Bad Memory Read online

  “Of course, I knew the reason for his obsession with Angel Henderson, even if he didn’t want to admit it to himself. I always believed Charlie thought of Angel as the daughter he never had. Ever since the day he carried her out of that drug house. He was desperate to be a father, and I couldn’t give him the children he so badly wanted. You probably already know we tried for a long time, Jason. That we spent thousands of dollars on fertility specialists.

  “Much later, we discussed fostering or adopting, but I think we both knew our marriage was all but over by then. When the girl died, he spent even more time away from home trying to find her killer. By then, the anger was long gone. All I felt was sadness. For her, for him, for myself. For what had become of our marriage.”

  “I’m sorry things weren’t so great between you and Charlie toward the end,” Pryce said. “And the last thing I want to do is upset you, Maggie, but I do need to ask you some questions.”

  Maggie hesitated, just for a second, then said, “Okay.”

  “Like I said, we’re now looking at the possibility Charlie knew his killer. Someone unconnected to DaMarcus Jones. Is there anything at all you can think of that happened in the days leading up to Charlie’s death that could be helpful? It may be something that seemed unimportant or insignificant at the time?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Is there anyone Charlie might have spoken to or met with during that time frame? Someone we don’t know about? Something that didn’t come up in the original investigation?”

  Maggie shook her head again and placed the mug on the table. Her hand trembled, and some of the coffee sloshed over the side. Pryce shot a look at Medina, who raised his eyebrows. It was the first time Maggie had appeared shaken during the visit.

  Pryce leaned forward on the couch. “Maggie, is there something you’re not telling us? You know it could be important to the investigation, right?”

  She said nothing.

  “It could help us catch Charlie’s killer,” Pryce pressed.

  “I don’t think it will,” she said, her voice not much louder than a whisper.

  “Why not let us be the judge of that?” Pryce said gently.

  Maggie looked away, pressed a fist to her mouth to stifle a sob. A fresh wave of tears rolled down her cheeks. Pryce thought she suddenly looked even smaller than she had when she’d first answered the door.

  “Please, Maggie.”

  She turned to face him, and Pryce could see the turmoil in her eyes.

  “I’ve never told anyone, other than Harry.”

  Pryce just nodded, waited for her to continue.

  Maggie took a deep breath, let it out slowly.

  “Shortly before Charlie died, I found out he was staying out all night for a different reason,” she said. “A reason that had nothing to do with Angel Henderson.”

  “What are you saying, Maggie?”

  “I’m saying I lied to those detectives who investigated Charlie’s murder. And I lied to you too, Jason.”

  Pryce felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. Like he had just taken a punch to the gut. He could see Medina shifting awkwardly next to him on the couch from the corner of his eye, as he stared at Maggie.

  “What did you lie about?”

  “Charlie did have another woman. I don’t think it was really serious enough to call it an affair or to refer to her as his mistress, but he was having sex with someone else. In the weeks before he died.”

  Pryce was stunned. He’d known the mistress theory had been explored during the investigation, but he’d never believed it was true. Not for a single second. Now, he didn’t know what to say, how he was supposed to react.

  Maggie said, “From the look on your face, I’m guessing you didn’t know, Jason?”

  “I had no idea. How long was it going on for?”

  “Not long. A month or so.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us, Maggie?”

  “I didn’t want the state of my marriage to be the subject of gossip at the station.” There was a hint of defiance in her voice now. “Don’t forget, I knew a lot of those cops. I knew their wives and their families. I was sure Charlie’s infidelity had nothing to do with his murder, and I decided our private life was no one else’s damn business.”

  “But how could you be sure this woman had no involvement in Charlie’s death?”

