“Somebody’s got a major bug up his ass,” Brown said.
“I got every politician in the state up my ass,” Terry said. “So hurry it up. They can’t hang anybody out to dry until we get there.”
Terry’s flare-up was out of character. “Chill out,” I said. “Witch hunts happen, but it’s too soon to crucify us yet. This thing has gone from one murder to three in a week. How long did it take them to nail the Unibomber or Son of Sam? We have to get a few more at bats before there’s a public flogging.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t usually give a shit about LAPD politics. I’m not sure why this one got to me.”
“So we should keep going to the helipad?” Brown said. “I was about to tell Pags to make a U-turn and head for the nearest psych ward.”
I knew Pagnozzi was a cowboy when he peeled out before our asses even hit the back seat. He drove like he must have dreamed about when he was a kid wanting to be a cop. The car careened to a screeching stop at the Fed Building in less than six minutes. He jumped out and opened my door. Brown turned to Terry and said, “Sorry, pal, I don’t do doors or windows. Have a nice day.”
I thanked Pagnozzi and followed Terry into the building through a revolving door, where we hit our first security checkpoint. We ID’d ourselves to the corporal at the desk and were escorted to an elevator by another Marine who had the steely eyes and square jaw you see in the recruiting posters.
Private Square Jaw rode with us to the top of the Fed and turned us over to yet another Marine who escorted us to a chopper. For the remainder of the eighteen-minute trip to Familyland, Terry didn’t say much and I said even less. For one thing, we didn’t have much to say. But mostly because you can’t be heard on a helicopter unless you talk into headsets, and that’s about as private as Open Mike Night at the Comedy Club.
We landed in an empty parking lot, were whisked to a black Suburban, then transferred to a turbo-charged golf cart that barreled us along the Lamaar Underground Highway. We came to a stop at a sign that said Area 47, Space Shuttle Restaurant. Parking lot to restaurant, four minutes.
“We should use this travel agent more often,” Terry said, as we followed our guide through a passageway that would take us to the World Above.
Terry is funny, but he doesn’t know when to draw the line. Not everyone is in the mood to yuck it up at a homicide investigation. “Could that please be the last funny thing you say until we’re alone again?” I said politely.
“It could,” he said. “And bless you for thinking that was actually funny. We artists need positive feedback to keep us going.”
The Space Shuttle looked like a Burger King on steroids. Jessica hadn’t set up shop yet, so it hadn’t yet taken on the familiar trappings of a crime scene. But the kitchen was closed, the cash registers were silent, and the people who stayed had been herded to one corner of the room. Crime scene in the making.
“Detectives!” It was Curry. He looked happy to see us, which I suspected was as happy as he was going to be all day.
“This is our worst nightmare,” he said. “They killed a woman. A guest. She was here on vacation with her husband and two kids. We’ve got the family in a booth in the corner. A doc is taking care of the daughter who is hysterical.”
“Where’s the victim?” Terry said.
Curry tipped his head, and we followed him toward the rear of the place. “Where’s your shadow?” I asked.
“Amy? She’s with the family. The lawyers are circling the next of kin like birds of prey. She’s actually making sure they don’t jump the gun.”
“Glad she has something to do besides hang with us.”
“I can’t muzzle her, but I told her not to fuck with you guys. She’s all balls, but this has got her pretty shook up. This will probably make her easier to work with.”
Terry couldn’t resist. “Or harder.”
CHAPTER 55
The victim was Judy Kaiser. White, forty-four, a soccer Mom with a minivan. She worked as a fundraiser at the local PBS station in Minneapolis. Her husband, Russell, was a minister and a Civil War buff. The kids, Luther, eleven, and Becky, fourteen, were 4-H and drug-free. The Kaisers were as close to apple pie as you could get in MTV America. The only things missing were Wally and The Beaver.
Judy’s number must really have been up. Not only had she picked the wrong bathroom at the wrong time, but the Kaisers had been scheduled to visit Familyland during Spring Break a month ago. Unfortunately for Judy, she came down with the flu. So she and Russell decided to take the kids out of school for a few days to make it up to them.
