Desert Noir (9781615952236) Page 2

  “Oh, come on. She was divorcing him, as you well know, because for years he beat the holy living hell out of her. And just in case your client didn’t tell you, there was a restraining order in effect against him when he killed her. And let us not forget the bloody shoes they found in his alley. His shoes.” Remembering Clarice’s savaged body, it was all I could do to keep from spitting in his face.

  Big Money smiled. “Now, Lena. You know better than that. Just because a man beats his wife doesn’t mean he’ll actually kill her.”

  “Tell that to Nicole Brown Simpson. And it’s Miss Jones to you.”

  Another sour look, then he rustled around in his pocket, pulled out a business card and slapped it down on the desk. The card was Albert Grabel’s, CEO of Seriad, Inc. On the back was a note in Grabel’s handwriting which said, “Lena, Jay Kobe is my wife’s nephew. Please help him.”

  I looked around the office, at my expensive—if tacky—furniture, all courtesy of the computer chip magnate who’d set me up in business after I took a bullet in the hip. True, I’d been shot getting his foolish, drug-addicted son out of a self-inflicted mess, but still…I was a cop and protecting fools was my job. Grabel hadn’t looked at the situation that way. After the doctors released me from the hospital, he shipped me off to a fancy clinic in California. And when the head of the Violent Crimes Unit moved me to a desk job despite my protests, Grabel stepped in again and convinced me my future lay in preventing computer crime.

  The fact that I was scared of my own Macintosh didn’t faze Grabel. He knew somebody who wasn’t, he said, an Indian genius with a tattooed face who had just spent the morning spooking the hell out of Seriad’s personnel director.

  I handed Grabel’s card back to Big Money and sat down again. “So what’s your name?”

  “Hal McKinnon. Mr. McKinnon to you.”

  I smiled. “Well, Hal. Convince me that shithead didn’t kill Clarice.”

  By the time McKinnon finished talking, I was worried. Jay was screaming frame—no surprise there—but some aspects of the case bothered me. True, Jay was an evil-tempered thug who’d beaten his wife on numerous occasions, a hearty partier with recreational drugs. And true, as a widower instead of an ex, he was now the beneficiary of Clarice’s will—one hell of a motive for anybody. Clarice was worth, what? Several hundreds of thousands? A million? Motive, means, opportunity. They were all there. But didn’t the whole case look a little too slick?

  Unlike detective fiction, real murder cases leave loose ends dangling all over the place. McKinnon had made a pretty good point.

  “Let me reiterate,” he finished with a smug look. “At the time of the murder, Mr. Kobe was in bed with his girlfriend, who will probably swear to that in court. And even if she doesn’t, I’m betting the toxicology tests done on him will prove he was simply too drunk to leave the house. As for those bloody Nikes, they could have been planted.”

  “Who by? Elvis?”

  He ignored me. “And don’t forget about the gallery’s back door.

  It was halfway open, right?”

  I nodded carefully, wondering where he was going with this.

  “The door was smeared with blood, yet there were no fingerprints. Now, Le… uh, Miss Jones, don’t you think that’s odd?”

  Yes I did and the thought didn’t cheer me. I wanted Kobe to be guilty. Clarice’s face haunted my dreams, perhaps because I hadn’t done enough to save her. In the six months I’d been her neighbor on Main Street, I’d seen bruises on her face more than once. But every time I’d tried to talk to her about it, she’d changed the subject. And I’d let her.

  I sighed.

  “Well?” McKinnon sounded impatient.

  “Well what?” Just because he said his client was innocent didn’t mean I needed to do anything about it, Albert’s note or not. If Kobe hadn’t killed Clarice, it was only because he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  McKinnon leaned forward and the flush that began at his neck rose slowly to his cheeks. Now he didn’t look quite so healthy, more like a heart attack waiting to happen. “I’m trying to save this man’s life. You were a cop. Didn’t you ever save someone’s life?”

  “Several times, as a matter of fact, but none of them were wife beaters.”

  The flush intensified. “There’s a lot of money involved here. You could get a goodly chunk.”

