The First Cut (38 page)

T H I R T Y - T H R E E

P
USSYCAT SAT ON THE BED FOR OVER AN HOUR, HOLDING HER SLEEPING
dog on her lap, a towel protecting her clothing from fur. Her husband hated the dog and would especially hate white fur on this particular outfit. She was wearing Frankie’s uniform, as he’d requested. The top three shirt buttons were undone and her breasts billowed from the opening. The remaining buttons strained to remain closed. Her feet swam inside Frankie’s heavy-soled, lace-up shoes, even with thick gym socks. She’d had to fold up the pants hem. The equipment belt had most of the pieces intact. Missing were the spare clip, the pepper spray, and the cherrywood baton that Frankie told her had belonged to her father and his father before that. Of course, John had removed the weapons.

Wearing Frankie’s clothing, she tried to draw upon Frankie’s strength. Unlike herself, easily wooed by romance and hearts and flowers, Frankie had always known the score. Her mistake was miscalculating the endgame.

Pussycat had seriously misjudged her husband’s motives regarding Frankie. What was she supposed to think when she had to sit there and smile as he gave Frankie the watch that was supposed to be her birthday gift? That same night, the night they’d picked up Frankie at the strip club, he’d told Pussycat to leave the basement so he and Frankie could be alone.

Jealous, she refused to go. He dragged her all the way to her rooms by her hair and shoved her inside. Her dog Mignon yipped at him and tried to bite his ankles. He picked up the dog and threw her against the wall, then swung around and gave Pussycat a right jab in the ribs for trying to stop him. Pussycat feared he’d killed Mignon but, miraculously, the dog was all right. As for her, she was certain he’d broken a rib. He had definitely pulled out locks of her hair. She took a Vicodin and managed to fall asleep.

Pussycat was despondent when she’d come down for breakfast the next morning, expecting any minute for him to tell her to pack her bags. Through the kitchen windows, she saw John walking down the driveway to pick up the newspapers. Pussycat peeked and saw he’d left both doors to the basement open. He was more careless about that when Lolly wasn’t working.

Pussycat felt a dull ache in her ribs. While taking another Vicodin with a cup of coffee, she heard Frankie’s voice coming from the basement. She was shouting and cursing John. He was muttering profanities in that disjointed way that told Pussycat he was approaching orgasm.

Pussycat crept down the stairs. Playing on the flat screen was a movie of her husband sexually brutalizing Frankie.

“Turn it off,” Frankie said.

S
HE WAS HANDCUFFED TO THE BED.

Pussycat stared at her, stunned.

“Turn the fucking thing off.”

Her husband was yelling, “Scream, bitch. Scream louder.”

Pussycat grabbed the remote and silenced the television.

“That bad?” Frankie asked in response to Pussycat’s horrified expression. Frankie’s lip was split and her eye was black. Blood streaked her thighs and torso.

“He’s never hit me in the face before. He’s never kept me locked up down here. You getting a picture of what he plans to do?”

Pussycat gaped at her. She didn’t want to accept Frankie’s interpretation. “But he loves you. I’m the one he’s getting rid of.”

“Oh, honey. We both underestimated him. Get me out of here. We can take him.”

“I don’t have the keys.”

“Then get the fucking keys!”

“He wouldn’t do that. I know him.” She winced and held her ribs.

“Did he beat you up, too? Pussycat, what are you waiting for?”

Her eyes darted to the side and Pussycat turned to see him behind her. She recoiled as he reached for her, but his hand on her arm was gentle.

“Come on, sweetheart. You’re my wife. She’s not worth worrying your pretty head over.”

Frankie shrieked, “You think you’re done with me? You’ll never be done with me. Ever!”

N
OW PUSSYCAT LOOKED DOWN AT FRANKIE’S UNIFORM THAT SHE WORE.
She turned the nametag so she could see it. She wished she’d done what Frankie had asked and gotten the keys. Her husband was careful about where he kept them after that, but she could have found a way.

Who was she kidding? Her husband and Miss Tina called the shots in her life these days. And her husband knew how to get Tina to speak in just the right way.

