“He had lots of women around him, but no one he was serious about.”
“It seems that randy old Mr. C put a bun…” Natalie heard me cough and saw me shaking my head. “Sorry, I meant to say Mr. C had a daughter who went by the name Cassie Reynolds. She was born a few months after he went missin’.”
“A daughter! That’s so wonderful. I think he would have made a wonderful father.”
“A lady named Gloria Stallings was her mother,” Natalie said. “Does that name ring a bell? She might have remarried, changed her last name.”
“I’m sorry, as I said there were lots of women, but I had no idea anyone was pregnant.” Her gaze met Natalie directly. “Maybe you should talk to Cassie about her mother?”
Natalie nodded but didn’t say anything.
I was getting frustrated. Grayson wasn’t giving us anything new. I decided to ask the question that had been on my mind since Robin’s arrest.
“Did you ever see Mr. Carmichael with the actor Wolf Donovan?”
Lydia Grayson’s heavy face defied gravity and registered surprise. “Oh, heavens no. I would remember him. Wolf Donovan. Now, that would really be something.”
I looked at Pearl and Natalie, picking up on their frustration. “Is there anything else you might be able to tell us, Ms. Grayson?”
The flesh on Grayson’s face folded into a smile. Her tired eyes moved from Pearl to Natalie and then back to me. “Aren’t you going to ask me who murdered Mr. C?”
I lifted my brows, my blood pressure rising. “Okay, who murdered Mr. C?”
The elderly woman’s voice became hushed, “I didn’t think much about it until several days after Mr. C disappeared. I tried to report it to the police but no one seemed to want to listen.”
“What is that, Ms. Grayson?” I asked.
“The night before Mr. C disappeared I remembered I’d left my checkbook at work. I came back to the office that evening. Mr. C’s office door was closed but I heard voices, angry voices, arguing.”
“What was the argument about?”
“I couldn’t tell. All I know is at one point I heard the voice of a man saying, ‘You do that and you will regret it.’”
“Do you have any idea who he was talking to?”
Grayson shook her head. “No, I left right after that. I was worried someone might come out of the office and catch me there.” A furtive smile creased her fleshy face. “But I saw his car. It was parked up the block from Mr. C’s office.”
We all exchanged glances. “Whose car?” I asked.
Grayson’s lips turned up as she told a secret she’d kept for almost thirty years. “It was a black-and-white car. The man arguing with Mr. C the night before he disappeared was a policeman.”
Nathan Kane follows Marsha Wentworth as she pulls out of the elementary school parking lot. The killer’s adrenaline surges; his thoughts racing with anticipation. The shrink’s already shown the instincts of a mother who will do anything to protect her child. He plans to use that to his advantage.
Ten minutes later, Wentworth’s car stops in front of a small older home. An elderly woman whose earnest countenance has the same oval shape and green eyes as the psychiatrist’s comes to the front door. She must be the shrink’s mother.
Kane curses as the old woman hugs the child. She then kisses the psychiatrist on the cheek and disappears into the house with the girl. Wentworth pulls away from the curb and is back on the highway.
Too bad. While he has no plans to harm the child, having her close at hand would make her mother’s performance all the better.
The psychiatrist drives a few blocks to a newer tract of homes, Kane following at a distance. She pulls into the garage of a two-story colonial.
The garage door is left up as she dashes into the house. Wentworth’s in a hurry. People are stupid. How many times has he used careless stupidity to his advantage?
Kane parks up the block and walks through the neighborhood. When he’s sure no one is watching, he slips into the garage. He tries the interior door, but it’s locked. After a couple of attempts he has the lock picked and pushes his way inside.
He knows from seeing the doctor’s wedding ring that she’s married. A quick check and he finds there’s no one on the first floor. The good doctor’s spouse is probably at work.
He moves up the stairs, passing photographs: first a formal pose of the shrink and her husband taken on their wedding day at a seashore, then a montage of the young married couple, followed by a picture of their daughter as a baby, and finally, at the top of the stairway, a recent group photograph. They are a beautiful family. All that is about to change.
