Red Light (21 page)

"I
do know. I should have thought of that."

If
you ask about the footprints I'll have to shoot you, thought Merci.

"Won't
he notice your footprints?"

Merci looked back at
the drive. She wasn't heavy enough to leave good prints in the packed, graded
dirt, but the rough outlines were there.

Mrs. Heath was
looking, too. "How about this, Detective Rayborn? I'll walk up to the
door, stepping where you did. I'll leave the letter in the box. That way, he'll
be looking at my footprints, not yours. Reggie's, too. If Mike asks, you can
evade the truth without lying. They're not yours."

Fuck, Merci thought,
this is getting to be an Agatha Christie novel. She faked what she could of
patience and good cheer.

"Good
thinking, Sergeant Heath!"

She watched the old
woman deliver the letter, watched Reggie jump around while his mistress opened
the rusty old mailbox door, watched Mrs. Heath return, carefully choosing her
steps.

"Our little
secret," she said. "We'll tell Mike about it
after
birthday."

Merci smiled, waved and
headed down the road toward her Mike's birthday wasn't for five weeks, but who
knew, he might be in jail by then.

• • •

Before going in to
headquarters, Merci went to the Sheriff's Firing Range in Anaheim. She talked
briefly with the Weapons Instructor, she was thinking about going to a .45
instead of her nine, wanted more stopping power.

Timmerman told her
that stopping power and knockdown power were subjective and mysterious, some
experts saying they were more related to velocity than to bullet mass. Others
disagreed. With relish, he broke down Einstein's E = MC
²
into
layman's terms for her, then argued its relevancy to shooting someone.

He
himself drew his opinions from LaGarde's research for the classic
Gunshot
Injuries,
in which suspended cadavers swayed very little when shot by .38-caliber
guns, but oscillated dramatically when shot by a .45. This, he explained, is
why LaGarde had recommended the .45 as the American Armed Services sidearm—in
1904.

"Remember,"
he said, "what stops a charging animal isn't the momentum of the bullet,
it's the kinetic energy of the bullet on the
functioning
of the living
body."

"I'll
remember."

"There's also
velocity, caliber, shape of the bullet point, its frangibility and penetration.
Lots of factors."

Merci nodded
along like she was interested, then checked out a Colt .45 to carry and test
fire for a couple of weeks. He was kind enough to loan her a shoulder rig and a
hip holster, too, and he threw in some wad-cutter ammo to use on the range.

M
el Glandis reclined his big torso against the back of
his chair nodded at her. His office was every bit as bland and bureaucratic as
Glandis himself, but it was a welcome calm in the storm that Mike McNally had
caused.

Merci couldn't think
straight about Mike right now. But she could make herself think straight about
this.

"How come nobody
cared about Patti Bailey? You're asking
me?”
A laugh from the
assistant sheriff.

"Maybe back then
you guys thought it was funny when a woman got: and you couldn't find the creep
who did it. It isn't funny now."

Glandis straightened,
his face going from amused to bovine. "Hell, I didn't mean it that way.
What I meant was I was a fourth-year guy. Out of the power loop."

Merci knew Glandis
well enough to understand that winning was what interested him: power and
politics, vengeance and reward, who had what on whom, who could step on you,
crush you, help you. A pack animal. As a lifelong disciple of Chuck Brighton,
Glandis had had early good luck to attach himself to a winner.

"That's why I
asked you," said Merci. "You weren't the establishment around
here—yet."

He
smiled, taking this as the compliment she knew he would. He up, moved across
the floor on his small, dancer's feet, closed the door.

"Yeah.
What you have to understand is nobody cared about any of the caseload that
year. Everything here was in upheaval. The old sheriff, Bill Owen, he was in
tight with the head of the County Board of Supervisors—that was Meeks. Ralph
Meeks. And Meeks was getting heat for a kickback scheme from developers. You
know the old story, the pols make the rules and throw the business to their
friends, the friends aim some of it back. Someone gets in trouble and the
fingers start pointing. Big stink in the press. About the same time Meeks was
getting investigated by the Grand Jury, Bill Owen got down real low. You know,
real low, real quiet, like he was looking out of a foxhole. Expecting
fire."

"Was he on
Meeks's payroll?"

"Nothing
that obvious. Nothing you could prove. They were friends. Meeks got favors,
Bill got favors. You know, friends."

"Then what was
Owen's problem, besides being Meeks's friend?"

"Politics.
Some of the deputies didn't like his ideas. You gotta remember, this was a real
political time. Not like now. There was a clique of John Birchers in the department,
and they really couldn't stand him. They thought everybody who wasn't a Bircher
was a communist, and that included Owen, because he wasn't conservative enough
for them. Wasn't tough enough on crime. That was part of the communist
conspiracy, you know—let America rot from the inside out, let the criminals
get the streets, like they did in Watts. Bumper stickers back then said
No
Watts in Orange County.
Owen, he wouldn't issue concealed carry permits to
anybody with a right-wing slant. So, when Owen tried to stay low on the Meeks
scandal, the Birchers turned up the heat. They had him grilling on both
sides."

"Who were
they?"

Glandis
gave her an odd look then, something guarded in his usually readable face.
"There were a lot of them. Beck Rainer was the ringleader. The Birchers
thought he'd make a good sheriff someday. There was a big, funny guy named Bob
Vale, one of the lieutenants. There was Ed Springfield, Dave Boone, Bob Emmer.
I think Roy Thornton, too, and his partner, Rymers. There was Pat McNally—Mike's
old man. A bunch of the traffic guys on motorcycles—North and Morrison and
Wilberforce. Your dad had something to do with them for a while, if I remember
right."

