Chapter Five – Recollections
Samantha Morrison had brushed her blonde hair back into a ponytail high on her head, and then braided it. It still reached down to the waistband of her skirt, and was heavy on her back. She had a lunch appointment with a guy who had come into the pharmacy where she worked, and she was really looking forward to it.
He had been in a couple of times in the last week, just for ordinary things, mouthwash, deodorant, nothing special, but he had always made sure that she served him, and after the first couple of times Sam had tried to arrange it so she could help him look for his purchases as well as put them through the till for him. He had been in just after six the night before, and she was putting her coat on and getting ready to go home when he had appeared at her shoulder.
"Hi, I was hoping I would catch you. Listen, I know this is really short notice, but I wondered whether you'd like to go for a coffee or something."
Sam had smiled, she would have loved to go for a drink with this guy, but her momma had told her to play hard to get, and so that was what she would do. "I can't tonight, I have plans, but I'm free tomorrow lunch time." Ok, so not hard to get, just a little difficult.
"That would be fun, let me just take your cell number and address in case I can't get there. Oh, my name is Dominic by the way."
"I live at the Beach View Hotel, my mom works in the health center, and we have a room there."
Dominic had written it all down, and then held the door to the store open for her and she had waved to the manager still in there cashing up.
Now Sam was looking forward to telling him all about the hotel, how her mom had increased the membership of the health center by twenty percent, and how she was thinking of maybe branching out, well, the two of them and opening their own place. The bell to the store rang, and Sam ran lightly down the back stairs from the staff room and out into the shop. Dominic looked devastating in his black jeans and white heavy cotton shirt. He had a pair of shades resting in his blonde spiky hair, and a single red rose in his hand.
Sam had been quite pleased with the way she looked until she saw Dominic, now she felt dowdy and a bit average. She wasn't allowed to wear jeans to work, and so she had her new denim skirt on with a pink polo shirt which was comfy and she knew looked good on her.
"This is for you, and you look pretty." Dominic smiled at her. "I know you live and work locally, but I thought maybe we could go to Santa Monica Place and have lunch there, what do you say?"
"That sounds lovely, and it means we can spend almost the whole hour together before I have to get back." Sam had smiled and sniffed the rose. "This is just gorgeous, thank you."
"Sam?" A voice called to her from further in the store.
"Yes, Mrs Thorne?"
"If you're prepared to work through your afternoon break you may take ninety minutes."
Sam smiled. "Thank you, I promise I won't be late back." Then, with a cheery wave, she was gone.
Rae moved round and sat on the sofa so that she could see the Chief in front of her. "Do you want to tell me why you let everyone think she was your sister, Sir? Why you lied to me when I am in charge of this investigation?" Rae knew that she should be sympathetic, but right now all she could think of was that she had been taken for a fool.
John Masters looked down at the picture in his hand, as if seeking permission from the woman in it to speak. Then, with a sigh that seemed to come from his very soul, he began to talk.
"After I graduated from high school I studied pre-law and after law school I joined the diplomatic service. After a while, I guess it doesn't matter how long, I was transferred to London." There was silence for a moment, and then, placing the photo on the desk in front of him, the Chief began to talk once more.
"I'd been there for six months when a new secretary began to work in my department. Her name was Elizabeth Kagan, and she was as strong minded as I was. We started talking one day in the cafeteria, there was an article in the paper about the Nobel peace prize being awarded to Martin Luther King Jr. and she asked me what I thought about him."
"What did you think about him?" Rae had no idea if she was supposed to join in or not, but she felt as if she should say something.
"I told her that I didn't think anything about him at all." John Masters chuckled to himself. "She was scandalized. She thought he was a hero, and for the rest of our lunch break she proceeded to tell me why. I thought he was pretty heroic myself, but I would have said almost anything to get her undivided attention for a whole hour … she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever met.
"London was an exciting place to be in the early sixties, in 1965 we stood on the Mall for Churchill's funeral, saw Bob Dylan play in concert. Life was good, and at the end of that year we got married." The smile that spread across the face of the Chief of Police showed how pleasant the memories were, and he put his hand into his pants pocket and took out his wallet. "I don't usually carry this with me, but it seemed appropriate to bring it on this trip." The picture that he handed to Rae was one of himself and Elizabeth on their wedding day, and Rae could see that Elizabeth Kagan-Masters had indeed been very beautiful.
"1966 was a year I'm sure you're aware of, especially if I tell you that Elizabeth and I were at Wembley."
