Wednesday night.”
Mike saw me grimace.
“That’s okay, blondie. Keep this up and I’ll have enough overtime next year to get you one of your own.” He only said it to rattle Luther a bit more, but it didn’t help me either, underscoring the additional brutality of an autopsy to the already ugly fact of Isabella’s murder.
“No book, though,” Wally added.
Luther’s pad was out again as he wrote my description of Isabella’s book.
“It was always in her pocketbook or tote. If that’s gone, I’d suggest that your killer had enough fortitude to reach into the bloody car and remove it. That’s my guess.”
When he finished writing, Luther asked me to join him in the kitchen to answer a few questions about Isabella.
“Wally, why don’t you take Mike out and show him around while we’re talking here,” I suggested.
“Finest kind, Alex. Love to do it. Let’s go, Kojak,” Wally chuckled, as he led Mike out the side door and Luther and I sat down at the kitchen tab leto dissect what I knew of Isabella’s life.
Special Agent Luther Waldron was out to show me just how thorough a federal investigation could be, even though it was pretty clear to the rest of us that he didn’t actually have jurisdiction over the murder of Isabella Lascar. He wanted to know the entire history of our relationship and all of the details of our recent conversations, despite the fact that I had gone over that with Mike Chapman the day before.
Had I been anything less than cooperative, Waldron’s boss would have been on the phone to the District Attorney and I would be forced to waste the rest of my weekend doing this again.
“I don’t mean to suggest anything negative by my question, Alex, but why do you supervise the stalking cases that come into the office? They’re not really sex offenses.”
“No, Luther, they’re not. Back when Battaglia asked me to take over the Sex Crimes Unit, he used to joke that my professional territory was everything between the knees and the neck. That covered most of what I did. But with the increase in stalking cases and harassment that all of us in law enforcement began to see in the late eighties by phone, by mail, by computer, and by physical menacing we didn’t know what to do with them. Once the psychiatric experts started to work with us it was obvious that a lot of the cases involved domestic relationships that had broken up and lovers who had been jilted, so the D. A. thought our unit was a natural home for many of them. They’re usually crimes with complex motivations and victims who need especially sensitive treatment. In that sense, they’re very much like sex offenses.”
Stalking cases are really an odd variety of criminal behavior, which Waldron knew every bit as well as I did. Most states, like New York, don’t even have a law that proscribes the conduct there is no penal code provision that specifically outlaws what most of us think of as stalking, no crime on the books with that name.
We struggle to prosecute under a broad range of petty violations when the bad guy makes harassing phone calls or mails threatening letters. But the risks are enormous between that sort of action when not punished and the enraged lover who tires of his calls and entreaties being ignored by his subject, and waits outside her office building with a gun in his hand. Not a week goes by when I don’t have several of these pending, with women desperately fearful as they tell me about their estranged husbands standing outside their offices or apartments every day, watching their movements. They plead with me, each of them wanting to know the same thing: if that conduct is a violation of their orders of protection. Can’t he be rearrested?
No, I respond, it rarely is legal cause for rearrest, no matter how sympathetic the prosecutor or cop. Lurking and watching and following seem to have no sanction in the courts, and yet the stalker’s next move often escalates to a deadly one. You can keep the harasser a certain number of feet away from the victim’s front door, order him not to enter her workplace, and demand that his calls and letters cease, but once she’s an open target walking in a public space or street or subway, the thin sheet of paper handed to her by a judge as an order of the court is as worthless as Confederate currency. The criminal justice system is far more capable of dealing with murder than with harassment, though the line that divides them is often deceptively slim.
“Tell me what you know about Miss Lascar’s latest threats.”
“Well, that’s just it, Luther,” I said sheepishly. “I’m afraid I didn’t ask her much about them I thought they were mostly an excuse to ask me to use the house and to come up here for some privacy.”
He frowned and I knew he was telling himself how unprofessional of me that had been. He was right.
“She told me that she had gotten some messages at the hotel and even some callers who got through the operator, but then hung up on her. She didn’t save any of the slips of paper. Isabella attracted attention wherever she went, Luther, and she was used to dealing with it. She did tell me she was annoyed about a shrink her words and some letters she had gotten. I don’t know if it was her psychiatrist or just someone she met who happened to be a shrink.”
“Yeah, we had that information yesterday. Her agent’s getting the information on all her doctors for us. She’s been through six or seven therapists in the last few years. And we’ve got the agent and the cousin taking the LAPD through her house on Sunday – the funeral’s tomorrow…“
“Yes, I know.”
“They’ll be looking for that correspondence plus notes, love letters, business deals. Perhaps we’ll fax you copies of any papers that might be connected to things she talked to you about – you can tell us if they relate to the problems she discussed with you.”
“Of course, anything I can do.”
“Have you ever met her ex-husband, Richard Burrell?”
“No, no I never met him. She had told me a lot about him, and Nina Baum our mutual friend knew him quite well.” I waited to see where Luther was going with this before I offered the information that Isabella and Nina had gossiped about so freely when we first met.
“They’d been divorced for some time, I understand.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we’re giving him a close look, Alex. The reason she went to Boston was to meet with him last Saturday.”
“What?” That information really came as a surprise to me. Richard Burrell had produced a few of Isabella’s first movie projects and she had eloped with him one weekend when she was still an unknown. He had been a big deal in the business once, but just as she started to emerge, his cocaine problem engulfed him and cost him most of his money as well as his short-lived marriage. She dropped him instantly, accepting the advice that she would be poison in Hollywood if anyone suspected that she was as deeply into the white powder as Burrell was.
“I’d keep it under your hat, Alex, but it’s a fact. They were both at the Ritz-Carlton last weekend. Separate rooms, arrived and departed at different times but it was a planned meeting. Her agent thinks he’s been trying to reconcile – wanted to meet with her to show her he’s off the coke, clean. He’s been living on one of those small islands off the coast of Maine for the past year, trying to write.”
“You ought to talk to my friend Nina about Richard Burrell. I’ll give you her number. I think Isabella always had a soft spot for him, but reconciliation was out of the question.”
“Did she ever tell you he was violent to her, or abusive? You know, confide in you because of what you do, what your job is?“
”With a couple of drinks she’d have confided in anyone, Luther. Isabella was quite open about her personal life. Much too open. No, she had a lot of complaints about Richard, and how much it cost her to keep him out of trouble, but he never hurt or threatened her. He was wild when he was coked up – vulgar and coarse and unfaithful but he didn’t direct it at her.“
“How about guns? Did she ever mention he had guns?”
“No, not specifically. But when I listened to Isabella and Nina, I used to think that everybody in L.A. had guns. It always seemed so different than New York. Everyone in the Hollywood Hills, in the Valley, in town they all seem to have guns. Not necessarily to carry, but at home or to keep in their cars. Weird. The more upscale they are, the more guns, the more automatics. You know, Luther, when the revolution comes… they’ll be ready.“ I don’t think Luther followed me, but he was probably a gun freak, too.
“Do you have a gun? I mean, a handgun, for protection?”
“Luther, with my temper that would be a real mistake. No, I hate guns.“
“Oh. Well, that’s about all I can think of for now. We’ll be able to pick up some speed on this investigation next week. A lot of the West Coast friends and business associates will be more available to us once the funeral is
