Full Release (20 page)

I should have guessed they’d done something like this. Financially, the city was circling the drain. There’s no way they could afford to have me followed by a couple of cops twenty-four/seven. A GPS saved them a ton of money. I opened my car and tossed the GPS device onto the front seat. Now, I controlled whether they followed me or not.

I was angry, of course. Strangely, I felt dirty. Doing massages with a full release hadn’t made me feel dirty. But the idea that the police were watching me, judging every move I made, waiting for me to give them the information they needed to put me in prison like any common criminal, that made me feel dirty. Like I’d picked up a parasite.

I was still fuming when the phone rang. Not recognizing the number, I barked a hello into the phone. I was surprised to discover Sylvia Navarez on the other end. She sounded nervous, her voice quivering.

“I want you to come over. If you come over, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Why? Why are you going to tell me?”

She left a long silence. “I feel too guilty. Letting you pay for something you didn’t do.”

That was good enough for me. I hung up the phone and rushed to put away my groceries. When I was done, I hurried back out to the garage. I opened up the passenger door on my car and picked up the GPS off the front seat. I set it into one of the boxes of unused kitchen things. I didn’t think it was a good idea for the police to know where I was going.

Relief flowed through me. I felt like I’d just had a couple glasses of wine. I was sure Sylvia knew who had killed Eddie, and that meant this whole thing would be settled today, in just a few hours. I was nearly giddy as I sped to her house. I parked up the hill exactly where I had the last time I’d come. As I walked down toward Sylvia’s house, I wondered if her new protégé would be hanging around like he had last time. He was kind of cute. Maybe when all this was over I’d treat myself to one of his massages.

Of course, when all this was over what I wanted to treat myself to most of all was Detective Tripp. I had no idea if that would be possible. Sure, our make out session let me know he was attracted to me. But he hadn’t called me, and he didn’t completely believe I was innocent. I had no idea how he might feel about me when all this was over.

I probably should have called and had him meet me at Sylvia’s, but she might not be ready to talk to the police. She might only be ready to talk to me. Turning into her driveway, I could see the security door standing open. The Shelby Mustang sitting quietly in the driveway.

When I got to the porch, I stood next to the door and called out, “Sylvia.”

The house seemed unnaturally quiet. Standing very still, I wondered what I should do. Something was wrong. Sylvia seemed like the kind of woman who was protective of her things. Leaving the security door open struck me as out of character.

I stepped into the house. The small living room was a mess. The sofa had been pulled away from the wall and its cushions pulled off. The zipper on each one was opened, as though someone had run a hand inside looking for something. I squeezed my way past the large screen TV, which acted as a mirror, reflecting me as I walked across the room.

“Sylvia?” I called out again.

After the living room, there was a tiny dining room barely big enough for a small table and four chairs. On the built-in buffet, Sylvia’s son was allowed to keep a hamster in a cage. As I got closer, the tiny animal decided it was time for exercise. The wheel squeaked as it began to run in an endless circle.

The drawers of the buffet were open, their contents spilled onto the floor -- napkins, tablecloths, candles. On the dining table sat an old video camera and the bag it was normally packed in. Miscellaneous wires and empty mini-DV cases spread across the table. Was this the camera they used to make the video?

Two doors led off the dining room. One directly in front of me led to the kitchen. Another to the side led to the bedrooms and bathroom. I checked the kitchen first. Pushing the swinging door open, I peeked in. The contents of the cupboards littered the floor. It looked as though there had just been an earthquake. Letting the door swing closed, I walked across the dining room to the door that lead to the bedrooms.

My breath came really fast. I realized if I didn’t slow it down I’d hyperventilate. Standing very still, I slowed my breath. “Sylvia,” I called out for the third time. The house remained horribly silent. Through the door was a miniscule hallway. Directly in front of me was the door to the bathroom.

I turned and headed toward the bedroom on the right. It occurred to me that if she’d come home to find the house like this Sylvia might have immediately run out. The car was in the driveway, but she might have run to a neighbor’s house. Or maybe, like Eddie, she had an entirely different car she used. Either way, she might be safe right then, and calling the police. But no, she’d call me. Did this mess have something to do with why she’d decided to finally tell me who’d killed Eddie?

