“I think it does.” He pressed the bullhorn icon and unmuted the sound on his machine. All the computers in the squad room worked with muted sound. To hear conversation between the detectives was a must. Sometimes someone would overhear two people talking and add something very relevant. There was a reason why the detectives sat at open tables and weren’t housed in cubicles.
Decker played the intro to the episode. Like all good trailers, it revealed nothing about the actual case other than that the crime originated out of Wisconsin. Decker scrolled down the Web page to an icon that said Buy This Episode. The price was definitely within the departmental budget, so he clicked the icon. The response told him that this particular tape was no longer for sale.
“Well, that’s terrific.” But then Decker thought a moment. “The case involved forensic reconstruction and was made into a TV show. I’m thinking that it must have been some kind of long-term, high-profile murder. If you describe what you saw to Wanda Bontemps, maybe you two can go online together and cull through some of Wisconsin’s notorious murder cases. See if anything looks familiar.”
“Good idea, although it might take up time for your detective.” Hollander curled the ends of his walrus mustache. “I was just thinking to myself that somewhere this tape exists. Maybe it’s in A and E archives, or if it isn’t, maybe I can contact the producer. Let me do some research before we bother a detective.”
“If that’s what you want to do with your free time, I won’t complain.” Decker raised up a finger. “Let me see if I can get you on as a consultant. That way you’ll get a little money for your services.”
“If you do that, Pete, then I won’t complain.”
Decker qualified: “As long as your consulting doesn’t interfere with my daughter’s remodeling plans.”
Hollander punched him in the shoulder. “What kind of lieutenant detective are you?”
“Blood is thicker than a paycheck.”
MARGE LEANED AGAINST the wall, arms folded across her chest, waiting as Decker looked over the phone records. She said, “I’m trying to figure out the best way to approach Ivan Dresden to make him feel like he’s on our side.”
“With her last call coming out of San Jose, he may actually be on our side.” Decker flipped through phone records. “What was Roseanne doing there?”
“Maybe working, but maybe she was visiting her old boyfriend.”
“So-called old boyfriend: nothing’s been verified. Is this Raymond Holmes’s phone number?” Decker recited the numbers out loud.
“Yep.”
“Roseanne hadn’t called it for the last six months. That jibes with Arielle Toombs’s account…that she had severed the relationship a while ago. But he did call her about three months before the crash.”
“Hmmm…what did we find out about Holmes?”
“He lives in San Jose at 5371 Granada Avenue. No wants, no warrants, no priors.”
Oliver walked into Decker’s office, rubbing his eyes and rolling his shoulders. His emerald tie was slightly askew and the collar of his jacquard white shirt was wilted. Marge checked her watch. It was almost four in the afternoon. “Hot time last night at Leather and Lace, Scotty?”
“Wish it were so.” Oliver yawned. “I just got out of court. Peabody homicide.”
“Kerry Trima,” Decker said. “The one with the inconclusive DNA. How’d it go?”
“The PD was wet behind the ears. He spent all his time attacking the DNA expert and gave our circumstantial evidence a free ride. He could have easily put a giant hole in my testimony, but luckily he didn’t ask the right questions. I think the jury will be swayed despite the lack of a smoking gun. What are we dealing with now?”
“Roseanne Dresden’s phone records,” Marge said. “Did you get my message?”
“About the midnight San Jose call?” Oliver shrugged. “What was Roseanne doing in San Jose eight hours before she allegedly perished on a flight from Burbank to San Jose?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Marge said. “I think it’s time to talk to Ivan the Terrible. Maybe he knows what she was doing there. And since Mr. Dresden fancies himself a ladies’ man, I figured we should interview him together and you should do most of the talking. You two can talk about Fifi at Leather and Lace.”
“Her name is Jell-O, not Fifi.”
“Jell-O?” Decker laughed out loud. “Is that for real?”
“Her given name is Marina Alfonse,” Oliver said. “By the way, I’ve altered my opinion of the young lady and that may have some bearing on the case. When Rottiger first talked about Marina’s reaction to Ivan, he implied that Marina thought that Ivan was a jerk. Fast-forward to last night. Now I find out they’ve been humping in secret because it’s against the rules to fuck your clients. Meanwhile, Dresden’s jacked up fifteen gees’ worth of lap-dance bills.”
Both Decker and Marge gasped.
Oliver said, “Yeah, I had the same reaction. The owner, a no-nonsense guy named Dante Michelli, got antsy and told Marina to collect a partial payment. To everyone’s surprise, Dresden paid the bill off in its entirety. Marina thinks he might have mortgaged the condo to get the cash, a condo he now owns because Roseanne is presumed dead from the crash. That spells m-o-t-i-v-e to me.”
“How’d he get a second mortgage on the condo so fast?” Marge wondered. “Insurance and the coroner haven’t declared her officially dead yet.”
“First of all, it’s been over two months since the crash, so the loan wasn’t necessarily a fast one. Second, maybe he has an in with the loan officer at the bank. Eventually, even if we don’t find the body, Roseanne’s insurance policies are going to have to pay out.”
“Not if we declare her disappearance a homicide,” Marge said.
“And what evidence do we have for that?”
“Well, we certainly don’t have any evidence that she was on the plane,” Decker said. “Especially with her last phone call coming in from San Jose.”
Marge said, “There is a possibility that she flew in on the five A.M. flight from San Jose going to Burbank and then flew back out on the doomed eight-fifteen flight.”
“I thought WestAir didn’t have a work assignment for her on that flight.”
“As far as we know, they still don’t,” Marge said. “So how do we approach Ivan?”
“Ask Ivan why Roseanne was in San Jose. Then see if he knows anything about Raymond Holmes.”
“So you want us to bring up her ex-lover?” Oliver asked.
Marge said, “The last call on Roseanne’s phone was to her house from a tower in San Jose.”
“Okay…so you’re thinking she went up to see him.”
“It’s possible, although there doesn’t seem to have been contact between them for a good three months before the crash.”
Oliver nodded. “So with Ivan Dresden, we’re, what…using the approach that we think Mr. Holmes was the last one to see her alive so help us make him the bad guy?”
“It may be true,” Decker said.
“But we’re still considering Ivan the Terrible a suspect even though we’re not approaching him that way.”
“Yes.”
“And we’re figuring that if the heat’s on Raymond Holmes, Dresden may feel relaxed enough to open up.”
“Especially if we appeal to his ego,” Marge said.
“We need your help, Mr. Dresden,” Oliver acted out. “The police are counting on you.”
“Yeah, we can lay it on as thick as peanut butter,” Marge said. “You never can go wrong appealing to a man’s ego. Guys are basically fragile creatures. I mean, we women really don’t even need to put out. A few well-placed compliments are all it takes for a movie and dinner.”
17
I T WAS A condo in a neighborhood of block-long condo compounds, all of them refurbished, seventy swinging-singles apartment houses, each building bleeding into the next. The exteriors were fashioned from wood and stucco with balconies for every unit. The sycamores and elms that had been planted three decades ago as little sprouts were now mature trees providing shade and greenery-a good thing because summer temperatures in West Valley often reached one hundred degrees and beyond. Weaving in and out of courtyards abloom with impatiens and azaleas, Dunn and Oliver passed two swimming pools, four Jacuzzis, a glassed-in gym, a recreation room, two resident coffeehouses, and dozens of parking lots, giving the complex the feel of a planned community with suburbia mall overtones.