Dead Ringer (19 page)

“
If that’s what you want, then that’s what you get.”

“
You’re not gonna make me eat oatmeal? Lately whenever we go out for breakfast you make me eat oatmeal. Oops, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”

“
That’s okay,” Maggie said. Then, “Do we go out to breakfast a lot?”

“
Only on the weekends.”

“
Ah. Well, we’ll still do that, but no more oatmeal, you can have whatever you want.” Going out to eat was supposed to be special and oatmeal was anything but that. Maggie shook her head. Why would Margo take her daughter out to eat, then spoil it by not letting her have what she wanted?

Jasmine bubbled all through breakfast. Maggie doubted she’d ever seen anyone so happy. She almost wished she didn’t have to take her to school. It would have been nice if she could have spent the whole day just getting to know her. But she’d have time for that later, now it was important for her to get on with Margo’s life.

* * *

Maggie had promised Gay she’d go straight to the police station after she dropped Jasmine off at school and describe Ferret Face to the cops, but she wasn’t ready. Besides, nobody was going to kill her in class and by the end of the day she’d have her story down pat.

She found a spot in student parking, found the bookstore and got a map of the campus. Margo’s first class, Creative Writing, started at 10:00. American Government at 11:00. An hour for lunch, then Psych 1A at 1:00, Spanish at 2:00 and Biology at 3:00. A very full load.

She settled into the writing class. She may have come in at the middle of the semester, but she’d have no problem in the class. She spent the time listening to the professor drone on without taking notes. He wasn’t very good. Maggie thought back to when she had been in college, remembered her creative writing professor. He’d made fiction come alive, not like this guy. As an instructor, he was a wet noodle.

She gasped when she walked into the next class. The redhead she’d seen with Nick at the Lounge was talking to the professor at the front of the classroom. How could that be? What were the odds? Then she remembered Nick said she was a student at Cal State.

The girl looked up as Maggie took a seat at the back. They locked eyes for a second, then the redhead turned back to the professor, a smallish man in a cord jacket and slacks. She hadn’t recognized her. Didn’t have a clue. And she was a journalism student. What kind of reporter could she ever turn out to be? Maybe it was the new hair, or head job as Gay called it.

Maggie wondered if Nick spent the night with her, wondered what Nick was thinking right now. Did he have to go to the morgue to identify the body? Was he grieving? Could she find out from the redhead how he was handling it? Would that be smart? Probably not.

She saw the albino on her way to her third class.

“
Mrs. Kenyon.”

“
Officer —,” she let it linger.

“
Norton,” he said.

“
That’s right.” She had to play it cool. It was a good thing Gay told her about the cops.

“
We’ve missed you this last week.”

“
Sorry.” She couldn’t think of what else to say. “Where’s your partner?” She remembered Gay saying he had a partner.

“
He’s on his way to England.”

“
I don’t understand.”

“
He put in for a transfer a couple of years ago, kind of a cop exchange program. He found out he got accepted this morning. He’s on his way to the airport as we speak.”

“
That sounds kind of fast.”

“
Apparently he’d been approved weeks ago, but there was some slip up when it came to notifying him.”

“
Sounds like he was lucky he got the news at all,” Maggie said, feeling her way around the conversation.

“
Sounds like.” Then, “You cut it off, dyed it.”

“
What? Oh, the hair. I felt like a change,” she said.

“
It looks good on you.” He hadn’t had any trouble picking her out of a crowd of students, but then cops were trained to be observant.

“
So, what are you doing here?”

“
You were supposed to come down to the station and look at more photos.” He was studying her hair. Any second she expected him to ask why she’d done it.

“
Now?” Maggie fought panic. She wasn’t ready.

“
If it’s not too much trouble.”

“
I’ve got a class.”

“
How about after?”

“
My last class gets out at 4:00.”

“
Mrs. Kenyon.”

“
I’m sorry, school’s important to me.”

“
Alright, I’ll pick you up at 4:00.”

“
That’s okay, Mr. Norton. I know how to find the police station.”

But she had trouble finding a parking spot that evening and didn’t get into the squad room with Norton till ten after five. “That’s a lot of books,” she said when she saw the stack she was going to have to go through.

“
We could be here a while,” he said. “It’s a good thing I live alone.”

“
Okay, let’s get started.” Maggie was glad she’d called Gay and told her she might be late. From the amount of mug books on Norton’s desk, it could be an all nighter.

Three hours later, eyes bleary, she turned a page and sucked in a quick breath.

“
See something?” Norton said.

“
That kinda looks like him.” It looked like Horace with the ferret face, only lots younger and with longer hair.

“
You’re sure?”

Maggie looked at the picture for a few seconds. It was Ferret Face. She gulped. Part of her wanted to tell this policeman everything. Another part said to hold her silence and that’s what she did. Yes, he and that Virgil character had chased her on the beach, but what if it was only because they’d seen her in the paper? What if they were only going to mug her?

“
It’s not him,” she said.

“
You don’t look so good,” Norton said.

“
It’s a little warm in here.”

“
No it’s not.”

“
I’ll be alright.” But she didn’t know if she would be.

“
Make real sure it’s not him. Look hard.”

Maggie did. “It’s not him.” But it was Ferret Face, however that didn’t mean he was the one who did the killing in the mini mart. She couldn’t be sure, not for certain. She couldn’t name him for that. Besides, she’d look awful stupid if she said it was him and it wasn’t. If he had an alibi, like if he was miles away or something.

“
Norton, phone,” a seedy looking detective from the other side of the room called out. “I’ll transfer it over.”

“
Norton here.” He listened. “Oh no!” He sat as if the air had been ripped from his lungs. “I see.” He hung up.

“
What?” Maggie knew it was bad.

“
My mother took her life.” He was shaking.

