The Deepest Cut (38 page)

Vining rolled her eyes.

“Cookie probably would have washed out if it hadn’t have been for Betsy. Their relationship went beyond the professional. Betsy said that Cookie reminded her of herself when she was young. I’d heard stories from PPD guys who knew Betsy back in the day about how wild she was. I don’t know what kept Betsy going during those first days after we found Cookie. She was … crushed.”

“Gilroy was the deputy chief then. Didn’t the chief give her any heat for shielding a problematic officer?”

Iverson made a face like the notion was ridiculous. “Watching out for your friends was the status quo under Ben Stevens, who was the chief then. Stevens was an old-school small-town police chief. He fixed parking tickets. Got friends and friends of friends out of scrapes. He was thick with the movers and shakers in town, playing golf, going fishing, and drinking at the country club. Rumors were that they greased his palms. I never saw it. That said, Stevens lived in a very nice house and he and his wife had a brand-new Cadillac every year. One of his buddies owned a Cadillac dealership. Chief Stevens was not into rocking the boat and he didn’t like being bothered with day-to-day police business. He’d been talking about retiring for years. When the then-deputy chief retired before he did, he was annoyed that he had to actually work and recruit someone.

“So in comes Betsy Gilroy, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ambitious. She took over. Chief Stevens couldn’t have been happier. She’d only been on the job a few months when Cookie was murdered.”

“Were you interested in being deputy chief?”

Iverson winced and shrugged at the same time in a gesture that Vining interpreted as a yes.

“I already had a foot out the door,” Iverson said. “I’d already started the water feature business in my spare time.”

Vining nodded as she thought. “So the day Axel confessed, why had Gilroy brought him in for questioning again?”

“I don’t know. I was off that day. She grabbed a sergeant, Ernie Bautista, and picked up Axel. Next thing I hear, Axel’s in jail.”

“How did the confession come about?”

Iverson picked one last peach and moved to the lemon tree. “Only Betsy, Bautista, and Axel Holcomb know what went on in that interview room.”

“Doesn’t the Colina Vista P.D. videotape interviews?”

“Bautista said they couldn’t get the equipment to work.”

“Not even an audio recording?”

“Nope.”

“That’s odd,” Vining said. “Gilroy came up through the ranks of the PPD where making recordings is the norm. Even our patrol officers carry cheap digital audio recorders.”

“All Bautista and Betsy would say is that they’d put Axel through a tough interrogation and finally broke him down. They said that the D.A. forbid them to discuss it.”

“Did Axel ask for an attorney?”

“Apparently not.”

Vining frowned as she followed him into the vegetable garden. “What’s Bautista’s history?”

“He was a twenty-five-year veteran on the force. One of Chief Stevens’s hires. He retired shortly after Axel was convicted.”

“What about Axel’s family? Didn’t they protest?”

“His mother did, but she didn’t have the money to hire a big-gun defense attorney.”

“What about his brother, your old football teammate?”

“He’d been dead for a couple of years. He was an insurance salesman. Had a little agency in town. Had a cerebral aneurysm at his desk.”

“The community?”

“Everyone was glad to have someone in jail for the murder. The city council and the mayor were delighted to put it behind them and to let Colina Vista slip into obscurity again. Few people were sorry to see Axel gone. Like I said, people were leery of him. After Betsy and the chief paraded Axel as their man, the citizens lined up behind them.”

“Chief Stevens was on board?”

“Almost everyone was on board. Let’s be honest. The evidence put Axel at the scene. The circumstances of the confession weren’t ideal, but it had been witnessed by two veteran police officers who had spotless
records. Chief Stevens could care less about a couple of folks’ misgivings. He was happy to have the pressure off. Closing that case didn’t hurt Betsy any. It made her career. When the chief retired, Betsy was a shoo-in for his job.”

“You told me earlier that you didn’t think Axel was capable of something so evil. Do you still feel that way?”

“Axel was found guilty.”

“But you have doubts.”

He straightened, holding three zucchinis. He placed them inside the paper bag that he’d set on the ground. “Axel said something about that night that I can’t get out of my mind. You won’t read it in any news report, because Betsy and I never spoke of it publicly, and for some reason the defense didn’t bring it up during the trial. Axel told us that when Cookie was hanging by her ankles from the rafters, before the killer slit her throat, he’d unzipped his pants and started masturbating. Axel said that as the guy masturbated, he kept saying, ‘Do you see this, Officer Silva? Look at this.’”

