San Diego Noir

The guy’s torment was palpable. He sounded like a man struggling to convince himself that he wasn’t somehow at fault for his sister’s death. Or like a man who was flat-out guilty.

“So you believe she killed herself,” I said, rephrasing my earlier question.

“I guess so. I mean, she had a hard life.”

He paused and looked away, a stoic expression on his face. But the emotions roiling inside him were broadcasting loud and clear to my solar plexus. Beneath Joe’s guilt, I sensed a mother lode of unexpressed grief.

“The police said all the evidence pointed to suicide,” he said at last.

Living on the street—or in Wendy’s case, the beach—carried certain risks, particularly for a substance abuser.

“Any possibility she got into trouble over a drug debt?” I asked.

“No. Wendy refused to put drugs in her system, including antidepressants. The irony is, if she’d been open to drugs, she’d probably be alive today.”

“So I take it there was a lot of despair in the note she left.”

“Note?”

“Detective Baxter told me she left a suicide note.”

“Oh, that. It wasn’t a note, really. More like a diary entry.” He went into the back of the house and came out with a dogeared journal. He flipped through the pages and handed the open book to me. “This is it,” he said.

The entry was written in a slanting, uneven hand:

I guess the years and escapades have finally done me in. I’m sorry I’m letting so many people down. People who love me. But I don’t love myself anymore, so what’s the use? Going down, down, down …

“Down, down, down,” I read.

“That’s the part the police picked up on,” he said.

“She doesn’t come right out and say she’s killing herself, though.”

“Not in so many words, but—”

We were interrupted by a banging noise coming from the back of the house.

“That’s Tiny,” he said. “She wants in.”

I followed Joe into the kitchen. Outside, an enormous gray pig on tiny cloven hooves stared through the sliding glass door, impatiently switching her tail. This was no pot-bellied piglet. Tiny weighed a hundred pounds if she weighed an ounce. Much of her mass hung in flabby folds from her neck and belly. She jammed her flat, round snout against the glass and kicked the door with a foreleg.

Bang.

“All right, all right, just a second.” Joe slid the door open. With surprising grace, the pig trotted right up to me. She plopped her fat bottom on the floor like a dog and looked longingly into my face.

“She wants to be petted,” he said.

“I see.” I scratched Tiny’s ears and she blinked thoughtfully. Scientists say that pigs are the fourth smartest creature on the planet, behind humans, apes, and dolphins. This pig had more going on behind her eyes than a lot of people I knew. “What a charmer,” I said.

“Isn’t she? I think having to give up Tiny was the final straw for Wendy. This pig was her soul mate.”

“Did she have to give Tiny up? I thought she left the pig with you voluntarily, because she was planning to take her life. Tying up loose ends and all.”

“Not exactly. People were complaining to the city about Tiny. Wendy was forced to give her to me.”

That put a slightly different spin on the matter.

“Did she ever mention who was making the complaints?” I asked.

“No. I don’t think she ever knew who made them.”

Watch enough TV and you’ll think that murder motives must be dark and deep. Hang out with cops and you’ll discover that many murders are utterly stupid, with motives so lame officers are ashamed to write them into their reports. The man who killed his brother fighting over whether the angel or the star went on top of the Christmas tree is a classic example. The guy who shoots the neighbor whose dog won’t stop barking is commonplace. With that in mind, the following morning I went to the city’s code compliance department to see who had made the complaints against Tiny.

Reports filed with the animal control department are available to the public. Unfortunately, the names, addresses, and phone numbers of those who complain are confidential information. I got around that by asking to see the inspector in charge, Helen Drood. A grim-faced woman, Ms. Drood didn’t strike me as an animal lover, or a lover of much of anything. I explained that I was an investigator working with Detective Baxter on the Woskowicz case—it was almost the truth—and that I was looking into complaints made about the victim’s pet pig.

“Woskowicz. That’s the woman who drowned in La Jolla Cove, right?” She said it almost cheerfully.

“Yeah. Do you know if Ms. Woskowicz ever received copies of those complaints?”

“Yes, eventually she did. Ordinarily, we send a copy of the letter to the complainant and mail the original to the party being accused of a code violation. But in the Woskowicz case, we didn’t have a deliverable address.”