"You were at Wembley, what, for the final?" Rae's eyes were as large as saucers. "My dad would have sold his entire family for tickets to that match."
"I have to admit that I didn't really understand it very well, but we got caught up in the excitement of the whole thing, and there isn't that much chance of our national team winning the World Cup for soccer now is there?"
"No, Sir, I guess not, but it's football in England, as you well know." Rae smiled at him, she hadn't been kidding, her dad would have given almost anything to be at Wembley Stadium to see the England football team win the World Cup on home soil. Nothing that came close to that had happened since, and it was a great moment in her country's sporting history. For a moment she let her mind wander, no matter how much she loved living in LA; she guessed England was still her country. Bringing herself back to the present Rae smiled again. "Next time I get to see any clips from it I'll be watching the crowd and not the game."
"We stayed in London for another four years. Elizabeth had our son, Thomas in 1967, but we called him Tommy, and then in 1970, the first week of 1970 we had a daughter, we called her Rachael." The room became enclosed in silence, but this time Rae knew that she shouldn't break into it. "We brought Rachael home from the hospital on the 7th of January, the four of us in our new Jaguar car, except Rachael never made it home, and neither did Tommy. On the way there, I killed them."
"Sir?"
"The weather was lousy, the fog was really bad and we were driving by the Thames, you know what the water there does to fog."
"It makes it thicker. Sir, you don't have to carry on," but Rae knew that he did, that now he had begun to unburden himself, he would be unable to stop.
"Elizabeth had just passed me a sandwich, I hadn't eaten all day, and we were both hungry. Your partner may like hospital food, Detective, but neither of us did." John Masters tried to lighten the mood, but he knew that was impossible. "I guess I let my concentration waiver for a minute, a second, a moment, I don't know, all I do know is I never saw the car that smashed into the back of ours." John closed his eyes and was back there, the horror of it all was still so fresh as to be startling. "Elizabeth and I weren't hurt, can you believe that? They took the children back to … back to the hospital we'd left not more than an hour before, but … but it didn't matter."
Rae had already worked that part out, but she said nothing.
"We buried the children in the churchyard where we'd stood for wedding photos just four years earlier, and we seemed to sit in our house in silence for six months after that. Then on the fourth of July we packed our bags and came back to Santa Barbara. Or at least Elizabeth did. I couldn't speak to her, touch her, I couldn't even make eye contact with her, and when we landed in Los Angeles I knew our marriage was over. I joined the LAPD, and Elizabeth went back to the house she'd been born in, and for a while she cared for her mother, when she died three years later Elizabeth found that the house and all its contents had been left to us. I arranged for my share to be given to her and so she just carried on living there.
"I didn't speak to her or contact her again for twenty-five years. I'd just been made Chief of Police, and I got an invitation to a night of opera in Santa Barbara and decided to attend. I was being handed a glass of champagne when I saw her. It had been a long time, but I knew it was her." For a minute he sat there, and when he began to speak again Rae was inside his memory with him.
"Elizabeth, it's been a long time." John looked at the woman in front of him. Her hair was a little greyer, and maybe set a little more severely than in the past, but she was still his Eliza.
"Yes, John, it has. You've done very well for yourself, but then there was never any doubt about that. If you had stayed in the diplomatic service you would be a very high ranking politician by now."
He had nodded his head slightly in agreement at what she said. He knew that it was true. He'd had a successful future mapped out for himself, but he'd discarded it all to become a cop, and not once had he regretted it.
"I hope that you will enjoy the evening, I have to admit to having a hand in your being here." The smile had been warm, almost inviting, and he had stared at her for a moment, and then he had seen her stiffen a little before a voice broke into their conversation.
"Now, Elizabeth, you didn't tell me you were bringing such a handsome escort." The woman who had come to join them was smaller than his wife, with jet black hair and eyes. John had known she was Hispanic, but apart from that he knew nothing about her, except for the fact that he could tell his wife was not at all pleased to be interrupted by her.
"Mariana, I'm sorry, we didn't come together, John, this is my neighbour Mariana Ortega, Mariana, this is my … my brother, John."
"I asked her the following day why she had told such a blatant lie, and she just laughed. We were sitting out in the garden, on the patio you can see from the kitchen. After the concert we'd walked off from the opera house together. I'd gone there privately, so I wasn't expected to make small talk with anyone, and Elizabeth told me that since … since the accident she walked everywhere that she could. Once we were out of sight of prying eyes, it seemed natural to hold hands, to talk about the time we had been apart, what we'd done, you know the type of thing."
