Looks to Die For (3 page)

Inside the station house, everything seemed surprisingly quiet. A sleepy-eyed cop at the front desk munching take-out from Taco Bell stared at me when I walked in, and when I told her I was looking for my husband, Dr. Dan Fields, she waved toward some chairs at a far wall.

“Better siddown,” she said, sounding like a transplant from Brooklyn.

“Can I join him, please?”

“Nope. Siddown.”

“He is here, correct? I’m in the right place?”

She shrugged. “I guess so.”

“I told the policemen who took him that I’d be following in my car,” I said, persisting. “I’m sure they’re expecting me.”

“Yeah, they set an extra place,” she said snidely. She swung her beefy jowls around until she was barely a taco’s length from my face. “Siddown, lady. Or leave. I don’t care which.”

I sat. Antsy, I crossed and uncrossed my legs. My shoes stuck to the floor and made an odd sucking noise as I tried to pull them up. There weren’t any magazines around, and the only newspaper was four days old. I ran my fingers through my hair and contemplated the gouges in the wooden floor, trying not to think about what could be making it so sticky. I stared at the policewoman, wondering how much tighter her LAPD uniform would be after that taco. She caught my eye and sat back heavily in her chair, chewing thoughtfully on the taco and gazing at my Manolos. I got up and approached the desk.

“Listen, this is all a misunderstanding,” I said, trying to sound calm and friendly. “Please, please tell me where my husband is.”

She shrugged without putting down the taco. “Don’t really know.”

“Your detectives have the wrong person. He doesn’t know anything about what they’re investigating.”

“Heard that one before.” She laughed through her nose and took another big bite.

“No, really.” I took a deep breath, trying to win her over. Maybe if we became friends, the taco lady could send Dan home. “My husband is Dr. Dan Fields. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

“Nope.”

“He’s a plastic surgeon. He’s in the newspapers a lot.” Impress her, but still sound modest. “Actually, he’s pretty well known.”

“Right. Everybody in L.A.’s so important. I’ll add him to my list. Let me guess — your husband gives second-rate actresses first-rate boobs.”

“Not at all,” I said, slightly offended. Then, trying to get back on her good side, I added, “Actually, he spends most of his time doing reconstructive surgery on people who’ve been seriously hurt.”

“Yeah? So he’s a good guy?” She looked up, vaguely interested.

I nodded eagerly. “A very good guy. He does facial reconstructions and skin grafts on burn victims. Last week he reattached a teenager’s finger after a car accident, and the boy’s going to be able to play hockey again — or maybe lacrosse. Whichever he did before, I can’t remember,” I said, talking faster and faster. “Oh, and cleft palates. Did I tell you about cleft palates? Two years ago Dan went to Chile and started a free clinic and taught all the doctors there how to do the surgery. He’s so good, really good.”

I paused in the midst of my rant — running out of breath and coming to my senses at almost the same time. If the cop wanted Dan’s résumé, she could click onto his website. But probably all she wanted was to finish her shift and go home to her own husband — whose fingers were all attached, and who wasn’t in jail tonight.

I kicked off my shoes and sunk about four inches. The cold tile floor of the police station stung my bare feet. “Look,” I said, “my feet hurt. I have blisters. My husband’s back there somewhere when he shouldn’t be. My kids are home alone. I want all this to be over. What do you think I should do?”

“Go home, Mrs. Fields.”

For a moment, I wondered how the taco lady had managed to say that without moving her lips from her synchronous chewing. Then I realized that the voice was from the other side of the room, and I got into my shoes again and spun around to see Detective Reese standing there. From across the room, he looked a little like Jimmy Smits in his
NYPD Blue
days, but there was a hardness around his eyes that no actor could simulate.

“I’m not going home without my husband,” I said firmly.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to.” The detective gave me a lazy, contemptuous smile. “He’s been arrested, ma’am. Not going anywhere until his arraignment.”

“Which is when?”

“Within forty-eight hours, usually.”

“Forty-eight
hours
? That’s two
days.
” I was seething, trying not to scream. “You have no right to do that.”

“Oh no? Tell it to the judge, as the saying goes. But just to calm you down, a good lawyer can probably get the case heard in the morning.”

“Can’t we get it heard right now?” I asked, picturing the dank cell where Dan was probably cowering right this minute.