Stepping into the bedroom, I immediately saw that Sylvia was not at a neighbor’s house. She hadn’t driven off somewhere. She lay very still on the bed, her eyes open and staring.

Slowly, I walked over and took her by the wrist, checking for a pulse. I couldn’t find one. I broke out in a nervous sweat. She was dead. Her neck was red, particularly around her chin. There were two rows of fresh scratches, one below her chin and the other above her collarbone. At first they didn’t make sense, but then I realized she’d probably scratched herself while attempting to remove her killer’s hands. Looking more closely at her eyes, I noted that they looked flat, as if they’d never reflect light again. There were bright red hemorrhages around the edges.

I backed out of the bedroom, being careful not to touch anything. That left the other bedroom, her son’s room. It was awful to looking at Sylvia’s dead body, almost as bad as looking at Eddie’s, though I hadn’t really known her. I didn’t know what I’d do if I had to see a child dead. I walked down the short hallway to the other room.

The sheets and curtains depicted cartoon super heroes. It was difficult to tell if the room had been searched the way the others had, or if this was the normal condition of a ten-year-old’s room. The bed was empty. The floor covered in toys. Her son wasn’t here. I let out a deep, relieved sigh. Then it was time to get out of there. I tried to think back, had I touched anything in the house? I’d touched the door leading to the kitchen. I hurried back there and took the bottom of my T-shirt and rubbed it over the edge of the door where I’d touched it.

Walking back through the living room, I tried to remember if I’d touched the security door. My fingerprints on the outside wouldn’t be a big deal. Tripp knew I’d been here before. I had an explanation for those. I was almost out of the house when I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

On the coffee table, a cordless telephone receiver faced up. The dial was dimly lit. It looked like it was on. Using the bottom of my T-shirt again, I picked up the phone and listened. It sounded as though the line was open. “Hello?” I said.

“Hello! This is the emergency operator. The police are on their way. Can you tell me the situation?”

I dropped the phone and ran out of the house. When I got to the driveway, I heard a car screech to a stop in front of the house. I spun around and ran up the driveway. I slipped by the studio into the backyard. The hill continued upward in the back until the very end of the property where it was a dozen or so feet above the house’s roofline. Doors slammed behind me. Footsteps thumped into the house. Maybe I had been seen.

The yard was filled with junk: rusted patio furniture, a broken bicycle, building materials that should have been used to fix up the place long ago. A rotting wooden fence surrounded the property. I scanned the yard looking for a hiding place. Would I be safe back here? No, they’d search the yard eventually. I heard voices inside the house, more car doors slamming on the street. I couldn’t tell how many cars were down there now, but it was definitely more than one. I had to get out of there.

Hurrying to the back of the yard, I scrambled over the fence. The old fence broke under my weight, and I landed on my ass in the neighbor’s backyard. It took a moment to realize where I was. There was a great deal of squawking. Something smelled musty and old, like a rancid attic. To my right was a small shed-like structure too small for any human. To my left were a dozen flustered chickens. I’d landed in a chicken coop. I jumped up and ran across the patch of hard-packed dirt where the chickens were fed and jumped over the smaller fence used to keep the chickens in their area. As I got near the back of the Spanish-style house, a dog inside began barking. Then, unexpectedly, the chickens let out more flustered squawking -- just as they had when I fell over the fence.

I didn’t look back. I didn’t have time. But I knew someone was after me. I ran along side the house and found myself in the street. I had to make a decision fast. I could stay on the street until I figured out how to wind my way back to my car, or I could cut through people’s yards moving in the direction of my car.

Since it was clear that whoever was following me could get me in their sightlines if I stayed on the street, I decided to cut through yards. I ran three houses down and zipped into the yard of a contemporary ranch that didn’t have any fences to hop over and hopefully no chicken coops.

Dashing across the well-manicured lawn, I heard footsteps in the street behind me. My sense of direction was good. I was right above my car. What I’d forgotten was the steep, thirty-foot wall of sand and rock below me. I stopped at the end of the backyard and quickly tried to assess the safest way to get down to my car. Twenty feet to my left was a gully created by the last rainstorm. I decided that might be the best way down. I made for it.

Just as I began making my way down the gully, I was grabbed from behind. I spun around and there was Tripp. Without saying anything, he searched my eyes. Then he grabbed my hands and looked them over.

