The Beast A DeckerLazarus Novel (38 page)

“It would help if we could find her. Help you out as well.”

“All I know is that she’s from Missoula and talked about going back home.”

“What about Georgie Harris or Georgina Harris?” Oliver asked. “Any idea where she is?”

Havert sat back and regarded them with confusion. Marge’s brain continued firing out all possibilities. He insisted he wasn’t there when Penny was murdered. But Randi was, and she had called him in a panic.

If Randi shot Penny and no one else was involved, then Havert would have told her to leave the apartment immediately. Then they’d both pack up and skip town. He certainly wouldn’t have gone to the apartment, placing himself at a murder scene, unless there was a good reason.

Like cleaning up a mess that could come back to haunt him.

Two girls went in carrying duffel bags. But Bruce mentioned only Randi coming out.

Marge whispered, “Bruce, we never saw Georgie leave the apartment. But we did see you lugging those duffel bags. And we could tell that it held more than just clothing by the way you were dragging it.”

Silence. As four pairs of eyes went to Havert’s face, the dealer looked down. Spots of water dripped down his cheeks. Marge touched his hand. He looked up, dazed but not confused.

“It’s time to get it all out. Tell us how Georgina died.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

S
ITTING ON HER
white and blue French Regency sofa, Sabrina Talbot had gone through an entire tissue box in record time. “I don’t know what happened!” she sobbed. “I was never part of what he did there!”

Her wailing was directed to Will Barnes from Santa Barbara PD. He was tall and large, and his once dark hair was giving way to silver. His relationship with Marge had been years in the making, and lately the two of them had been talking about rings. Since both of them were around the half-century mark, it wasn’t a surprise that neither was in a hurry.

Hobart Penny’s murder was in Decker’s jurisdiction, but his potential murder victims were not. However, since Decker had a package of frozen fingers, he had more than just a passing interest in what had gone on behind the iron gates.

Leo Delacroix, Sabrina’s hired henchman, was getting angry. “Is this really necessary?”

Will Barnes stared at him with incredulous eyes. Penny’s private room had glowed like a radioactive igloo, as did the locked
closet, where Penny had stored a variety of restraining devices. He and Decker figured that Penny had used the closet to stash his dead women, probably removing the fingers postmortem. But maybe not.

Barnes tried out his most patient voice. “I’m sorry to upset you but I have to ask questions. If we could get through them without so much emotion, it would go faster.”

“How could I not . . . be emotional . . . ?” Sabrina’s voice was in fits and starts. “I was . . .
married
to this man!” More sobs. “What does this say about . . .
me
?”

Decker stepped in. “Sabrina . . .” How could he say it without worsening the situation? “I’m going to be honest with you because I think you can handle it. This is the deal. Okay?”

She nodded and wiped her eyes.

“There is no doubt that something bad happened here.”

“I didn’t know
anything
about it!”

“I believe you. Just listen, okay?” Decker cleared his throat. “We found frozen body parts in Hobart Penny’s apartment. If you can remember anything about the girls he had brought home—where they were from for instance—that might give us a start on where to look. I realize this was twenty-five to thirty-five years ago, but we have to begin somewhere.”

“I’m going to be sick!” To prove the point, she got up and ran to the bathroom.

Decker rubbed his forehead. To Barnes, he said, “I know blood degrades, but I’m sure we can get some DNA and probably more than one profile.”

“Agreed. Does she have any idea how many girls he picked up?”

“No. But even if it was once every six months . . . over ten years that could be a lot of girls.”

“And she doesn’t know where he picked them up from?”

“All she told me was that they didn’t look like professionals . . . more like drunken party girls. Any idea about the club situation twenty-five to thirty years ago?”

“I just came here five years ago. They say this town caters to the
newly wed and the newly dead, and it’s been that way for a long time.”

“There must be some clubs.”

“Yeah, we have our nightlife. Lots of bars but mostly in restaurants. We have some dance clubs—a couple of salsa clubs, one hip-hop, a few C and W places in the Pass. We have singles bars, gay bars . . . probably anything you want. But it’s scaled down to a city this size.”

