Title: Hunting Haunted Memories.
Author: ken r AKA ken242 AKA Kenneth Renouard
Rating: Mature kind of
Couples Max/Liz other characters as needed.
Disclaimer: I used the characters of the Roswell story like actors on a stage. I mean no harm to any of them. I siimply borrowed them
Summary. She was beloved of almost everyone. From street people to the rich and famous, no one could say anything bad about her. So why was she so brutally murdered? The only clue Max has is a confused ghost whose memory is rapidly deteriorating. He has a young assistant with credentials from Northwestern University and a super computer sleuth who can dig up dirt on anyone to help him.
I guarantee this story to end Dreamer friendly.
Hunting Haunted Memories
It was three o’clock in the morning. The phone rang. That wasn’t unusual for Max, but he still wished people would get themselves blown away at a more decent hour. He showered because there was no telling when he would get home again.
Home, that was a name for where he lived, the little house in the rundown neighborhood behind the university. At one time when Max parents had first come to Albuquerque, this had been the best neighborhood in town. This was Nob Hill where the rich had come when the town was younger. Now the character of the people had changed. There were punks walking down the streets when the sun went down. Many of the older people were afraid to come out of their houses.
One evening when Max came out, there was a group of youths all in their early 20’s who came up to him and demanded money. Max laughed and they didn’t catch the joke. One of the dumber punks pulled a knife. “Hey, man, we ain’t fooling. Gimme your cash, for I stick you.”
Max looked at the kid for a minute or two. It was long enough for the punk to start to get nervous. “I ain’t kidding no mor. Gimme yo cash.”
Max reached as if to get his wallet. When he saw the kid’s eyes following his left hand, Max hit him as hard as he could with his right. The kid went down. The hand carrying the knife was laying across the curb. Max stepped on the wrist. There was a loud crack and the kid screamed. While standing on his forearm, Max pulled out the police radio he carried and called patrol. “Mackenzie, I got a juvenile who tried to assault me with a knife. Send someone over quick! I got a call.”
This brought quick action. The patrol car screeched as it braked to a halt. And a burley officer jumped out. “Hey, Max! What happened?”
Max just shrugged. “He tried to come at me with a knife and we scuffled. Someway, he got his arm broke. Take him to emergency and, then, book him for attempted robbery. I will file the papers tomorrow.” With that, Max was on his way to some gang shooting or the other. The juvenile was on his way to the emergency room screaming that the police did this to him and no one was listening.
Tonight, or rather this morning, Max was not sure what he had. He came out to the old Crown Victoria Ford. The uniformed officers had gutted it with 24 hour patrols for two years and, then, given it to the investigation department. The mayor was hoping that investigations could coax a few thousand more miles out of it before turning it into scrap.
The car growled into running like an arthritic man who awakens with the urgency of needing to go to the bathroom, but his joints were in too much pain to move. The car was showing wear. The garage no longer asked the mileage, but rather, how many times had the odometer been around. Max had no intention of asking for another one. There was something about respect for age, that evey year he spent in homicide, Max identified closer with. If Max wrecked this car or some morning it just refused to get going, then he would lay it to rest where it stood.
The goddamned mayor had been on another revitalization kick and he had rebuilt an old theater. Max had read that the old “Sunshine” building was now a place “for society to go.” It had live theater. Even with the crap, the homeless and the druggies, the elite of the city made it, “The place to go.”
Places like this were like squirrels. You could put new clothes on them and introduce them to society, but the area itself and the people around the old building made it still just a “rat.” A squirrel was just a rat in fancy clothes. Max thought that it might be like his car. Dab a little paint on it and pretend it was set for a new century. The mayor was sure that the historic value in the old building would cloud out the filth that accumulated where it stood. There was, now, a possible homicide that attested to the character of he neighborhood. That was another thing. There could be gallons of blood slopped all over the scene and the body completely dismembered, and it was still called a “possible homicide.”
Max didn’t pay much attention to what went on around places like this, or to the type of people that the mayor attracted to flock to them. If he really wanted to know anything about society, he would ask smart asses like Kyle. Kyle had made detective just this year. Kyle had attended classes at Northwestern. Kyle dated society girls. Kyle had a modern life. Not like Max, who when he went home would turn on a CD player with Jazz or classics. Sometimes he would sit in the evening with just a book for company.
