ONE MONTH TO MIDNIGHT-Chapter 6

TUESDAY, AUGUST 9th

DENT STARTED DIALING through the Newhouse list at 9 a.m. At 9:25 he found the place Mrs. Parks bought the masks—place in San Francisco called Wellington and Sons.

The woman he was speaking to, a Mrs. Kent, spoke in very precise, very cool English tones. She was very quickly pissing Dent off.

Mrs. Kent’s voice saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. Dent but I simply cannot release that information. Our customers respect Wellington and Sons as a place of the utmost discretion.”

“I’m sure Mrs. Parks would appreciate your discretion, but I don’t think she’ll mind.”

There was silence on the line. Finally, Mrs. Kent said, “How can I be certain you’re who you claim? You could be ringing me up willy-nilly and not be at all associated with law-enforcement.”

Which was how Dent ended up faxing photocopies of his badge and drivers license to Mrs. Kent. When she was on the phone again, he said, “Now I’d like to ask a couple questions.”

Mrs. Kent’s voice said, “A thought occurred to me while awaiting your facsimile: How do I know Mrs. Parks is dead? Or that you’re not with those Internal Revenue Service fellows. I need not tell you Wellington has no wish to become embroiled in any messy taxation business.”

“Ma’am, I’m homicide. I don’t care if you pay your taxes, I care who killed Mrs. Parks.”

“I’m not sure . . .”

“Mrs. Kent? Give me a jif— I’ll facsimile over something more convincing.” Which is how Dent ended up faxing a photo, shot from above, showing pentagrams slashed into Mrs. Parks; visible in the upper left corner was a metal stake stuck through her hand; in the lower right, C. Parks, Caucasian Female.

Dent called Mrs. Kent back. “Now will you answer some questions, please?”

“You are a very rude man, Detective Dent—”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

“—-but you may proceed.”

“Thanks. First, when did Mrs. Parks purchase the Kwiatlu’s?”

Dent heard paper being rustled. Mrs. Kent’s voice said, “July 12th.”

“How’d she pay?”

“By cashier’s check drawn against First Bank of the Bahamas.”

“And how’d she find out about them? Was it a catalogue or an auction or what?”

“It was a blind auction. Each interested party makes an offer.”

“Did you put ads in the newspaper or some magazine?”

Mrs. Kent laughed a cultured, above-it-all laugh. “Detective, we don’t advertise our auctions. We simply ring our clients up and let them know what’s available.”

“How many participated?”

“A dozen or so.”

“I’ll need their names.”

There was momentary silence. Then: “I am afraid that would be contrary to the manner Wellington and Sons conducts business. Our clients are private people. I am sorry.”

“A woman is dead, Mrs. Kent. A client of yours is dead.”

A longer silence before Mrs. Kent’s voice said, “I am sorry.”

Dent was non-plussed, unable to comprehend this woman cared more about protecting her living clients’ privacy than helping locate the killer of one of her now-dead clients. “Did Mrs. Parks pick up the masks in person?”

“No, she sent a man to get them. He picked them up on a Saturday, as I recall. I remember it quite clearly because I was forced to miss a cricket match at the club that day.”

“A regular drag, hunh?”

“Quite.”

“Do you have his name and the date?”

“Hold on.” Dent heard rustling papers. “Raymond St. Michael on July fifteen.”

Dent hung up the phone. Raymond St. Michael? Who the hell’s Raymond St. Michael? He didn’t know what he expected, but so far he had shit. It was starting out that kind of day.


DENT SAID: “Lou, look me straight in the eye and tell me that again.” Staring at Lou Cano through the wire mesh and getting a little antsy about what Lou was saying.

“Vince, I’m telling you, I can’t find it. Me and Janey looked, we can’t find it.”

“But it was here, I checked it in last night.”

“I know that, Vince, I took it, remember? It’s back here somewhere, we just have to find it.”
‘Back here’ being the racks of guns and knives and bloody rocks and other stuff making up the ingredients for San Diego crime.

“Who else has access to the cage?”

“Nobody ‘cept me, Janey and Wes.”

“You talk to Wes about this?”

“No, I didn’t know until you came down and asked.”

In the past, evidence had been misplaced in the cage. Dent remembered how one time a hair sample in a murder case involving a stripper was lost for over two years before mysteriously turning up. But never a whole laptop.

“We can’t go losing that laptop, Lou. It’s very important. The main computer already had the hard drive wiped and we lost critical info about a guy who was murdered. I want you and Janey and Wes to tear that place apart and find it.”


DENT WAS WORKING through the Parks case folder, reading reports, summarizing his own observations and conjectures, when the phone rang. Gideon Pope’s voice said: “I’ve got Jim Winston at Quantico on a three-way, Vince.”

Jim Winston’s voice said, “First off, your guy’s good-looking, articulate and self-assured. I say that because if you have a guy who’s afraid to talk to people, they’ll blitz attack, just hit the woman from behind with everything they’ve got. This guy got inside the house without forced entry, so he’s a talker, good with people. Second thing is the lacerations’ high degree of elaboration— he’s got a lot of pent up hostility and this is his vent. But the manner he carries it out suggests a highly organized mind— it’s very planned. This guy’s killed before, probably a lot. The fact he took time to revive her tells me he’s got a massive ego . . . really wants her to acknowledge him as God, the Devil, that sort of mentality. He knew her somehow and knew he had time to draw it out. Most likely he’s somewhere between 35 and 45— this is a highly evolved fantasy by someone who’s perfected his craft. He’s above average in intelligence and accustomed to dealing with the higher social classes. He’ll kill again, probably sooner than later, and because of his organized mind, unless he screws up, he’s gonna be a bitch to nail.”



