Flipping Out (3 page)

'I'm
here for the same reason my boss is here. And his boss. A cop's wife was
murdered in cold blood in her own home. Whatever else you're doing, shelve it.
This case goes to the top of the pile.'

'We
both knew the victim,' I said. 'Is there any conflict with us handling this?'

'We
all knew the victim,' Kilcullen said, his voice kicking up a notch. 'She's one
of our own. She was killed in our jurisdiction. It's ours to solve, and you two
are going to solve it.'

'Right,'
Terry said. 'And if you yell louder, maybe we'll solve it faster.'

'Sorry,'
Kilcullen said, more to Jo than to Terry. He bent down and took a closer look.
'They cut her hair. It's like a violation on top of a violation.' He smacked
his fist into the palm of his hand and stood up. 'CSU should be here any
minute. I've got half the station combing the neighbourhood. You guys get the
fun job. Interview Reggie.'

'Rule
number one,' I said. 'The husband is always the primary—'

'I
know,' Kilcullen said. 'But I know Reggie, and he didn't kill her. Let's just hope
he's got a solid alibi.'

'He's
going to want in on the investigation,' Terry said.

'Well,
you know the answer to that one. No fucking way. You need manpower, you let me
know. Anyone but Reggie.' He took one more look at the dead woman at our feet.
'I don't get it,' he said. 'A nice girl like Jo. I can't imagine she had any
enemies.'

Terry
shrugged. 'She must've had one.'

Reggie
was sitting on the sofa in the living room. He was dressed for work - tan
pants, pale yellow short-sleeve shirt, green tie with thin blue stripes. He had
showered and shaved since I saw him last night, and his face, forever tan from
a life on the water, was probably a melanoma waiting to happen. But for the
moment, it gave off a healthy glow. Only his eyes were a window to the shock
and the grief.

He
stood up when Terry and I walked in. 'Oh man, am I glad to see you guys. I'm
crawling the walls here. What's going on? What do you know?'

'Reg,
we're all torn up about this,' I said. 'We're gonna solve it, but we're just
getting started. First, we need to sit down and talk.' I put my hand on his
shoulder and tried to ease him back toward the sofa, but he didn't budge.

'Mike,
I don't want to sit and talk. I want to be part of the investigation.'

'Reg,
you know the rules...'

'Fuck
the rules,' he said. 'I worked robbery-homicide at Central. I know what I'm
doing.'

'Reg,
that was years ago, and you transferred out after six months.'

'This
is different. This is my wife.'

Like
a lot of cops, when Reggie made detective, he thought he could do the most good
working homicide. But catching murderers doesn't bring back the victims, and
Reggie has always had a passion to help people find the road to recovery. So he
switched to vice, where he can help addicts kick the habit and prostitutes get
off the street. Before he joined the navy he was raised as a Jehovah's Witness.
While other kids were out playing ball, Reggie and his parents were knocking on
doors trying to save souls. He gave up the religion years ago, but he never
shook the need to point others toward the light.

'Reg,'
Terry said, 'I can't tell you how sorry I am. We're going to catch this guy,
but we're losing time here. The best way you can help right now is to let us
ask you some questions.'

Reggie
lowered himself back onto the sofa and buried his head in his hands. 'I know
the drill,' he said, looking back up at us. 'Get to it. Ask.'

'Let's
start with the usual,' I said. 'Did Jo have any enemies?'

He
shook his head. 'Mike, you knew her. Everyone loved her.'

'Dig
deeper. What about crazy neighbours, old grudges, any of her exes, any of
yours?'

'Mike,
I've been digging deep for the past two hours. There's nobody. If I could've
thought of somebody, I'd already be at their house.'

'Did
you hear anything or notice anything out of the ordinary in the past few days?'
Terry said. 'Anyone new hanging around the neighbourhood? Weird phone calls?
E-mails? Any flare-ups at work?'

'Nothing.
She was happy. Busy, but happy. That was her. That was Jo.'

A
uniform came into the living room. 'Excuse me, Detectives,' she said.
'Detective Burns said to tell you that the medical liaison is here.'

'Thanks,'
I said. 'Tell her Detective Drabyak will be right out.'

'I
don't need a doctor,' Reggie said.

'It's
standard procedure, Reg. Cop in trauma. Just talk to the doc. We'll have
someone drive you to the station, and we'll pick up the interview there.'

'I
spent the night on the boat,' he said.

'I
know,' I said. I didn't know it for sure, but I knew that's what he'd say.

'I
should have come home.' His eyes were starting to tear up. 'I should have come
home. This wouldn't have happened.'

'Reggie,
before you go,' I said. 'We need your OK to do a permissive search of the
house.' I handed him the paperwork and a pen.

'Do
it,' he said, signing the form. 'Rip the place apart. I don't give a shit. Just
find out who did this.'

'And
we'll need to secure your gun.'

He
grunted out a laugh. 'I don't know why you need it now. I don't know who to
shoot yet.' He reached down to his ankle, took his piece out of the holster,
and handed it to me.

'Thanks.
We'll talk back at the station,' I said.

'The
first thing we talk about is making me part of the investigation.'

I
looked at Terry. He had told Kilcullen that Reggie would want to help us catch
Jo's killer. I also remember Kilcullen's answer. No way. Only he said it in
three words.

'Did
you hear me?' Reggie said. 'I want in.'

'We
understand,' Terry said. 'But it's not our call. We'll ask Kilcullen. He's
pretty reasonable. Let's see what he says.'

Kilcullen
delivered the manpower we needed. At least a dozen uniformed officers plus
detectives from every desk at the Hollywood Station canvassed the area and questioned
everyone they could find within a six-block radius of the crime scene.

