Mythbound Trilogy Boxed Set Page 21
“I know who it is,” the detective said, “and I gotta say, I’ve seen and heard from you entirely too often this week. What gives?”
“Pardon?”
“Well, your place of business and house was burned down in one fell swoop, then the next day you turn up at a murder scene right down the street. What the hell’s going on?”
“No comment,” Steve said. He ran through a yellow light that had just turned red as he blew through the intersection, eliciting a loud honk from a car that almost T-boned him.
“That’s not good enough anymore, Mister Remington. If you want to stay off my suspect list, I’m gonna start needing some answers.”
“To what questions?”
“First off, are you trying to collect insurance on your burned-down studio? Is that your plan?”
Steve made an offended look with his face. Into the phone he said, “Absolutely not! And besides, my landowner would get that money, right?”
“True enough, but I thought you might be dumb enough not to know that,” Richmond said.
“Well . . . hey, hey,” Steve shook his head, “I’m the one who called you.”
“Yeah, why’d you do that?” Richmond asked, as if it was the stupidest thing Steve had ever done.
“I have a favor to ask you.”
“Oh boy. We’re not on good enough terms to be swapping favors, Mister Remington.”
“Okay, well how can we get on good enough terms?” Steve asked. “This is important.”
A pause. Detective Richmond was clearly thinking on the other end—he thought he’d nabbed Steve, that he had him right where he wanted him. On the ropes. “Well, first, what’s your question?”
“I’m trying to see the tapes from Buddy’s Diner, from the night my studio burned down.”
“You know about those?”
“Just learned from my lawyer.” He said lawyer with enthusiasm, like, “Don’t try me, bud, I’m legally protected.”
Richmond said, “And?”
“And the on-duty manager at Buddy’s says you guys got ‘em.”
“We do.”
“Can I see them?”
“How about this,” Richmond began, then cleared his throat. “I’ll get you those tapes—though I don’t know why you’d want to see them, I already looked through them and didn’t see a damn thing. But I’ll let you take a peek, in exchange for your testimony.”
“Testimony for what?” Steve asked.
“Testimony regarding Shannon Barton’s fatal car crash.”
“She didn’t do anything wrong—she was trying to avoid getting smashed by a car that ran a red light.” Just then, Steve ran another light just changing red. The irony was not lost on him.
“That’s what she told you, eh? And what the hell are you doing talking to Shannon Barton?” Richmond asked.
“She’s in a bad way, man. I wanted to tell her everything’s all right; that it wasn’t her fault; that there’s nothing she could have done.”
“Yeah, well I don’t buy that shit. It is her fault and there is something she could have done.”
“Like what?”
“Not killed a man.”
Steve sighed. He didn’t feel like he was getting very far with Detective Gary Richmond. If anything, he seemed to be irritating the detective a bit. But he continued.
“What will it take to see those tapes?”
“Come down to my office at your earliest convenience. Let’s talk about Shannon Barton and the murder at the tarot shop. Tell me some things I don’t already know.”
“And if I do, you’ll show me the tapes?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll only talk if you show me the tapes first,” Steve said.
“What, you don’t trust me?”
“No,” Steve said flatly. “It’s nothing personal, I just don’t trust any law enforcement.”
“Fair enough. Deal.”
“You’re at the Northern Division in La Jolla?”
“Yeah, near UTC Shopping Center—Eastgate Mall,” Richmond said.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Steve clicked off the phone and flipped a bitch, heading back into La Jolla.
STEVE TOOK TORREY PINES Road north, which at 3:00 p.m. was already a bit congested with traffic. Torrey Pines Road—if you were going east and south, bottlenecked pretty badly when you got into La Jolla. It was one of only two ways to get into La Jolla, so traffic was always pretty bad.
But going west, away from La Jolla, it was okay.
