Bird Lives! Read online

  I’m too close to rush hour to chance the Santa Monica Freeway, so I use surface streets for the drive to Westwood. I pass through the metal detectors, take the elevator to the seventeenth floor again, and I give my name to the receptionist. She picks up the phone, and in a couple of minutes, Andie comes out.

  “Thanks for coming,” she says. “This way.” She’s all business today, much more distant than she was at dinner and Bob Burns.

  I follow her through the bullpen area to Wendell Cook’s office. The scene is a little different today. Coats are off, ties are loosened, and the wastebasket is stuffed with fast food bags and soft drink cans. Everybody has a coffee cup in front of them at a long table, and they’re all looking at a large white board covered in multicolored marker pen writing—four columns, one for each victim in a different color, with notes below the names. I don’t recognize the first two; the column for Ty Rodman is blue, and Cochise’s column is red.

  A crime scene photo of each victim is taped to the board. I’d almost put Rodman’s face out of my mind, but no more.

  “Sit down, Mr. Horne,” Wendell Cook says. Coop is sprawled in another chair alongside Cook. He waves a finger at me. The only one missing is Ted Rollins. “Special Agent Rollins is in San Francisco,” Cook says as if reading my mind. “We’re doing a little brainstorming here. We’d like your input, and then Andie will work with you on the profile. Can I get you some coffee?”

  “Yeah, coffee would be good.” So would a cigarette, but I don’t see any ashtrays.

  While Cook is gone, Coop leans in next to me. “Play along, make them happy, and you’ll be out of here in time for dinner. They’re really buying this jazz theory.”

  I catch Andie watching me while Coop talks. She looks tired, and I wonder if she’s just come back from San Francisco herself. Cook comes back with coffee, a handful of sugar packets, creamers, and a wooden stir stick he sets in front of me before returning to his own seat.

  “Okay, Andie, why don’t you bring us up to speed.”

  She walks up to the board, glances at it for a few moments while she gathers her thoughts. “Okay, these are the four victims, and in each column I’ve listed the similar crime scene elements.” She draws lines between the columns, matching up things like music playing at the scene, song titles, instruments, cause of death. In both the Cochise and Ty Rodman columns, bird feathers are listed. No feather under the New York names. I scan the board and take it all in.

  “So far we have no witnesses, no prints, and no weapon. Shall I play the tape?” She looks at Cook for approval.

  “Sure, go ahead,” he says.

  “This was playing at the Cochise scene in San Francisco. See if you recognize it,” she says to me.

  She presses the play button on a small cassette player. The tinny speaker emits an alto saxophone I know in the first five notes of the melody. “That’s called ‘I Remember Bird.’” It’s a recording by Cannonball Adderly, and I tell them that too.

  Andie shuts off the tape, and all of them stare at me as if I’d just correctly answered the final Jeopardy question. “Are you sure?” Andie asks. “Do you want to hear it again?”

  “No, I have the album, and I’ve played the tune.”

  Andie and Cook take a few moments to absorb my quick response. Only Coop is smiling. I know he’s dying to say, “I told you so.”

  It’s Cook who speaks first. “Can you give us any input as to why San Francisco?” he asks. “We’ve got three cities, four victims.”

  “The first thing that came to mind was a jazz club.” I tell them about the Blackhawk, the Miles recording, everything I can remember from the liner notes on the CD. When I finish, they just stare at me again.

  “How is it you know so much about all this? I know you’re a musician,” Cook says, “but—”

  “I have the Miles album too,” I say. “When I heard about the murder, I started thinking about San Francisco, and it just came to mind. I dug it out and read the liner notes.”

  Cook nods and stares at the board, watching Andie write in Cannonball’s name and the song title. “But you said Miles Davis. This recording was Cannonball,” Cook says. “What do you make of that?”

  I shrug. “Cannonball played alto, the song fits, and you found white feathers at both scenes. The Blackhawk recording Miles did was a famous one. I don’t know for sure, but I think Cannonball might have played the Blackhawk too. I know he recorded at the Jazz Workshop. That was going at the same time as the Blackhawk.”

