Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (5 page)

“No kidding?”

“There was a cop there—a really pushy detective,” Marianne said. “He’s the one I just saw go by in the lobby. I didn’t want him to see me again. He caught me staring at the stain, and he started asking a lot of questions. He’d eaten something rancid for lunch.”

“Oh, so you got close enough to smell his breath?”

“Renee, knock it off. He’s probably still around here somewhere. If he finds both of us up there gaping at that wall, he’ll haul us in for questioning.”

“Oh, come on,” Renee laughed. But when she saw the expression on Marianne’s face, she groaned in surrender.

They paid their bill, and Marianne led the way to a door exiting directly to the street.

Like a fleeing criminal. Maybe I
ought
to
be arrested.

00011
KUDZU

“Chicago?” Nolan snapped. “Do you realize what the weather’s like in Chicago in the middle of January? They’ve got this big goddamn lake there. It’s artificial. They put it there just to blow cold air across town and freeze visitors’ butts off. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. That’s the kind of creeps these Chicagoans are.”

Nolan was leaning across Captain Bruce Coffey’s desk. The captain leaned back in his chair, puffing briskly at his cheap cigar. The smell was vile as always, almost suffocating, but nobody ever raised a voice in complaint. Any division strictures against smoking went unenforced in the captain’s office.

Clayton stood quietly behind Nolan, noticing for the thousandth time his partner’s uncanny ability to fill up a room. Everything about Nolan struck Clayton as
wide
—not actually fat, although his gut did display a slight roll, but ruggedly broad. His mouth, nose, and brow were all outsized and a bit primitive. Of course, the captain was big in his own way, too, but his weight was distributed somewhat lower on his shorter frame.

“Nasty weather is one of those little hardships a dedicated detective must sometimes endure,” Coffey chuckled in his gravelly voice, leaning back in his chair.

“I’ve got other cases going,” Nolan added. “Why can’t the cops there do their own homework?”

It was clear that Nolan and the captain were enjoying the battle. Clayton wondered where his partner got the energy.

Come on, guys. Let’s finish up the routine.

Clayton looked around the office. All the chairs, with the exception of the one occupied by the captain, were stacked with folders and papers. Memos of one kind or another were pinned three deep to every inch of the pale green bulletin board and had crept onto the nearby walls.

Like kudzu.
The voracious vine had shrouded whole trees in South Carolina, where Clayton’s grandmother still lived. He was struck by an image of papers covering the desk, the walls, the lamp, and even the captain with a leafy blanket, hiding all details, smothering all activity.

“Think of it as a diplomatic mission,” Coffey said. “We’ve got fences to mend. The L.A.P.D. doesn’t exactly shine when somebody takes an axe to a wealthy and prominent Chicago citizen in one of our finest luxury hotels and we can’t even come up with a suspect.”

“Actually,” Nolan replied mildly, “forensics is pretty sure the weapon was a knife.”

“Whatever,” the captain snapped back with a glare. “As of today, you don’t have other cases going. You get my point, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I get it,” Nolan said, shuffling his feet edgily.

Clayton glanced around uneasily, as if the pinned up papers had rustled behind him. “So I guess I’ll go home and start packing too?” he asked.

“Nope. You’re staying right here to direct the follow-up on local leads.”

“Oh, that’s just great,” Nolan complained. “Clayton stays warm and cozy while I head off to the Arctic tundra to tangle with the Cossacks—on a weekend. My
weekend
for Chrissake! Everybody I need to talk to’ll probably be out of town.”

“Don’t worry, Grobowski. I talked to the folks in Chicago, and they’re already checking out the whereabouts of family and associates. They’ll be available.”

“Look at all this electronic crap!” Nolan exclaimed, waving at the fax, the computer, and various other digital devices. “Why can’t we get everything we could possibly need—”

“I want you there! I want you to look people in the eye and get answers yourself, just like always. I want to know what
you
think, not some ball of chips and wires.”

“Okay, Captain. That’s what you want, you got it.”

There was a brief silence, then Coffey shifted in his chair. “Move the papers,” he growled. “Sit.”

Clayton sighed. He had hoped to be out of here by now. Both detectives picked up stacks of papers off the chairs and piled them on top of other stacks elsewhere in the office. They sat down and took out their notebooks.

“So what do we know about the Quenton Parks murder?” Coffey asked.

We don’t know shit, and he knows it. He just wants to rub our noses in it.

But they went over it again.

Yesterday, they had interviewed more than two dozen people at the hotel and turned up nothing. Today they had returned to the scene, but useful information had been no more forthcoming. The lack of an apparent motive or any other leads or suspects was a bad sign.

