“Was
she a good detective?”
“Yeah.
So was Fernie. Normally I’d assume they’d be damn thorough. But in this case,
maybe they saw Barnett as a victim and didn’t think it through.” He frowned.
“Bunny MacIntyre likes him but she didn’t vouch for his whereabouts Sunday.”
He
poured himself tea but didn’t drink it. “I need to get hold of the entire file
on Lara before I talk to Sue. That’ll be fun— reopening a case another D thinks
is long-closed. Maybe I’ll use the helpless approach: Here’s what I’m faced
with, Sue. I could use some help.”
He
grabbed his fork again, held it poised over the bowl. “So how’s your appetite?”
“Fine.”
“Proud
of you.”
* * *
He downed
two Bengal premiums, called for the check, and was slapping cash on the table
when his cell chirped Beethoven’s Fifth.
“Sturgis.
Oh, hey. Yeah. Good to hear from you, thanks . . . Would that be
okay? Yeah, sure. Let me write it down.”
Tucking
the phone under one ear, he scribbled on a napkin. “Thanks, see you in twenty.”
Rising
to his feet, he motioned me toward the exit. Some of the twenty-somethings
stopped laughing and looked at him as he loped out of the restaurant. Big,
scary-looking man. All that merriment; he didn’t fit in.
“That
was Sue Kramer,” he said, out on the sidewalk. “She’s right here in the city.
Working a suicide, as it turns out, and happy to chat about Lara. So much for
reading the file.”
“It’s
L.A.,” I said. “Improvise.”
T
he address was in Beverly Hills, Rexford Drive, south
side of the city, between Wilshire and Olympic, where apartment buildings
predominated.
“That’s
her,” said Milo, pointing to a trim, dark-haired woman walking a
champagne-colored toy poodle up the west side of the block.
He
pulled up to the curb and Sue Kramer smiled and waved and gathered the dog in
her arms.
“You’re
not allergic are you, Milo?”
“Just
to paperwork.”
Kramer
got in the back of the unmarked. As Milo drove away, she sniffed the air. “That
good old dirty-cuffs smell. Been awhile.”
“What’re
you driving now, Ms. Private Enterprise? A Jag?”
“A
Lexus. And a Range Rover.” Kramer was in her fifties, with a tight, leggy
figure emphasized by black chalk-stripe pipe-stem pants and a tailored gray
jacket over a white silk shell. Her hair was ink-black, cut short and spiked.
No jewelry. Black Kate Spade purse.
“Hooh
hah,” said Milo.
Kramer
said, “The Lexus I earned myself. My new husband’s a financial guy. He bought
me the Rover for a surprise.”
“Nice
new husband.”
“Maybe
the third time’s the charm.” The dog panted. “Chill, Fritzi, these are good
guys— I think she’s smelling scumbag back here.”
Milo
said, “My last passenger was Deputy Chief Morales. Got stuck driving him to a
meeting at Parker.”
“There
you go.”
Milo
crossed Rexford at Olympic, turned left on Whitworth. “How’re things, Sue?”
“Things
are great— pipe down, Fritz.”
“San
Bernardino treating you well?”
“I
could do without the smog, but Dwayne and I have a great weekend place in
Arrowhead. How about you?”
“Peachy.
What brings you to B.H.?”
“In
the words of Willie Sutton, that’s where the money is,” said Kramer.
“Seriously, it’s a sad one. Divorce case, Korean couple, the usual hassles over
money and custody. The husband decided to kill himself, made sure the wife
found him.”
“Gun?”
“Knife.
He ran a bath, got in, cut his wrists. That was after calling the ex and
telling her she could have the car and the kids and all the spousal payment
she’d demanded. All he wanted was for her to come by so they could talk like
mature adults. She walked in, saw bloody water running all over the apartment.
Coroner says suicide but his divorce lawyer hired us to make sure.”
“Iffy?”
said Milo.