“I don’t think we could find a judge who’d consider this an emergency worth getting up for.”

“So why did you arrest him at midnight? He told you he’d try to help you out in the morning. He doesn’t know anything about this case. This woman. Whoever she is.”

Again, the contemptuous smile. “We knew where we could find him at night. Now as I said, Mrs. Fields, you’d better leave. Your husband is being photographed and fingerprinted and we’re running a check on his criminal record.”

“He doesn’t have a criminal record,” I said. “You can’t count the parking ticket from last Sunday because it was my fault. Dan always puts in plenty of quarters. He’s the most honest man you’ve ever met.”

Reese cleared his throat. “Then he’ll have a clean rap sheet.” He turned and began strolling away, but his studied casualness was interrupted by a door flying open and a commotion erupting in his face as two cops dragged in a grotesquely bloodied creature, barely recognizable as human. Howling like an animal, he flailed his emaciated arms and legs, then collapsed in a heap, quite literally at Reese’s feet. Reese tried to step back, but two blood-caked hands grabbed at his ankles.

“Let go!” Reese hollered, but the man’s own wailing drowned out the words, and suddenly the other two cops descended on him with nightsticks, beating him away from Reese. Blood spurted onto the floor and Reese leaped away as the other cops pinned their prey. The howls changed in intensity from plaintive to pained, and the dissipated mess on the floor writhed like a half-dissected frog pinned to the table for a seventh-grade biology class.

“Get him to the back,” Reese yelled, and with stunning viciousness, the cops yanked their victim out the opposite door, in the very direction I’d been staring since I arrived.

“No!” I shrieked, running after them. “My husband’s back there!”

The door slammed with a convincing thud, locking in the bloodied, the victimized, and the criminal. I crashed against the handle with wild fury, but a lock had snapped into place, and nothing budged. I kicked at the door with the piercing high heel of my left mule, pounding until something seemed to give, but it was the heel, which I felt break away from the sole, dangling like a half-amputated limb.

Reese. Maybe he had a human side. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I twisted around to face him. I would have thrown myself at his feet if I thought it would help — but I’d just seen how much good that did. “Officer, I need you to help me. Whatever you can do, just get my husband out of there. Please, I beg you.” My terrified plea ricocheted around the squad room with such high-pitched anguish that Reese actually stopped in his tracks and turned slowly to look at me. He blinked a few times, as if trying to figure out who I could be.

“I can’t release your husband,” he said finally. “He’s in jail. A very serious crime, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay! Please don’t lock him up all night!” Maybe the room turned humans into wild animals, because my bellows suddenly sounded identical to the cries of the creature who had just been dragged away. Reese didn’t bother answering me this time; he just disappeared out the door where he had first come. Despite my broken shoe, I charged after him, but the taco cop stood up with more speed than I would have thought possible and planted herself in front of me.

“Sorry, lady. Nobody leaves this area.”

“I’ve got to help my husband,” I said, my voice suddenly shaking.

“Ya not gonna help him here.” An edge of sympathy had crept in under her Brooklyn accent. “Look, just get home. Come back first thing in the morning.”

“Do you think Dan’s in a cell with…” I gestured vaguely, indicating the wild man who had just come in.

“Nah. That was probably a drug charge. Your husband’s in on murder. Much bigger deal. Probably in seclusion.”

My shoe chose that moment to give up completely, the torn heel collapsing and my ankle twisting as I sunk to the floor. My husband was more dangerous than a bloody, drug-crazed maniac. I got up and without another word half crawled, half stumbled to my car.

Driving home, I wanted to think out the situation properly, preparing for constructive action, but instead I kept hearing a mocking voice scream in my head,
Dan’s in jail! Dan’s in jail! Dan’s in jail!
like some endlessly repeated child’s tape from the Brothers Grimm. My only images of jail came from TV shows and bad DVDs: I pictured a hostile cell mate, a smelly toilet, and a shaky, lice-infested cot. I tried not to think about the worst — Dan the doctor being beaten up by some nothing-left-to-lose killer, who’d turn his face into a bloody pulp and force needles into his arm.

The highway was empty and I revved the motor, driving eighty most of the way home. Forget the treadmill — my personal best tonight was going to be set in the car. I half hoped I’d get stopped so I could tell my story to some other cop, but nobody came near me. Maybe all the cops in L.A. were busy arresting innocent people tonight.

