Faye Kellerman: The Mercedes Coffin

Decker shook his head no. “Just Lamar.”

“What’d you think of him?” Marge asked.

“He’s all right…seemed to care.” To Oliver, Decker said, “Did you ever work with either of them on any homicide case?”

“Sure, on the homicides that we worked in teams of five. They were competent if not inspiring. They seemed like a tight twosome.”

“Lamar said he rarely talks to Vitton now that they’re both retired. Cal ’s apparently a brooder.”

“I can see that,” Oliver said. “I think he went through a bad divorce.”

Decker said, “Did you ask any of Little’s colleagues about Darnell Arlington?”

Marge flipped through her notes. “Marianne Seagraves from the English Department remembered him-and I quote-as a big black boy with a big chip on his shoulder. Darnell didn’t have a father and his mother had a drug problem. Marianne said that Little tried his best with Darnell-after-school tutoring, lunch off campus, lots of heart-to-hearts, Christmas presents-but no one was surprised when Arlington was expelled.”

“Any history of violence?” Decker asked.

“Darnell had his fair share of fights. No weapons other than his fists as far as Marianne can remember.”

“Did you locate him?”

“I found a high school gym coach named Darnell Arlington who lives near Akron, Ohio, but I haven’t verified that it’s the same Darnell Arlington.”

Oliver said, “How many Darnell Arlingtons are out there?”

“According to Find-it Yellow Pages, there are four: one in Texas, one in Louisiana, one in Wisconsin, and one in Ohio.”

“That’s the problem with these search engines,” Oliver griped. “They bring up all this irrelevant information.”

“Yes, but they bring up relevant information as well,” Marge told him. “Like my grandfather used to say, you take the good with the bad.”

THE PHONE CALL came at nine in the evening on the cell. Decker had been working at home in his pajamas, scouring through the Little file, trying to find a scintilla of an overlooked clue. He regarded the number and realized it was Vitton.

“Thanks so much for calling me back, Detective. At your convenience, I’d like to meet with you for an hour or so regarding the Bennett Little homicide-”

“You can stop right there, Lieutenant. Arnie called me up and told me you were at his place on some kind of a mission. I’ll tell you what you already know. If I would have thought of something new, I would have told someone a long time ago.”

“I realize that, Detective. I don’t expect a breakthrough. Just your thoughts and insights-”

“No new thoughts. Definitely no new insights. You taking time out to talk to me would be a total waste because I don’t have anything to tell you.”

“Sometimes just by talking, new things pop up.”

“We’re talking now. Nothing new is popping up.”

Decker gritted his teeth. “Still, if you can give me an hour, I’d appreciate it.”

“Why?” Vitton’s voice had tightened even further. “I already told you, I got nothing to say.”

“Okay, then let me spell it out for you. I was ordered to reopen the case. That means I have to talk to everyone involved. If there’s a definite reason why you don’t want to talk to me, I’d like to hear it.”

Silent Cal was silent. Decker waited him out.

“I just don’t have anything new to say to you. Arnie and I never found a good suspect, and we went through them all.”

“Who did you interview?”

“Just read the goddamn file.”

Again, Decker felt his jaw clench. “I have the file in front of me. I was wondering if there were people who didn’t make it into the file.”

“Everyone I interviewed should be in the file.”

“Who came closest as a suspect?”

“No one. The man didn’t have any enemies!”

“He must have had one.”

“No, he didn’t. He had bad luck.”

“You think it was a random carjacking?”

“He drove a Mercedes. A car like that would be a good score to a couple of punk boosters.”

“But they didn’t steal the car.”

“Maybe Ben came out and surprised them…that has always been my theory…that the punks panicked, threw him into the trunk, and drove to Clearwater Park. Once there, they whacked him.”

Decker gave Cal ’s ideas brief consideration. Immediately the question arose: How did the punks escape from the park? It could be the punks just walked away. The file had recorded lots of shoe prints on the grass by the car lot, but none of them led anywhere, and fifteen years later, that was probably a dead end.

“That’s one explanation,” Decker told Vitton. “I’d like to talk to you in person and consider other theories.”

Another round of silence.

Decker said, “Look, Cal, if I didn’t have to talk to you, I wouldn’t bother. But I need to do this. So help me out and make it as painless as possible. The quicker we do this, the quicker I’m out of your hair.”

“I used that line many times when I was at LAPD, and I know that it’s a truckload of shit. This is only the beginning.”

“What time can you meet me tomorrow?”

“Come at nine in the morning.”

“I’ll be there. This is the address I have for you.” Decker read off the numbers. “Is it current?”

“Yeah, it’s current.”

“So I’ll see you at nine.”

“Fine. I’ll meet with you. But don’t expect a hot pot of coffee waiting for you. This ain’t a social call.”

THE NUMBERS WRITTEN on Decker’s notepaper matched a small stucco house in a development of modest homes. The street was wide-typical of most streets in Simi Valley -and ended in a cul-de-sac. If lawns were classified like eye color, the patches would have been designated as hazel, a mixture of green grass with russet, sun-bleached weeds. The sidewalk trees were stalks with bushy, untrimmed canopies, resembling adolescent boys with a ’fro. Mixed flowers offered some color, as did the blue sky, but most of the surrounding rocky terrain was brown and dusty.

Both of Decker’s stepsons and his younger daughter had taken their driver’s license examinations in Simi. It was a good place to learn because the roadways were broad and there were assigned left-hand turn lanes complete with arrows. With Hannah now driving, Decker was left to ponder how fast his life had come at him. He felt active and vigorous, but that didn’t change the years. Was retirement a theoretical concept or an inevitable reality of the near future?

After parking the car, he checked his watch. At precisely nine o’clock, he got out of the cruiser and ambled up the walkway, climbing two steps to reach the door. He gave the wood a firm knock, the type of rap that told a cop that another cop had arrived and there was serious talking to be done.

When no one answered right away. Decker was peeved. He rang the bell and waited, feeling uneasy when silence answered him back.

He glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected Cal to materialize; then he looked upward at the cloudless cerulean ether. No Cal in the sky, either, just the fluttering of black ravens along with harsh cawing. The late spring morning was still cool enough to be comfortable, but the warmth from the sun was attracting bugs-bees, gnats, flies, and the ever pesky mosquitoes.

He knocked again, tried the door handle, which, not surprisingly, was locked.

His watch now read 9:10.

Vitton’s driveway was empty.

Who the hell did he think he was, avoiding the police? Cal must have been an idiot to think that an amateurish dodge would discourage Decker. With an angry scrawl, he wrote on the back of his business card that he’d be in touch! He dotted the exclamation point angrily and was two steps away from his car when something tickled his brain.