F
RANKIE CONTINUED CURSING THEM LONG AFTER SHE HEARD BOTH DOORS
bolted. She had hoped for Pussycat’s help. She should have known she couldn’t count on a meth tweaker. This was what her mother would have called a come-to-Jesus moment. Frankie knew she was as good as gone. She accepted that fact with a serenity that surprised her. She’d always wondered about people who realized they were about to die. Wondered how they handled it. Now she understood. There was a certain peace in knowing. Sort of like watching a movie you’ve seen before. The suspense falls away and you have time to pick up on details that had slipped by because you were absorbed in the story.

At that moment, the detail Frankie noticed was the silence in the soundproofed basement. It no longer felt like the absence of noise, but she recognized it as an entity unto itself with its own character and substance. It surrounded and caressed her. Infiltrated her. She closed her eyes to take it in. After a while, she opened her eyes. She felt not sad, but wistful. And angry. Above all, she was angry. He might just get away with what he had done and would do to her, and that made her more upset than the thought of her impending death.

While she was thinking about that, something near the pillow caught her eye. She reached to pick it up, the chain on her wrist rattling. At first she couldn’t figure out what it was. Then she remembered. It was a crown that had fallen off his tooth. He had been sitting cross-legged on the bed, eating one of those stinky cheeses with which he was so impressed, conversing like they were sitting across a dinner table, like a normal couple, when he’d jumped up, spitting out a chewed-up mass in his hand. Losing that crown had really pissed him off. She didn’t remember what he’d done with it. There it was.

Frankie measured the heft of it in her palm. Then she had a tremendous idea. She set the crown on her tongue, like a communion wafer, then rolled it back into her mouth and swallowed it.

“I’ve got you now, you prick.”

T H I R T Y - F O U R

T
HE NEXT MORNING, AS VINING MADE HER SHORT DRIVE ON THE
101 into Pasadena, she received a call from Rosemary, Pussycat’s sister.

“Pam just called me.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she was feeling better but was still in bed. I told her I wanted to come out to see her tonight and she said not to bother. She’d try to get together with me later this week. I said that she should go to the doctor because migraines don’t last this long. She said John had taken her yesterday and the doctor told her she needed to rest.”

“How did she sound?”

“Sort of out of it. I asked her if she’d taken a tranquilizer or something. She said she’d taken Xanax. I think she goes to this pill doctor who’d prescribe anything. Course John, in that business he’s in, can get anything. I’m thinking of driving out to their house.”

“That’s not a good idea. Let us take the next step.”

“What’s the next step?”

“We have a plan. That’s all I can say.”

A thought occurred to Vining. “Rosemary, do you have the name of an old friend of Pussyca—Ah, Pamela’s? Maybe someone from school who might try to get in touch with her? A voice from the past?”

Rosemary gave her a name and promised to back Vining’s story.

Vining parked in the lot of the minimarket on Walnut and Los Robles. At a phone pod there, Vining called the Lesley residence. She had no doubt that a man like John Lesley would have caller I.D. and possibly contacts who could trace her cell phone number. A woman with a Spanish accent answered.

“Lesley residence.”

“Who am I speaking with?”

“This is Lolly the housekeeper. May I help you?”

“I’d like to speak with Mrs. Lesley, please.”

Lolly hesitated. “She can’t talk right now. May I take a message?”

“Is she there?”

“She’s here.” The inflection of her voice ascended. Vining guessed she was under stress, but being truthful. “But she can’t talk right now, okay?”

A male voice came on the line. “This is John Lesley. Can I help you?”

A chill tickled Vining’s spine. She carried on, pitching her voice higher than her normal contralto. “This is Debby Selvig. I’m an old friend of Pamela’s and Rosemary’s from high school. Is she there?”

“She’s resting. I’ll take your number and have her call you.”

“Rosemary said that Pam wasn’t feeling well. I’m sorry to hear that. I’m in town for a few days and wanted to come by and see her.”

“Rosemary gave you this number, I bet.”

“Yes, she did. I can stop by this morning.”

“Pamela is not well enough for guests. If you talked to Rosemary, she should have told you that. Pamela has exerted herself enough today. I’m sorry but she can’t come to the phone. Good-bye.”

V
INING ENTERED THE SECOND-FLOOR DETECTIVES SECTION AND PASSED LIEUTENANT
Beltran and Sergeant Early, who were in the conference room with the door closed. Through the windows, Vining saw that the interaction was tense. They were both standing. Early leaned on the table on both hands, her eyes shooting daggers at Beltran.