  I shrugged. “I already have a car that runs, a two-year, paid-up lease on this office, and I don’t collect Picasso. So exactly why would I need that, as you call it, chunk?”

  McKinnon looked like he was about to stroke out. Then, after taking a few deep breaths, he surprised me and said, “Then let’s see how this strikes you, Miss Jones. Albert Grabel told me how you got that scar on your face, and…” His flush now had nothing to do with anger. “Well, what I mean to say is, you help me and I’ll help you. As I’m sure you realize, in my years as a defense attorney I’ve had some interesting clients. Maybe one of them knows somebody who shot a little girl in the head thirty years ago.” My scarred face must have revealed my sudden interest because McKinnon nodded and said, “Now that we’ve got our pissing contest out of the way, maybe you should go down to the Madison Street Jail and talk to my client.” I sighed again.

  It seemed to be my day for sighs.

  Chapter 3

  As soon as McKinnon left, I called the Scottsdale Violent Crimes Unit and asked to be put through to Captain Kryzinski, my old boss.

  “Jay Kobe? You workin’ for Jay Kobe? You nuts or what?” His Brooklyn accent always thickened when he was upset. “I thought you hated that dirt bag!”

  “Actually, I never met the man, so for now I can only hate him in the abstract. Will you help me or not?”

  Kryzinski breathed heavy for a moment. “If you were still one of my detectives you’d already have the information you’re wantin’,” he snapped. “So why don’t you come on back?”

  I didn’t want to be bothered covering old territory. “I’d like to see the case file. The lab test results, the notes from the investigating officers, the photos, everything. And I’d like to know the results of the AFIS check you ran on Jay when you booked him.”

  AFIS was Scottsdale’s laser-based Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which was linked electronically with all other state and federal fingerprint identification systems around the country. The suspect put his fingers on a glass plate smaller than a post card, the laser scanned them, and the results came back almost instantaneously. You could book somebody for a D.U.I. and within an hour find out if they’d killed their Aunt Tilly in Winnetka—even if they’d given you a phony name and were driving under a phony license. Cops loved it. Suspects hated it.

  Kryzinski grumbled. “Well, I don’t got any problem lettin’ you know ’bout that since that crazy Indian you’re working with can find it out in a New York minute. Yeah, Kobe had form. Back seven years ago, before he became an artsy-fartsy type, he worked as a nightclub bouncer out in Bakersfield. One night he got a little too rough with a patron and put her in the hospital.”

  “Her?”

  “Yeah, her. Some shaved-head punker with more piercings than Arizona’s got snakes. She was drunk and making a total ass out of herself, but shit, he didn’t have to go and do what he did. Busted her jaw, knocked out a few teeth. She came out of it okay, sued the club for a bundle. As for Muscle Man, he pulled six months.”

  I thought about that for a minute. A nightclub bouncer? That was a long way from the art galleries of Scottsdale. I said as much to Kryzinski.

  “God works in mysterious ways. Seems while he was sitting around the correctional facility counting his toes some bleeding heart came in and started giving art lessons. Guess it was supposed to make the cons appreciate the finer things in life or somethin’ like that. Turned out Kobe had a knack for painting. But you know something else?”

  He gave a dark laugh, as he always did when confronted by the more twisted pathways of human nature. “When Kobe got released, he move
d in with his art teacher, who apparently had been swayed by his highly sensitive nature. Two weeks after movin’in, our boy beat the crap out of her, too. What is it with these women, tell me that? When Clarice Kobe threw him out, he moved in with Alison Garwood within two fuckin’ weeks. He’s already knocked her up, too. Not that he let that stop him from having his heavy-fisted fun. When our guys got there the night of the murder, she was lyin’ in bed with an ice pack pressed to a black eye. Face swollen the size of a football. Kobe was passed out next to her, scabs all over his knuckles. Hell, Lena, I just can’t wait for this trial. Men like Kobe oughta be euthanized or somethin’.”

  I closed my eyes. Whatever had possessed me to take the Kobe case? The man was an unrepentant thug. It was probably a miracle he hadn’t killed someone before now. Or maybe he had.