It wasn’t as if Max didn’t have any social life. Hell, he had screwed some of the whores working in the offices down town. Max caught him self. He was using the macho slang of some of his fellow cops. You do not call a woman a whore if she is willing to sit with you and give you solace. Then, she is willing to go to bed with you, a person, who had no promise. She is willing to hold your head after love making, if it could be called that. If she is willing to share her body for a night for nothing more than the dinner and the company you offered, hell, you ought to call her a bloody saint. Yeah, call her a saint; because without women like that, you would have nothing, but the damned CD player for company.
Max didn’t watch detective shows on TV. The damned actors made the detectives just too pretty. None of the movie detectives looked like they had ever had a suspect puke on them, or that they would know what to do if one did. Occasionally, Max would watch an old Mickey Spillane movie. There, the detectives were always worn out, drunk and tired. Well, that was mostly true. Max had, so far avoided the alcoholism, but he was tired of the constant similarity. There were usually only a few reasons for murder. What made homicide interesting was the inevitable surprise that came up now and again.
The Spillane detectives did leave with the pretty young girls most of the time. Max was still waiting for that part. Most of the women Max met on the job had their nasal passages already rotted out from sniffing too much white powder.
If this turned out to be a society dame who got it, Max would have to call Kyle. Kyle could mix with the upper crust where Max would probably get into more trouble than he had when he broke that punks arm when he pulled the knife.
When Max got down town, he saw that the old building was lit up like Christmas. Max just pulled into a fire lane and got out of the old car. He didn’t even bother to lock it. If the gang bangers wanted to steal it as part of their gang initiation, let them. It would probably save the city money if the car disappeared.
“Hey, man! You can’t park there!” A fresh young face in uniform came running over, yelling at Max for parking where he did. Max showed the kid his shield. He must have been just out of the academy or had just transferred from days to nights. Most of the regulars all knew Max. They knew his scofflaw attitude about parking, and many other things, for that matter.
“What you got here, Junior?” Max asked.
The young officer had not gotten over his meeting with Max Evans who was the detective of legend on the force. But maybe, to his superiors, he was better known as, the royal pain in the butt. It wasn’t putting up with Max as he was solving crime that irked them. It was putting up with him other times when he didn’t have anything working and he would be cussing a stack of crimes, which he had no idea how to solve.
“It is Andrea Simms, the actress,” he said as if that explained everything.
“Okay, so what’s this Simms dame done to cause this much fuss?” Max inquired as he stood up and stretched. Max was looking at the building. It was still a rat even with the new façade and the crowd of people in Tuxes and gowns. Hell, PETA aught to be here handing out citations because of the dead animal remains seen by the number of fur wraps he could see.
“She was murdered,” the young officer stated.
“Hell, kid, someone gets waxed in this town almost every other night. What’s so special about this one?” Max asked. Max took out a piece of chewing gum. He had quit smoking sometime ago, but the infantile desire to put things in his mouth still lingered.
“She is about the most beautiful woman in the world,” the officer breathed.
“Fuck, kid! It’s a big world and neither of us has seen half of it yet. First, tell me who she is. There are a lot of pretty broads and a lot of them get taken out by some scum bag that they think they are in love with.” Max retorted. That would be the first thing he would have to check. What kind of love life did the victim have?
The officer frowned, “You really don’t know who she is, do you?”
“As I tried to say kid, fill me in. You got youthful enthusiasm and I got age. Let’s see if we can bring them together.” Max was not trying to be grouchy. This was just the way he felt at this time of the morning. It seemed that homicide was a crime that always tried to find inconvenient times to occur.
“She was a child star. Now, she is all grown up and was in town making movies with the Mayor’s cinema group. They had her doing a charity benefit at the Sunshine building. They just found her. She had her throat cut. Who would do such a thing? She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.” The young man clearly was star struck.
