"Some of them."
"Heck, a man who saved a cop, I guess I can tell you-just don't put this in your article." Brimley leaned closer, his forehead shiny with sweat. "I wasn't on my way home that night. Not directly, anyway. I lived clear on the other side of town in those days, but I used to swing by here first just about every day." He bit into a chocolate doughnut. "It was the Kreamy Krullers. Good, aren't they? Well, the store on Hermosa Avenue was the only one in the area in those days, and I was hooked on the butternut eclairs. Used to grab a half dozen after work, and by the time I got home there wasn't more than one or two left." He patted his ample belly. "Can you imagine the fun people would have had with that if the papers had found out? Cops and doughnut shops-Jay Leno would have been making jokes at my expense for a month."
"That's what you were doing here that night?"
Brimley drew a forefinger to his lips. "Shhhhhhh."
Jimmy felt the ache draining from his shoulder blades. He hadn't realized how tense he was until Brimley's doughnut confession, the explanation offered up without being asked. It was almost always a mistake to like a potential suspect, to want to believe them. He was still glad that Brimley had offered up a rationale for his behavior- and not to make himself look good but to avoid looking foolish.
"What is it, Jimmy?"
"Nothing. I'm just really glad to hear about your love affair with Kreamy Krullers."
Brimley scratched his head. "I'm never going to figure you out."
"If you trust me with that kind of damaging information," said Jimmy, recovering fast, "that means you're probably going to let me see your field notes."
"You never quit."
"Never."
Brimley popped the last of the doughnut into his mouth. "I got my notes in the trunk of my car. Just don't gloat." He closed the lid on the box. "That's all for me. You want to come get the notes? I don't know what else there is do out here except sweat."
"Not just yet." Jimmy scanned the beach. "Take a look around. The girls are all in groups, lying around on their blankets, talking, oiling up, and checking out the boys from behind their sunglasses. That sort of thing never changes. So why was Heather different? Why did she come here alone that day?"
"You asked me that on the boat. I told you I didn't know, and neither did her mama. The way you keep asking makes me think you must know the answer."
"No, I just have the question." Jimmy was tempted to tell Brimley about his conversation with Chase Gooding, tell him about the photographer who cruised teenage beauty contests, and Heather's new agent who hadn't bothered to attend her funeral. He kept quiet though. The good husband wouldn't have killed Heather himself-he would have farmed the job out. Jimmy wondered if the man who had done it had come this way, come in off the beach, a towel draped around his neck. Jimmy took in the whole scene and scanned the shoreline. He wondered how long the man had been out there, imagined him with his nose in a paperback, waiting for the crowd to drift off and the darkness to come. Most of all, he wondered where the man was now.
"You got cop eyes, Jimmy. I mean that as a compliment."
"I take it as a compliment."
"It's a mixed blessing, seeing things clear, noticing what other folks miss." Brimley hunched his broad shoulders, his bare arms burned from the sun. He might love the sun, but the sun didn't love him. "The Heather Grimm homicide was the biggest case of my career, but I wish I had never taken the call. I should have let the uniforms handle it. She was dead already. Wasn't like I did her any good." He shook his head. "Hermosa is a small department, we probably didn't get more than one or two murders a year. I had seen things before, bad things, but nothing like what was in that little house."
Jimmy had only seen photos of the crime scene; they were bad enough.
Brimley shook his head. "I thought it was going to be just another domestic disturbance call. Tell them to keep it down, and I'd go on about my business. Instead, the door opens, and Walsh is standing there holding that stupid gold statue, blood everywhere, everywhere, and lying next to the fireplace-this pretty blond girl with her face caved in. I tried CPR, that's what you're supposed to do, but her teeth were all over the carpet, and the whole time Walsh is crying like he's the one hurt."
"I'm sorry, Sugar."
Brimley's expression hardened. "I'm a gentle person, but it took everything I had that night not to shut him up for good."
"The nine-one-one disturbance call-I haven't been able to get a copy of it."
"I'm not surprised, the way they keep things. Not that it would do you much good anyway. Call came in from the street. Too much traffic noise in the background, if you were hoping to recognize the voice." Brimley started toward the street. "Come on, you can borrow my notes. Maybe they'll do you more good than they did me."
Jimmy kept pace with him as they slogged through the soft sand.
"I think you were pulling my leg back on my boat," said Brimley. "I asked how you found out where I lived, and you said you just handed the job off to someone else, but I bet you didn't. You're a bird dog, that's what you are." He walked slower now, the two of them side by side. "I've known a few cops who were the same way. We'd get a heads-up on a skinny hooker or a car prowler with braids, some description that would fit half of L.A., but by the end of the shift, the bird dog would drag in the bust, acting like it was no big deal. Never could figure out how they did it. Instinct like that-it's a gift."
Jimmy kept walking.
"Me, I never had a gift," said Brimley, a little out of breath now. "I always said the only reason they made me a detective was because I didn't have enough street smarts to stay in uniform. Even so, once I had the bad guys in custody, well, they'd tell me what I needed to know, without me ever having to get nasty in a back room. I hate that rough stuff, smacking a man with a phone book or planting a knee in his privates. That's not police work. Me, I'd settle back in my chair and break out a candy bar, a Baby Ruth maybe or a Butterfingers, and I'd take a nibble, looking across the table at the bad guy. Then suddenly I'd catch myself, apologize for my poor manners, and offer him a bite. Heck, couple of candy bars later, we'd be old friends, and the hardest con would tell me anything I wanted to know."
Jimmy wanted to laugh. The rap was total bullshit. He had seen the look that crossed Brimley's face when he thought no one was looking. Brimley's gift was that he was the good cop and the bad cop all in one, a terrifying combination. No wonder suspects were quick to spill their secrets. Jimmy was just glad he didn't have anything that Brimley wanted.
Chapter 31
"Happy now?" Sugar didn't introduce himself. Old buddies like the two of them didn't need introductions.
Silence on the line.
"I told you not to do anything, didn't I? Let sleeping dogs lie, that's what I said. Now they're up and yapping."
"Who is this?"
"Yeah, okay, this is a wrong number." Smart. At least the man still had his wits about him. "You didn't do the job on your own, I know that much. You always need help. Now I got this fellah showing up at my place unannounced, asking questions. Somebody else to worry about. Somebody else needs quieting down."
"I didn't do anything."
Sugar looked out across the Pacific, the waves the color of blood. " 'Red sky at morning, sailors take warning, red sky at night, sailor's delight.' The question for you, my old friend, is what time is it? Morning or night?"
"Listen carefully. Please. I didn't do-"
"Morning or night?"
"I didn't do anything. I give you my word."
"It was an accident?" said Sugar. "That's what you're telling me?"
"Accidents-accidents do happen. Some men invite misfortune upon themselves…"