Bad Memory Page 12

  “Partly it was about the money. But mostly it was about me. I wanted to feel challenged again. I wanted to prove to myself I could still handle more than infidelity cases and employee background checks. I jumped right in, size sevens first, without giving the whole thing enough damn thought.”

  “What’s done is done,” Pryce said. He drummed his fingers on the file in front of him. It looked like a murder book but not an LAPD one. “I may have a way for us to resolve the situation quickly and easily. But, first, we should order. I need to go pick up Medina shortly.”

  Jessica had forgotten all about the menu in her hand, hadn’t so much as glanced at it.

  “I’ll have a black coffee,” she said.

  “Me too. I have no idea how to pronounce half of these drinks, never mind know if they taste any good.”

  She looked at the menu. The artisan selection included exotic concoctions such as Gihombo coffee, Sweet Tooth Shakisso espresso, and Ti-Kwan-Yin tea.

  “Interesting choice of venue,” she said, arching an eyebrow above the shades.

  Pryce grinned. “Dionne likes the place, and it’s close to home. I’ve got a field trip this morning, so no office for me today.” He stood up and removed his Armani sunglasses, carefully folded them, and dropped them into his breast pocket. “Two black coffees coming right up—hopefully.”

  Pryce headed inside to place the order, and Jessica’s eyes fell on the file again. She wondered if it was the reason Pryce had asked to meet, but she resisted the urge to open it and have a peek at the contents. Instead, she watched the steady stream of traffic rumbling past and the diners tucking into pancakes outside House of Pies across the street. She saw a battered old brown station wagon parked in the restaurant’s lot that looked a lot like Dylan’s car.

  “Here you go.” Pryce lowered a tray holding two large cups onto the table and slid back into his seat. “Some fancy Ethiopian name, but I think they’re both basically plain black coffees.”

  Jessica took a sip and nodded approvingly. “This is pretty good. Maybe Dionne is onto something with this place after all.”

  She glanced across the street again as Pryce dumped the empty tray under the table. The brown station wagon was gone. She figured there must be hundreds of old cars similar to Dylan’s on the streets of LA. In any case, he hadn’t mentioned a visit to the city when they were together last night.

  Pryce tried some of the coffee. “It is good,” he agreed. Then he nudged the file toward her. “This is what I wanted you to see. Megan Meeks and Lucas James’s murder book.”

  Jessica pushed her shades on top of her head and stared at Pryce.

  “I don’t understand. Why are you showing me their file? Why do you even have a Hundred Acres murder book?”

  “Don’t ask where I got it from,” Pryce said. “Let’s just say I called in a favor. You have twenty-four hours with the file; then I need you to drop it off in my mailbox at the condo. Don’t bring it to the station. I don’t want anyone there seeing you with a police file you shouldn’t have. And don’t make any copies.”

  “Okay . . . I still don’t understand why you’re giving it to me, though.”

  “Look, Charlie was a damn good cop, and you’re a good investigator, Jessica. I figure the quickest way to put this whole business to bed is for you to see for yourself how Charlie and his team carried out their investigation. Maybe if you look through the murder book, you’ll realize there’s no big mystery to unravel in Hundred Acres, no unanswered questions, nothing untoward going on. Maybe then you’ll be satisfied Rue Hunter is guilty, just like she said she was thirty years ago.”

  “Thanks, Pryce. I appreciate it. This will be a big help.”

  Pryce checked his watch. “Shit, I have to go. Medina will be waiting for me. We gotta be someplace by lunchtime.”

  “New case?”

  “Old case.”

  “I didn’t think you worked cold cases.”

  “I don’t. This one is personal.”

  “Personal?”

  “Charlie’s murder.”

  Pryce gulped down the rest of his coffee and nimbly climbed over the metal waist-high fence right onto the street. “Remember, twenty-four hours with the file.” Then he walked briskly in the direction of the 7-Eleven parking lot, turned the corner, and was gone.

