The Poisonous Ten (20 page)

“Oh? And who says I’m damaged? And why would they?”

“Oh, I hear the talk around the station. Everyone’s got their own opinions. You’re a man of mystery in some ways. They’re a little concerned about you after Kozlov. And with losing your partner. But you seem to be holding it all together to me. Then there’s your broken childhood. A mother who’s not around? And a dead father? I think they’re all waiting around for you to have a breakdown or something.”

“That’s what I don’t get,” Parks admitted, almost laug
hing about it. “I didn’t have a traumatic childhood. At least not as far as I can remember. Maybe that’s why I’m so mellow about it. My father died when I was like four. But I barely recall any of the circumstances revolving around it. Why he did it? Was he depressed? Running from something? Exhausted? What? My mother was no help after my father committed suicide. She was never around after that. Has almost never been around my whole life. But I was raised by her sister and brother-in-law in Newport Beach. I mean, it wasn’t exactly a lacking childhood. They had money. Clout. Treated me like their own. Never made me feel like an outsider. I went from being an only child to having a brother. I was never lacking growing up. Sure I was a bit of a loner, probably spawning from my immediate family’s circumstances, but I wasn’t some off the wall wild-child. Did baseball in high school. Was semi-popular, if I do say so myself. Especially considering I wasn’t really outgoing. Dated. Was nominated for Prom King. Lost both Junior and Senior years. Had a memorable time those four years though. Got married. That didn’t last. That was probably the most traumatic experience in my whole life. I was bitter after that. Real bitter. But I was never self-destructive or anything like that. I joined the force, found focus and direction. And . . . just been living my life for the last fifteen years. I date here and there. I’ve had a few serious girlfriends, but nothing worth proposing my undying and eternal love for. I’m a bachelor, probably for life, and that suits me just fine. I like where I’m at in life and see no reason for any major changes. Not that I’m not open to them if something right was to come along, but I see no reason for it. I’m good. There are far more people a lot worse off than me.”

“Right? Amen to that.”    

“So I’ve got some tics and whatnot. Who doesn’t? I’m not out committing crimes or hurting myself or anyone else. I feel I’m pretty well grounded. Why do I need to be flawed and damaged goods?”

“Hey, don’t look at me,” Jackie said finishing off her drink and setting it aside. “I think you’re good just the way you are.”
             

“Do you now?” 

Jackie got up and moved over and sat down in Parks’s lap. She leaned in and began to kiss him.

“I do. And just so you don’t question me, let me prove it to you.”

Jackie slid into the chair and Parks’s arm, the two of them laying there, kissing as they relaxed and took in all that was around them. This, to the two of them, at that moment, was paradise.

And both of them wondered how long it would really last.

25

“P
arks. Parks!”

“What is it?” Parks shouted, looking up from the iPad he was playing brain teaser games on. He was testing his me
mory skills, his logic skills, and just plain playing games and forgetting the rest of the world for a few minutes. He had been in a much better mood since the Kozlov ordeal was finalized. He could move on. Was determined to. He had even slept good, through the entire night. 

“The pack—what are you . . .?” Parks made a face that encouraged Fairmont to continue with what he was there to discuss.

“Um, yeah. That package . . . that was . . . that was delivered to Ian Harris,” Fairmont said, almost out of breath. “The one . . . that held . . . the death adder? With . . . the prints on it? Remember?”

Good thing he’s trying to quit smoking, thought Parks. “You mean the prints that we didn’t get a hit on? What about it?”

“I have a match.”

Fairmont smiled from ear to ear.

“How?” Parks was genuinely shocked by this information. “We ran them through IAFIS. We didn’t get anything.”

“I know,” Fairmont said. “But I had a hunch, and I had
them run against everyone else connected with this case. Maybe someone who didn’t have prints on record with IAFIS.”

“And? Who did they match?”

“Deborah Bollinger.”

“The third victim’s wife?” Parks wasn’t expecting this.

“The one and only.” Fairmont was excited. “So now what?”

“Now?” Parks said. “Now we go have a chat with the w
idow Bollinger.”

*
                            *                            *

“Deborah Bollinger,” Parks shouted through the closed door. “LAPD.”