Max walked up to the building. He didn’t need identification here. These were all old timers. They knew Max and were relieved, Now that he was here, the CSI, Crime Scene Investigation, teams would be following and they could go back to their normal patrols. They could be booking drunks and hustling street people instead of looking at the most beautiful woman in the world, At least she was without the blood and the rugged cut at her throat.
Max was ushered inside where they took him to a dressing room behind the stage. There was a bed along with the dressers and closets that held changes for the stage performance. The performers usually stayed in one of the hotels nearby, but there were accommodations if they wanted to rest or even stay the night after a long session with the public.
The room was a mess. It was covered with blood. Lying in the middle was the body of a woman. Someone had covered her with a sheet. Max went over and lifted the sheet.
He was greeted with the sight of long, silky brown hair and a slightly triangular face with full lips. Max drew back the sheet further. Her nude upper body showed beautiful breasts and creamy skin. It appeared that she was still wearing a skirt of some sort. Max didn’t investigate further to see if she still had on her panties. She deserved some respect and privacy, although as soon as CSI arrived, her entire life and body would be exposed for all to see.
The officer outside wasn’t exaggerating. She had been a beautiful woman in life. Now, she was just rotting evidence. Max had seen so many like this that he didn’t allow himself to get wrapped up in what they had been in the past. Max always found it best to divorce himself from any personal feelings about the victim or anger toward the perpetrator.
That is what the body and the crime scene were. It was just a pile of rapidly rotting information that the CSI boys would discover and interpret to Max. He in turn would beat the shit out of a few punks. Finally they would arrive at a case together, if they were lucky.
Sometimes, they would even quickly solve it. Other times, Max would wait until someone got drunk, careless or just had a string of bad luck. Then the perpetrator would actually divulge the answer themselves.
“Here, Max.” One of the officers handed Max sheets of paper with the names of people who were nearby when she was found. Max looked at the names. If they weren’t personal friends or drinking buddies of the mayor, they were relatives. Hell! If he talked to these people, the department would loose its budget for a year. Kyle would be requested to help him. Max would put that expensive golden education to proper use. Let Kyle interview those who were too delicate to shove around. Another man came over,
“This list may be more to your liking, Max. It is the people we have working here and other places around the theater.” Max grunted. He could feel comfortable with this group. Max would be sure to check all their names through warrants. At the least, he might make a few arrests that way and not waste his whole day.
CSI arrived and, with hand shaking all around, Max left to greet the rising sun over the mountains and on to the downtown headquarters. Max went to the desk that he used when he was here. It was clean because Max seldom sat at it.
He used the inbox, to pick up phone messages. He would selectively throw most of them away. The only ones he bothered to answer were those pertaining to whatever cases he was on. Personal messages were discarded because he couldn’t think of anyone he would want to talk to. As he was sitting there making his morning contribution to the trash, a dapper young man came up.
“Captain said you would need help with this one, Max. Andrea Simms! Who would have thought? She was one of the few really nice people in Hollywood. This will be a tough one. Where do you want me to start?” Kyle asked.
Max grunted. It wasn’t that Max didn’t like Kyle. Kyle was a nice guy, Educated, friendly and everything Max wasn’t. Over the years, Max had learned not to trust nice people. If a man wanted to kill you, Max could understand that. Max had seen so many sweet voices, who were just a cover, for the knife someone wanted to plant in your back.
Max went through the pockets of his now rumpled jacket. Taking out the sheets, he placed them on the desk. After looking at the lists of names, he set some of them to one side, “Here is a list of names of the humans with social standing. I will take the animals. Get the latest from the CSI team. I guess we should go together to interview the movie bastards. We need to find out all we can about this broad. Everyone seems to think she is so lovely and nice. There has to be a troll in her closet somewhere. Someone didn’t like her. This surely wasn’t a suicude”
Kyle turned to Max “Unless, of course, it was a random murder. We have to find out if she was sexually assaulted also. I might get the secretaries looking up the known rapist in the area and start running them. We need to run some checks of the street people. How many other cases do your have?” That was Kyle, always with a formula to fit the case to. He even worried about the number of cases on Max’s desk that didn’t fit any formula and would not be solved by intellect but rather by chance.
