Red Light Read online

  For P. B.?

  Says who?

  Merci went back in, waving the air in front of her face. She noted dusty-sweet smell of paperbacks and old boxes. There was mouse crap on the floor, and a mousetrap with part of a small gray skeleton in it.. No cheese. She tapped the sofa with her hand and watched the dust puff She took a newspaper off the top of the stack and checked the date: February 11, 1970.

  The file cabinets were empty. So were the credenza and dressers. When she opened the refrigerator the top half of the thick old gasket peeled away and hung in front of her. The freezer was an EAZY DEfrost, and Merci was surprised that even thirty years ago manufacturers misspelled names to get the attention of buyers.

  The bike was a Schwinn. The mattress was from Sears. The quad system—her girlfriend Melanie had owned one—was by Pioneer.

  The first box she looked in was filled with dishes. She lugged it off the stack and set it aside. The next had a few paperbacks, some loose pens and pencils, an old desk lamp with the cord wrapped around the base. There was an orange peace sign glued to the shade. The third box contained winter gear—gloves and mittens, fur-lined ladies' snow boots, a couple of plastic raincoats that remained tightly folded when she picked them up. Mice had made a nest in one of the boots. Shreds of newspaper and bits of cardboard fell to the ground when she turned it over and shook it.

  The box at the bottom of the first stack was filled with hardcover books: I Was Castro's Prisoner; Five Days to Oblivion; East Minus West Equals Zero; Witness; The Blue Book. She opened the last one, a spiral-bound volume, and scanned the title page. It was the John Birch Society handbook, written by Robert Welch. Merci thought she remembered some of the titles from the bookshelf in her girlhood home. Clark and Marcella had had hundreds of books, but these seemed familiar. The mice had gnawed the cover of Tail of the Paper Tiger.

  Another box: pots and pans. Another: typing paper and old Smith-Corona ribbons, carbon paper, envelopes yellowed with age, a heavy crank pencil sharpener, some rulers and a circular slide rule, and a stack of leaflets held together with a thick rubber band that crumbled away when she picked them up. The pamphlets had red and white covers: Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles. She looked through one. The author seemed to be saying that the primitive jungle rhythms used in some Beatles songs could induce a hypnotic state in listeners, and that communist messages could be easily absorbed when someone was in such a state. There were other stacks: Fluoride and Moscow; Disarmament and Surrender; The Obligations of the Informed American.

  The box on the bottom was the only one sealed with tape. Merci noted that it was relatively new tape—it didn't crack or peel when she tried to get it off. She used her penknife, then folded open the flaps. On top was a thick stack of yellowed newspapers from late 1969. The black-and-white photography and the print and layout style made them look even older than they were.

  Under the papers was a manila folder, and in the folder was an inexpensive date book for 1969 and an audiocassette. The cassette wasn't labeled. It was inside a locking plastic bag that Merci was almost certain was not made in 1969. The date book was jammed with names and numbers, shorthand, nicknames, code names, more numbers.

  It reminded her of Aubrey Whittaker's. Merci looked through first few pages, hoping to find the owner's name and address. None.

  Under the folder was a black plastic garbage bag containing something light. Merci lifted it out and set it on the floor. She untied the loose knot—no cracking of the plastic—and looked in. A garment. Using both hands she carefully removed it and set it atop the bag. It was a blue satin dress, small, blasted with blood. There were two rips in the middle front, two more in the middle back. Still in the garbage bag were two shoes, which Merci pulled out one at a time: blue velveteen heels, high ; petite. More blood, ancient and almost black.

  Patti Bailey, she thought. Black book, cassette tape, and the clothes she wore in her life.

  The box held one more black plastic bag. Inside was a smaller one, one of the locking freezer bags of the type that Merci herself occasionally used to freeze extra food. Sealed up in the freezer bag she found a Reuger .38 Special with a two-inch barrel and two loose casings. Theblue steel was lightly rusted.

  The evidence, she thought, the evidence that Thornton never found. More specifically, perhaps, the evidence that Thornton should have found.

