The Mercedes Coffin (5 page)

“How deep did you manage to dig?”

“We didn’t get any interference if that’s what you mean.” Lamar thought about the question. “We started with the wife and when we hit a wall, we branched out to friends, coworkers, students, and community people. There was an insurance policy, but at that point, the widow hadn’t bought herself a new car or a flashy diamond ring. There was money in a college fund for her boys. She also took a job.”

“What kind of work?”

“I think the school hired her as a secretary or a teacher and used his seniority so she could keep the benefits.” He finished off his beer. “We scoured through Little’s desk, his files, his old floppy disks and the computer, his credit cards, his phone records, his bank account. When I tell you nothing was awry, I mean it.”

Decker nodded, although something struck him as odd. “I spoke to the widow. She married very well.”

Lamar took a moment to digest that. “Good for her.”

“She also told me that she had gone into debt, hiring a private detective named Phil Shriner, trying to get a lead on the case.”

“Hmm…” Lamar crushed his beer can. “Did she get anywhere?”

“Nothing that she wanted to tell me about. But when you checked out her account, she was solvent.”

“She must have gone into debt after I retired.”

“So you don’t know anything about the private detective?”

“Didn’t even know he had a name until you told it to me. Have you checked him out?”

“I have someone going down that avenue,” Decker told him. “Right after you retired and I came on, one of my first assignments was dealing with a murder of a coed at Central West Valley High.”

“Central West…” Lamar wiped his mouth on his hand. “Cheryl Diggs, was it?”

“Exactly. Her boyfriend at the time was a guy named Christopher Whitman. He’s now Christopher Donatti.”

“Whitman…” He looked confused. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

“Because we originally brought him in for the Diggs murder. It turned out he was innocent, but as a side note, we discovered that the boy was totally mobbed up.”

Lamar frowned. “As in New York mob?”

Decker nodded. “He worked as a hit man for his uncle — a real goombah named Joey Donatti. After Joey died, Chris inherited his money as well as his enterprises. What Chris didn’t inherit, he made on his own by running numbers, operating brothels, and peddling subscriptions to Internet porn sites. He took his unreported cash and now he owns a chunk of Manhattan real estate between Harlem and Washington Heights. His registration dates put him at Central West after Little was murdered, but he could have been here before the official date of enrollment. I just was wondering if you had any dealings with him before I came on.”

Lamar shook his head no. “I don’t recall talking to him as part of the Little investigation. Look in the notes and see if I interviewed him.”

“I did and you didn’t.”

Lamar shrugged as if to say, “So there you have it.” “As far as I know, his name never came up. But neither Cal nor I bothered to look into people from Central West.”

“I have one more guy I want to run by you. A kid named Darnell Arlington.”

“Darnell Arlington…” Lamar scrunched his eyes. “I remember him… a black kid… troubled. I think we ruled him out. How ’bout refreshing my memory.”

“You’re right. Darnell was a troubled kid. When he was threatened with expulsion, Ben went to bat for him and got him a second chance. Darnell blew that opportunity, and the boy was finally kicked out of North Valley for good. That happened about six months before Little was murdered. The second time, by the way, Ben sided with the school.”

Lamar didn’t talk for a moment. “I never did talk to the boy, when his name came up. As I’m remembering it, he wasn’t even in the state when Little was killed.”

“Little’s widow told me that he was in Ohio, playing in a school basketball game.”

“Yeah, it’s coming back.” Lamar nodded. “Cal was the one who interviewed Darnell. The kid was back east playing in a game, witnessed by about one hundred people. From what I recall, the kid was broken up about Little’s death.” A pause. “You’re looking at a revenge thing?”

“I’m considering everything.”

“Like I said, Cal checked him out. He could tell you more than I could about Darnell.”

“When I talk to Cal, I’ll ask about Darnell. Do you still keep in contact with your old partner?”

“We see each other every now and then. For all that we went through together, once that whole thing ended, we found out that we didn’t have too much in common. I’m a doer, Cal’s a brooder. Sometimes it worries me, but I’m tired of mothering the man. Eventually he needs to figure it out on his own.”

“I’ve left a message. I trust he’ll call me back.”