“Not
at all, but you know attorneys. This one wants to rack up a few more billable
hours before he closes the file. Which is fine with Bob— my boss. We don’t make
moral judgments, we just do the job. The apartment where it happened is back
there, I’m supposed to watch it for a few days, see if anyone interesting goes
in or out. So far, nothing, I’m going out of my mind. You did me a favor by
calling.”
She
leaned forward to get a better look at me. “Hi, I’m Sue.”
“Alex
Delaware.”
I
reached back and we shook hands. Milo told her who I was.
“I
know that name,” said Kramer. “You evaluated Turner and Duchay, right?”
“Right.”
“Talk
about sad.”
Milo
said, “Duchay’s dead, Sue. That’s why we’re here.”
Kramer
stroked the poodle. “Really? Tell me about it.”
When
he finished, she said, “So you’re thinking: If Malley’s a vengeance-crazed killer,
maybe he did the same to Lara.”
“I’m
sure you were right on, but you know how it is when stuff comes up— ”
“No
need to stroke me, Milo. If the situation was reversed, I’d do the same thing.”
She sat back. The dog’s breathing had slowed. Kramer whispered something in its
ear. “Fernie and I did a good job on Lara. Coroner confirmed it was suicide,
there was no reason to think it wasn’t. Lara was what you psychologists call
profoundly depressed, Doctor. Since Kristal’s death, she’d lost weight, was taking
medication, slept all day, refused to socialize.”
“You
got this from Barnett?”
“That’s
right.”
“I
found him a rather taciturn fellow.”
“Yeah,
he did have the old Clint Eastwood thing going on,” said Kramer. “But Fernie
and I had bonded with him because we caught the two little monsters.”
“What
was his reaction to Lara’s death?”
“Sad,
wiped out, guilty. He said he should’ve taken her depression more seriously,
but they’d been having their problems and he’d been focusing on his work.”
“What
kind of problems?”
“Marital
stuff,” said Kramer. “I didn’t push. This was a guy who’d lost everything.”
“So
he was feeling guilty for not paying attention to her.”
“Suicide
does that. Right, Doctor? Leaves all that guilt residue. Like the case I’m
working on right now. The wife hated the husband’s guts, did everything in her
power to squeeze him dry during the divorce. But seeing him bleeding out in
that bathtub freaked her out and now she’s remembering all sorts of wonderful
things about him and blaming herself.”
Milo said,
“Did Barnett express any guilt about Lara using his gun?”
“No,”
said Kramer. “Nothing like that. I also talked to Lara’s mother and she said
basically the same.”
“She
and Barnett get along?” I said.
“I
got the feeling they didn’t, but she never came out and said anything bad about
him,” said Kramer. “What I got from her was that Lara had really struggled
after Kristal’s death and she felt powerless to do anything about it, poor
woman. Her name was Nina. Nina Balquin. She was devastated. How could she not
be?”
“Lara
was on medication,” I said. “She get that from a family doctor?”
“Lara
refused to see a therapist, so Nina gave her some of her pills.”
“Mom
was depressed, too.”
“Over
Kristal,” said Kramer. “Maybe there was more. I got the sense this was a family
that had dealt with a lot over the years.”
“Like
what?” said Milo.
“It
was just a feeling— I’m sure you’ve seen that, Doctor. Some families seem to
live under a cloud. But maybe my opinion was colored because I was seeing them
at their worst.”
“Twice,”
I said.
“Talk
about the pits.
I’m
getting profoundly depressed just thinking about
it,” said Kramer. She laughed softly and stroked the poodle. “Fritzi’s my
therapist. She loves stakeouts.”
“Walks
in a straight line and doesn’t talk,” said Milo. “The perfect partner.”
“And
doesn’t need privacy to pee.”
Milo
chuckled. “Anything else that would be helpful, Sue?”
