The Murder Book (17 page)

Marge’s eyes moistened. “You’re nice to say so. Well, it’s been good meeting you. Coupla good listeners.” She smiled. “Must be a cop thing.”

We followed her to the front door, where Milo said, “Did Pierce ever have any visitors?”

“Not a one, Detective. The two of us hardly ever left the ranch, except to buy provisions, and that was maybe once a month for bulk shopping in Oxnard or Ventura. Once in a while we’d go into Santa Barbara for a movie or to a play at the Ojai Theater, but we never socialized. Tell the truth, we were both darned
anti
social. Evenings we’d sit and look up at the sky. That was more than enough for us.”

The three of us walked to the Seville. Marge looked toward the horses, and said, “Hold on, guys, groom time’s coming.”

Milo said, “Thanks for your time, Mrs. Schwinn.”

“Mrs. Schwinn,” said Marge. “Never thought I’d be Mrs. Anybody, but I do like the sound of that. I guess I can be Mrs. Schwinn forever, can’t I?”

When we got in, she leaned into the passenger window. “You would’ve liked the Pierce I knew, Detective. He didn’t judge anyone.”

Touching Milo’s hand briefly, she turned on her heel and hurried toward the corral.

B
ack on Highway 33, I said, “So now we know where the book came from.”

Milo said, “Guy pierces his ear, turns into Mr. Serene.”

“It’s California.”

“ ‘He didn’t judge.’ You know what she meant by that, don’t you? Schwinn decided my being gay was acceptable. Gee, I feel so validated.”

“When you rode together, was he homophobic?”

“Nothing overt, just general nastiness. But what man of that generation likes queers? I was always on edge with him. With everyone.”

“Fun times,” I said.

“Oh yeah, whoopsie-doo. I always felt he didn’t trust me. Finally, he came out and said so but wouldn’t explain why. Knowing what we know now, maybe it was speed-paranoia, but I don’t think so.”

“Think the department knew about his addiction?”

“They didn’t bring it up when they interrogated me, just concentrated on his whoring.”

“What I find interesting is that they eased him out with full pension rather than bring him up on charges,” I said. “Maybe because going public about a doping, whoring cop might have brought other doping, whoring cops to light. Or, it had something to do with handling the Ingalls case.”

Several miles passed before he spoke again. “A speed freak. Asshole was a jumpy insomniac, skinny as a razor, gulped coffee and cough syrup like a vampire chugs blood. Add paranoia and the sudden mood swings, and it’s Narco 101, I shoulda seen it.”

“You were concentrating on the job, not his bad habits. Anyway, turns out whatever personal feelings he had toward you, he respected your skills. That’s why he had someone send you the book.”

“Someone,”
he snarled. “He dies seven months ago, and the book arrives now. Think that someone could be good old Marge?”

“She seemed to be dealing straight with us, but who knows? She’s lived alone for most of her life, could’ve developed some survival instincts.”

“If it was her, what are we dealing with? Schwinn’s last wish to wifey-poo? And that doesn’t explain why you were the go-between.”

“Same reason,” I said. “Schwinn covering his tracks. He pierced his ear but held on to a cop’s survival instinct.”

“Paranoid to the end.”

“Paranoia can be useful,” I said. “Schwinn had built a new life for himself, finally had something to lose.”

He thought about that. “Okay, put aside who sent the damn thing and shift to the big question: Why? Schwinn held something back about Janie for twenty years and started feeling guilty all of a sudden?”

“For most of those twenty years, he had other things on his mind. Bitterness toward the department, widowhood, serious addiction. Sinking to the bottom, like Marge said. He got old, kicked his habit, and bought himself a bunch of new distractions: remarriage, easing into a new life. Learning to sit still and stare at the stars. Finally had time to introspect. I had a patient once, a dutiful daughter taking care of her terminally ill mother. A week before the mother passed on, she motioned the daughter over and confessed to stabbing the woman’s father with a butcher knife as he lay sleeping. My patient had been nine at the time, all these years, she and the rest of the family had been living with the myth of the bogeyman — some nocturnal slasher. Her life had been a mass of fear and now she learned the truth from an eighty-four-year-old murderer.”

“What, Schwinn knew he was gonna die? The guy fell off a horse.”

