The Zen Man (11 page)

I suppose the mish-mash of decorations were meant to lighten employees’ mood from the daily grind of dealing with crime and lawsuits and court proceedings. For me, it was like walking into an LSD flashback. Except for Bill Maher. He made sense.

I stood at the counter, staring into the olive eyes of a middle-aged matron with more wrinkles than a Shar Pei, a mass of curly, dyed brown hair like Jerry’s before he went gray, and lips that might crack if she attempted a smile.

So much for decorations boosting employee morale.

“May I help you?” she asked, sounding as though it were the last thing she cared to do.

I looked down at her badge. Patricia M. Hardin.

“I’d like to request a copy of a supplemental report, Ms. Hardin.” Supplemental report is another term for police report, although no one in the court system seems to want to call them that anymore.

Her painted-on eyebrows smashed together, creating a squiggly line across her forehead. “Haven’t we seen you before? Rick? Levine? Murder?”

A legend in my own time. “That’s me.”

“And you want to order
your
supplemental report?”

“Yes.” I paused. “Please.”

“There are rules about these things.”

“I’m sure there are,” I said with a smile, “and you’re going to remind me of every one of them.” I flashed on Jack Nicholson ordering a chicken salad sandwich on toast.

“No, I’m not going to remind you of every one of them, Mr. Levine, as I’m sure you know most of them from your previous career.”

“I have a constitutional right to adequately prepare my defense.”

She gave me an oh-really look. “Smart people don’t try their own murder cases.”

“Even dumb people are entitled to their police reports.”

“Supplement—”

“Supplemental reports.”

She heaved a deep, world-weary sigh as though contemplating the very sanctity of the United States Constitution as it might apply to a slug like me.

“Incident occurred last Friday night. We’d only have the patrol deputies’ reports. Detective and crime lab reports are still in process.”

“But CAD would be available now.” CAD, computer aided dispatch, are the dispatch and 911 summaries.

She grunted affirmatively.

“I’d like those, too. Please.”

She retrieved a sheet of paper from a shelf next to her.

“That’ll be sixty-four dollars and twenty cents, payable in cash or money order. We don’t accept checks. There’s an ATM machine at the court house next door.” She slid the form toward me. “Fill this out, bring it back to this window with your payment. Meanwhile, I’ll grab my magic marker and redact addresses and phone numbers.”

The courts make sure to redact—cross out—any personal information of witnesses, others, in case said defendant goes berserko and decides it’d be a good idea to hunt down those poor souls and do vile things to them.

I accepted the form, thanked Ms. Happy Go Lucky, and nestled into one of the uncomfortable, hard-backed plastic chairs in the waiting area. After filling out the form and returning it, along with most of the cash in my wallet, I sat back down and called Sam to ensure he’d ordered the supplement reports, too. Attorneys don’t get the black-marker treatment, plus they get the entire discovery package, from detectives’ reports and photos to autopsy photos to crime lab reports. We briefly discussed if the latter would be all that helpful as Wicked had been so out of it with her pills and booze—would a murderer have bothered to inject anything else into her system? But then we discussed how murderers were rarely the most rational citizens on the planet, and maybe Deborah’s killer had given her a little something extra to ensure she breathed her last, so yes, the crime lab reports were a good idea.

“And by the way,” I said, “some Hispanic dude in a Santa suit tried to kill me with a switch blade. I slammed him with my knee, which has almost stopped hurting, and thought I’d knocked him out, but then he disappeared.”

“Are you back on drugs?”

“Sam, don’t be a fucking un-dude.”

Mistress Hardin was calling me back to the window, so I ended the call. After receiving the reports, streaked with more black than tire marks after a collision, I returned to my seat and flipped through them.

Like most police reports, there was little recorded to help an accused. Descriptions of the scene and interviews with drunk people offered no solid information. Iris’s statement read like a cover flap for a bad noir novel, painting me as a low-life, pissed-off, vengeful ex who’d cracked and pulled a knife on Deborah. And to think Iris would be on the bench soon, orchestrating justice for other poor souls like me.

