The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin (13 page)

B
ack in the Focus. I dialed up Andrea's mom, Eve Cogburn. She answered and said I could come by whenever. She didn't say it in a cheery way: “Sure, come on by whenever!” Nah, the opposite, in fact. Flat. Emotionless. Like, sure, come by whenever, I don't really care. I said I'd be there in twenty.

Well, I was on my way to talk to another parent about a child who had died. Not my favorite thing to do. Think I'd rather get a prostate exam while waiting in line at the DMV. Added to that, this was yet another trail that might not lead anyplace special.

But, I said to myself, the case is cold, Darvelle. Edges. Examine the edges.

Like Jackie Fuller had said, Eve Cogburn lived “not
too far” from Hancock Park. And like Jackie Fuller had implied, and like I told you, it was a very different neighborhood. South of Pico, between La Brea and Highland. I was close to Eve's now, taking in the neighborhood. There was a bunch of run-down apartments stacked too close to one another, some of them right next to a fast-food joint, a gas station, a dry cleaner. Look, it wasn't as bad as some neighborhoods in L.A. We're not talking rampant crime and daily drive-bys. It was just dreary. Lifeless. Depressing. Not a lot of trees, lots of wires in the sky, a sad-eyed dog looking at you from some sad steps leading up to a sad building. I got to Eve's place, parked out front, took the stairs up to the second floor of her beige, beaten-down eightplex, and knocked.

Eve Cogburn answered the door in an unusual fashion. She just opened it, then walked back to her chair. She didn't say hello. She didn't say anything. I guessed I was supposed to walk in. So I did.

I sat down in a chair across from Eve Cogburn and took in the apartment. It was reasonably pulled together, not messy, a couch, some chairs, an antique-looking table or two, a TV. But everything felt beaten down, dead, just like the outside. Yeah, I mean, the old beige carpet, the low popcorn ceiling, the forlorn, forgotten kitchen.

Eve looked at me and lit a cigarette, a Winston, out of a red and white pack.

“Thanks for talking to me,” I said.

She took a drag and nodded.

I had already told her on the phone what I was up to, looking into the murder of Keaton Fuller, so I just got right to it.

“So your daughter, Andrea, dated Keaton?”

Eve nodded again.

“I don't know much about their relationship, obviously. But I get the impression it was off and on. More casual. Is that right? What was the situation?”

Eve looked straight at me and said, “It wasn't casual.”

Sometimes when people lose a loved one, or lose hope, they talk in a very direct fashion. In its own way, it's refreshing.

“Okay. What do you mean?”

“I mean they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Now, I don't know if Jackie Fuller remembers it that way. She never liked that they were dating in the first place. But they dated for a couple of years seriously and then, to use your words, off and on after that. But even that was serious too. Their hearts were involved.”

She blew out some cigarette smoke and looked right at me. Life had done a number on this woman. Her graying brown hair was thinning and dry. Her face showed the damage of smoke and alcohol. She wasn't obese, but she had a stomach. And the legs that came out of her green housedress were white and bloodless. But she was pretty. You could see a pretty face somewhere in there, somewhere back in time. And she had an intelligence about her. And her eyes. Her eyes held a similar feeling to Jackie Fuller's, yet different. They held the tragedy but not the shame. Anger, helplessness, but not shame.

She said, “I guess there's no way to prove to you that my daughter and Keaton were serious because she's dead. And so is he.”

I nodded and said, “How did they meet?”

“How far is Hancock Park from here? Two miles? And when you look like Andrea did, the boys from the nice families find you.”

She got up, walked into the back bedroom, and came back holding a picture. She handed it to me.

Andrea Cogburn. Blond, with big, slightly wide-set, bluish-green eyes. Stunning. A true beauty.

“Beautiful,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“And how long did they date? And when did they stop dating?”

“They dated in high school, even though they were at different schools. They dated in college some—he was at USC, she was at Santa Monica College. I don't know when they broke up. Keaton was always breaking up with her. But a few years after college, it finally ended for good.”

I really didn't want to ask Eve Cogburn to explain to me in detail the exact circumstances of her daughter's death. I could probably go to a friend of mine at the morgue and find that out. So I asked Eve Cogburn another question, one that I already knew the answer to, that ended up giving me the answer I wanted: “Your daughter and Keaton, were they into drugs?”

“How much do you know about my daughter's death?”

“Not a lot.”

“Andrea overdosed.” Eve looked at me with those damaged, but direct, eyes. “That's how she died. Was coming down from coke. Took some sleeping pills. Died. But, to answer your question. Yes, she and Keaton did drugs to
gether. That's probably when it all started. In high school with Keaton.”

“Did he get her into drugs?”

Eve shrugged. “Maybe. He had the money to buy them. But most of the time people do what they are going to do. He didn't force the coke up her nose. Mr. Darvelle, have you ever done coke, smoked pot?”

