Eyewitness. Part 1

EYEWITNESS.

Kathleen Creighton.

To Gary, for all the best reasons

Chapter 1.

The blonde lay sprawled in the tumbled sheets like a bride on her wedding night, one arm flung out and back with the hand resting seductively on the pillow beside her head. The nails were a soft seash.e.l.l pink, the fingers almost white and delicately curled, like the petals of a water lily. "The other hand, gently fisted, nestled in the V of her rib cage just below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, betraying a self-consciousness somehow the more poignant for falling short of full modesty.

Viewed from above, her eyes appeared to be closed, as if she were sleeping. Or, perhaps, from the slight upward curve of her lips, simply antic.i.p.ating her lover's touch. But from Detective Sergeant Justin Tyler MacDougal's position near the foot of the bed he could see that they were only half closed, and that they had the unmictakable flat sheen of eyes that would never look upon a lover's face, or anything else, again.

Another one, he thought, feeling every one of his thirty seven years and then some. And then, as almost always happened when the victim was young, female and beautiful , he had an instant's flashback to a different scene entirely a scene from long ago but one he knew he wouldn't forget if he lived to be 137.

"Shot once in the head, looks like-right here." Careful not to touch anything, his partner, Buroside, leaned over the body, squinting in concentration. "Barrel impression, no powder burns around the entry wound. Small caliber, maybe even a .22. Wow." He made a clicking sound with his tongue and shook his head.

MacDougal grunted softly in agreement. A . 22 slug could do a lot of damage rattling around inside a human skull.

Buroside, who hadn't been his partner very long, glanced at him to see if the grunt required a response, then turoed his attention back to his examination. He peered closely at a pillow, cautiously sniffed it. " " Powder residue here, too. Looks like he put the pillow over her face to m.u.f.fle the shot. That plus the small caliber -explains why n.o.body heard it. "

MacDougal nodded his approval. It was beginning to look as if the kid might have the makings of a good homicide detective.

"Doesn't look like she put up a fight, either, does it?" said Buroside as he came to join MacDougal at the foot of the bed. "No bruises.. : His voice trailed off and the two men stood together for the s.p.a.ce of a moment too full of mutual understanding for words.

Buroside cleared his throat. "Whoever did it, looks like he, uh, made love to her and then shot her. Just like that. Before he even got.. : '

"Ain't love grand," MacDougal drawled, deliberately keeping his tone dry. Emotions like anger and outrage had no place in a homicide investigation.

Meanwhile, his gaze was traveling a familiar route around the bedroom, searching, cataloging. No sign of the weapon, but he hadn't expected it to be here. He'd been wrong before , but he was pretty sure he already knew how this one was going to go down.

"Stay with her until forensics gets here," he said, tucking his notebook into his s.h.i.+rt pocket. "I'm going to check around outside, see what the lady's neighbors have to say about her love life."

Carefully retracing his steps back through the apartment , he detoured long enough for a quick check of the contents of a purse he'd spotted earlier on the floor beside the couch. Balanced on the ball of one foot, he carefully withdrew a wallet of burgundy leather-not an expensive one-and flipped it open to the driver's license. He stared at the photograph encased in cloudy plastic for along moment , then closed the wallet again. Before he slipped it back into the purse he poked once more through the acc.u.mulation of odds and ends in the bottom, just to make sure that what he hadn't found really wasn't there. He rose, then, and let his eyes make a brief but thorough survey of the living room. Nope-not here, either.

Two steps to the right gave him a good view of the tiny kitchen through a pa.s.s-through opening lined with wooden swivel-type bar stools. He gave it the same once-over, paying special attention to the countertops and the small pile of items beside the phone, all the places a woman might be expected to drop a set of car keys. Like the gun, he didn't really expect to find them.

He stepped outside onto the sunbaked landing. Milton Stanislowski, the medical examiner, was toiling up the concrete stairway from the courtyard below, sweating in the October heatwave in spite of a relative humidity that had to be near zero.

When the ME saw MacDougal he reared back in mock surprise and growled, "What the h.e.l.l are you doing here? Oh, Lord, it must be a homicide. Can't think of anything else that'd tear MacDougal away from The Big Game."

