiber, latents, blood and semen.”

Weir’s stomach sank. “Was she raped?”

“I’ll get to that. First, time of death between midnight and one A.M. Yee’s firm on that because we got her six hours later. Food in her system, blood loss, lividity, rigor mortis, the usual. She was stabbed with a sharp knife, thin, single-edged, nonserated, with a six-inch blade and no hilt. It’s called the Kentucky Homestead, made in Japan, and there’s a picture of it in the file here. Any one of thirteen wounds were fatal — they were done before the others. The first three happened when she was standing — the other twenty-four when she was down. No sign of resistance, so apparently our man got tired or scared — what have you. Twenty-seven penetrations in all. Now there wasn’t so much as a cut on either of her arms or hands, so we’d have to say she lost consciousness almost immediately, before she could defend herself. No bruising that would indicate a struggle before the knife hit her. Eight of the thirteen fatals penetrated the heart; the others hit the aorta or the pulmonary artery or both. He was forceful, Jim. Very.”