Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (9 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I would not have recognized this kid as Antonia, the pretty niece of Alonso, and I had to wonder if I'd actually seen her in the role, but I did get an instant memory make from the mug shot in the cast file and knew that she was Susan Baker before
Lahey
spoke the name.

"Miss Baker?" He showed her his badge. "I am Sergeant
Lahey
of the San
Bernadino
Sheriff’s Department. Can we come in and talk to you?"

She was a sizzler. Looked about eighteen but I knew better than that. Great body, long and lithe but nicely plumped out in all the right places, enticingly provocative now in a skintight leotard—dark flashing eyes, olive-cream complexion, jet black hair all wild and
touseled
and falling below the shoulders. But that doesn't tell it all. Something else was woven into all that, some kind of wild energy or essence. She
smouldered
, that was it, as though something vital and commanding was boiling up inside and slowly escaping through her pores—a controlled explosion.

Lahey
was visibly affected by it and I guess I was too.

She swung the door wide and leaned into it, almost like a studied pose yet natural and graceful, and motioned us

inside with her leg. "Sure, come on in," she said in a hoarse whisper. She raised a manicured hand to her throat. "Sorry, it's laryngitis, the singer's curse. I can stand it if you can."

Then she saw me and did a double take over the shoulder as she retreated into the apartment, glowered at me while
Lahey
and I took seats, then she did one of those quick switches, showed me a weak little smile and said, "Hi, Joe."

I smiled back. "Hi, kid."

Lahey
sent a questioning look between us and asked, "Do you two know each other?"

I told him, "Miss Baker plays Antonia in
Man of La
Mancha
."

He turned to her with a hard look and said, "So you recognized the victims next door."

"No," she replied, returning his riveting gaze full on. "I just stood in the doorway and peeked inside. All the lights were on and the door was standing open. I didn't see anyone to recognize, just blood splattered all around." Her gaze fled to me. "So I came right back over here and called 911."

She had one of those faces that couldn't seem to hold a focus for more than a second or two. Various expressions were on a constant march across it, as though reflecting tumbling thoughts behind it. There were a lot of jerky little body movements too—head up, head down, head to one side and then another, shoulders up, shoulders down, legs crossed and a foot swinging, ankles crossed, legs
scissored
to her torso and both feet up, then one and then the other—all this in a restless and relentless attempt to match the outer with the inner, and never quite succeeding.

"But you did know the tenants next door,"
Lahey
persisted.

      
"Sure. I found the apartment for them. Never dreamed they'd be lousy neighbors." She smiled to herself and drew a foot up under her on the couch, then decided she'd rather sit on the other one, settled for both as she continued. "Peter, James and Jesus." She did not give it the Spanish pronunciation,
Hay-
soose
.
"I call them the trinity." She giggled "Is that awful? Well, what the hell, I'm an infidel. So bum me." One arm curled over the head, the other hand gripping a foot. "What was going on over there last night?—a cock fight?" She squealed and hastened to explain, "No, I mean like, you know, roosters— gamecocks."

      
Lahey
glanced at me, frowned, told her, "This is a murder investigation, Miss Baker.
 
You weren't aware that-?"

      
She'd leapt from the couch and turned to me to ask, "Which one was murdered, Joe?"

      
I looked at
Lahey
. His eyes told me to go ahead, so I told her, "All were murdered, kid."

      
"Craig too?"

      
I nodded. "Him first."

      
She danced over to a hall closet and pulled out a jacket, put it on and said, "Well, I'm late for work."

      
Lahey
went over to block the door, asked her, "You have to be at the theater this early?"

      
She replied, "No, I have to be at my real job this early. I'm a dance-aerobics instructor. I'm really quite late. I have to leave now."

      
"Well make this as brief as possible," he assured her.

      
"No, you don't understand. I have to go right now."

      
The kid appeared to be very disoriented. She tried to get past
Lahey
and couldn't, glanced at me and went the

other way, began moving aimlessly about the room in jerky movements and talking incoherently.