Once getting off Torrey Pines, he headed east on La Jolla Village Drive. He took the road past UCSD, up until he came to the Westfield UTC Shopping Mall, and instead of taking a right to the mall, he took a left. UTC was in the midst of huge reconstruction and renovation, as it had been for a year, as the place tried to compete with the advent and invasion of online businesses. It was another cause for traffic, but Steve avoided it by heading north away from the mall.
In all, it took a little longer than ten minutes to get to the Northern Division of the San Diego Police Department, but not much longer.
Steve shivered and felt goose bumps on his arms when he pulled into the precinct parking lot, which was, of course, filled with cop cars and paddy wagons. It was one of his biggest fears, being surrounded by this many cops in uniform, even though he rightly had nothing to fear.
If anything, he should have felt safe being around all those boys in blue.
But their presence had the opposite effect.
Steve was aware he looked out of place—like a peace-and-love-for-all hippie, with a musician’s vibe. And if he was lost, Annabel was in absolute limbo.
They held hands as they entered the main lobby of the building. There, Detective Richmond was already waiting for them, sitting on a lounge chair, one leg crossed over the other.
“Was starting to think you weren’t gonna show,” Richmond said as he slowly rose to his feet.
Steve furrowed his brow and glanced at his phone, before putting it back in his pocket. “We’re three minutes late, Detective. You must have a short attention span.”
“Your wife told me the same thing last night,” Richmond said, then nodded down a hall. “Come on, follow me.”
Oh, so we’ve got a jokester here, Steve thought, growing angry. Real funny. Fucker.
Luckily, the detective didn’t even bother to look at Annabel. He probably thought she was Steve’s young yuppie girlfriend, and not some 250-year-old mythological being, so it was all right with Steve she didn’t raise any flags with the detective.
They came to a small, dark room with a flat-screen TV and a couple chairs in it. A laptop was connected to the TV, and a young dorky guy with glasses was manning the computer.
“This is Arnie,” Detective Richmond said, motioning to the guy. “He’s our IT guy.”
“Pleasure,” Steve said.
Arnie didn’t bother replying. His face was stuck in the computer, his Cheeto-hands clicking away.
“The fire began just after dusk, at around 6:00 p.m., correct?” Richmond asked.
Steve nodded. “Sounds about right. But why don’t you play it for an hour before and an hour after.”
“All right,” Richmond said. “You heard the man, Arnie. Fast forward at four-times speed.”
Arnie nodded. He leaned closer to the computer, his nose almost touching the screen, fondled a few buttons, and there it was: Steve’s studio in pristine condition, illuminated by the purple and pink glow of the setting sun.
Steve was gonna miss those seaside sunsets.
Arnie clicked a button and the image got a bit grainy. Steve could tell it had been sped up because the cars driving by were going way too fast.
Buddy’s camera had been pointed down, overlooking the sidewalk and the street. But in the peripheries, to the left was Steve’s studio, and to the right was a Papa John’s. And since Steve and Papa didn’t have security cameras, Buddy’s did a fair enough job of getting them all covered.
A couple pedestrians went walking down the street a few times, passing the studio and Buddy’s Diner and Papa John’s, or vice versa. And every time one of them popped into the camera’s view, Steve had Arnie slow it down.
He didn’t recognize anyone.
Thirty minutes into the recording, at almost exactly 6:00 p.m. on the tape, probably just as Steve and Annabel had been kissing for the first time at the beach, someone stopped in front of the studio.
This guy wasn’t like the rest.
He lingered.
“Wait, hold up,” Steve said, leaning forward and pointing at the TV screen. “Rewind a bit . . . yeah, keep going . . . there!”
Arnie punched the PLAY button and the camera resumed.
“What is it?” Richmond asked, squinting at the camera.
Annabel was looking at Steve strangely, too.
No . . . Steve thought to himself as he stared at the back of the figure in the camera.
At first, he thought it was Dale. What a tragedy that would have been!
But then he recognized the man’s roundness was rounder, his tallness not as tall.
