Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (34 page)

At 11 P.M. I pushed open the front door, which was ajar,
and went inside.

Darkness. Silence.

There seems little point in my describing the interior of
the house except to say it was what you'd expect in such a
neighborhood-stylish and neat. I didn't take it in much beyond that. Interior decorating is not my thing. Besides, my
mind was elsewhere. I flipped on my flashlight. The hallway
that led to the back of the house was lined with framed photographs of Melinda and Jeffrey smiling together in various locations, such as Japan, France, Florida. I turned a corner and
saw the closed double doors that led to the master bedroom.
Still, no sound from within. Surely, no sex. Melinda was likely
just sleeping inside, alone. That'a girl, I thought, only halfdisappointed by what I was not going to get to see.

Of course, I still had to open the bedroom door and look
inside just to be sure. It was my job.

I wish I hadn't done it.

By the light of a reading lamp burning beside the king-size bed, I saw Melinda sprawled on the rumpled bedspread, her
vacant eyes open and askew. Most of her clothes had been
ripped off her body. I knew right away she was dead. Poor
Melinda. There were red marks at her throat and blood on
one of her swollen lips. She'd been knocked around and then
strangled and then, you know ... It was ugly. Even twentythree years of working security at the park doesn't prepare you
for something like this. At first, I didn't know what to do. Had
Jeffrey been right about a lover in the house, a lover turned
murderer? Had I arrived only a few minutes too late to save
poor Melinda? Or might the killer still be hiding in the house?
I turned and looked around the room.

But I was alone.

At least, I was alone until the police arrived just three or
four minutes after I'd entered Melinda's bedroom.

Jeffrey hadn't shut off the silent alarm, the bastard.

"Officers, officers!" I shouted as they burst into the bedroom. "I was just about to call you!"

They pressed around me, their automatic weapons pointed
at my face, and shouted for me to show my hands and to lay
spread-eagled on the floor, which I did. My training in security
prepared me for such treatment; they were only taking proper
precautions.

Still, I tried to explain: "The killer may still be in the house!"
I shouted. One of them wrenched my arm behind my back to
apply the cuffs. They weren't interested in what I had to say,
though one of them recited my Miranda rights. "Look, you've
got it all wrong, guys! I work for Jeffrey, I'm private security!"

Somebody hit me hard with his elbow in the back of my
head. My face hit the floor and I tasted blood.

Then he hit me again.

The next thing I knew I was in the back of a patrol car.

"Just shut up!" the driver said every time I tried to explain.

It was not until an hour later in the police interrogation
room that I realized how completely I'd been set up. Should I
have seen it coming? Maybe, but I possess a trusting nature.
And Jeffrey is a formidable enemy, particularly when you don't
know he's your enemy. The interrogator told me that "poor,
distraught" Jeffrey had managed to communicate through his
tears that he'd had no contact with me whatsoever since the
day he fired me from the park. No phone calls, no meeting at
Carl's Jr., no private investigation.

He'd lined it all up: The videotaped testimony from my
hearing at the park suggested I had a history of "stalking"; my
subsequent firing suggested I had motive to get revenge on
Jeffrey (by taking away the love of his life, just as he'd taken
away the park from me); my reporter's notebook, confiscated
at the time of my arrest, indicated I'd been following Melinda
for weeks, noting her every move; my interviews with some of
her neighbors and so forth reinforced the idea that my attentions had been "obsessive"; my being in the house at roughly
the time of her murder, and the broken lock on the front door
... well, that seemed to speak for itself. Not good, any of it.

Obviously, Jeffrey killed her. Surely, you can see that. My
part, as patsy, just made it a "perfect crime."

But nobody wanted to hear that.

The staff at the Carl's Jr. did not recall Jeffrey and me ever
having eaten there, but why would they as it had been almost
a month previous? The calls from Jeffrey to my home phone,
the most recent of which had occurred the night before the
murder, proved to have been placed from my own lost cell
phone, which Jeffrey must have stolen from my apartment before initiating his plan.

My attorney advised me to cop a plea.

I told him to go to hell.

