Free To Die in Beverly Hills by Gerald Petievich

medallions had given him a headache after only an hour or so.
    By three hours his back and butt, as well as his head, ached. Somehow, he developed a second wind. Later, the second wind went away.
    Finally, he felt like his entire body had fallen asleep and only his brain was working. The room was hot and he had an urge for a cold beer. He turned another page. A sketch of a star-shaped medallion did not jump out.
    It just sat there staring at him.
    The detective responsible for the sketch had drawn little arrows pointing to three points on the star. The notation read: "inlaid diamonds on these points only, victim says they are 1/4 carat. " Below the drawing and the notation was a printed caption: "Medallion stolen during West L.A. residential burglary. See Crime Report L4921368/Victim: Morganthau, Adam." Carr closed his eyes and pictured the medallion Amanda Kennedy had been wearing... It had to be the same one.
    Carr snapped the binder release and removed the page from the folder. He carried the page to a copying machine in the corner of the room. Having made a copy, he replaced the page in the binder. It took him almost a half hour to refile the binders.
    On his way downstairs to Higgins's office, he stopped at a bank of food vending machines, where he bought a stale candy bar, which he ate in two bites, and a fresh pack of cigarettes.
     
    Early the next morning Carr waited in a dingy visiting room at the L.A. County Women's jail. He lit another cigarette and realized that the pack was almost empty. A bearded young man who looked like an attorney and a fat black woman sat at one of the long tables. They were separated by a face-high clear-plastic partition. Because of the early hour, they were the only ones in the room. In a ceiling corner, a closed-circuit TV camera scanned back and forth.
    There was the sound of a hydraulic lock snapping open.
    A large steel door in the corner of the room slid slowly into the wall. Amanda Kennedy, dressed in a county-issued blue denim sack dress, walked through the doorway. She stopped and stared at Carr for a moment, then came forward and sat down on the other side of the table.
    "I hope I didn't keep you from getting breakfast," Carr said.
    "Oatmeal mush," she said. "Oatmeal mush makes me sick." She had neither makeup nor any form of expression on her face. "I didn't know that medallion was stolen."
    Carr lit another cigarette. He held the pack above the partition. She shook her head as if he had offered poison.
    "You're the one who told the police I had the medallion," she said. "They wouldn't tell me who told them, but I know it was you. You told them to put me in jail. I was up all night being processed. I don't feel well. Although I'm sure this will come as a shock to a person like you, I've been in jail only once in my whole life. I was at a friend's apartment one night. He was an airline pilot and these narcs broke down the door. They said my friend was a heroin smuggler. I hadn't done anything, but they arrested me anyway. Every time I'd try to tell them that I was just visiting, they'd tell me to shut up. I spent three days in jail and I hadn't done anything ... May I ask you a question?"
    Carr nodded.
    "If someone gives you a gift and that gift turns out to be stolen, is the person who accepts the gift guilty of possession of stolen property?"
    "It depends."
    She sat back. "I want to see a lawyer."
    "Why waste the money? I can give you the same advice he'll give you and without a retainer fee: Don't talk. Don't say a word to the cops, no matter what they promise you. There, I just saved you a thousand bucks."
    Amanda Kennedy began to pick at her face, then self- consciously stopped herself. "I don't want to go to jail for something I didn't do."
    Carr looked nonchalant. "I just stopped by to ask you a few questions."
    "And if I don't answer them I'm going to be prosecuted, isn't that right?"
    Carr stared at her for a moment.
    Amanda Kennedy picked at her face furiously. She