The Ghost of Mistletoe Mary (8 page)

The ghost saluted. “Got it, Chief.”

He moved his hand away from the speaker. “I got a corpse too, Aaron.”

“Just make sure it's not yours.”

“I'm doing my best.” The other bin moved forward and another well-aimed bullet hurled his way. “But hurry!”

Before the words were out of Jeremiah's mouth, the scream of approaching sirens split the late-afternoon air. The other Dumpster stopped moving and Jeremiah heard footsteps echoing in the alley, moving away from him. He prayed Granny wouldn't lose the shooter.

“I have a hunch that's Mary Dowling in the dryer,” Jeremiah said to Aaron who'd arrived on the scene shortly after the patrol cars. An EMT was working on Jeremiah's shoulder, cleaning and bandaging it while he sat on the edge of the back of the ambulance.

“Any idea who was shooting at you?” Aaron asked.

Jeremiah shook his head and repeated what Granny had told him. “Just that it was a guy in a field jacket with a knit cap.” Then he remembered something else, something Granny didn't hear or know.

“What else?” asked Aaron. “You look like you just remembered something important.”

“It could have been a woman,” Jeremiah suggested. “At one point that other container got stuck and I heard grunts when the shooter pushed it loose. Thinking back, the sound didn't seem low enough for a man.” The EMT finished with the bandaging and Jeremiah slipped back into his shirt and jacket. “There was also a homeless guy sleeping off a drunk when I first came down the alley. Maybe he saw something.”

Aaron wrote something down in a small notebook. “Could he have been the shooter just posing as a sleeping bum?”

Jeremiah shrugged. “Maybe, but I doubt it. He was wearing a dirty plaid jacket. The shooter was wearing either a field jacket or something more military looking.”

“Lot of homeless vets down here looking to make a quick buck and a lot of them wear old field jackets,” Aaron pointed out.

Jeremiah nodded in agreement. “Tell you one thing, whoever was shooting at me knew how to use a gun. Could be military trained or it could be a criminal posing as one of the vets.”

“But outside of the jacket and cap, you saw nothing else?”

“Afraid not, Aaron. Just an average-height guy in a field jacket and knit cap.” Jeremiah stood up. “You going to be handling the investigation?”

His friend shook his head. “I'm technically off today. I saw Bud Ornelas and Audra Wilcox inside. He's fairly new but a good detective, and Audra's been at it awhile. You're in good hands.” Aaron tapped his notebook. “Did you tell them this stuff?”

“Yeah, everything but my hunch about the shooter. I know Audra. She questioned me a bit while Ornelas went inside to check out the stiff. I'm sure they'll have more questions.”

“What hunch is that?” asked a tall black woman in her forties. The two men turned to see Detective Audra Wilcox slip out the door behind the Dumpster. On her hands were latex gloves. “You holding out on me, Jeremiah?”

Jeremiah smiled. “I wouldn't dream of it, Audra.” He indicated to Aaron. “In talking to Aaron here, I remembered that the shooter grunted while moving that trash bin. I think it's a woman.”

Audra Wilcox pursed her full lips as she considered the possibility. She was a handsome woman with coppery skin and high, chiseled cheekbones. Her slightly slanted eyes gave her face an intelligent, feline look—a feline used to hunting and catching her prey. She kept her thick wiry hair clipped closed to her head. “I wonder,” she began in a slow drawl as she considered each word, “if it was the bogus daughter you mentioned? Where can we find this Sloan guy? Maybe he can lead us to the guy who last saw Mary Dowling in this alley.”

“He should be on Wall Street in front of the City of Angels office,” Jeremiah told her. “I left him to guard my motorcycle. We should also find the guy in the plaid jacket who was sleeping when I came up the alley.” Something nagged at Jeremiah even as the words came out of his mouth.

“I already have officers out canvassing the streets for him,” she told him. “We'll head on over in a bit to talk to this Sloan about what he saw.”

“Wait a minute,” Jeremiah said as a new thought crossed his mind, leaving a trail of new unsettling worries.

“What is it, Jeremiah?” she asked. Aaron leaned in closer with curiosity.

“Huh?” Jeremiah shook his head. “Nothing. I thought I had an idea but it's a nonstarter.” He took a deep breath and rubbed his aching shoulder, as if it was the reason for his concern, but it wasn't. “Sloan is usually around the Angels office. If you don't find him, just ask Red Watkins.”

