The Emerald Cat Killer (17 page)

“But, I—”

Joseph Horton shook his head, or tried to. It hurt too much to do more than move it a fraction of an inch either way. “I'm no—what you call them?—no chicken hawk. Is that the term? I'm no child molester.”

“Then what are you? What were you doing out there?”

“I—that girl—”

The tweed-jacketed woman nodded encouragement.

“She's my daughter. I've been looking for her for months. Months! My wife keeps saying she must have run away, that she's probably on the Hollywood strip by now, or in New York.”

“Are you serious? Is there a missing persons report on file?”

“Sure. Sure. Filed it months ago. Nobody cares. There are so many of them. Runaways, drug users, diseased, abused. She was only … such a pretty thing … when she was a little girl we used to play, and…”

Joseph Horton fell silent, tears running down his cheeks, too weak or wounded or exhausted to wipe them away. Or too lost in despair.

*   *   *

Rigoberto Chocron was a man of his word, give him that. And he insisted that Marvia Plum live up to hers. A full Sunday breakfast at Los Arcos de Oro before they headed for the Route 880 Flea Market.

Dos huevos con jamón, pan tostado, queso, jugo grande de naranja, café,
and a couple of
tortillas de maiz con salsa
for good measure. Rigoberto leaned back, patted his belly, and told Marvia Plum, “Very nice, very nice. Thank you. Now pay the lady.”

Marvia did, and they proceeded to the flea market in her souped-up Falcon. She drove slowly, not letting on that the car was other than a forty-year-old beater. Her ID got them into a reserved parking area and VIP entry to the market itself. A huge outdoor motion-picture screen, now tattered with weather and neglect, loomed over the scores of sellers.

A manager offered to guide Marvia and Rigoberto through the lot, but Marvia declined. Rigoberto had assured her that he could find the Space Cadets and she preferred to keep officialdom at arm's length, at least for now.

It wasn't hard finding the Space Cadets. Yes, yes, there were two of them, an amazing matched set, male and female, both seriously overweight, clad in matching baseball caps and badly faded T-shirts that showed the faint remnants of scenes in outer space. The male Cadet wore his gray ponytail pulled through the strap on the back of his cap. The female Cadet sported Princess Leia side-braids.

They sat beneath a banner blazoned
STARSHIP GALAXY ENTERPRISES
. Their table was covered with merchandise aimed at the hopeless science fiction devotee. Baseball caps harking back to every sci-fi movie or TV extravaganza from Captain Video and Rocky Jones onward, T-shirts, plastic models, ray guns, DVDs, and super high-tech electronic gear whose purpose Marvia Plum could only guess at. There were rows of paperbacks with aliens and rocket ships on the covers, pulp magazines and comic books. And one laptop computer. The computer was open, an ever-changing scene of spaceships and alien planets swirling across the monitor.

The male Space Cadet grinned broadly at Marvia Plum and Rigoberto Chocron. Both Space Cadets held up their right hands in a gesture that might have been either a Hebrew blessing or a Vulcan welcome sign.

The two Cadets chanted in perfect harmony. “Greetings, travelers to alien worlds. In what may we interest you this lovely terra-day?”

Marvia Plum showed her ID.

The Cadets came back to Earth.

“I'm Lieutenant Plum, Berkeley Police Department.”

“We're in Oakland,” the female Cadet growled.

“Doesn't matter. If you want to make a phone call before you speak with me, feel free.”

The two Cadets exchanged glances. The male spoke up. “No, Loot, ask away. We're honest businesspeople here, just trying to keep the public happy and make an honest space-doubloon or two.”

“Do you recognize this man?” Marvia Plum gestured at Rigoberto Chocron, who shuffled his feet like an embarrassed schoolboy.

The Cadet frowned at Chocron. “Can't say as I do.” He turned to his partner. “You recognize this earthling, Plutonia?”

The female Cadet tilted her head and shot a studious glance at Chocron. “Can't say as I do, Telesto. Mayhap he was using a shape-changing paradigm and appeared to us as a Martian sand-tiger or a gray.”

“All right.” Marvia Plum rapped her knuckles on the table. “We're here on business. Did you or did you not sell a laptop computer to this man?”

