Deranged

Morris woke up with Parker sitting on his chest licking his face.

“Gah,” Morris spat out as he held the dog back with both hands. “Sardine breath!”

This made Parker more enthusiastically try to bull his way forward, his rear end wiggling like crazy. Morris squinted at the clock next to the bed and saw that it was just after seven. He spotted Natalie by the open door.

“You’re enjoying this,” he said.

“Somewhat. But it was an accident. Parker was waiting quietly outside the door, and he squeezed his way through before I realized he was there.”

Morris successfully wrestled Parker away and maneuvered himself off the bed. He rubbed the bull terrier’s muzzle. “Are you ready for a day of crime fighting?” he asked.

Parker responded with one of his excited piglike grunts.

After he showered, shaved, and dressed in the same wrinkled suit he wore the day before, although with a fresh shirt and a different tie, Morris kissed Natalie good-bye and took Parker with him. On the way to the MBI offices, he stopped off for a coffee and bagel and cream cheese, and picked up a bagel, bacon, and egg sandwich for Parker, which the dog greedily devoured.

Stonehedge was waiting at MBI. The actor had on the same disguise as he did the previous day, and he gave Parker a careful look. “Is this bring your dog to work day?” he asked.

“Whatever you want to call it. I often bring Parker to the office with me,” Morris said. “At least the days that my wife doesn’t take him with her. Best dog in the world, no question about it, but not the kind you can leave at home all day by himself. He’s also a superlative judge of character, and offers certain other advantages in my kind of work. With some witnesses, Parker proves to be very disarming, and they relax with him around. Others get more nervous when they try lying in front of him. I can’t explain why the latter happens, but it does.”

The dog watched attentively as Morris handed Stonehedge a strip of bacon that he had removed earlier from the sandwich.

“Give him that, and he’ll be your friend for life.”

Stonehedge did as Morris suggested, and somehow avoided having one of his fingers snatched off in the process. As promised, the dog gave the actor one of his piglike grunts and wagged his tail.

“How’d you come up with the name Parker?” Stonehedge asked. “Are you a wine enthusiast?”

Morris gave him a confused look.

“Robert Parker, the wine critic? Or did you name him after the other Robert Parker, the author of the Spenser detective books?”

“I named him after the other Parker books,” Morris said. “The ones written by Richard Stark.” He showed a guilty smile. “That’s right, he’s named after a stone-cold criminal, but one with a strong code of conduct.”

The actor looked deep in thought, as if he were trying to dredge out a stubborn fact from his memory. “A movie was made with Lee Marvin from one of those books, right? Point Blank?”

“That’s right.”

Morris’s cellphone rang. Doug Gilman.

“I heard from Hadley that the Santa Monica police weren’t able to pull any useful surveillance video,” Gilman complained sourly.

“I wouldn’t know. I only just got to the office.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the story. And what do you mean you’re just getting to the office? It’s eight o’clock already.”

“True. But I needed to go to San Diego late last night to cross off a potential suspect, and didn’t get home until three.”

“We want this psycho caught before he completes his cycle. You know, killing a blonde twenty-something girl. There’s a lot of fear out there, Morris.”

“I understand that. And I want to catch this psycho as much as anyone, but the odds are he’s already finished his cycle and we just haven’t found the body yet.”

“Let’s hope that’s not true. Whatever extra resources you need, you give me a call, okay? The mayor is hot on this.”

“I understand.”

“Did the hotline generate anything of interest?” Gilman asked, his voice sounding more weary than his earlier petulant tone.

“It brought a lot of shut-ins and crackpots out of the woodwork, but it also gave us a few leads to follow up on. I’m sure more calls came in overnight, and more will be coming. Doug, we’ll catch him. Either because of a mistake he made here, or from the New York end.”

“Sooner will be better than later.”

“No kidding.”

That seemed as good as any place to end the call. Morris checked in with his office manager, Greta, who, after welcoming Parker with a hug, gave Morris a stack of messages, which included the same news that Gilman had given him regarding the police coming up empty on finding any useful surveillance video. As he had expected, more calls had come in to the hotline overnight, and Morris spent an hour calling these people back. One of them was a psychic who claimed she had a suspicious client the other day.

“He gave me a fake name. He told me his name is Howard, but his real name is Henry.”

