Body Copy - Michael Craven [74]
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The next day, driving toward the Hollywood Hills, toward Dean Latham’s, Tremaine, in his most optimistic daydreaming, was trying to envision situations in which this guy Dean Latham could fit into the Roger Gale case.
Was this the desperate daydreaming of a frustrated P.I., or was Tremaine simply following the leads he had, never ignoring a clue, allowing the tiniest of leads to capture his attention? That’s what good P.I.s did, right? That’s what he’d always done. But it was a fine line. Chase too many bad leads and you’re a fool.
Dean Latham, sure, he could have absolutely no relevance to anything Tremaine was interested in. But what if he was the key, the connection? Could it be that Roger Gale had a drug habit, and Dean Latham and Kelly Burch B O D Y C O P Y
somehow played a part in that? Kelly being into drugs.
Roger Gale being, at the very least, mysterious. The medical examiners didn’t find anything in Roger Gale’s blood during the autopsy, but maybe Roger Gale owed a drug debt from the past. Maybe he’d kicked but never paid off his suppliers. Or maybe Kelly Burch and Dean Latham were somehow connected to the karate place. The karate place where Gale may or may not have enjoyed a sex show.
Jesus, Tremaine thought, who knows? It could be anything or nothing. The more Tremaine thought about it, the closer he came to actually confronting Dean Latham, the less likely it seemed. His mind just kept going back to the most sensible possibility. The one that Lopez had ribbed him about. That he was chasing a bunk hunch.
Tremaine was cruising down Santa Monica, just looking around at the buzz of Hollywood on the weekend, when his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number but didn’t worry about it, either. He just picked up the phone and said, “Tremaine.”
“It’s Vicky Fong.”
“Hi, Vicky. What’s up?”
“You know how I was saying I needed to clean up that storage room a little? The one where all the boxes were?”
“Yeah,” Tremaine said. “But I gotta be honest, I didn’t think it looked too bad.”
“Oh, yes it did. But that’s not why I’m calling.”
Both Tremaine and Vicky knew that’s not why she was calling, but neither one of them acknowledged that fact.
It was a segue to something else, just a piece of innocuous conversation.
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“I found something when I was cleaning up. I think you should come over and see.”
“I’m actually near your apartment,” Tremaine said. “I’ll be right there.”
Vicky was waiting for Tremaine, the door to her building already open when he pulled up. He got out of his car, walked into the building, then into her apartment.
Vicky stood in her living room anticipating his arrival, like before, but this time she held an envelope in her hand.
She said, “Hi, Donald.”
“Hi, Vicky.”
“I found this when I was straightening up. There was an old guitar case in there, I guess it was Kelly’s. It’s just been sitting in there and I thought it belonged to one of the other tenants, but I wanted to check. So, I opened it up and took out the guitar. And behind it was this envelope, just loose in there.”
She handed it to Tremaine. Just like before with the box, he went in the adjoining kitchen and sat down at the table.
He opened up the envelope and inside it there were two letters. Tremaine pulled them out, splayed them out on the table, and looked at them. Both typed. And both with the same signature, in blue pen, at the bottom.
I love you, Dean, they both were signed.
Tremaine read the letters.
After no more than two sentences, Tremaine realized they were what he figured they were: love letters to Kelly.
They were intense, well written, and overtly sexual. Riddled, in fact, with references to sex, and the incredible, intense sex between the two of them. But there was a sweetness to the letters, too—Dean saying he truly loved her, that they’d be 234
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together one day, that he felt, looking at her across a table at a crowded restaurant, that he was