  The rest of the box contained another thick stack of old newspapers. Taped to these was a sheet of white paper. Big, marking-pen letter like the childish writing on the letter that had led her to this storage container, read:

  MERCI—THOUGHT YOU MIGHT WANT TO GET UP TO SPEED ON YOUR UNSOLVED.

  She stepped back out to the dazzling sunlight. The breeze coming off the desert was cold. She got her crime-scene kit from the trunk, filled out a Field Evidence Sheet, photographed what she had found, sketched the scene in her own rudimentary manner, then packaged it back up loaded it into the Impala. She figured the note and the key would have be good enough to establish a permitted search. If a judge ruled against her, she'd lose the evidence as admissible. But if she didn't take it now, she was running the risk of losing it altogether. It had been hidden for thirty-two years and it could get hidden for thirty-two more. She tagged it all with the Patti Bailey case number from 1969: H38-069.

  • •

  The manager of Inland Storage was Carl Zulch. His hair was white and cropped short, his skin was pale. His eyes were dark brown, rimmed with a thin circle of blue. She guessed him to be in his mid-seventies.

  She badged him and Zulch insisted on writing down her ID number. She told him she needed to know who paid the rent on 355 and Zulch told her that was impossible—he'd need a court order.

  "I've got better," she said. "Permission to search."

  "Prove it."

  She gave him a very hard stare, which Zulch returned. She went to the car, got the letter, put the key back in the envelope and set it on the counter.

  Zulch read it. "Who's P. B.?"

  "A woman who was murdered in 1969."

  "Here?"

  "No. Orange County. Who pays the rent here, Mr. Zulch?"

  "Still impossible to say for sure," he said. "Because this is all I get for that unit. I get it every month. Every month for the last five years."

  He shuffled through a drawer, came out with a stack of envelopes and pulled away the rubber band. It took him a while to find what he was looking for. He handed it across the counter to her.

  The envelope was addressed in typewritten print, no return address, a no-lick stamp. Inside Merci found a twenty, a ten and two ones.

  "Thirty-two a month," said Zulch. "Never late. Never a check. Never a note. It isn't the only space rented out like that. People have secrets. I keep them."

  "Who do you call if it burns down? Who do you write to when the rent goes up?"

  "We don't raise the rents once you're in."

  "Don't tell me it's fire and earthquake proof, too."

  Zulch had already raised a pale finger in anticipation. He used to ply an old Rolodex, then he pinched out a card and set in on the counter.

  The card was dated at the top. It said Bob Cartwright, followed an address, phone number and signature.

  "He opened the account five years ago, like it says."

  "Is it used often?"

  "No. I make the rounds in my golf cart sometimes, see if everything's all right. Never seen the renter."

  "I'm taking the envelope and the money. I'll get you thirty-two bucks to cover it."

  • • •

  Merci hadn't even coded her way out of the complex when she place call to the renter of 355 on her cell phone. A woman answered. She’d never heard of Bob Cartwright. She'd gotten this telephone number from Pac Bell when she bought the house eight years ago. She told Merci she never made purchases over the phone and to take her off list if this was a telemarketing outfit.

  Merci said she would.

  Next she called headquarters and had one of the desk sergea
nts check the cross-referenced directory. The address used by Bob Cartwright didn't exist.

  She had just hit the "end" button when the phone rang. The reception was bad but she recognized James Gilliam's even, unhurried voice.

  "The casing from Whittaker's and the casing you gave me were fired by the same gun."

  "How sure are you?"

  "As sure as I can get. The extraction marks were identical, the firing marks identical. Perfect match, every land and groove lined up. Textbook."

  "Could you say that in court?"

  "Depends how you got the second case."

  "You know that's not what I mean."

  "I can't get a better match than those two cases. Same gun. No doubt whatsoever. No real room for dispute, no matter what firearms expert they brought in. It's a lock. I'm going to ask you one question now. Did that casing come from where I think it did?"

  "Yeah."

  "This could get bad."

  "It's already bad. I'm not sure what to do."

  "You have to talk to Brighton."