Back inside the house, I peeked in on Jimmy, but his bed was empty. I dashed down the hall to Ashley’s room — where my daughter was sound asleep, with Jimmy curled at the foot of her bed like some loyal golden retriever. I carried him gently back, grateful that he didn’t wake up. Making a final stop in Grant’s room, I found my oldest son also asleep, his long hair flung across the pillow, a small silver earring glinting in the moonlight that crept in from the edges of the shade. He looked like a Hollywood surfer boy, but under the golden tan was a smart student who had a physics midterm tomorrow. I somehow had to get him off to school in the morning without prattling on hysterically about the police. No use upsetting him before his test. With college applications coming, he needed good grades, and nothing mattered more. I took a deep breath. Nothing mattered more? If only. Whether Grant ended up at Stanford or Swarthmore suddenly didn’t seem as serious as Dan’s ending up at Sing Sing.

Heading back to my own bedroom, I decided I’d try Jack again at 6:30
A.M
. or so. He should be answering by then — Los Angeles is an early-morning town. I lay down on the bed, trying to muster the energy to undress and wash my face, but instead I just closed my eyes.

And then opened them again.

Who cared about the time? With my husband stuck in a cell, I couldn’t worry about waking his lawyer. I fumbled in my closet for a pair of no-blister Hogans to replace the broken-heeled mules, then crept quietly down the stairs and back to my Lexus.

Jack lived in Beverly Hills, just north of Sunset on elegant Roxbury Drive, and at this hour, zipping along at a conservative seventy miles per hour, I was there in ten minutes. A thick hedge of trees blocked the neo-Colonial mansion from the quiet street, but Jack, less pretentious than his neighbors, had no gate. I pulled into the driveway, marched up to the front door, and rang the bell.

Nothing. Could they be away? No, his son attended the same private school as Grant, and no self-respecting family with Ivy League aspirations would leave town in March, during midterms of junior year. I rang again. And again. From where I stood on the front porch, I saw the faint glow of a light going on in a distant window, and then a woman’s voice over the intercom — at least theirs worked — saying uncertainly, “Who’s there?”

“It’s Lacy Fields. I need Jack. There’s an emergency.”

“Lacy?” The voice — Jack’s wife, Gina — seemed to perk up. “Hang on, I’ll wake him up.” The intercom went dead long enough for me to wonder if he was a sound sleeper or in a different bed, but then the front door was opening and Jack was there, tying on a thick terry robe.

“Geez, Lacy, what’s going on? Are you all right?”

Jack put his sturdy arm around me, and I felt myself trembling, ready to cry. But I held it together, sensing that if I collapsed now, I’d never get up again.

“I’m okay,” I said. “But Dan’s in jail.”

“What?” His voice ripped through the quiet night, and I envisioned neighbors bounding up from their beds, thinking they’d heard a shot. Jack recovered quickly enough to grab my arm and pull me over the threshold, closing the heavy door behind us with a thud. In the dim light of the foyer, he looked at me uncertainly.

“I want to hear this. Come on in. Do you need a drink? Should I have Gina put on some coffee?”

“Just water,” I said. Jack looked dazed, and since he was now dealing with a woman who had shown up unannounced at his doorstep at three in the morning, I couldn’t really blame him. We walked down a hall, past the sleekly modern dining room, and then Jack flipped on an overhead light in the kitchen. Gina had been calling me for months to get my professional opinion as a decorator on her room renovation. She had a good eye herself, and now that the kitchen was finished, I could practically picture Martha Stewart coming in to whip up some cream puffs. Good manners demanded I rave about the stainless steel stove and free-form granite counters, but in my current state, I simply wasn’t capable of making kind comments about custom cabinetry.

Jack opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of lemon Poland Spring. “What do you mean Dan’s in jail?” he asked, saving me from any small talk.

I took a deep breath. “Short version or long?”

“Short.”

“Two cops showed up at midnight, crashed through the house to find Dan, and then put handcuffs on him. One of them drew a gun and pointed it right at him.” I started shaking, my voice quavering at the memory. I sniffled a couple of times and put my fingers over my lips to stop the trembling. “They took him down to a squad car and to the precinct house downtown, where they locked him up. They won’t let me see him.”