Now, all of a sudden, she was pregnant and just thrilled to pieces about it. Well, that little bit of news had just shunted Nyreen at least another million miles away from Arvo. Now she was having Vern’s child, she was less his problem than she had ever been. At least that was his view. Somehow, he had a feeling that she would see things differently. She always did. Maybe she’d want him to be godfather. And that would probably be after she’d claimed half the house.
Arvo realized he was hungry. So okay, he told himself, getting up and stretching, the hell with Nyreen. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get Christmas on the road.
In the four years after his parents’ death, Arvo had got into the habit of spending Christmas alone. In fact, now he thought about it, he and Nyreen had only been together for one Christmas.
As he had spent two of his three Christmases in Los Angeles alone, so far, returning to the familiar ritual for his fourth gave him a degree of comfort. He wasn’t a Christian, and the drop or two of Jewish blood he had inherited from his mother’s side hadn’t galvanized him into any sort of Judaic interests or beliefs, but the season nevertheless had a certain something; it demanded some sort of recognition, if only a brief genuflection in the general direction of the twin gods, Mammon and Glutton. It was also a time that tended to encourage introspection.
First he went to the fridge and took out the smoked salmon and selection of imported cheeses, cold cuts and pâtés he had bought a couple of days ago at the farmers’ market on Fairfax—some Caerphilly, to remind him of his Welsh roots, old Cheddar and cambozola because he liked them.
Then there was that Welsh delicacy, a can of laver bread, made from seaweed and absolutely delicious with a couple of rashers of Canadian bacon. Finally, he would nibble on a couple of the Welsh cakes his Granny Hughes had sent him, as she did every Christmas, without fail. If he were still hungry at supper time, there was a microwavable turkey dinner in the freezer.
When he had set up his tray, he popped the cork on a bottle of Schramsberg Californian “champagne” and poured himself a glass. Then he went over to his CD collection and put on Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”
By the time he had got through the third glass of champagne and most of the smoked salmon, his mind began drifting. He thought first, as he always did at Christmas, of his parents and the family Christmases in Detroit, all the houses in the street decked with colored lights, the presents under the tree, turkey with sage-and-onion stuffing and cranberry sauce, shovelling the piles of snow from the driveway. Well, maybe that wasn’t such a romantic image.
He thought of his grandfather in Amlwch, how at eighty-five he still got around with the help of a knobbly walking-stick and never missed a lunchtime session at the pub, and how his wife, at eighty-two, would bawl him out if he was late back.
He thought about Maria down in San Diego with her family. The thought of her brought back the memory of her perfume, of her warm breast against his arm, and it made him feel horny.
Then he thought of Nyreen and how last year, only a couple of weeks after they had got married, they had gone to the Christmas boat parade down in Marina del Rey.
Bundled up in a green wool sweater against the cool evening, Nyreen had clung onto his arm and jumped up and down like a child, pointing at the procession of boats bobbing by with their illuminated reindeers, angels and fake blue-lit icicles hanging from their bows. Arvo had thought it was tacky, but he was happy to see her so excited and alive. He remembered how passionately they had made love that night. Now she was pregnant in Palo Alto, living with Vern.
By the time Arvo was on his fourth glass of bubbly and his second Welsh cake, Richard Burton was bringing the story to a close. When it was over, Arvo wasn’t sure whether the tears that came to his eyes stemmed from nostalgia for his father’s homeland or from drunken self-pity. He rubbed them away with the backs of his hands and finished the bottle.
In the evening, he watched a double bill of two of his favorite sci-fi videos: Them! and The Creeping Flesh. He stumbled to bed sometime around midnight without having got around to the frozen turkey.
It wasn’t until eight o’clock the next morning that his beeper went off, shocking him out of a chaotic dream about a giant ant with Nyreen’s face trying to explain to him how ants procreated. He woke into a real jackhammer of a headache. When he dialed the unfamiliar number and spoke his name into the receiver, his voice was hoarse with dehydration.
“Arvo, it’s Joe. Joe Westinghouse. Sorry if this seems to be getting to be a habit, but it looks like there’s been another one.”
Still fuzzy from sleep and alcohol, Arvo mumbled, “Another what?”
“Another murder.”
Well what was so odd about that? Arvo thought numbly. Day after Christmas in LA. Any day in LA. Bound to be plenty of other murders. And Joe did work Robbery-Homicide.
“Maybe you’d like to come and have a look?” Joe suggested. “I think this one will interest you.”
“Just a minute,” Arvo croaked, reaching for the pencil and paper he always kept on his bedside table. “Give me the address. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
23
AT EIGHT-THIRTY IN THE MORNING THE DAY AFTER Christmas, there was plenty of traffic on the San Diego Freeway as the shoppers headed for the post-Christmas sales at the huge malls out in the Valley. Arvo turned off at Sunset and drove with the top of his convertible open. He needed a little air to blow a few of the cobwebs out of his brain.
