Body Copy - Michael Craven [11]
And he ran.
Not toward the street but deeper into the alley behind the row of houses. He reached the street on the other end of the block, went right onto the sidewalk, and walked, back in the shadows again, to his car.
Driving home, windows down, cool beach air in his face, he thought about Nina. That’s what she left out at the trailer.
That’s what the pause was about, the look in her eye. This 31
Michael Craven
was the other reason she was looking into Roger Gale’s murder. She needs to do something good. She needs some answers that make sense. She needs to reconnect with her family in some way.
She needs to reconnect with her life.
Tremaine thinking, and I suspected her of something less real, something less innocent. I suspected her of maybe having some impure reason to look into this killing.
Then he thought, remember Jeff Creswell. I’m a P.I., for fuck’s sake, and that’s what I do. I suspect people of stuff that’s less innocent.
Now back on the PCH, heading north to Malibu, Tremaine thought about what Nina was doing right now. He knew what she was doing right now. She was looking at the sliding glass door, thinking, I can’t believe I left that open; anybody could have just waltzed in here. He would never hear about it, he knew that too. She’d never know he’d been there. But the most important thing that Tremaine knew was that he didn’t feel Nina was hiding something, and he was looking forward to helping her out.
32
C H A P T E R 6
The next day, a big packet arrived via messenger from the LAPD, from Lopez. Tremaine emptied the contents onto his desk, leafed through them, and took out the specific things he wanted to look at. Then he went up on the roof.
Sunny and nice again. Shocker. Southern California could be like Groundhog Day. Tremaine knew he shouldn’t complain, but every now and then a little rain or something would be nice. A drop or two. Jesus, Marvin could come over and spray him with a hose and it would be a nice change.
Tremaine took off his shirt and lit up a smoke and suddenly he was glad again that it was warm and lovely. Tremaine didn’t smoke a lot, but when he was just starting to Michael Craven
think about a case, a smoke was nice. And when he was driving, a smoke was nice then, too. And after surfing, they weren’t bad either . . .
Tremaine looked at the police reports he’d brought to the roof. They included everything from autopsy information to statements from people interviewed about the murder to crime scene information to notes from police detectives. John Lopez, good man.
Tremaine began by reading the specifics of the murder.
Just over a year ago, Roger Gale was found dead at approximately 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning; however, the time of death was estimated at approximately 12:30 a.m., much earlier that morning. Gale was found by an employee of Gale/Parker named Mary O’Shaughnessy, who had come in to work that morning. A go-getter, Tremaine thought—
6:30 on a Saturday. According to Mary, Roger Gale was sitting upright at his desk with his eyes open, then, out of nowhere, he slammed down onto his glass desk. She wit-nessed this fall.
She’s quoted in the report as saying, “I was looking in his office at him, wondering if he was in some sort of creative trance. Then, he just slammed down onto his desk.”
This fall cut his head and certainly added drama to the situation, but it had nothing to do with why he died. No, when he was killed some six hours prior to his being discovered, he’d suffered another blow to the head. But the thing that killed him? Asphyxiation. The conjecture in the report was that the blow to the head knocked him out, then the murderer calmly and easily plugged up the old air holes.
Roger Gale, Tremaine read in numerous statements, 34
B O D Y C O P Y
had definitely left the office the Friday night before he was found. So he had either returned and been killed in the office, or he had been killed elsewhere and deposited