He finds the psychiatrist in the master bedroom wing getting out of the shower. She has her clothes laid out on the bed. Probably getting ready for work where she’ll spend the night shift torturing some poor soul with her psycho-babble.
As the glass door of the shower swings open, Kane steps around the corner. “Hello, Marsha. Thought I’d drop by for a little session before heading off to Hollywood.”
The psychiatrist screams. He brings his large hand up to her mouth, holding the knife he used on Jenson and his girlfriend to her throat. “Another sound and I go over the river and through the woods.” He sees the terrified, confused expression. “To grandmother’s house, to Marianne.”
A nod. He releases her. Wentworth’s naked body trembles. She falls to the floor like a limp doll.
He yanks her up, pushes her toward the bed.
“Put on the dress. It’s time for a little therapy, Doctor.”
The whimpering psychiatrist towels off, begins dressing, fumbling with her panties.
“No underwear, just the dress.”
In a moment, the woman is sitting on the bed wearing the black dress. Her eyes are downcast, her voice is barely audible. “What do you want?”
He smiles, knowing she’s accepted her fate. “Your office? You must have an office?”
Wentworth lifts her head, but she doesn’t make eye contact. “Down the hall.”
Kane follows her to the office where he orders her to sit behind her desk. He sits in the chair across from her.
There’s something familiar about the scene. Another woman had counseled him a lifetime ago in an office like this one. She had listened and tried to help him understand the demons that possessed him. That was before he raped and sodomized her, then tossed her body into a drainage ditch.
“I need therapy,” Kane says to the psychiatrist. “I need you to help me understand why I enjoy killing.”
The psychiatrist stares blankly at him, starts to speak, but her eyes drift away. She shakes her head.
“Do you think I’m hopeless, Dr. Wentworth? Is that why you’re shaking your head? Because, if there’s no hope for me, I’ll just kill you now and then go take care of Marianne.”
“No, please.” She crosses her arms, clutching her sides. Her body convulses as she says, “I’ll try...please don’t hurt my daughter...I’ll do anything.”
“Very good, Doctor. I think we’re making excellent progress.” He stands up and walks around the room, examining the diplomas and awards the woman has earned. “You do seem very qualified to help me.” He takes a seat again. “It’s my childhood, Dr. Wentworth. I need to tell you about my childhood.”
“I’m listening.”
“My father was a very harsh man. We lived in a small town in eastern Ohio. The winters were cold. We were poor and the house was small. Father made me sleep outside in the barn. I remember one winter when I was eleven a blizzard came through our village. It was so cold that I spent the night shivering beneath my blanket until morning. When I couldn’t stand it any longer I went into the house.”
“I’m sorry,” Marsha Wentworth says. “That must have been terrible.”
“Not the childhood Marianne has, I’m sure.” He catches the terrified look at the mention of her daughter’s name. “Back to my story. I was still shivering when I got to the house. Mother must have heard me come in. She motioned for me to come into the bedroom and got me under the covers, holding me tight as she tried to stop my shaking. That’s when I heard the water running. I realized Father was in the shower.”
Kane reaches behind him, feeling the blade in his back pocket as he continues. “When Father came into the room, he was naked and had an erection. He saw me in bed, Mother holding my body as I shivered beneath the covers. He screamed at me. Kane meets the psychiatrist’s eyes. “Do you know what he called me?”
Wentworth shakes her head.
“A motherfucker.” Kane brings the blade out of his pocket, runs a finger along its sharp edge. “Father didn’t like his son in bed with his wife. He ran out of the room but returned a minute later, holding a very large, very sharp carving knife.” The shrink’s eyes are fixed on the blade. “It was very much like this one, Marsha.”
The room is quiet, except for the psychiatrist’s ragged breath. Kane continues. “That’s when Father decided the little motherfucker in his wife’s bed had to die. But first he killed Mother. When he turned the knife on me, I was ready.”
Kane lifts his shirt, showing the scars that cover his upper torso. “Father had practiced on me before. I wasn’t going to allow that again. When his knife came down, I jumped back and he missed me. I grabbed the knife and bit Father’s hand. I bit it very hard. So hard that two of his fingers came off in my mouth.”