“Penny had been in his fifties when he lived here. If he went to hip places, then he’d probably stand out as an older guy.”

“You throw around cash, you get the ladies.” Barnes thought a moment. “What was popular in music thirty years ago? Was that psychedelic or disco or . . .”

“Disco would be more late 1970s.” Decker pulled out a tablet that he often used to photograph crime scenes. “Okay. In 1985, Tina Turner won a Grammy for Record of the Year.”

“She’s pop.”

“Yeah . . . oh, wow.
Thriller
came out in 1982.” Decker looked up. “Wasn’t that kind of a lead-in to the Goth movement?”

“That would seem about right.”

“Here we go . . . 1980s in Canada . . . start of the Goth movement. . . .
Pornography
by the Cure. So you got
Thriller
and the Goth movement and probably an increase in satanic rituals. That would fit right in for a guy like Penny. He liked dressing up in costumes. He was into sadomasochism.” Decker looked up. “Any idea about the Goth scene here?”

“No.”

Decker ruminated on his ideas. “You know if Penny was a regular at any club, he’d run out of girls pretty quickly. What the guy needed was a continual source of party girls. Aren’t you about ten miles away from UCSB?”

“Yes, we are.” Barnes gave him a thumbs-up. “A fresh stock of girls every single year—young and impressionable and away from Mommy and Daddy for the first time.”

“Like you said, throw around enough cash and add drugs to the mix and a certain percentage could be talked into anything.”

“Okay,” Barnes said. “This is what I’ll do. After I’m done with Ms. Talbot, I’ll check the cold cases on file with the police. If nothing comes up, I’ll find a contact at the university.”

“Would the university involve Santa Barbara PD in Missing Person cases?”

“If the person wasn’t found after a day or two, I’m sure UCSB police would make contact with all the local police stations. A missing girl would be well publicized.”

Decker said, “Would you mind if I stuck around for a bit . . . nosed into your business?”

“It’s both of our business.” Barnes gave him a pat on the back. “I have the jurisdiction, but you have the body parts.”

Havert wasn’t as
easy as they had hoped. With the mention of Georgie Harris’s death, he began to idle. He took another cup of coffee, he asked for another glass of water, and then he asked to get dressed again. This time they let him put on clothes. The detectives strategized, and because it was murder, they elected to bring Havert down to the station house.

The dealer agreed to go with them, looking refreshed in a bowling shirt, jeans, and sandals. He had combed his black hair in a modern take on an Elvis ducktail. Four cops were too much for one interview room, so Crone and Silver decided to view the proceedings from the other side of the camera. It was about four in the afternoon.

The first hour consisted of building up rapport that Marge and Oliver had lost in travel from the house to the station house. But eventually they got him to the same mental space, edging him to move forward. Baby steps, but he had to start somewhere.

“You just don’t understand what they were dealing with,” he said.

Marge had the sympathetic ear. “I’m sure I don’t. So tell me.”

“The man was . . .” A hand through the hair. Lots of fidgeting. “I told Randi to be careful, that it was getting out of control. But the
money . . . it’s always about the money, right?” His eyes darted from Oliver to Marge, trying to get confirmation. “I mean he tossed around hundreds like toilet paper. Especially when it was both of them.”

Marge took out a notebook. “Georgina Harris and Randi Miller together?”

“Yeah, the two of them could pull a couple of grand a session. Even with my cut, we all walked away happy.”

Oliver kept the conversation going. “How long was a typical session?”

“Under an hour most of the time. A lot of money for a short period of time.”

“How many times did he hire both girls?”

“Dozens.”

Marge leaned in. “Bruce, I need your input. What went wrong this time?”

“Oh God, do you have all night?”

“As long as you want,” Marge said. “Just take your time.”

He checked his watch. “I’m gonna have to leave for work, you know.”

Silence.

“I didn’t have anything to do with his murder. I swear. He was crazy! You know about the tiger.”

“Yes.”

“He also had a whole bunch of other disgusting things in his possession: poisonous snakes and bugs and lizards.”

“We found that out as well.”