No matter how many times he had passed through Bel Air and Beverly Hills, he had never ceased to marvel at the incredibly opulent bad taste that juxtaposed Elizabethan stately homes with Spanish haciendas, fairy-tale castles and French chateaux, all tucked away at the end of long driveways behind walls and elaborate metal gates, all surrounded by immaculately kept lawns. Well, you never did stop marvelling, did you, if you were from Detroit? It made Grosse Point look like the projects.
Still, there was something morbidly fascinating about it all, the way there often is with such overt bad taste. To gild the lily, some of the large houses were strung with gaudy displays of Christmas lights, and there were even a couple of oversized Christmas trees among the topiary, hung with tinsel and baubles. Probably imported from Norway or somewhere.
It was a perfect morning. The whole city had a fresh look and a clean, crisp smell, as it often did after rain. Sometimes, if only for a few hours, it seemed as if a day’s rain could wash all the poison from the air and rinse away years of grease and grime from the streets.
The early sun shone piercingly bright on the white stone of the protecting estate walls, and a few high white clouds floated serenely across the pale blue sky. In the far distance, way beyond the Hollywood Hills, stood the San Gabriel range, greenish-brown slopes scattered with chaparral and sagebrush. High up, near the jagged peaks, rough white striations stood out in relief, where snow had settled in the gullies and fissures.
After three glasses of water and four extra-strength Tylenol, Arvo was feeling a little more human, but he still experienced waves of dizziness and nausea and his heart seemed to be laboring to circulate the sluggish blood through his body. The bright light hurt, even through dark glasses. He didn’t bother turning the radio on; he knew the way a hangover distorted his sense of hearing so much that even the organized harmony of a Mozart quartet would sound like a series of random sounds scraped by chainsaws on iron railings.
He drove up Laurel Canyon to the turn-off road Joe had mentioned, then turned left up the hillside and looked for the hand-painted sign.
Three police cruisers had pulled off the road to block the drive, lights flashing in the bright sun. Arvo parked his car by the roadside and flipped his shield. One of the officers raised the yellow crime-scene tape to let him through and made a note of the time and Arvo’s name on a clipboard.
The short driveway led to the backyard of a small timber A-frame, the front of which, held up by stilts sunk in concrete in
the hillside, looked out over the canyon. Trees shaded the whole area and cast eerie, slow-moving shadows over the earth as the breeze stirred their heavy limbs. The air smelled of freshly cut grass, eucalyptus and pine trees. Even though it was early on a December morning, the temperature was in the mid-sixties. Raindrops still clung to the leaves like dew.
Someone had fixed a crime-scene card to the door, which meant that Joe had probably established a “double crime scene.” It made sense in a case like this, which was probably going to attract a few dignitaries and high-ranking police officers, not to mention high-fliers from the DA’s office.
What you did was you set up two crime-scene areas, one starting at the driveway and the second at the door to the house itself. The second, inside the house, of course, was the primary crime scene, the most important area to seal off, and Joe would now be responsible for who did and who didn’t get in there.
When the brass arrived, they would get the opportunity to breach at least one police line; they would be allowed through the driveway as far as the back of the house. That served two purposes: first, it would gratify their sense of importance; second, it would keep them out of the way of the real crime scene and avoid further contamination. So the brass saved face and the crime scene remained as intact as possible. Everyone gained.
Over by the trees, a young man wearing gray shorts and a red T-shirt sat on a tree stump beside a gas barbecue with his legs planted wide apart and his head in his hands, crying. A lock of straight blond hair had slid down and hung almost to his knees. A female patrol officer stood beside him.
Joe Westinghouse stood talking to another detective outside the back door. Joe was smoking, tapping his ash carefully into the yellow Sucrets tin he always carried with him to crime scenes. Jim Sung, from the coroner’s office, stood beside them with his scuffed black bag, waiting to go in. Jim nodded as Arvo approached. He looked as calm and bored as he always did, slowly chewing away at a piece of gum.
The three of them wore blue LAPD jumpsuits and disposable gloves to avoid contaminating the crime scene, or, in some cases, to avoid being contaminated by it. AIDS was a constant threat if there was a stranger’s blood splashed around the scene.
Arvo took his jumpsuit out of the trunk, slipped it on over his Tigers sweatshirt and jeans and walked over. He could feel the tension between Joe and the other man as he approached them.
“This is Detective Heffer, Hollywood Division,” said Joe. “He caught the squeal.”
Arvo nodded at Heffer, who had a pale, almost albino, complexion and an unusual combination of thin face and lips and a pug nose, revealing almost circular nostrils. His cold gray eyes were flecked with yellow, and his sparse hair was the color of bleached straw. Like Jim Sung, he was also chewing gum, and occasionally he paused to blow a bubble. He gave no acknowledgment of Arvo’s greeting, nor did his eyes betray any emotion.