  Jessica decided to order herself another cup of the fancy Ethiopian coffee and have a quick look through the Meeks/James murder book before going through it again in more detail once back in Hundred Acres.

  She skimmed the transcripts of interviews carried out by Charlie Holten and Pat McDonagh with Rue Hunter following her arrest, the sheriff and his deputy clearly not having a great deal of luck with the teenager. Then there were witness statements taken from Patty Meeks, Heather and Steve James, and Rose and Barb Hunter, none of which were particularly revelatory. Copies of pages from Megan’s diary—which had been found in her underwear drawer by Holten and McDonagh—made several references to a secret romance with someone known only as L, who was presumably Lucas James, despite Patty Meeks’s doubts.

  There were some other transcripts too from interviews carried out by a Dr. Ted Blume, the “cop psychologist” Rue had told her about during the prison visit. The woman was right; he did seem persuasive. Jessica didn’t like the sound of the man or his methods, both of which came across as flaky and outdated to her, but she figured using visual aids and analyzing folks’ dreams were probably popular techniques back in the eighties and early nineties.

  She remembered what Nina DePalma had told her about a little girl who’d been desperate for her teacher’s approval, and Jessica felt like the eighteen-year-old Rue Hunter had been just as needy for Dr. Blume’s approval. A copy of her confession followed, and Jessica decided to wait until she’d returned to the detective agency to read over it properly. After all, those were the words that had effectively sealed Rue Hunter’s fate.

  Jessica noted there was no mention in the file of the guy Rue claimed she was with the night of the murders. Rue had told her the cops had asked lots of questions about the car ride before dropping their interest. Jessica quickly flicked through the pages of the murder book again in case she had missed that part of the questioning. She hadn’t. There was nothing. She was beginning to wonder if Rue had lied about a ride that night when she turned the page to the clear plastic folder containing the crime scene photos.

  And alarm bells started to ring.

  The first three images were held together by a paper clip and showed tire treads in the mud not far from Lucas James’s Toyota Cressida. Scribbled on a faded yellow Post-it note stuck on the top photo were the words No further action required.

  Jessica then turned to the prints of the two bodies in the back seat of the vehicle. Megan was wearing white jeans and a black silk blouse, just as Patty Meeks had described in their conversation at her home yesterday. And Jessica knew from the prison visit with Rue Hunter that Lucas had been wearing blue jeans and a black-and-white plaid shirt. The woman had spent the last thirty years being haunted by nightmares of herself ripping apart those clothes, and the flesh that lay underneath them, with a bloodied knife.

  Jessica stared at the crime scene photo of Lucas James again.

  He wasn’t wearing blue jeans or a black-and-white plaid shirt.

  18

  PRYCE

  Pryce drove north for seventy miles, deep into the Antelope Valley on the western tip of the Mojave Desert. Medina had spent most of the journey reading up on the murders of Charlie Holten and Angel Henderson.

  A cop and a street kid. Worlds apart in life, but their deaths both compressed into a bunch of pages in three-ring binders to be pored over by strangers.

  Dry, bleached scrubland stretched as far as the eye could see on either side of the car until a large compound made up of more than two dozen squat gray-and-white buildings appeared on the shimmering horizon up ahead. Like a desert mirage under a baking sun. As they got closer, they could see high razor-wire fencing encl
osing the facility that was home to more than three thousand male inmates.

  Once inside the building, Pryce was reminded again how prisons always smelled like hospitals, a gut-churning mix of cleaning products and bad food and piss and shit. The only pop of color in the gray concrete interview room was provided by the orange jumpsuit worn by the inmate who was waiting for them. The man was shackled to a table by his handcuffs. He was tall and muscular, the bright uniform stretched tight across wide shoulders. The floppy dreads were long gone, replaced now by graying hair cropped close to the scalp.

  DaMarcus Jones regarded Pryce with a hint of amusement in his brown eyes.

  “Long time no see, Detective Pryce,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure after all this time? Must be, what, almost twenty years since we last spoke?”