When the DA started rooting around in my past, things
got no better. I still don't know how they thought they'd ever
locate Mandy in Bangkok. She doesn't exactly work a desk
in an office-besides, she's probably going by another name
these days. That's how it works there. Just because immigration has no record of her ever exiting the U.S.A. doesn't mean
she didn't go back, for God's sake. There are a million ways for
girls to get around bureaucrats! I'd never have hurt Mandy,
however much she hurt me. And who'd have guessed that the
student I took such an interest in during my last year of teaching was shortly thereafter murdered? My sixth sense alerted
me to her need for special protection. I was right! Do I get no
credit for that? If the school district hadn't gotten in my way
all those years ago, she might be alive today. Any inference
now of my having killed her is ridiculous. Look, whose past
wouldn't reveal unseemly coincidences if put under a microscope? Yours? I doubt it.

Maybe I'll cop a plea after all.

But let me ask you this: after all my years working in park
security (which is a branch of law enforcement, after all), do
you think I'm fool enough to commit a murder and leave every clue pointing to me? Of course not! Any true detective
of the Sherlock Holmes ilk would understand that the vast
number of details that seem to incriminate me, actually exonerate me! Besides, if I did kill poor Melinda, then much of this
report is a pure fiction. Talk about fantasy-land! And knowing
what you know about me, do you honestly believe I'm capable
of making something like this up?

should have left the minute I gave it to him, should have
just tossed the eviction notice across the doorstep and
onto the cracked tiles of the old mansion's foyer. A smarter
man would have hoofed right back to the Sentra and caught
the car ferry off Balboa Island. Me? I stood there like the wideeyed fan I once was, rooted to the front steps of his formerly
grand palace at the island's southern tip. I'd specifically asked
for this delivery, just for the chance to meet somebody I once
idolized. Now I was staring into the face of a faded nobody with
the saddest eyes I'd ever seen. When he answered my knock, he
looked like someone peering up from the bottom of a well.

"Been 'specting you," he said, slurring a bit.

"Wheels of justice don't turn so fast, but now you've got
the paperwork. Court order came down yesterday."

I resisted the urge to apologize. I'd read everything ever
written about him, including the entire bankruptcy file. He
could only blame himself for this latest bit of unpleasantness.
He'd never stopped living like the star he once was, even if
the money ran out years ago. It showed. The fenders on the
Porsche out front were rusted through and the canvas top was
ripped in three places. The house was the choicest piece of
real estate on this tony Newport Harbor refuge, but pretty
run-down. His ex, the third, owned it now. The judge gave
him twenty-four hours to vacate.

I looked at my watch. "Anyway, the sheriff'll be here this
time tomorrow morning."

"Splendid."

He cinched the belt of his robe, raised his highball glass,
swirled the ice, and took a sip of something thick and ambersomething completely wrong for 9:40 in the morning. His
bony chest was unnaturally tan, almost orange, the hair on
it white.

"Question for you, sir," he said. "Know anythin'bout dark
matter?"

I'd seen my share of people in denial. I serve eviction notices for the Superior Court of Orange County, California. I am
a $15.50-an-hour destroyer of worlds, the death messenger of
the American Dream. Nothing surprises me-guys with guns,
screeching women, unleashed dogs. It's why I carry pepper
spray in a little holster on my belt. But this, this was the worst
of it. I'd just delivered a final curb stomp to somebody who'd
once meant a lot to me, somebody who'd obviously given up.
What was I thinking when I asked to handle this one?

"Dark. Mat-ter," he repeated, working hard to enunciate.

I knew all about his eccentricities. Guy was one of the
kings of cock-rock when he was, like, nineteen. So big even
a teen dork like me played his first album to death. He was
white-hot after that first record, the swaggering lead singer
of the '70s band. Life was good. Spent millions on anything
that moved-cars, horses, women. For years he kept exotic
animals as house pets, and claimed some mystical connection
to them-right up until Animal Control took them away after
his panther killed a neighbor's dog.

Nothing lasts. The second album rose briefly, then sank to
oblivion. The third? It was over. The band broke up. That was
more than thirty-five years ago, half a lifetime of autograph shows, Behind the Music cameos, and the occasional Japanese
royalty check. The passing harbor tour boats used to point
out his house, but that stopped years ago. No one even called
him for session work anymore, because of the drinking. I have
this friend who works at TMZ, the celebrity scandal show. She
said that during his latest divorce, his ex was shopping a videotape that showed him butt-naked on a lawn chair, pasty and
late-life Baggy, getting blown by a Goth-looking high-school
sophomore. Its release actually might have helped his career.
But my friend told me the show had passed on the tape.

The executive producer didn't even recognize his name.