Parks knocked forcefully on the door to the Bollinger’s apartment and waited with Moore and Fairmont at his side. He went to knock again when the door opened. Mrs. Bollinger appeared as if she was still accepting the fact that her husband was never coming home again. She wore sweats, and her greasy, matted hair was down, giving the appearance of having been untouched for the past few days. She was without makeup and looked like she’d been doing her fair share of crying, her eyes all puffy and red, aging her a decade. The look on her face was anything but welcoming to the detectives.

“Detectives,” Mrs. Bollinger said, recognizing Moore and Fairmont. “What is it?”

“I’m Detective Dave Parks,” Parks explained. “We have a few questions for you.”

She hesitated for a moment, huffed mostly for show, took a swallow of whatever alcoholic beverage was in the short glass she held, and let them in. She didn’t walk to the couch so much as moped her way to it before plopping down, sta
ring at the coffee table in front of her as if remembering a moment from her life before her husband had been murdered. She uttered a short laugh then made a face as if deciding whether she should cry or not. 

“I’m supposed to be planning a funeral. Though with what money, I don’t know.”

“We wondered if you were familiar with this person,” Parks said, holding up a picture of Ian Harris. Mrs. Bollinger stared at the picture, puzzled, as if she knew the face but couldn’t place how or why, before taking another swallow of her drink.

“Who is he?”

“Have you seen this man before?”

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

Parks stalled as he thought of the best way to advance the interrogation now that he had caught the woman in a lie.

“But he . . . he does look familiar. But I can’t tell why.”

“His name is Ian Harris,” Parks said, pausing to see if the name struck a bell with her.

Mrs. Bollinger shook her head. She couldn’t place him.

“He lived across the courtyard,” Parks said, nodding toward the windows behind her. “He—”

“Lived? You mean he’s dead? Was he another victim of the same person who killed my husband?”

“We’re not at liberty to discuss an ongoing investigation. We—”

“Oh!” Mrs. Bollinger threw up her hands. “Oh. Oh. Across the courtyard. That’s where. Yes. I-I-I do know him. I mean, I don’t know him, but I met him. Just once. The day my husband died.”

“Yes?” Parks sat up on the edge of his seat while Fairmont and Moore who had been pacing behind him, stopped and leaned in to hear what she had to say.

“When I was going to leave, to go see my family, I n
oticed a package on our doorstep. But it didn’t have mine or my husband’s name or address on it. It had that other man’s on it.”

“Ian Harris.”

“Yeah. I saw the address was just next door, so I decided to drop it off on my way out of town.”

“So you took it to Mr. Harris?”

“Yes.”

“And what time would that have been?”

“Early afternoonish. Around twelve thirty. Maybe one. But I think earlier than that.”

“Did you speak to Mr. Harris?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Bollinger admitted. “When I handed him the package.”

“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary about Mr.
Harris?”

“How would I know what was out of the ordinary for him? That was the first time I had met him. But he was drunk.”

“Drunk?”

“Yes. Really drunk. He slurred his words and could har
dly stand. He tried to cover it up, but it was obvious. Place reeked of booze.”

“The methanol,” Moore muttered to Parks.

“There was something else actually,” Mrs. Bollinger continued. “He seemed . . . oh, um, I don’t know. Ashamed.”

Parks thought about this.

“Spying,” Fairmont mouthed to Moore, who nodded back.

“Ashamed?” Parks a
sked.

“Sorta. Like I had caught him doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. But I’d never met him before. So how would I know what he should or shouldn’t be doing? Anyways, that’s how he acted. Caught. Didn’t say much of anything. Just took the package and that was it.”

“And this package . . . you don’t know where it came from?”

“No idea.”

“You looked at it?”

“At it, yes. Not in it. No idea who it was from. It didn’t say on the box. Just the delivery address. So I took it over there.”

“Thank you for your time. There is one other thing, if I may. I need you to look at some photos.”

“Photos?”

“Yes. They’re of your husband’s death scene. I’ve had the portions of his body blocked out, but I need you to focus on the rest of the scene. Around him. See if you notice something out of place.”

“Dave,” Moore muttered. “What are you doing?”

Parks ignored his associates. “If you’re not up to it, I understand Mrs. Bollinger. But it would really help us.”

“Help you catch the man who did this to my husband?”

“It could.”