Audra nodded, mentally making note of Sloan's information. “We'll head over there and question him as soon as we're done here.”

Jeremiah did his own time calculation. He needed to get to Sloan before the police did. He had his own questions for Jeffrey Sloan and knew if he didn't get to him before the cops, he might never get the answers he wanted. He had to know personally if he'd been set up and he wanted to watch Sloan's expression when he accused him of it.

Jeremiah's phone rang. It was the third time since the police had arrived. All three calls were from Emma Whitecastle. Jeremiah answered this one. “Hey, Emma. Sorry, but I'm with the police right now. Thanks for sending them my way.”

“Are you okay?” she asked with a worried strain to her voice. “Granny said you were in a shootout. She popped in frantic, but at least calm enough to give us the location.”

“Yeah, I'm fine,” he told her. “I'll call you when I'm done here.” They ended the call and he put his attention back on the police. “If you don't need me anymore, I'm going to head on out. It's been a long-assed day. You know where to find me if you have more questions.”

“I'm sure we'll have more questions, Jeremiah,” Audra told him, “but I see no reason to keep you here. We've got a lot to go through. However, I think you're right about the corpse being Mary Dowling. You said she had a tattoo?”

Jeremiah nodded. “Yeah, I was told it's a flower, center of her chest.”

“Same as the victim,” Audra said. “Looks like an orchid. We're still hunting for any purse or ID she might have had with her.”

Patrol cars had blocked off the end of the alley to keep the curious away from the crime scene. Jeremiah looked down
at the crowd of lookie-loos building behind the barriers and wondered if the shooter was in the crowd watching the police—watching him. He scanned the faces, but he was too far away to see much detail. Near the other Dumpster, an SID—Scientific Investigation Division—officer was placing ID tents by pieces of evidence found on the ground and was taking photographs of them, while another was examining the bin itself. The ID tents looked like a scattered yellow brick road as they indicated spent shells and possibly footprints.

“Detective,” the officer checking the bin called to Audra. “We've got something.” He was holding up the lid to the bin. One of the few that still had a lid. Audra Wilcox headed toward him with Aaron and Jeremiah on her heels. When they reached the container, the three of them glanced inside to find the body of a man wearing a plaid jacket. He was in a crouching position on top of trash in a corner of the metal container. He'd been shot in the chest several times.

“This the guy you saw, Jeremiah?” Audra asked.

He nodded. “Sure looks like him.”

Audra looked around on the ground, then up at the young SID investigator, a pasty, serious young man with
Pulsky
on his name tag. “You find any blood?”

He shook his head. “Not leading to the bin. I think he was already in there when he was shot, especially in that position.”

Audra nodded. “On first blush, I think so, too.”

“I'm thinking,” Aaron said, “that the guy in the bin either saw the shooter and crawled in here to keep out of the way, or the shooter convinced him to get in here saying he'd be safe, then wasted him so he couldn't identify him.”

“Or her,” added Audra.

“Or her,” Aaron agreed.

Detective Wilcox turned to Jeremiah. “You turned in your gun, right?”

“Yeah,” Jeremiah told her. “It was taken into evidence almost first thing.”

“We'll check it out to see if it matches against the bullets in this poor guy.” She shrugged. “Who knows, maybe he was hiding and your bullets hit him, but I doubt it. Looks like he was shot close range.”

Jeremiah was antsy to get away. “Call me if you need me,” he told both Audra and Aaron. “I'll come straight to the station.”

He found Jeffrey Sloan almost exactly where he'd left him a few hours earlier, right in front of the Angels office watching his bike. Sloan was sitting propped against the front wall reading a tattered paperback novel. The lights in the office were out, so Red and his meager Sunday staff must have gone home. Sloan got to his feet as soon as he saw Jeremiah, but didn't look surprised. Jeremiah breathed easier. It was a good sign.

“I'm sorry I took so long, Sloan,” Jeremiah said, “but something came up.”

“A whole bunch of police came whizzing through here not too long ago,” Sloan said. “I haven't heard why yet, but from the sound of the sirens they stopped pretty close.”

“And if you hadn't been watching my bike, you would have followed them to check out what was happening, wouldn't you?”

“Hey,” Sloan said with a shrug, “it's my 'hood. Pays to know what's going on. Safer, too. It sounded like the direction you just came from.” He looked at Jeremiah hoping for some news.

“Yeah, it was,” Jeremiah admitted. “I found Mistletoe Mary's body. The police are there now.”