  I catch a look of relief from Coop that I don’t give away it was me who found the feather. I don’t imagine the FBI would have liked me at a crime scene.

  “Where was the feather?” I ask Andie.

  “In the saxophone case. His horn was heavily damaged too,” Andie says.

  “Well, there you go.” I look at all of them, thinking hard. “Do you need me for anything else?” Nobody seems to know what else to ask me, and I can’t think of anything more to tell them. I don’t like any of this, and I’m dying for a cigarette.

  “No, I guess not,” Cook says. He looks from Andie to Coop. “We appreciate your help. Andie wants to run her profile by you, but you can do that in her office. Andie?”

  “Yes, we can do that now. Save you another trip,” she says.

  I hope that means I won’t be back. I get up and we start to go, but Cook stops us. “Mr. Horne, would you mind waiting outside for a moment?”

  “Sure.” I glance at Coop, but his expression reveals nothing. I shut the door behind me and lean against the wall, watching all the activity in the bullpen. I wonder how many cases they’re working on at this minute and how much of that effort is being directed to these murders. There must be forty people reading files, talking on the phone, or staring at computer screens. I’d read somewhere that L.A. was the bank robbery capital of America.

  Andie comes out in a couple of minutes, with Coop just behind her. “Have fun, you two,” he says, and winks at me.

  Andie catches it and rolls her eyes. “This way,” she says. “Your friend has a vivid imagination.”

  She takes me down the hall around the corner to her office. It’s much smaller than Wendell Cook’s and standard Government Issue. File cabinets, a desk, some bookcases—all government gray—and of course, a computer fill out the room. Her suit jacket is thrown over the back of her chair. She shuts the door, walks across the room over to one of the lever windows, and opens it. From her desk she pulls out a tiny gold-foil ashtray embossed with a fast food logo.

  “From the old days,” she says, setting it on a corner of her desk. “Go ahead. Bet you need one.”

  “Aren’t we violating federal law?”

  She laughs. “It’s my office. I’m sure you’re allowed some kind of immunity from prosecution, since you’re helping us.”

  “And maybe Wendell could call me Evan.”

  Andie smiles, but there are worry lines around her eyes. “Wendell plays it by the book. He’s usually not so formal, but he’s under a lot of pressure on this case.”

  “So are you, I imagine.” I light up and blow the smoke toward the open window.

  “Yeah, well, it comes with the territory.”

  Andie sits down at her desk and taps a couple of keys. The screen changes to blank, and she types in PROFILE: near the top of the screen.

  “So what was the secret meeting about?”

  “How much to involve you in this investigation—but I’m sure you knew that.” She doesn’t even look at me. She just calls up a couple of files, scans them quickly, then returns to the screen we started with before I can read anything. Her fingers fly over the keyboard at Oscar Peterson speed. I know as much about computers as I know about country music.

  “I guessed. Was Coop in favor? How do you do that so fast?”

  “I just work with them all the time. He speaks very highly of you, said you had been invaluable in those other cases.”

  “Invaluable. My, my.”

  “He also argu
ed to keep your involvement to a minimum.”

  “Haven’t we already gone beyond that?”

  Andie ignores that. “He told us about the recording date you have coming up, but of course I already knew about that”

  “Yes, you did.” I wonder if she told Wendell Cook about our dinner and jazz night out. I doubt it. Well, I haven’t told Natalie either.

  I smoke for a moment, watching Andie gather her thoughts. “Look, Evan, whether you knew what you told us about the Blackhawk or it came from the back of an album cover doesn’t matter. We wouldn’t have any idea how to start on that. It could have taken us forever to find somebody to recognize the song on that tape. That’s the same reason Cooper called you to the Rodman crime scene.” She glances at me. “Yes, I knew about that. The FBI doesn’t have any jazz experts that I know of, and except for you, neither does the Santa Monica Police. Cooper knew you’d know what those words on the mirror meant. Just now, you knew that song instantly. You’ve saved us a lot of time.”

