“
Furry-ous.
And if you try to work
fur-ensic
in, he won’t be the only one demonstrating a proclivity for violence.”
The tech smiled placidly. “I’ll get some photos.”
“Of all the cars in the lot.”
“Yes, sir.”
Speculating that shots might have also been fired outside the room, I checked the front of the Chevy for bullet holes, but couldn’t find any. Glancing to my left, I saw the door to Room Seven opened a crack and the silhouette of someone’s head peeking around the edge of the door.
Then a woman half-whispered, “Detective Lyon, is that you?”
“In the flesh. Who’s there?”
“It’s Kimberly.” She poked her head out a little. “You remember me, don’t you?”
In Victorian-era parlance, Kimberly Fleming was a “soiled dove.” However, being a hooker didn’t make her a bad person. Indeed, one of the things I’d always liked about most prostitutes was that they were usually bluntly honest about the fact that they sold themselves to strangers, unlike so-called respectable people, such as politicians. In contrast to most of the other cops she’d met, I’d treated her as a lady and she’d proved a valuable street informant. Once upon a time Kim had been a pretty girl. But the combination of meth, poor nutrition, and the nightly anxiety of wondering if her next customer was going to be Norman Bates had quickly taken its toll.
“Of course, I remember you, Ms. Fleming.” Realizing that she wasn’t going to leave the room, I walked over to her. “How are you tonight?”
“Okay, I guess. I saw you through the window and couldn’t decide if it was you or not.”
“Understandable. I look a lot older than I did.”
“And the cane. I heard you got shot.”
“That’s true, but I’m back now.” I decided I wouldn’t complicate matters by adding that I wasn’t a homicide inspector anymore. “Would you feel safer if I came in there to talk?”
She glanced at one of the uniformed cops standing near the crime scene tape. “Yes, please.”
Kim held the door open for me. The shabby motel room smelled of marijuana, Mexican food, and a cinnamon-based perfume so strong I could almost taste it. Once we were in better light, I could see that she’d aged even more than I had in the past few years. Her features were haggard and her eyes as dull as a John Tesh album.
Pushing the door shut, I asked, “Has anyone talked to you?”
“No, sir. I mean, the cops knocked on my door . . .”
“And you didn’t answer because you have an arrest warrant for prostitution, right?”
She nodded glumly.
“Don’t worry about that. I’m just interested in knowing what happened tonight. Where were you when the shooting started?”
“Here.”
“That must have been scary.”
“Tell me about it. We’re talking and suddenly—
boom, boom, boom
—it’s like a war movie. I hid in the bathtub.”
“So, you were with a customer?”
“Yeah. We were still discussing price.”
“And I imagine he bailed when the gunfire stopped.”
“Him and half the other people in the motel.” Kim shook her head in disbelief. “Man, I never thought she actually meant it.”
“She?” I tried to keep my voice casual.
“Some chick. I think she was the wife of the guy in the room.”
“Do me a favor, Ms. Fleming. Back up and start at the beginning.”
“I was on the stroll out on the sidewalk.” She pointed toward Lombard Street. “On the stroll” was a euphemism for standing by a roadway to solicit johns.
“And how long was that before the shooting began?”
“I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes. It wasn’t a long time.”
“Did you see where the woman came from?”
“No. In fact, I didn’t even notice her until she started banging the hell out of the door.”
“What did she look like?”
“White, I think. She sounded white. Nice figure, from what I could see.” Kim thought for a second. “Kind of long dark hair, jeans, and maybe a brown jacket.”
“Young? Old?”
“Youngish. Maybe in her twenties. I didn’t want to get that close, Mr. Lyon. She was really pissed off and crying—not that I blame her. There’s too many married guys out here screwing around when they should be home.”
I nodded in sad agreement. “Could you identify this woman if you saw her again?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What happened next?”
“Like I said, she was banging on the door and yelling about how she knew he was in there, and that she couldn’t believe how he’d betrayed her,” Kim said.
“Did she ever mention the guy’s name?”
“Not that I remember.”
“And the guy never answered the door?”
“No. I felt so bad for her.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“Oh, yeah. Right before she took off, she shouted that he was going pay for what he’d done to her. Pay with blood. She was screaming that at the top of her lungs.” Kim looked away from me and I suspected she was suddenly sorry she’d implicated the other woman.