  “You still there, kid?” Kryzinski sounded smug.

  “I’m still here and I appreciate you giving me all that information. Now what about the rest of it? The case file?”

  He didn’t answer and I knew he wanted a promise I couldn’t give. Instead, I threw him a bone. “Look, Captain, you let me take a look at the case file and I’ll give some serious thought to coming back to the Department. How’s that sound?”

  He sounded perkier. “Sounds good. The VCU just ain’t the same without you. But hell, kid, you know that case file’s classified information. It’s not supposed to leave department hands, or at least not until the prosecutin’ attorney gets his shot at it.”

  “The case file doesn’t have to leave the building. I’m a speed reader. Let me come up there, I’ll be done with it before you know it.”

  “Ah, shit, Lena.”

  That’s when I knew I’d won.

  Chapter 4

  The next day, Jay Kobe’s first words attacked me as the jail guards ushered him into the urine-scented visiting room, “You could be a beautiful woman if you did something about that scar. McKinnon told me you got shot in the ass, not the face.”

  Still the brute. Jail hadn’t settled him down at all.

  “I was shot in the hip. Or as my doctor phrased it, my pelvic girdle.”

  He frowned. “Then what about that awful scar on your forehead”

  What a guy. “I was shot for the first time when I was about four years old.”

  “First time?” Kobe let out his breath in a hiss. He had halitosis. Living in the Madison Street Jail will do that to you. “Jesus, who’d shoot a kid?”

  For some reason, I never minded telling criminals my story, perhaps because violence was already so much a part of their own lives. A bullet wound here, a knife scar there—all were badges of honor to them. But there was another reason, too. Since violence attracted violence, there was always the chance that they knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew something about it. This was the way most crimes were solved.

  I settled myself back into the visitor’s chair. “It’s nice that you’re concerned, Mr. Kobe, but nobody knows who shot me or why. When I turned eighteen the social workers told me some Hispanic woman brought me to St. Joseph’s Emergency Room and then took off. She didn’t leave her name and nobody ever showed up to claim me. You know anybody who knows anything about a kid getting shot around thirty-two years ago?”

  Kobe, who probably wasn’t more than thirty-two himself, shook his head. “So that’s why you don’t have it fixed. You’re still hoping someone will see it and recognize you.”

  The disappointment hurt, it always did, but I shoved it away. “Smart man. Now tell me why I should believe that you didn’t murder Clarice.”

  Even dressed in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s black-and-white striped jail duds, Jay Kobe was still a handsome man. The hazel eyes were unclouded by guilt or allergies, the cleft in his chin rivaled that of Kirk Douglas, and his bulked-up bod proved the efficacy of free weights. His only physical imperfections were his bruised knuckles. From Clarice? Or his girlfriend?

  Yes, he was a pretty boy, but like most wife-beaters, I knew he would reveal himself to be a moper, a self-described perennial victim forced into unseemly behavior by his nearest and dearest. Jay didn’t let me down. As he recounted his wife’s many sins—arrogance, stinginess, duplicity, and an all-around inability to recognize his many sterling qualities—his black-fringed eyes took on a wounded look.

  “I’m an easygoing guy but Clarice could really press my buttons, you know? But with all her faults, I loved that woman with every inch of my being.”

  “Apparently you had an inch or two left over. Somebody down at VCU told me your new girlfriend is pregnant. Congratulations, stud.”

  Kobe’s bedroom eyes narrowed and for that one unguarded moment, psychopathy radiated off him like skunk skat. “The bitch told me she was on the pill. And since you’re working for me, what the fuck are you doing hanging around the police department?”

  “All my best friends hang out there, remember? Jay, I hope you don’t expect me to take your word for anything, not with your track record.”

  His eyes opened baby-wide. “I told you, Clarice knew how to push…”

  “Your buttons.” I yawned. “Now before I fall asleep here in Sheriff Joe’s Motel, why don’t you tell me your version of the events last Thursday night?”