Immediately, I knew he was looking for scratches. He’d seen Sylvia’s body and knew that the scratches she’d made on her neck meant she’d also likely scratched her attacker. When he saw that there were no scratches on my hands, he looked up at me and said, “Get out of here. Fast.”

I squeezed his hand, then turned and scrambled down the gully to my car.

Chapter Twenty-One

The minute I pulled into my garage, I found the GPS on top of the box of kitchenware where I’d left it, bent over, and managed to get it stuck at the top of the wheel well where I’d found it. I knew Hanson and Tripp would be coming to talk to me. I didn’t want Hanson to know I knew about the GPS. Tripp would figure it out, obviously. But that didn’t matter. Somehow, miraculously, and for reasons I only partially understood, he believed me.

Tripp looked at my hands and saw that I couldn’t have killed Sylvia, yet he told me to leave the scene. He could have brought me back to his partner and explained why I wasn’t the killer, but he seemed not to want me anywhere near her. Why? Was she connected to the murders? That didn’t make sense. Especially if the killings were sex related. But what if they weren’t? Did Sylvia’s murder mean that Eddie’s death wasn’t sexual? Was there another reason for Eddie and Sylvia’s deaths?

Blackmail. It had crossed my mind before. It made sense. Eddie and Sylvia had too much money for what they were doing. So who were they blackmailing? One of Eddie’s clients? Was it the priest? If Hanson was Catholic, that could connect them. Is that why she was trying to railroad me? To protect her priest? God, I needed Eddie’s client list. I reminded myself to call Tiffany and find out how Cameron was doing on the password.

I’d been set up. That much was clear. The killer had forced Sylvia to call me, to get me over there. Then he’d killed her and called 911. He’d planned for the police to find me there. Hanson had expected to find me there. It was smart. Whatever Sylvia knew died with her, and implicating me in a second murder made it likely I’d be convicted of both. But I had an alibi. According to the GPS they’d attached to my car, I was home the whole time.

I decided for Tripp’s sake, and my own, to strengthen my alibi. As quickly as I could, I made a pitcher of Margaritas. Then guzzled down more than half the pitcher. I had other booze around, beer or vodka, which would have taken less prep, but I wouldn’t have been able to drink them as quickly as a cool, tart margarita. I’d nearly finished the entire blender full when they knocked on my door. I opened the door, to find Hanson and Tripp crowded together. I smiled at them like they were old friends. “Hey.”

“We’d like to ask you some questions,” Hanson said. “Can we come in?”

“I don’t think so.” I stood close to the screen door and did my best to breathe on her. “You’re not as friendly as you look.” Then I laughed, “Actually, you don’t look friendly at all.”

“Sylvia Navarez has been strangled.”

“And you thought of me, how sweet.” I slurred my words as best I could. My face felt flush with alcohol.

Hanson looked at Tripp and said, “He’s drunk.”

“Looks that way,” he said.

Anger passed over her face. She’d thought she had me, except she didn’t. Somehow she must have called whoever she had watching my GPS signal and found out it hadn’t budged for hours. And now she could smell “evidence” of what I’d been doing during those hours.

I couldn’t resist prodding her. “You wanna arrest me for something. How ‘bout Housing-While-Intoxicated.” It was a terrible joke, and I knew it. But it was exactly the kind of joke I made when I was drunk. And I’d begun to feel drunk. My stomach felt distended from all the Margarita I’d dumped into it.

Hatred floated off Hanson; she turned and walked down my lawn to the Crown Vic. Tripp gave me a little nod and followed his partner. I went into the kitchen to make another pitcher of Margaritas. While mixing the ingredients, I looked out the window and saw Hanson and Tripp standing on either side of the Crown Vic, arguing.

I stopped mixing Margaritas and watched. Hanson was furious, red-faced, yelling so loud the cords in her neck stood out. Tripp attempted to placate her. He had both hands up in a conciliatory gesture. Obviously, she was accusing him of something, but what?

I was thinking about easing open the window so I could hear what they were arguing about when Hanson got into the Crown Vic. Tripp tried to open the passenger’s door, but it was locked. He pounded on the window as she pulled away from the curb. I was shocked. Hanson had dumped her partner. I hurried out to the front yard. As I walked down the lawn, Tripp had his cell phone out making a call. When I got close, I could tell it was to a cab company. A minute later he hung up the phone.

