to the other. “Except for going to Safeway to get some groceries and going for a jog around eleven, he’s home all day. But then, at four-fifteen, he gets in his car and drives down to the hospital.”
“Which hospital?” Madden asks.
“Parkview, man. Where he used to work.”
Madden looks at Burns. For the past couple of days, with Fernandez on vacation, the three of them have been taking turns tailing him, though Billings, who Cogan hasn’t met and fortuitously has the lightest caseload, has been doing the bulk of the surveillance. Of the three of them, he’s also the most non-descript. He’s of average height and looks, has a thin frame and full head of closely cropped, light brown hair. He has virtually no distinguishing features save exceptionally white teeth, which he takes exceptionally good care of, and a self-assured smile that he once admitted, after several rounds of drinks at The Goose, he modeled after Robert Redford’s smile in one of the early scenes in Butch Cassidy. That smile, of course, rankles Madden to no end, for it represents cheap seduction, not of women, but of those in their fraternity. Billings may only be an average detective, at best, but he’s universally popular in local law-enforcement circles, the guy everybody wants to buy a beer.
“What was he doing at Parkview?”
Billings hands him a digital photo he’d printed out on an inkjet printer. Pointing at the photo with his toothpick, he says, “He waited for her.” The picture’s a little fuzzy from being blown up a little more than it should, but Madden has no trouble recognizing the woman with short, dark hair.
“Dr. Beckler,” he remarks to Burns.
“Yeah,” Billings feels compelled to interject. “I assumed she was a doctor.”
Burns asks, “Where’d he wait for her?”
“In the parking lot.”
Cogan pulled into the back of the lot and waited in his car. Right around five, Billings says, he saw this woman—Dr. Beckler—heading toward the area where Cogan was parked. When she was twenty-five yards or so from him, Cogan stepped out of the car. He didn’t go to greet her, though. Instead, he stood next to his car and waited for her to notice him.
“Could you tell whether she was expecting him?” Madden asks.
“Didn’t appear that way.”
When she saw him, she stopped in her tracks, clearly surprised. From his vantage point, he was having trouble seeing Cogan’s hands. But from the glimpses he got, he didn’t see a weapon.
They spoke for about five minutes. Their conversation didn’t seem heated. She started to leave, then came back and said something. Not longer after the second exchange they both got in their separate cars and left. Cogan went directly home.
“Did she give him anything?” Burns asks.
“No. She had a shopping bag and a briefcase, but never took anything out of either.”
Madden stares at the photo. He sees the shopping bag Billings is talking about.
“What do you think, Hank?” Burns asks.
“That’s a Neiman Marcus bag, isn’t it?”
Burns scrutinizes the photo.
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Nothing. I just didn’t picture Dr. Beckler as a Neiman Marcus kind of gal.”
May 9—5:02 p.m.
“I need your help, Anne.”
“Is this one of your pathetic attempts at humor, Cogan?” He shakes his head. “You know I wouldn’t ask unless it was really important. And I would appreciate that if you turn me down, you keep this conversation confidential.”
“I can’t guarantee that.”
“Fair enough.”
She sets the shopping bag down.
“You better not be fucking with me.”
He is in a way. He’s always fucking with her. But this time there’s no cum line. No, he truly needs her help. He says that he’d heard through the grapevine that she volunteered a couple of times a month at the Free Clinic. “I need you to pull a patient’s chart,” he says. “The name on file should be Ray. Chris Ray. I need to know what she was treated for.”
“Who’s Chris Ray?” she asks.
“The girl.”
“The girl?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“You know she came into the clinic?”
“Using that alias. The Sunday after the incident. The next day.”
“Are the police aware of this?”
“I don’t think they are. They definitely poked around, but it doesn’t look like they tried that hard to ID her.”
She looks at him with renewed skepticism.
“I’ll give you a hint,” he says, anticipating her next question. “Lead singer, Twelve Picassos.”
Her eyes open wide. “Heather? The admin?”
“She recognized the girl from a picture I showed her. A certain baseball cap jogged her memory. For the record, I swore I wouldn’t tell you she told me.”