his jacket and tossed it on the counter. “Enough bullshit self-pity.
What can I do for you?”
I told him about Cassie Jones, gave him a mini-lecture on Munchausen
syndrome. He drank and made no comment. Looked almost as if he were
tuning out.
I said, “Have you heard of this before?”
“No. Why?”
“Most people react a little more strongly.”
“Just taking it all in. . Actually, it reminded me of something.
Several years ago. There was this guy came into the E.R. at Cedars.
Bleeding ulcer. Rick saw him, asked him about stress. Guy says he’s
been hitting the bottle very heavy cause he’s guilty about being a
murderer and getting away with it. Seems he’d been with a call girl,
gotten mad and cut her up. Badly-real psycho slasher thing. Rick
nodded and said uh-huh; then he got the hell out of there and called
Security-then me. The murder had taken place in Westwood. At the time
I was in a car with Del Hardy, working on some robberies over in
Pico-Robertson, and the two of us bopped over right away, Mirandized
him, and listened to what he had to say.
“The turkey was overjoyed to see us. Vomiting out details like we were
his salvation. Names, addresses, dates, weapon. He denied any other
murders and came up clean for wants and warrants. A real
middle-of-the-road type of guy, even owned his own businesscarpet
cleaning, I think. We booked him, had him repeat his confession on
tape, and figured we’d picked up a dream solve. Then we proceeded to
round up verif’ing details and found nothing. No crime, no physical
evidence of any murder at that particular date and place; no hooker had
ever lived at that address or anywhere nearby.
No hooker fitting the name and description he’d given us had ever
existed anywhere in L.A. So we checked unidentified victims, but none
of the Jane Does in the morgue fit, and no moniker in Vice’s files
matched the one he said his girl used. We even ran checks in other
cities, contacted the FBI, figuring maybe he got disoriented-some kind
of psycho thing-and mixed up his locale. He kept insisting it had
happened exactly the way he was telling it. Kept saying he wanted to
be punished.
After three straight days of this: naaa. Guy’s got a courtappointed
attorney against his will, and the lawyer’s screaming at us to make a
case or let his client go. Our lieutenant is putting the pressure
on-put up or shut up. So we keep digging. Zilch.
At this point we begin to suspect we’ve been had, and confront the
guy.
He denies it. Really convincing-De Niro could have taken lessons. So
we go over it again. Backtracking, double-checking, driving ourselves
crazy. And still come up empty. Finally, we’re convinced it’s a scam,
get overtly pissed off at the guy-major league bad-cop/bad-cop. He
reacts by getting pissed off, too. But it’s an embarrassed kind of
anger. Slimy. Like he knows he’s been found out and is being
extra-indignant in order to put us on the defensive.”
He shook his head and hummed the Twilight Zone theme.
“What happened?” I said.
“What could happen? We let him walk out and never heard from the
asshole again. We could have busted him for filing a false report, but
that would have bought us lots of paperwork and court time, and for
what? Lecture and a fine on a first offense knocked down to a
misdemeanor? No, thank you. We were really steamed, Alex.
I’ve never seen Del so mad. It had been a heavy week, plenty of real
crimes, very few solutions. And this bastard yanks our chains with
total bullshit.”
Remembered anger colored his face.
“Confessors,” he said. Attention-seeking, jerking everyone around.
Doesn’t that sound like your Munchausen losers?”
“Sounds a lot like them,” I said. “Never thought of it that way.”
“See? I’m a regular font of insight. Go on with your case.”
I told him the rest of it.
He said, “Okay, so what do you want? Background checks on the
mother?
Both parents? The nurse?”
“I hadn’t thought in those terms.”
“No? What, then?”
“I really don’t know, Milo. I guess I just wanted some counsel.”