“All I’m saying is old age and introspection can be an interesting combination. Maybe Schwinn started reflecting about unfinished business. Decided to communicate with you about Janie, but still wanted to hedge his bets. So he used me as a conduit. If I didn’t pass the book on to you, he’d have fulfilled his moral obligation. If I gave it to you and you traced it to him, he’d deal with that. But if you threatened him in any way, he could always deny.”

“He puts together a whole bloody scrapbook just to remind me about Janie?”

“The book probably started out as a twisted hobby — exorcising his demons. It’s no coincidence his later photos had no people in them. He’d seen people at the worst.”

We rode in silence.

“He sounds like a complicated man,” I said.

“He was a freak, Alex. Pilfered death shots from the evidence room and cataloged them for personal enjoyment. For all I know he got a sexual kick out of the book, then he grew old and couldn’t get it up anymore and decided to share.” He frowned. “I don’t think Marge knew about the murder book. He wouldn’ta wanted her to think of him as a freak. That means someone else sent it to you, Alex. She made like the two of them had built this little domestic cocoon, but I think she was
real
wrong.”

“Another woman,” I said.

“Why not? Someone he visited when he wanted out from hilltop nirvana. This is a guy who tumbled with whores in the backseat while on duty. I don’t have that much faith in transformation.”

“If there was another woman,” I said, “she might live far from Ojai. This is a small town, too hard to be discreet. That would explain the L.A. postmark.”

“Bastard.” He cursed under his breath. “I never liked the guy, and now he’s yanking my chain from the grave. Let’s say he did have some big moral epiphany about Janie. What does the book communicate? Where am I supposed to take it? Screw this, I don’t have to play this game.”

We didn’t talk until I was back on the freeway. At Camarillo, I shifted to the fast lane, pushed the Seville to eighty. He mumbled, “Pedal to the metal… bastard starts feeling righteous, and I’ve got to jump like a trained flea.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” I said.

“Damn right, I’m an
Amurrican
. Entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of unhappiness.”

We crossed the L.A. county line by midafternoon, stopped at a coffee shop in Tarzana for burgers, got back on Ventura Boulevard, hooked a right at the newsstand at Van Nuys, continued to Valley Vista, and on to Beverly Glen. Along the way, I had Milo call my service on his cell phone. Robin hadn’t called.

When we reached my house, Milo was still in no mood to talk, but I said, “Caroline Cossack sticks in my mind.”

“Why?”

“A girl poisoning a dog is more than a prank. Her brothers are all over the papers, but she doesn’t get a word of newsprint. Her mother ran a debutante ball, but Caroline wasn’t listed as one of the debs. She wasn’t even included in her mother’s funeral. If you hadn’t told me the poisoning story, I’d never know she existed. It’s as if the family spit her out. Maybe for good reason.”

“The neighbor — that cranky old lady doc — Schwartzman — might’ve been overly imaginative. She had no use for any of the Cossacks.”

“But her most serious suspicions were of Caroline.”

He made no move to exit the car. I said, “A girl using poison makes sense. Poisoning doesn’t require physical confrontation, so a disproportionate number of poisoners are female. I don’t have to tell you psychopathic killers often start with animals, but they’re usually males who dig blood. For a girl that young to act out so violently would be a serious red flag. I’m wondering if Caroline’s been confined all these years. Maybe because of something a lot worse than killing a dog.”

“Or she died.”

“Find the death certificate.”

He knuckled his eyes, looked up at my house. “Poison’s sneaky. What was done to Janie was blatant — the way the body was dumped in an open spot. No way did a girl do that.”

“I’m not saying Caroline murdered Janie by herself, but she might’ve been part of it — might’ve served as a lure for whoever did the cutting. Plenty of killers have used young women as bait — Paul Bernardo, Charlie Manson, Gerald Gallegos, Christopher Wilding. Caroline would’ve been the perfect lure for Janie and Melinda — a girl their age, outwardly inoffensive. And rich. Caroline could’ve stood by and watched as some-one else did the wet work or participated the way the Manson girls did. Maybe it was a group thing, just like the Mansons, party scene gone bad. Females are affiliative — even female killers. Group settings lower their inhibitions.”