“Not surprised she's dead, considering her lifestyle, but it's too bad for her daughter just after finding her, huh?” Sloan pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “I thought I heard shots, but around here that's not uncommon.”

Jeremiah nodded, but didn't take his eyes off Sloan's, which were clean and curious. The guy didn't appear to be covering up anything. “I found the alley you told me about. You know, the one where that guy said he saw Mary with her daughter?”

“That's where Mary's body was?”

Without preamble, Jeremiah grabbed Sloan's upper arm and dragged him into the mouth of the narrow alley next to the Angels office. Sloan stumbled behind him because of his ill-fitting prosthesis, but Jeremiah paid no mind to his discomfort. Sloan's cigarette dropped to the pavement as he struggled to keep up. He was about thirty years younger than Jeremiah, but no match for the older and much stronger man, and he knew it.

“Hey, man,” Sloan protested. “What's going on?”

A couple of old guys leaning against a wall on the other side of the street watched and started to move forward. “You okay, Sloan?” one of them called out after a couple of cars went by.

“He's fine,” Jeremiah snapped back. “Mind your own business.” The old man watched a few seconds, then he and his pals decided to follow Jeremiah's advice.

Jeremiah shoved Sloan against a chipped brick wall. “You sent me to that alley.”

“And you found her, huh?” It was phrased as a question, not fact. “You'd think you'd be thanking me, not beating on me.”

“Maybe I would be thanking you if someone hadn't ambushed me. The shots you heard were someone trying to kill me and they almost succeeded. See that hole in my jacket?” He had hold of the front of Sloan's jacket, a field jacket, like the one the shooter wore. Jeremiah yanked Sloan forward, then slammed him back again. The activity shot pain through his bandaged shoulder, but he didn't care. For a brief second he'd thought Sloan might be the shooter, then remembered the footsteps. Whoever ran from the scene was surefooted, not a gimp.

He stepped closer to Sloan, almost nose to nose, close enough to smell the fresh tobacco smoke on his breath. “Did someone tell you to send me there? Did you set me up?”

Sloan's hands went up, palms out, in defense, and his head swung back and forth with conviction. “No, man. I swear. It was just like I said.”

“Tell me again,” Jeremiah hissed, letting go of Sloan's jacket but sticking close.

“Like I told you,” Sloan began, “I was asking around about Mary and this guy told me he saw her in that alley with another woman, some fancy ass he thought was slumming to score drugs but who called Mary Mom.”

“This guy, what did he look like? Where did you see him?”

“I don't know his name.” Sloan pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket with shaking hands, then stopped and looked at Jeremiah. “Mind if I smoke?”

The PI shook his head but never took his eyes from Sloan's. “What else can you tell me?”

Sloan lit a fresh cigarette. He took a long drag, then exhaled. Jeremiah was about to rattle him again for taking so long, but saw that the smoking calmed Sloan and might help him remember details.

“I don't know the guy's name, but I see him from time to time,” he began after his second puff. “I came across him near that alley I told you about. Not sure how old he is, but he looks old. Into booze and drugs when he can get 'em.”

“And he was going to roll Mary for drugs until he heard this other woman call her ‘Mom'?”

“That's what he told me,” Sloan confirmed, his voice cracking with nervousness. “I swear. Even though he's kind of broken, Mary would have been easy to take down the way she was.”

“If she was so messed up,” Jeremiah persisted, “why was he so sure she might have drugs on her? I was told she'd kicked the drugs a while back but not the booze. Even so, if she was using, she'd be using it, not carrying it around with her.”

Sloan took another drag, then confessed, “The guy told me he'd seen her in that alley before. He thought she might even have a secret crash pad nearby. But he also said he thought he saw her handing stuff off to guys there, and they weren't Johns. You know what I mean? He thought she was dealing.”

Jeremiah stared at Sloan a few seconds as he tried to fit the new pieces together. Mary would have been an easy target for anyone looking to grab her drugs, but she might have also been left alone so not to disrupt product availability. She might have been the delivery service, not the vendor. Was the woman posing as Mary's dead daughter the actual drug seller who was coercing Mary into making the deliveries?

“The guy did say,” Sloan continued, “that he'd thought of taking down Mary before but she was always with that other
ho, the young one.” Sloan took another long drag from his cigarette, the red glow chewing away at the cancer stick at a fast pace.

“What other one?” Jeremiah asked, wondering if he meant Lizzie.

