T. Parker: Red Light

“Mr. Coates, those two arrivals you heard upstairs, they were the footsteps of men, correct?”

“Yes.” A confessional glance and nod.

“The same man, or two different ones?”

“Oh, different men, certainly. I was going to tell you that if you didn’t ask.”

“How sure are you of that?”

“Well, if you hear two voices, you know there are two people. Same with footsteps.”

“What else about them, by the sound of them?”

Zamorra aimed a look her way but said nothing.

Coates settled his bottom into his chair, readying himself for his presentation. Eighteen years of anecdotal data, Merci thought, about to find its way into a thesis.

“The first? Heavy, but not overweight. Not in a hurry. He was light on his feet, but you can’t fool the boards. Pounds are pounds. Young and probably athletic. And familiar. Familiar with the area. He was wearing hard-soled shoes or boots. Not cowboy boots, they have an entirely different sound. I pictured a young businessman coming home from work, happy to be home, eager to see his wife or his lover. When he left he was... reluctant. He wished he wasn’t leaving, but he had to.”

Zamorra was staring at the floor, his pen in his hand.

Coates looked at Zamorra with concern, made an internal decision, turned his attention back to Merci.

“The second? A much lighter man. He was young also, light on his feet, quick. Soft shoes. In somewhat of a hurry. I couldn’t tell if he was familiar with the area or not. He left much more slowly than he came. He sounded... unsteady. Uncertain. I think I remember him pausing, about halfway down. I may have imagined that. I can’t swear to it. I pictured him as a young man eager to see someone. Eager to get there, get what he wanted, then eager to leave. You know, an impatient young buck on his way to the next thing. When he paused, I saw him realizing he’d forgotten something. But he didn’t go back.”

Coates sighed and looked into the fire.

Zamorra abruptly shut off his tape recorder, cast his black eyes on Merci, then the man. “How much pot did you smoke in the bathtub?”

Merci had smelled it very faintly, too, when she had first sat down. It hadn’t seemed relevant, yet.

Coates’s face took on an expression of blank defiance. “One half of one joint.”

“Strong stuff or cheap stuff?” Zamorra asked.

“Very strong.”

“There’re other people to talk to,” said Zamorra. He stood and walked out.

Merci finished her notes. The door slammed.

“That man is unbelievably angry,” said Coates .464

“Believe it. Thank you.”

Back on the upstairs walkway, Merci stood aside for the coroner’s people to wheel Aubrey Whittaker past. She thought that Aubrey Whittaker would most likely have been wheeling around in her red Cadillac if she hadn’t answered the door for the wrong guy. She looked out to the sparse 2 A.M. traffic on Coast Highway. Zamorra was already interviewing another neighbor.

Inside she was greeted by the green eyes and wide smile of Evan O’Brien. The CSI held up a small paper bag. Merci took it and looked in at a cartridge casing that had rolled into the bag’s corner.

“The forty-five caliber Colt,” said O’Brien. “Load of choice for many in law enforcement.”

Merci Rayborn looked at the CSI with a hostility that could overtake her in a heartbeat. Jokes about her profession were never funny.

“Hey, Sergeant, don’t rain on me for some of the best physical evidence you can ask for. Lynda found it.”

“Raped?”

“Apparently not. And no signs of forced entry. Looks like some kind of scuffle or something in the kitchen.”

“How many shots?”

“Probably just one. There’s a hole up in the corner of the slider. Your bullet is out there in the ocean somewhere.”

“Find it.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Merci met Mike for breakfast at seven in the courthouse cafeteria. She’d had three hours of sleep and now seemed to have feathers between her brain and her thoughts. Tim, Jr., had awakened when she went into his room. She had held him until he fell back asleep. He was just a year and a half old now, her little man, her reason for everything.

Starved as usual in the mornings, she got the big-eater’s plate. Mike set down his tray of yogurt, fruit and coffee with envy. He had a file under one arm, and he handed it to Merci.

“Copy of Whittaker’s jacket,” he said. “Thought I’d save you some time.”

She scanned the top sheet: one drunk driving conviction two years prior; one arrest for pot, pleaded down to a misdemeanor for her attending a drug diversion program; one pending charge of solicitation for prostitution — to be dropped for her cooperation in a vice-squad investigation of outcall sex-for-hire.

“We’d finally talked Aubrey Whittaker into helping us go after the outcall service,” he said unhappily.

Mike had a pleasant face and a serious disposition. It seemed to have gotten more serious during the last few months. But he’d been there for her, off and on, for over a year now. She liked him and trusted him, and he let her keep a little distance between them, a little padding. Marriage: no, not now. Cohabitation: no. Innermost feelings and secret confessions: not yet. The future: later. The insulation seemed to be part character. Mike understood this, even if she didn’t at times.

“That was just two days ago,” said Mike.

“Which outcall?”

“The Epicure.”

“Is that the Italian prince?”

“He’s a YACS thug.”

YACS was a new term in law enforcement, a new threat to the innocent. It stood for Yugoslavian-Albanian-Croatian-Serbian, who — in spite of littering the aisles of history with each others’ dead — were lumped together for ethnic reasons. They’d mostly stayed East Coast, but Southern California was getting its share.

“I thought the YACS were supermarket robbers, truck hijackers,” said Merci.

“Well, this one peddles flesh and calls himself an Italian prince.”

Mike peeled his banana without desire, bit into it. She thought this was emblematic of him: His whole life was a should instead of a want. That was part of what made him Mike, what made him good. Sometimes, actually noble. Two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle, a boy’s smile and blue eyes clear as a desert sky, for whatever that was worth. Worth quite a lot, sometimes. Other times she thought it was vanity.

“Priors?”

“Stateside he’s got pimping, pandering and some assaults. Woman, of course. Back in YACSville, who knows?”

“I hope you get him.”

Mike shook his head slowly. “She... Aubrey Whittaker, tried stand up for the guy at first. Said if we wanted a bust just bust her. Wouldn’t admit that he was taking almost the whole outcall fee, which he was. Wouldn’t admit she was encouraged to keep her ‘clients’ satisfied, whatever that took. Wouldn’t admit that she was working for tips, which she was. He’s a pig, selling nineteen-year-olds to rich old and high-tech nerds with million-dollar companies and no morals. You do that to a girl, you’re stealing her soul. I’ll get him. And you’ll nail the shit who killed her.”

Mike wore a silver cross around his neck. Merci could see the chain behind the open collar of his blue dress shirt, a glint within a shadow. He’d started wearing it a few months back, when he joined the church. Merci had only gone twice: She would not attend any church where worshipers were forced to stand and greet their neighbors.

“Good luck on the next-of-kin search,” said Mike. “She went to court to change her name, wouldn’t tell me what the real one was.”

“Where’d she grow up?”

“Wouldn’t come clean with me. Oregon, Seattle, Texas or Ohio, depending on who she was talking to, Iowa is what she told me.”