Kane smiles, brings the knife up and points it at Wentworth. “Father died after he dropped the knife and I picked it up. But not before he lost all of his other fingers, as well as his penis.” His body convulses with laughter but the killer feels nothing. “My father died a dickless little wimp, begging for his life.”
“I’m sorry,” Wentworth says.
“For what?”
“Your father, for everything that happened.”
Kane chuckles. “Don’t be. I took care of the scene, made up a story about someone breaking in, killing my parents. I was very convincing.”
Nathan Kane stands and moves toward the psychiatrist. He’s hard, his erection bulging against his pants.
Wentworth falls out of her chair, retches onto the floor. When she‘s finished, he pulls her up by her hair and drags her onto the desk. The knife blade is sharp, easily cutting through the straps on her dress. In seconds, he has her naked and screaming for her life.
Hours later, when the fun is over and he’s ready to end the shrink’s life, a realization comes over Nathan Kane. He knows why he likes the psychiatrist, why he’s taken the time to follow her home and play with her. She reminds him of someone. It’s the cop from Hollywood who came to visit him. Detective Kate Sexton and Dr. Marsha Wentworth could be sisters.
“I have an appointment with Bill Compton.”
Bernie and I waited at the counter in the Santa Monica District Attorney’s Office. It was a little before nine in the morning and I was late for the meeting. After our talk with Lydia Grayson, I’d gone home and turned in early but had trouble falling asleep. I finally dozed off around three in the morning, but then hit the snooze button and overslept.
While the receptionist called the prosecutor who had put Nathan Kane in prison, I glanced around the office. It appeared to be organized chaos as attorneys prepared for the morning’s calendar. Bodies jostled and papers were being shuffled. A cart creaked past full of legal files. Then I saw him.
Doug, my ex-husband, was leaning over a desk, pushing the blonde bangs off the forehead of an attractive young woman. Or should I say girl? His target, or victim, looked barely out of high school. Neither of them had seen me.
The receptionist diverted my attention. “Mr. Compton says he’ll be out in a moment and you can walk with him to court if you’d like.”
“Thanks,” I said, tugging on Bernie’s leash and walking away. I strolled across the office and stopped directly behind Doug, listening to the conversation.
“It’s a cozy little place, just outside of Arrowhead,” Doug said. My ex was six feet tall with brown hair and blue eyes. As usual, he was using his considerable charm for his own selfish interests. “We could pack a lunch and picnic on the way up.”
The pretty young woman giggled. “I don’t know. I have to study this weekend, and…”
Doug’s victim saw that I was eavesdropping. “May I help you?”
I stood there, not answering, arms folded. I tilted my head to one side and smiled as Doug turned and saw me.
“Kate! Wha...what...a surprise.”
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” I asked. Before he could respond, I moved around him and held out my hand to the young woman. “Detective Kate Sexton. I’m Doug’s ex-wife.” We shook.
“I’m...ah...Carolyn Porter.”
“Nice to meet you, Carolyn. Forgive me, but I happened to overhear that you two have a little weekend getaway planned.” I cut my eyes to my ex and smiled. “Did you tell her, Doug?”
“Don’t you have better things to do?” He was glaring at me.
“Not at all.” I turned back to Carolyn. “In fact, I consider this my civic duty.” I leaned over to the pretty young woman, lowering my voice. “Carolyn, just so you know, Doug sometimes finds it a little difficult talking about his condition.”
My ex became angry. “What are you trying…”
I cut him off. Bernie offered a little growl of support as I addressed Carolyn again. “They’ve made great strides with the herpes virus. But even with the new medications, it’s important to use protection.”
Carolyn cut her big blue eyes to Doug. Her mouth dropped open, something I’m sure Doug was eagerly anticipating, just not in this context.
“She’s making things up,” Doug said, visibly shaking with anger.
I ignored him, my eyes still on Carolyn. “And, by the way, you have seen the video, haven’t you?” The young woman shook her head. I turned to Doug who was red as a cherry. “I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned it?” I swiveled back to the clerk. “Doug’s a movie star, Carolyn. The fact is he co-stars in a production called,
Dougie Does Phyllis.