I didn't have it in me to correct her and tell her to call me John. I just said, “Yeah. Both.”

“Well, did anyone make you do it?”

“No.”

She took a drag off her cigarette and gave me a look that said: then you see my point.

“Did you like Keaton, Eve? Like that he was involved with your daughter?”

She answered, again, by asking me a question. “How much do you know about Keaton?”

“Enough to know that most people didn't like him much.”

“Well, you can add me to the list. He was an entitled, rude used-car salesman with a big bank account who loved my daughter but was ashamed to admit it when he was on the other side of Pico.”

“You have any thoughts on who might have killed him?”

Another shrug, another question. “Who knows what Keaton Fuller got himself into? All I can tell you is, when I heard he was killed it didn't surprise me.”

I thanked Eve Cogburn for her time, got up, and headed for the door. Eve stayed in her chair, her back to me, as I walked out and shut it.

I
still wanted more specific information on Andrea Cogburn's death, so I called my friend at the morgue, guy named Elliot Watt.

“Elliot, Darvelle.”

“Yes.”

“Elliot, the way you just said ‘yes' didn't sound like you were saying: ‘Yes? This
is
Elliot, what do you want?' It sounded like you were saying: ‘Yes.' Like, ‘yes' as a definitive answer to a question. Like, as if I had asked: ‘Is the sky blue?' And you had said: ‘Yes.' But I haven't asked you a question yet. And you still said ‘yes' that way. Do you see what I'm saying?”

“Yes, Detective Darvelle, I do see what you are say
ing. And yes, you are correct in your hearing of how I said ‘yes.' See, I know you are going to ask me for something, to come down and look at something, and I know that if I say no, you'll just pester me until I say yes. So I just decided to go ahead and say yes to the question you haven't even asked me yet—will I pull something for you—even though I'm not really in the mood right now to do it. Do
you
see what
I'm
saying?”

“Yes. And great,” I said. “I'm on my way to the morgue now.”

“You're lucky, it's a reasonably slow day. For Los Angeles. If we were in fucking Boise, everyone would be going apeshit. But we're not in Boise, so it's a reasonably slow day.”

“Please pull the file for a woman named Andrea Cogburn. White. Died between the ages of, I'd say, twenty-six and twenty-nine. Probably six, seven, eight years ago. Drug overdose. Is that enough info?”

I could tell that Elliot was writing everything down. He said, “Yeah, that's enough.” And then: “I'm too good to you, Darvelle. I really am.”

“I'll bring you a present. See you soon.”

It really helps to have
a friend at the morgue. Getting autopsy reports, coroner's reports, Elliot Watt's own personal opinions on stuff—it all goes a long way. Sometimes breaks open a case. I have to tell you, Elliot Watt is a bit of a strange cat. That being said, he's the perfect guy to work in a morgue. He's a bit of a loner. He has an analytical mind. He's innately drawn to the macabre. And he
looks
the part. He literally looks like he belongs there. He's got
black hair, alabaster skin, big blue bug eyes, a big mouth with too many teeth. Almost like he himself is dead and has been embalmed. You see him walking around in the darkness of the morgue, sort of shuffling along. A bit like a zombie in a movie.

And I think that's a good thing. There are certain jobs where you want the guy holding them to look and act the part. The guy at the morgue is one of them. A lawyer,
your
lawyer, is another one. You want your lawyer to look and act a certain way, because it's your self-interest he or she is usually protecting. But a doctor, that's the top example. A doctor in charge of
your
health. In charge of whether you're going to, you know, die. True story: One time I went to the doctor, new doctor, just for a checkup, and there was music playing in the waiting room. But it wasn't terrible adult contemporary, or classical music, like it's supposed to be. It was the Clash. “Lost in the Supermarket.” Great song. Amazing song. One of the best songs ever. But the wrong song for the doctor's office. You know? I mean, at that point I didn't want to go to that doctor anymore. I wanted to party with him. I mean, I definitely wanted to party with him. But I didn't want to have him as my doctor anymore.

I made a stop to buy Elliot a little something. Then I jetted downtown to North Mission Road to visit the L.A. County morgue.

I walked in. There was
Elliot sitting at his neat desk, ready for me, file in front of him—Andrea Cogburn's file, I assumed.

“Here's her file,” he said, sliding it over to me.

“Thank you, sir. I got you a couple of presents. Some magazines. A little reading for your downtime.”

I presented each one to Elliot, pulling them out one at a time from a brown bag. “The new
Popular Mechanics
, because I know you like it. I have no idea why, but I know you do.”

“Thank you,” he said as he placed it on his desk. “I have not read this one yet.”

I pulled out the next magazine. “An
Over Forty
porn mag,” I said. “All the women inside are
mature
. Being the twisted bastard you are, I thought you might like this.”

