Hotline to Murder (25 page)

The doorbell chimed. Who could that be at
10:00 on a Saturday morning? Tony glanced at his attire, relieved
that he was wearing shorts, even though he was shirtless. At least
he was presentable enough to answer the door. He padded slowly into
the living room, without his crutches. He didn’t intend to use them
anymore. He didn’t bother to look through the peephole in the front
door. The sun was shining and nothing bad could be lurking outside.
He opened the door and found himself looking at the crooked nose of
Detective Croyden.

It was a shock to see the man he had just
been thinking about. Tony stared at him for a moment before he
found his voice. “Good morning, Detective Croyden,” he said. “Do
you work twenty-four hours a day?”

“Thirty, sometimes. I’ve come to talk to
Josh.”

Josh. Tony was horrified. When he had given
the panties to Croyden, he had known at some level that Croyden
would have to talk to Josh. But he hadn’t actually pictured how
this would take place. In his house. And so soon.

“Josh is still asleep.” He had come home
even later than Tony.

“Well, wake him up. This is official police
business. And I want to talk to him alone.”

That did sound official. Tony stepped back
so that Croyden could enter. He pointed to the couch in the living
room and said, “I’ll get him.”

As he went slowly up the stairs, still
favoring his left leg, Tony dreaded what was going to happen.
Croyden was carrying a briefcase. He could guess what was inside.
He pictured Croyden whipping the panties out of the case and
saying, “Where did you get these?”

Croyden hadn’t had time to perform any tests
on the panties. But what could he test for? If there wasn’t any
blood on them, how could a test connect them with Joy? Tony reached
the top of the stairs and looked at Josh’s closed door. He was a
grumpy riser. And being faced with the prospect of talking to the
police would make his mood that much fouler.

Tony decided to go to his athletic club and
work out, something he hadn’t done since his knee injury. Get good
and sweaty. And not return for a while. He gritted his teeth and
knocked on the door.

***

In fact, Tony didn’t return home until late
that afternoon. After he finished his workout he went to his office
to catch up on paperwork. He sometimes did that on weekends when
there was nobody around to disturb him. It was peaceful, and he was
very productive. He found that he really liked this job, and he
wanted to do well at it. He was sure that what he did helped
people. Just as the Hotline helped people.

Toward the end of the afternoon, he
remembered that he had been going to tell the Los Angeles Police
Department about the church scam. It would be a long drive to a
police station near the church. And then back. And Croyden had been
pessimistic about how much good it would do. He decided to skip
it.

He hadn’t thought about Josh and Detective
Croyden for several hours when he turned into the car park of his
townhouse development. He had driven the Porsche for the first time
in several days, and it felt good to be behind the wheel of the
responsive car, even if he had to be careful shifting because his
left knee was still sore.

As he drove down the row of carports, he saw
that his was filled with large cardboard boxes. What the hell was
going on? He saw Josh’s SUV, which had been backed into the
adjoining carport, and then he saw Josh, methodically loading the
boxes into it.

Tony stopped the Porsche outside the carport
and got out, not bothering to close the door. He limped over to
Josh, who had not ceased work, and said, “What are you doing?”

Josh placed a box carefully into his car before he
replied. He looked at Tony and said, “Remember, I told you that I’d
move out within thirty days? I’m well within that time period, I
believe.”

“I didn’t think…I didn’t think….” He didn’t
think what? “I didn’t think you’d really do it.”

Josh looked very cool. He said, “An
agreement is an agreement. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to
do, although I’m almost finished. This is the last load. Then I’ll
be out of your hair for good.” He picked up another box and shoved
it into the car.

“Where are you going?”

“What do you care? I’m going; that should be
all that matters to you.”

“It was Detective Croyden, wasn’t it? What
did he tell you?”

“He didn’t have to tell me anything. When he showed
me the panties that were a souvenir of my first affair in college,
I knew the whole story. I knew that my buddy had double-crossed me.
I knew he was trying to set me up—for what reason I don’t know. But
it’s definitely time to make a break with the past. So sayonara,
Noodles. It’s been fun.”

