This Doesn't Happen in the Movies (12 page)

I struck out the first time.  “Please be the right George,” I whispered as I dialed the next number.

“George Romero.”  A deep voice rumbled into the phone.

“George, my name is Philip Marlowe,” I said, using the name of the fictional detective in
The Big Sleep
.  “I’m with the Boulder Police Department.”  After Jon Benet, I didn’t need to identify the state.  Everyone at all related to criminal investigation knew of Boulder, Colorado.

“Yes?”

“You were the detective investigating the death of Elaine Richards, correct?”

“Yes sir, that's true.”  I did a silent high five into the air.

“I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm wondering if I can ask you a few questions?”

“What can I do for you?”  Polite, but cautious.

“I’m investigating a rape case that took place near the college here, and some of my research into similar cases around college campuses led me to one you investigated a few years ago, a woman by the name of Elaine Richards.”

“Yes sir, I remember that case.  The unsolved ones can stick with you.”  His voice boomed so that I held the receiver an inch from my ear.  “She was a popular young lady, had quite a future in front of her.  One of those cases you hate to see.”

“Why did the case remain unsolved?” I asked.

“We didn’t have anything to go on.”  He stretched out his words as he spoke.  “I looked first at Derek Jones – you familiar with him?”  I said I was and he continued.  “Of course, you always look at the husband or boyfriend, right?  But he had an airtight alibi, so I had to look elsewhere.  And we didn’t have that much to work with.  We think the killer, or killers, dropped her body there after she’d been raped and killed.”

“What about forensic evidence?”

“Very little of that.  The perp, or perps, used condoms because the autopsy didn’t find any sperm, even though she was violated.  Hair and fiber results came up with very little as well.  No DNA evidence.  Whoever murdered that poor girl must have read a lot of detective fiction.  They were careful.  Really careful,” he mused.

“So after Derek Jones, did you have any other suspects?”

“We checked into a few boys she dated that fall, but never did get enough on anybody to take it to the D.A.  You know how that goes.”

I concurred.  “You mentioned that Derek had an airtight alibi.”

“Yes sir, his roommate and his best friend both swear he was with them after he took Elaine home.  All three said they dropped Elaine off at her dorm.  They watched her disappear through the front door and they left.  We checked around the dorm and found a few students who remember the car, a black Firebird, driving through the parking lot at the time those boys said they were there.  No one specifically remembers Elaine getting out of the car, but it was dark, and the witnesses saw the car, not the people in it.  I tried to find loopholes in Derek’s alibi, but I couldn’t.”

“You think Derek did it,” I said.

Romero breathed heavily into the phone.  “That wasn’t a popular viewpoint around here, him being a football player, and a damn good one at that.”  I waited for him to continue, hoping he would share what he really thought.  He finally spoke.  “Yes sir, I think that boy was guilty.  He raped and murdered that girl.  I’d hang my badge on it.”

“Why so sure?”

“My gut told me those other boys were lying for him, giving Derek his alibi so he wouldn’t take the rap.  And when I looked into his background, he wasn’t the all-American boy that he appeared to be.  He had a history of violence, some bar brawls, and some allegations from a former girlfriend.”

“None of that was ever reported?” I asked, thinking about the articles I’d just read.  This did not fit the football star described by the papers.

“No sir.  Derek had that little girl scared silly.  She never pressed charges, never said anything to her parents, or any authorities.  I stumbled on it when I interviewed some of the girls in Elaine’s dorm; would’ve missed it otherwise.  That girl told me she’d deny it if I reported it or said anything public about it.  Now she may’ve been lying, but my gut says no way.”

I pondered that for a moment.  “So the case remains unsolved?”

“That’s right.  And it’ll probably remain that way.”

“Why?”

Romero grunted.  “You know what happened to Derek Jones?”

“No,” I said.

“Derek was driving down Highway 75 two nights after he played in the national championship game.  He had two interceptions in that game, played just great.  Maybe he was still celebrating.  Anyway, he ran his truck straight into a guardrail, and down an embankment.  He was thrown from the car, killed instantly.”

“It was an accident?” I couldn’t contain my surprise.  I naturally assumed the X Women wouldn’t worry about covering up a murder.

