The Gumshoe Diaries (14 page)

“Don’t bother kid, he’s not listening
anyway,” explained her partner as he led her out the door. They
quickly waded past the eavesdroppers milling around the squad room
amid jeers and catcalls. Becca felt her cheeks flush with
embarrassment and jerked free of Iggie’s grasp and strolled out of
the room slowly trying to retain as much of her dignity as
possible. She considered socking Iggie once they were out of sight
but thought better of it. She still needed a positive evaluation
from him in order to clear her probationary period.

“What homicide was the LT talking about,”
Becca asked as they walked down the stairs to the parking lot?

“It came in over the wire while we were
taking flack from Celaya,” Iggie answered.

“Somebody got waylaid on campus at UCLA late
last night.”

“
What?
What is waylaid anyways,” asked
Becca, both puzzled and annoyed? She didn’t like the way Iggie
talked over her head using slang she was unfamiliar with. She
thought it was rude and suspected that he was enjoying himself way
too much at her expense. White people were like that, she didn’t
get it or appreciate it, but she accepted it, that’s life.

“Waylaid is just another term for mugged,
hard,” Iggie replied slamming his left fist into his right
palm.

“The poor bastard had his head stove in with
a ball peen hammer,” he added.

“I see, thanks. And do you have to curse so
much?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Get used to it
kid, you’re a homicide detective, start acting like one,” Iggie
scolded as he opened the door to the garage.

“
Asshole
,” Becca muttered
uncharacteristically under her breath as she followed him to their
unmarked cruiser. Maybe there was a bright side to this assignment,
it could happen she thought. Iggie tossed her the keys and jetted
in front of her to the passenger side.

“SHOTGUN,” he hollered as he climbed in and
buckled up.

Becca rolled her eyes and got in on the
driver’s side. As she turned to buckle her seat belt she caught her
partner stuffing a sizable piece of beef jerky into his mouth.
Without hesitating she started the engine, rolled down all four
windows and sped out of the lot.

“Good call kid,” Iggie chuckled through a
mouthful of jerky.

“
No shit Sherlock,”
Becca retorted,
surprised at how easily this cursing thing was coming to her. She
pinched her nose closed and peeled out unintentionally.

“Now you’re getting the hang of it girl,”
howled Iggie as Becca went slightly airborne onto 1st street,
scraping both bumpers front and back!

--

The Alexandria Hotel, Room 201, Monday, Feb
23, 2009…8am

--

I was in the middle of shaving when someone
started frantically banging on the door to my room. Pressing a
styptic pencil to your gob was not the most pleasant way to start
the day. I didn’t bother wiping the foam from my face and went out
of the bath to answer the door.

“Keep your shirt on,” I yelled while
unlatched the front door.

“COME ON WHITEY, open up, I’m in big
trouble,” pleaded Judy Looney, bursting into my room out of breath
as soon as the latch was disengaged.

“What’s with the panic doll?”

Judy rushed over to the window and pulled the
drapes, taking a quick second to peer up and down the street below.
She wasn’t just scared; she was terrified. It didn’t take much
detective training to figure that out. I watched her slowly back
away from the window and sit gingerly on the small sofa across from
my Murphy bed. She picked up a worn and torn throw pillow that I
got from Yankee Stadium a few years back and clutched it tightly to
her breast. I wasn’t sure what to say next but I knew what I had to
do first which was throw on some clothes on before the towel around
my waist dropped and she got something else to be frightened
about.

“Give me a minute to put on some clothes doll
and you can tell me all about it.”

“Okay, but hurry alright?”

“I’ll be back before you can count to a
hundred.”

“Lot of things can happen in a minute and a
half Whitey.”

“My ex used to say that to me all the time
but for a totally different reason,” I said trying to raise a smile
on my worried friend’s face. She smiled weakly and sunk deeper into
the sofa. I scurried off the bathroom and dressed.

“So what gives Judy? You’re acting like the
big bad wolf is out there getting ready to huff and puff,” I yelled
from the bath.