“
Is there anything I can do?”

“
No.” He looked at her, eyes misty. “My ex-wife died last year. A skiing accident.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
We were young, had kids, then divorced. We never should have married, but she got pregnant, you know how it goes.”

“
Yeah, I do,” Maggie said.

“
The kids have been staying with my mother in Avalon.”

“
I’ve been to Catalina. It’s nice. Good place for kids to grow up. Safe.”

“
I’m going to have to take some time, go over there.”

“
Of course.” Maggie wanted to comfort him, but didn’t know how.

“
I’ll have to get my cases reassigned, yours too.”

“
I understand.”

“
I don’t think you do.” He was speaking as if every word was an effort. “A man named Larry Striker is the lobbyist for Nakano Construction. They build all over the county, office and apartment buildings of the ten to twenty story variety. It’s rumored they use a lot of Yakuza money. Yakuza, that’s like the Japanese Mafia.”

“
I know who the Yakuza are,” Maggie said.

“
Striker used to be a cop. Twenty years, rose to captain. He knows everybody. When he left the force he went to work for Congressman Nishikawa as his local administrative assistant. It was Nishikawa who got him the job with Nakano. You see, there’s laws, a congressman can only pay so much. With Nakano, the sky’s the limit for a guy like Striker.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
He was the kind of cop who wasn’t afraid of breaking the rules. He wouldn’t think twice about lying on the stand, lying to his boss, to the press, to anyone if it furthered his career. I’d imagine he’d be very valuable to a company like Nakano.”

“
So, why are you telling me all this?”

“
This guy you almost identified, Horace Nighthyde, he used to snitch for Striker.”

“
Surely that’s a coincidence?”

“
Maybe.” He stared across the room with a faraway look in his eyes. “Let’s look at what we have so far. When we pulled your ex in, he acted like the ballbuster he is in court, but as soon as we threatened him with a few hours in a holding cell, he started to make nice. He confessed he was working with Frankie Fujimori. They knew you were following him and were waiting for you to harasses him. Kenyon didn’t just want a restraining order, he wanted you arrested.”

“
Swell guy.”

“
You married him.”

“
We all make mistakes.”

“
Yeah, well, I know about that.” Then, “Fujimori wasn’t the only Asian in that store when he was killed. Ichiro Yamamoto, ex-employee of Congressman Nishikawa, was there too. He was Striker’s right hand when Striker was in the Congressman’s employ. He stayed on for a year or so, then he was caught in a bar with an ounce of cocaine and sixty-thousand dollars.”

“
Let me guess,” Maggie said. “He said it wasn’t his.”

“
You’re partly right. He owned up to the coke, but said the money wasn’t his. He wanted to cut a deal, said he had the goods on the Congressman. For something that big we called the DA and Assistant DA Norris Stover came right over. Yamamoto said the money was from Striker and Nakano, a regular payment which Nishikawa distributed among a few other congressmen to get them to vote against anything that has the government interfering in Western Africa.”

“
I don’t get it.”

“
Yamamoto claimed Nakano was supplying some oil company with weapons and that somehow those weapons were being traded for illegal diamonds.”

“
I still don’t understand.”

“
Conflict diamonds. Diamonds mined by rebel armies. They use them to finance their wars.”

“
Oh.”

“
But the investigation stopped dead in its tracks, because Yamamoto made bail and two days later someone shot Frankie Fujimori dead right in front of his eyes. All of a sudden Yamamoto says he was lying about the congressman and the diamonds. Apparently he’d rather go to jail, than have what happened to Fujimori happen to him.

“
You think Nishikawa had Striker send this Nighthyde character to kill him? Nishikawa’s a war hero. He wouldn’t do that. That’s nuts?”

“
You’re probably right. It’s just one of those things that bothers a homicide detective, you know, a coincidence.”

“
Your Yamamoto character was probably lying through his teeth.”

“
I admit it’s thin, but it’s something I would have followed up.”

“
Do you think it should be?” Maggie didn’t want to admit that Congressman Nishikawa might be a crook. She’d met him at several functions. He was kind of a friend of Nick’s. He seemed like such a nice man.

“
Yeah, but it’s not easy questioning people like Nishikawa and Striker without a lot more to go on.” He pushed his hair out of his eyes, sighed. “Look, there’s this guy, Lt. Wolfe. Billy Wolfe. He’s a weird duck, works alone. I can try and get him interested in this. Maybe he’ll take it on. He’s the only one I’d trust with it.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Besides having to go up against the brass to get permission to question a congressman, we’re overworked, and it’s no secret if you don’t clear a homicide in the first couple of days, it’s almost never solved. We’re going on two weeks with this one, so most of the guys would put it on the back burner, even if Striker and Nishikawa weren’t potentially involved.”

“
And this Billy Wolfe won’t.” Maggie fidgeted in her chair.

“
He’s not like the rest of us. It’s not that he’s smarter. He just looks at things differently. It’s one of the reasons he works alone. The other is he doesn’t keep regular hours. He might work forty-eight straight, then we might not see him for a week. Sometimes he works nights, sometimes days, sometimes he sleeps at his desk.

“
If he takes a case, there’s a high probably it’ll get solved. He has the highest clearance rate in the state, the nation I’d bet.”

“
What do you mean if? Doesn’t he get assigned cases like any other officer?”

“
Nope, he only takes on the ones that interest him.”

“
How’s he get away with that?”

“
He doesn’t take the easy ones. He gets an open and shut and he passes it on. Makes him very popular among the guys. The brass don’t like him much, but they keep him around because he hands them the hard ones on a platter. The press keeps his name out of the papers because he delivers good stories, usually slanted to put pressure on whoever he’s investigating, but they’re good stories nonetheless. They know he’s using them, but they can’t help themselves.