She had gone to the bathroom as soon as the family entered the restaurant. Ten minutes later, she hadn’t returned, so young Becky went to see if her mother was okay; an experience that will haunt her for the rest of her life. She opened the bathroom door and screamed bloody murder, which it literally had been. The father and Lori Lum, the restaurant manager, another long-time Lamaar employee, ran back to the bathroom.
Reverend Kaiser is a volunteer ambulance driver, so he knows dead when he sees it. Judy was definitely dead. He knew enough not to touch the knife in her chest, but he knelt at her side, which contaminated some of the scene. He calmed his daughter, while Ms. Lum paged Buddy Longo, setting off a chain of events similar to NORAD going on Red Alert.
The first two security people arrived within thirty seconds. They made some major dumb decisions, not because they were dumb, but because they were trained to protect the company’s image, instead of the crime scene.
The Lamaar people were like terriers about their image. Even the yellow crime-scene tape ended up stretched from one inside wall to another, far from the eyes of the happy park patrons on the other side of the metal gates.
Terry and I peeked in at the body. Mrs. Kaiser was fish-belly white in a pool of her own blood. A dagger was sticking out of her chest. I got close enough to see that the knife had been driven through a plastic bag which contained an envelope. There was writing on the front, but the blood on the baggie made it impossible to read. I could, however, make out something else inside the plastic. A flipbook.
I called over my shoulder to Brian. “Did you see the murder weapon?”
“It’s a letter opener with one of our characters on the handle,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it’s something we sell. I sent some of our people to the gift shops to check it out.”
“Did you touch anything?”
“Not me. But the daughter, the husband, the restaurant manager, and one of our security people have blood on their shoes. Kaiser remembers touching his wife’s face and feeling for a pulse, but he swears he didn’t touch the weapon.”
“Lock this bathroom up till the lab rats get here,” I said. “Any witnesses? And don’t hold shit back, or this is just going to be number three in a never-ending series of theme park homicides.”
We sat at a table in the center of the room, and Brian signaled to a young couple to join us. The man was in his early thirties, athletic looking, buzz cut, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans like your typical tourist. Undercover Security. The woman had an innocent girlish face, and, with the right wig and makeup, could pass for fifteen. Right now, she looked like the guy’s age-appropriate wife.
“These are two of our best security people,” Brian said. “We’ve beefed up the detail in the past few days, but these guys have been with us for a while. This is Karen Gill.” The woman nodded. Great smile; nice decoy.
Before Brian could go on, the man stuck his hand out. “Hi. Kenneth Dahl. D-A-H-L. Terrible thing, what happened today. Terrible.”
“Detectives Lomax and Biggs,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Ken.”
“I prefer Kenneth,” he said.
“Okay, Kenneth,” I said. I didn’t look at Terry, because if he were smirking, I didn’t want to catch it. “Tell us what happened.”
“We were walking past the Arctic Expedition, when we heard the Buddy Longo,” he said. He hesitated, not sure we understood.
“Go a
head, we know what it is,” I said.
“We’re not supposed to blow our cover, so we didn’t run. We walked real fast like we were a couple of hungry tourists. Karen and Lori, the manager, went into the ladies room. I went over to the dad and the screaming kid.”
“No question that the woman was dead,” Karen said. “I told Lori to shut down the kitchen and lower the electric gates.”
“To keep people in?”
“Out. You can’t lock guests in. Not if they want to get out.”
“What are you talking about?” Terry said. “Of course you can lock guests in. It’s a crime scene.”
Brian jumped in. “Guys, we train our people to contain, but not detain.”
“Meaning?”
“Get control of a bad situation, but don’t detain the innocent bystanders.”
Terry raised his voice. “How the hell do you know who’s innocent?”
“I think in this case our people made a decision that there was an adverse situation, but that whoever did it wouldn’t stick around to finish their lunch.”