”
Carolyn’s eyebrows shot up. I raised my voice, seeing that I now had a small audience of the clerk’s co-workers. “Oh, you’ve never met Phyllis? She used to work here, but quit. Last I heard she was home with a really bad outbreak of herpes.”
Doug then went a little insane, pleading his case like a defendant facing a lynch mob. I noticed an elderly man with a briefcase in his hand standing at the reception desk. He had a bemused look on his face.
“She’s a God-damned liar,” Doug went on. “I don’t have…” He lowered his voice, “herpes...and the video she’s talking about simply doesn’t exist. It’s a figment of her imagination.” My ex must have suddenly realized several people were watching. He turned to his co-workers. “She’s an angry, bitter woman, who can’t accept that our relationship is over.”
I started to walk with Bernie toward the elderly gentleman, who I assumed was Bill Compton, but Doug’s outburst stopped me in my tracks.
I turned, held up a hand, and shouted, “STOP!”
Doug’s tirade abruptly halted. The office was so quiet you could have heard Phyllis moaning, if Doug hadn’t ended her employment.
I addressed the crowd of onlookers. “Has anyone here seen Doug’s video? If you have, please raise your hand.”
There was an awkward silence before a woman giggled and said, “I’ve seen it.” A moment later others spoke up as a multitude of hands were raised. The room erupted into laughter.
I looked at the clerk and smiled. “Carolyn, I rest my case.”
I walked back to the reception desk and held out a hand to the elderly man. “You must be Bill Compton? I’m Kate Sexton.”
Compton motioned for us to walk with him to court and said, “If you ever decide to become a prosecutor, let me know.”
“Thanks. But I’m a little particular about who I work with.”
Compton laughed. “I understand. If it’s any consolation, your ex is the worst attorney in the office.”
“Makes my day.” When we entered the elevator, I said, “I appreciate you seeing me and I’m sorry I was late. I’m here about a man you prosecuted several years ago—Nathan Kane.”
“Serving a life term for manslaughter.”
“Was,” I said. “He was granted parole yesterday.”
The elevator door opened and Compton held it for a moment. “I was afraid of that. We got the parole hearing notice but due to budget cutbacks I was told I couldn’t attend. I just hope the son of a bitch’s medical condition will keep him from being a threat.”
As we stepped off the elevator, I said, “Some of the prison staff aren’t convinced about that.” We stopped outside the courtroom. “I’m trying to establish a connection Kane may have had to a man who went missing about thirty years ago. His name was John Carmichael.”
Compton checked his watch. “I’ve got a felony arraignment calendar this morning. If Sharkey takes his usual ten-thirty recess to smoke three cigarettes, I can spare twenty minutes then.”
Bernie and I waited until we saw the silver-haired prosecutor push his way out of the courtroom during the morning break. I bought Compton a cup of coffee and we found a bench in the courtyard under a magnolia tree.
I took a few minutes to bring him up to speed on the investigation, starting with the murder of Cassie Reynolds as a probable cover-up of what she knew about the disappearance of her father.
“As I mentioned, I’m trying to establish any connection Cassie’s father, John Carmichael, may have had to Nathan Kane. I know Carmichael was involved in a corporation called Pacific Trading Partners that was formed in 1983 with the movie producer Conrad Harper. I also know that Kane and Harper have some shared interests.”
Compton dumped a packet of sugar in his coffee and said, “Let’s start with what I know about Nathan Kane. If he was connected to Carmichael, it probably had something to do with drugs. Kane established a drug empire in the 1980s by importing paintings and other works of art from Europe. The shipments came from Paris via Mexico City where heroin was substituted for the art.”
“Why heroin?”
“A lot of cheap heroin was coming into Mexico from Southeast Asia, before finding its way into the states. The stopover allowed for the exchange of cheap European art for heroin, without much scrutiny.” Compton stirred his coffee. “Kane made a fortune and went on to control most of the drug trade in California.”
“And Conrad Harper—could he have been involved?”
