'She'll be back later.'
'Thanks,' I said, and watched as she left. Then I hefted Agent Orange's Motor City Monster up onto my lap and thumbed it open to the contents page.
Chapter one was entitled: 'Growing Up to Kill Social Environments and Formative Years.'
I turned the page and began to read.
Chapter 42
Alexa arrived at a little past five that afternoon. The sun was already down as she walked into my hospital room and kissed me on the lips, letting the moment linger before pulling me close and gingerly hugging me. Then she looked over and saw Judd Underwood's book on the nightstand.
'You're reading this?' She seemed surprised as she picked it up.
'Just finished it,' I said.
She thumbed through a few pages before setting it back down.
'I thought you said he was a jerk.'
'Actually, there's a lot of good stuff in there.'
She settled in the chair beside the bed and took my hand. 'Okay, let's hear it. Something's on your mind.' I took a moment to gather my thoughts. 'I need to know what's going on with Zack,' I said.
'Nothing. He's in the wind. Of course, after what he did to you he's probably dust on the LAPD. We could file on him for assault with attempt to commit and battery against a police officer, but for that to stick, you'd have to be willing to press charges and testify. Knowing you, I'm guessing you won't.'
I nodded my head.
'So that train probably doesn't get out of the station,' she said. 'It'll still have to go to the Bureau of Professional Standards. But so far, all we've got is a psychologically distressed cop who went momentarily nuts, knocked you in the head, and split. Since he was legally committed here by his wife, there's some monetary and civil complaint issues, but that's it.'
I nodded. I was reluctant to get started because once I did there was probably no turning back. She sensed my hesitancy and pressed me gently.
'Where Zack went isn't what's bothering you. I can't help if you won't tell me.'
'Some of this is theory, some just guesswork. So if you go proactive on me before I get this completely straight in my mind, then there's a good chance it's going to ruin what's left of Zack's life, 'cause I could be completely wrong.'
'Shane, stop dodging. What is it?'
'Okay, but you won't like it.'
She let go of my hand to pull an LAPD detective's notebook out of her purse.
'It starts with an old open homicide that Zack was working before we partnered,' I began. 'We agreed to handle all of our prior cases separately, but he told me about this open murder case the first week we teamed up.
Alexa started making notes.
'The victim was a woman named Arden Rolaine. She was clubbed to death with a brass candlestick in her house in Van Nuys back on June third of this year. Zack and Van Kelsey caught. The squeal. The one-eightyseven was sent to our division because she used to be in a singing group called The Lamp Street Singers, and it got classified as a celebrity homicide.'
'Let me jump ahead,' Alexa said. 'You're about to tell me Arden and Vaughn Rolaine were related.' Writing it down as she said it.
'Brother and sister.' I took another deep breath. 'Arden had some substantial money saved up from her music career, but Zack and Van never found any of it after she died.'
'And you think it was under her mattress or buried in a fruit jar in the backyard. The doer beat it out of her, dug it up, and took it.'
'Yes. Zack's prime suspect in that murder was Arden's brother Vaughn. He was homeless, but was always coming around and mooching money from his sister. Finally, she got tired of it and told him to buzz off. Zack's theory was Vaughn got pissed and came back in early June to burgle her place. She surprised him. He smacked her around, got her to give up the dough, and then put her down with the candlestick.'
'Pretty straightforward,' Alexa said.
'What's troubling me is how Vaughn Rolaine could be the prime suspect in one of Zack's murders last June, and then turn up as the first dead body on the Fingertip case this December.'
'A little coincidental, isn't it?'
'Yeah, but not impossible, I guess.'
She nodded and finished writing that down.
'The Arden Rolaine murder book is a mess,' I continued. 'Zack didn't organize anything. Maybe because by then the spark was out and he'd stopped trying, or maybe it was all unfiled because he never planned on solving it. I was going through the binder, getting it in shape before giving it to Underwood and I came across this margin notation: 'Re-interview VR, on timeline for June third.' Zack told me he never spoke to Vaughn Rolaine. Couldn't find him. They never met.'
'Then how could he be re-interviewed?'
'He couldn't. Just before he jumped me, I asked Zack if it was his casebook shorthand for something else, like Victim's Relative. He couldn't remember at first, then changed his mind and told me that, on second thought, that's what it stood for.' I waited for her to finish writing and look up. 'How long you been a cop?' I asked.
'Seventeen years.'
'If you use shorthand in case notes, you think you'd ever forget what your abbreviations stood for?'
She shook her head.
'Me neither. So if VR doesn't stand for victim's relative, then it probably stands for Vaughn Rolaine, and that means Zack talked to him once before and was lying to me. Zack said he couldn't find Vaughn because he moved around a lot. But the homeless people we talked to in Sherman Oaks Park two days ago, said he was a fixture down there. So which is it?'
'Where's this going?' She stopped writing.
'I don't have a shred of evidence for this. It's all total speculation, but I keep wondering if it's possible that Zack was the one who killed Vaughn Rolaine. It's the only construct I can come up with where all of these coincidences line up and make sense.'
'What's his motive?'
'The missing money. Arden's recording industry dough. His case notes say he and Van couldn't find it in any bank accounts of hers, no safety deposit boxes. According to Zack's theory, Vaughn forced his sister to tell him where it was before he killed her. So if her little brother found it and took off with it, then maybe Vaughn buried it in the park somewhere.'
'And you think Zack waited four or five months until Arden Rolaine's case cooled down and then went after it.'
'His divorce probably helped determine the timetable, but yeah, that's what I'm wondering. Zack goes to the park, drags Vaughn up into the foothills, stuffs a rag in his mouth and clips off the guy's fingers to get him to talk, ends up killing him. Zack's a cop. He'd know clipping off the fingertips and moving the body to the L. A. River would bitch up our investigation. With no fingerprints, there'd be nothing connecting him to the case, 'cause we'd never ID the body. And we almost didn't.'
Alexa blew out a long breath. 'If your theory has him catching the Vaughn Rolaine murder himself so he could control the spin on the investigation, then the big question is how did he set it up so you two would get the case?'
'The night we found the body in the L. A. River was a Friday. That previous afternoon, Zack and I moved to the top of the murder board. We knew we'd get the next one-eighty-seven. We even went home early to get some