“Which way did she go when she left?”
She pointed eastward. “She walked away.”
“Did you see if she had a car?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see or hear the woman again?”
“No.”
Kim’s answers were becoming monosyllabic and I knew she was anxious to end the interview. She was on the clock, and also frightened that her pimp would find out she’d been talking to a cop. Unfortunately for her, I wanted some more answers. I asked, “Was anyone arguing or shouting right before the shooting began?”
Kim shook her head.
“Look, I know you want to wrap this up, but I have just a few more questions and I want you to think very carefully about this next one. You said she was pounding on the door. Did she do anything else, like try to push it open?”
Her eyes became slightly unfocused as she recalled the scene. “Yeah. Yeah, there was a point when she had both hands pressed against the door while she was crying.”
“Like this?” I held both my hands up, palms outward and fingers spread.
“Uh-huh.”
“And was that car we were looking at already parked there when the woman was pounding on the door?”
She went over to the window and pulled the curtains aside to take another look at the Chevrolet. “No. It must have pulled in after I came inside.”
“Any idea whose car it is?”
“No, sir.”
“I promise this is the last question. I’m assuming you know Mervin Bronsey, who used to work the vice squad. Have you seen him around here tonight?”
Kim’s eye’s widened with alarm. “No, thank God. He’s a sicko.”
“Yeah, I got that memo a while ago. Thank you, Ms. Fleming. You’ve been very helpful and I just wonder if you could you do me one more favor?”
“What’s that?” she asked with a slightly resentful sigh.
“If you can’t get out of this line of work . . .” I gestured toward the unmade bed, “promise me that you’ll be very careful. I’d hate to see something bad happen to you.”
Sometimes an unexpected word of compassion can be as surprising and painful as a sudden slap to the face. Kim looked as if she was going to cry. “See you around, Detective Lyon.”
“I hope so. You take care, Kim.” I gently shut the door behind me.
The tech did a double take when he saw me come from the motel room. “So, that’s where you went. One minute you were here and the next, I turn around and you’re gone.”
“One of my old informants wanted to talk to me. Did you find anything in any of the other cars that’s worth following up on?”
“Nothing.”
“Then keep an eye on that Chevy while I get down to Room Four. I’ve got some important information for the detectives.”
A few moments later, I stood outside the murder scene and noted that there were no signs of forced entry on the door or its frame. Inside, a man was lying faceup in a small pool of blood on the stained industrial carpeting, which meant the medical examiner must have turned the victim over. I didn’t recognize the dead guy, whose peroxide blond hair looked as if it had been styled with a weed-whacker. He wore a baggy pair of arctic camouflage military fatigue pants and a black T-shirt that bore the charming message:
I MAY NOT BE MISTER RIGHT, BUT I’LL SCREW YOU UNTIL HE GETS HERE.
Whoever had rented the grim little room was traveling light. There was nothing in the tiny closet, and the only toiletries visible on the bathroom sink were a toothbrush and a travel-sized tube of Colgate toothpaste. A glance at the unmade bed, strewn with prepackaged food, told me the room’s occupant must have been having dinner when things went south. There was a half-full plastic container of sushi on the nightstand along with an open bottle of that rascal of the vineyard, Boone’s Farm Blackberry Ridge wine.
Next, I quickly scanned the room and counted the bullet holes. There were three in the far wall, two in the wall where the door was located, one in the ceiling, and another two in the victim. That made eight, which was a lot of ammo expended in a room that wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet.
Gregg, Aafedt, and Garza were huddled in quiet conversation as the ME completed his preliminary inspection of the corpse.
I waved to signal I had news and the three cops came out. I asked, “Have any witnesses said anything about a woman having a screaming fit outside this door about ten minutes before the One-Eighty-Seven went down?”
“First we’ve heard about that,” said Gregg.
I recounted how I’d met Kim and quickly outlined what she’d told me.
When I finished, Aafedt said, “I’ll get a tech started on processing the door. With any luck we’ll get both latent prints and biological evidence from the tears.”
As Aafedt left, Garza glanced back at the corpse. “She said she was going to make him ‘pay in blood’? That’s a pretty definite statement of intent. So is our victim a philandering husband?”
