Cold Heart (16 page)

Lorraine arrived home after driving up to Santa Monica to walk Tiger on the promenade, a pretty stretch of parkland on the bluffs above the beach, just as darkness was falling at about six o’clock. She immediately checked her answerphone, to find only one message from Decker, giving Sonja Nathan’s home number, which Lorraine took down. After a shower, she fixed herself some agnolotti and salad, cooked up some meat and vegetables for Tiger, and was just about to make the call to Sonja Nathan when Tiger let rip with a deep bark, then growled as footsteps became audible on the walkway up to the apartment.

Lorraine went to the window and looked down into the road. She saw the Chewy, parked directly underneath. She didn’t recognize the car and looked quickly at her watch. Just after ten. After the incident with the brakes, she was immediately tense, and Tiger was ready to pounce.

The door buzzed, and Lorraine hesitated before she picked up the entryphone. ‘Who is it?’

‘Lieutenant Burton, LAPD.’ The voice was neither friendly nor familiar.

Lorraine looked out of her window and could see Burton standing back from the front door on the steps. He was holding his ID card up for her to see, so she pressed the door-release button and told Tiger to sit. The dog still wasn’t convinced and she had to hold his collar in one hand as she opened the door to the apartment.

‘Hi – can you just say hello to my dog?’

Burton smiled. ‘Sure. Hi . . . Do I put out my hand or what?’

‘Just stay where you are, let him have a sniff. He’ll be okay soon.’

As Burton leaned forward Tiger growled deep in his throat.

‘Good boy . . . good boy.’

Lorraine slowly released her hold on the dog’s collar and he relaxed. ‘Sorry about that. Come in.’

‘No, I’m sorry, I should have called first, but . . . you want another look at my ID?’

She smiled. ‘No, that’s okay.’

Lorraine tried to think what the hell had brought Burton to her apartment, while smiling and offering him coffee or tea, both of which he refused.

‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here?’

‘You could say that.’ She sat down opposite in an easy chair. Burton was not the kind of man she found attractive – she had always preferred men with darker colouring – but she was impressed by him. He seemed quite a cool guy, though the hair was too short, and judging from the pressed pants, polished shoes and so on, he was anally retentive. She laughed at her analysis.

‘Did I miss something?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry. It’s just you being here all spick and span, and at the same time my mind is wondering what the fuck it is you want?’

He laughed – a pleasant laugh – and she also noted he had nice, even teeth.

‘You had a meeting with one of my officers.’

‘Yes, Jim Sharkey.’

‘Yes,’ he repeated softly. ‘Jim Sharkey.’ Nothing Sharkey had said had given him any indication about how Lorraine Page looked. Nor had anything he had read about her. He had not expected to be bowled over by her looks.

‘So, you’re running that division now, are you?’ she enquired. He liked the way she tilted her head when she spoke, her silky blonde hair falling forward over one side of her face.

‘Yes, I hope you don’t mind my calling. It’s not official - just wanted to touch base.’

‘Really?’ she said, with a half-smile, then again offered him something to drink. This time he accepted a glass of iced water. He had strong hands with long, tapering fingers, which brushed hers for a second as he took the glass from her.

Burton drew out a hard-backed chair from the little dining nook, and brought it over to the coffee table, although there was a more comfortable chair and the sofa. He twisted the chair round and sat astride it, leaning his arms along the back.

‘You want to trade information,’ he said, looking at her directly. He leaned over, picked up his glass, and sipped from it, then replaced it carefully. ‘As I said before, this is unofficial, but I’m new in town - new to the station. I like to get a handle on some of my officers, especially if they’re taking backhanders, and I know most of them are. I’m on what you might call a clean-up campaign.’

Lorraine cocked her head to one side, and waited.

‘Did you offer any payment to Detective Sharkey?’

‘No, I paid for his cappuccino, that’s all.’

He stared at her. It was his turn to wait, and there was a long pause. ‘I see. Have you traded information with Detective Sharkey before?’

‘No. I did some work on a case with a former partner who was an old buddy of Sharkey’s, Bill Rooney -Captain Rooney. I think they sank a few beers together and discussed the investigation. It was the disappearance of—’

‘Yes, I read the file. Girl was found murdered in New Orleans, wasn’t she?’ He half smiled. ‘You got a bonus, so I heard, a big one.’