“Cool your jets, commissioner. Maybe we did, maybe we didn't. I don't recognize your friend here. When did this alleged sale take place?”

Rigoberto Chocron said, “Beginning of last semester. I needed it for my course at Laney. That would be September, maybe end of August.”

“Are you certain these are the people who sold you the laptop?”

“Absolutely. Could I forget these two?”

Marvia gave the Space Cadets her tough-cop, this-is-serious-business look. “Mr. Chocron is certain that he bought the computer from you.”

Plutonia growled, “Okay, so we sold him the computer. So what? We get some serious merchandise from time to time. Most of our business is tchotchkes but once in a while we'll pick up a nice iPhone or BlackBerry or laptop, and turn it for a little profit. Nothing illegal about that, is there?”

“Not if it's legitimate merchandise.”

“That's all we handle. Rules of the market, if nothing else.”

“Do you keep records? Sales slips, transaction books, anything like that?”

The Cadet pointed to the laptop on the table. “This one isn't for sale. It's the one we run our business out of.”

“All right. Can you look up the transaction with Mr. Chocron? I don't imagine you sell many computers.” Marvia noticed that the computer was literally padlocked to the table.

“No, we don't,” the Cadet conceded. “Let me see what I can come up with.”

A couple of interested browsers had stopped at the table and the female Space Cadet was pitching them an authentic, studio-certified script for an unproduced
Legion of Space
feature film. The browsers also came in a matched set, male and female, decked out in futuristic regalia but each of them about a hundred pounds lighter than the Space Cadets.

“Last year?” the male Cadet asked.

“Yes.”

“September twelve. Here it is.” He swung the laptop around. It showed a sales line for one laptop computer, forty-nine dollars plus tax. “We have a resale license, you know the state inspectors are really tight-assed about collecting sales tax. Pardon my language.”

“Quite a bargain. What did you pay for that, if you could sell it for forty-nine dollars and still make a profit?”

The female Cadet turned her attention back from the browsers to Marvia Plum. “We spend a lot of time at garage sales, thrift stores, closeouts. Even recycling depots. You'd be surprised, Captain, people dump perfectly good equipment.”

“Lieutenant, and thank you.” To the male Cadet, “Does your record show the customer's identity?”

Cadet Telesto clicked a couple of keys. “Here it is. Customer's name, John Smith. Means of payment, cash.”

Marvia turned to Rigoberto Chocron. “Are you John Smith, too?”

“I guess I didn't show much imagination.”

“Never mind. That was you? Are you sure of that? You didn't get your laptop from somebody else?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I couldn't forget these dudes, could I? I got it from these Cadets, that's for certain, Loot.”

Marvia said, “All right. This is good. We're getting somewhere. Now, Mister— What did you say your name was? Telesto?”

“That's right.”

“Let me see your resale license.”

He produced it.

“Mister … Watkins. Mr. and Mrs. Watkins. Oscar and Mandy. I take it you're Oscar, then.”

“That's right.”

“Okay, just wanted to make sure. Mr. Watkins, this looks pretty clean so far. I take it you didn't insist on seeing ID from John Smith here, but I don't suppose you needed to for a cash transaction. But what I need to know is, where did you get the computer? At a yard sale?”

“I'm not sure. So much comes through here.”

“You'd better remember. Try hard.”

Telesto stared into his computer, clicked a few keys, stared some more.

“Here it is. But I don't know how much good it can do you.”

“Never mind that. Let me worry about it. Speak up now!”

“I got it from a couple of kids.”

“Children?”

“Teenagers.”

While Marvia Plum interrogated Oscar Watkins a.k.a Space Cadet Telesto, the browsers had bought the unproduced movie script, a couple of stills, and his-and-hers T-shirts featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a killer android from Space Cadet Plutonia. They strolled away hand in hand, looking like happy children. Maybe that's what they were. A decade or two overage for the designation, but happy children nevertheless.

Mandy Watkins a.k.a. Space Cadet Plutonia had put their money in a cash box. She turned to her partner. “You through with the computer, Telesto? I need to enter this sale.”

Telesto looked questioningly at Marvia, received an approving nod, and turned the computer over to his partner.