A chill went down Vining’s spine. She flashed back to the kitchen in the house at 835 El Alisal Road. T. B. Mann had peeled a tiny magnet from a set of poetry magnets on the refrigerator, had placed it in his palm, and held it out for her. “Officer Vining, I want you to see this. Do you see this?” Soon after, he’d grabbed the knife from a set in a wood block on the kitchen island and plunged it into her neck, the bullet she fired at him having gone haywire.

Iverson’s story confirmed something about T. B. Mann that she’d suspected.
That’s the only way you can get off, isn’t it, asshole?

Iverson gritted his teeth. “Then he went over to Cookie, with his penis still hanging out of his pants. He took a folding knife from his pocket and slit her throat. Apparently, he intended to finish masturbating while watching Cookie die, her blood flying everywhere, probably onto him, too. He didn’t get the chance because Axel said that’s when he screamed and jumped up from his hiding place. The killer went running from the barn with his dick in his hand. Forgive the crass description.

“That whole scenario always stuck in my mind. I never thought that Axel had the smarts or the imagination to make something like
that up, especially in such detail. Axel is black or white. There are no shades of gray. So, yes, I have my doubts.”

“Did you find the murder weapon?”

“Never did.”

“What about other suspects, like the Glendale police officer Cookie was dating?”

“Philip Wondries. Cookie had been dating him for about six months. He was working that night and was able to account for all his time. As far as Axel’s story of the stranger, he provided enough of a description to do a decent artist’s sketch. We ran it in all the newspapers and on television, but no solid leads came of it.

“We tracked down a couple of guys Cookie had dated during the prior year. One guy in particular interested me. A girlfriend of Cookie’s told us about him. Cookie had gone out with him just once, for drinks. She told her girlfriend that he was a creep. Then he started showing up at places where Cookie was.”

“Stalking her?”

“Sounded like that. The friend said that Cookie was more annoyed by him than afraid. Cookie wasn’t shy. She told him to back off.”

“What was his name?”

Iverson sucked in air through his teeth and gazed off, trying to remember. “Teddy something? Teddy Pierce, maybe. It would be in the case files. He worked as a security guard at a shopping center in Pasadena. The Rose City Center, by the freeway. He was the kind of guy who had all the right answers, but it seemed phony to me, and I can’t tell you why. He had these intense eyes. Not crazy, like Charles Manson, but cold and calculating. Ice cold. In fact, they were light blue, just like ice. No alibi, but that doesn’t mean anything. How many people have alibis for every minute of their day?”

“What did Betsy Gilroy think of him?”

“She didn’t talk to him. By the time Cookie’s girlfriend had called me to say that she remembered one more guy Cookie had known, Axel had already confessed. No one was interested in hearing about some weirdo Cookie had gone drinking with.”

“No one asked Axel if the security guard was the man he’d seen that night with Cookie?”

“Look, they had their killer. They had physical evidence and Axel’s confession. Betsy was the heir apparent to the chief’s office. Who was I to go against her?”

Vining knew what that felt like. “Was this the man?” She handed him the photo of Nitro cowering on the floor of a PPD jail cell.

After studying it for a minute, Iverson shook his head, then frowned dubiously. “That’s not the guy, but he has those same ice-blue eyes. That’s uncanny.”

“How about this man?” She took out the artist’s rendering of T B. Mann.

Iverson took a long time looking at the drawing. “Again, we’re going back ten years, but I can’t say that this
doesn’t
look like him. Who is this?”

“That’s the man who stabbed me and left me for dead.”

“Damn.” He took a closer look at the drawing. “He’s still loose?”

“Yes.”

He gave her the drawing back. “You should have them pull the case files over at the Colina Vista P.D. All the names and photos of everyone we interviewed would be there. But keep in mind that Betsy Gilroy didn’t want to hear about this guy then, and I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear about him now.”

“Any way to go around her?”

“Call and ask for Joanne Temple. She’s handled records there for thirty years. Tell her I told you to call. She’ll want someone to approve the request. Suggest she ask the watch commander.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

“I hope you get your guy.” He hoisted the grocery bag, testing its weight. “Is this too much? I can’t give any more away to our friends and neighbors. They’re maxed out.”