True, a young, blond, buxom, and extremely anxious woman in room 636 had come forward and admitted that she had been in bed with Mr. G. K. Judson a very short time before his death. Ms. Gail Printy said she had met Mr. Judson just the day before.

“Call girl?” Coffey asked.

“Naw, anything but.” Nolan laughed.

“Just a kid,” Clayton explained. “Nineteen, rich neurosurgeon’s daughter. Wants to make it in Hollywood, so Daddy puts her up in a fancy hotel for a few weeks.”

“Mr. Judson kind of swept her off her feet,” Nolan added.

“Snowed her with a lot of talk about his Hollywood connections. Said he was tight with Steven Spielberg.”

Coffey let out a low, rumbling chuckle. “So whaddya say? Should we haul ol’ Stevie in for questioning?”

“Probably not. A guy as rich as Judson can’t afford friends, is how I see it.”

“Girl was hysterical that maybe we’d call her daddy and tell him she’d been sleeping around,” Nolan said. “Couldn’t seem to get it through her head there’d been an honest-to-God murder. A real sheltered Suzie Sorority type.”

“So Judson balls her and heads back to his own room,” Coffey said. “And you believe her story?”

“We ran a check on her, and she seems to be who she says she is,” Nolan added. “Besides, she’s about five foot two with tiny hands and delicate fingernails. Whoever did Judson in was made of sterner stuff.”

“Guess I’ll have to trust your instincts.” Coffey shook his head. “I sure as hell hate to do that. What was Judson in town for, anyhow?” Coffey asked.

“Some kind of board meeting, his secretary in Chicago said.”

“Any nasty winds in the business world? A merger? A buyout? Cooked books? Stockholder feuds? A guy like Judson must have been a nonstop boardroom screwing machine. He must’ve done lots of billion-dollar humping, and not all of it consensual.”

“I talked to a couple of higher-ups at the local Apex Airlines office on the phone,” Clayton said. “According to them, Judson was just here to attend the meeting as a courtesy. Nobody admits to any arguments on deck. Everything was all roses, according to these guys.”

“Sure. They’ll never say anything else. Didn’t you talk to any of the secretaries? They’re the ones who know. Or maybe a disgruntled mid-level manager.”

“We’re gonna get to those this afternoon.”

“This afternoon? Why haven’t you done it already?”

Nolan and Clayton ignored this jab and finished up their summary. Earlier today they had again exasperated Gillaspie, the hotel manager, by presenting him with a subpoena for credit card information on the hotel’s several hundred guests, plus the hotel register. The precinct’s computer wizards would work the data over to check for any previous connection between other guests and Mr. Judson. Nobody honestly expected to find anything there.

It was becoming a high profile case. Judson was big news. National headlines and TV had put the L.A.P.D. in the ugly glare of a spotlight. So Nolan would go to the Windy City tomorrow, where he’d meet with Chicago homicide detectives to help interview Mr. G. K. Judson’s family, business associates, and friends (if any) to determine just how many people wanted Mr. G. K. Judson dead. Doubtless, the list would be formidable.

In the meantime, there was still plenty to check out in L.A. Nolan would pay a visit to Apex Airlines’ local office and see what else he could put together about Judson while Clayton talked to some of his contacts on the streets.

“Is there anything else you want?” Clayton asked.

“Yeah,” snapped Coffey. “An arrest. And get the fuck out of my office. Whaddya think this is, the detectives’ lounge? Get back to work.”

*

Marianne stood in the lobby of the Quenton Parks Hotel, waiting for the elevator. The shock she had experienced that morning, her fear of arrest, her paranoid elevator trip down to meet Renee, all seemed like memories from long ago.

So what did she feel now?

Sad.

Yes, that was the best word for it.

But why? The two and a half hours she had just spent at Renee’s condo had hardly been unpleasant. Most of the time had been spent in the expected small talk and reminiscence. What had been wrong with that?

Had
anything been wrong?

The two of them had tried to find another time to meet during Marianne’s stay in L.A. But their lunch and dinner schedules just didn’t jibe for the next three days. Renee had invited her to an open house at her condo on Sunday night, but Marianne needed to head back to Santa Barbara before then. Would it be another year before they saw each other again?

Marianne got on the elevator. The doors closed. Alone, she rode up through the whispering tunnel. She kept seeing the memorabilia that cluttered Renee’s new condo, kept hearing the note of bittersweet longing in her friend’s voice. It seemed discouraging to be so unable to share Renee’s nostalgia. What had happened? When had “the good old days” passed so resolutely into the past that Marianne couldn’t even yearn for them?

