It's Not a Pretty Sight Read online

  Gunner shook his head, said, “She’s not the reason I’m here, no. But I’m curious as to why you would think she might be.”

  Stanhouse shook his own head and said, “It doesn’t matter. I’ve got nothing to say to you. Or her. Not now, not ever.”

  Gunner shrugged. “Okay. Lock your car up and come on, we can ride back up to your office together.”

  Stanhouse just stared at him.

  “You don’t want to talk to me, it’s cool. I’ll talk to Mr. Bowers. Or Mr. Bain. Or Mr. Lyle. One of those fine gentlemen should be able to give me a moment of their time, don’t you think?”

  “I can’t speak for Mr. Bowers. But seeing Mr. Bain or Mr. Lyle would be quite a trick. They’ve both been dead for over ten years now.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. And as for Mr. Bowers, even if he did agree to speak with you, I’m sure he’d only tell you what I’m about to tell you now. Which is that Nina was a very disturbed young woman whose allegations against me were completely false. Not only that, but they were the exact opposite of the truth.”

  “Meaning what? That she harassed you?” Gunner had to grin at the very idea.

  “That’s right. She did,” Stanhouse said.

  Gunner started to laugh.

  “You can laugh if you like. But that’s how it was. It was a classic case of the secretary having a crush on the boss. Only Nina took it too far. When I refused to go to bed with her, she tried to have me fired, claiming I was the one pressuring her for sex. And it might have worked, too, if Mr. Bowers hadn’t known me as well as he does.” He closed his car door, reactivated the alarm, and said, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, that’s all I’ve got to say about the matter. You want to talk to Mr. Bowers about it, you’re welcome to try. But don’t hold your breath.”

  He started forward, intending to march right past Gunner for full dramatic effect, but the investigator held his ground, barring his path.

  “Let me by,” Stanhouse said. He looked like a man who might spontaneously combust if he was forced to talk about Nina another second longer.

  “When we’re done,” Gunner told him.

  Gunner thought the attorney’s first move would be a push of some kind, a hand on his shoulder or in the middle of his chest, but to Stanhouse’s credit, he threw a right hand at Gunner’s left eye instead, getting right down to business. No girlish preliminaries for him. It was a good right hand too: quick and straight and full of bad intent. Gunner had little choice but to admire it as he feinted left, ducking under it, and drove a right hand of his own into the other man’s mid-section, hard, instantly reducing him to a doubled-up non-combatant choking for air.

  “That’s assault,” Stanhouse gasped, falling to his knees.

  “Actually, that’s self-defense,” Gunner said, glancing about briefly to see that they were still all alone on this parking level. “Assault is when I attack you first. Without provocation. You can look it up when you get back upstairs, you don’t believe me.”

  He gave Stanhouse a few more seconds to gather himself, then crouched down to be at eye level with him again and said, “Look. Let’s not get crazy, all right? I brought you down here to talk to you, not ruin your suit. Answer a few questions for me, and I’ll be on my way. You can do that, can’t you?”

  Stanhouse struggled to his feet, slapping away Gunner’s attempts to help him. “I’ve already told you everything you need to know,” he said, brushing himself off. “I didn’t sexually harass anybody. Nina—”

  “I tell you what, Stanhouse. You don’t hand me any more of this shit about Nina being madly in love with you, and I won’t laugh in your face anymore. What do you say?”

  “You don’t think she could have loved me. Is that it?”

  “She could have loved you, sure. Anything is possible. But to the point of obsession? To where it was affecting her work and jeopardizing her employment? Not a chance.”

  “How the hell would you know? You didn’t know her.”

  “Actually, I did. She and I were good friends, once. Very good friends.”

  He’d said it just to see how Stanhouse would take it, this not so subtle implication that he and Nina used to be lovers, and for the most part, he got the results he had thought he might: Stanhouse seemed shaken.

  “But that’s neither here nor there,” he went on. “Who Nina was or wasn’t in love with isn’t nearly as important to me as who killed her, and why. As it must be to you, I’m sure.”