  “Those two detectives, Hunt and Adams, came to me with their theories about Charlie being blackmailed by a mistress, which was just ridiculous. For a start, we had no money. We were surviving on a cop’s salary, and any savings we did have had been eaten up by fertility treatment payments. And even if it wasn’t about money, even if she was blackmailing him for some other reason, the woman had no hold over him, as far as I could tell. I knew Charlie was sleeping with her, and she knew that I was aware of what was going on, had been since the first night they got together. Then Hunt and Adams mentioned DaMarcus Jones, and his connection to Angel Henderson, and I was convinced she was the reason Charlie was murdered. So I kept quiet about his other woman.”

  “How did you find out about her?”

  “He told me. We were already sleeping in separate rooms by then. He came home late one night, drunk and sobbing and stinking of her perfume, and he shook me awake and told me what he’d done. Said he still loved me, but he’d needed to feel the kind of physical intimacy we hadn’t shared for a long time. I held him in my arms as he cried like a baby, and I told him to do what he had to do. He spent the night with her a few more times before he died.”

  Pryce had known nothing about the affair. Realized now just how little he’d really known about his partner. The revelation was like a brick to the face.

  “Can you tell me anything about this woman?” he asked. “You know we’ll have to try to track her down and speak to her about Charlie’s murder, right? Especially now that we’re looking at other angles not involving DaMarcus Jones.”

  “Of course,” Maggie said. “I truly am sorry for not telling you the truth, Jason. I was ashamed, and I genuinely thought DaMarcus Jones was behind Charlie’s death. But I’m afraid there’s not much I can tell you about the woman other than her name was Marie, and she worked in a bar called the Raeberry over in the Eastside.”

  “We’ll check it out,” Pryce said. He nodded at Medina, who withdrew a small notepad from his jeans pocket and wrote the names of both the woman and the bar. “Is there anything else you can tell us about the days leading up to the murder that might be useful? Anything else you felt you couldn’t tell us at the time?”

  Maggie shook her head. “I told Hunt and Adams everything else I knew. How Charlie had been anxious and agitated in the days before the shooting, how I was sure he had something on his mind but wouldn’t discuss it. How he’d shut down any attempts at a conversation.”

  “Any ideas at all about what might have been bothering him?”

  “None whatsoever.” She looked at Pryce. “All I can say is, it must have been something big if he felt he couldn’t confide in you or me.”

  21

  JESSICA

  Jessica reached the liquor store in under five minutes, eager to hear what Lockerman had to tell her.

  It was a straight run, east along the highway, in the opposite direction from the tire mart. The building was low and detached and had a kind of disheveled appearance, like the drunks it serviced every day. Once-white paint flaked off in chunks, like dry skin on sunburned shoulders, the result of decades spent baking in fierce heat and being roughly swept by desert winds. The midafternoon sun glinted off the yellow store sign propped on the flat roof, unlit now, but a beacon for those cruising the highway after dark.

  Jessica ignored the “no parking” warning, mounted the curb, and pulled up between a black plastic trash receptacle and an empty newspaper dispenser. A plastic banner advertising an energy drinks offer flapped in the soft breeze. She put the truck into park and watched as a guy in a dirty wifebeater stumbled out of the store clutchi
ng a brown paper bag, looking like his purchase was an attempt to recover from last night’s drunk.

  One of the double doors was propped open. The other had a crude cardboard sign taped behind the glass, under the red blinking LED OPEN sign, advertising the assistant manager’s job. At first glance, the place appeared empty. No customers, no Jed Lockerman, the counter unmanned. Jessica wandered down the center aisle, snacks and candy bars and potato chips stacked on one side, freezers filled with packs of ice on the other. Then she spotted Lockerman in the warped reflection of a circular convex security mirror nailed high on the back wall.

  She turned the corner into the next aisle and found him on his knees in front of an open refrigerator, stacking bottles of Bud and Coors and MGD onto the bottom shelf.

  “Hi, Jed.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, Jessica. I didn’t expect you to get here quite so soon.” He pushed himself to his feet with a groan, left the rest of the beers in the cardboard boxes on the floor, and started making his way toward the front door. “Let me just lock up for ten minutes. I don’t want anyone to interrupt our conversation, and I don’t have staff cover in order to have a chat out back since firing Michelle.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Jessica wandered back the way she had come and waited for Jed next to the cash register. He secured the front door, hurried back along the aisle, and slipped behind the counter. Pulled a bottle of Talisker from the shelf behind him and handed it to her.