"Yes, Sir, I know." Rae smiled; she had a feeling that, for a while at least, the tale would be a little happier.
"Before either of us knew it we were back here and, as my car was still at the opera house, Elizabeth asked if I would like to spend the night. The following morning we had breakfast on the patio, and were so relaxed, so back together that it all seemed so right." This time a full throated laugh escaped Rae's boss, and he shook his head. "I know that you Brits put your washing out on the line at every possible opportunity."
Rae looked confused, she was sure she hadn't missed anything.
"Sir?"
"We sat on the patio, and I saw a twinkle come up in Elizabeth's eyes. She lowered her voice just a little and told me to look into the glass of the door behind her. I could see Mariana putting washing up on a very hastily erected line. We sat out there for just over an hour, and that woman came and checked her linens about once every ten minutes. In the end we had to come in."
"Did you find out why your wife didn't want to admit to being married to you? You were still married weren't you?"
"Oh, yes, we had neither of us ever felt the need to divorce the other. I guess if we had found other people we wanted to spend our lives with it would have been different, but our pasts were so tightly linked together that no one else could get through to us.
"After that it just seemed the natural thing to let everyone think we were brother and sister. I knew that I would attract all sorts of bad publicity if I suddenly produced a wife of thirty-two years. Elizabeth had a certain standing here, she was on the committee of various charities and local organisations, a ready-made husband wouldn't really have done her any favours either. Neither of us wanted to have to discuss our children and so we mentioned a couple of times that we had lost contact for a few years, but that was all, and then only to the people who wouldn't let go until they knew where I'd been all this time."
"Like Mariana Ortega?"
"Like Mariana Ortega. In fact, I'm surprised you didn't hear all about the long lost brother angle when you were here the first time."
"I may well have done if Mrs Ortega had been home, but the entire time I was here I never saw her, I guess she was out of town."
"Ah, lucky you."
"What happened after you got re-acquainted?" Rae suddenly blushed as she realised how awful that sounded, but she had no idea what else to say so she kept silent.
"One of the perks of being the Chief of Police is that you can, for the most part, work nine to five, five days a week. I used to make sure that at least two weekends in every month I got to Santa Barbara. Apart from the children, it was as if we had always been together, always been happy, as if nothing had torn us apart." For a minute the Chief was silent and then he continued speaking. "And then, after five short years, it was all taken away again." His voice wavered and Rae knew that she should leave him be for a while. She stood up and made her way out to fill the kettle for a hot drink and as she looked out of the kitchen window she saw Mariana Ortega hanging out her washing.
The flight to Texas had been uneventful, but then it normally was. Jo had sat on her own, a laptop computer on the table in front of her, a pitcher of iced tea and some peanuts next to it. There was a lot to be said for owning your own jet. For one thing you never had to wait in the departure lounge. It went when you were ready. If there was a hold up at the airport you just stayed home a little longer. Then when you were on board it didn't look like an airplane but the lobby of a five star hotel. There was a deep cream semi-circular sofa which could be reclined in four places so that you could lean back and relax as you watched your movie, which was always one you liked. The bar was always well stocked, as was the galley and, if she requested it, a chef would travel with her. This time though Jo had asked for total privacy, and she knew that short of a red alert she would talk to no one, unless she chose to, until she landed.
She had walked through the executive lounge and then been picked up by David's chauffeur and taken to the ranch. The Walters spread was twenty miles from anywhere, which meant it was about thirty miles from the airport. The half hour journey had been very relaxing, Jo leant back into the leather seats and let the hot dry air waft around her. She loved Los Angeles, couldn't see herself living anywhere else now, but Texas was home, and she guessed it always would be. Next time she came she would make sure that Steve and Daniel came too. The boy had begun to have riding lessons, much to her amusement. Maddie had been in total awe when she found out that Daniel's mom owned her own stables, and they now both went for lessons on Saturday mornings, although how that would fare now he was in money earning mode she had no idea.
The black limousine drew up outside the main Texas residence of the Walters clan and Jo waited for the door to be opened for her. "Darren, thank you." She carefully extricated herself from the car and made her way towards the front door, which was opened silently as she approached it.
"Jonathon, how ya doin'?"
"I am fine, thank you, Madam; I hope you had a pleasant journey."
"I did. Thank you." To Jo it always sounded strange to hear the formal words said with a strong Texan accent. Somehow Michael's British one was far more suitable, but probably only because that was what she was used to.
