Pale as Death

by Heather Graham

  “I know.”

  “You know.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ve spoken with Detective Vining. When I couldn’t reach you, I called him. He’s on his way here, I believe. Worried about you.” He stared at her pointedly. “He didn’t say as much, but I gathered that he thought you’d behaved a little strangely when you were speaking with the media yesterday. Also, I’m going to assume you need to get some paperwork done on this—someone did break into your home.”

  She heard the sound of a car driving up and stopping out on the street.

  And the water was still crashing down in the shower.

  And she was wearing only a towel.

  Sophie ignored him and swore, headed into the bathroom and turned off the shower, and then beat it into her room.

  She slammed the door and sank onto the bed for a minute.

  She could hear this McFadden—Bruce—opening the door. Then she could hear him speaking to Vining.

  Her partner was out there. Her amazing partner—before whom she could not appear to be falling apart or frazzled.

  She breathed deeply. She was a cop—a good one. A detective. The entire world seemed puzzling at the moment, but that’s what detectives did—they solved the puzzle of a crime.

  She gathered herself together and got dressed.

  Forget the ghosts.

  Forget standing ridiculously in front of stranger in a towel with a spray container of household cleaner.

  In five minutes, she was ready.

  When she walked out, Vining and McFadden were deep in conversation. Vining stared at her with concern.

  “Sophie, someone broke in? Someone who maybe had a key? I’ve got a unit coming over. They’ll dust for prints. You know our crime scene guys—if there’s something to find, they’ll find it.”

  “Thanks, Grant.”

  He was staring at her oddly.

  “You’re certain you locked your doors.”

  She prayed for patience.

  “Absolutely certain,” she assured him.

  Be professional, she warned herself. Be careful not to mention that this ass just walked in and then asked the same damned questions.

  “As soon as they’re here, we’ll get going,” he said. “Mr. McFadden is going to be joining us.”

  “What?” she demanded sharply. Too sharply. “But...sir! He isn’t LAPD. He isn’t—he isn’t law enforcement of any kind.”

  “Licensed PI,” Vining said. “And you know me. Help is help—in any form. Hell, Sophie, I’m delighted to have him here. This man is Bryan McFadden’s brother. We both know that his folks knew the workings of Hollywood like few others.”

  “Yes, his parents did,” she said.

  “Bryan and Marnie sent him. Let’s welcome what help he can give, Sophie.”

  She forced a smile. She was pretty sure that it had to look more like a snarl.

  “Welcome, Mr. McFadden, for as long as you’ll be around,” she said quietly.

  He didn’t even appear to hear her. He was already talking to Grant Vining again, and more cars were arriving.

  The crime scene techs had come.

  “You need to fill out a report, as well,” Vining said, watching her. “If you know that someone was in your apartment.”

  “I locked my doors,” she said firmly, unflinching confidence and authority in her voice.

  Grant Vining nodded. She knew that he did respect her—and her abilities.

  She hoped she still felt the same way about herself.

  “We’ll get the paperwork started,” he said.

  “And quickly,” she added. “We need to be at that autopsy.”

  “Yes, we need to be at the autopsy.”

  She turned to greet the officers and crime scene techs who had come. She explained the situation—Bruce McFadden helped, and she should have been grateful. She just found it difficult.

  She was glad to see that, among the other techs, Lee Underwood had come. His was a friendly face.

  “We’ll find out what went on,” he assured her.

  “Can’t believe you’re here,” she murmured.

  “I heard it was you—I asked for the assignment. We all love you, you know, Sophie.”

  She smiled. “Thank you!”

  She admitted to herself she was a bit shaken. There had been a ghost in her house—or in her imagination. Then this morning there had been someone real. Ghosts didn’t pick locks and leave doors open. And then, there had been Bruce McFadden.

  Way too busy for her little place—and her little, focused-on-work life.

  Things moved along, and the head of the unit explained that it was going to be difficult to discover anything—especially if nothing was taken—because, of course, there would be dozens of fingerprints in her home.

  She hadn’t made an assessment of her belongings; she did that quickly, touring her rooms with an eye for anything out of place.

  She found that nothing had been touched in her bedroom. Her computer was fine; her laptop, still in its case, was fine, as well.

  She collected the papers on the floor.

  Only one thing was missing. It was one of the papers she had printed out on the Black Dahlia case.

  “You’re sure—just one paper?” Vining asked.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she said.

  “And you definitely printed out?” he persisted.

  “Grant! Yes, I printed it, and it’s gone.”

  She glanced at her watch. The autopsy was due to begin.

  “No one has your key?” the head tech asked.

  “Yes, my cousin in San Francisco has one,” she said.

  “Someone could have gotten it—copied it?”

  “In San Francisco?” she asked.

  “Maybe they copied your key,” Bruce McFadden suggested.

  “I keep my things with me—or in my locker,” she said.