  “This is for you,” he said. “As promised.”

  “You really don’t have to.” She grabbed the bottle and slipped it into her bag. “But thanks anyway.”

  Jessica leaned on the counter and appraised him. She wasn’t one for judging people on looks alone, figured a guy who could make her belly laugh was worth a hundred Brad Pitts, but Sylvia Sugarman was right—Jed Lockerman was not an attractive man. Reed thin, receding hair, acne-scarred skin, eyes a little too close together. And not forgetting that long, bony nose, now pointing southwest instead of south, courtesy of Rose Hunter’s textbook.

  He asked, “You really trying to get Rue Hunter off the hook for those murders?”

  Jessica smiled. “Not exactly. I’m being paid by her sister to take a fresh look at the case, see if I can find any evidence to suggest Rue might be innocent before her execution. If she’s guilty, there’s not a whole lot I can do to help her.” Jessica stared right at Lockerman’s nose and arched her eyebrows. “Speaking of Rose Hunter, I heard you two have a bit of history?”

  His face burned red. “Whatever that woman told you is a lie. What happened back in high school was an accident.”

  “I heard the story from someone else. Rose didn’t say a word about it.”

  “Well, it didn’t happen the way she claimed back then.” His voice was steadily rising. “I bumped into her is all. Trust me, that gal had problems, just like her crazy, murdering sister.”

  “Chill, Jed,” Jessica said. “I get it—it was an accident. Now, why don’t you tell what you saw at Devil’s Drop? What’s this big secret you’ve never shared with anyone else?”

  He chewed his bottom lip. “It might not be important. Although I think it probably is a big deal. I mean, I ain’t never heard anyone else mention it. So I don’t know if that means it’s important or not.”

  Jessica huffed impatiently. “Oh, for Chrissake, Jed. Just spit it out, will you?”

  He glanced around, as though worried someone might overhear them, even though the store was empty and the locked front door meant they wouldn’t be interrupted by customers. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, like it’d been on the telephone. Thankfully, there was no heavy breathing this time.

  “Back in the summer of ’87, I was a bartender at Cooper’s. I was working a shift the night of the murders. It was Fourth of July, which meant double pay and a ton of tips. The place was packed, and it was hot and sweaty. Later in the evening, around nine p.m., I took my break and stepped outside for some air and a cigarette. That’s when I saw her.”

  “Rue Hunter?”

  Lockerman nodded. “She was in the phone booth right outside Cooper’s. When I’d seen her earlier in the bar, she’d looked totally out of it. Now, she seemed real mad. She slammed the receiver hard into the cradle, left the phone booth, and paced in front of it for a while, muttering and cussing. Then a car pulled up next to her.”

  Jessica’s skin prickled; adrenaline shot through her veins.

  “Tell me what happened next,” she said.

  “The driver rolled down the window, and Rue stormed over to the car and started yelling at him for being late. Called him an asshole a couple times and told him he’d wrecked their plans. He said something about car trouble. She still looked real pissed. Then he mentioned having some beer and pot and how there was still plenty of time to party. Asked if she wanted a ride or not. Rue climbed in the passenger side, and they drove off.”

  The car.

  The treads.

  The flat tire.

  The driver Holten and McDonagh had decided not to bother tracking down.

  “I don’t suppose you know who was driving the car?”

  “Sure, I do.”

  “Who?”

  “Tom Lucchese.”

  Lucchese.

  Where had she heard the name before? Then she remembered. The plans for a luxury Vegas-style casino and hotel complex in Hundred Acres that never came to fruition. Dylan had told Jessica the story months ago, when she’d bemoaned the lack of decent accommodation options in town.

  “The guy who was going to build the casino?” Jessica was confused. “He was driving around on a holiday weekend, with booze and drugs in his car, picking up teenage girls?”