“Oh yeah, he’ll do that. Little bothered him as much as the case bothered me. Let me know if you make any headway. Be nice to see someone in custody before I die. That’s not too much to ask of the Good Lord, right?”

Decker agreed that it wasn’t too much to
ask
. But when it came to results, the GL always seemed to have other ideas.

BY SIX IN
the evening, most of the detectives had checked out on the whiteboard, leaving the squad room hauntingly quiet. When Decker listened hard enough — carefully enough — he could hear wounded voices speaking to him through the blue-covered murder books. He often got his best insights by being receptive. Focused and wired on coffee, he cleared about half his desk when the knock on the door frame broke his concentration.

Marge Dunn and Scott Oliver looked as if the day had dragged on too long. Marge’s hair was wilting, and Oliver’s royal blue tie was askew. His formerly starched white shirt was limp, and he was carrying his suit jacket.

Marge said, “Ben Little should be nominated for sainthood.”

Oliver kicked out a chair with his foot and sat down, stretching his legs in front of him. “He’d give Mother Teresa a run for her money. Not a speck of dirt to dig up, but I’m still not convinced. No one can be that good.”

“I agree with Oliver,” Marge said. “How can a guy that dynamic and active not have at least one skeleton in his closet?”

Oliver said, “I remember the cops being frustrated about that. I think we all would have been more comfortable dealing with the whack if the vic had some bad habits.”

“Interesting that you say that,” Decker said. “Arnie Lamar remarked that the Little homicide was particularly sad because he was such a nice guy.” His eyes drifted to Oliver’s. “What did you think of Homicide’s handling of the case?”

“They worked it pretty hard for about six months. Then it just froze. I recall that Arnie and Cal kept at it from time to time, but this wasn’t a case with a lot of forensics. There was some ballistic evidence, a couple of prints that Arnie would run from time to time. And DNA? Pshaw, my friend, pshaw.” Oliver waved his hand in the air and chanted, “Ice, ice, baby.”

“What did you think of Cal and Arnie?” Decker asked.

Oliver gave the questions some thought. “They were competent. I liked Arnie more than Silent Cal, but that doesn’t mean that Cal was a bad Dee. Have you talked to Vitton yet?”

Decker shook his head no. “Just Lamar.”

“What’d you think of him?” Marge asked.

“He’s all right… seemed to care.” To Oliver, Decker said, “Did you ever work with either of them on any homicide case?”

“Sure, on the homicides that we worked in teams of five. They were competent if not inspiring. They seemed like a tight twosome.”

“Lamar said he rarely talks to Vitton now that they’re both retired. Cal’s apparently a brooder.”

“I can see that,” Oliver said. “I think he went through a bad divorce.”

Decker said, “Did you ask any of Little’s colleagues about Darnell Arlington?”

Marge flipped through her notes. “Marianne Seagraves from the English Department remembered him — and I quote — as a big black boy with a big chip on his shoulder. Darnell didn’t have a father and his mother had a drug problem. Marianne said that Little tried his best with Darnell — after-school tutoring, lunch off campus, lots of heart-to-hearts, Christmas presents — but no one was surprised when Arlington was expelled.”

“Any history of violence?” Decker asked.

“Darnell had his fair share of fights. No weapons other than his fists as far as Marianne can remember.”

“Did you locate him?”

“I found a high school gym coach named Darnell Arlington who lives near Akron, Ohio, but I haven’t verified that it’s the same Darnell Arlington.”

Oliver said, “How many Darnell Arlingtons are out there?”

“According to Find-it Yellow Pages, there are four: one in Texas, one in Louisiana, one in Wisconsin, and one in Ohio.”

“That’s the problem with these search engines,” Oliver griped. “They bring up all this irrelevant information.”

“Yes, but they bring up relevant information as well,” Marge told him. “Like my grandfather used to say, you take the good with the bad.”

THE PHONE CALL
came at nine in the evening on the cell. Decker had been working at home in his pajamas, scouring through the Little file, trying to find a scintilla of an overlooked clue. He regarded the number and realized it was Vitton.

“Thanks so much for calling me back, Detective. At your convenience, I’d like to meet with you for an hour or so regarding the Bennett Little homicide—”

“You can stop right there, Lieutenant. Arnie called me up and told me you were at his place on some kind of a mission. I’ll tell you what you already know. If I would have thought of something new, I would have told someone a long time ago.”

