Unpaid Dues (14 page)

Perhaps her killer had used her affection for dolls
to lure her out of hiding.

In her kitchen trash he found pieces of a greeting
card. There was also a blue envelope that seemed to match the card.
He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, gathered the torn pieces, and
assembled them on her kitchen table. The printed message read: "I
think of you often, though the years and miles have divided us."
There was an additional handwritten note, unsigned. It read: "I
haven't forgotten you."

St. John made a note to obtain Cyrill McCarthy's jail
booking records for a sample of his handwriting. He called Shelter
from the Storm when he got back to headquarters. An operator
answered. She told him that he needed to speak to an advocate, then
took his name, badge number, and supervisor's name. The call was
returned to him through dispatch.

"
This is Janet Moriarity from Shelter from the
Storm," she explained in a pissed-off tone of voice. "I'm
returning your call."

Not: What can I do for you?

"I'm trying to solve a homicide. I have reason
to believe that the murder victim volunteered at your facility and
I'm trying to reconstruct the last few days and weeks of her life."

"
Was she killed by her batterer?"

"We don't know that yet."

"Look at the statistics. ln fact, why don't you
check your nine-one-one logs and see how many times your officers
were called out to save her?"

Yeah, he thought, and how about how many times she
refused to press charges? "Her name was Jane Ferrar."

"
l can't give you any information," she
said.

Her hostility was palpable. He took a calming breath.
One of them needed to be composed.

He knew where she was coming from. Women went to
shelters because they had been battered, were seeking haven, and
understandably had a problem with trust. St. John's team had once
lost a witness when they placed her in protective custody at a
battered women's shelter under an assumed name and then misplaced the
pseudonym. The staff at the shelters felt a deep responsibility to
keep their clients safe and their identities confidential. They
wouldn't confirm, even to the police, especially not to the police
(who were often batterers themselves), if a woman was there or had
ever been there. The LAPD had a bad  habit of not taking
domestic violence seriously and in fact was being sued for it.

St. John remembered working patrol and how he and his
fellow officers felt about domestics. If a cop was going to get hurt,
chances were it would be during a husband/wife thing. Standard
operating procedure was to pull the woman aside and ask what she had
done to provoke the guy Then they told the guy to take a walk and
calm down. They treated them both like criminals. Eighteen required
hours of "sensitivity training" later, all that had
changed.

"Ma'am, we are trying to catch her murderer. "

"So you say. Seventy-five percent of the women
killed by their abusers are killed as they are leaving them."

"
Yes, ma'am," he said as politely as
possible. He hadn't called for a lecture, and he was tempted to
direct her attention to other statistics. For instance, how many
times these women returned to their batterers after leaving them.
He'd guess on average a half a dozen per woman. Maybe he'd read that
somewhere. And how many of those women got restraining orders and
then broke them and made contact with their supposed enemy? His wife,
Caroline, had explained the psychology of it all once, or tried to.
It still didn't make any sense to him.

"My information is that Jane Ferrar was a
substance abuser."

"
Drugs and alcohol are against our rules.
They're often a big part of the overall problem."

"
I'm sure they are," he said. "I'm
also looking for another woman who was a victim of the same man."

"When we get these women in a room together to
talk about their experience, it's as if they were all married to the
same man. The men all use identical isolation tactics, repeated
attacks to the women's self-esteem, unpredictable outbursts of anger
followed by physical abuse."

He held up a palm, translating the gesture into his
tone of voice. "I'm not arguing with you. I'm one of the good
guys."

She made no response.

"This woman's name is Stacy Lansford. As I said,
she's a previous victim of our prime suspect. I'm very concerned
about her. In fact, we're about to file a missing person report."
He hoped the ploy would pry some bit of confirmation out of her.

Janet Moriarity didn't sound the least bit fazed by
his announcement. The most she would agree to do was post a notice on
the various bulletin boards, and if Stacy Lansford was around, and if
she saw the notice, and if she chose to respond, he would hear from
her. The notices could be delivered to the outreach office in Santa
Monica and Janet Moriarity would see to their distribution from
there.

St. John wasn't
optimistic. Stacy Lansford had been missing in action for four years.
The odds were slim that she would still be availing herself of a
shelter unless she was still in the horrible back-and-forth phase
before breaking free. He composed a flyer asking for information
about Stacy Lansford and Jane Ferrar, explaining in candid terms that
he was a homicide detective hoping to bring Jane's murderer to
justice and that any information about Jane's whereabouts prior to
her death would be most helpful to his investigation. He made it
clear that Stacy Lansford was not a suspect and that anyone
contacting him could do so with complete anonymity He included his
telephone number and a photograph of Jane, made ten copies, and took
them to the outreach office in Santa Monica.

* * *

Nathan arrived at Munch's work a little after three.
Munch didn't see who had dropped him off. She looked up to see him
swaggering her way He stopped to give a car the right of way and then
spit on the cement as it passed him out the driveway. She shook her
head, remembering how Deb spit all the time and how cool and tough it
had seemed when they were teenagers.

"Don't do that," she said now as Nathan got
within hailing distance.

"What?"

"
It's crude."

"You want me to swallow it?"

"
Just don't make such a point of it."

"Whatever." He squinted at the passing
traffic.

"Did you get paid?"

He patted his pocket by way of answering.