“Yeah, I’d say a woman with a knife in her chest is an adverse situation,” Terry said. “Good call, Kenneth, but not so smart on letting people go.”
“It wasn’t just our call,” I-Prefer-Kenneth said. “Even before we shut down, a dozen security guys showed up. One of the suits tells the crowd we have a medical emergency. ‘Sorry to mess up your lunch, but you all have to leave, and we’re gonna give you each a fifty-dollar gift certificate you can use at any of our gifts shops or other restaurants.’”
The door that connects to the underground passageway opened and Jessica Keating and her merry band of criminalists trooped in. “Afternoon, gentlemen,” she said. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
Terry was livid. “Hello, Jessica. We’ve got one dead body and about a hundred possible eyewitnesses who might be able to ID the killer. Oh, no, wait. The crack security team sent them away and gave them spending money.”
Brian stood up, which immediately gave him more presence than anyone in the room. “Whatever they saw, we’ve got on our surveillance cameras,” he said. “And when they turn in their gift certificates, we ask for a driver’s license, so we’ll know who they are.”
Terry stood too, until he was as eyeball to eyeball with Brian as one can be without getting kissed or hit. “Great, and we can follow them home to fucking Kansas or Taiwan or wherever, and then ask them if they saw anything.”
Brian didn’t blink. “Hey, I don’t expect you guys to understand Lamaar policy, but let me spell it out for you. The people who were in this restaurant are our public. They’re not the same as a bunch of homeless winos who you can just wrangle up and hassle as much as you want.”
“What did you think we were going to do to your precious public? Kick ’em in the nuts? Letting them go just hurts our investigation.”
“Not as much as interrogating them would hurt our reputation,” Brian said, his voice reaching an un-Lamaar-like decibel level. “You may think I sound like a corporate asshole, but we can’t have people going back to fucking Kansas or Taiwan or wherever telling their friends that Familyland was a real hoot, except for the part where some lady got stabbed to death in the bathroom.”
A shrill whistle pierced the air. Jessica, two fingers in her mouth, had generated enough noise to hail three cabs in a snowstorm. As soon as she had our undivided attention, she cocked her head, and, in her nails-on-a-blackboard nasal Chicago voice, said, “This was supposed to be my day off. Now would one of you buckets of testosterone show me the DOA, or did I come at a bad time?”
By default, I got to play Good Cop. I took Jessica back to the ladies room and told her that whatever was inside the plastic bag was our highest priority.
“I must have sounded like a total PMS-ing shrew back there,” she said.
“Don’t apologize,” I said. “They had it coming.”
“No they didn’t, but I’m glad I let them have it anyway. I wish I could be that assertive all the time.” She stopped when she saw Judy Kaiser and knelt next to the body. “You poor woman,” she said. Then without looking away from the victim, she added, “Lomax, leave us alone please. I’ve got work here.”
It took the better part of two hours for Jessica and her team to take their pictures, vacuum up hairs and fibers, and dust for fingerprints, which was basically fruitless since we were dealing with a public restroom.
Amy joined us, and to Brian’s credit, she was not at all abusive, which for her was model behavior. We also learned that the letter opener was indeed another souvenir from the Lamaar gift assortment of fine murder weapons. The plastic handle was molded in the shape of J.J. Hogg, the world’s richest pig.
“Sounds like a rip-off of Scrooge McDuck,” Terry said.
“Not so loud,” Brian said. “Disney agrees with you. They’re suing us.”
“Some nerve,” Terry said. “Like they’re the only ones who can have a billionaire farm animal?”
Brian tried to hide a smile, but the amusement twinkled in his eyes. Now that the tension between the two of them had diffused, I figured we could have some real laughs together, if it weren’t for this damn triple homicide.
Finally, Jessica came out of the ladies room and announced what we were waiting to hear. “You’ve got mail.” She held out a stainless steel medical tray. In the center was a sealed white, business-sized envelope. We all stared at it like it was the original of the Magna Carta.
“Can you open it?” I asked.