“I realize that, Detective. I don’t expect a breakthrough. Just your thoughts and insights—”

“No new thoughts. Definitely no new insights. You taking time out to talk to me would be a total waste because I don’t have anything to tell you.”

“Sometimes just by talking, new things pop up.”

“We’re talking now. Nothing new is popping up.”

Decker gritted his teeth. “Still, if you can give me an hour, I’d appreciate it.”

“Why?” Vitton’s voice had tightened even further. “I already told you, I got nothing to say.”

“Okay, then let me spell it out for you. I was ordered to reopen the case. That means I have to talk to everyone involved. If there’s a definite reason why you don’t
want
to talk to me, I’d like to hear it.”

Silent Cal was silent. Decker waited him out.

“I just don’t have anything new to say to you. Arnie and I never found a good suspect, and we went through them all.”

“Who did you interview?”

“Just read the goddamn file.”

Again, Decker felt his jaw clench. “I have the file in front of me. I was wondering if there were people who didn’t make it into the file.”

“Everyone I interviewed should be in the file.”

“Who came closest as a suspect?”

“No one. The man didn’t have any enemies!”

“He must have had one.”

“No, he didn’t. He had bad luck.”

“You think it was a random carjacking?”

“He drove a Mercedes. A car like that would be a good score to a couple of punk boosters.”

“But they didn’t steal the car.”

“Maybe Ben came out and surprised them… that has always been my theory… that the punks panicked, threw him into the trunk, and drove to Clearwater Park. Once there, they whacked him.”

Decker gave Cal’s ideas brief consideration. Immediately the question arose: How did the punks escape from the park? It could be the punks just walked away. The file had recorded lots of shoe prints on the grass by the car lot, but none of them led anywhere, and fifteen years later, that was probably a dead end.

“That’s one explanation,” Decker told Vitton. “I’d like to talk to you in person and consider other theories.”

Another round of silence.

Decker said, “Look, Cal, if I didn’t have to talk to you, I wouldn’t bother. But I need to do this. So help me out and make it as painless as possible. The quicker we do this, the quicker I’m out of your hair.”

“I used that line many times when I was at LAPD, and I know that it’s a truckload of shit. This is only the beginning.”

“What time can you meet me tomorrow?”

“Come at nine in the morning.”

“I’ll be there. This is the address I have for you.” Decker read off the numbers. “Is it current?”

“Yeah, it’s current.”

“So I’ll see you at nine.”

“Fine. I’ll meet with you. But don’t expect a hot pot of coffee waiting for you. This ain’t a social call.”

THE NUMBERS WRITTEN
on Decker’s notepaper matched a small stucco house in a development of modest homes. The street was wide — typical of most streets in Simi Valley — and ended in a cul-de-sac. If lawns were classified like eye color, the patches would have been designated as hazel, a mixture of green grass with russet, sun-bleached weeds. The sidewalk trees were stalks with bushy, untrimmed canopies, resembling adolescent boys with a ’fro. Mixed flowers offered some color, as did the blue sky, but most of the surrounding rocky terrain was brown and dusty.

Both of Decker’s stepsons and his younger daughter had taken their driver’s license examinations in Simi. It was a good place to learn because the roadways were broad and there were assigned left-hand turn lanes complete with arrows. With Hannah now driving, Decker was left to ponder how fast his life had come at him. He felt active and vigorous, but that didn’t change the years. Was retirement a theoretical concept or an inevitable reality of the near future?

After parking the car, he checked his watch. At precisely nine o’clock, he got out of the cruiser and ambled up the walkway, climbing two steps to reach the door. He gave the wood a firm knock, the type of rap that told a cop that another cop had arrived and there was serious talking to be done.

When no one answered right away. Decker was peeved. He rang the bell and waited, feeling uneasy when silence answered him back.

He glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected Cal to materialize; then he looked upward at the cloudless cerulean ether. No Cal in the sky, either, just the fluttering of black ravens along with harsh cawing. The late spring morning was still cool enough to be comfortable, but the warmth from the sun was attracting bugs — bees, gnats, flies, and the ever pesky mosquitoes.