  “Who killed her? What are you, nuts?” Stanhouse asked. “That sonofabitch she was married to killed her. Who else?”

  “That’s exactly what I came here to find out: the who else.”

  “Jesus. You think I did it? Is that what you think?”

  “Well, put yourself in my shoes for a minute. You’re telling me she was a mentally disturbed woman under your direct supervision whose constant sexual advances were making your life a living hell, and whose baseless charges of sexual harassment almost cost you your job. That doesn’t sound like a motive for murder to you?”

  “No!”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No! You’re out of your mind to even suggest such a thing. I could never have hurt Nina. Never!”

  “Because you were in love with her.”

  “No! I mean—” He stopped himself, the words to come catching in his throat like a vulgarity he was not allowed to speak.

  “What do you mean, Mr. Stanhouse?” Gunner asked.

  The attorney shook his head and said, “I’m all through answering questions. You want to talk to me again, you’re going to have to do it with my attorney present. My secretary will be happy to give you his number.”

  He paused a moment to see if Gunner had anything to say about that, then said, “Now—I’m leaving. Same way I came down here. You want to stop me, let’s go.” He waved Gunner forward playfully. “Maybe this time I can fuck your clothes up a little.”

  Gunner had to grin, so impressive was the. other man’s pluck. “Relax, counselor. I’m through with you. For now.” He made a show of stepping aside to grant Stanhouse passage, and Stanhouse took advantage of it, striding slowly past him like a one-man victory parade, chest puffed out and chin held high.

  Gunner didn’t laugh out loud until he was long gone.

  “You got to call this guy Goody,” Mickey said, “before he drives me to an early grave.”

  Gunner had called him from the Tommy’s Original hamburger stand on Beverly and Rampart downtown, where he was eating lunch, right after he’d left a message for Matt Poole out at Southwest. He was fairly certain Poole wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know—what ballistics had determined about the make and model of shotgun that had been used on Nina—but he thought it was worth a try anyway. The one Agnes Felker had been waving around looked like a twelve-gauge Browning. If Nina had been killed with something like that …

  Well, coincidences just didn’t come that big.

  So he gave Poole a call and left a message, then called Mickey afterward, and that was what he heard the minute the barber answered the phone and realized who was calling: “You got to call this guy Goody.”

  “Forget about him. I’ll call him later,” Gunner said. “What about Trini Serrano? She call me back yet?”

  “Yeah, she called. She said she’d be available to see you anytime after one, you wanna come by her place. She gave me the address, in case you didn’t have it. You want it?”

  “No thanks. I’ve got it. Anything else?”

  “Nothin’ except this guy Goody. He’s called this mornin’ twice. First at eight, then eight-thirty, mad as hell ’cause you ain’t called ‘im back yet. I know you say it’s nothin’, man, but it don’t sound like nothin’ to me. Sounds to me like this man’s ass is in some serious trouble, he don’t get ahold of you soon.”

  “Goody always sounds that way,” Gunner said, trying to finish his chiliburger and talk on the phone at the same time.

  “Yeah, well, I’m just tellin
’ you what he sounds like to me. So if somethin’ happens later, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Jesus. The man’s just trying to get me to do a job for him, Mickey. That’s all. He offered it to me once, and I turned him down, so now he’s trying to hound me into taking it. He’s one of those people who don’t know how to take no for an answer.”

  “Okay. Whatever you say.”

  Mickey still sounded concerned.

  “All right, all right. I’ll go see the sonofabitch right after I talk to Serrano. That okay with you? Will that make you feel better?”

  “I’ll feel better when you start payin’ me for this shit. That’s when I’ll feel better. Doin’ this mess for free is gettin’ old, I swear to God.”

  “One day, I’ll make it all up to you, Mickey. I promise,” Gunner said.

