Chapter
Seventeen
Hollenbeck Station, Los
Angeles…December 5, 1:00pm
Rebecca leaned way back in her chair raising both arms high
above her head in an over the top big girl stretch. Yawning audibly she shook
her head to clear the cobwebs from her weary brain. She wasn’t tired just
fatigued. Clenching her hands into tiny fists she rubbed her eyes and prepared
to get up and go to the loo to wash her face with some cold water. Suddenly she
was startled by a loud familiar noise. Flinching she looked up from her reading
and watched her partner flop down into his chair at the desk directly across
from her. “Darn it Iggie, can’t you see I’m working here?”
“So am I detective,” he
replied taking a loud bite from the Fuji apple he had just polished to a shiny
red/orange hue on the lapel of his sport coat.
“By the way, here’s your
corned beef on rye. Hope you like extra mustard and pickles. Oh, and I may have
taken a bite too,” Iggie said tossing a brown sack onto her desk.
“HEY! Boundaries Iggie, geeze, and thank you.” What an
ass she thought. Becca noticed that he always seemed so out of place in a coat
and tie. She suspected that off the job he wandered around Hermosa Beach
hitting his favorite watering holes like The Mermaid near the pier, a dive bar
frequented primarily by old dudes who sat at the windows facing the beach to
watch bikini clad women jumping and diving on the tournament style volleyball
courts. She pictured him sitting there in a pair of board shorts, a tank top,
and flip-flops, swilling pitcher after pitcher of Budweiser, his favorite brew.
“I see, well can you keep it
down for a few minute while I finish what I’m doing?”
Becca lowered her eyes and considered
opening the sack and devouring the sandwich, she was famished having worked
through lunch. Instead she opted to continue reading her notes and hold her
water for a while longer. As quietly as he could, save intermittent bites of
his apple, Iggie watched her study her notes. Becca tried her best to tune him
out, but it was hard to concentrate with him chewing noisily with his mouth
open. He really was a piggy. She wished that she had gone to the library at
lunch instead of staying in to gather her thoughts. Fueled only by some awful
station house coffee and some saltine crackers her stomach growled. She could
feel Iggie watching her, evaluating her and braced herself for the inevitable
interruption. She didn’t have to wait long.
“Penny for your thoughts,”
Iggie finally uttered.
“Cost you more than that buddy,
I ain’t cheap,” Becca quipped halfheartedly.
“Har-de-har-har, good one. Really, what are you working on?”
“Just going over my case notes,”
she replied.
“The Mallory case?”
“Yes.” Iggie tossed the apple
core into the circular file under his desk. He reached into his coat and
retrieved his own steno pad from the inside pocket. In a quick movement he flipped
it open. Thumbing through it, he stopping on a dog-eared page.
“Okay newbie let’s compare
notes. What’s your theory so far?”
Becca wasn’t really prepared
to share her thoughts yet, but even though she found her partner crude and a
bit misogynistic, he was also a seasoned professional. Not to mention being her
training officer. She decided to throw
caution to the wind and brainstorm with the man. After all, he had proved
himself worthy of her respect on the last case that they worked together. The Mei
Li Teng (a.k.a. Sally November) murder. They had teamed up with former LAPD
detective turned private investigator, Whitey Roode to track down what turned
out to be a serial killer. It was her first major case and it ended in a
shootout at a Las Vegas police station. Exciting times and it was Becca who
took down the killer herself while she was stuffed into an airshaft. She
remembered laying prone in that small space, sweating profusely while she waited
for the perp to literally crawl right into her line of fire. She winced, the
memory still fresh in her mind’s eye. Her ears had rung painfully for weeks
afterward. Becca set down her notebook and looked up. “You first,” she said.
Iggie chuckled, “Okay, age
before beauty, I can live with that,” he replied.
He licked his thumb and peeled
back a few pages in his note pad. Clearing his throat he began to share his
thoughts so far.