“That’s very generous. Thank you.”

“You can make a terrific marinara sauce for dinner with those tomatoes.”

She looked at her watch. “Speaking of that, I have to scoot to pick up my daughter from school.”

She took the heavy grocery bag that he handed her and gave him the empty “I Love Grandpa” mug. “Thanks, Mike, for everything.”

“It was my pleasure.”

They headed toward the house.

“Mike, one last thing. Did Cookie ever talk about receiving a pearl necklace as a gift? Did you ever see her wearing a pearl necklace? It would have come down to about here and would have had a little pendant on it, maybe with a dark blue stone.”

He let her enter the house ahead of him. “I don’t recall such. Her girlfriend might, if you can track her down. Betsy might.”

“Was there a necklace on her body?”

He opened the front door and paused with his hand on the doorknob.

She again detected the darkness that lurked behind his sunny disposition. He never mentally returned to that barn, not voluntarily. She recognized his sacrifice. He was doing it for her, because of her own spilled blood and the pursuit of her own madman.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He opened his eyes, gratefully returning here, but she detected a shudder. “I remember Cookie’s body, the expression on her face and in her eyes, and blood. I remember blood everywhere. I can’t tell you whether or not she was wearing a necklace.”

Vining shifted the heavy paper bag to shake his hand. She left.

THIRTY-NINE

I
N THE DETECTIVES SECTION CONFERENCE ROOM, JIM KISSICK PASSED
around photos of Marvin Li, Grace Shipley, and her daughter Meghan that were taken by the surveillance team. Present at the briefing were Sergeant Kendra Early, and Detectives Alex Caspers, Louis Jones, and Doug Sproul.

The women were slender and wearing tight jeans, low-cut snug tops, and high-heeled sandals. Meghan, a college student, had straight hair that fell past her shoulders. It was severely streaked blond. In one photo, she’d been snapped through Love Potion’s windows trying on a bridal veil. In another, she held a wedding gown against herself, admiring it in a mirror. Her mother still had a great figure, but her face looked hard. Her shoulder-length hair was as blindingly blond as her daughter’s.

There was a shot taken in the driveway of the Shipley home on Newcastle Street. Li was in his wheelchair. Grace was bent over with both arms around his shoulders and was kissing the top of his shaved head.

Kissick passed information gleaned from the PPD’s records search.

Caspers lingered over Megan’s photos, especially one in which she was on the sidewalk, wearing tight jeans, her back to the camera.

“I sent the Shipleys’ photos and information to Sergeant John Velado
of the Sheriff’s Asian Gang Task Force,” Kissick said. “Marvin Li’s attorney, Sammy Leung, says that Li and Grace Shipley are having a romantic relationship. Leung tells us that the manager of an apartment building on La Pomelo Road, one block east of Newcastle, is the guy who hired the Aaron’s Aarrows human directionals. We talked to the manager. He was nervous, but he insists that he hired Li’s arrow guys. Leung says that Li has no knowledge of the guys who arrive after the human directionals leave at midnight and who stay parked on Newcas-tle until morning. So far, the search of Li’s phone records and computer haven’t turned up anything suspicious.”

“The top guys keep themselves insulated,” Early said.

Just then, one of the staff assistants knocked on the open conference room door. “Sorry to interrupt. Detective Kissick, Sammy Leung says he and Marvin Li want to speak with you.”

THE COOPERSMITH SCHOOL SAT ON A RIDGE ABOVE THE JUNCTION OF THE
210 and the short stretch of the 710 that had been constructed in Pasadena. The grassy, tree-shaded property and its stained-wood buildings surrounded by a tall chain-link fence, were a bucolic sip of water for drivers barreling down Pasadena Avenue toward the freeway entrances past the mammoth Huntington Hospital compound.

The two-acre Coopersmith School campus and its woodsy buildings were all that remained standing after a historic church was razed in the 1970s in preparation for the completion of the final six-mile stretch of the 710 freeway. Back then, Cal Trans had bought many homes and properties along the proposed route. Decades later, many of the homes still remained empty and the lots where structures had been razed were still bare as a virulent city-against-city fight raged on in the battle over traffic flow versus preservation of thousands of trees and hundreds of historic homes.