Max grimaced, taking out another piece of gum, again, with the nursing fixation, popping it in his mouth. “About ten of them right now, Kyle. I think that I can wrap a few of them soon. But a couple will be with me for maybe years. I guess we should concentrate on this one while it is fresh, but I can’t leave the others, either.” Max stretched in his chair. Homicide was interesting sometimes. He was good at solving cases, especially with Kyle’s help. Max didn’t have what it took to mix with society but Kyle did. Max had that infamous gut which occasionally was correct. Max was many times lucky.
Max was looking past Kyle where he saw a short, slender woman, with dark brown hair just looking at him from the hallway. She looked familiar. Usually, he would duck his head and let Kyle or someone with more class, greet people like her. There was something familiar about this one. Max got up and went to the door. When he got to the door, there was no one in the hall. Oh well, Max hadn’t got much sleep last night. Maybe, it was just his imagination.
Kyle left to visit the dwellings of the great ones. Max left to prowl the alleys for rats, cats and, if he looked really hard, the lowest of all, the people who had fallen to this level. The rats and cats and an occasionally stray dog were all respected, but the imitations of human beings were the ones he must find to learn anything.
As Max walked out to his car he familiar face watching him saw from a second story window. He stopped and looked up, but she was gone.
Max just shook his head. He drove to the Sunshine Building. When he got there, he had to show his shield because they also had day people who Max saw so seldom that they didn’t know who he was. Max went to the manager’s office and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” the melodic voice of the manager was heard. “What can I do for you?”
again Max had to show his shield. “I need some information about the dame who got killed last night.” He said.
The little man was wringing his hands. “Oh, this is so terrible! It just couldn’t happen. She was the most beloved lady in Hollywood. There is just no way she could be dead now.”
“Well, there was someone who didn’t agree with you. I need some information.” Max pulled out the list of things he had jotted down. Max also pulled out the ever-present stick of gum. As he was unwrapping it, he was thinking how best to approach this man. He clearly wasn’t facing a man with great backbone or resolve.
Max read the items off from his notes. “First, I need a list of all the men you had working last night. I have one list, but I need yours. Then, I need a statement about who you ran a background checks on and the results of those checks. I need all you can tell me about that charity group. Who are they and what is their charity?
The little man was still wringing his hands as if he hoped he could wash away the problem. “This was an adult program. The Mayor wants us to help those who need a second chance, so we didn’t run checks on the people we hired. I can get you tentative lists, but you will have to talk to Mr. Johnson, the head of the charity, to get the whole list. The charity hired some of the people as stage hands. The mayor so wants his program to get a second chance to work.”
“Yeah, and the Mayor is an asshole,” Max muttered.
This is why he hated these people. They were so sanctimonious until the shit hit the fan. Then, they cried for the police to fix their screw ups. The list that the manager was talking about was a pet project of the mayor. He even tried to use ex-cons to work as janitors at the police department. That was until, Max and a few others had a drop your drawers and check your pee, exercise, making them take drug tests. The cops had most of the mayor’s project back in jail for parole violations. The mayor had to drop his give a man a second chance, at least in the police department. Hell, most of them had already had dozens of chances before they were finally caught and put away in prison.
Max tried and tried to get the manager to tell him more about the show last night, but the little sissy, bastard kept crying that this just couldn’t happen over and over. Next Max needed to pick up Kyle and visit the organizers of the charity. Maybe, they would have their shit together by now.
As he left the office, Max thought he wasn’t old for a homicide detective, but the many things he had seen were wearing upon him, homicide being so many times the last result of worse crimes the victim had suffered before expiring. The way people like the manager faced the reality, by the denial that such crimes could occur, weighed on his shoulders. As he walked outside behind the Sunshine building, Max took out another stick of gum. Long lasting gum wouldn’t have solved Max’s problem either. He found relief in the action of unwrapping and thrusting he gum into his mouth.
Max still had a few more things he could do alone. He rousted the maggots in the alley. You could feel sorry for these caricatures of humanity if you wanted. The First Baptist church had free dinners served at their hall just four blocks from here. The Catholic charities had a store house just a few block the other way, but they all had a condition. They asked that a man be sober and clean of drugs before they would work with him.