‘Yes, I did. Not that I think it’s any business of yours, but it’s what I used to open up my office.’

‘Did Sharkey get a cut of your bonus?’

‘No, he did not. It was split between myself and my partners.’

Burton drained his glass, and held the blue goblet loosely in his hands. ‘You working for Cindy Nathan?’ he asked casually.

‘Yes.’

‘You mentioned a number of things to Detective Sharkey - some tapes, telephone and video . . .’

Lorraine stood up. ‘Yes, I did, but he said you knew about them, or the investigating officers did.’

‘Then he lied. It was the first we’d heard of them. You want to tell me about them?’

Lorraine was getting edgy. Burton had got up and was wandering around the room. It unnerved her, as if he was mentally sizing up both her and her apartment. ‘It seems Nathan recorded all incoming calls, and had video monitors set up all over the house.’

‘So what did you glean from these tapes?’ he asked, bending to look at a photograph of her father in police uniform.

‘That Nathan was both vain and paranoid,’ Lorraine replied. ‘Most of the tapes were of him making beauty appointments. None that I had the opportunity to listen to were of much interest, and some were destroyed.’ She had his full attention now. ‘Someone broke into my office and poured acid over them.’

‘Did you tell Sharkey this?’

‘No.’

‘And the videos?’

‘Well, they’re a little different. They are explicit recordings of Nathan’s sexual exploits with his last two wives.’

Burton folded his arms. ‘Is that why you wanted to see Sharkey? Trade off these videos?’

‘No, though I offered them. A good defence attorney will also use them – Cindy took a lot of abuse.’

‘Enough to make her kill him?’

‘No, not necessarily. I know the evidence against her is pretty incriminating – maybe too incriminating – but I don’t think she did it.’

‘You mean she could have been set up?’

‘Possibly.’

He sat on the arm of the sofa. ‘By whom?’

‘I don’t know, it’s just a theory.’

‘And you are obviously being paid a good retainer to find out?’

‘Again, I don’t think that’s any of your business. I’m doing my job, that’s all.’

‘Apart from the tapes and the videos, do you have anything that would cast suspicion on someone else?’

It was Lorraine’s turn to pace the apartment. Should she tell him about her suspicions of Kendall Nathan, the parked jeep? She played for time, tidying a stack of magazines on the coffee table.

‘You had a problem with your car?’ he said. ‘Sharkey told me.’

She straightened. ‘Yes, brake cable had been cut, sliced in two.’

‘But you didn’t report it?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think someone was warning you off?’

‘I’d say it might have been a bit more than a warning – if I’d been going at any speed and had to stop I might have been killed.’ She swung round to face him. ‘And this unofficial visit is beginning to get to me. Do you think I’m withholding evidence or something? Why would I? Christ, I’m hired to get my client off a murder rap. Surely anything I come up with I’d feed back to—’

‘I’d like to see the tapes.’

‘Fine, send someone round to my office and you can have them.’

‘What else have you got?’

She glared at him, and he looked back at her with laser-like intensity.

‘You don’t believe Cindy Nathan killed her husband. Is it just a gut feeling, or do you have other evidence that might implicate someone else?’

Lorraine thought for a moment, then said, ‘Okay, there was a jeep parked across from the Nathans’ house, unidentified so far, seen by the housekeeper. He was sure it didn’t belong to anyone in the neighbourhood, two-tone Mitsubishi, driven away shortly after the shooting. Kendall Nathan owns a jeep that matches that description. Kendall Nathan was also one of only two people who knew that the tapes which were destroyed at my office were in there.’ Burton remained impassive. ‘Cindy Nathan thinks she heard possibly two shots – the first she presumed was a car backfiring, so she didn’t pay any attention to it, and the second made her get up and walk round to the pool area. That’s when she found her husband.’

‘He was shot only once.’

‘Yes, but . . .’ Lorraine decided against saying anything about the bullet she had found. ‘There was also a phone call,’ she went on. ‘Someone called me right after Nathan was shot, said she was Cindy Nathan, but Cindy subsequently said it wasn’t her. Now that I’ve met her, I don’t think the voice was hers either. It could have been Kendall’s but she denied it.’

‘But Kendall Nathan doesn’t have much of a motive, right? She gets half an art gallery, but Cindy’s the one who stood to inherit the house and the stock and everything.’