“Forensically, yes,” she said. “But first let me read you the message on the envelope. Quote, Police, deliver directly to Morris Rosenlicht or his heirs. If you open it, you’ll be the cause of the next victim’s death. Unquote. Now, are you sure you want me to open it?”
“Who’s Morris Rosenlicht?” Terry said.
“I think I know.” It was Amy.
“Can you tell us?” I said.
“This is really very weird,” she said. “Give me a minute.”
She opened her cell phone and walked toward a corner.
“What about the flipbook?” I said.
Jessica held out a second stainless steel tray. The book in the tray looked like the others. “I don’t want to manhandle it any more than I already have, so let me just act it out for you.”
She started with a closed hand, then put her thumb and forefinger in a circle and held the other three fingers in the air. “I think it means, ‘everything’s going great.’ Something like that.”
“It’s also the ‘three-ring’ sign,” Terry said. “Ask the man for Ballantine.”
Jessica shook her head. “You lost me.”
“Ballantine Beer. Gosh, Jess, I guess you’re not the man you think you are.”
Amy rejoined the group. “I just called Ike Rose,” she said. “He’s on a plane back from New York. He’ll be here in a few hours.”
“Ma’am, with all due respect,” Terry said, as politely as I’d seen him in recent days, “we’ve either got to deliver this envelope, or ignore the warning and open it. We don’t have time to wait for the head of the company.”
“The letter is addressed to the head of the company,” she said. “Mr. Rose was born Isaac Rosenlicht. He changed his name in business school. His father was Morris Rosenlicht. He’s dead. This letter is meant for Ike Rose.”
“This gets sicker and sicker by the minute,” Terry said.
Brian circled his fingers in the three-ring sign. “Detective Biggs,” he said. “For the first time today, you and I are in violent agreement.”
CHAPTER 56
It was after five o’clock when Ike Rose arrived. He wanted to personally express his condolences to the dead woman’s family, but we had interviewed them and sent them to a hotel over an hour ago.
He wanted to see the latest victim. We tried to discourage him, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“This is madness,” he said, when he came back from the blood-spattered ladies roo
m. “She was a guest. An innocent woman. A wife, a mother.”
“Can you talk,” I said, “or do you need some time?”
He shook his head. “I’m fine. I mean, I’m not fine. Nobody here is fine, but I can talk.” He sat down at a table, lit a cigarette, and sucked in the poison.
Jessica set the envelope on the table. She had already photographed it, dusted it for prints, checked out the paper and the ink, and done a field-level analysis. If there were any clues like DNA, she’d find out in the lab.
Rose stared at it. “Deliver directly to Morris Rosenlicht or his heirs. That’s my father,” he said. “He died last year. Oh, Jesus, it says if you open it, you’ll be the cause of the next victim’s death. The guy’s a madman.”
“We don’t usually take orders from madmen,” Terry said. “But in this case we decided to wait till you got here.”
“This is Jessica Keating,” I said. “Forensics. I’d like her to open it.”
“We all know what it’s going to say,” Rose said. “‘Dear Ike, you’re next.’ I’ve gotten death threats before, but never from someone who has successfully demonstrated his capabilities beyond any shadow of a doubt.”
“Is there a reason somebody would want to kill you?” I asked.
“Same reason someone wants to kill every politician, every corporate leader, or their gym teacher. Somewhere along the line I did something to piss him off. Only most people don’t act out their resentment the way this guy has. Go ahead, Miss Keating. Open it.”
Jessica sliced the side of the envelope open with an X-acto knife, then used long tweezers to pull out a single sheet of paper. She unfolded it gingerly and began reading. “Hello, Isaac. By now we hope we have proven we can kill your employees, your customers, or anyone else who associates with Lamaar. We are capable of killing many, many more. If you’d like the killing to stop, it will cost you two hundred sixty-six point four million dollars.”
Rose sprang up like he was zapped by a cattle prod. “What the fuck! They want money? This is Danny Eeg. He’s been trying to get money out of us for years. Who else knows my father’s name? You’ve got to arrest this guy.”
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