“He used to cart out the snakes just to scare the girls. He would offer them a hundred dollars per minute if they’d hold the snake. At first they were freaked, and he got off on that. But then Randi figured out pretty quickly when the snake had been recently fed and wasn’t interested in biting. Most of the time, it just slept in her arms. She acted scared cause it turned him on. I thought that she was crazy. I mean, you can’t predict what a snake is going to do, right?”

“Right,” Oliver said. “Did the murder have anything to do with the snake or the tiger or . . .”

“I told you I wasn’t there when it happened.”

Marge said, “But you were there
after
it happened.”

“Randi was hysterical. She didn’t know what to do, and the tiger was starting to wake up.”

“So the tiger was there when you arrived at the apartment?”

“Yeah, that was the problem. It began to move, and Randi was panicked. She couldn’t just leave Georgie there . . . I mean, to the tiger, she would have been fresh
meat
.” Havert made a face. “It’s sickening to think about it.”

“So when Randi called you, Georgina was already dead?”

“Of course she was already
dead.
Randi swore up and down that it was self-defense.”

“Okay . . .” Marge looked up from her notebook. “Why don’t you start with Randi’s phone call to you? What did she tell you?”

“That Penny was dead and now the tiger was moving. What should she do?”

Oliver said, “What’d you tell her?”

“I told her to get the hell out. But then she told me about Georgie being dead. Should she leave her or what . . . God, I felt sick to my stomach!”

Marge nodded. “So what did you say to her after she told you Georgie was dead?”

“Told her I’d be down in ten minutes.”

Oliver said, “Did she tell you any details over the phone?”

Havert scratched his ear. “Just that the old man pulled out a gun.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have a clue.” Havert paused. “I still don’t know why he did it. Randi said that Georgie tried to get the gun away while Randi hit him. Then the gun went off and Georgie was dead and then he was dead.”

“Bruce, we have to break this down step by step, okay?” Marge said. “First Penny pointed the gun at the girls?”

“Right.”

“Then what happened?”

“Uh . . . Randi told me that Georgie tried to get the gun away from him.”

“So Georgie tries to get the gun. Then what happened?”

“There was a struggle. The gun went off and killed Georgie.”

“So after Georgie was killed, what did Randi do?”

“She made a grab for the gun. Then it went off and killed the old man. It was self-defense.”

Oliver and Marge exchanged glances. He said, “Randi shot the old man while the two of them were fighting over the gun?”

“Exactly.”

“You mentioned something about Randi hitting the old man? What was that all about?”

“I think she was trying to get him off Georgie. I really don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

“What did she hit the old man with?”

“Her fists, I think.”

Oliver was dubious. He had seen the blunt force trauma inflicted on the old man’s head. That wasn’t done with a fist, even if the skull had been brittle. “I’m just a little . . . uneasy about something, Bruce. Both Georgie and Randi were street savvy and in their thirties. Penny was an old man. If I were betting on a fight, I would bet on the girls.”

“The old guy was really strong!” Havert said. “At least, that’s what Randi told me.”

“So if he was really strong, when he pulled out the gun, why didn’t the girls just run away? Surely they could outrun him.”

“I guess they froze.”

“They didn’t freeze. You said they jumped him.”

Havert was flustered. “I don’t know. I told you I wasn’t there.”

Marge stepped in. “I’m confused, Bruce. You said something about Randi bashing the old guy over the head.”

“I said Randi hit him, not bashed him over the head.”

“Where did she hit him?” Oliver asked.

“She didn’t tell me.”

Marge said, “But you did see the body after everything happened.”

“Yeah, for about a second. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.”

Marge nodded to keep him thinking she was on his side. “Could you be a
little
more specific about what the body looked like? It could be important later on.”

“He looked
dead,
Sergeant. How much longer is this gonna take?”

“A while, Bruce. Unfortunately, we have a lot of questions,” Marge said. “Where was the old guy shot?”

“In the head.” He shuddered.

“Penny was shot in the head?”

“I think so. His head was a bloody mess. Can we move on?”

Marge said, “You know what would really help us out? The murder weapon.”