“Yes sir, an accident.  And I can’t say that I mourn his passing,” Romero said.

Silence filled the phone line between us.  “What’s this case that you’re working on?” Romero finally asked.

“Oh, I can’t divulge any information right now,” I said.  He murmured understanding.  “But I appreciate your help.”

“My pleasure,” he said.  “I hope that helps you in your investigation.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said truthfully.

“What was your name?”

“Philip Marlowe,” I said.

“Isn’t that the name of a detective from an old book or something?”

“Yes,” I said.  “My mother was a fan of the old classics.  Hey, thanks again,” I said and hung up the phone.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I must’ve sat at my desk for ten minutes mulling over my conversation with George Romero.  So the X Women made Derek’s death look like an accident.  This group looked more and more like one that operated with a cold efficiency, swooping down like Spiderman, I thought wryly, to mete out justice, then leaving without a trace of ever having been there.  I wondered how many other murders the X Women committed in the name of justice, murders that they made look like an accident.

I plodded to the kitchen for a fresh cup of coffee, then returned to the computer.  I ran some searches, trying to come up with a way of finding accidental deaths of people who had recently been accused of a crime, or had been convicted of a crime.  I didn’t have much luck, hitting way too many websites that had nothing remotely to do with my search.  I also had a difficult time getting a reasonable list.  Most searches resulted in thousands of hits.  I sat back, thinking of how I could glean this information from the World Wide Web.  There was only one thing to do.

“Hey, aren’t you going to get some sleep?” I asked when Cal picked up the phone.

“Tonight.  I’ve got some work to get done.”  He didn’t even sound tired. 

“Have you come up with anything more on the X Women?”

“I just got off the phone with you a couple of hours ago,” he said.  “I have a client who’s screaming to get his software back tomorrow.  I need to work on that for awhile, then I’ll look into it some more.”  Cal’s work as a consultant allowed him to work from home, but I didn’t understand much of what he did.  He once told me his work was similar to Sandra Bullock’s in
The Net
and I took his word for it.

“You’re not going to believe what I found out since you called,” I said.

“That you drool in your sleep?” Cal asked.  The sound of him tapping on his keyboard clacked through the phone while we talked.  “Want me to find out more about the X Women?  Are they really women?  Or does the X stand for women who’ve had sex change operations, hence they are ex-women?  See it on the next Jerry Springer.”

“Ha, ha,” I said.  “I tracked down another victim of the X Women.”

“You’re counting Peter Ghering as a victim?”

“Yeah, besides him.”  The clicking stopped, which meant I had his full attention.  “I’ve been on the Internet, and I finally tracked down Maggie’s friend, the girl she says was killed by a football star.”

 “I really thought you’d go back to bed.”

“I couldn’t sleep after everything you told me.”  I relayed to him my last couple of hours of work, ending with George Romero’s tale.  “I need to find out if there’s been other accidental deaths of people who’ve been accused or convicted of a violent crime, or who have served time for something like that, then got out and died in mysterious circumstances.”

“That’s your working theory?”

“So far.  I know it’s thin, but…”

“Uh huh,” Cal said, before lapsing into silence.  I could almost hear the wheels grinding in his head as he thought.  “It wouldn’t just be violent crimes.  I’d bet the X Women have committed murder for other things as well.”

“That’s what I would assume,” I said.  “But I can’t find anything on just the violent crimes.  If I broaden my search that much, I’ll never find anything.  It’s just a starting place, to see if I can find a pattern.”

“I’ll take care of that for you,” Cal said.  “I’ll just add it to the X Women list.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked, then immediately said, “No, I don’t want to know.”

“It’s nothing bad,” Cal chuckled.  “I have more resources at my fingertips, and I know where to look.  You just play on the computer.”  Compared to Cal’s computer skills, I had to agree.  “Come up here later and we’ll see what we can find.”

“Sure, how about later this afternoon?”  He grunted a response, which I took to be a ‘yes’ and I hung up.  That done, I padded into the kitchen with my empty coffee cup, then showered and dressed.

