The next day I was sitting in Detective Hansen’s office on the third floor of the Huntington Beach Police Station. Today Hansen was wearing dark blue slacks, a powder blue Polo shirt with a shoulder holster, and loafers with no socks. I knew this because his feet were up on the desk, ankles crossed. His perfect hair was parted down the middle. Fit and tan, he was the quintessential Huntington Beach cop.
I motioned toward his clothing. “Items A amp; B, page one twenty three of the Nordstrom's men catalog?”
“Close,” he said. “Ordered from Macy’s. Wife picked them out. Thought I should set the standards for hip and cool for Huntington Beach PD.”
“Which, itself, sets the standards for hip and cool for police departments everywhere.”
“Sure.”
“So, if you follow that train of logic, you are the hippest and coolest cop this side of the Mississippi. Perhaps ever.”
“Gimme a break, Knighthorse.”
Something caught my eye. Actually two somethings. Hansen’s office overlooked a big alabaster fountain. The fountain was of mostly of a nude sea nymph. A buxomly sea nymph.
“Distracting, huh?” said Hansen.
“The sea nymph?”
“Whatever the fuck it is,” he said. “Why the hell did they have to make her tits so goddamn big?”
“Because they could.”
“So what can I do for you, Knighthorse?”
I told him about my mother, the picture, and why I was there. As I spoke, his eyes never wavered from mine. I finished the story. Hansen continued looking at me and then started shaking his head. His perfect hair never moved.
“Shit, Knighthorse, I never knew.”
“Few do.”
“The case is closed?”
I nodded. “I’m re-opening it. Unofficially.”
A corner of his lip raised in a sort of half smile. “Of course. And you have a picture of the perp, or the presumed perp?”
“Yes.”
“And the picture’s twenty years old?”
“Yes.”
He sat back in his chair, ran his fingers through his hair. His fingers, amazingly, were tan. And his hair, amazingly, never moved. Only grudgingly made some space for the fingers. Otherwise held its ground. I waited. Hansen thought some more.
“Maybe we can ID him,” he said.
“Mugshots?”
“We have them that far back, of course. Sound good?”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
Ten minutes later we took an elevator down to the basement. He left me alone in a dusty backroom and, surrounded by outdated computers and boxes of old case files, I looked at the faces of hundreds, perhaps even thousands of Orange County’s most hardened criminals of yesteryear.
But not the face I was looking for. And as I took the elevator back up from the basement, I was looking forward to crossing paths with the buxomly sea nymph.