“What’s his last name?” Morris asked.

“Forty-one, but I’m told I look younger.”

Morris started to draw a line through her name, but stopped halfway and asked whether the man had threatened her.

“No, not exactly.”

“What do you mean not exactly?”

“He didn’t do anything that a typical bystander would think was threatening, but I found his psychic energy extremely threatening. There was a lot of disturbing violence in it.”

Morris heard Parker let out a soft moan, and looked down to see the dog stretching as he lay on his side by Morris’s feet. “Did he say anything that could be construed in any way as a threat?” he asked.

“No, nothing he said. Only his energy.”

Morris finished drawing the line through her name. None of the other callbacks went any better.

* * *

At eleven o’clock he met Adam Belkins at the parking garage in Santa Monica where Susan Twilitter was murdered. Of the four hotline calls from the other night that had shown a modicum of promise, Morris had crossed out three of them that morning after more detailed questioning, but Belkins might actually have seen SCK while he was lying in wait for Susan Twilitter.

Belkins, a thin man in his late twenties who was dressed sharply in a light gray suit, stood by the pedestrian entrance of the parking garage waiting for Morris, tapping his foot impatiently.

“I was in a rush yesterday when I saw someone kneeling by a car,” he said after he exchanged greetings with Morris, gave Stonehedge a nod as if he recognized him but couldn’t quite place where he knew him from, and noted that Parker looked like one cool dog. “I thought he was checking one of his tires and didn’t think anything more of it until I saw you on the news last night. I wish I had gotten a better look at him.”

Morris had him take them to the location where he had spotted this mystery man, and it was where Susan Twilitter’s car had been parked. Stonehedge volunteered to kneel by the car that was currently parked in that spot, and Belkins positioned the actor so that he was in the same spot and bent down as much as the man Belkins had seen. Once that was done, Belkins moved to where he was standing when he had spotted this mystery man, which was sixty feet away.

“I had just come up that staircase,” Belkins said, nodding to a staircase to his left. “My car was parked in that empty spot next to where those two vans are now. For some reason I looked over my shoulder, and that was when I saw him. It was just a quick glance, and it barely registered. Again, I thought it was just someone checking a tire.”

From where Belkins was standing, he wouldn’t have been able to see much of SCK while he hid behind Susan Twilitter’s car, especially if it had been just a quick look. All Morris could see of Stonehedge was the top of his head and the outline of his shoulders. Still, he asked Belkins to describe the man he had seen.

Belkins shook his head. “I don’t think I can.”

“Any impressions?”

Belkins considered this for a moment. “He was big. Wide. And a round head. Like a pumpkin.”

“Color hair?”

Belkins shook his head. He squeezed his eyes tight as he tried to remember more about the fleeting glance he had seen. “Hard to say. Maybe light brown? I think he had a bald spot.”

“His race?”

“White. I’m pretty sure of that.”

“What was he wearing?”

“That would be a wild guess at best. His shirt might’ve been dark blue. Or maybe gray. Possibly a polo shirt. Or a golf shirt. Again, I’m just guessing here.” Belkins made a disgusted face. “It never occurred to me that he was hiding there. I really thought he was just checking his car.”

That seemed to be all that Morris was going to get out of Belkins, and he thanked him for coming forward.

“I just wish I could’ve told you more.”

“It’s a lot more than we had.”

“Yeah, maybe, but it’s awful thinking what he did to that woman here. And to those other people also. I wish I’d been more on the ball and realized what was going on. Maybe if I had been, I could’ve stopped him from killing that woman.”

Morris didn’t say what was obvious to him. That if Belkins had tried approaching SCK he’d probably be dead now also.

After leaving Belkins, Morris, Parker, and Stonehedge walked the four blocks to Stephanie’s Café. As Morris expected, Parker was a big hit among the waitresses working there. When he showed them photos of Gail Hawes and Susan Twilitter, two of the waitresses remembered seeing Hawes two days earlier, but none of them could recall seeing Twilitter.

“We should split up,” Stonehedge suggested to Morris. “If you give me one of Susan Twilitter’s photos, I’ll take the blocks south of here and show it around to the bars and restaurants and see if she ate at any of them with SCK two days ago.”