  “Think of it as a pleasant surprise,” Pryce said.

  DaMarcus Jones had clearly looked after himself throughout his incarceration. Pryce guessed the toned physique was down to daily cell squats, push-ups, sit-ups, and lunges. A man who made full use of the exercise yard by actually walking around it, instead of huddling in corners smoking and plotting and hustling like other inmates when granted their daily hour of fresh air.

  From what Pryce had heard, DaMarcus Jones had been working on his soul, as well as his body, during his years inside. The former gangbanger and pimp was now the unofficial prison chaplain after apparently turning his back on the devil and finding religion. Pryce spotted a cross crudely inked on the back of his right hand, its lines blurred by a blunt needle and the passage of time. He wondered if DaMarcus Jones was Catholic and how he felt about confession.

  “You know why I’m here, DaMarcus,” he said. “Someone put a bullet in my partner’s head a long time ago, and I’m not going to rest until I find out for sure who did it. Maybe it’s time you finally helped me out.”

  DaMarcus smiled. “I may have changed over the years, Detective, but my answer remains the same. I didn’t shoot your partner, and I didn’t order no one else to do it either.”

  Pryce held his gaze. “You sure about that, DaMarcus?”

  “Positive. I was involved in a lot of bad stuff back then, and I’m paying for it now. Have been for almost two decades. But taking out a cop? That’s a whole different level altogether.”

  “What about Angel Henderson?”

  The smile disappeared, and Pryce saw something flicker behind the man’s eyes. Pain, sorrow, regret. Whatever it was, he wondered if she was the reason DaMarcus Jones had turned to God, why he felt the need to permanently mark his skin with religious symbols, why he tried to steer other prisoners back onto the right path after they’d taken a wrong turn in life.

  “I didn’t kill her either.” He lowered his eyes. “At least not directly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  DaMarcus continued to stare at the table, wouldn’t look at Pryce.

  “She didn’t die by my hands, but I sent her to her death. I ask for God’s forgiveness every day, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for what happened to Angel.”

  “A john?” Pryce asked.

  DaMarcus nodded.

  “What happened to him?”

  DaMarcus raised his eyes and, this time, there was a hardness to them.

  “Let’s just say he didn’t get the chance to hurt another girl after what he did to Angel.”

  Pryce knew DaMarcus was talking about street retribution. Something, as a cop, he shouldn’t condone. But he’d seen the photos of Angel Henderson’s broken body, and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be losing a whole lot of sleep over the punishment handed out to the guy responsible for her ending up dead in a dumpster.

  “What about Charlie Holten? He liked you for it, DaMarcus. Took an interest. It must have made life difficult for you considering your line of work back then.”

  A nod and another smile.

  “True.”

  DaMarcus turned his attention to Medina, who hadn’t spoken so far during the visit.

  “You don’t say much, do you?”

  “I’m the strong, silent type.”

  “Is that so? First time I ever met a cop who didn’t like the sound of his own voice.”

  “It’s you we want to hear talking, DaMarcus.”

  “I said all I got to say.”

  Medina glanced at the cross on DaMarcus’s hand. “You know, they say confession is good for the soul.”

  “I already confessed my sins to God.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t listening,” Pryce said. “Why don’t you try me? I’m all ears.”

  DaMarcus sighed. “Put a Bible in front of me right now, and I’d happily place my hand on it and tell you I had nothing to do with your partner’s death.”

  “But you know something, don’t you? I can see it on your face. You say you’ve changed, DaMarcus. Prove it.”

  “I have changed.”

  “So do the right thing.”

  “Okay, but I want something in return.”

  Pryce shook his head. “You know I can’t cut you a deal, DaMarcus. There’s no way I can get you out of this place.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking.”

  “What then?”

  “I want you to go find Angel’s grave. Lay some flowers there. I mean good ones from a proper florist; none of that cheap garbage from the grocery store. And then you tell her I’m sorry.”

  Pryce nodded. “I can do that. No problem.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Tell me about Charlie Holten.”