“I’m assuming you still haven’t IDed him yet,” I said.
Gregg shook his head. “No. He didn’t have a wallet and nobody recognized him, so it looks like we’re going to have to submit his fingerprints for analysis.”
“Which could take hours. I’m suddenly concerned our victim might be the son of a teddy bear artist that Ash and I know,” I said.
Garza gave me a sharp look. “Why would you think that?”
I pointed toward the Chevy. “There’s a bear costume inside that car. It’s the same one a guy wore during a Two-Eleven I witnessed at a teddy bear show in Sonoma earlier today.”
Garza watched my face and waited for the punch line, but when it didn’t come, she said, “A robber dressed as Winnie the Pooh. You’re kidding.”
“Nope, and I’ve got a bruise on my butt to prove it happened—not that I think you want to see it. The suspect flat ran over me.”
“But how does this relate to our murder?”
“I believe the thug in the costume was connected with Merv the Perv Bronsey, who was also there.”
Garza reacted as if she’d just caught a faint whiff of raw sewage. “I couldn’t believe the state gave Bronsey a PI license.”
“And apparently, now Merv has a client with very deep pockets. Lycaon Software.” I went on to describe the robbery, how Bronsey had threatened Lauren Vandenbosch, and the tale she told afterwards.
“And you think our vic might be Kyle Vandenbosch?” asked Gregg.
“I hope not, but maybe Kyle wasn’t telling his mom the truth about how he left his job. What if he actually stole that robotic bear from Lycaon?”
Six
“It’s an interesting theory, but aren’t you jumping to some major conclusions?” said Garza. “For starters, how do you know that Lycaon even made that thing?”
“I don’t. But Lycaon—a Silicon Valley powerhouse—hired Bronsey to recover
something
, and that teddy bear robot represents cutting-edge computer technology. It can talk and looks like it’s designed to walk,” I said.
“It talks?” Garza lifted an eyebrow.
“Whether it’s clever programming or genuine artificial intelligence, Patrick talks.”
“Patrick?” Gregg gave me a quizzical look.
“Patrick the Polar Bear. He told me his name.”
“O . . . kaaay,” said Garza, who was obviously a little creeped out that I’d been chatting with a teddy bear.
“But why would Bronsey or whoever it was kill this Kyle to recover the bear?” Gregg sounded doubtful.
“Toys are a multibillion-dollar industry. What if Lycaon developed a teddy bear that could walk and talk? What if it could actually play with a child and maybe also double as an electronic watchdog? You think it might be worth a few shekels?” I asked.
Gregg’s eyes widened. “It could be Tickle Me Elmo squared.”
“Give that man a cigar.”
“Let’s get a photo of Kyle Vandenbosch to compare against our dead guy.” Gregg turned to an evidence tech. “Get on the computer in your van and print me a copy of his driver’s license photo.”
As the tech left, Garza said, “In the meantime, we found car keys on the victim. We might as well find out if they go with the Chevy.”
Gregg took a small manila evidence envelope from his pocket and removed a key ring. He unlocked the car with the first key he tried.
“So, the car is definitely connected to our dead guy,” said Garza.
“I think we’d better run this guy Vandenbosch for warrants,” said Gregg. He spoke into the radio and a moment later emitted a low whistle.
“Ten-Thirty-Seven-Frank?” I asked, using the radio code for a felony arrest warrant.
“Yep,” replied Gregg. “Santa Clara SO has charged him with multiple counts of grand theft, computer fraud, and felony vandalism. His bail is one million dollars.”
“Man, that seems like a pretty high bail for nothing more than hibernating,” I said, keeping a poker face.
“What are you talking about?” asked Garza.
“If Patrick belongs to Lycaon, the only thing Kyle’s really done is . . .
bear-napping
.”
“Drop the pun or I’ll shoot,” said Gregg.
“Both of you are brain-damaged.” Garza reached up to massage her left shoulder. “So, how did the robo-bear end up out in the parking lot?”
I was about to apologize for
bruin-ing
Garza’s night, but decided against it. Instead, I said, “Because whoever ran from Room Four dropped the bear when they tripped and fell. I found a small amount of blood and blue fibers on the pavement near the Chevy. Your tech collected the evidence.”