“Bitch!”
“I’m sure she was… carrying on with a married man with two children.”
“You don’t know the half of it!”
Her nostrils flared with anger. It was easy to see how this big-boned woman could choke the life out of Solana, drag her into a car, and stuff her into a closet.
“I’d like to hear it all, Laurie. So let’s go down to the station house. We’ll sit and have a cup of coffee together, and you can tell me all about it.”
“Do you have French-press coffee?”
“Uh, no, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“How’d you know it was she and not he who did the choking?” Oliver asked Decker. “Matt was acting pretty guilty, if you ask me.”
“Guilty because of what had happened, not because of what he’d done. Initially, it was nothing more than a gut feeling. When the preliminary DNA of Solana’s nail scrapings came up female, I had no doubt in my mind what had happened.” Decker took a sip of his coffee. “She killed his mistress, then set him up to take the blame.”
“How did she get inside the open house unless he left a door open for her?” Marge said.
“They originally had gone to the open house together, just as it was closing, and they had a long list of questions to ask the agent. Then Laurie suddenly claimed that she had a headache and had her husband handle it. But not before she’d unlocked a window so she could come back in. In the meantime, Matt had bombarded the agent with enough questions that Adele would be sure to remember him.”
“And Laurie knew that her husband’s fingerprints would be all over Solana’s apartment,” Oliver said.
“Right.”
“Do you think Matt knew that his wife had done it before she confessed?” Marge asked.
“Definitely,” Decker said. “All his talk about taking the Fifth-not to protect himself but to protect his wife.”
“She kills his girlfriend and tries to set up her husband. But he still takes the Fifth,” Oliver said. “What an idiot.”
“He felt guilty, Scott,” Marge said.
“I repeat: What an idiot.”
“Solana’s parents are coming in tomorrow from Texas by bus,” Decker said. “They want to take their daughter back to Mexico and bury her there, but they don’t have a lot of money.”
“We’re taking up a collection,” Marge said.
Oliver grimaced, then took out his wallet and opened it. “I’ve got a five.”
“You’ve also got a twenty.” Marge plucked it out of his wallet. “We’re trying to raise two hundred to give her a good church burial in a decent coffin. Pete and I offered to drive them to their town in Mexico.”
Decker said, “I figured I could use a little practice with my Spanish.”
“That’s how you two want to spend your days off?” Oliver was incredulous.
Marge said, “We’ve been thinking that maybe afterward we’d go to Acapulco.”
Oliver’s ears perked up. “Now you’re talking my language. Do you know Spanish, Margie?”
“Not really. What about you?”
“Sí, no, and Usted cuesta mucho dinero.”
Decker smiled. “Coming with us, Scottie?”
“Us?” Again Oliver was surprised. “You’re going to Acapulco with us and without your wife?”
“Rina’s going to meet me there. We’ve decided to turn it into a mini-vacation. You two will be on your own.”
Marge winked at Oliver. “You come and help split the driving, I’ll be your wingman when we hit the bars.”
“You’ve got a deal.”
“But don’t go too far, Pete,” Marge said. “We’ll need someone Spanish-speaking to plead his case after he’s been arrested for a drunk-and-disorderly.”
“You wound me,” Oliver said.
“Not as much as you wound yourself,” Marge said.
“And not as much as Solana Perez was wounded.” Decker shook his head in disgust. “The capacity of human beings to inflict pain on one another is just astonishing.”
“At least we got her a modicum of justice,” Marge said. “Until the next one.” She gave her words some thought. “And there always is a next one.”
“Speaking of which…” Decker handed them a detail sheet. “Lee and Bontemps just caught this case. They could use some help.”
Marge and Oliver let out a collective moan.
“Aw, quit your bitchin’,” Decker said. “Crime may make us cynical and ugly, but it’s how we earn our paychecks. It’s a nasty job, but someone has to do it.”
B ull’s-Eye
“Bull’s-eye” features Peter Decker and his daughter Cindy dissecting a perplexing shooting of an unpopular drill instructor at the Los Angeles Police Academy. It required a visit to the academy, a fascinating place within spitting distance of Dodger Stadium. I was surprised to learn that many of the academy facilities were funded by Jack Webb of Dragnet fame. This story is the first time that Cindy Decker appears in a professional capacity. Father and daughter have a few issues to work out as they edge toward solving this baffling case.
Crazy broad! Holstetter kept his feelings in check, his face impassive, as Sergeant Rigor talked and talked… trying to break him, break them all. He knew all the others felt that way, too, even the girls-uh, women. Martinez was always calling Rigor a fascist, MacKenny rolling her eyes whenever she lectured. Even Decker despised Rigor, said she suffered from a bad case of queen-bee syndrome, whatever that was.
Rigor wasn’t a particularly big woman-around five-six or -seven, medium build, brown hair clipped close to her scalp, one step below a crew cut. Psycho eyes that took you in and spat you out.
Holstetter realized he was beginning to slump. He straightened, hoping Rigor hadn’t noticed.
“Gettin’ tired, Holstetter?”
“No, ma’am, no!”
Rigor’s eyes drilled into his. “Sure? I wouldn’t want to tire you out.”
“No, ma’am, no!”
“Maybe you and your troop should take a run up the hill- say, five, ten miles. Sound good?”
Holstetter could feel the anger rising around him, his fellow cadets silently cursing him. His momentary lapse in posture had cost all of them. Still he remained expressionless. “Yes, ma’am, yes!”
“Great!” Rigor said with mock enthusiasm. “Tell you what, Holstetter, I’ll even run with you.” She lifted a finger. “But first things first.”
She addressed her charges. “You people think you’re making progress? You got miles to go-I mean light-years-before you’re even fit to call yourselves trainees.”
She glared at them. “I can’t stress brainpower enough. You’re going to need every cell in your less than adequate craniums when you’re out on the streets. Those bad guys out there… tell me about the bad guys, Baldwin.”
A burly African American answered in a deep voice: “There’s more of them than of us.”
“See, folks?” Rigor announced. “ Baldwin ’s actually learned something! There are way more of them than of us. And they got no morals. They got nothing holding them back, nothing to prevent them from turning you into a colander. Why did I bring up a colander, Martinez?”
“Because it’s full of holes,” a young Latina said.
“Excellent, Martinez. My job here is to prevent any of you from turning into a colander. Got it?”
The group answered in unison, “Yes, ma’am, yes!”
“That’s good. I’m glad you understand. Because this is what I wanna do. You get good shooting practice here, but I don’t think it’s enough. So you know what I’m gonna do for you? I’m gonna take you out on Saturday-voluntary, of course. We’re going to run a bit, train a bit, shoot a bit. Not here. At another range… to get you used to different situations and circumstances. So you don’t get to thinking that Mr. Scumbag is always directly in front of you, twenty feet away, just waiting to be shot at. You gotta train all over the place!”