Then she remembered. For her, “the good old days” had ended with a very specific incident. At one of Evan’s soirées, she had dropped a good dose of LSD, as had everybody else there. According to Renee and Evan, Marianne was rather stuffy about drugs. But on that particular night, a little reality altering had seemed like a good idea.

As the drug began to take effect, Marianne watched the others at the party with detached fascination as they exchanged stoned inanities. Then came a flood of dizziness and disorientation, and Marianne retired to the bedroom. She plopped herself down on the bed on top of everybody’s coats and jackets and stared at the window blind, which seemed to take on profoundly meaningful shapes.

A curve along the edge of the blind became a vast, frozen mountain lake with a violent snowstorm blowing across it. The window lock, partially visible behind the blind, became a hunched, solitary figure trudging wearily across the lake, carrying some enormous burden. Marianne watched for what seemed like days, following the figure’s futile but heroic trek across miles of ice and snow. She could not tell whether it was a man or a woman, nor could she guess what burden the little lost being bore through that storm.

Reality had split down the middle. Marianne was lying in a heap of clothes atop her own familiar bed while simultaneously observing a poignant drama in a strange, faraway world. In the middle of it all, the drug abruptly wore off. The window blind was only a window blind, and the lock was only a lock again. Marianne rose from her bed and looked at her watch with surprise. The effects had quit a good bit ahead of schedule, but the memory of the solitary ice traveler was still disturbingly vivid. What was this person she’d seen trudging determinedly through the snow trying to tell her?

Marianne left Evan three weeks later. Her old life ended, leaving a strange blank where her new life was supposed to be.

The design job that Marianne found in Santa Barbara offered her a real professional life for the first time. As for her personal life, she had thought that surely nothing could be less authentic than her years with Evan. But she had been wrong. Life became, if anything, more empty and purposeless than it was before. She had only wandered farther adrift into an icy inner landscape.

The elevator doors hissed open at the sixth floor. Marianne started. She had almost forgotten about this morning’s bloody apparition. It had escaped her mind that she would have to confront it again.

Marianne stepped off the elevator and forced herself to face the wall. It was perfectly, immaculately white. The screen and the yellow tape were gone. A small area rug covered the floor, and three potted palms sat on the rug. There was no sign of workmen or disarray of any kind.

Marianne leaned over and reached through the plants, placing one finger on the wall. She jerked it back.

The paint wasn’t even wet.

She felt a deep tingle in her solar plexus. In an eerie and terrible way, the coat of paint only made that stain more visible, more palpable, more indelible. Whatever portion of the stain had proven impossible to scrub away
was still behind there.
It wasn’t just a redness. It was a bit of a man’s mortality. It was part of his corpse. And it was permanent now. It could never be removed.

She looked down at the rug on the floor. If she moved a palm and looked under that rug, she would find a stain there, too.

She thought back to her encounter with the cop that morning. Why had she fled from him? What had gotten into her?

Marianne hurried down the hallway toward her room.

*

Nolan was getting ready to pay a visit to Apex Airlines. He had just put on his jacket and was starting to walk away from his desk in the tumultuous detective bay area when his phone rang.

“Grobowski.”

“I’m gonna do it,” snapped a man’s voice on the other end.

“Pardon?”

“You heard me,” replied the voice tensely. “I said I’m gonna do it.”

What in the hell is this?

Had someone on the switchboard blundered and transferred some sort of crisis call to Nolan’s desk? If so, who was he talking to? Some suicidal nut standing next to an open twelfth-story window? Or some psychopath holding a gun to a hostage’s head?

“This is Lieutenant Nolan Grobowski,” Nolan said cautiously.

“I know who I’m talking to.”

“Then perhaps you would like to explain your situation to me.”

“I already explained my goddamned situation. I’m
gonna do it.
What more do you need to know?”

Nolan took a long, slow breath. What should he do now? Put this character on hold while he buzzed the switchboard to find out what this was all about?

“You’ve got me at a bit of a disadvantage. Would you please tell me just what it is you’re going to do?”

“I’m gonna retire. What the hell do you think?”

“Retire?”

“Yeah. I’ve put it off long enough. So what the hell are you gonna do about it?”

Nolan’s mouth dropped open. Now he recognized that sharp, intense voice, however cleverly disguised …

“Syd!”
he exclaimed.

“Who’d you think it was?”

Nolan sank back into his chair. It was Syd Harper, Nolan’s field training officer from a decade and a half ago. “Crazy” Syd used to pull little stunts and pranks on Nolan fairly routinely, sometimes with the semiserious intent of simulating hypothetical on-the-job emergencies. Now Syd was the sheriff in a small town in Oregon, but Nolan still heard from him occasionally.