The detective in charge of this scene was a lieutenant who’d seen hundreds of murders, maybe thousands, yet chose to stay outside for a while.
I let loose more mental pictures. Some fiend in a geeky delivery hat ringing the doorbell then managing to talk himself inside.
Watching as the prey went for her purse? Waiting for precisely the right moment before coming up behind her and clamping both his hands on the sides of her head.
Quick blitz of rotation. The spinal cord would separate and that would be it.
Doing it correctly required strength and confidence.
That and the lack of obvious transfer evidence—not even a shoe impression—screamed experience. If there’d been a similar murder in L.A., I hadn’t heard about it.
Despite all that meticulousness, the hair around the woman’s temples might be a good place to look for transfer DNA. Psychopaths don’t sweat much, but you never know.
I examined the room again.
Speaking of purses, hers was nowhere in sight.
Robbery as an afterthought? More likely souvenir-taking was part of the plan.
Edging away from the body, I wondered if the woman’s last thoughts had been of crusty dough, mozzarella, a comfy barefoot dinner.
The doorbell ring the last music she’d ever hear.
I stayed in the apartment awhile longer, straining for insight.
The terrible competence of the neck-twist made me wonder about someone with martial arts training.
The embroidered towel bothered me.
Vita. Life.
Had he brought that one but taken the rest from her linen closet?
Yum. Bon appétit. To life.
The decomp reek intensified and my eyes watered and blurred and the necklace of guts morphed into a snake.
Drab constrictor, fat and languid after a big meal.
I could stand around and pretend that this was anything comprehensible, or hurry outside and try to suppress the tide of nausea rising in my own guts.
Not a tough choice.
CHAPTER
2
Milo hadn’t moved from his position on the landing. His eyes were back on Planet Earth, watching the street below. Five uniforms were moving from door to door. From the quick pace of the canvass, plenty of no-one-home.
The street was in a working-class neighborhood in the southeastern corner of West L.A. Division. Three blocks east would’ve made it someone else’s problem. Mixed zoning allowed single-family dwellings and duplexes like the one where the woman had been degraded.
Psychopaths are stodgy creatures of routine and I wondered if the killer’s comfort zone was so narrow that he lived within the sawhorses.
I caught my breath and worked at settling my stomach while Milo pretended not to notice.
“Yeah, I know,” he finally said. He was apologizing for the second time when a coroner’s van drove up and a dark-haired woman in comfortable clothes got out and hurried up the stairs. “Morning, Milo.”
“Morning, Gloria. All yours.”
“Oh, boy,” she said. “We talking freaky-bad?”
“I could say I’ve seen worse, kid, but I’d be lying.”
“Coming from you that gives me the creeps, Milo.”
“Because I’m old?”
“Tsk.” She patted his shoulder. “Because you’re the voice of experience.”
“Some experiences I can do without.”
People can get used to just about anything. But if your psyche’s in good repair, the fix is often temporary.
Soon after receiving my doctorate, I worked as a psychologist on a pediatric cancer ward. It took a month to stop dreaming about sick kids but I was eventually able to do my job with apparent professionalism. Then I left to go into private practice and found myself, years later, on that same ward. Seeing the children with new eyes mocked all the adaptation I thought I’d accomplished and made me want to cry. I went home and dreamed for a long time.
Homicide detectives get “used” to a regular diet of soul-obliteration. Typically bright and sensitive, they soldier on, but the essence of the job lurks beneath the surface like a land mine. Some D’s transfer out. Others stay and find hobbies. Religion works for some, sin for others. Some, like Milo, turn griping into an art form and never pretend it’s just another job.
The woman on the towels was different for him and for me. A permanent image bank had lodged in my brain and I knew the same went for him.
Neither of us talked as Gloria worked inside.
Finally, I said, “You marked the pizza box. It bothers you.”
“Everything about this bothers me.”
“No brand name on the box. Any indies around here deliver?”
He drew out his cell phone, clicked, and produced a page. Phone numbers he’d already downloaded filled the screen and when he scrolled, the listings kept coming.
“Twenty-eight indies in a ten-mile radius and I also checked Domino’s and Papa John’s and Two Guys. No one dispatched anyone to this address last night and nobody uses that particular box.”
“If she didn’t actually call out, why would she let him in?”
“Good question.”
“Who discovered her?”
“Landlord, responding to a complaint she made a few days ago. Hissing toilet, they had an appointment. When she didn’t answer, he got annoyed, started to leave. Then he thought better of it because she liked things fixed, used his key.”