Deborah Bollinger turned and stared out a nearby window and didn’t say a word. She seemed lost, confused, frailer than Parks figured the woman usually was. He was about to stand up and leave when she turned back to him.

“Okay,” Mrs. Bollinger replied, finishing off her drink, the ice clinking against the side of the glass. “Show them to me.”

Parks retrieved the pictures and handed them over and let the grieving woman look through them. The area where her husband’s body was supposed to be in each photo was blacked out so that she wouldn’t have to look at him. As much as it was there to help, it didn’t, and Mrs. Bollinger began crying at the sights displayed before her, as she knew her husband was still in them, sitting there, lifeless.

“There’s . . . nothing,” Mrs. Bollinger finally said. “Nothing. I don’t see anything.”

She held the photos in front of her and stared at them without even looking at them while they rested limply in her hands, the last connection she had with her deceased hu
sband. Parks knew when he was defeated, and this exercise, though a good intention, proved fruitless.

“I’m sorry to have taken your time,” Parks said as he stood up and reached to take the photos.

As he grabbed the pictures, Mrs. Bollinger’s grip on them tightened and she pulled them in closer, focusing on them for the first time. She looked to the kitchen then back at the photo. “Did your people remove anything from the apartment?”

“I’m sure some things were removed that the body touched or when we dusted for fingerprints,” Parks e
xplained. “We have a log list.” Parks motioned to Fairmont. “What in particular have you noticed?”

“A baseball,” Mrs. Bollinger said, pointing to a five-shelved stand next to the kitchen table. On the shelves in the stand were various knickknacks and mementos. Glass fig
urines of animals were spread throughout each shelf, while photo frames were filled with the generic pictures that had originally come with the frames.

“A baseball?”

“It was special. To my husband. It was a signed baseball that he had up on the . . . the . . . over there. It’s not there. It was always right there. I know it was there the day I left.”

Fairmont shook his head from side to side as he glanced
through the log list.

“Nothing here about a baseball,” Fairmont said. “Plus, we didn’t take anything on those shelves, so there’s no reason we would have taken just the baseball.”

“Now this baseball, you said it was special?” Parks asked.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Mrs. Bollinger said. “At least to my husband it was. It was signed.”

“Signed? By whom?”

“A baseball player.” Mrs. Bollinger shrugged.

“Yes.” Parks smiled, trying to keep his patience. “Do you know who? Was it from—”

“Yes,” Mrs. Bollinger interrupted. “It was the Dodgers. I remember that. Jason loved the Dodgers. Only team he would watch on TV. We have—well, used to have, season tickets.”

“Do you remember who? Or when?”

“It was late spring or early summer. Just this year,” Mrs. Bollinger recalled immediately. “I remember that because we saw him out with his girlfriend, and I remember her b
ecause she’s that actress that everyone loves. I don’t remember the guy’s name. But he was cute. That much I know. It was a short name. And foreign. Not his first name. His last name. But then again, most of the players these days are foreign.”

“Does the name Kyle Oni sound familiar?”

“I’m sorry. All those names sound the same to me.”

Parks turned to Fairmont. “Tell me we have a picture of
Oni on us?”

Fairmont dug through
a folder and shook his head.

“Mrs. Bollinger,” Parks broke in. “Do you perchance r
eceive the LA Times?”

“Um . . . yes,” Mrs. Bollinger answered. “Why?”

“Do you happen to have a few copies lying around?”

“There’s a recycling bin in the kitchen.”

Moore left for the kitchen and, after some rummaging, came back with the Sports section from a few days before, when Kyle Oni’s face was plastered all over for his coming-out story.

“Is this the guy?” Moore asked, holding up the paper.

“Looks like him.” Mrs. Bollinger nodded but still didn’t look sure.

“He’s dating Caroline Maddox.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Bollinger finally said emphatically. “That’s her. That’s the girl. I remember. People say I look like her. Like I could be her sister or something. Even though she’s a redhead and I’m blonde.”

“Thank you,” Parks said, hoping his skepticism didn’t show. “Thank you so much. That helps us a lot. Thanks.”

Parks stood and turned when Moore pulled in closer to him.

“How exactly does that help us?”

“Not sure,” Parks admitted. “But at least we’re finding some kind of a connection.”