Jonathan Kellerman - Compulsion

In the sheriff’s office, a young, completely bald man in khakis sat at a PC keyboard. Behind him was a one-room jail as clean as his head. The walls were papered with the usual wanted posters, bulletins, and safety pitches. Cinderblock made an inhospitable bed for tape, and some of the papers had curled loose.

“Dr. Delaware? George Cardenas.”

“Morning, Sheriff.”

This sibling shook heartily and smiled without reservation. His skin was clear like his sister’s, his eyes the same gold-brown. But his face was round and soft, with none of that falcon-alertness. Baby-face; the lack of head hair did little to age him. “Coffee?”

“Black, thanks.”

Cardenas poured both of us Styrofoam cups, dosed his with Coffee-mate, and motioned me to sit. “You’re a little early.”

“My previous appointment canceled.”

“Detective Bragen changed his mind, huh?”

“You know him?”

“Talked to him for the first time this morning. I figured he might do that.”

“Why’s that?”

“Talking about the case made him kind of annoyed. He called it a loser from the git-go, like he didn’t want to churn it up.”

Beside his computer was a short stack of paper. He peeled off the top sheet and handed it over.

Sheriff Wendell Salmey’s summary of the Bright-Tranh murders.

I learned a few facts DV Zapper hadn’t reported: The name of Leonora Bright’s salon had been Stylish Lady. She’d been thirty-three at the time of her death. Vicki Tranh, a recent arrival from Anaheim, had been only nineteen. No disruption of the store, other than two dead bodies and lots of blood. Both women were left with jewelry on their persons, and a day’s worth of cash remained in the register, ruling out robbery.

Salmey’s spelling was better than the kid’s, but not by much.

George Cardenas said, “That’s all there is.”

He brushed imaginary dust from his trousers. “When I took the job, all of Sheriff Salmey’s files were in boxes in a storage facility in Los Alamos. I started going through them, trying to get a feel for the town. Mostly, he dealt with small stuff – apples stripped from a tree, lost dog, once in a while a domestic. He was in favor of diplomacy rather than enforcement.”

“Going easy on the locals?”

Cardenas’s thumb hooked at the jail cell. “Folks tell me about the only time that got used was if a transient needed to sleep off a drunk. Sheriff’s wife died eleven years ago, then his son a year after, traffic accident on the 101 near Buellton. Sheriff pretty much curled up after that.”

“Ten years ago is right before the murders,” I said. “You’re thinking he wasn’t in high gear.”

Cardenas sat back and crossed his legs. “I don’t want to talk ill of the dead, everyone says Sheriff was a great guy. But Ojo Negro since the highway moved is pretty much an oil painting. I don’t mind, but it’s not for everyone.”

“You like the quiet.”

“Sometimes I do get a little antsy and call my sister, ask her to drop in for a spell – we’re twins, she’s a nurse at Cottage Hospital in S.B., gets good vacation time. But mostly I’m working, so the quiet’s perfect.”

“Working on cases?”

He eyed his computer. “This is gonna sound stupid, but I write. Or at least try to.”

“Fiction?”

Averting his face, he talked to a fire alert poster. “Started with short stories then I read in some writer’s magazine that there’s no market for them, so I’m trying a novel. Haven’t started yet, still working on finding what they call my point of view.”

“Police novel?”

“Depends what comes out once I get the story set in my head,” he said. “I was a double major at U. New Mexico. English and criminal justice, couldn’t figure out what I liked more, so I decided to get some police experience, maybe I’d have something to say in a book. Did a couple years with the state police, then Ojo Negro came up, they hadn’t had a sheriff in five years, got a two-year state grant to fund one. My sister and her kids aren’t too far and she’s divorced and her ex is out of the picture. I figured maybe I could be a good influence.” Shrug. “Seemed like a good opportunity.”

“I’ve talked to a couple of detectives at Santa Fe P.D. Steve Katz and Darrell Two Moons.”

“Know ’em by sight but never worked with ’em. Mostly I was in Albuquerque, doing gang suppression. That got me close to a couple of homicides, I watched the pros, learned it’s not my cup of tea. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to help you much on this one. That one sheet’s all I found.”

“Is there anyone I could speak to who was here nine years ago?”

“Just about everyone still living in Ojo Negro was here nine years ago. Most of my people are seniors who don’t want to or can’t afford to leave. The grocery store brews fresh soup when there’s enough demand and the big day is when the Social Security checks come in.”

“Anyone you’d recommend to start with?”

His legs uncrossed. “Lieutenant Sturgis really thinks this could be related to an L.A. case?”

“Hard to say. The main link is a stolen black car.”

“Mercedes and Bentley, yeah, he told me. The original GTA filing on the Lincoln is under Santa Barbara’s jurisdiction ’cause the car was taken there. I checked and it’s archived. All I could find is a basic theft-recovery report. By the time the tags were linked to that Clint Eastwood-type loiterer, the vehicle had been cleaned and rerented, had over a hundred new miles on it. No probable cause to examine it, so that was that. In terms of people who might remember, I asked around, and, sure, anyone with a working memory recalls the case. This was the first homicide in forty years. But no one has any details about the loiterer beyond tall white male, long coat, cowboy hat. And I can’t find anyone who actually saw him.”

“Mysterious stranger.”

“We don’t get too many visitors and I doubt nine years ago was any different ’cause that’s still after the highway reroute. There’s nothing really connecting this individual to the crime other than his hanging around and no one knowing him.”

“The coat and the hat could’ve been a disguise,” I said.

“I guess.”

“Any way he could’ve been a local?”

“No way, Doctor. This is a real small town.”

He sipped his coffee. “Hate to say it, but the whole thing sounds pretty frozen to me. Maybe I’ll make up an ending and put it in my book.”

“Beats reality,” I said.

He tapped his keyboard. “What you do sounds interesting. Maybe I could pick your brain sometime.”

“Sure. I noticed a salon on this side of the street. Was that originally Leonora Bright’s place?”

“Nope, Cozy Coiffure replaced something else – restaurant, I think. The Ramirez family runs that place. Estella and Ramon, no kids. They moved here from Ventura three years after Leonora got murdered. Took that long for the town to get anyone, running ads in other towns’ papers. Before that, folks had to drive to Los Alamos to get trimmed. The crime scene was the last store as you leave town. Want to have a look? I could use a stretch.”

We left the office and crossed the street. I asked him about Ojo Negro local government.

He said, “No mayor, no city council, we just rely on the county. Basically our issues are county issues, we’re kind of a stepchild to Los Alamos or anyone else who’ll have us.”

“How many residents?”

“Sign says a thousand but it’s much less. I’d guess two hundred, tops. The way we’re going, soon there’ll be nothing left – okay, here we are.”

He’d stopped in front of one of the boarded storefronts. Original pink stucco peeked through the flaking cocoa-brown repaint, patchy and florid, like a skin disease.