  “When there’s an unsuspected criminal mind-set,” Grant said with a shrug, “anything is possible. I’m going to suggest that you get the locks changed this afternoon,” he added.

  “I’ll call a locksmith while we’re on the way to the morgue,” she said.

  “We’ve a hell of a day before us,” Grant murmured.

  “Good thing it’s LA,” Bruce said. “People work all hours of the day and night.”

  She looked at him.

  Once again, she knew that she should be grateful. Instead, she was still swallowing down her hostility.

  Most probably because she’d run almost naked at him and basically straight into his arms.

  And because she’d been so...

  So vulnerable.

  She didn’t have a chip on her shoulder—she really didn’t.

  She’d been raised by a great father who had been certain that a girl or a woman could do anything she chose. She’d hit the academy with a lot of determination to take on whatever challenges came her way, and the humility to accept help when necessary.

  She just didn’t like the feeling of being so...

  Haunted.

  They had to work hard to solve a brutal murder. She had to be strong and competent.

  And not pass out at the sight of a ghost or the pull of her imagination.

  And not go running practically naked into a stranger’s arms.

  She managed a grim smile for all of them.

  “Autopsy,” she said flatly. “Let’s go.”

  3

  Still morning

  It was hard to accept that the pieces of body on the gurney in the morgue had ever been a real woman, all in one piece, with no chunks of flesh gone, no bisection, and no horrible gashes in the mouth.

  Bruce had seen brutal things done before; he’d been at war. He’d seen men ripped apart by explosions. But the torturous cruelty in
this murder seemed above all else.

  LA County had a huge morgue—and a constant, exhausting supply of the dead. There were always hundreds of bodies. Not all that long ago, the head of the LA County Department of the Medical Examiner-Coroner had resigned because the backlog of bodies was over two thousand when it came to awaiting certain tests. Budget cuts had made things worse. His resignation had, at the least, amplified the seriousness of the situation and things were getting better.

  But often, cops could beg for help until the cows came home—and they’d have to wait.

  That wouldn’t happen with this case; Dr. Chuck Thompson, one of the top men in his field, had been assigned. An autopsy for this poor woman would be swift.

  No one wanted anything but the utmost diligence on this case.

  A number of body parts were partially destroyed. The details were explained in a combo of scientific and layman’s terms to them by Dr. Thompson. Bruce was impressed by him right away; his dedication in the midst of what seemed to be a sea of death was commendable. He didn’t speak to the corpse like a long-lost friend, but he treated the remains with respect. At one point, he glanced up at the assembled investigators—Bruce and Detectives Manning and Vining; he’d been recording his words, but he switched off the recorder for a moment.

  “I’ve read that they sometimes believed that a medical man of some kind might have been the Black Dahlia killer. It had to do with the way she was bisected. This killer has repeated that bisection. He managed to cut with precision at just the right part of the spine.”

  There was little to say to that. They nodded, and the doctor turned his recorder back on. He went on to use the medical terms to explain the way the body had been cut.

  Police photographer Henry Atkins was also there, documenting the autopsy. Atkins kept wincing and shaking his head. He glanced at Bruce apologetically and whispered. “Sorry—I’m so close to retirement. Just a few more months. And somehow...I just had to catch this one!”

  Bruce nodded sympathetically. The photographer looked at him curiously. “Your folks were Maeve and Hamish McFadden.”

  “Yes.”

  “Shouldn’t you be an actor?”

  “No.”

  “You could have been.”

  Bruce smiled at that. “Probably not—I can’t act.”

  Sophie was watching him as he spoke with Atkins. He wondered what she was thinking. Probably—judging from the attitude she’d given him so far, and the little scowl currently creasing her face—that she wished to hell he had gone into show business instead.

  Then Dr. Thompson was speaking again, and they all fell silent; Atkins took more pictures.

  They listened to the findings that the medical examiner had for them; not much that he hadn’t already believed to be true. The victim had been held for at least a little time. It had to have been somewhere out of the way—otherwise her screams would have been heard when her mouth was gashed to pieces. She was dead before being sawed in half—sawed being a key word; that was the instrument that had been used, evidenced by the raw edges of flesh on each part of the body.

  Bruce stayed near the pieces of the corpse. At the same time, he prayed that if the young woman’s soul had remained behind, she was not here now.

  He listened to the drone of the ME’s voice while opening himself to any possibility. He watched Sophie Manning, too, but she stood tall and straight, her expression set and fathomless.

  He didn’t feel a presence; he was certain that she did not, either.

  Nothing. He concentrated more on forensic facts.

  There was almost no blood; the body—pieces—had been bathed before she’d been left for discovery.

  Displayed.

  Too much of too many of the digestive organs were destroyed or gone for analysis of her last meal; from the trace amount of material in what pieces of the digestive tract could be found, she hadn’t eaten for many hours before her death.

  It was while they all stood stoic—listening to the horrid and grisly details brought down to a clinical dissertation—that Vining received a phone call. One glance at his caller ID caused him to clear his throat, nod at Sophie, and move into the hallway to accept the call.