Sloan shrugged. “That red-headed girl. I used to see them together working the streets. I think her name was Linda or Lucy or something like that.”

“Lizzie?”

Sloan nodded as he considered the name. “Could be.” He took another long puff, exhaled, and dropped the spent butt, crushing it beneath his foot.

“What else can you tell me about this guy?” Jeremiah asked. “I need to find him.”

“Like I said, he hangs around near Crocker, by that alley.” Sloan paused, then added, “And he wears a funny coat, red and black squares, I think.”

Jeremiah felt his heart stop. “Red and black? You mean a plaid jacket, like a hunter might wear?”

“Yeah, man, that's it. A plaid jacket. Easy to spot him out here. Only guy I know wearing something like that.”

Jeremiah grabbed the front of Sloan's jacket again, but this time didn't shove him. “What about jackets like yours? You know many guys who wear these field jackets here on the streets?”

“Yeah, several. I got mine from Angels. I think Red gets them every now and then from a guy who owns a surplus store.”

“What about women? Know any women wearing them down here?”

Sloan thought about the question, then answered, “Just a couple. There's Beth who hangs out on San Pedro by the Women's Center and Keisha who sometimes helps out at the mission. Though there might be more.”

Jeremiah knew both women. Keisha White, like Beth, had been in Iraq. She was African-American, built short and compact like a pit bull. Sloan was right; there might be more, especially if Red and his crew handed out the donated jackets from time to time.

Jeremiah leaned against the other wall of the alley and thought about his next move. Would it be talking to Lizzie again or running down Keisha and Beth? Without getting a good look at the shooter, he couldn't be certain if the gunman had been male or female, black or white, or even something in between, even though his gut told him the shooter was female.

Sloan watched Jeremiah as he went through his thought process. “Look, man,” he said, breaking the silence, “I'm sorry you got shot. I mean, I'm glad you're okay, but sorry you got shot. But I'm telling ya, outside of that old guy telling me about Mary being in that alley and possibly selling, I know nothing about it.”

Jeremiah watched him in return, looking for any sign of duplicity, even something as small as an eye tremor, but he saw nothing but concern coming from Sloan. If he was hiding something, the police might break him down.

“Sometime tonight the cops are going to be looking for you,” he told Sloan. “They need to question you about all this.”

“The cops?” Sloan looked even more worried. “I told you,” he emphasized again, “I had nothing to do with all this!”

“If you don't, then you have nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah, right.” Sloan spit on the ground. “I'm a young black man, an ex-drunk only half off the streets. You saying the L-A-P-D is gonna cut me a break?” He pronounced the police department's initials individually as if each were a swear word. “If you weren't an ex-cop, you'd be as worried as the rest of us brothers.”

“It's going to be all right, Sloan,” Jeremiah said. “The head detective on the case is Audra Wilcox, a sister and a friend of mine. Just answer her questions honestly. If you've told me the truth, you'll be fine.”

Just then a car pulled up to the curb in front of Jeremiah's motorcycle. Audra Wilcox got out of the passenger side. Bud Ornelas got out from behind the wheel. They looked around a moment until Bud saw them in the alley. The two detectives approached them.

“Jeffrey Sloan?” Audra asked Sloan. “We need to ask you a few questions.” She eyed his jacket with suspicion.

“Hold on a moment, Detective Wilcox,” Jeremiah said using her formal title and name. He pulled her and Bud aside, out of earshot of Sloan. “I heard the shooter running just before the patrol cars got there. It wasn't this guy. He has a prosthetic leg. He also just told me that the guy who told him about Mary meeting her supposed daughter in the alley wore a plaid jacket. I didn't tell him yet about finding the guy dead.” He paused, then added, “He told me he knew nothing about the gunman looking for me in that alley.”

“Do you believe him?” asked Bud Ornelas, a stocky but muscled Latino who looked uncomfortable in his suit.

“Yeah, I do.” Jeremiah looked from Bud to Audra. “He also told me the guy in the plaid jacket thought he saw Mary delivering drugs to customers.” The detectives nodded and made a move toward Sloan, but Jeremiah stopped them. “Look, Sloan's on his way to cleaning up his act. Seems serious about it. I'd hate to see him pressured back into the bottle. You know what I'm saying?”

The detectives nodded. “We're just questioning him, Jeremiah,” Audra told him. “If we need to take him in, we'll call you. As a courtesy. That enough?”

“Yeah, it'll do.”