  Kobe looked like he wanted to hit me but since he knew I might help him beat a Murder One rap, he recounted the events of last Thursday. According to him, he was sleeping it off at Alison Garwood’s house, Clarice having thrown him out of the house a couple of months earlier. He and his girlfriend had been partying hard all day, he admitted, and he seemed to remember bopping her one.

  “Alison can really push…”

  “Your buttons. Continue.”

  He ground his teeth. “Listen, bitch, you’re pushing my buttons, you know that?”

  I smiled sweetly. “Touch me and you’ll be shitting teeth for a week.”

  He flinched. Like most batterers, Jay was a coward. He’d never hit a woman who might hit back.

  “Come on, Jay. I’m not staying down here all day. Tell me more about the night of the murder.”

  “There’s nothing else to tell. The cops came and dragged me out of bed about two in the morning, and after one of them found those damned Nikes in the Dumpster, that was it. I told them and told them I hadn’t seen those shoes in months, but they wouldn’t listen to a word I said.” His fingers tapped a nervous rhythm on the wooden table and I could see that his nails were growing a little long. He was overdue for a trip to the manicurist.

  “Why couldn’t your girlfriend convince them you’d been with her all day?”

  “Ummmm.” He looked thoughtful. “Alison, um, well…”

  It was obvious he wasn’t going to tell me the truth, so I cut to the chase. “How’s this sound? Alison was mad at you for hitting her so she told the police she was in bed with an ice pack and didn’t know if you’d gone out later or not. She also told the detectives that you’d often talked about killing Clarice before the divorce went through so that you’d be able to keep all that lovely money.”

  I enjoyed the expression on Jay’s face. He looked like he’d swallowed a scorpion and it was stinging its way back up. “She’s nothing but a lying whore. Look, I admit I had problems with Clarice, but I wasn’t the only one. Everybody did.”

  Here it came, the I-Didn’t-Kill-Her-But-I-Know-Who-Probably-Did Tango. I raised my eyebrows and slouched lower into my chair, prepared for a long monologue.

  “See, Clarice was always having trouble with her family. There was something weird going on there, especially with dear old dad, you know what I mean?”

  I shook my head.

  “Ah, come on, a woman like you? You’ve been around, you know what’s what.”

  I shook my head again.

  He looked exasperated, which was what I wanted. Exasperated people were careless people. “What I’m trying to tell you, lady, is that Mr. Stephen Hyath himself had one big skeleton in his closet where Clarice was concerned. Capice? ”

  I
began to capice all right but needed to hear more. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Jay.”

  “Incest, you stupid bitch! Before things went bad between us, Clarice told me that her daddy used to crawl in bed with her when mommy dearest was too drunk to care!”

  I thought about that for a moment. Even if the rumor was true, would it make any difference to the murder case? It seemed to me that if long-ago incest had been the Hyath family secret, it would have been Clarice murdering Daddy, not Daddy murdering Clarice. I said as much to Kobe but he just sneered knowingly.

  “She was getting ready to take him to court.”

  I laughed. “C’mon. Clarice was thirty. The statute of limita-tions on child molest would have run out years ago. Or was she going to use Recovered Memory Syndrome as an explanation for a tardy filing? That wouldn’t get her much in this state, because none of those judgments are holding up on appeal.”

  Kobe shook his head. His fingers stepped up their nervous drumming on the table. “Clarice wasn’t interested in justice, just money. She was going after her father in civil court to the tune of thirty million dollars. I doubt if old man Hyath was crazy about the idea of forfeiting any of his millions. He’d rather see her dead. That whole fucking family worships money.”

  “And you don’t?”

  The fingers stopped drumming and clenched into a fist. He began to rise from his chair but made the mistake of looking into my eyes. What he saw there stopped him. He sat back down slowly and forced his hand open again. His nostrils flared and I could hear the hot, fast breath whizzing through them.

  I couldn’t remember disliking anyone so much on first meeting, not even the serial child molester I’d once caught in the act. But I remembered McKinnon’s promise to help me out with my own problem.

  “OK. I’ll interview Clarice’s father, see what he has to say. But somehow I just can’t see him rending his Brooks Brothers suit, throwing ashes upon his head, and confessing to me that he feels guilty about diddling his daughter.”