“Not funny Whitey, this is serious,” she
replied quickly.

“Sorry kitten, tell me what’s wrong,” I said,
apologizing as I re-entered the room and sat beside her. She clung
to me instantly and started sniveling; it was not like her at all
to be this vulnerable. I could feel her tears soaking through my
shirt sleeve, they were cold and unsettling. They felt like fear
and suddenly I was uncomfortable as well.

“It’s all my fault Whitey,” she said in a low
even tone.

“What’s your fault Judy?”

“He’s dead because of me, I just know it,”
she continued.

“Who’s dead? What are you talking about? From
the beginning Judy, start from the top.”

“Ernie’s dead.”

“Who?”

“Just a horny grad student I was using to get
access to a special piece of equipment I needed to analyze those
threads you left with me.”

“I thought you already finished your tests,
you gave me those results the other day, remember?”

“I know, but you were a pest and I was lazy,
and the bottom line is I didn’t do a very good job.”

“You mean those threads weren’t from one of
my uniforms?”

“No, they were definitely yours but you
weren’t the only one sweating in those clothes.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean a dead man’s DNA was on those threads
sweetie, a dead man near and dear to you.”

The light started to flicker in my brain as
things began to add up. She had to be talking about either Lu or
Jai; they were the only corpses I had any recent tie to, which
meant that now I could be placed at two murder scenes. Terrific,
this just kept getting better and better. Still, it didn’t explain
what Judy was so scared of. She was jumping at shadows on the
sidewalk. Something out there had her on edge and truth be told it
was beginning to vex me as well.

“I was followed there Saturday night, I’m
sure of it,” Judy said, breaking my train of thought for the
moment.

“I’ve had a queer feeling for days, you know?
Little things frighten me now. I can’t go to sleep without looking
under every bed and checking the locks on every door. I haven’t
slept in two days. I’ve even stopped closing the shower curtain
when I bathe for fear of a “Psycho” moment, it’s silly, I
know.”

“Do you feel that way now, here with me,” I
asked, guiltily trying to force the picture of Judy in the shower
out of my head?

“Yes.”

“I see, and the other night at the lab with
your horny little friend?”

“Yes, coming
and
going. Someone’s
stalking me Whitey and I’m scared.”

I ignored the fact that the object of my
affection was sitting so close beside me, and I resolved to
concentrate on comforting a friend, acting out of compassion and
not lust. If she were right than whoever was stalking her was
probably nearby. A woman’s instincts are never to be trifled with.
The prey usually senses when the hunter is near, she did, and now I
did as well. If I have learned anything in fifty some years on the
planet it’s that your first impression is usually the clearest. I
also subscribe to the notion that a strong offense is an effective
defense. It was time to hunt the hunter. We’ll give whoever he is a
taste of their own medicine. In the mean time I better call Ronnie
and tell her,
I mean him
, that this might be a good time to
take Judy on the honeymoon they never had. I’ll hunt better with
her out of the way anyway. I’m a gorilla fighter by nature, a skill
I acquired hunting Viet Cong in Southeast Asia courtesy the
USMC.

I glanced down at Judy, sometime during my
personal strategy session she had fallen asleep. Oh well, hunting
the Shadow could wait another ten or fifteen minutes I guess. I
forced myself to relax a little and put my feet up on the coffee
table constructed with eight cinder blocks and a sheet of 3/4 inch
plywood. Her head slid from my shoulder to my chest and I leaned
forward and kissed her hair. Thirty seconds later we were both fast
asleep. She was exhausted; I was just living out a fantasy.