The rest was a lot of boring details layered with unsupported conclusions by homicide detectives and patrol deputies, their grammar and punctuation so atrocious it’d make an English teacher commit hari-kari.

Heading back into the winter chill, my cell phone chirped. Not recognizing the number, I debated whether to answer. I had better things to do than listen to some guy who wanted to hire a PI to follow his cheating wife. It was rarely women, usually men, who cried in these calls —hell,
I’d
cried with them a few times.

But it might be a call pertaining to my case.

“Levine,” I answered, fishing in my pocket for the car keys.

“Rick.” That soft Southern drawl was unmistakable.

I stopped, the wind whipping my hair, but I no longer felt the cold as an old, hot pain crowded my heart. I closed my eyes, wishing this door to my past had been left closed.

“Rick, you there?”

“Hello Brianna.”

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.”
—Buddha

A
fter Brianna dumped me, I swilled, smoked, and sniffed anything I could get my hands on, trying my damndest to numb my broken heart. It was bad enough to be dumped, worse that she’d traded me in for a hot-shot detective before we’d even officially broken up, a guy who could pass for one of those stud cop bad-boys in
The Wire
while I looked like the stand-in for
Columbo
. I hit bottom when, five years ago, I woke up one overcast Sunday morning on her front lawn, lying on an empty bottle of Patron tequila, wearing a pair of AC/DC pajamas I didn’t even know I owned, staring blearingly up at her unforgiving eyes. Soon after, I walked into my first twelve-step meeting.

“I heard what happened,” she said.

“Yeah.” Our first words since the front lawn debacle. I opened the Durango driver’s door. “I’m sorry about…that Sunday morning…” Me, who a judge once accused of needing a paragraph just to write my name, couldn’t think of another, single word to utter. So I didn’t try.

After a moment’s strange silence, she continued, “Saw some crime scene photos.”

I breathed in a lungful of air, the cold seeming to condense the scents of ozone with the outdoors, stinging my nostrils with a smell like metallic pine.

I got into the driver’s seat, slammed shut the door, sat in the silence for a moment. “Considering my own lawyer hasn’t seen them yet, how’d you score?”

“Friend.”

She’d worked as a deputy coroner for Arapahoe, and her husband…I realized she’d been widowed for at least a year…had all kinds of friends who might have access to those photos, but why show them to Brianna?

“I’m sorry…about Joe.” Had meant to say it after it had happened. Had thought about attending the funeral, but was afraid it’d only upset her more.

“Thank you.”

I inserted the key into the ignition, but didn’t turn it. “So…what about the photos?”

“I…think it’d be better if we met in person. Phones, you know.”

I knew what she meant, although her paranoia took me by surprise. I didn’t think my situation had evolved into a tap on my cell, mostly because it took legal legwork and a lot of paperwork to get a wiretap. If somebody—like Mr. Crain—wanted it that badly, I doubted it’d be in effect for another few days, at least. On the other hand, any idiot could download spyware and listen in on someone’s call, even if the person wasn’t on the phone. Wouldn’t hold up in court, but crazy people wanted to eavesdrop for reasons that had nothing to do with the legal system.

I looked at the gray clouds threatening snow, realized it was better to get together sooner than later. “I have time now.”

“Me, too. Where?”

I wondered what the hell she’d seen in those photos that she’d drop everything to meet.

“How about that place on Colfax.”

“Gyro?”

The Greek place we used to meet. “No. Star Man.”

“Yeah.” Pause. “See you in thirty.”

I hung up, started the Durango and headed out of the lot, past the rolling foothills dotted with clumps of pinion and leafless scrub oak. To the southwest yawned the mouth to Mt. Vernon Canyon and the road to Lookout Mountain where my grandmother had lived for thirty years until her death. She hadn’t approved of Wicked, although she’d been too much of a lady to ever say it. Her lack of exuberance whenever Wicked was around and the decreased invitations to dinner had clued me in. My grandmother came from an upbringing where ladies didn’t gossip or backstab, especially when it involved family, although I wished to hell she had. Might have saved me from marrying the wrong person and being in the clusterfuck I was today.