“Where is he now?”
He pointed across the street. “Recuperating with some firewater down in that little Tudor-ish place.”
I found the house. Greenest lawn on the block, beds of flowers. Topiary bushes.
“Anything about him bother you?”
“Not so far. Why?”
“His landscaping says he’s a perfectionist.”
“That’s a negative?”
“This case, maybe.”
“Well,” he said, “so far he’s just the landlord. Want to know about her?”
“Sure.”
“Her name’s Vita Berlin, she’s fifty-six, single, lives on some kind of disability.”
“Vita,” I said. “The towel was hers.”
“The towel? This bastard used every damn towel she had in her linen closet.”
“Vita means ‘life’ in Latin and Italian. I thought it might be a sick joke.”
“Cute. Anyway, I’m waiting for Mr. Belleveaux—the landlord—to calm down so I can question him and find out more about her. What I’ve learned from prelim snooping in her bedroom and bathroom is if she’s got kids she doesn’t keep their pictures around and if she had a computer, it was ripped off. Same for a cell phone. My guess is she had neither, the place has a static feel to it. Like she moved in years ago, didn’t add any newfangled stuff.”
“I didn’t see her purse.”
“On her nightstand.”
“You taped off the bedroom, didn’t want me in there?”
“I sure do, but that’ll wait until the techies are through. Can’t afford to jeopardize any aspect of this.”
“The front room was okay?”
“I knew you’d be careful.”
His logic seemed strained. Insufficient sleep and a bad surprise can do that.
I said, “Any indication she was heading to the bedroom before he jumped her?”
“No, it’s pristine. Why?”
I gave him the delivery tip scenario.
“Going for her purse,” he said. “Well, I don’t know how you’d prove that, Alex. Main thing is he confined himself to the front, didn’t move her into the bedroom for anything sexual.”
I said, “Those towels make me think of a stage. Or a picture frame.”
“Meaning?”
“Showing off his work.”
“Okay … what else to tell you … her wardrobe’s mostly sweats and sneakers, lots of books in her bedroom. Romances and the kinds of mysteries where people talk like Noël Coward twits and the cops are bumbling
cretins.”
I wondered out loud about a killer with martial arts skills and when he didn’t respond, went on to describe the kill-scene still bouncing around my brain.
He said, “Sure, why not.”
Agreeable but distracted. Neither of us focusing on the big question.
Why would anyone do something like this to another human being?
Gloria exited the apartment, looking older and paler.
Milo said, “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “No, I’m lying, that was horrible.” Her forehead was moist. She dabbed it with a tissue. “My God, it’s grotesque.”
“Any off-the-cuff impressions?”
“Nothing you probably haven’t figured out yourself. Broken neck’s my bet for COD, the cutting looks postmortem. The incisions look clean so maybe some training in meat-cutting or a paramedical field but I wouldn’t put much stock in that, all kinds of folk can learn to slice. That pizza box mean something to you?”
“Don’t know,” said Milo. “No one admits delivering here.”
“A scam to get himself in?” she said. “Why would she open the door for a fake pizza guy?”
“Good question, Gloria.”
She shook her head. “I called for transport. Want me to ask for a priority autopsy?”
“Thanks.”
“You might actually get it because Dr. J seems to like you. Also with something this weird, she’s bound to be curious.”
A year ago, Milo had solved the murder of a coroner’s investigator. Since then Dr. Clarice Jernigan, a senior pathologist, had reciprocated with personalized attention when Milo asked for it.
He said, “Must be my charm and good looks.”
Gloria grinned and patted his shoulder again. “Anything else, guys? I’m on half-shift due to budgetary constraints, figure to finish my paperwork by one then go cleanse my head with a couple of martinis. Give or take.”
Milo said, “Make it a double for me.”
I said, “Was significant blood pooled inside the body cavity?”
Her look said I was being a spoilsport. “A lot of it was coagulated but yes, that’s where most of it was. You figured that because the scene was so clean?”
I nodded. “It was either that or he found out a way to take it with him.”
Milo said, “Buckets of blood, lovely.” To Gloria: “One more question: You recall anything remotely like this in your case files?”
“Nope,” she said. “But we just cover the county and they say it’s a globalized world, right? You could be looking at a traveler.”
Milo glared and trudged down the stairs.
Gloria said, “Whoa, someone’s in a mood.”
I said, “It’s likely to stay that way for a while.”
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