  "Shit. Then what? What am I going to do?"

  "Whatever he tells you to."

  Merci listened to the static. She couldn't think it through right now. Her heart was pounding too hard and her brain felt foggy.

  "Remember, Merci, the casings don't prove he killed her. We can only assume the found shell held the bullet that killed her. But we can't prove it without the bullet and the bullet's in the ocean. If there was corroborating evidence, then the casing is more damaging. Very damaging. Say, if those prints in the kitchen were made by shoes like his. Or say, some of the fibers matched up to clothes that were his. Things like that are what add up to a conviction. You know that. It's all complicated by the fact that he was there for dinner."

  Merci couldn't talk. It was the first time in her life she found herself unable to speak. Finally, the words rushed out.

  "What if he didn't do it? What if there's an explanation I'm not seeing?"

  "Then there's still the question of how brass fired by his gun got into Aubrey Whittaker's apartment. He didn't leave it in the vase as a hostess gift."

  "That isn't funny."

  "I'm not trying to be."

  "He's one of us, James. One of us."

  There was a silence before Gilliam spoke again. "Whoever killed Aubrey Whittaker is definitely not one of us. Maybe he used to be. Whoever killed her should be arrested and charged."

  Merci knew this but she hadn't really imagined it happening until now. Sergeant Michael McNally, arrested for the murder of Aubrey Whittaker. It sounded like a headline from some bogus souvenir newspaper.

  "James, I'm bringing in evidence in the Patti Bailey murder."

  "That would be thirty-two years old."

  "I've got a gun and a letter envelope I want to Super Glue the living daylights out of. There's a dress, too. Four bullet holes in it and blood over."

  "The DNA possibilities should be interesting. We'll do what we can.”

  "I feel like things are getting worse by the second."

  "I can offer proof of that. Zamorra busted in here yesterday with some fingerprint cards he'd taken himself. Wouldn't let anybody them. Ran them against the prints your people collected in the apartment. Today, he tried to pull the same stunt so I kicked him out. I’ve documented it. I may have a talk with Brighton myself. If nothing else he's broken the protocol for chain of evidence. This isn't a serve-your self forensics lab, for Zamorra or you-know-who or anybody else."

  Merci caught the subtle emphasis on "your people," and the not-subtle suggestion that she should keep her partner from running amok in Gilliam's temple of science.

  "He thought they botched the kitchen."

  "Then they should have been asked to go back and unbotch it."

  What was she supposed to do now, offer apologies for her partner?”

  "James, the walls are closing in."

  "They are. And it's going to affect the whole department. For a long time. Be careful what you do, Merci. I ran the comparison myself, so nobody here knows anything about it. Nothing."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  She met Colin Byrne in the UCI Library. He was wearing a shiny suit with a thin necktie, a fedora of gray felt. He looked even more slender and more preposterous than before. "It's my Marlowe garb," he said.

  "No bullet holes in the tie."

  "That was a little much."

  He'd put together a thick notebook for her, everything and anything relating to bad cops in Orange County, 1965-1975. The clips were arranged chronologically, but he had cross-referenced them and had created a handy index of names and events in the back.

  "A lot of that came from the smaller papers, some from law-enforcement publications. There was quite a bit of overlap between the cops and the Birch Society," he said. "So I went into archives, got the American Opinion newsletters and assembled this for you."

  He handed her a binder, thick with the monthly Birch Society newsletters. Behind those were a fat collection of JBS Chapter 231 newsletters, which appeared to be hand-typed.

  "There was lots on Jesse Acuna, and the De Anza Hotel, but I knew you had some of that stuff. I went light on it. There are some interesting names in there."

  Merci collected the binders. "I really appreciate this, Mr. Byrne."

  "You're very welcome."

  She watched O'Brien set up the fuming chamber—a ten-gallon aquarium. It was brand-new. He wiped it out thoroughly with glass cleaner and paper towels, then set two shallow dessert dishes of water in two corners. He suspended the rusty .38 Special and the brass casings from wires connected to a plastic lid. He propped the storage payment envelope upright on the bottom, with two sides leaning against the glass, reached in and squeezed the glue drops onto the bottom, distributing them evenly around the container for even evaporation. He counted each one out loud.