MacDougal acknowledged that with a wry snort; it was common knowledge around the precinct that, having grown up in the shadow of Chavez Ravine, he took his baseball seriously-if you could apply a word like "serious" to someone whose favorite team was the Los Angeles Dodgers This year, for example, after several grim seasons spent languis.h.i.+ng in the bottom half of the Westero Division, the Dodgers had defied all the odds-makers' predictions and streaked to the lead after the All-Star break. Then, in typical Dodger fas.h.i.+on, with pennant fever in L. A. approaching epidemic levels, they'd gone into an equally dazzling tailspin. They'd just barely managed to hold off a season ending charge by, of all the teams in the league, the lowly San Diego Padres!

In the end, as it seemed to so often when the Dodgers were involved, the unimaginable had happened. The two bitter rivals from opposite ends of the 405 Freeway had finished the regular season in a dead heat. A one-game play-off would decide the Western Division winner, to be played, by virtue of a coin toss, which the Dodgers had of course lost, in San Diego. That game was being played this evening. Right this very moment, in fact.

MacDougal had pulled every string he knew how to pull, but he still hadn't been able to wrangle a ticket to the game.

The ME, having at last achieved the landing, elbowed him in the ribs and grinned. " " Hey, one h.e.l.luva game, too. I was listening to it on the radio on the way over here. Listen to this-top of the second, and Sanchez leads off-"

MacDougal planted a good hard grip at the join of Stanislowski 's neck and shoulder and proceeded to explain in a good-natured and friendly way exactly what part of the ME's anatomy he planned to cut off and feed to him if he finished that sentence.

Stanislowski gave an admiring chuckle followed by a grunt of sympathy. "Taping it, are you?"

"I sure hope so: MacDougal flattened himself against the railing to get out of the way of the arriving swarm of forensics experts, then jerked a thumb toward the open door and muttered, " Bedroom-Burnside's in charge. " He started down the stairs. " I've got a six-hour tape in my VCR. First guy that tells me how that game comes out's going to wish he hadn't. "

"Good luck," the medical examiner wheezed cheerfully, and heaved himself through the door after the photographer Yeah, right, good luck, thought MacDougal as he made his way down the stairs and along a concrete walkway shaded by overgrown banana plants and made perilous with bird-of-paradise spikes and tendrils of creeping lantana. Tonight that broadcast, featuring the golden voice of Vin Scully, was going to be leaking through every wall and booming from every car window in the city. He'd need to be d.a.m.n lucky, as well as deaf and blind, to avoid it.

Out in front, the uniformed officers who'd been first on the scene were busy securing the area and interviewing possible witnesses. MacDougal always liked to keep up with the new faces on the force, but he didn't recognize either the Hispanic male unreeling the yellow crime scene tape or the black female he could see talking to a a cl.u.s.ter of neighbors on the apartment building's tiny rectangle of lawn. There sure were a lot of new faces these days, he thought. Lot of shaking up going on throughout the department, too, all part of getting a new chief, he supposed-kind of a trickle down effect.

He'd been feeling a few of those trickles himself, pressure from some people who meant him well. But he had no desire for a lieutenant's job and the desk that went with it , not yet, not for a few years yet. He liked the streets, and he liked partnering the rookies. He'd been around along time, and liked to think there were still a few things he could teach these gung ho kids.

The officer on the lawn stopped scribbling in her note pad as he approached. MacDougal nodded at her while he took careful note of the neighbors, who seemed a little edgy and excited but not terribly broken up-about normal for L. A. He glanced at the officer's name tag.

"Officer Cook? Sergeant MacDougal-homicide. What've you got?" He looked at his watch. Almost nine thirty It was going to be along night. He wondered briefly if the game was over yet, and who was winning.

Mary, JoJo, Daisy Pepper and Preacher threaded their way together through the maze of parked cars in the Jack Murphy Stadium parking lot. They were quiet but not gloomy, simply subdued, like exhausted children after along day at Disneyland. That is, until JoJo hunched his ma.s.sive shoulders and ventured, "It was a good game. Exciting."

"Hah," snapped Daisy Pepper. She was still sore about the bet she'd lost to Preacher; two bits was a lot of money to Daisy.