It was Pancho.
The Mythic was staring at the overhead sign that read “Remington Studios.” Then he walked in through the front door. The front door didn’t even open—he just glided through it like a ghost.
It gave Steve the heebie-jeebies.
“The hell’s wrong with you, man? Can we get this over with and keep fast-forwarding?” Richmond asked. “I’d like to finish this sometime tonight, so let’s not watch the damn thing in real time, yeah?”
Steve held up his finger to silence the detective. Probably a bad move, but it did the trick—he was too engrossed by the action on the screen to care about Richmond’s reaction.
The action on the screen no one besides himself seemed to see.
“Why?” Steve whispered to himself.
When Richmond and Annabel turned to him, he shook his head, stood up straight, and retreated to his thoughts.
On the screen, only thirty seconds after he’d gone in, Pancho came sauntering back out, appearing once again through the door, on the sidewalk.
Smoke started fogging the windows.
“What was that?” Detective Richmond asked, to Steve.
“Uh, never mind,” Steve said, rolling his wrist in the universal motion that meant “keep going.”
Arnie clicked a button and the fast-forwarding resumed, but Richmond kept staring at Steve, in an unnerving way. His eyes were a bit narrowed, and Steve got a whole new set of heebie-jeebies from the big detective.
Why, Pancho? Steve asked himself, trying to ignore the detective. What did I ever do to you? We never even exchanged words! It was only with Tumbleweed I talked . . . why would you do something like this?
Ten minutes later, the entire building was engulfed in a blaze of fury.
Then the camera showed Dale running up from the street. It was almost comical, the display of emotions that went through Dale as he wordlessly and silently reacted to the billowing fire. First, he put his head on his hands, then he ran around in a circle, as if calling out loud to no one in particular, then he put his hands on his knees and doubled over from being too tired.
Then he grabbed his phone.
An audience was building now, of curious onlookers—some of them pointing, wondering, “Is that a person in the window, burning to death? Or is that a cat? No, it’s nobody. It’s got to be nobody.” These are the things Steve assumed they were saying as he watched the display.
His heart sank.
“Seen enough?” Richmond asked. “I told you, man, there’s nothing here. It’s strange, I know.”
Steve nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Strange.”
Annabel could tell something was wrong with Steve, but she had the wherewithal to withhold her discovery from Detective Richmond and Smelly Arnie. She reached over and simply squeezed Steve’s arm gently, a sad look in her eyes.
The tape kept running and Steve studied the back of the heads of the people in the footage. He thought he might have recognized someone in that group . . .
Then Arnie pressed a button and the footage froze.
“Well, I gave you what you wanted—I’m sorry you couldn’t learn more,” Richmond said, and for once, he seemed genuine. “But now, it’s my turn.”
“Right . . .” Steve said, hanging his head and trailing off.
A knock came from the door.
Detective Richmond angrily spun around, snarling. “What is it? We’re busy in here!”
A female’s voice came from the other side. “The woman you asked to speak with is here, Detective.”
“Who?”
“The daughter of the woman from the tarot shop. Scarlet Amos. She’s here to speak with you—don’t you remember asking us to notify Mrs. Amos’ next of kin?”
Richmond sighed loudly. “Yes, I do.” He checked the thick watch on his thick wrist. “But she’s half an hour early! I told her not to come until 4:30!”
“Well, she’s here. Want me to have her wait in the lounge?” the woman asked.
“Yeah, tell her I’ll just be a few minutes.”
Scarlet! Steve’s mind yelled. What is she doing here? Why would she want to talk to the police? Does she actually think they can help in a supernatural murder? I’m no detective, but it sounds a bit out of Richmond’s wheelhouse. Steve shared a look with Annabel, which told him she thought the same things as him.
Detective Richmond faced the computer and said, “Arnie, beat it. I’m taking this room.”
