Our destination was a house on Carmelina Avenue in Brentwood. Actually, calling it a house was a little like calling Moby Dick a fish. It was a big, sprawling affair, set far back on the lot and separated from the street by a stone fence and foliage and palm trees and, from what I could see of it standing beside Brueghel’s Crown Vic, a lush garden.
It was just a few blocks away from O. J. Simpson’s old place, a connection brought to mind by the scene before me. That would be Roger Charbonnet, hands cuffed behind his back, being perp-walked from his home by Detective Mizzy Campbell and two uniformed cops. They hurried him past the arriving media mob and his grim-faced neighbors to one of several parked police vehicles.
Brueghel stood off to one side, obviously enjoying the moment. Then he strolled back to where he’d insisted I remain, beside his car. “Better twenty-three years late than never,” he said.
The detective was speaking in a normal tone, and, with the press shouting questions and the general hubbub, I doubted Roger could have heard him. But he turned his head suddenly in our direction and saw me.
He glared, did that flaring-nostril thing, and stood otherwise frozen until one of the cops used a head push to coax him into the patrol car. He sat in an awkward position, with his manacled hands behind him, as the cop slammed the door. He continued to stare at me through the side window until the vehicle drove away.
“Time to roll, Blessing,” Brueghel said, as the gentlemen and ladies of the press, having lost their main attraction, began to fan out in search of someone of lesser interest to harass.
He backed the Crown Vic away from the approaching horde, made another of his famous U-turns, and took off down the avenue.
“Media got here pretty fast,” I said.
“Sometimes they fill a need,” he said. “Especially when there are certain scenes you want captured. So you can cherish them forever.”
He made a few turns until we were headed back in the direction of Hollywood.
“Were you expecting an arrest today?” I asked.
“No. But sometimes you get lucky. Or maybe God provides the luck.”
“What exactly did He provide?”
“In this case, I’d say it was a combination of arrogance and overconfidence. Maybe Charbonnet didn’t think we could get a search warrant so quickly. Or maybe he assumed we were so stupid we’d ignore all the crap he had in his garden shed out back.”
“What did they find?”
Brueghel gave me a sharp look. “You’re an okay guy, Blessing. But you are a member of the tribe.”
I blinked, not certain I’d heard him correctly. “Say what?”
“The tribe,” he repeated. “The media.”
“Oh.”
“If the chief wants you guys to know the details of Charbonnet’s arrest, he’ll hold a press conference.”
“ ‘You guys’? Do I look like Brian Williams to you? Maybe Woodward or Bernstein? I’m asking you not as a member of the tribe. I’m the guy Charbonnet tried to light up, remember?”
He nodded. “Hell, I don’t suppose it’s gonna be any big secret, anyway. They found the materials used to make the bomb in Charbonnet’s shed.”
“Nothing so hard-core. An empty container that smelled of bleach, distilled water, imitation salt, and camp-stove gasoline.”
“How do you make a bomb out of that?”
“Well, you need a container, a scale, a battery hydrometer, all of which were in the shed,” Brueghel said.
“Okay. You get all that stuff, then what?”
“Then you punch up any one of a couple dozen websites that tell you how to make the bomb.”
“How difficult is it?”
“I’d say if you can cook a soufflé, making a plastic explosive from bleach should be a breeze.”
“And these materials were still on his property?” I asked. “After your visit last night?”
“Like I said, arrogance. Probably figured we’d think they were just household items. In any case, he screwed the pooch and left them there long enough for us to find ’em. And the DA told Mizzy to bring him in.”
Roger was arrogant, yes, but stupid? Or careless? For that matter, was he enough of a nutburger to mix up a bomb, put on a ninja suit, and sneak into a theater with it, just to get rid of yours truly? Well, maybe. In any case, the idea of him being behind bars certainly appealed to me. And when the detective deposited me at the parking lot next to the renamed but now boarded-up Di Voss Theater on Fountain, I was feeling almost upbeat about extending my L.A. stay.
“You’re sticking around awhile, right, Blessing?” Brueghel asked from the car. Reading my mind, apparently.
“A couple of weeks,” I said. “Why?”
“The DA assigned the case may want a sit-down with you,” Brueghel said. “You’ll have to come back for the trial, too, of course. But that could be as long as a year from now.”
Brueghel’s eyes seemed to lose focus, and he mumbled, mainly to himself, “Charbonnet’s going to have a lot of time to think about his sins. To sit in his tiny cell, where he’ll be visited by Tiffany and Des O’Day and who knows how many of the departed he’s wronged over the years.”
The detective was creeping me out a little. “I’ll be at the trial,” I told him, backing away. “Thanks for the lift.”
“Justice demands you be there, Blessing,” he said, focused on me again. “You understand what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t question me on it.
“In addition to what you can tell the jury about your run-in with Charbonnet a few weeks ago, I expect the prosecutor will use your testimony to try and introduce information about the Tiffany Arden murder. Specifically, that Charbonnet’s alibi was bogus.”
“His lawyer won’t object?”
“Once the truth is said, he can object all he wants. The jury will have heard.”
“Good point,” I said, backing away farther.
“Tiffany Arden will be in that courtroom, you know, just as she has been with me for twenty-three years.” He was drifting away again. “She and all the other victims whose killers have never been made to pay for their crimes. In my dreams they circle around me like a whirlpool, dragging me down …”
He shook his head suddenly. If the motion had been an attempt to clear his mind, it didn’t quite work. “Remember, Blessing, Tiffany is still here with us. With me. And, I think, with Charbonnet. And none of us will be free until he joins the six-four-eight.”
“I don’t know what that means, the six-four-eight,” I said.
“The six hundred and forty-eight prisoners on death row in the state,” Brueghel said.
He put the Crown Vic in drive and roared away, leaving a three-foot-long trail of rubber on the asphalt.
An interesting guy, the detective. An honorable cop. A dedicated and dogged cop. But when the Good Lord was serving the entrées for a sane and happy life, Brueghel must have wandered off the buffet line to search for clues.