Merci thought again
of that Birch Society rally so many years ago, set up to support the local
police. She tried to relate it to the body of a prostitute dumped near the
corner of Myford and Fourth.

"Where's
Bailey come in?"

A wry expression from
Glandis then, like little Merci would never learn.

"Well, Merci, I
don't
know
exactly where she comes in. I'm just setting the stage for
you. What I'm saying is, there's all this shit coming down at Owen and there's
the Birchers agitating him from the inside so this place is like a . . . like a
cauldron. Everybody's worried. They’re paranoid. And in an atmosphere like
that, it's no wonder nobody really cared about a dead hooker in an orange
grove."

Merci tried to draw a
line again, the same one she'd tried to draw between Patti Bailey, Jesse Acuna
and the cops he claimed beat him

"Any
of those men hang out at the De Anza Hotel in Santa Ana?

Glandis nodded
approvingly. "We all did. It was a great place, until the hookers ran it
over."

"Ralph
Meeks and Bill Owen?"

Glandis smiled.
"They were big men back then. You wouldn't find them at a place like the
De Anza. That was for us little guys. No."

He leaned forward
then and looked at her, lacing his fingers like he was getting ready to pray.

"How
about a change of topic, Merci?"

"Shoot."

"I'm going to be
blunt and candid here for a minute. I want you to be the same."

She
watched and waited.

"You
think Brighton's a good sheriff?"

She thought for a
moment, not about the question, but about why Glandis was asking it.

"Yes."

He nodded. "I
always did, too. He always put the department first. Now, though, I wonder when
he steps down if he's going to leave with somebody good or somebody
not-so-good. You've heard what idiot Abelera wants to do—run this place like a
Fortune-Five-Hundred company. Privatize half the work we do. I hope Brighton
doe endorse
him."

"Me,
too."

"What
do you think of Nelson Neal, as sheriff, I mean."

Here we go again,
thought Merci. She told him the same thing about Nelson she'd told Brighton—not
inspirational.

"Craig
Braga?"

"He'd
be good."

"Mel
Glandis?"

She hesitated,
looking for some hint of humor in Glandis's placid eyes. There wasn't any, and
she understood what he was after.

"I'd
be happy to work for you, if you got the nod from Brighton."

"What
if I didn't?"

"You'd be a good
sheriff, Mel. I didn't think you were angling that way."

But why not, she
asked herself. Glandis was a rider of winning horses. He'd gotten where he was
with loyal devotion to Brighton. Now he was worried his leader was going to
overlook him. In fact, she could think of worse people than Mel Glandis running
the department. In his own clunky way he managed to get the job done, keep
people working together.

"I'm just
testing the waters," he said quietly. "I've asked a few deputies,
people I respect. I don't want to make a fool out of myself. Don't want to
upset the apple cart around here. But if there's a gap I can fill, if I can
help the department, then I'll do it."

"What
does Brighton think? Of you following him?"

Glandis smiled and
shrugged. "You know Chuck. He likes to talk about retirement but he hates
the idea of doing it. He's been on the verge of retirement for half a decade. I
don't blame him. You want to hang on, do what you can do. But you know, there
comes a time for fresh ideas, younger blood. That's just the way it works.
We're all like boxers, we all want to fight one more time. That's when we get
hurt. He's seventy-two years old. I'm fifty-eight. I think I can contribute.
Anyway, thanks for being honest with me."

Fourteen years ago,
as a first-year deputy working the jail, Merci had picked fifty-eight as the
age she wanted to become sheriff. She considered it a lucky number for no
reason. She didn't know if Glandis was usurping her good luck, or perhaps, in
some way she was yet to understand, adding to it.

She
disliked her superstitions but could never get rid of them.

"I
don't lie very well." Just ask Mrs. Heath, she thought.

"Me neither. But
I take care of the people who take care of me. Remember that. I will, when it
comes time to pick a sharp detective run homicide."

"That's
good to know."

Glandis sighed.
"So, what was Mike doing at the hooker's house that night?"

"Having
dinner."

He slowly shook his
head. "This can only end bad or worse. I'll help you on it if I can."

"How?"

"I
have absolutely no idea."

"I
don't, either. Maybe you could keep it to yourself, for a start."

"I will. I
promise. Half the department knows anyway. By tomorrow, the other half. It gets
out, Mike's dead. We'll all suffer if it does

Merci felt her pulse
speed up, the quick heat in her neck and ears. "It's like a bunch of
little old biddies around here. It's all yap, yap, yap.”

"It's
the nature of the organizational beast."

"Chickenshit's
what I call it."

"You've got a way
with the language, Sergeant."

• • •

Back at her desk Merci
tried to concentrate on the CSI reports on Aubrey Whittaker scene. She was
hoping something would pop, something would stand up and call attention to
itself, something would take her mind off what she'd found at Mike's place.

But she couldn't take
her mind off it, the way she couldn't let creeps get away with things. It just
wasn't in her nature.

So she asked herself
the same questions over and over, and came with the same answers. What possible
motive could Mike have for keeping around silencer and bloody boots he'd used
in a murder?
None whatsoever.

Was it just a device
he'd made, or perhaps purchased, never used on Aubrey Whittaker at all? Was
that quail or deer blood on the chukkas? An injured bloodhound?
Possibly.

What if someone had
planted it all there as part of a frame?
Who? And how did they get their
hands on my damned underpants?

It occurred to her
again to simply confront him. Let him explain. That's what adults did, right?
But if he had killed, he would destroy evidence. Maybe worse.