  “Is it that important?” I just didn’t see how me being able to identify Cannonball Adderly playing a Leonard Feather song fit in.

  “It could be. That’s the point. We never know when some little bit of information will break a case. We have very little to go on here except for the jazz and the possibility that it might be a musician or a jazz fan doing these murders. Frankly, I have to admit it’s looking better all the time. That’s what we’re going to focus on in the profile.”

  I take one last drag on my cigarette then stub it out in the ashtray. I suddenly flash on the FBI taking me from murder to murder, playing a horrible game of Name That Tune, a perverted version of the Downbeat blindfold test.

  “Look,” Andie says, breaking in on my thoughts. “Let’s run through this and see where we are.”

  I look at the blank screen. “I thought you were already going to do one, just have me add to it.”

  Andie nods. “I have. I just want to see how yours matches up with mine, sort of compare notes. Keep in mind, what we’re doing here is creating a picture of the artist, sick as that might sound. To understand jazz, for instance, doesn’t it help to understand the musician? These crimes are our killer’s art.”

  I think it’s more than that. Andie is not telling me everything. I don’t know the details about how the murders were done except for what I’ve seen on the news. Most of what the FBI knows is probably off limits to me.

  “Okay, let’s do. it,” I say. I pull my chair in closer and watch Andie type on the screen

  UNSUB: JAZZ MUSICIAN/FAN

  SERIES OF HOMICIDES

  NEW YORK, SANTA MONICA, SAN FRANCISCO NCAVC/VICAP

  “Unsub?”

  “Unknown subject,” Andie says. “The other two at the bottom are National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. VICAP is a computer database—Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.”

  However reluctant I am to get involved, unconsciously I’ve been thinking about this since the night I saw those two words scrawled on Ty Rodman’s dressing room mirror. What kind of person would do something like that? I’m intrigued by the process of finding out, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’m convinced it’s not a musician.

  “For what it’s worth, my guess is it’s a fan, someone steeped in jazz history. A record collector who is thoroughly familiar with important dates, or at least has access to someone who does.”

  If it was a musician, bent on some kind of revenge, what about a musician who hasn’t been able to play for almost three years and was filled with rage that Ty Rodman and Cochise have been playing, recording, and making a lot of money? Then I suppose the killer could be a musician, and I could be describing Ace Buffington and myself. Those thoughts I don’t share with Andie.

  Andie stops typing at that point. “I don’t think so. Serial killers almost always work alone. They never involve anyone else, but I see your point.”

  I add everything else I can think of while Andie types. She leans back, rubs the back of her neck, and reads it over with what seems a satisfied smile. “Your profile is pretty on target with mine.” She continues to stare at the screen, then swivels her chair toward me. “You asked the other night if it could be a woman?”

  “Yeah, I thought it was a possibility. You still don’t?”

  “I don’t know. I’m wavering. All the victims have been men, and what you said about it being someone who knew the victims or could get close to them makes sense. But this has to be more than a groupie. This person is very intelligent, high IQ, very organized, a professional.”

  I’d thought about that too. “What about somebody in the business—publicity, booking agents, record people? A lot of them are women.”

  Andie’s eyebrows pinch together as she considers it. “Yes,” she says, “I hadn’t thought of that, but…” Her voice trails off as she looks back at the screen. She stares at it for a couple of minutes, totally lost in some world of concentration. She taps on the save key, and we both watch the screen dissolve to the program page again.

  She turns her chair toward me. “Thanks for doing this, Evan. Your input, as Cooper said, is invaluable. I don’t know where we would have started on this without you. This one is really different from anything I’ve seen. If anything else comes up, I’ll be in touch.”

  “That sounds like I’m through.”

  “Yeah, I guess it does.

  I stand up and start for the door. “Oh, thanks for the cigarette.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  We look at each other for a moment. “Well,” she says, “I can’t think of anything else.”