“Well, I really don't read that kind of thing, but okay,” he said as he slid it carefully into a drawer and then closed the drawer very gently and quietly.

I pulled out the next magazine. “And then I got you this too.
Cranes Today
magazine.” I handed it to him.

He looked at it and said, truly confused, “What the hell is this?”

“It's a copy of
Cranes Today
magazine,” I said.

“I don't get it.”

“It's a magazine all about cranes. The machines, not the birds.”

“Yeah, Darvelle, I can see that. There's a crane on the cover. I still don't get it.”

“Well, if you're going to be that guy who publicly reads
Popular Mechanics
, then why not take it all the way into true freakdom and read something like this. Just go sit in a park and be the guy who's on a totally different planet from the rest of us.”

“I don't understand you, Darvelle. I really don't. Is that an insult? A joke? What the eff? I mean, I'm helping you. I'm giving you material you otherwise couldn't get.”

“What the eff.” That's what he said.

“I think you might like it. Just read it.”

Elliot didn't have any chairs in front of his desk. He had two against the wall opposite his desk, a little coffee table as well, almost like a waiting room. I took a chair and looked through Andrea Cogburn's file. There was a picture of her in her bed, dead. She didn't look dead. She looked asleep. Sometimes when you see pictures of the dead, they look dead. I mean
dead
. Keaton Fuller looked dead. A giant hole in his chest and out his back. But Andrea Cogburn just looked asleep. She was in her nightgown, in her own bed.

I focused in on the details. Andrea died six years ago, at age twenty-nine, with alcohol, cocaine, Valium, and Ambien in her system. Cause of death: She stopped breathing. Just that simple. You stop breathing, you die. Cessation of breathing isn't the only fatal outcome of an overdose, though. Truth is, an overdose can mean lots of things. It can mean you had a heart attack. It can mean you had a brain aneurysm. Or, as in this case, it can mean your lungs stopped taking in air and pushing it out again.

I looked up at Elliot. He was engrossed in
Cranes Today
magazine.
Engrossed
.

“So,” I said. “Andrea Cogburn stopped breathing. What does that mean exactly, Elliot? In Andrea's case? What happened exactly? Why did she stop breathing?”

He lowered the
Cranes Today
magazine and peered
over it at me. He then dropped it on the desk and started talking.

“Basically, on the surface, it means that she was drunk and on coke and then took Valium and Ambien to come down. But she took too many and her throat relaxed too much and she stopped breathing and died. Now, essentially, that's how people with sleep apnea die when they die. Sleep apnea. You know it? It's pretty common.”

I nodded.

He continued, “When I say that's how people with sleep apnea die, I don't mean the drugs and alcohol part. I'm talking about the throat part. Their throats relax and close up, and they stop breathing. But people with sleep apnea usually don't die. Their brains send a signal to wake the fuck up, and they do. They gasp for breath, then go back to sleep, then do it again. All fucking night. But they don't die. Now, I'm not saying Andrea Cogburn had sleep apnea. Okay? I'm not saying that. But her throat relaxed and closed up
like
someone with sleep apnea. Then,
if
her brain sent the signal to wake up, and I don't know that it did, but
if
it did, she didn't hear it because she was on too many pills. And if her brain didn't send the signal, which is also possible because she was so wasted, then, well, her throat was closed up and she stopped breathing. Same result, obviously, with or without the signal.”

He took a deep breath and continued, “But you know what I think, in addition to all that?”

See? This is why I really come down here. Sure, it's great to see the file. But I can read the file back at my desk. What's really great is to hear, in person, the theories of an
expert, a guy who lives and breathes this shit, a proper Morgue Guy.

Elliot said, “I think she offed herself. Suicide. Very hard to prove. After all, what is suicide when you're talking about dying from too many drugs? You could say that everyone who ever died from taking too many drugs committed suicide, if we're talking about a somewhat loose interpretation of the word. But this time, I don't think the term has to be taken that loosely.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Girl that size, with what she put in her body in one night? All that Ambien and Valium? And apparently, according to the cops and her own mother, a longtime drug user who had to know what drugs do? That's somebody saying: I don't want to wake up.”

I looked at Elliot's big blue bug eyes and said, “Yeah.” And then I said, “Thanks, Elliot. Thanks for your help.”

He nodded and picked up
Cranes Today
. “You know how much a crane weighs? Thirty tons. Sixty thousand fucking pounds. I mean, think about how heavy that is. Jesus.”

“See, I told you you'd like it! I told you, Elliot!”

“Get out of here, Darv.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks again.”

I put Andrea's file back on Elliot's desk and headed out. As I was exiting, Elliot's office door swinging shut behind me, I looked over my shoulder through the door's window and could just make out Elliot's right hand going for the drawer with the
Over Forty
in it.