  When he returned, he had all their attention.

  “Fingerprints came through. Her name was Lili Montana,” he said.

  “And she was an aspiring actress?” asked Sophie.

  He nodded glumly. “She worked occasionally as a substitute teacher—thus her prints on file. But, yes, she was an actress. She last worked with a group of improv players, the Hollywood Hooligans. I have the director’s information. He’s expecting us. He’s also given me the names of two men Lili had been seeing, one with whom she had a breakup about a month ago, and another she’d been seeing for the past several weeks.”

  “Has her next of kin been informed?” Bruce asked.

  “One of our public relations officers is trying to decide just who that might be—she grew up in the foster system. Anyway, we do have some suspects or at least persons of interest to question.” He looked at Bruce. “You have any feeling on this?”

  “I have no authority here. I’m at your command.”

  “If you had authority?”

  “I’d say divide and conquer,” Bruce said. “Switch around when necessary. If any of the parties come to light as being possible suspects who should be questioned again, it’s always good to ask some of the same questions—and compare answers.”

  “Sounds good. I was thinking you should take on this person named Kenneth Trent,” Vining said.

  “Who is?” Bruce asked.

  “Head honcho—director—for the Hollywood Hooligans,” Vining said.

  “All right.”

  “Names for the boyfriend and ex-boyfriend?” Sophie asked.

  Vining looked at his phone. “Ex—Ian Sanders. Current—Jace Brown. I’ll start with the current beau and get his alibi. Then try out the ex and find out what his story might be.” He hesitated. “Strange that the boyfriend didn’t report her missing. She had to have been gone a couple of nights now. We’re going to have to establish a time line, too. She was killed at least the night before she was discovered. The condition of her corpse, of course, makes it hard to say, but she was brought there and dumped—or laid out!—in the middle of the night. She had to have been tortured, killed and bathed before then. Somewhere—somewhere where someone could do something like that.”

  “Outside the city,” Sophie murmured.

  “Or a room with soundproof walls,” Bruce said.

  She was staring at him with narrowed eyes. He wondered why he still liked her and found her intriguing.

  She was really a bitch.

  Yeah, but one who looked pretty good in a towel.

  He gave himself a mental shake. Not the time or place to be thinking like that.

  “All right, then, I’m off to see the director. I have your numbers. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. Sophie will be going with you,” Vining said.

  “What?” Sophie demanded, sounding shocked.

  Bruce had to smile. Inwardly.

  “He does need some authority. You are LAPD,” Vining said. “Time’s a wasting,” he added. “And we’re nowhere near a suspect. God knows if he’ll strike again.”

  They left the morgue, but they didn’t head out to meet up with Kenneth Trent. An urgent call sidetracked their investigation.

  A second victim had been found.

  The corpse was just behind a cherry hedge on the other side of the park from the place where Lili Montana’s body had been displayed.

  * * *

  It was uncanny—and terrifying. It was as if the killer had taken a picture of his previous display—he probably had—and then created a mirror image with his second victim.

  Just a naked girl. Her face ga
shed in a horrific grin. Her body torn asunder.

  Dr. Thompson and Atkins had followed them; Sophie was grateful. As busy as LA was, it was a great boon to have the same medical examiner working on both victims. It was, of course, pretty obvious that the same killer had struck twice.

  Once again, the area was filled with police, with crime scene techs, and with the media—all scrambling to get close.

  So far, no one had allowed a civilian with a cell phone to get close enough to snap a shot—it was something that should never pop up on any social media pages. Whoever this young woman was, she had someone out there. Parents. Friends. A lover who cared for her deeply.

  They should never see this. Never.

  Henry Atkins was busy taking pictures; they might, at some time, help in solving the crime.

  The techs were out in force, collecting everything and anything they could find.

  Reporters, journalists and the morbid curious were pressing against the police line as Vining, Bruce and Sophie hunkered down by the halves of the ripped body.

  “You want to take it again?” Vining asked Sophie.

  “What do you want them to know?” she asked wearily. “They know that the last was a copy of the Black Dahlia. I’m sure they know already that this is the same.”

  “Tell them that you do believe the same killer has struck again, urge them to give us time, to understand that every officer in the region and beyond will be working on this, and that we will find whoever is perpetrating these crimes. It’s really important that we don’t get people whipped up into a frenzy of panic,” Vining said. Then he frowned. He was looking at her a little worriedly. “I mean, if you’re all right. You seemed a little off yesterday.”

  “I’m fine,” she assured him.

  She felt Bruce looking at her. He evidently thought that there had been something off with her yesterday, too.

  Of course. He’d seen the news. He’d seen her stumble when she’d heard Michael Thoreau—or her imagination—talk to her.

  “I am absolutely fine,” she said assuredly. She walked up to the police line, secured more by a dozen uniformed officers than it was by the yellow crime scene tape.