“But I didn’t remember the panties. I’m not
trying to set you up. You know that.” Tony sputtered, not knowing
what to say.

“After all we’ve been through together, you
don’t trust your roommate. That’s what hurts the most.”

Josh shoved the last box into the back of
the SUV and slammed the door down. He walked around to the driver’s
side, pushing Tony out of the way when he tried to stop him. He
climbed in, slammed that door, started the engine and pulled
forward out of the carport. He took a left turn, then another, and
disappeared around the row of townhouses.

***

Tony had just finished looking into Josh’s room and
verifying that everything “Josh” was indeed gone when the phone
rang. It was Rasa, Shahla’s mother. She was speaking rapidly and
Tony had trouble understanding her.

“Could you repeat that?” he asked.

“It’s Shahla. She has disappeared.”

CHAPTER 29

“When did you last see Shahla?”

Tony tried to ask the question in an even
voice, hoping that his example would help to calm Rasa down enough
so that he could understand what she was saying. Upon receiving her
call, he had immediately driven to her place, knowing that he would
never be able to communicate with her by phone. When he had
arrived, she had started talking as soon as she opened the door, so
rapidly that he still couldn’t understand her accented words. He
had suggested they sit down in her living room. She appeared to be
a little calmer now as she answered.

“This morning. She came down about eight
o’clock and had something to eat.”

That was better. The act of sitting had
slowed the flow of words; they were now intelligible to Tony. He
said, “And then what happened?”

“She said she was going to study with her
girlfriend. Her girlfriend lives short distance from here so she
walked.” And Rasa’s car was in the driveway.

“And she was supposed to come home at a
certain time?”

“That is too much to ask. I told her to call
me at noon and tell me where she was. She did not call so I called
her cell phone. I got message.”

“Did you call her girlfriend?”

“Yes, I called girlfriend. There was no
answer.”

“And you haven’t heard from her since.”

“No. I called again and again and always got
message. She must not have phone with her. Otherwise she would
return my calls.”

“What do you think happened to her?” As soon
as he asked it, Tony wished he could withdraw the question.

Rasa sobbed, “I think Joy’s murderer has
kidnapped her.”

He wasn’t used to all this emotion, except
from the callers, and with them he had the safety of a phone line
between them. At least Rasa didn’t say she thought Shahla was dead.
But she did look close to collapsing. Tony reflected that in the
days before cell phones, it wasn’t unusual for a teenager to be out
of touch with her parents for several hours, or even all day. Now,
parents expected instant access to their children. He didn’t know
whether to be worried or not. If it weren’t for the fact that a
murder had been committed….

“Let me try her,” Tony said. He pulled out
his own phone. God. The world was being run by them. He called
Shahla’s number and waited. It rang twice and went to voice mail.
After the beep, Tony said, “Shahla, it’s Tony. Please give me a
call at your earliest convenience.” He gave his number and hung
up.

“What should I do?” Rasa asked wiping her
eyes with a tissue.

She was looking to him for guidance. Because
of the circumstances, immediate action was called for. And maybe it
would get her to stop crying. “I think we should call the
police.”

“Do you think police will help?”

“That’s their job.”

***

It was after 9 when Tony got back to his
townhouse, emotionally exhausted and starving. He hadn’t had
anything to eat since about noon. He rummaged through the
refrigerator and found some leftover chicken that Josh had bought
at a fast-food restaurant and not finished. A parting gift from his
ex-roommate. He gave it the sniff test, and it passed, so he ate
it, along with a potato and some frozen corn that he
microwaved.

It had been a thoroughly bad day. First Josh
and then Shahla. After Tony had called the Bonita Beach Police, the
desk officer had called Detective Croyden who was at home. Tony had
actually been shocked that Croyden wasn’t working. And then he
realized that he expected Croyden to be on duty all the time. And
it almost seemed as if he was. When Shahla and others badmouthed
the police for not solving the murder, they were ignoring Croyden’s
work ethic.