  “Nah, you’re thinking of Bruce Lucchese,” he said. “Tom was his son.”

  “And you’re absolutely sure it was him?”

  “No doubt about it. For one, I saw him real clear when he leaned out the window to speak to Rue. And, second, no mistaking those sweet wheels.”

  “Why? What kind of car was he driving?”

  “Toyota Supra Turbo. Cherry-red metallic, pop-up lights, less than a year old by the looks of it.”

  “You seem to remember an awful lot about a car from more than thirty years ago.”

  Lockerman grinned. “As I said, it was a sweet ride. Lucchese was a few years younger than me, probably twenty or twenty-one. While I was pulling shifts at Cooper’s, he was driving around in a smart piece of Japanese machinery. I hated his guts.”

  “Fair enough,” Jessica said. “Why didn’t you tell the police what you saw?”

  “They didn’t ask.”

  “You could’ve volunteered the information.”

  “By the time I found out about what happened to Lucas and Megan, Rue had already confessed. Lucchese’s name was never mentioned, so I figured he was in the clear. Had nothing to do with the murders. In any case, I didn’t want to go upsetting the big boss man. Everybody in town was hoping to land a job at the new casino when it was built, and I was no different. Didn’t see how causing unnecessary trouble for his boy would help anyone. Especially me.”

  “What happened to the Luccheses?”

  Lockerman shrugged. “They packed up and left town around six months after the murders when the casino project fell through. Not sure where they went. Back to Vegas probably. Or maybe LA.” He chewed his bottom lip again. “You think what I saw was important, Jessica? Tom Lucchese giving Rue Hunter a ride that night?”

  She thought of the tire treads in the mud at Devil’s Drop, just yards from where Lucas’s and Megan’s bodies had been found.

  “Yeah, Jed. I think it was important.”

  22

  PRYCE

  Pryce and Medina grabbed a late lunch in a small, no-frills eatery in Silver Lake before taking a stroll down the street to the Raeberry.

  It was late afternoon and baking hot. All blue skies and no clouds. The kind of day better spent enjoying the salty breeze coming in
off the sea at Malibu or Venice, instead of pounding sizzling sidewalks in the Eastside.

  Medina said, “So what do we think the chances are of us finding the mysterious Marie still behind the bar here? Just waiting for us to wander in and ask her questions twenty-some years after the event?”

  “Pretty much zero,” Pryce admitted. “But we don’t have anything else to go on right now.”

  “Agreed. You want me to take the lead on this one?”

  “Why not? Looks more like your kind of place, Vic.”

  The Raeberry was a small shop front at the end of a block tagged with graffiti. In the lot around the side, discarded shopping carts were parked next to vehicles presumably belonging to staff and patrons. Inside, it could have been midday or midnight. It was impossible to tell once the door closed behind them, shutting out the daylight. The ceiling and lighting were both low, and there were no windows. The bar area was softly lit by red fairy lights, the pool table in the rear of the room illuminated by a branded Corona Extra lamp. A Patsy Cline record could just about be heard playing on an old-fashioned jukebox over the thwack of cue tips striking pool balls.

  It wasn’t a cop hangout, and Pryce knew they’d both been made as cops as soon as they walked through the front door. He also knew the bartender wasn’t Marie. The woman was at least twenty years too young, her dyed blue hair swept back in a ponytail exposing a shaved undercut. She wore tight jeans and a tank top, showing off tattoo sleeves on both arms, and had a silver ring hooked through her nose that, Pryce thought, made her look like a bull. Clearly not Holten’s type, he decided. But Pryce had thought Maggie was Holten’s type, and, apparently, he had been wrong. At least in those final days of his ex-partner’s life.

  The bartender eyed them suspiciously as they both took a seat on the padded leatherette stools in front of the bar and ordered a beer each. She wordlessly walked over to the refrigerator, pulled out two Buds, popped the tops, and placed the bottles in front of them. Medina handed over some cash and told her to keep the change. She didn’t bother to thank him.