CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Keith pushed open the door to Mane Attraction on Monday afternoon, a single bell hanging on the handle clattered against the glass. The little salon occupied a storefront in a strip mall just a few blocks from the Camelot Motel. The name of the shop was stenciled in pink tempera paint across the windows.
Someone had once made an effort to give the space a little flair, but now the pink walls were smudged gray with a decade’s worth of handprints. Faded photos of outdated hairstyles hung over the mirrors, along with dozens of glittery fake butterflies, their antennae bent and broken. There were three stations, but only one was currently in use. A middle-aged woman sat in the chair beneath a purple smock. Behind her stood a tall, wiry woman, her hair teased in an extravagant bouffant.
The hairdresser glanced up as she heard the door. “Be right with you, hon.” Her voice was soft and a little gravelly.
“Sure. Take your time.” Keith pretended to look at his phone while the woman in the chair resumed a story about her ex-husband’s new girlfriend.
“He tried sushi with her. Sushi. When he was with me he wouldn’t even try a new brand of cereal.”
The hairdresser made little tsk noises in response, shaking her head as she worked. Keith could see that she was younger than he’d first thought—maybe in her early thirties. Her face was caked with makeup, but it couldn’t quite cover up the pitted scars across her cheeks. Her fingers, though, were slender and clean, her nails sculpted and painted pearly blue.
She’s not using now, Keith thought. If she were, those nails would be bitten to the quick. But she still had the gaunt, hollowed-out look of a meth addict.
“All right, Carla, take a seat over here.” She patted the arm of an ancient-looking dryer chair just across from her beauty station. The older woman sat down, and the hairdresser adjusted the bowl of the dryer over her head. “I’m gonna see to this gentlemen. It doesn’t look like it’ll take too long. Just a little off the top?” She winked at Keith.
He chuckled, hands in his pockets, waiting for her to get the woman set up with the dryer full blast in her ears.
“So what can I do for you?” The woman picked up a broom and started sweeping hair away from her chair.
“Are you Casey Roarke?”
She froze for a split second. “Yeah, that’s me. And who’s asking?”
He held up his hands in a placating gesture. Glancing at Carla to make sure she was safely involved in her Cosmo, the dryer blasting in her ears, he spoke in a low, calm voice.
“Ms. Roarke, I’m Keith Mars. I’m a private investigator. I’m sorry to bother you at work, but I was hoping I could ask you a few questions.”
Her expression turned cagey. “What about?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard about the lawsuit against the Balboa County Sheriff’s Department—the one that’s accusing them of planting evidence to boost their arrest numbers.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about any of that.”
He looked down, shifting his weight slightly. He was a solidly built man, but over the years he’d learned to morph into a less imposing figure when he needed to put someone at ease. Shoulders and belly relaxed, thumbs hooked in front pockets, a hint of Andy Griffith in the voice, sans the overt rurality. “Well, if I’m not mistaken, in August 2012, you were pulled over for speeding. Deputy Douglas Harlon searched your vehicle and found three grams of crystal meth in your glove box. From what I heard, you denied it was yours for more than a week, before changing your story and pleading guilty to a misdemeanor drug charge.”
Casey’s face hardened. “Fine, I’m a tweaker. So what?”
“I don’t think that meth was yours,” he said evenly. “I think Deputy Harlon planted it in your car because you already had a record and because he needed an arrest that night.”
Her fingers tightened around the broom handle. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you put in a call to the ACLU on August twenty-first. You told the volunteer that you’d been clean for eight months when the cops found that eight ball.”
She shrugged. “I was looking for a way out of jail.” She leaned toward him. “Haven’t you ever met an addict before? We’re liars.”
Keith didn’t miss a beat. “Doug Harlon was the same deputy who arrived on the scene when my client was shot. He made sure there was a Glock in his hand when backup arrived. And you aren’t the only two with stories like that.”
“Yeah, but that’s all you’ve got. A bunch of stories.” She shook her head. “You know what I’ve got? Three kids I just got back from CPS. You have kids?”
“A daughter.”
“Well, imagine if someone could take her from you.” Her voice was like glass, sharp and clear. “Just for a second, imagine that you had a choice to make. That you could keep your mouth shut and maybe get your kids back, or that you could stir up shit and lose everything. Think about that before you come asking me about any more stories you’ve heard, all right?”
She knelt with a dustpan and deftly scooped up the scraps of hair. Then she stood and looked him in the eye.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got a lot of work to do.”
Back in the car, Keith collected his thoughts before starting it. Leading up to Eli’s criminal trial, he’d found dozens of people willing to testify about the planted evidence. But to strengthen the civil case, he wanted to make sure he could show that Deputy Harlon, the officer who’d signed off on Eli’s arrest, was a part of this pattern. So far he’d struck out; Casey Roarke had been his third interview of the morning, and they’d all gone about as well. Lawrence “Duck” Gibbs, a former heroin dealer and small-time thug, had let his two pit bulls out in the yard when he’d seen Keith at the gate; he’d shouted over their frenzied barking that he “wasn’t no kind of snitch.” And Benji Saroyan, one of Neptune’s itinerant homeless, had started to cry in the middle of Keith’s pitch and refused to answer any questions—though he’d taken Keith’s outstretched twenty eagerly enough.
It didn’t matter; there were plenty of witnesses. And they were trying to show institutionalized corruption, anyway—not just Deputy Harlon’s itchy evidence-planting finger. He thought they’d have enough with or without Harlon’s victims. But it troubled him to see how many people were still scared. It meant that even with all the press, the Sheriff’s Department was still squeezing the underclasses as hard as they dared.
He glanced up and down the street. So far, no oncoming trucks. And he had three more people to try to talk to before he gave up for the day. He turned the key in the ignition and glided back out into traffic.