“So, I’m wondering what would
drive a mother, a very young mother that, to choose such an awful fate. What
sort of desperation could have pushed her into so dark a corner? Choosing to
end not only for her own life but the life of her innocent child as well. What
was she afraid of? Who was she afraid of? Murder/suicide makes quite a statement,
what was she trying to say? I think we need to start with who was closest to
her in the days before her decision. Start with the priest, Father Quinn, and
work our way backwards and build a timeline. Textbook investigating, detective
101 sort of. Are you with me so far? What do you think?”
“Yeah I think so, but you’re just
scratching the surface. Do you have a working theory to build on?”
“Patience young-un,” Iggie
said in a fatherly tone. Becca rolled her eyes.
“Remember, multiple witnesses
said that they heard the mother yell before lighting the match, ‘father, I love you!’ So, who was she talking about? The priest,
Father Quinn? Her own father? The father of her child, whoever that might be? My
theory is that one of those fellas is likely the lynchpin in this tragedy, savvy,” explained Iggie.
Becca rolled her eyes again.
She hated it when Iggie would mansplain everything
like she was clueless. She thought that she had earned a little more respect
after Vegas. Guess as far as her Iggie was concerned she was still a work in
progress.
Iggie continued, “So consider
this, what if they are all the same person?”
Becca snorted audibly and stifled
a laugh. “That’s your theory? Are you suggesting that Father Quinn is all
three, priest, daddy, and father of her kid? Is that what you are thinking?”
she asked frowning,
“What, no good? Why not, it’s not impossible,” he replied.
“Might be possible biologically,
but highly improbable. I can’t see it. My early research into Father Quinn is preliminary
but so far he’s a well-respected member of the clergy and the community. People
like him, they say he’s a good egg to quote one parishioner.”
Iggie leaned back in his chair
and spoke over his hands laced together in front of his face. His mood had
shifted slightly and he did not try to mask his annoyance with his rookie
charge. “It’s a theory Rebecca, maybe not a good one in your opinion, but it is
meant to be a starting point. A disciplined investigator never throws the baby
out with the bathwater. As unlikely as it might seem, it is where we are going
to start our investigation. My call, I am the lead on this case, don’t make the
mistake of forgetting that. Are we clear?”
Becca resisted the urge to
challenge or contradict her training officer and nodded submissively but with
an unmistakable defiant look in her dark black eyes. Nothing to be gained here
by escalating this beyond the nickel lecture he had laid on her. In this case
silence was golden. She knew that her silent rebellion had not gone unnoticed
either. Actually Iggie looked pleased to see it. She was pretty sure that he would
attribute it to his stern yet magnanimous supervision. What a goofball.
Iggie continued, interrupting
the uncomfortable silence. “Look I realize it’s a longshot, a stretch, but that’s
how ya do it. Think of every possibility, every angle. Approach this like a
sculptor approaches a block of clay. You start pecking away, piece by piece you
eliminate the noise until you get to the hidden art, in our case the truth.
That’s the way I look at it anyway,” he said with a smirk, clearly pleased with
himself.
Becca was taken aback. That
really made sense. That was almost profound and completely unexpected. She felt
a little guilty judging him so shallowly. Clearly there was more to this man
than she had unfairly led herself to believe. Never judge a book by its cover.
She had read that somewhere. Becca decided an apology was in order.
“Huh, I see what you mean Iggie. I’m sorry for throwing rocks so
quickly. I spoke too soon, my bad, rookie mistake boss,” she offered with a
sheepish grin.
“No harm no foul Becca. Olay,
time to get to work. First up we roll through the five W’s. Who, what, when,
where, and why. We start with what and who we know, specifically the principle players
in this sad story, Megan Mallory, her child name unknown, and Father Nicholas
Quinn. Let’s go to the conference room, break out the dry erase markers and
post-it notes and start mapping the timeline and connect the personal histories.”
This was the fun part as far
as Iggie was concerned. He beamed slightly, pleased with how Rebecca Tran was
progressing, convinced that he was the main reason. The kid had guts, she
proved that in Vegas when she gunned down that serial killer Jai Lai. Sure, she
was a brat, but she was a cute brat and she made Iggie smile.
“Okay Detective Tran, grab
your stuff and follow me to conference room B. Let’s kick this pig,” Iggie said
as he gathered his own stuff, turned and led the way.