Ruiz was in but Kissick and Caspers were not.

“Where’s Jim and Alex?” Vining stood in the opening to Ruiz’s cubicle.

“Jim’s at the courthouse with Mireya Dunn trying to get approval for the search warrants. I don’t know where Caspers is.”

She jerked her head in the direction of the conference room. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t know. They were in there when I got here. Must be serious. They didn’t want to talk in front of Cho and Taylor. I do know that Lesley made our team that was surveilling his house last night. He drove up about half past midnight and knocked on the car window.”

“Son of a bitch.” Vining went to the Detective Sergeants’ office where Sergeant Cho was at his desk. “What’s the deal with Early and Beltran?”

Cho was going through reports. He looked up at her without moving his head, his eyes almost lost in his fleshy face. “Your surveillance got snuffed.”

“What?”

“Order from on high.”

“Why?”

He hiked his shoulders. “You know what I know.”

Vining went back to Ruiz who was standing in his cubicle. “Cho says our surveillance got snuffed.”

“Huh?”

Early and Beltran were still at it.

Caspers showed up. “What’s going on?”

“Were you pulled off your surveillance at Reign last night?”

“Yeah. I was there with Jill Hendricks. She was chatting up the bartender. I was hanging out. John Lesley passed by, started shaking hands with people at the bar. I was like, ‘Hey, howyadoin’?’ That was around midnight. An hour later, Early calls me on my cell and sends me and Hendricks home.”

Early jerked open the conference room door and stormed out with Beltran on her heels. He left the area. Early agitatedly waved at the group, calling them into the conference room.

She worked her mouth, as if struggling to find words. “Beltran called me around one this morning and told me to shut down the Lesley surveillance.” She held up her hands, forestalling comment. “That’s just the way it is. If Kissick gets his warrants, we’ll be back in there. Otherwise, hands off the Lesleys. We still have plenty of leads to follow up.”

She left the room.

Vining, Ruiz, and Caspers looked at one another.

“You know what that’s about,” Caspers began. “John Lesley is farther up Beltran’s ass than we thought.”

“Lesley made you and Hendricks last night,” Ruiz said. “Probably went home to see if we had a car on his house. Called his buddy Beltran. Beltran thinks he’s a Hollywood player. Wasn’t he trying to sell a screenplay?”

“Yeah. ‘Death in a Blue Uniform.’” Caspers snickered.

“We should have seen this coming,” Vining said. “At his club yesterday, Lesley didn’t just brag to Jim and me about how he’s friends with Beltran, he taunted us, saying he’s got contacts in the local law.”

“West Hollywood is covered by sheriff’s, isn’t it?” Ruiz asked.

Caspers nodded.

“What the hell?” Ruiz added. “We didn’t have anything solid on Lesley anyway. We’re on to him only because he might have beat up his ex-wife and he was seen talking to Frankie.”

“It’s not much,” Caspers agreed.

Vining ground her teeth. They were wrong, and she couldn’t tell them why. “Jim decided on the surveillance after we interviewed Lesley yesterday. He found enough to take a closer look.”

“He’s got his reputation on the line,” Caspers said. “He’s getting desperate. Frankly, I’ll be surprised if Kissick gets those search warrants.”

Vining glumly stared at the ground. She looked up at Caspers. “Did you and Hendricks find out anything when you were at Lesley’s club?”

“Nothing. Hendricks worked over the bartender, talking about how she’d been robbed, was thinking of buying a gun, did he know anything about them.”

“Not exactly subtle,” Ruiz said.

“We didn’t exactly have a lot of time to build this thing. Couldn’t get the bartender to talk.”

“Lesley must have warned them if anyone asked about a gun,” Vining said. “His ex-wife probably tried to get him on that before.”

“I heard from Chase,” Caspers said. “He did record his encounter with the Lesleys. He remembered it well. It got nasty. He threatened to pull Lesley in on a one forty-eight. If we want the tape right away, it’s at his house. His housemate will let me in.”

“We want it right away,” Vining said.

“I’ll take off.”

“Guess I’ll keep dialing and smiling,” Ruiz said. “Tracking down harebrained leads. If anything good was coming in, it would have come in by now.”

Vining put her hands in her jacket pockets. She wore a different pair of slacks but the same jacket she had on the day before and was surprised to find Frankie’s school photo that was still there.