      
Lahey
opened the door and put his head outside, called for a paramedic. I was trying to get an arm around the kid and she kept throwing it off, acting crazy but not violently so.

      
A paramedic came in and put her down, examined her, then hit her immediately with a needle.

      
Reality can be a bit too hard to take, I guess, when it begins to look too much like the nightmare. Susan Baker’s dream had turned into that, for sure.

      
"Well have to transport her," the paramedic informed us.

      
"Where to?"
Lahey
asked him.

      
"The nearest psycho ward. Guess that would be Valley Central."

      
"Treat her with respect," I growled.

      
"I treat all psychos with respect," the guy growled back.

      
But I didn't think that Susan Baker was a psycho. I decided that she was simply terrified.

      
It appeared that I was out of
Lahey's
dog house—for the moment anyway. He told me that he was running Craig
Maan's
fingerprints and hoped to have a solid ID before the day was over, also that he had already flashed them to all the local police agencies just in case there was anything to the story that
Maan
had worked as an undercover cop.

I wished him well in all that but told him also that I thought the FBI could provide that ID any time they wanted to. He didn't argue with that; it almost seemed as though he knew something that he wasn't ready to share with me, so I just let it go.

I told him, too, about the curious story of Alfred Johansen alias Johnny
Lunceford
and the Minnesota connection. Told him I thought the feds were behind it, that it seemed very strange to me that someone would try to confuse Johansen/
Lunceford
with
Maan
/Whoever unless the idea was disinformation and the goal was to sidetrack me completely.

He said, "Sidetrack you from what?"

I said, "There's the brass ring, pal. What is it and who's got it? I don't know, but I feel that I have to run it down."

Then I told him about the "cruelest lie" that had turned the
La
Mancha
cast upside down, and I pointedly mentioned Larry Dobbs and Jack Harney, adding that I was considering the possibility that
Maan
had used the story to explain the presence of Dobbs and Harney, without regard to the effect of that cruel deception upon his friends.

Lahey
advised me, with a warning in his voice, "Don't put too much stock in that angle, Joe."

I asked him, "So what do you know that I should know about that?"

He replied, "I'm not so sure that anyone was even watching
Maan
."

"Bullshit," I said. "That's why Dobbs and Harney have been laying all over me. They—" I saw something in
Lahey's
eyes that made me think again, "—okay, if they

weren't watching
Maan
, who were they watching?"

      
He
signalled
for a uniformed deputy, told him, "Take Mr.
Copp
back to his car."

      
I couldn't give it up that easy. "What about Elaine Suzanne? How do you think she got here? That hit on my place had Dobbs and Harney written all over it. One of them suckered me away with gunfire while the other snatched the girl. Why? Why did they want the girl?"

      
"The officer will take you to your car, Joe."

      
"Put a guard on the whisperer! I mean it!"

      
“Joe...”

      
"Do me one thing! Run a make on Dobbs and Harney. Give me a handle on those guys. Get me an address, a phone number, anything!"

      
"Maybe later," he said with a sigh. "Right now I have to put these other pieces together. Five people died here last night, at different times and different apartments but in the same complex and they're all linked to one another by friendship and by work. At the moment I don't know who did it or why but I intend to find out. So just stay out of my way, Joe. When I know something for sure, I’ll let you know."

      
"Talk to Dobbs and Harney," I insisted.

      
He merely nodded his head at that and walked away. I slid into the police cruiser, grinned at the deputy, and said,
    
"Nice guy."

      
"Sergeant
Lahey
?" The deputy smiled and started the engine. "We call him Bulldog. Once he gets his teeth into it, he never lets go. And he is
not
a nice guy."

      
I knew that.

      
Sure, I knew that. And I was damned glad he wasn't.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

No matter how many times you've walked the valleys of the shadow, no matter how professional you may be or try to be, you never get blasé about violent death, it is never a minor concern—and I’d just been in a hell house. I give you that so you’ll know my state of mind at the time and so you’ll understand when I tell you that I probably was not running on all my cylinders as I left that place.