Max thought here was a place where the churches had more sense than the frickin mayor. These starving creatures were the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t give up the drugs and booze. It seemed that they were willing, to give up their humanity.
“Charlie, rise and shine. Let it hang out and give me a piss.” Max shouted as he stirred a bundle of rags with his foot.
“Aw, Max, have a heart. I only had a little last night. If you take my piss now, I will be back in the slammer,” the creature said as it stirred and the semblance of a man straightened out. “Have a heart, Max. There must be something I can do for you?”
Max knelt down, “As a matter of fact there is, Charley. A lady was killed last night. I want anything you can find out about her.”
“Now, that is better Max. You take care of me and I will take care of you. What was the dame’s name?” Charlie asked now that they were negotiating.
“She was that movie star, Andrea Simms,” Max replied.
“Aw, no shit, Max! She was a lady, that one. No one should take something like that out of the world. She would speak to anyone, even me, if I came up to her on the street. No, Max, you gotta be wrong, not Andrea!” Charlie was truly upset. In a way, he was much like the theater manager.
Did everyone else know and love this woman except Max? Couldn’t any one say she was a bitch, a whore or something that would lead the police to her murderer? Charlie would do his best. He was a smart man when he was straight, but he had just gotten so strung out that only in death would he ever get his life back.
Max went back into the theater. There were two men vacuuming the rugs. Max wondered if they were part of the mayor’s program. Max took out his shield, “What can you guys tell me about the woman who was killed last night?” he asked.
They looked at each other, “Man, she was a lady! She don’t give nobody airs like she was somebody above you, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. She was Mother Theresa incarnate, but come on guys, there must have been fights or arguments. These stars don’t get there by being nice to everyone.” Max stated.
The two men stopped what they were doing. “No, man, you got it wrong. She don’t give shit to nobody.” The men looked at each other and the quiet one spoke. “Dis one here is a lady. Probably, she was the only real lady around last night. She don’t never yell if we don’t clean her room out. In fact, if we is busy, she actually will come out and borry a broom and sweep her place out herself. No, she ain’t like none of these other important people,” he said.
“Okay, guys, how about men friends? Don’t tell me a doll like her don’t have a guy or two coming by after the show,” Max stated. There had to be a crack somewhere in her sainthood.
Again, the men looked at each other. The more vocal one said hesitantly, “There was that dude one night who came for her in a big limo. You know, those cars that rock stars like. This one had a chauffeur and everything. He was one of those fancy men who were in those black suits last night. From what we could see, he seemed to really like her. That is all I seed. He seemed to be a nice guy. We just figured he was someone who she, maybe, gave a little to. We didn’t see him pick her up, but that once.”
Max thanked the men. Well, what do you know? Here was a chink in saint Andrea’s armor. She did put out to someone or, at least, that was what the maintenance men believed.
Max returned to the station. He figured Kyle would be back soon and they would compare notes. That mysterious lover was all he had so far. True, there still might be something on the street. And there always could be a twist that none of them had ever thought of. That was the curse and the blessing of homicide. No matter how you investigated, people were always out to surprise you. Over the years, Max had seen some strange things.
Kyle came in. He was excited. “She did have a lover. It was Ralph Watson, the investment counselor. He took her home three nights ago. He said that they casually knew each other and when their paths crossed they always tried to have at least one night together.”
Kyle continued, “He was here last night but he was with a group of friends. They spent the whole night at the casino on the reservation after her show. He gave me the names of those he was with and, also, the limo company they used. He says he used that company whenever he wanted to impress someone. He did seem to be broken up about her death. He said she was truly a great friend, but not a regular lover. Those are the words he used.”
Max stood and stretched, “Kyle I started the street people looking for anything they can find, I also started on the maintenance crew. I will want to see the list of ex-cons that the theater was using that night and the results from the lists of known rapists. I was up at three this morning. It has been a long day. I am headed in. Call me if you run across anything I should know.”
Max drove his Crown Vic back to his house. He saw some of the punk kids at the end of the street but he noticed that they stayed well away from his place. Max picked up Tai food for supper.