“Trouble?” I asked. He gave me a dirty look. “You want me to give you a ride somewhere?”

“You’re drunk.”

I shrugged. “True. You want a Margarita?”

“I don’t drink.”

“Oh. That’s right.”

“What do you mean ‘that’s right?’ We never talked about that.”

“There’s a cup on your desk. The kind alcoholics have.”

He gave me a stern, unfriendly look. Then he seemed to remember I wasn’t the enemy. His look softened. I turned and walked up the lawn. Looking over my shoulder, I made sure he followed me. I was barely in the house before he grabbed me and pulled me to him. We kissed, tongues plunging deep into each other. Falling against my front door. Our hands everywhere.

Before I thought about it, I had my hand in his pants, wrapping a fist around the base of his thick cock. With my other hand, I unzipped his slacks. I eased his pants and briefs down around his hips and got his prick completely free. His skin was amazingly smooth, like living silk. He was uncircumcised, and I jerked him gently so the foreskin rubbed up and down his cockhead.

Meanwhile, he had hold of my prick, rubbing me through my shorts. He was rough, rougher than I was. I wondered then how completely he believed in my innocence. Did he still have doubts? Was he bringing them into this? When I broke our kiss and tried to look down at his dick, he pulled me back up to his mouth and gave me a bruising kiss.

Finally, he undid my shorts and pushed our naked cocks together. He pushed my hand away and jerked us both. His dick a darker brown than the rest of him, mine flushed pink. Letting go, he reached down and grabbed my balls. I gasped. He rolled my balls in one hand while pumping me with the other. Gently, he flicked the head with a finger.

Pushing away, I began to drop to my knees, anxious to get him into my mouth. He grabbed me by the neck to stop me. I looked into his eyes, questioning. He smiled and continued to jerk me off. I reached over and pulled on his dick.

Our eyes glued to each other, we pumped. Soon, his cock seemed to swell, getting even harder. Then it contracted, and come spurted out of him, landing on the floor and all over my hand. Even as he was coming, he pulled me into a kiss. And then I joined him, my hips pushing forward as my muscles convulsed. I came on his nicely laundered shirttails.

We held each other, panting, for a few moments. Then I went into the kitchen and got a paper towel from the butcher block. After we wiped up, I asked, “Why is your partner mad at you?”

He frowned, seeming to be sorry the mood had changed. “She thinks you killed Sylvia Navarez. She’s pissed you’re getting away with it.”

“Why is she so sure? You’re not sure.”

He just looked at me for a moment. “You know what, I really shouldn’t talk to you about the case. I’ve already said too much.”

Then I answered my own question. “She thinks I killed Sylvia because she thinks I killed Eddie. It doesn’t make sense they’d be strangled by different people. So it has to be me.”

“We should talk about the weather. Nice day, isn’t it?”

“You don’t think I killed Sylvia. That means you don’t think I killed Eddie. You let me go because you’re afraid your partner is going to find a way to pin both murders on me.”

“I like this time of year,” he said, wiping himself off and pulling up his pants. “It’s comfortable, but not too cold.”

“Sylvia called me and asked me to come over. Whoever killed her made her do that. Set it up so it would look like it was me.”

With a serious look, he said, “You should go to a hotel. Hide out. Don’t answer the phone. This will be over in a few days.”

“I can’t do that,” I said, without explaining the reasons, without even understanding the reasons myself.

“What’s your favorite time of year, Matt?” He kept his eyes on mine. I wasn’t sure if he was falling in love with me or trying to see if he’d made a mistake letting me go.

“I’m beginning to think this isn’t about sex,” I said.

“After what we just did, how you can say that?”

“I mean the murders. I don’t think the murders are about sex.”

He nodded, but didn’t say anything. A good cop wouldn’t. I decided to give him a break and change the subject. “We hardly know anything about each other.”

“Actually, I know a lot about you,” he said. I imagined it was true, too.

“Okay, I don’t know much about you. Where’d you grow up?”

“Cerritos.” I wasn’t too familiar with the area, but I was pretty sure it was a suburban area down near Orange County.

“School?”

“Cal State Long Beach. Criminology. You want my GPA?”

“I’d say it was above three point eight.”

“Three point nine two.” He was smart, obviously. But more than that, his high GPA meant he knew how to play by the rules. He probably liked playing by the rules. Saving me must have gone against every instinct he had.