  “Neither can I.”

  Coop has pulled his car next to mine in the garage. “That didn’t take long,” he says. “Get in for a minute.”

  “Well, they didn’t tell me everything, and she’s too quick on the computer. I think there was something she didn’t want me to see.”

  Coop nods. “Magic fingers. This is the FBI sport, need-to-know basis, eyes only, and all that Elliot Ness stuff. They don’t tell me everything either. The more media coverage this gets, the more weirdo phone calls. There’s always somebody out there ready to confess. In these cases, certain details are always left out. It’s a way to separate the kooks from the real killer. They’re worried about leaks.”

  “You mean someone is going to call the FBI and say he did it?”

  “Hey, it happens.”

  “Well, I’m the last one to want any of this leaked. That’s all I need.”

  Coop pauses for a moment. He doesn’t look at me, but he says, “You’re right, I owe you or we’re even, however you want it. I appreciate you keeping certain things to yourself.” Only then does he turn to me. “That is good news on the recording date. Going to do any Garth Brooks songs?”

  “Don’t make me gag.” I light a cigarette.

  “This is a nonsmoking car, sport.”

  “Yeah, right. Does your captain know about your cigars? Thanks, Coop. I hope that’s all I have to worry about for a long time.”

  “They’ll call you back in, you know, if they need something else. It’s out of my hands now. Besides,” Coop says, “you and the lovely Miss Lawrence seem to get along just fine.”

  I give Coop a look. “Why don’t you ask her out?”

  Coop starts his car. “She already told me she doesn’t date cops. Besides, that’s your specialty.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When I open the door, I smell what I hope is the aroma of sausage and peppers. Natalie is at the stove, stirring a large pot with one hand. With the other, she brushes back wisps of her fine blond hair. She’s in sweats, no makeup, and she’s never looked more beautiful to me.

  “Hi,” she says. “Want to open the wine?”

  Just like that, she’s back. She puts the lid on the pot while I open something called Bob’s Really Good Red. There’s a caricature drawing on the label, a guy with a white beard and glasses. “Where did you get this?” I ask, looking at the bottle. I
pour two glasses and hand her one.

  “Friend of mine brought a couple of bottles back from San Francisco. She thought the picture looked like our contract law professor.” She holds up her glass. “Here’s to Bob.”

  We take a sip. “Not bad, huh?” she says. She looks back at the stove. “We’ve got some time. That has to simmer for a while,” she says, nodding at the stove. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be back. How did the rehearsal go?”

  I sit down at the table and light a cigarette. “Great—this is going to work out well. We ran over a few tunes, just talked about the concept for the recording.”

  Natalie stirs the pot once more, then joins me. “Any more calls from the FBI babe?”

  “Special Agent Lawrence, you mean? Yeah, they had me come in again, help with the profile they’re putting together.” I tell her about the meeting and our discussion. Natalie’s face grows more serious as she listens.

  “You really think you’re helping?”

  “They do, but I don’t think there’s anything else I can tell them.”

  “I saw the story about Cochise. I imagine there are some musicians out there who are getting nervous. Do they have any idea who it might be?”

  I shake my head. “Not really, although there’s a possibility it might be a woman.”

  “A woman? Why a woman?”

  I give her a brief rundown of what I’d told Andie Lawrence. She drains her glass and pours more wine. “Sounds like you spent a lot of time with this Andie Lawrence.” She holds up her hand in front of her. “I’m sorry, I’m sounding like a jealous bitch, aren’t I?”

  “Coop and Wendell Cook were there too. Cook is the boss.” Natalie looks like she’s only half listening, trying to appear cheerful. “C’mon, Natalie, what am I supposed to do? Four people have been killed; they have little or nothing to go on. They’re grasping, and I just happen to be a convenient straw.”

  “I know, I know,” Natalie says. “I’m just—”

  “What?”

  “Afraid you’ll get in this too deep and won’t be able to get out.”