  But Mickey had better sense than to believe him.

  twelve

  TRINI SERRANO’S STUDIO WAS IN HOLLYWOOD, on Melrose Avenue between Kenmore and Edgemont, not far from the campus of Los Angeles City College. It was a ground-floor storefront in an old, two-story brick building, with a large display window and a half-glazed door to match. There were no markings out front, but a mannequin occupied the display window; a nude female, posed in a crouch, hands up to guard its face, like someone cowering under the blows of an ongoing beating. The prototypical abused woman: naked, helpless, her shame exposed for all the world to see.

  Beyond the grimy glass pane of the door, Gunner could see someone working inside; a Caucasian woman, medium height and weight, dressed in a crisp white blouse and dark slacks, arranging photographs on the west wall. He knocked on the door and she turned around, a mop-topped brunette with a kind face and plenty of gray around the ears. Old enough to be somebody’s grandmother, maybe, but still more attractive than some women would ever live to be.

  Another vaguely familiar face from Nina’s funeral last Saturday.

  Without waiting for her to do the honors, Gunner let himself in through the unlocked door and said, “Hi. I’m looking for Trini Serrano.”

  Moving to greet him, right hand extended, the brunette smiled warmly and said, “You must be Aaron Gunner. Welcome.” She shook his hand. “Wendy Singer told me I’d probably be hearing from you. Come in please, make yourself at home.”

  She ushered him further inside and watched with some satisfaction as he took a look around, admiring the place. Her photographs were everywhere. Black-and-whites of assorted sizes, mounted in double rows on opposing walls. A graphic litany of women riding the emotional roller coaster that was life with an abusive partner; women of all colors and all ages. Laughing during the deceptive lulls between bad times, crying when the bad times inevitably returned. Bruised and battered, ducking away from punches and clawing at hands clamped around their throats, hiding behind locked bathroom doors and shivering under the covers of unmade beds. And here and there, their mates, the lethal monsters, almost all of them men, to whom they owed their unenviable existence: faces contorted by rage, spittle flying from open mouths, hands clenched tight around anything that could be used as a weapon. Broomsticks, leather belts, hiking boots, and pool cues …

  “It’s not a pretty sight, is it?” Serrano asked.

  Gunner turned, startled. Without realizing it, he’d been staring in silence now for a full minute.

  “What some of us do to the people we claim to love, I mean,” Serrano continued.

  “Oh. No. It’s not,” Gunner said, his eyes drifting back to the photographs on one wall as if of their own accord. “It’s not a pretty sight at all.”

  “I guess you wonder why I do it. Spend all my time taking pictures like these.”

  Gunner faced her again and said, “I imagine you do it because you think it’s important.”

  Serrano smiled, making the crow’s-feet at the corners of both eyes widen beautifully. “That’s part of it.”

  “And what’s the other part?”

  “The other part is that it pays better than wedding pictures.” She smiled again, enjoying herself, but Gunner couldn’t bring himself to do the same. “Come on, Mr. Gunner. It’s just a joke. I take my work very seriously, I assure you.”

  “I’m sure,” the investigator said.

  “I was just putting some new prints up when you came in. We can talk out here while I finish, or we can go back to my office and talk there, if you prefer. Whatever makes you feel more comfortable.”

  “Out here is fine,” Gunner said.

  “Wendy tells me you were an old boyfriend of Nina’s,” Serrano said, after he had declined her offer of something to drink. She was peeling yet another photograph off the west wall as she spoke. “Do you mind if I ask what happened? That is, why it is you two never got married?”

  “I’m afraid that’s a long story.”

  “You couldn’t make a short one out of it? Just this once?”

  “I suppose I could. You don’t mind telling me first why you’re interested.”

  “I’m interested because I think it might tell me something about you I should know. Like whether you’re a good guy, or a bad guy, for instance. If you’re a good guy, I can talk to you freely, without worrying about what you might do with the information I give you. But if you’re a bad guy …”

  “I’m not a bad guy,” Gunner said.

  “Good. But tell me what happened between you and Nina anyway.”