  "Thirty-five drops," he said. "You can go forty, but I don't want to overdevelop anything. I can add later if I have to."

  He sealed the top with tinfoil, pressing it along the sides of the tank. Then he put on another layer and secured it with masking tape.

  "We'll cook it and watch it. The cyanoacrylate esters will polymerize when they hit the moisture and amino acids in the print residue. With older prints, the residue is going to be dry, so I don't want to accelerate it with heat. I put in two humidity sources instead of the usual one. My guess is eight hours. We might get something in less. We probably won’t get anything at all—the body salts in fingerprints have rusted out the finish by now, ruined the prints. I've never fumed a piece of evidence that’s this old."

  O'Brien pointed at the case number on Merci's evidence sheet. "Never thought I'd work a case with sixty-nine on it. I was born seventy."

  "Sixty-five for me," she mumbled. The cyanoacrylate fumes had already made the tank glass pale.

  "What's with the brass Gilliam was working on this morning? From across the room, it looked like a forty-five."

  She stared hard at O'Brien, then ran her finger across her throat.

  He retracted his head into his shoulders a little, a turtle with no shell. "I shall remain in ignorance. And happily so, for you, my lady, queen, my luck."

  "Perfect. I'll be back."

  Three o'clock sharp. Merci circled headquarters in her white Chevy, saw nobody at the corner of Flower and Civic Center, so she made the loop again. She could see the odd white of the sky far off in the north— a new storm, loaded with rain, supposed to hit by morning.

  The second time around she saw him and pulled over. Wrapped in an overcoat against the chilly afternoon, Chuck Brighton bent his tall frame into her passenger's seat and shut his door. It took him a long time to get in.

  "The last time I did this, some guy from the tax collector's office wanted to tell me the county had just gone bankrupt."

  "What did you say to that?"

  "I asked him why in hell he didn't tell me before it happened. Said he saw it coming but couldn't be sure. Not a believer
in the proactive stance."

  "My news isn't much better."

  "I suspected that. Get away from here," he said. "I know half the people on these sidewalks. The other half I've thrown in jail."

  She got out to Fourth Street, made a left. She passed the carniceria, the zapateria, the pawn shops and the bail bondsmen, the shop with wedding dresses racked out front, the Mexican music store. There were Christmas lights and tinsel in the windows, nativities and Santas with sleighs, Feliz Navidad and Merry Christmas painted on the glass in bright colors. She watched the street numbers.

  Two blocks down the buildings were bigger, set back from the street, fronted by lawns or small parking lots.

  "That's the old De Anza," she said. It was a big red-brick building with neat white awnings and trim. A wooden sign out front announced:

  GRECO, GRAFF AND REYES—ATTORNEYS AT LAW.

  "First whores, then lawyers. You wonder what's next."

  "You ever go there, back in the bad old days?"

  Brighton smiled and shook his head. "All I did was work. My idea of fun was to drive the family up to Bridgeport, camp out and do some fishing. They made me sheriff at forty-two. That's too young. I didn't know how to do it, so I did twice as much as I had to."

  "The Bailey case led me there. Her sister said Patti knew who beat up the farmer. The farmer said it was cops. The papers said cops were hanging out with girls at the De Anza. I figured if I could put Bailey there I might get a lead."

  "Have you?"

  "Not from the De Anza. But a concerned citizen sent me the key to a storage area in Riverside."

  She explained what she'd found, and how she'd found it.

  "I think it's the gun used to kill Bailey. It's being fumed right now in the lab."

  Brighton grunted. "Gilliam told me. I can't figure who'd lead you out there. Send you the key. Somebody involved in her killing? Somebody covering somebody? What's in it for anybody, thirty-two years after the fact?"

  "What's in it for me is a dead woman and the truth."

  "Apparently you're not alone. Gilliam says the chances of lifting prints that old are small."