The IT guy frowned, got up, and left the room. Steve held his nose as Arnie passed him. Am I the only one who can smell that guy? Jesus!
Richmond motioned to the chair and Steve sat in it.
He frowned, feeling like he was stewing in whatever terrible things Arnie had just left for him.
“Tell me about the day of the crash. What were you doing prior to the crash?” Richmond asked. A little notebook and pen had appeared from inside his jacket.
“I was recording music with Annabel here and my friend, Dale Thornton,” Steve said.
Richmond jotted that down then looked up over the notebook, at Steve. “What were you doing outside, then?”
“Smoking a cigarette.”
“And did you ever talk to the homeless guys there?”
Steve shrugged. “Sometimes. This time, yeah. I gave Tumbleweed a cig. He was . . . the one that went splat.” Steve clapped his hands together to accentuate his point.
Richmond’s eyes bulged at the sound of the loud clap, and its implication. He frowned.
“Sorry,” Steve said, facing the ground.
“And you, Miss, what were you doing?”
Annabel held her hands joined together at her stomach. “Uh, I was in the recording room with Dale still—”
“You were outside when the crash happened, on the way back inside,” Richmond said, nudging his chin toward the frozen TV screen to indicate he knew where Steve and Annabel were during the whole event. “What were you doing out there?”
“Oh, yes, I needed some fresh air,” Annabel said. Even though she wasn’t lying, her voice didn’t give Steve a vote of confidence. “And I wanted to talk to Steve about the music.”
Richmond turned back to Steve. “What did you do when you saw the car coming?”
“I didn’t,” Steve said, shaking his head. “I just heard it. And I froze. Dale had just come outside to get me and Annabel—we were going to keep recording. Then I heard the car careening.”
Richmond nodded, looked down at his notebook, jotted something. Glancing back up, he said, “And how do you know January Amos? Or, how did you?”
Steve sighed. “Through acquaintances,” he lied. Richmon
d was asking the questions at such a rapid pace—probably to confuse Steve and Annabel, to catch them fumbling—that Steve hoped he didn’t see through the lie.
“What does that mean?” Richmond scoffed, seeing through the lie.
On the spot, Steve came up with, “My friend Dale was a client of hers. He’s into that superstitious voodoo horseshit.” He remembered January saying Shannon was a client of hers . . . so he just switched names and genders and voilà: Dale was a client of hers.
But now Steve was getting into dangerous territory, and he knew it. That was the second lie he told, and now he’d have to build on it if Richmond dug any deeper on that subject. That’s why lying was so hard to do to the cops . . . it wasn’t the lies that were hard, it was having to keep remembering; that was the tough part. And building on those lies.
“You mean tarot readings?” Richmond asked.
Steve nodded. And now he was thinking about Shannon again, a terrible thought played in the back of his head: Shannon was a client of January’s. She was susceptible to mind alteration. What if she had something to do with January’s death, too?
Richmond jotted. “So why were you there during the murder—when it first happened? Were you headed to the tarot shop for some reason?”
Steve shook his head. “We just happened to be driving by from watching the sunset—Annabel and I. We saw all the cops parked in Wells Fargo, the traffic . . . thought we’d see what was going on.”
“You were curious? That’s your answer?”
Steve shrugged, then nodded. It wasn’t very convincing.
Lie number three.
How much longer could he go without admitting he knew January on a much deeper level, as well as Shannon?
Richmond sighed. He seemed to be losing steam. Or maybe he just wanted to get Steve and Annabel out of there, so he could focus on the heavy hitter in the other room: Scarlet Amos.
Speaking of Scarlet . . . Steve had a few things he’d like to ask her, too.
But he didn’t trust her. If Dale’s theory was right, and the succubus had been the cause of Shannon’s “brainwashing,” did that make her an enemy?
Or now, since Tumbleweed and Pancho were discovered to be the target of the crash—or murder—did that mean Steve had nothing to do with it? No link at all to the crash?