"Well, let's go check out your new car. "
Munch grabbed the key off the Peg-Board above the service desk and
led Nathan around the side of the shop to where a white Honda Civic
was parked. Nathan approached the car reverently, spreading his large
hands over the hood as if to assure himself it was real.

"What do you think?"

"Totally rad."

She lifted the hood, pleased he was so happy. "Let
me show you a few things. This is the dipstick for the crankcase and
here's the brake fluid. Don't rely on the coolant level in the
overflow bottle; once a week check the radiator, but always when it's
cold." She walked him around to the trunk and showed him where
the spare tire and jack were stowed, then explained how to use them.

"
I've got lots of spare parts from the old
engine if anything goes wrong"

"
This is a new engine?" he asked.

"New used. I buy them cheap. I've been doing
this for years: buying cars with mechanical problems, fixing them up,
and then selling them. A few months ago I bought another Honda I
thought just needed a valve job. I had already bought the car and was
manually rotating the engine by turning the crankshaft pulley and
then I saw something move from where I shouldn't have been able to."

"What was it?"

"The piston moving up and down. There was a big
hole in the block I hadn't seen before. Now I'm fucked, uh, screwed,
because the engine is history I started looking in the Recycler and I
see all these ads for used Japanese engines, I mean, like, cheap. A
hundred dollars on average. I found out that in Japan when the cars
get thirty thousand miles on them they have to get a new engine. It's
their smog law. So anyway they ship all the good used engines by the
tanker over here. Cost me less to swap out the engine than it would
have to do a valve job and I wound up with a better product. Of
course, you don't know how well the previous owner took care of his
car, but for a hundred bucks it's worth the gamble."

Nathan nodded throughout her recital. "Awesome,"
was his only comment.

She gave him the ownership certificate, which had
already been signed off, the registration, a smog certificate, and a
bill of sale for one hundred dollars.

"You're going to need to pay sales tax when you
register it in your name, so I had to put something down. I've only
had this car a week, so it's still in the last owner's name. I'll
drive over to the DMV with you today if you want. Did you call that
guy about insurance?"

"
Not yet." .

"
You're going to have to have liability at least
before I can give you the keys."

"I'm going to do it."

"C'mon, you can use the phone in the office."

She pocketed the keys and he followed her around the
front of the building. "I talked to your mom last night."

"Oh yeah?"

"
I told her you were working. She said she was
real proud of you."

Nathan beamed.

It always astonished Munch how a person could be the
worst parent in the world and still be loved, how the parent's praise
or any little nod of approval would be cherished. And the worse they
were, the fewer crumbs it took to make their kids happy In fact, some
of the sweetest-natured kids she knew had junkies for mommies and
daddies.

"
She told me how much she missed you. You should
write her. "

"
I'll call her tonight."

"That's awfully expensive. I hate to see you
burn up all your paycheck on my phone bill."

"No, it's cool," he said. "I've got a
credit card number to use."

"That's not going to happen."

"Why not?"

"It's stealing."

"
No, here's the thing. It's a big company. They
won't even notice."

"Not the point."

"
Man," he said, looking exasperated.

"Listen, I'm going to need you to watch Asia
tonight. You do that for me and you can make one quick call to your
mom. Sound like a plan?"

"
Sure. And, uh, Munch? Thanks for everything"
l

"I'm happy to do it."

They reached the office. Nathan called the insurance
company. When Asia's school bus arrived at four-thirty, the three of
them drove to the Department of Motor Vehicles after first stopping
at the insurance office and picking up Nathan's insurance
certificate. The only problem came when the guy wanted to sign Nathan
up for a year. They finally came to an agreement whereby Nathan paid
for three months now and would pay the balance in May.

One day at a time, Munch thought.
 

Chapter 14

That night, Munch gave Rico Chac6n's number to
Nathan. The two kids were sitting on the couch watching a show called
Family Ties. Asia let Nathan hold the "cartooner," which
had been Munch's and Asia's word for the remote control for as long
as either of them could remember. Asia absorbed the show with her jaw
dropped open. Nathan seemed equally enthralled.

Munch had scrubbed her hands raw, put on makeup, and
sprayed her throat with Charlie perfume. She had on boots, which she
wore outside her jeans, and a sheer polka-dot blouse under her bomber
jacket. When she bent down to kiss Asia good-bye, the little girl
wrinkled her nose.

"
You don't smell like you."

Munch was a little surprised, never thinking of
herself as having a particular scent. She imagined it was most likely
petroleum-based.

"
You don't like my perfume?" she asked.
"Doesn't it smell like flowers?"

Asia waved her hand in front of her face. "It's
kinda strong."

"
You're hurting my feelings," Munch said,
imitating Asia's I'm-about-to-cry voice.

Asia pretended to faint into the cushions. "Somebody
open a window."

"
I like it," Nathan said, shoving her
shoulder playfully.

"Thank you. I'm glad to see someone in this
house has some manners."

Asia coughed by way of answer.

Munch squeezed Asia's toes. "I'll see you all
later."

She arrived at Rico's at eight-thirty.

He answered his door barefoot, smelling of warm soap.
She hoped he would kiss her right there, under his porch light, in
front of God and everybody Instead he pulled her inside and shut the
door. Then the kisses started. They barely spoke for the first hour.

Several more hours passed, until finally they
parted—each lying spread-eagle on the bed, the bed-sheets in a
hopeless tangle. She expected the mirror on the closet to be dulled
by their steam.