It isn't merely the sight and smell of death that rattles
 
the brain in a scene like that one. Something more vivid than sight and more evocative than smell broods over the charnel house, something oppressive and threatening—like dread, only this is not a quality of mind but a physical reality that depresses the senses and heightens that other sense, the sixth sense as some would call it—a sort of knowingness of horror.

I've been told that psychics and other
sensitives
can sometimes develop intelligence from that atmosphere, decipher it and even reconstruct to fine detail the events that transpired there. If that is true, then it would suggest that something like memory overhangs scenes of incredible violence, that it somehow becomes impressed or recorded upon the physical structure that surrounds the events.

I would not find that difficult to swallow because I know that violent death leaves its imprints behind, one way or another, and that it affects any normal person who is exposed to it.

And I was thinking about my whisperer, Susan Baker, and trying to understand her behavior. Had she been lying when she said that she had not been inside the apartment of death?—that she had not known what had happened there? If she'd been telling the truth about that, would she have reacted the way she did when I told her what had happened there?

There are different strokes for different folks, I understand that, and I had no past familiarity with Susan to use as a guide—but I'd seen hundreds of other folks over the years in their reactions to similar situations, and I had to grade Susan's reaction as bizarre ... if she'd told the truth.

Of course if she'd been in there...during or after the fact—then the nervous breakdown or whatever it was could be easily explained as a delayed reaction to overpowering horror...or guilt. Whichever and whatever, I felt that I had to follow up on Susan Baker and learn the truth about her. That would not be easy to do. I'd seen the same questions in
Lahey's
eyes and knew that he would be keeping her under close wraps, at least for awhile.

Meanwhile I still had her thousand bucks so I felt sort of obligated to see that she was treated fairly and properly.

That is the state I was in when the deputy dropped me at my car. We had met two other sheriff’ s cars on their way out of the theater area; I stood there outside my car gazing indecisively at the open stage door, then decided what the hell and went inside for another go at Judith White.

      
It was now a bit past nine o'clock and several people were fooling around backstage, messing with the scenery and whatever. Judith was in her office, reared back in the swivel chair with feet crossed atop the desk, hands folded behind her head and staring fixedly at the ceiling.

      
I stood just inside the door and said to her, "I've heard that all the world's a stage. Does that include ceilings?"

      
She replied in a dreamy voice without breaking the pose. "Sure does. There's a big playwright in the sky, I think, and every play is a play within a play. So what the heck is it all about?"

      
I went on in and sat down on the casting couch, glanced at the ceiling, told her, "Solve just one piece of it, kid. Then use that as a template."

      
"You've been solving pieces of it all your life," she said m the same dreamy voice. "What did it ever get you?"

      
"Nice place in the hills," I replied. "My car is paid for. Old, but paid for. I eat okay, usually. Even take in a play now and then."

      
"Did it ever get you a wife?"

      
"A few, yeah, briefly."

      
"Why didn't you use your template on them?"

      
"Too wriggly," I said. "They wouldn't hold still for it."

      
She cocked her head to look at me. "You're not so bad, I guess."

      
"Gee, thanks. Neither are you."

      
"I mean you sort of grow on. I’ll bet inside that tough armor beats a very gentle heart.
 
I’ll bet you're not half as tough as you look."

      
I shrugged and made a tough face. "Guess you can't fool all the people all the time."

      
She laughed softly and brought her feet down, sat up

straight and smoothed her hair, said, "My day is shot to hell. The worse part, I don't seem to care. I was thinking about Craig."

      
"Yeah?"

      
"Yes. Yesterday was so full of promise. And also anxiety. And also... just so
full
of everything. For Craig, I mean. Okay, he was full of bullshit. But even that is something. Where is all that now?"

      
I replied, "Wherever Craig is now, I guess. I think you do take it with you."