Burton had surprised Lorraine – division heads didn’t usually spend much time poring over reports and, in her experience, few had been sufficiently involved with an individual case to discuss motive. But, then, she had never had an unofficial home visit from anyone that high up either.

‘Maybe the motive isn’t financial,’ she said. Burton gave her that penetrating look again. ‘Nathan’s finances, as far as I can gather, are not as healthy as one would expect – Cindy Nathan is not coming into a fortune. I’d say she might even find herself in debt after she’s paid off all Nathan’s creditors, so I’m in two minds about money being in the picture at all.’

Burton hesitated before replying. ‘Maybe you’re right, but even if it’s not money, Cindy Nathan is still in the frame. You’ve said he abused her – maybe she’d taken enough. She’d threatened publicly to kill him and, according to the reports I’ve read, she was pretty confused when she was arrested, not saying categorically that she didn’t kill him, but that she didn’t
think
she did, that she couldn’t have. Then she said, “Could I?”’

Lorraine sat down on the sofa. ‘Yeah, I know, but she found the body. She was presumably in a state of shock.’

‘Perhaps you don’t know the results of the medical examination, after she was brought into the station?’

‘She was pregnant. Yes, I do know, and she lost the child – in fact she’s only just been released from hospital.’

‘I wasn’t referring to her pregnancy. Cindy Nathan is or was a cocaine addict. According to the report, your client was high as a kite on the morning of the shooting.’ He looked at his watch, then extended his hand. ‘Thank you very much for seeing me, Mrs Page.’

She shook his outstretched hand, trying not to show her astonishment that Cindy Nathan had been doped up when she had first spoken to her.

‘I’ll have someone collect the tape footage from you first thing in the morning,’ he said coolly.

She walked beside him to the front door. He stood head and shoulders above her, and she was close enough to smell his aftershave, fresh, lemony, discreet. He took her by surprise again when he opened the screen door and said softly, ‘You don’t look anything like your photograph.’

She looked up into his face. ‘My photograph?’

‘Mug-shot. I read up on you, Mrs Page.’

‘Did you?’ she said coldly.

He held open the screen door with the toe of his shoe. ‘But, then, that sort of photograph is never very flattering, is it?’

‘No, and it was a long time ago.’

He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I congratulate you. It takes a lot of personal courage to beat alcoholism – beat the demons, so to speak.’ Lorraine made no reply. He had read the reports of her drunkenness and her arrest for vagrancy, no doubt he even knew she had prostituted herself, but she felt sickened above all that he knew what she had done – knew why she had been cold-shouldered out of the force. It made her flush.

‘What happened to your scar?’

Lorraine jerked back her head as Burton reached out to touch her cheek with one finger. ‘I had it fixed.’

‘You mind if I say something to you, not as an officer, but as a friend?’

She took two steps back, avoiding his eyes.

‘You haven’t reported the break-in at your office, that someone tampered with the brake cable on your car. You had a tough climb out of the gutter, Mrs Page. Perhaps someone from your past, nothing to do with Cindy Nathan, is carrying a grudge. I’d take a little more care.’

‘Thanks for the advice.’

‘Take it, Mrs Page, and if you need to speak to me at any time, please call.’ He took out his wallet, adroitly produced his card and a pen, and wrote down another number for her. ‘That’s my extension and my home number.’ He put his wallet and pen back in his jacket, and held out the card.

Lorraine took it without looking at him, and walked back into the apartment as he let himself out and closed the door behind him. She watched from the window as he went towards his car; she knew she should have told him her suspicions of a possible art fraud, which Cindy had outlined, but he had thrown her by admitting he had seen her report sheet. She continued to watch as he drove off down the street.

He had made her feel jaded somehow – his cleanness and freshness, and his neat handwriting on the card in her hand. Plus Cindy Nathan had tested positive for drugs. That put a whole new light on their meetings, and Lorraine was angry that she had not noticed, or even suspected it from the girl’s odd chatter, her chronic inability to concentrate, and failure to connect with what was happening around her. Suddenly, Lorraine doubted her judgement completely, and began to think that Cindy Nathan was probably guilty, after all. The depression deepened until she sat down, her head in her hands, feeling wretched, inadequate, unable to stop the tears.