Croyden had come to Rasa’s home. She had
repeated her story to him. Tony had told him about his meeting with
the Chameleon. Otherwise, he would have been withholding evidence.
Croyden hadn’t even chewed him out. He just took notes with his
Mont Blanc pen and looked properly concerned. An officer Croyden
had brought with him started calling friends of Shahla from a list
supplied by Rasa.

Tony belatedly told Croyden that Josh had
moved out. Croyden made a note and looked at Tony for a moment with
what was almost a compassionate expression. He said, “You still did
the right thing. It’s hard to rat out your buddy, but sometimes to
have to do it.”

“You don’t think he’s involved in this, do
you?” Tony asked, shocked by Croyden’s serious tone.

“His story about the panties sounds legit.
We’re checking on his alibi for the night of the murder.”

Tony couldn’t recall that Josh had given him
an alibi. But he felt relieved. Even if Josh never spoke to him
again, he didn’t want him to be convicted of murder.

A female friend of Rasa’s arrived to comfort
her. Detective Croyden was using the house as a temporary command
post while he coordinated the efforts of several officers in the
field. In between phone calls, he asked Rasa questions about
Shahla’s friends and habits.

After watching him in action for a while,
Tony began to see him in a better light. He really was a good
policeman. It relieved Tony’s mind a little. He still wasn’t
convinced that Shahla had met with foul play, but whether she had
or whether she hadn’t, Croyden was doing his best to find her.

Eventually, Tony began to feel expendable,
like a disposable razor. So he left. He decided to conduct his own
search. He drove slowly, up and down almost every street in Bonita
Beach—the streets that crossed Pacific Coast Highway and ran
downhill to the water, and the cross streets parallel to PCH and
the coastline. He did this for two hours—until his gas gauge
registered empty.

What else could he do? The more he tried to
think, the more his brain wouldn’t function. It was then he
realized that he was exhausted and starving. He drove home and
parked in his carport. After staring at the empty space where
Josh’s car used to be, he dragged himself into the house and went
to the refrigerator.

***

Tony leafed through the pages of the Green
Book at the Hotline office on Sunday morning, concentrating on the
inactive callers at the back of the book. Detective Croyden had
considered all of the active callers as possible suspects, and as
far as Tony knew, he had discarded all of them except Fred the
Chameleon. And Tony had discarded Fred as a suspect. Tony was sure
that Croyden had also looked at the inactive pages, but because
there was no way to contact the people who were no longer calling
the Hotline, he really didn’t have any leads to follow.

Tony wasn’t sure he could do any better, but
he read the description of each caller, looking for something—he
didn’t know what— that might set off an alarm in his brain. He read
the information for each inactive caller and then went back and
reread it for just the male callers. Then, for some reason, he came
back and read the page for one caller a third time.

This was a man who had given a variety of
names, none of which had any special meaning for Tony. His Hotline
nickname was Cackling Crucifier. He had called for several years
and apparently stopped calling very abruptly about nine or ten
months ago. He was given the name because of his weird laugh and
because he liked to talk about religion. He appeared to carry a lot
of guilt. He talked as if he thought he had personally crucified
Jesus. He asked listeners about their religions. He always had a
television set on in the background. The page on him said not to
discuss religion or give him any personal information.

Tony had come into the Hotline office
because he wanted to feel as if he was doing something to help find
Shahla. Besides, he couldn’t stand the quiet in his townhouse with
Josh gone. He had called the Bonita Beach police first thing this
morning to get an update on the search for her. No news. Now that
he was here, he realized that this was where he usually saw her. He
missed her. It occurred to him for the first time that if something
had happened to her, he might never see her again. He
shuddered.

He was sitting at the white table in the
outer office. A girl named Anne was in the listening room. Tony
knew she had been a listener for a couple of years. When she hung
up from a call, Tony carried the Green Book into the listening room
and said, “Anne, did you ever speak to this guy called Cackling
Crucifier?”