  “Well, like I said, it’s a long story. But the short of it is, I walked away from her. Thinking I could do better.”

  “And did you?”

  “I haven’t yet. And I probably never will. One of life’s little lessons learned in retrospect.”

  “Ah. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s a waste of energy, being sorry.”

  “Yes. I’ve noticed that.” She turned away from her work to smile at him again. “Okay. Your turn.”

  Gunner asked her what, exactly, Wendy Singer had told her about him.

  “Just that you’re an old friend of Nina’s who’s investigating her murder. Because you aren’t completely certain it was her husband who killed her.”

  “And your feelings about that are?”

  “What? That you aren’t certain her husband killed her?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t have any feelings about it. I’m not so sure he did it either.”

  It wasn’t what he had expected her to say, and his face must have shown it.

  “Does that surprise you?” Serrano asked.

  “Just a little,” Gunner said.

  “Why? I’m not the first person to say something like that, am I?”

  “As a matter of fact, you are. Everyone else I’ve spoken to so far not only believes her husband killed her, but that he was the only one who could have possibly had a motive for doing so. They say Nina was too well loved to have been killed by anyone else.”

  “Oh, she was certainly well loved,” Serrano said. “And deservedly so. Nina was a beautiful human being. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t people in this world who might have wished harm to her.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as Shirley Causwell. Another resident over at Sisterhood House who was there while Nina was. And a man named Gary Stanhouse. Her ex-boss, works at a law firm Nina used to work for downtown. Is that a straight enough answer for you?”

  “The straightest I’ve had all day,” Gunner said.

  Serrano put down the photograph she was holding and lowered herself into a nearby chair, no longer willing to divide her attention between Gunner and her work. “Have you spoken to Shirley yet? Is she still there at the house?”

  “She’s still there. And I spoke to her while I was there yesterday, yes.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said the only two people she ever saw Nina have words with were Agnes Felker and you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. Both she and Angela Glass told me Nina wasn’t speaking to you the last few days of her sta
y there, and Shirley said she thought she knew why. Seems she heard part of an argument you and Nina had in the laundry room once, over you going through Nina’s things at the house without clearing it with Nina first.” He waited for Serrano to deny it, but she didn’t say a word. “You have any idea what she was talking about?”

  “You mean, do I recall the conversation she was referring to? Yes. I remember it. But I also remember that Shirley couldn’t have caught more than the last ten or fifteen words of it, so how she can say she knows what it was about is beyond me.”

  “It wasn’t about you going through Nina’s things without her permission?”

  “No. Not really.” Serrano hesitated. Either to formulate a lie, or to decide how much of the truth he needed to hear. “What we were really talking about was a bracelet I gave her. Nina had taken the inscription I’d put on it the wrong way, and wouldn’t wear it. So I’d gone through her things to find it, just to make sure it was still there. I was afraid she’d thrown it out. That day down in the laundry room, I was trying to explain to her one more time what the inscription meant. I was apologizing for not having made my meaning more clear.”

  “What was the inscription?”

  “I’d rather not say. I’m sorry.”

  “Was it something along the lines of ‘For Nina, you are much stronger and more beautiful than you know’?”

  Again, Serrano hesitated, clearly surprised to hear her own words recited back to her so accurately. “You’ve seen the photograph,” she said.

  “Yes. It was at her mother’s. A beautiful piece of work. You captured Nina perfectly, I thought.”

  He wasn’t going to tell her he actually had the photograph they were talking about with him now, in the inside pocket of his coat. He didn’t want to take the chance that she would ask for it back.

  “Thanks. I always thought so too,” Serrano said.

  “But we digress. I was asking if the two inscriptions were similar. The one on the photograph, and the one on this bracelet you say you gave her.”

  Serrano remained silent.

  “I tell you what. It’s a personal matter, I can see that. That’s why I’m not asking for any specifics, you don’t want to give me any. All I’d like to know is whether the inscription on the bracelet was as suggestive as the one on the photograph. A simple yes or no will do.”