Mary heaved a sigh and shook her head. "I still can't believe the Dodgers scored four runs. And with two out in the ninth. Goes to show you: She looked around the half empty parking lot. " " I bet a lot of people are going to be surprised tomorrow morning: '

"Teach 'em to leave in the seventh inning," Daisy scoffed. "You'd never catch anybody doin' that at Wrigley Anybody did that, he'd never live it down: Daisy was an ex-bleacher b.u.m from Chicago and didn't have much respect for West Coast fans.

"Seven to six," groaned Preacher. "What kind of score is that? That's not a baseball score, that's a football score."

"Well, the Dodgers got a good team," JoJo rumbled, lumbering along in their wake. "Score lotta runs. Makes it exciting. I like that."

"Exciting? You call that game exciting? Children, you don't kno-o-ow about exciting," Preacher intoned in the voice that had earned him his nickname. "You call these prima donnas the Dodgers got now a good team? The 1963 Dodgers-now there was a team. One-nothing, that's how they won games in those days. Won the pennant, and took the series from the Yankees in four straight, too, just like that. One-nothing. Koufax or Drysdale on the mound, Wills leads off with a walk, steals second, takes third on a sacrifice by Gilliam, comes home on along fly ball off the bat of Frank Howard. Bingo-all she wrote. Give those guys one run and it was all over. Ten, twelve strikeouts a game, easy. Now, that was exciting."

"Sounds boring as a day in church to me," said Daisy. "Me, I like to see some runs. Give me a day in Chicago with the wind blowin' out, and I'll show you excitement. b.a.l.l.s flyin' outta there like they was made of rubber. Kids used to chase 'em in the street. That's the way baseball oughtta be. Fun."

Preacher snorted. "Sloppy. No finesse." "

" Sports sn.o.b ! "

It was an old debate and probably would have gone on a good bit longer, exrept they'd reached the car by that time and there was something new to argue about, like who got to sit up front this time. Mary left them going at it while she got out her keys and unlocked the Bronco, stepping over a pile of trash to do it.

"Unbelievable," she muttered under her breath. She got so tired of litter. She gathered up a crumpled cigarette pack, a paper cup and grease-stained bag from McDonald's, and a newspaper that was just beginning to scatter in the late evening breeze. Out-of-towners, she thought scornfully, when she saw that the paper was today's L. A. Times.

"Hey," she said as she tossed the trash into the back of the Bronco, " " any of you guys want this paper? "

"Mine," yelped Daisy, giving Preacher a smug look. She was probably figuring it made up a little for the two bits she'd lost; newspaper was a valuable commodity on the streets. It was clean bedding, toilet paper, protection from the rain and insulation against the cold. n.o.body was forgetting that it was October and that there'd be some nippy nights ahead, even in San Diego. " " It's yours," Mary said, but her voice trailed off, and instead of handing the newspaper over to Daisy she went on holding it in both hands while she stared down at the front page. " I'he faces of three men gazed back at her with the famous self-confidenoe of political candidates. Beneath the faces was the headline, Search for New Police Chief Narrows And below that, Three Final Choices for Head of LAPD to Come from Rank and File. " " Give it here," Daisy prompted from the back seat, wiggling outstretched fingers.

"In a minute.. : Two of the faces were blurred and faded. The third stood out stark and clear in the artificial twilight. As stark and clear as a memory. " Oh, G.o.d," Mary whispered. " I don't believe it. "

"What'sa matter?" JoJo asked, looking worried.

Daisy snaked a scrawny arm over the back of the seat and s.n.a.t.c.hed the newspaper. She scooted back, folding it and tucking it jealously away inside her sweater.

"The world is the matter," Preacher said with a sorrowful sigh. " " A mean and dangerous place. Filled with selfish people, hostility and distrust. " He glared meaningfully along his shoulder at Daisy Pepper, who squinted up her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him.

Mary started the Bronco and edged cautiously into the line of vehicles winding slowly out of the parking lot.

"Mary?"

"Yeah, JoJo?"

The huge black man turned his head toward her and smiled, revealing missing teeth. Under the right circ.u.mstances , JoJo's smile could be a fearsome sight. "Thanks. You know-for the game and everything."

"Yes, indeed," Preacher drawled from the back seat, "we've all been remiss. Thank you, m'dear, thank you. Except for the, uh, unfortunate and completely unnecessary edict regarding alcoholic beverages, it has been a most enjoyable evening."