"Jo, Honey, how are you?" David's broad Texan tones broke into her thoughts and she turned into a huge hug from her brother. She felt herself being swung round and once again, just as when Steve had done it to her the other day, she didn't like it.
"Davie, put me down."
"Davie? You haven't called me that in years." David looked a little surprised, but Jo could tell he was delighted too.
"Sorry, it just slipped out. But it was a nice name."
"Jo, do I get a chance to say hello to my soon to be sister-in-law?" Debs came out of one of the doors that led to the huge living room that went the entire length of the rear of the house. Jo put a forced smile on her face and gritted her teeth.
"Sister-in-law? I guess I have some catchin' up to do."
David had the grace to look a little shame faced, and Jo could swear she saw him glare at his fiancée. "We have set a date for three weeks time. Do you think that Steve will be able to come?"
"Well, I don't rightly know, but I will ask him. He has a lot on his plate right now, an' Daniel can't just take time off school like that…" Jo looked between the two faces. "You weren't goin' to include him were you?"
"Well, now, Jo, it's not like he's family or anythin', an' you did have a small weddin' yourself."
"Yes I did, but I invited you, an' you were nothin' to me! Daniel is our son."
"No, he's your foster son, he could be moved someplace else tomorrow." Debbie's eyes blazed, but she forced her temper back down.
"We weren't gonna say anythin' until it was all finalized, but Steve an' I are adoptin' Daniel, he will be our son very soon, an' anybody who can't treat him as a member of our family, won't be treated that way themselves. Now, if you will excuse me I am hot an' tired, an' would like to go to my room." Jo turned from the two shocked people in front of her and made her way up the staircase. As she did so she heard Debbie begin to talk again.
"Well, I told you, she is just not a Texas lady any more. Marryin' a cop, an' adoptin' a chil' with his background. You need to make sure that your business dealin's aren't common knowledge around here. There are some people you just can't trust."
Jo slammed the door to her room, lashed out at the waste basket that was just inside the door, and watched as it sailed across the room, then she flung herself on the bed and tried to calm herself down enough so that she could call Daniel without sounding as if she could chew metal, even though she was sure that right now it would be no problem to gnaw her way through a girder.
Steve had just been getting ready for a meeting with the Captain when his phone rang and a dispatch operator told him that a body had been found near a group of palm trees in an isolated part of Palisades Park.
With a deep sigh Steve had grabbed his jacket, put his head round the Captain's door to let him know where he was going, and then he had climbed into his car and headed off towards Santa Monica.
Amanda had already been there, and one look at her face and he knew it was another bad one.
"So what do you have that I need to be here for instead of a homicide cop from Pacific Community?" Steve had a feeling he knew already, but it never hurt to ask.
"A young woman who has the soles of her feet slashed."
"Great? Is she naked?"
"Oh, yeah, I'll move in a minute so that you can see."
"Don't hurry on my account. I'll text Rae, she'll be just thrilled." Steve moved away from the body and took his cell out of his pocket. They hadn't given the case a name yet, and he wondered the best way to let her know without putting too much information on the phone. Normally he would call her, but she was with the Chief, and he didn't want to call at the wrong moment. Face it, Sloan, there is no right moment to call someone who is working with the Chief. In the end he decided to just put 'Jenna is no longer alone', knowing that she would understand what he meant. Just as he put the phone back into his jacket he heard Amanda call his name.
"Steve."
"Yeah, can I have a look now?"
"Sure, but I think that things are pretty much as they were before, blonde female, no clothes, nothing to identify her, there is just one thing different than before. Well, apart from the fact that she was found much earlier this time."
"Which is?"
"That." Amanda pointed down to the body. There, under the right wrist, was a red rose.
Rae had spent the rest of the afternoon at the Masters' house sorting through clothes and jewellery, trying to work out what should be sold, and what should be given to charity. She had also found some love letters, two diaries and a set of bank statements which were addressed to Mrs J. Masters.
When the Chief had regained his composure he had brought his empty cup out to the kitchen. Rae had made him some tea and silently taken it in to him after he had made his confession, she could think of no other name for it. As they had stood together in the kitchen, both of them looking at the sheets fluttering in the wind next door, he had started to talk again.
"How did you know she wasn't my sister?"