      
"Where?"

      
"To the next theater, maybe."

      
"What do you want, Joe?"

      
"Everything I can get, I guess."

      
"No, I meant... what are you doing here?"

      
"Came to tell you something."

      
"Okay. Please tell it and get out. I am feeling very small right now, completely ineffectual, and I might just start crying at any minute."

      
I got up and went to the door. "Then I'd better not tell you."

      
"Is it about Craig?"

      
"No. It's about—well, first I'd like to ask a question."

      
She made a wry face, said, "I take it back, you're not okay. You are designing and manipulative. But go ahead. Ask your damn question."

      
"How long has Susan had laryngitis?"

      
"What?"

      
"Antonia, Susan Baker. How long has she been out of the play?"

      
She blinked at me. "All week. Why?"

      
"How well do you know her?"

      
"Well enough to avoid her outside this theater. Susan is a total flake."

      
"In what way?"

      
"In every way. Thinks she's the reincarnation of Sarah Bernhardt. I mean literally. Always talking about past lives, all that stuff. She has screwed every boy in the cast, trying to find her soul mate."

      
I grinned. "Sounds like a good place to start."

      
Judith tossed her head and said, "I believe she's tried a couple of the girls too. Says we come back into different sexes, have to experience it all before we can escape karma. That's a pretty good cop-out for nymphomania."

      
"Would you say that she is not of sound mind?"

      
"Nothing wrong with her mind," Judith sniffed. "It's a problem in character, I fear."

      
"She's gotten it on with all the guys?"

      
"There are probably a few exceptions. Susan doesn't have the right plumbing for several of these boys."

      
"Would those several be Peter, James and Jesus?"

      
She gave me a sharp look. "What are you getting at?"

      
"They lived next door to her, didn't they?"

      
She stared a hole through me before replying, "Lived? Past tense?"

      
I broke contact with those brooding eyes and said, "Yeah, '
fraid
so."

      
"Well that's a rotten trick!" she cried.

      
"What's a rotten trick?"

      
"You're trying to tell me that Susan is dead? After you just made me say all those terrible things? Joe, that is rotten."

      
I went back and sat down on the couch. "Susan isn't dead, Judith."

      
"Well thank God for something!" she said, fuming in relief. "Guess I'm ready to believe anything." She impaled me again with those hot eyes. "So just what are you getting at?"

      
"Susan was hospitalized this morning. Nervous breakdown or something."

      
"Over Craig?"

      
I shrugged. "Well..."

      
"Well what?"

      
"Craig and the others."

      
"What others?"

      
I got up off the couch again and she met me in the middle of the room. "The deputies didn't tell you?"

      
"No,
dammit
, what others?"

      
I took both her arms and said, "Calm down. This is going to be rough. Susan stumbled onto it this morning as she was leaving for her day job. All three of the guys next door were killed sometime during the night I think it was some time after Craig died, and only about a block away."

      
Shock, you know, is something like anesthesia. It's like a circuit breaker designed to disconnect the emotional circuits when they become overloaded.

      
I saw the precise moment when Judith White's circuit breaker tripped, saw the eyes bland out and felt the body go limp.

      
I was hanging onto her to keep her upright and I didn't know if she heard the rest of it or if it registered in the mind.

      
"Either they were having a sex party or someone wanted it to look that way. There was a girl with them. It was Elaine Suzanne. She's dead too."

      
"Susan killed them," Judith said in a barely audible voice.

      
I said, "Well, no, I didn't say that."

      
She was going to pure liquid, laying against me in a vertical position. It was terrible, I know—considering the circumstances—but I was strongly aware of the warmth of that lovely body on mine.

      
"Get me out of here," she whispered.

      
"Where would you like to go?"

      
"Just get me out. Out of here. Take me home."

      
"Yours or mine?"

      
She got her feet under her again at that point, pushed gently away from me, raked me with eyes that were coming alive again. "Yours," she said.