'Most
people are at work,' Kilcullen told them. 'Which means you keep going back and
knocking on doors till you speak to every single person who might have seen or
heard anything last night.'

Terry
and I searched the house. It was neat, tasteful, and completely devoid of
leads. At 11:00 a.m. we went back to the garage and were surprised to find
Jessica Keating wrapping up her preliminary investigation. For my money, Jess
is the best crime scene investigator in LA County. I just hadn't expected to
see her till October.

'I
thought you still had another month of maternity leave before you came back,' I
said.

'Breast-feeding
and poopy diapers are highly overrated,' Jess said. 'Besides, Dan works at
home, and we were starting to get on each other's nerves. So I bought a breast
pump, left enough milk in the fridge to feed a village, and asked if I could
come back to work early.' She looked down at Jo Drabyak and shook her head. 'I
know it sounds unhealthy coming from someone who just brought a life into the
world, but believe it or not, I missed this.'

'Glad
you did,' I said. 'What's the cause of death?'

'You
didn't really need me to figure that out,' Keating said. 'She died from a good
old-fashioned case of HILP: high-impact lead poisoning. A single bullet to the
back of her head. Small hole, no exit wound, probably a .22, but there's no
brass on the floor.'

'So
ballistics will be next to impossible,' Terry said.

Jess
shrugged. 'You know the odds as well as I do. A small calibre like a .22 tends
to just ping around your skull making a mess of everything in there, including
itself. The slug is usually hard to trace.'

'Any
sign of sexual assault?' I said.

'None.
It looks like the killer came to kill. He must have waited till she got out of
the car, got behind her, and put a bullet in her brain.'

'He?'
I said.

'Sorry.
That's my pronoun of choice for all assholes who commit murder. But it could
easily have been a she. Women aren't traditionally shooters, but the wound
indicates a small, ladylike gun.'

'What
about her hair?' I said.

'Bravo,'
Jessica said. 'A man who actually can tell when a woman gets her hair cut. If I
wanted Dan to notice I'd have to come home looking like Sinead O'Connor. Someone
chopped off a big hank of her hair. Unless she had a really bad hair day at the
beauty salon, my guess is whoever killed her decided to take home a souvenir.'

'So
what do we have here?' I said. 'A vendetta?'

'I'm
not a profiler,' she said. 'I just sift through the physical evidence and try
to find something that can help. But this doesn't look like a robbery, a crime
of opportunity, or a random shooting.'

'Time
of death?'

'Around
midnight - give or take.'

'Give
or take how much?' I said. 'Her husband has an alibi for part of last night,
but not for all of it.'

'She
probably was shot between eleven last night and one o'clock this morning. Does
that help?'

'It
helps us,' I said. 'It won't help him. You got anything else?'

'Nothing
yet,' she said. 'The garage is covered with prints. We'll be dusting for a
week. And we're going over the grounds looking for footprints, fibres, or any
sign of someone who might have laid in wait outside, then followed her in when
she opened the garage door.'

'Excuse
me again, Detectives.' It was the same cop who let us know when the medical
liaison showed up. She was young, blonde, with how-can-I-help written all over
her face.

'Yes,
Officer,' I said.

'Julie
Horner, sir. I thought you'd want to know. There's a flower delivery.'

Terry
rolled his eyes. 'Is this your first homicide, Officer Horner?'

'Yes,
sir.'

'The
detectives are usually too busy looking for the killer to handle flower
deliveries,' he said. 'Maybe you can sign for them and either put them in the
house or reroute them to the funeral home.'

'These
don't look like condolence flowers, sir,' she said. 'They're roses, and they're
addressed to Mrs Drabyak.'

The
guy driving the flower van was tall and blonde, with a chiselled jaw, and a
pair of arms that looked like they lifted more than floral arrangements.

'Soap
star wannabe,' Terry said, as we walked toward him.

As
we got closer, I could see that the face didn't quite live up to the physique.
Thin lips, eyes set close together, sharp nose. Not a problem if he could do
Shakespeare or deliver posies.

'This
is so cool,' he said. 'With the yellow crime scene tape and everything, it
looks like you're shooting a movie, except there's no cameras.'

'We
can't afford cameras,' Terry said. 'We spent all our money on yellow tape.
Let's see your ID.'

'John
G. Evans,' he said, not reaching for his wallet.

'ID,'
Terry repeated.

'John
G. Evans,' he said, flashing a mouthful of expensive teeth. 'I'm just
delivering flowers. Is my name going to be in the police report or something?'

'If
you don't show me your ID,' Terry said, 'your ass is going to be in a squad car
or something.'

He
dug into his back pocket, removed his license from his wallet, and handed it to
Terry.

'Well,
it's got your picture, John G.,' Terry said. 'But the state of California seems
to think your name is Evan Goldfried.'

'I'm
an actor. John G. Evans is my...'

'I'm
a detective. Way ahead of you,' Terry said. 'Who sent the flowers?'

He
shrugged. 'There's probably a card in the box.'

I
opened it. There were two dozen long-stemmed red roses and a single white card.
Dear Jo, Thank you for last
night. Everything was perfect, except me. You were right. I did have about six
drinks too many. Sorry if I put a damper on an otherwise fantastic evening.
Roger.

The
O in Roger's name had a smiley face drawn in it. I showed the card to Terry.
'Who's Roger?' he asked.

'He
must be the dude who sent the flowers,' John G. said.

'Where
do we find him? Do you have any paperwork with his name and address?'

'I'm
just the delivery guy. Call Peg at the shop,' he said, pointing to the phone
number on the side of the van.

I
dialled. The shop was Freem's Flowers. The owner, Peg Freem, was efficient,
cooperative, and not the slightest bit curious about why I was trying to track
down Roger.