OUT FRONT MIRABELLA’S HOUSE, Dent sat on the steps staring up at the fiery blossoms of the coral tree, thinking about the Parks and Mirabella cases, the bodies superimposed over the coral blossoms like some deathly collage. Mrs. Parks on the floor, nailed down, blood everywhere. Mirabella slumped in his chair. Dent pushed the specters from his mind to concentrate solely on the facts of the Mirabella case. Sipping from his flask just to set his mind straight, oil up the wheels.

Mirabella’s neighbors said he kept to himself and had few visitors, and that he went out at night for a couple hours carrying a black case Dent reasoned was the laptop.

But where did you go every night? Why?

Dent watched a kid wheel by on a bicycle, sling a newspaper at a house and continue on.

A couple neighbors reported a young brunette woman would drive into the garage and park a Ford Probe. Two neighbors thought the woman was white, another that she was “Oriental or Mexican or something ethnic like that.” Fingerprints in the house were mostly Mirabella’s, some the plant guy’s, and still two other sets unidentified. Turned out the nickel-plate .357 had been reported stolen by a La Mesa dentist six months back and had no prints other than the corpse’s.

Analysis of Mirabella’s phone records revealed an interesting point: an absolute absence of any long distance or 800 calls, making Dent suspect the man went out to make his LD calls— Mirabella was a Mexican national, had lived in other parts of the country and had to make at least a couple long distance calls a month.

Was that what you did every other night? Took that laptop out? And did what?

Dent was willing to bet Mirabella went out nightly to do nocturnal work with his laptop, maybe faxing documents somewhere down Mexico way.

Okay, but where would he do it? He couldn’t plug into a payphone with a laptop.

Dent sipped scotch, holding it in his mouth and watching a hummingbird hover at a feeder attached to a birdhouse hanging in the coral tree. The hummingbird took a drink, hovered a moment longer, then darted over to the house next door. It took a sip from a yellow plastic feeder and darted away. Maybe out towards the sea. Dent swallowed.

Maybe Mirabella went to hotels and started making calls, that way no one could track his calls back to his home number or plant a bug.

The idea of canvassing every hotel in the city was impossible, but Dent made a mental note to have Walt Bishop and No-Action Jackson take a photo of Mirabella to hotels within a five-mile radius of Mirabella’s house, betting Mirabella was lazy and wouldn’t drive further to make his calls. Dent thought about telephones some more until his mind ultimately double-tracked over to Celeste Parks’ telephone records.

Every one of the numbers on record was accountable and every number ruled inconsequential. Except one. On nine occasions in the last three months, Celeste Parks dialed the number of a pager reported lost and that the carrier for the paging service had failed to deactivate. The pager belonged to a nurse currently staying with her sister in Rhode Island. McClain had spoken to the nurse himself, along with the woman’s sister. Solid alibi. Dent’d called it this morning and left his number, but no one called back.

Who were you paging, Mrs. Parks? More importantly, who did you page the night you died, at 9:52 in the evening?

A pickup truck stopped at the curb, the back loaded with lawnmowers and yard equipment. Two guys got out wearing shorts and tank tops, and started unloading the equipment. Dent watched a moment before descending the steps.

“How’s it going guys?”

The guy who’d been driving was unstrapping a weed eater from the truck. He said, “Running’ late man, running’ late. One more place to do and it’s 4:30 and we got tickets to the Pods.” Took the weed-eater from the truck and started pulling the rope to start it. The other guy was rolling a mower down a ramp.

“You work for Peter Mirabella?”

“Sure, why?” The guy pulling on the weed-eater’s rope and the weed-eater not starting. Dent showed his badge. “Because you probably don’t want to go to all the trouble. He’s dead.”

The guy stopped pulling on the rope. “You mean like dead dead?”

“Right, like dead dead.”

“Well, shit.” Weed eater looked at his partner. “Hear that, Mike? No more picking leaf crumbs out of the sidewalk cracks.”

“I take it you didn’t like Mirabella a lot?”

“Not to dis’ the dead,” Weed-eater said, “but he was an asshole. Complained about the tiniest shit. So how’d he die?”

“Shot himself Friday morning. Do you know who drove the white Probe?”

“I think it was his girlfriend. Some hot stripper-looking chick. You know, big tits?”

“You by any chance know the license plate number on her car?”

“No offense, dude,” Mike said, “but do I look like Rainman?”

Dent smiled. “When was the last time you saw her here?”

Weed-eater said, “Last week. Drove away like she was pissed. Laid a stripe of rubber down—” waving at a 20-foot black streak on the street “—right there.”

“What day was that?”

“Tuesday morning. We were running late last week.”

“When was the last time you spoke with Mirabella.”

“Same day his girlfriend peeled outta here. He paid cash, so we had to pick it up every week. He was always trying to get out of it, not answering the door, or saying he only had hundreds, he’d get us next week. And he never tipped.”

“How’d he seem that day? Was he angry or anything after his girlfriend left?”

“I don’t know. Not angry. Maybe kinda quiet? He was weird, hard to read.”

“Why do you say that?”

Weed-eater shrugged. “I don’t know. He was just real calm. And he had these dark eyes. Kind of scary.”

Mike said, “Dull and sleepy-like, but you knew the asshole was watching you all the time, making mental notes.” He laughed. “Making sure the leaf crumbs were out of the cracks.”

Dent smiled. “Would you two sit with a sketch artist and work up a picture of Mirabella’s girlfriend?”

Weed eater shrugged. “It’s cool . . . but hey, dude . . . I thought you said Mr. Mirabella killed himself. Why’re you knocking yourself out over his girlfriend?”

Dent shrugged. “Boss is an asshole. Makes us do bullshit work. You know how it is.”

Mike smiled. “Fuckin ay, dude, fuckin ay.”