“Harper was an associate of Kane’s. He stayed in the background, but I believe he had a role in what was happening.”
“That’s where I have trouble understanding things. Why would someone like Harper risk everything to be involved in the drug business?”
“You’ve got to remember, back in the eighties, Harper was just getting established in Hollywood. He was a fledging movie producer. The drug money helped him get his movie empire off the ground. Kane also offered up something Harper was probably interested in—prostitutes.”
This was the first I’d heard of Kane being involved in prostitution. “Can you tell me about that?”
“Nathan Kane, if you want my opinion, was, probably still is, a violent sexual predator. He operated a prostitution ring that pioneered the practice of bringing illegal immigrants into the country with the promise of citizenship. Instead, the women were used in the sex trade. He moved his victims in and out of the country, some were killed by pimps or Johns. Of course, since they were illegal, none of the victims who survived would go to the authorities.”
I thought about Conrad Harper’s relationship to Kane. He’d been at the studio for Cassie Reynolds’s attempt at starring in a porn flick. Jack had also mentioned he’d heard that Harper was a sex addict. If Cassie’s prostitution activities were somehow linked to Kane, maybe Harper had become acquainted with Cassie through that relationship, as well as the producer’s connections to Roger Diamond.
“Do you think Harper might have been involved in the prostitution ring?”
“You’ve probably heard the talk about Harper’s sexual appetite. I’m just speculating now, but Kane might have leveraged that addiction by providing prostitutes in exchange for Harper’s help in distributing drugs to all the right players on the Hollywood scene.”
“The arrangement would have benefited them both.”
Compton sipped his coffee, nodded. “Kane got out of the sex business in the early nineties. Concentrated on dealing drugs, before he went to prison behind the murder of Marty Rubin who tried to cut in on his territory.”
“I think Kane is still involved in the drug trade, running things even while he was in prison. One of his dealers, a guy named Roger Diamond, turned up dead a few days ago. He was involved with Cassie Reynolds and still has connections to Conrad Harper.”
“Kane is ruthless and cunning. He wouldn’t be the first guy to continue dealing while behind bars.” The prosecutor checked his watch. “Sharkey’s probably in the middle of his third cigarette.” He tossed his coffee cup in the trash and said he needed to get back to court. I told him Bernie and I would walk with him.
As we walked along a glass wall of tinted windows that overlooked the courtyard, Robin’s drug charges came to mind. “This is more curiosity than anything else on my part, but I’m wondering if you ever saw a connection between any of the players we’ve been talking about and the actor, Wolf Donovan?”
Compton shook his head. “There’s been a lot of speculation about Donovan’s drug connections and sexual escapades over the years. He’s certainly had his share of dealing with the dregs of humanity, but he’s been clever enough to cover his tracks. If you want my opinion, his idiot son has taken up where Donovan left off.”
As we moved through the glass doors into the courthouse, I said, “I talked to John Carmichael’s former secretary yesterday and she said something of interest. She told me the night before Carmichael disappeared, she heard him arguing with someone in his office.”
Compton stopped at the entrance to the felony arraignment court. “Did she give you a name?”
“She didn’t see who he was arguing with, but later saw a police cruiser parked down the block from his office. She believes it was a cop that was arguing with Carmichael.”
The elderly prosecutor raked a hand across his ruffled silver hair and smiled. “Ever know something you were absolutely sure of in your gut but couldn’t prove?”
I thought about Jack Bautista. I hadn’t heard from him in a couple of days and wondered if he was safe. I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Yeah, as a matter of fact. Why?”
“When I did the work-up on Kane at the time of his prosecution, we went back and reviewed every police report—every scrap of information we could put together on the guy. I kept seeing the same cop’s name come up in a lot of the police reports. Sometimes it was just this guy signing off on reports that closed out investigations without any follow-up. Other times it was the same guy deciding the case didn’t have enough evidence to merit a referral to the DA for prosecution.”
The bailiff opened the courtroom door and motioned to the prosecutor.
“Kane and this guy have a long history,” Compton said. “Maybe he also had some connection to Carmichael. The guy’s name is Marvin Drake.”