  “You’re right,” DaMarcus said. “Your partner was a problem for the crew. Sniffing around, asking questions, sticking his nose in places he don’t have no business sticking it. We needed to know what he knew about our operations, so we turned the tables and kept eyes on him. The night he got whacked, two of my guys followed him to the warehouses out by Dodger Stadium. Thought he was meeting a snitch up there. The boys kept well out of sight, waited a half hour or so. Then a truck pulled up next to Holten’s car, and he got in the truck. They sat there for a while. Not going anywhere, just talking, I guess. Fifteen minutes later, Holten was back in his own car. They both drove off separately, Holten first, then the truck following a minute or so later.”

  “Who was in the truck?” Pryce asked.

  “No idea, and that’s the God’s honest truth. If it was a snitch, he wasn’t from our crew or any of the others we knew back then. It was too dark to make out the driver, but my guys didn’t recognize the wheels.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The boys held back for a few minutes, then decided they’d try to pick up the tail on Holten again. Just in case he had any more meets planned. They heard a single gunshot, turned the corner, and your man was stopped at traffic lights, head on the steering wheel, horn blaring. The truck was already burning rubber, and my guys pulled a 180 and did the same in the opposite direction.”

  “I don’t suppose your guys got a plate? A make or model for the truck?”

  DaMarcus laughed. “You’re not talking about cops, Detective. They weren’t hanging around long enough to note down a tag or admire the wheels. What I can tell you is that it was a dark-colored dually covered in mud. Definitely not a sleek city ride like those favored by the crews at the time. If it was a hit, it was nothing to do with me or any of my crew.”

  “A dually?” Pryce asked.

  “Dual rear wheels,” DaMarcus explained.

  Pryce looked at Medina and saw from his face he was thinking the same as him. If what DaMarcus Jones told them was true, then Holten knew his killer. Had spent time with the shooter just moments before he’d fired a shotgun into Holten’s face.

  It was as much as they were going to get from DaMarcus, so Pryce and Medina both stood and headed for the steel door to alert the guard outside that the interview was over.

  “Detective Pryce?”

  Pryce turned to face DaMarcus before stepping through the open doorway.

  “Yes, DaMarcu
s?”

  “Don’t forget about the flowers.”

  19

  JESSICA

  Pryce had told Jessica she couldn’t make any copies of the Hundred Acres murder book, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about showing the contents of the file to other people. As well as Lucas’s clothing, the tire tracks bothered her, and she wanted to know more about the vehicle that had left the treads behind in the mud at Devil’s Drop.

  Her own knowledge of cars and tires was fairly limited. Sure, she could change a flat if need be. The amount of time she’d spent behind the wheel of a truck these past few years, it was a necessary skill. After all, being stranded alone late at night, waiting for roadside assistance with nothing more than a cell phone with patchy reception and some misplaced optimism about a quick response, wasn’t an ideal scenario for any young woman to find herself in.

  But, when it came to identifying a vehicle just from its tread marks, she didn’t have a clue where to start. Had no idea if it was even possible.

  Acres Tire & Wheel Mart comprised a shop front with a garage space out back, about a half mile along the highway from the detective agency. Tires were piled four high on either side of an open front door with sale signs propped on top of each bundle. Shiny steel rims were displayed on glass shelves in the window. A chubby guy who looked to be around the same age as Jessica stood behind the counter. He was wearing coveralls and a greasy baller cap with the name Jerry stitched on the front. The shop smelled of rubber.

  “Nice truck.” He looked past Jessica to where the Silverado was parked outside. “You after a new set of tires?”

  “I’m actually hoping you can help me out with something else.” She’d already removed the crime scene photos of the tire tracks from the file’s plastic folder, and she placed them on the counter now. “What can you tell me about the kind of vehicle that would leave behind tracks like these? Is it possible to ID a make and model?”

  The guy—she assumed his name was Jerry—frowned.

  “You a cop or something?”

  “Something,” Jessica said. “Can you help or not?”