Morris agreed that made sense, and he gave the actor one of the photos he had brought of Twilitter. Twenty minutes later he got a call from Stonehedge.

“I found the place where they ate,” Stonehedge said. He gave Morris the address, telling him it was on the same block as the parking garage.

“Don’t question anyone any further,” Morris said.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be waiting outside the place for you, and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

Parker gave a little yelp as he sensed Morris’s excitement, and happily sped up his gait to keep pace with Morris’s half jog. Stonehedge was waiting where he said he would, a hard grin etched on his face as he leaned against the outside of the restaurant.

“A waitress recognized Twilitter’s picture right away. She started to volunteer more information, but I asked her to wait until you got here.”

“What kind of information?”

“That she was here with someone.”

Morris nodded. “You did good,” he said. “I might make an investigator out of you yet.”

“I almost wouldn’t mind that. It’s more honest work than I’ve been doing,” Stonehedge said, his grin tightening. He led the way into the restaurant, which was really more of a dark, dingy bar with some tables up front and booths in the back for more privacy. It was a place for people having an affair who didn’t want to be seen, and even though it was at the height of the lunch hour the restaurant was mostly empty.

Only one waitress was working then; a young, slight girl, very pretty even with all the piercings and her hair dyed an unnatural bright red. She’d been biting her bottom lip in a nervous way when she first saw Morris and Stonehedge approaching, but when she caught sight of Parker her mouth relaxed into an easy smile, and she scratched Parker behind the ear.

“I love these types of dogs,” she said to Morris. Her expression became more worried again. “That picture I was shown, was that the same woman who was killed in the parking garage yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. I saw something about it on TV, but I wasn’t paying close enough attention. I didn’t recognize her until your partner showed me that picture.”

She gave Stonehedge a more thoughtful look. “You remind me of someone, and I couldn’t think of who it was until just now. That actor. Philip Stonehedge.”

“A good-looking guy,” Stonehedge volunteered.

“Dreamy,” the waitress agreed.

“A damn good actor also.”

The waitress made a face at that. “Nah, he’s a ham, but I still wouldn’t kick him out of my bed.”

“Hmm,” Stonehedge murmured.

“You told my associate that Ms. Twilitter was eating here with someone?” Morris said, steering the conversation back to the reason they were there.

The waitress gave Morris a blank look.

“The woman in the photo,” he said.

“Yeah. I remembered her right away when I saw her picture. She came in by herself and took one of the booths in the back. She looked worried, like she was afraid she was going to be stood up, but she ordered for both herself and the person she was waiting for. A salad for herself and a cheeseburger for her friend.”

“And the guy showed up?”

“I’m pretty sure he did, although I never saw him. If it was a he. She was alone when I took the order and brought the food. Same when I brought over the check. She also left by herself. But both the cheeseburger and salad were eaten, and both drinks were empty, and on her way out I asked if her date ever showed. She didn’t say anything, but the way she smiled at me, I think he or she must’ve shown up.”

“You didn’t go by the table to see if they wanted anything?”

“She told me not to. That they wanted their privacy. So I only came over to give her the check when she waved for it.”

“Strange,” Stonehedge said.

“Yeah, I know,” the waitress agreed. “That’s what I thought. But it happens sometimes.”

“Where do you think he went when you brought over the check?” Morris asked.

The waitress shrugged. “If it was a he, the men’s room. If it was a she, ladies’ room.”

“How was the bill paid?”

“Cash. She handed me thirty dollars when I came over with the check, and told me to keep the change, which ended up being a nice tip. Almost ten dollars.”

“Did you see a large man walk in after you brought the food over? Wide body? Round head like a pumpkin?”

She thought about that and shook her head. “If he did come in, I missed him. He could’ve come in through the back door. If he did, I wouldn’t have seen him.”

“Any other waitresses working then?”

“No, just me. I was handling both front and back, and that woman was the only one sitting in the back. Rudy was working the bar. He might’ve seen this guy. He’s got the day off, but I can get you his cell number.”

A woman at one of the front tables had stood up and was giving the waitress an annoyed, impatient look. The waitress smiled apologetically at Morris and told him that she needed to get back to work.

“There’s really nothing else I can tell you. I’ll get you Rudy’s number right after I take care of Queen Bee over there.”

She gave Parker one more scratch behind his ear and walked away.