"You're welcome," Mary said, "but I can't take the credit. We should all thank the guy who donated the tickets : '

"Yeah, but you picked us," said JoJo.

"Hey," said Mary, "sure I picked you. You guys are my friends." She glanced in the rearview mirror. Daisy Pepper was already snoring away with her head on Preacher's shoulder.

Preacher nodded, b.u.mping her frowsy gray-blond curls with his beard. "That we are. That we are."

"Friends," said JoJo solemnly.

Friends. Mary s.h.i.+vered and reached to turn on the heater. It was a mild night, but she felt cold and frightened. Like a child walking home in the dark, suddenly aware of the silence and emptiness around her.

It was nearly one-thirty when Doug finally climbed the long flight of stone steps that led to his front door. He could have taken the inside stairs from the garage on the street level to the kitchen, and sometimes did when it was raining and the steps were slippery with bougainvillea blossoms. Most of the time, though, he took the long way. He needed the exercise.

As he inserted his key in the lock he could hear what sounded like a telephone ringing. "Stupid bird," he muttered He pushed the door open, dropped the keys into his pocket and threw his jacket onto the back of the couch. "Okay, knock it off, Maurice."

The ringing sounded again. Doug yawned and regarded the occupant of a large wire cage on the table in front of the living room windows with distaste. " " Cut it out, dammit. It's too late for this c.r.a.p. You'll wake the neighbors. "

Maurice the mynah bird c.o.c.ked his head, fixed Doug with one beady black eye and uttered a breathtakingly obscene remark just as the telephone rang again.

"Hey, Maurice, that's really-" Doug began in genuine admiration. Then realizing belatedly that ventriloquism was probably beyond even a mynah bird's capabilities, he dived for the phone and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the receiver, swearing under his breath.

"MacDougal," he barked, then listened fox a while, asking a question now and then. After he hung it up he stood for a minute with his eyes closed, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Dammit to h.e.l.l," offered Maurice. Doug snorted. The mynah bird added something impressively foul in tones of sympathy.

Which summed up Doug's sentiments pretty well. The murdered blonde's car had just been found, parked in a turnout up on Angeles Crest Highway. The missing boyfriend had been found, too. Sitting in the driver's seat, dead of a single small-caliber gunshot wound to the head. The lab work wasn't completed yet, but the gun found in the young man's hand was almost certainly the one that had killed his girlfriend. Nice kids, both of them. The boy had been a premed student at UCLA.

What was it about love, anyway, Doug wondered, that it could turn into such a force of destruction?

Dammit to h.e.l.l, indeed. Sometimes there was no joy in being right.

He covered Maurice's cage, then picked up the VCR remote control and punched the power b.u.t.ton. It was late; he hadn't planned to watch the game tonight, but after that phone call he knew he wouldn't be sleeping for a while, anyway. He figured he might as well turn it on, see how it went, see if he could manage to lose himself in the intricacies of the national pastime. If nothing else, the Dodgers could probably be depended on to give him something else besides the case to get irritated about.

The tape had run out and automatically rewound to its beginning, so he didn't have to resist the temptation to check the end to see how the game had turned out. He switched the TV on, fast-forwarded through the opening hype, a dozen or so commercials, "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the San Diego pitcher's warm-up tosses. When the next set of commercials came on, he went out to the kitchen to get himself a beer, which he sipped standing up while he watched the Dodger's lead-off batter ground out to the third baseman on the first pitch. He set the beer down on the coffee table, using the latest copy of Reader's Digest as a coaster, and pulled off his tie. The second batter went three and two, then popped up to short. Doug swore softly and went off to his bedroom to change into sweats and a T-s.h.i.+rt.

When he came back the Padres were batting. The Dodger pitcher had a bad case of first-inning jitters. He'd hit the first batter and thrown three straight b.a.l.l.s to the second, so he was taking his time about things, rubbing up the ball, playing with the resin bag and generally fidgeting around up there on the mound. Vin Scully, the Dodger announoer, was filling in the dead time with his usual grace, setting the stage, talking up the grand old game while the cameramen took turns focusing on close-ups of fans taking in the action-or lack of it-from the box seats just behind the dugouts. Kids, mostly. Sleeping babies or some little kid with a glove bigger than he was, hoping for a foul ball to come his way. Pretty girls in sun tops.