“I found it,” Telesto told Marvia. “You'll get a laugh out of this. I sold that computer to John Smith here, and I bought it from John Smith. Must be two guys with the same name, right?”

“Did you ask Mr. Smith—the first Mr. Smith—for proof of identity? Proof of ownership of the computer?”

“Captain, ma'am, let's get real. This is a cash-and-carry business. We don't ask our customers to prove who they are. We don't ask our vendors to prove who they are. We buy the merchandise, we mark it up just enough to cover expenses and grocery money, we sell it. We don't look like rich people, do we?”

Marvia resisted an impulse to heave a sigh. Beside her, Rigoberto Chocron was showing signs of restlessness. One quality that a cop needed was patience. She'd learned that at the academy, getting antsy and rushing a mock situation. She'd wound up with the cold muzzle of a forty-five pressed against her belly and heard the hammer click on an empty chamber. If it had been a real confrontation and the forty-five had not been disabled as well as unloaded, that would have been the end of Police Cadet Plum, all those years ago.

But Rigoberto Chocron was no cop, and he was getting antsy.

“Just a few more minutes, Rigoberto, and we'll get out of here.”

“I'm hungry, Lieutenant.”

“I'll buy lunch.”

That seemed to mollify him.

“All right, Mr. and Mrs. Watkins. I want you both to concentrate. You bought the computer from a man named John Smith. He had a female companion. What was her name?”

Space Cadet Plutonia said, “Mary Smith.”

Oh, great.

“No ID?”

Negative headshake.

“How about a description?”

Telesto spoke first. “The guy had dirty blond hair. Bad complexion. About five, oh, five eight or nine. Slim build. Kind of dirty and sickly looking. Might have weighed a hundred forty pounds, max. I'd say he was sixteen. Maybe a little older, not much.”

“Any scars, birthmarks? No? You say his hair was dirty blond. White male, what color eyes?”

“I couldn't tell. He looked away a lot, didn't want to make eye contact.”

“Could you tell if he was right- or left-handed?”

“Huh! Good question.”

“He was left-handed,” Plutonia put in. “I remember. He wanted to show us that the computer worked. He used his left hand on the touch pad.”

“See?” Telesto said. “She knows everything!” He reached over and patted Plutonia's hand.

Love will always find a way.

“What about his companion?”

Plutonia said, “I was really sad for her. She was a little thing, she'd blow away in a strong breeze. And she could have been so pretty. Couldn't have been more than twelve, thirteen years old. I could hardly tell what color her hair was, it looked so dirty but it must have been red. Not just auburn, understand. You'll understand, Captain, you're a woman. Not one of those bright red wig colors they wear nowadays, either. Real, classic Titian red. I'd love to have hair that color. And green eyes, beautiful deep green eyes, and skin.… She looked so dirty and sickly but if she'd just let somebody take her in hand and clean her up and feed her up, oh, you'd fall in love with her in a minute. Anybody would.”

Marvia asked if the Space Cadets had a record of what they'd paid the Smiths for the computer, and if the Smiths had given any indication of where or how they had come into possession of it.

A little more clicking and Oscar Watkins said, “We paid them thirty dollars for it. I remember we tried it out before we'd pay anything, that was when the kid wanted to give us a demo. The thing worked fine. Case looked a little battered but the screen lit up and there was even software loaded in it. Worked fine.”

“Do you remember anything about the files on the computer?”

Oscar Watkins shook his head. “Sorry. The operating system ran, I opened a text file and typed in a few sentences just to see if it worked, and it did. That was all.”

“And where they got the computer?”

“Said somebody had left it in front of a house with a
FREE
sign on it. Must have been moving. The kids said they left a bookcase and an easy chair and a couch, but all they took was the computer.”

“Did they say where that happened?”

“Nope. We didn't ask. They didn't tell.” He managed a smile. For the first time Marvia noted that he needed some serious dental work.

Telesto and Plutonia had no address for John Smith and Mary Smith. No ID. Nothing. Two sickly looking teenagers. A computer that came and went.

Now what?

Rigoberto Chocron said, “I'm pretty hungry, Loot.”