*****

After I got cleaned up, I ate a bagel, and walked over to the office.  I didn't have much to do there, just check my messages and retrieve the mail.  I wondered, not for the first time, about spending so much for rent on an office I rarely saw, but I held hopes of a burgeoning business.  Besides, I needed an office to show my father that I was legitimate.  The voicemail system had a call from a prospective client, a man who wanted to set up an appointment with me after he returned from Barbados.  He’d call again in two weeks.  Another prospect.  All right then.

I turned on the stereo, booted up my computer, and made some notes about the case so far.  In the midst of finding out about the X Women, I had shoved Peter Ghering to the back of my mind.  Where was he?  And the bigger question, was he still alive?

I called Detective Jimmy Merrick.  The dispatcher put me through to him.  When I identified myself, his tone turned cautiously curious.  “You’re still helping that Ghering woman?”  He couldn’t have sounded more derisive of her.

“Let’s just say that I have my own interest in the case,” I said.

“Okay,” he agreed.  “We’ll say that.  What do you want from me?”

He certainly came right to the point.  No bullshit, just like the night I’d met him at Amanda’s.  “I know you don’t think much of Amanda.”  His silence spoke volumes about his opinion of her.  “But what do you think happened to Peter Ghering?  Do you have anything more?”

A chair squeaked in the background, and I could picture Merrick shifting his powerful frame.  “I can’t tell you anything.”  He spoke as if he didn’t believe his own weak bluff.

“Sure you can, if you want,” I said.  “I promise not to bug you if you tell me what you’ve got.”

“Hey, buddy, I’m the one who’ll be crawling up your ass if you step over the line."  He let out a sigh that sounded more like a wheeze, as he played the Reluctant Game.  “All right, I guess it can’t harm anything to tell you that we haven’t turned anything up yet.  We’ve been in contact with the feds in Philly, and they haven’t gotten any unidentified male bodies, or anything else that would lead us to believe Peter was murdered and left there.  He hasn’t turned up here, at least as far as I know.  Amanda might be able to tell you more.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s holding out on all of us.”  I’m sure my silence now told him that I agreed.  “On the record, I don’t have anything to go on, so there’s not much I can do.”

“Off the record?” I asked.

“My own opinion, he got the hell away from that crazy woman.  Officially, he’s a missing person.”

“Any leads?”

“None.  He hasn’t used a credit card since that Monday.”

“Monday?”

“Is there an echo?  That’s what I said.  Monday.  He pulled out a cash withdrawal of five hundred from an ATM in downtown Philly.  Near the Liberty Bell.  We don’t have anything else.”

“Which credit card?” I thought about Amanda’s calls to her credit card companies.  She hadn’t said anything about that transaction.  I wondered how many lies of hers I would uncover before I found Peter.

“Am-Ex.  It was his business account.  You want anything else, Sherlock?”

I ignored the gibe, thanked Merrick and hung up.  If Peter was slated to be killed on Monday, before he left Philadelphia, did this confirm he’d gotten away?  Unless someone else used his card instead.  I shuddered at the thought.  Today was Wednesday.  More than a week had passed since Peter disappeared.  Was he alive or dead?

I took care of some busy work, mostly stuff I concocted, ate a late lunch at Jason’s Deli, and drove up to Cal’s house about three o’clock.  As I made each winding curve, I couldn’t help but envision last night's journey, hurtling down the mountain.  What had been gaping blackness now showed up as the jagged sides of valleys sloping down from the highway.  Had I gone over the edge, it would not have been a pretty death.  But it would have been made to look like an accident, I thought.  The signature kill for the X Women.

“Don’t you ever work?” Cal said when he opened the door.  Before I could answer he was shuffling back down the hallway to his office.  Judging by his matted hair, wrinkled shirt, and cheap cologne, Cal hadn’t bothered to shower or change clothes.  Personal hygiene took a back seat when Cal pursued a new project.

I followed him into his sanctuary and plopped onto the  love seat.  “I am working.”  The usual dust cloud swirled into the air when my butt hit the cushions.  I settled back.  “I’m working with you.”

He wagged his head as he swiveled around to face one of the monitors.  “I’ve got something on that thing.”  He was being clandestine again.