I remembered the feeling I’d had about Hanson when I was at Hollywood Station giving my statement. “Do you think your partner’s in love with you?”

He laughed. “She knows better.”

“She wouldn’t be the first woman who knew better but fell anyway.”

“She’s protective of her partners. We all call her Mama Lucy.”

“Do you think she has something to do with the murders?”

“No. She’s just wrong about you, that’s all. She’s stubborn.”

“And she thinks you’re wrong about me.”

“She doesn’t want to be my partner anymore,” he said.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said.

“She doesn’t trust me. Thinks I have a thing for you. That I’m letting it cloud my judgment.” He looked miserable, almost as though he was in pain. “It might be true.”

My heart bounced around in my chest. He had a thing for me. Well, obviously he had a thing for me, if only the momentary kind. But the look on his face told me this might be the longer kind. The kind that didn’t go away after a quickie.

“When this is over…” I said, as I noticed a cab pull up in front of my house.

“Yeah, when this is over…” Tripp walked out the front door and got into the cab. I watched as they drove off.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about what just happened. Deciding to forgo the second pitcher of Margaritas, I drank a few glasses of water to help my body deal with the alcohol.

Booze. That’s all it was. The thing with Tripp. I’d been drinking, so something that was really very trivial took on a bigger importance than it normally would have. We jacked each other off. Didn’t mean anything. I was definitely
not
falling for the cop who had been trying to put me in jail and who now seemed to be trying to keep me out of jail.

My phone rang. As I wandered around looking for the cordless, I hoped it was Tripp wanting to talk more, wanting to come back. But it was Sonja, calling to tell me that my job was officially kaput.

“But nothing’s happened,” I said. “I haven’t been arrested. And even if they do arrest me, we have this thing in America called innocent until proven guilty.”

“This really has nothing to do with what’s happening to you. This is about the re-engineering.”

“That’s an outright lie, and you know it.” There was a silence. I had breached one of the unwritten laws of corporate America. Never call a liar a liar.

“I was afraid you’d be unpleasant about this,” Sonja said.

“Why shouldn’t I be unpleasant?”

“I’ve managed to get you two months severance. Plus your unused vacation time, of course.”

“Is that what everyone’s getting in the re-engineering?”

“No. I got you more.” That gave me a little sympathy for her. Not because she’d gotten me more money, but because I knew the only way she’d gotten it was to fight for it.

“It’s not going to be easy without me,” I told her. She didn’t reply, so I hung up and made that second pitcher of Margaritas.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The next morning, the alarm went off and my head nearly exploded. I struggled to turn it off while trying to remember why I’d wanted to get up at quarter to seven when I didn’t even have a job anymore. Then I remembered. I had some place to be.

Saint Dominic’s was on Melrose near Larchmont. The church looked to be about four stories tall, brick, and had concrete curlicues at the top. Attached on one side was an even taller bell tower. I hurried up the front steps and found myself in a small lobby. The doors were open to the main church. The service hadn’t begun.

In the center of the lobby was a standing basin with what I assumed was holy water. On one wall, I noticed a plaque explaining who St. Dominic had been. It didn’t say when he’d lived, but he was the son of a blacksmith who dreamed of becoming a priest. Unfortunately, he died at the age of fifteen. He was the patron saint of juvenile delinquents. I had been brought up as a lukewarm Christian. The Catholic church was a different planet.

The mass was at seven-thirty. I flicked on my phone and saw that it should start in about six minutes. I went into the main church and took a seat in one of the last pews. There were about ten other people scattered around. An organist was playing somewhere I couldn’t see, possibly in a balcony above me.

A few minutes later, the music changed and everyone rose. They all had hymnals in their hands. I grabbed one from the back of the pew in front of me. Randomly, I opened to a hymn and tried to look like I might be about to sing. Then a line of men and teenage boys came down the aisle in a kind of parade. I scanned them, looking for Father O’Hannahan. He wasn’t there. Not even close. The two older men in the procession were Asian.

I stood there wondering what to do. I could just leave. It would be rude, but it wasn’t like I’d come with a Catholic friend. I promised myself that I’d leave as soon as I could without making a disturbance. The hymn ended, and we sat back down as the priests and altar boys made themselves comfortable at the front.