--

The Alexandria Hotel, Room 301, Monday, Feb
23, 2009…8:30am

Two little love birds just a floor below
me

K-I-SS-I-N-G

First comes love then comes marriage

Then comes, I don’t know, death maybe

I’m not a poet

Clever little rhymes are for saps…

--

This is too easy…

****

(“For when I’m drinking I’m always thinking and
wishing Peggy Gordon was here”)…traditional Irish song of Scottish
origin

Chapter Nineteen

Casey’s Irish Pub, Grand Ave., Monday, Feb
23, 2009…1pm

Bringing Judy here was a good idea, at least
that’s what I kept telling myself as I watched her nibble at her
lunch. We got here just ahead of the lunch bunch and grabbed the
catbird seat at Casey’s, the one centered near the big bay window
in front. Five minutes later and we’d have missed it and been
standing at the bar shouting out our order with the rest of the
tardy souls. We had burned most of the morning napping on my sofa.
She’d shown up at my flat totally exhausted after fretting all
night and dodging shadows. She was scared alright and who could
blame her after what she told me about her evening and what she had
found when she returned to the UCLA lab.

A former student was now deceased, very
deceased, lying in a pool of blood in the hall just outside the
room she had occupied with him only a few hours earlier. She was
less worried about being a suspect,
a fact that I pointed out
emphatically
, and more worried about being next,
a fact that
she pointed out even more emphatically
. As far as Judy was
concerned she had dodged a bullet courtesy her natural OCD
tendencies. Being a chronic box checker she had rushed home to
enter the results of the retest into her laptop, in real time of
course. In fact she must have come straight from UCLA when I
stopped by her place around 10pm on Saturday. I remember now, she
was reading from her notes with her portable office on her lap
while we chatted and drank scotch.

“I’m scared Whitey,” were the last words she
spoke before she whimpered herself to sleep, curled up on my
tattered old sofa. I had covered her with a wool blanket that my
Grandee had knitted for me a hundred years ago and sat on the
opposite end of the beat up furniture just to be on the safe side.
She tucked her feet behind me at the small of my back. It’s a
common habit with most women and small children whenever they curl
up beside someone, curious? In any event, I let her sleep a couple
of hours while I sat there racking and stacking these new facts
into the puzzle that was Sally November. They were all related
somehow, that much I was certain of.

There are no such things as coincidences in
life, I believe that. Raised Irish Catholic I was deeply rooted in
faith in the omnipresence of the All Mighty. To me that meant that
all things happen for a reason. It means that every occurrence is
part of a master plan, one beyond my mortal ability to understand.
Some call that fate, some karma, I just call it life. I know that
sounds weird coming from a battle hardened veteran and street wise
detective, but there it is. It saves me a lot of time over
analyzing hard stuff, like why my ex decided to change teams in the
middle of our marriage, stuff like that.

She came to around eleven-thirty and startled
me awake (I had dozed off minutes after she did) and after an
awkward moment we got up quickly, and decided to make tracks in
case whoever she was frightened of had followed her to the
Alexandria. I brought her to Casey’s because the place was is
crowded, plus it was below the street level where I could see
everyone as they walked down the stairs. There were only two
entrances, both of which were up front. Bottom line, I was taking
no chances! Judy looked up from her bangers and mash and studied me
studying her.

“I need to call Ronnie,” she said
quickly.

“I already did doll, she’s on her way here
right now.”

“Did you tell her anything,” she asked
meekly?

“No, that’ll be up to you my dear. But take
it from someone who knows her,
I mean him
, tell it slow but
tell it all,
nés pas
?”

“Okay, don’t lecture me!”

“Listen, as much as I hate to admit this we
should take you in and come clean with the cops before they start
adding two and two and come up with the wrong answer. Besides, if
you really are in someone’s crosshairs; disappearing into the
system could be helpful. At least you’ll have 24/7 protection while
I go into commando mode and figure this thing out.”

“You mean like witness protection? Don’t
those dopes always get bumped off?”

“Only on TV doll-face, only on TV,” I replied
reassuringly.

“Look, while we’re waiting for your better
half to get here, tell me again everything you remember about
Saturday night, and I mean everything. Like what cars do you
remember in the parking lot, what passersby do you remember, anyone
within eyesight when you arrived and when you left? Anything and
everything Judy; don’t leave anything out. The most insignificant
memory is usually the lynchpin that’ll solve a case.”

“Alright,” she replied, pushing her plate
away and leaning back in her seat.

“Where do you want me to start,” she asked
folding her arms defensively.