“That’s
it, guys. Those cases made me so damn sad, I couldn’t wait to close both of
them. So maybe I overlooked something on Lara, I don’t know. But there really
was nothing to indicate Barnett had anything to do with it.” She sighed.
Milo
said, “I wouldn’ta done different, Sue.”
“You
really think he could’ve killed her?”
“You
know him better than I do.”
“I
knew him as a grieving father.”
“An
angry, grieving father.”
“Isn’t
anger how men deal with everything?”
Neither
of us answered.
Sue
Kramer said, “If Barnett blamed Lara for being negligent, he never said so to
me. Can I see him waiting for Duchay to get out and pulling a revenge thing? I
guess. I know he was happy when the Turner kid got shanked in jail.”
“He
said that?” said Milo.
“Yup.
I called to tell him about it. Figured it might hit the papers and he shouldn’t
find out that way. He listened and said nothing, there was this long silence. I
said, ‘Barnett?’ And he said ‘I heard you.’ I said, ‘You all right?’ And he
said, ‘Thanks for calling. Good riddance to bad garbage.’ Then he hung up. I
have to say it creeped me out a little, because Turner was thirteen years old
and the way he died was gross. Still, it wasn’t my kid he murdered. The more I
thought about Barnett’s pain, the more I figured he was entitled.”
“Barnett
ever talk about Rand?” said Milo.
“Only
before the sentencing. He said he wanted them to get what they deserved. Which
I suppose they did, in the end.”
Milo
stopped at a light at Doheny.
Sue
Kramer said, “I remember Turner’s death making the paper, but I didn’t see
anything about Duchay. Was it in there?”
“Nope,”
said Milo.
“Something
like that, you’d think there would be coverage.”
“That
would require a reporter actually ferreting something out,” said Milo.
“True,”
said Kramer. “Those guys feed off press releases.” A beat. “Unlike us, huh,
Milo? We just keep running after trouble. Sticking our fingers in holes as the
world floods.”
Milo
grunted assent.
Kramer
said, “I’d better be getting back, guys. Just my luck to be gone when something
exciting happens. And Fritzi’s due for a bathroom break.”
He
circled back to Rexford.
“Drop
me off in the alley out back, Milo. I left a little piece of tape at the bottom
of the apartment door, want to make sure no one broke it.”
“Super-sleuth,”
said Milo.
“Can’t
wait to close this one. When I’m finished, Dwayne’s taking me to Fiji.”
“Aloha.”
“You
should get some sunshine yourself, Milo.”
“I
don’t tan.”
“Right
here’s fine, big guy.”
Milo
rolled to a stop behind a white-box apartment complex backed by parking slots.
Stepping out, Kramer set the poodle down, leaned into his window, touched his
shoulder. “The brassogracy treating you okay?”
“They
leave me alone,” he said.
“That’s
a brand of okay.”
“That’s
a brand of nirvana.”
* * *
“What
do you think?” he asked me as we exited the alley and drove west on Gregory
Drive.
“She
did a competent job, didn’t dig very deep.”
“What
about that comment: the family living under a cloud?”
“Sounds
like reality.”
He
grunted. “Let’s find Lara’s other surviving relative. See what her reality is.”
N
ina Balquin was listed on Bluebell Avenue in North
Hollywood.
Not
far from the site of her daughter’s suicide. Or the Buy-Rite mall, or the park
where her granddaughter had been taken to be murdered.
A
short drive, also, to the Daneys’ house in Van Nuys.
But
for Barnett Malley’s escape to rural solitude, the case had tossed a narrow
net.
Milo
got the number, spoke briefly, finished with, “Thanks, ma’am, will do.”
“Off
we go,” he said. “She’s surprised that I want to talk to her about Barnett, not
upset. Just the opposite, she’s lonely as hell.”
“You
picked that up in a thirty-second conversation?”
“I
didn’t pick up anything,” he said. “She came right out with it. ‘I’m a lonely
woman, Lieutenant. Any company would be welcome.’ ”