• • •

Half-hour later, I arrived at the stainless steel Davies Chuck Wagon Diner on East Colfax and slouched into a booth at the back, facing the door. I waved down the waitress and ordered a coffee.

One of the last post-WWII diners, Davies Chuck Wagon Diner was more famous for what was outside than in—a 36-foot neon cowboy in an apron, ready to serve hungry folks, and the life-size fiber-glass horse bolted onto its roof. Brianna and I used to meet here for quick lunches, a convenient spot halfway between our then-homes. By then, the diner had become famous as a locale for movies and TV shows, including a flick we both had loved,
Star Man
, about an alien who crashes into earth and clones himself using a hair from a woman’s deceased husband. We’d liked the film because the alien gave the woman a baby, something we’d decided we wanted and were actively working on. Good thing it never happened.

Claustrophobics couldn’t eat here. The counter, tables, and booths were steps from the kitchen. Through its window the short order cook, a scrawny dude who looked like an extra from
Easy Rider
, banged pots and wrangled food on a sizzling grill. An old Blondie hit, “Call Me,” played in the background. I like to be open-minded about music, but Blondie’s dead-pan, rag-doll delivery made my eardrums throb.

A few minutes later Brianna entered the diner, and for a surreal moment, I was slammed with remorse, pain, and a sweetness for what could have been. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit my heart shrank a little.

Her body was more angular, her curly dishwater blond hair longer, wavier, but she still had that jaunty watch-out-world walk. She’d never been one to dress up—had to be ready to “rock and roll” she’d always said in case she got a call to work a death scene.

“Hey, Rick,” she said, sliding into the booth.

“Hey.”

For a moment, we simply stared into each others’ eyes. Trying to decipher who we were all these years later, I suppose. Her eyes were still a pale brown, like a fawn, which was funny ‘cause her temperament was more like a hawk’s than some leaf-eating Bambi. There was still a flicker of imp about her, as though life were a joke and she was game to play, but it seemed tamped down, as though the years had taught her to put a lid on it.

She tilted her head. “Is that the old Blondie hit?”

I grunted.

“Oh, I forgot…” She smiled, then turned serious. “About those crime scene photos…”

Just like Brianna to skip the formalities and get to the point. She’d been like that in bed, too.

“Does your friend who shared them with you have a name?”

“I only got to look at them for a few minutes,” she said, ignoring my question, “but that was long enough to see something important.”

Our waitress appeared. Brianna ordered a cup of coffee. I added a side of fries, crispy.

After the waitress left, she leaned slightly forward, spoke quietly. “There’d have been more blood if she’d died from that stab wound.”

I thought back to the hot spring pool, the red tinge of the water. “Seemed like a lot of blood to me.”

“Yeah, she bled, but if the true cause of death had been from being stabbed in the heart, it’d have been a gusher.” She made a dismissive gesture. “Sure, it’s possible the fatty tissue in her breasts would’ve prevented much bleeding, but still, there should’ve been more blood. That’s my theory, anyway. Apparently the medical examiner believes Deborah’s fatty tissue quickly sealed the entry wound.”

An acne-faced kid at the counter looked over his shoulder at us, his eyes wide with curiosity.

“Autopsy report,” I said, lowering my voice. “Did your friend provide you that as well?”

“A different friend read parts of it to me over the phone.”

“I suppose this other friend doesn’t have a name, either.”

“I called in a favor, wanted to know how the medical examiner’s observations fit with what I’d seen in the picture.”

Brianna’s coffee and my heart-clogging pile of carbs and grease arrived. She poured cream and sugar into her coffee.

“Still making milkshakes, I see.” I picked up a fry.

“Still going for the comfort, I see.” When she smiled, fine lines splayed from her eyes, and her mouth spread into a thin-lipped smirk that seemed more an act of memory than real. Once upon a time, she’d reminded me of the Dead song “Scarlet Begonia” about a woman who was magical and different. The woman across the speckled Formica table seemed mundane, tired of life.

“I should’ve called you after Joe …”

She gave a one-shouldered shrug, took a sip of coffee.

I looked at her unpolished nails, imagined more than felt the small calluses on the base of her fingers. Noticed she no longer wore her ring, although only recently as the tan line was still there.