"There was a bank statement and a letter from Monterey; they were both addressed to Mrs J. Masters. The letter might have been an error, but the bank statement, I didn't think so. The lack of photos of you as a child then made sense, the reason that you only appeared in pictures from the sixties onwards was because before then Elizabeth didn't have anything like that to display."
John Masters had turned to the table and picked up the letter. He smiled and began to open it. "It's from Mildred."
"Sir?"
"You do know her, Detective, Mildred Davenport. She checked with me before letting you and Lieutenant Sloan into her house."
Rae laughed. "I remember her. She asked me whether I could vouch for Steve's honesty. He was not amused."
For a moment the Chief seemed to relax completely. "Did you have to leave your shoes in the box at the door?"
"Oh, yeah, and you know, somehow I felt more vulnerable without my shoes than I would if she had made me leave my gun in the box."
"It's a good thing she didn't think about that, she has a metal strongbox that I have to put mine in!" The shutters went back up, and Rae saw her boss disappear back into himself once more.
Rae had moved back into the living room, and felt her phone vibrate as she did so. As she took it out of her pocket she was surprised to see that the time on it said a little after half past five in the evening. She read the message, felt the familiar sadness that always accompanied her finding out that someone else had died a violent death, and then headed back towards the bedroom, knowing that there was little or nothing she could do or say anywhere else.
Amanda had left with the body as soon as the pictures of the location, positioning and placing of the body had been taken. She had talked with Steve briefly about what she had found, but both of them knew that until the blood could be cleaned away nothing of very much value would be discovered.
Once the area was clear apart from a rough outline drawn on the grass Steve had begun a detailed search of the area. He had no doubt that the murderer would follow an exact pattern in all his killings, and as the first scene had been discovered in the dark he planned to go over this one with a fine toothed comb himself. So far it had made little or no difference because he hadn't found anything. In the end, as his back and his neck began to complain, he knew that he should be calling it a day.
There seemed to be no reason to keep the yellow police tape round the area any longer. He signalled to one of the uniformed officers from the Pacific Community precinct and waited for him to join him.
"I'm heading back to North Hollywood now, I'll get a report sent to your Captain in the next day or two, once I have the autopsy report and any forensic evidence catalogued. You can get rid of the ribbon once you've finished your search."
"Ok, Lieutenant. We'll get our report to you by morning."
With that Steve headed back to his car and the prospect of a night without his wife.
The lunch date had gone well, Dominic had been pleased. Matthew didn't recall what he'd said, but he knew that he'd been pleased. He guessed he was lucky to find someone else so soon after that other woman had dumped him. Dominic never liked to admit that he'd been dumped, but the telephone number she'd given him wouldn't ring out, and so it looked like she'd given him a fake one.
Matthew couldn't remember ending up in the bathroom, but there had been blood on the floor again, and he'd found a pair of black jeans and a shirt in the laundry basket. They had been blood stained, and so just like he always did when he found this stuff he put it in the metal trash can, placed it on the fire escape and set it alight. He didn't know whose clothes they had been, they weren't his, he only wore blue jeans and t-shirts, usually ones with slogans on, like save the whales, or feed the world, stuff like that. Dominic, maybe they were his, but he liked suits, smart suits, business shirts and silk ties. Matthew didn't think he'd ever seen his friend in jeans before. His friend, he guessed that Dominic was as close to a friend as he had. He wished they could be together more often, but it seemed he always came home just as Dominic was going out, or Matthew would just be going off to sleep when Dom wanted to talk.
Matthew wrung his hands, he knew that something was wrong again, and his eyes strayed to the door on the third room. As he did so he felt the blood trickle down his thumb. He'd scrunched up the clothes ready to burn them and pricked his finger on something. It had bled, a lot, but as the shirt already had blood on it, Matthew had wiped it on there, then he'd shaken the shirt until he found what he was looking for, a thorn, he'd looked around the apartment, they didn't have any flowers, where would the thorn have come from? Matthew shook his head, he knew it was time for him to start writing things down again. Doctor Braeburn had told him that when he had too many things in his head that were unexplained he should write them all down. He couldn't see her any more of course, not since they'd moved, but he figured it would still work. Sticking his hand into his pocket Matthew pulled out a five dollar bill. He'd be able to get a nice book with that, and then he could start his diary again. That was a good idea. Feeling suddenly positive, Matthew headed for the front door, nothing that he wrote down could hurt him, and if he put it on paper he could forget all about it. Dominic would be proud of him. He wondered if he could get a red book, he liked that colour.
The door clicked shut behind him, and the trashcan kept on burning.