“Sugar and spice,” he said. “And the family found out, put the screws on with the department to hush up the case, locked Crazy Caroline away somewhere… the ghoul in the attic.”

“Big family money can furnish a really nice attic.”

He accompanied me inside, where I went through the mail and he got on the phone with County Records and Social Security. No death certificate on Caroline Cossack; nor had she received a social security number or a driver’s license.

Melinda Waters had received a card at age fifteen, but she’d never driven in California or worked or contributed payroll tax. Which made sense if she’d died young. But no certificate on her, either.

“Disappeared,” I said. “Melinda probably died the same night Janie did, and Caroline’s either very well hidden or she expired, too, and the family hushed it up.”

“Hidden as in hospitalized?”

“Or just watched carefully. Rich kid like that, she’d have a trust fund, could be living in some Mediterranean villa with twenty-four-hour supervision.”

He began pacing. “Little Miss Nowhere… but at some point, when she was a kid, she had to have an identity. Be interesting to pinpoint when exactly she lost it.”

“School records,” I said. “Living in Bel Air would’ve meant Palisades or University High if the Cossacks chose public school. Beverly, if they played fast and loose with residency forms. On the private side, there’d be Harvard-Westlake — which was Westlake School for Girls, back then — or Marlborough, Buckley, John Thomas Dye, Crossroads.”

He flipped open his pad, scrawled notes.

“Or,” I added, “a school for troubled kids.”

“Any particular place come to mind?”

“I was in practice back then, can recall three very high-priced spreads. One was in West L.A., the others were in Santa Monica and the Valley — North Hollywood.”

“Names?”

I recited, and he got back on the phone. Santa Monica Prep was defunct, but Achievement House in Cheviot Hills and Valley Educational Academy in North Hollywood were still in business. He reached both schools but hung up frowning.

“No one’ll give me the time of day. Confidentiality and all that.”

“Schools don’t enjoy confidentiality privileges,” I said.

“You ever deal with either of the places, professionally?”

“I visited Achievement House, once,” I said. “The parents of a boy I was seeing kept holding the place over the kid’s head as a threat. ‘If you don’t shape up, we’ll send you to Achievement House.’ That seemed to scare him, so I dropped by to see what spooked him. Talked to a so-cial worker, got the five-minute tour. Converted apartment building near Motor and Palms. What stuck in my mind was how small it was — maybe twenty-five, thirty kids boarding in, meaning it had to cost a fortune. No snake pit that I could see. Later, I talked to my patient and turns out what he was worried about was stigmatization. Being thought of as a ‘weirdo-geek-loser.’ ”

“Achievement House had a bad reputation?”

“In his mind, any special placement had a bad reputation.”

“Did he get sent there?”

“No, he ran away, wasn’t seen for years.”

“Oh,” he said.

I smiled. “Don’t you mean
‘Ah’
?”

He laughed. Got himself grapefruit juice, opened the freezer and stared at the vodka bottle but changed his mind. “Ran away. Your version of loose ends.”

“Loose ends were a big part of my life, back then,” I said. “The price of an interesting job. As it turns out, this particular kid made it okay.”

“He stayed in touch?”

“He called after his second child was born. Ostensibly to ask about how to handle sibling jealousy. He ended up apologizing for being a surly teen. I told him he had nothing to be sorry about. Because I’d finally learned the whole story from his mother. His older brother had been molesting him since he was five.”

His face got hard. “Family values.” He paced some more, finished his juice, washed the glass, got back on the phone. Contacting Palisades and University and Beverly Hills High Schools, then the private institutions. Putting on the charm, claiming to be conducting an alumnus search for
Who’s Who
.

No one had Caroline Cossack on their files. “Little Miss Nowhere.” He’d talked about washing his hands of the Ingalls case, but his face was flushed, and hunter’s tension bunched his shoulders.

“I didn’t tell you,” he said, “but yesterday I went over to Parker Center and searched for Janie’s case file. Disappeared. Nothing at the Metro office or in evidence or the coroner’s, not even a cold-case classification or a notice that the file had been moved somewhere else. There is absolutely no paper
anywhere
that says the case was ever opened in the first place. I know it was because I
opened
it. Schwinn used to shove all the paperwork at me. I filled out the right forms, transcribed my street notes, created the murder book.”