Muttering in annoyance, Doug hit the pause b.u.t.ton and headed for the kitchen to get himself something to eat.

He was halfway there when a strange little fris son of awareness suddenly s.h.i.+vered down his spine; he could feel the fine hairs on the back of his neck lifting; his scalp p.r.i.c.kled. He turned and walked slowly back toward the TV set.

On the screen, a woman's image was frozen into flat immobility , her face half turned, as if she'd been about to speak to the person next to her. Doug reached for the remote and thumbed the picture into action, and an instant later the woman's face vanished, to be replaced by the Dodger pitcher, delivering a fastball for a strike. He stabbed at the b.u.t.tons, rewound too far and had to fast-forward, then rewind again. And finally he had her.

She was a cameraman's dream, no doubt about it. And she wasn't even wearing a sun top. Short brown hair, sun streaked and tousled, like a very small boy's . doe-soft eyes and a smile that would light up the stadium. Unforgettable eyes. Unforgettable smile.

Doug stared at the woman's face until his eyes burned, rewinding and playing it over and over again. The cold, shocky feeling was wearing off, and he could feel his heart thumping away, going like a jackhammer. He couldn't be wrong. He couldn't be. The hair was different, but those eyes, that smile. After so many years it was incredible how little they'd changed, and how vivid and clear they still were in his memory. Like a brand new print of an old Technicolor movie.

Still, he had to be sure. Once more he froze the image, rendering it flat and grainy as old newsprint. He went into his bedroom, into the closet, where he took down a box from the top shelf and placed it on his bed in the middle of the unmade tumble of sheets that made him think briefly, just briefly, of that other bed, and another murdered blonde.

The box had been taped shut. He ripped at the tape, tearing it apart down the center seam, and opened the flaps.

The photograph was right there, on top of an untidy stack of notes, clippings and files, just as he'd remembered. A black-and-white studio head shot, eight-by-ten glossy, the kind aspiring actors send by the thousands to agents and casting directors each and every one of them a ticket to someone's dream. He lifted it out of the box and held it looking at it as he'd looked at it so many times before. There it was, that incredible smile, and those big brown eyes with the wistful, hungry look of a waif gazing through a candy store window. There, too, was the long, graceful neck, the tumble of hair. Soap opera hair, someone-his partner probably-had called it. Light brown, they'd said. The rich red-brown of sage honey.

From the living room came a sudden hurst of music and gunfire; the pause mechanism had released automatically, reverting the system to regular network programming, a vintage western, by the sound of it. Taking the photograph with him, Doug went into the room and picked up the remote Then he carefully laid the photo down on the coffee table, placed the remote on top of it, picked up his beer and took along swig of it, then a couple of deep breaths. His chest hurt, as if he'd been holding his breath without realizing it.

He got comfortable on the couch, sitting way up on the edge of the cus.h.i.+ons, with the remote control in one hand and the photograph in the other. Finally, frowning intently at the set, he turned the VCR on and found the right place on the tape. "Oh, my-now I ask you, isn't that a beautiful sight?" the voice of the Dodger announcer was crooning' What a smile. : '

What a smile. Yes, indeed. It was a smile he hadn't been able to forget in almost ten years. And it still didn't seem possible that it could be the smile of a murderer.

He reached for the phone without taking his eyes from the TV screen and punched a preprogrammed key. The number sang in his ear, then one brrr, and a click. A sleepy voice mumbled, "Yeah... Shannon."

"Hey, Jim? It's Doug."

" " Hey, partner. " The voice on the other end of the line suddenly got more alert. " What's up? What's wrong? " " " Nothing' swrong. Listen"

"Doug, it's two o'clock in the friggin' a.m. Something sure as h.e.l.l better be wrong."

Doug laughed softly. "Jim, you're not going to believe this."

" Try me, dammit. "

"I've found her: " "Found who?" There was a suspicious pause. " " Are you drunk? "

"What? No, I'm not drunk. Will you shut up and listen? I've found her, partner, and you're not going to believe where. It's like some kind of miracle. If I hadn't-" " " Who ? Dammit"

Doug took a patient breath. "The Rhinestone Collar case. Remember? "

There was dead silence. And then, in a completely different tone, Jim answered, Yeah, of course I remember. How could I forget? "

"Well, I've found her, Jim. Our missing witness."