Arvo knew Heffer, or at least knew of him. Word was he had applied for the TMU and been turned down. As a result, he had a hard-on for the department and didn’t hesitate to let it show.
Joe pointed toward the blond man in the shorts. “His name’s Jaimie Kincaid. Victim’s boyfriend. He phoned in at seven thirty-nine this morning and Officer Laski over there with him was first officer on the scene. You can get the details later. I suggest we go inside and have a look first.”
“Okay,” said Arvo.
“You ever been at a homicide scene before, Hughes?” asked Heffer. He had a squeaky voice that grated on Arvo’s nerves.
“Once or twice.”
“Uh-huh, it’s just that I figured you real élite star-fuckers down at—”
“Heffer. Shut the fuck up,” Joe cut in.
“Yes, sir,” Heffer said, and turned sullen.
The four of them went inside.
The back door led directly into a modern kitchen with fitted blond wood cupboards and shelves. Rustic copperware hung from hooks on the wall, and a large laminated chart showed the varieties of herbs and spices. The kitchen smelled of tomatoes, garlic and basil, and Arvo got the impression that the person who had lived there was quite the gourmet cook. A wooden rack held a set of kitchen knives; the biggest one was missing.
Even though he was wearing gloves, Arvo kept his hands in his pockets to avoid the temptation of touching something. He was also careful to step around the blood and mud smears on the ceramic tile floor.
Like Sarah Broughton’s place at the beach, the stilt-house was small but laid out in a design that made the best of its space and emphasized the view. At the front, sliding glass doors led to a large timber deck and looked out over the canyon.
The downstairs area consisted of one split-level room, the back, and higher, section fitted with a black matte dining table and matching chairs, the front with an off-white three-piece suite. The interior walls and floors were made of bleached pine. Contemporary paintings hung on the walls: the kinds of squiggles and seemingly random blocks of color that Arvo had never been able to work up much enthusiasm for.
A black-iron spiral staircase led upstairs, where there was one large bedroom, two smaller ones, a bathroom and closet space.
In the master bedroom, the naked body lay face up, spread-eagled on the king-size bed, hands and feet bound to the brass rails, a halo of blood around his head on the pillow. His clothes were neatly folded over the chair beside the bed, the missing kitchen knife resting on top of his white shirt, smearing it dark red. Facedown on the bedside table lay a paperback copy of Lonesome Dove, about half read, along with a sachet of white powder.
In life, Jack Marillo had been a six-foot, slim, vital, healthy, handsome, Italian male. In death, he looked pale and bloodless, nothing but an empty shell. His lifeless eyes were ringed with dark circles, like a raccoon’s, as if he had applied thick kohl or gone too many nights without sleep. They stared at a knothole in the ceiling. Though the body hadn’t started to decompose, the stench of blood and death in such a warm, enclosed space was almost overwhelming.
All around him, on the walls, on the rugs, on the bedsheets, Jack’s blood had been spilled. It had splattered over the abstract paintings, Arvo noticed, making hardly any difference at all to the quality of the art. Real Jackson Pollock stuff. On the sheepskin rugs that littered the floor, it resembled ink blots, and on the bedclothes around the body, it looked as if someone had emptied a couple of buckets of sludge.
Joe and Heffer hung back in the doorway. They had clearly been in the room earlier, where Joe would have pulled out his pocket Instamatic and taken a few photos before the “experts” arrived and messed up the scene. Nothing would have been touched yet, nothing moved. Jim Sung, who had seen everything you could imagine and more, looked around, sniffed, made a few notes, then went over to the body.
From where Arvo stood, the cause of death looked obvious enough, though he knew from experience not to jump to conclusions. Around Jack Marillo’s throat and chest were numerous stab wounds, at least one of them nicking the carotid artery just beside his jaw. That was the source of the fountain of blood that had sprayed over some of the paintings.
In addition to the stab wounds and the halo of blood on the pillow, there was one very odd and disturbing thing about the body. In the soft flesh of the upper abdomen, just below the lowest stab wound, someone had carved the crude shape of a heart with an arrow piercing it. It measured about three or four inches across at its widest point, Arvo guessed. Whoever cut it had also tried to carve something inside, maybe a name or some words, but it had turned out to be illegible, at least to the naked eye.
Jim Sung touched the skin, then he felt the jaws and neck.
“Okay to turn him over?” he asked.
“Just a minute,” said Joe. He took a penknife from his pocket and cut the cords that tied Marillo to the bed rails. He did this in a very special and methodical way to preserve them as evidence. First, he cut the cord between the rail and the hand, or foot, then he cut off the rest of the cord that was tied and knotted around the rail, making
sure he didn’t cut through the knot itself. As he went, he tied the pieces together with string, which Jim Sung supplied from the depths of his bag, so that they could retain their original form for the experts. Sometimes, you could tell a lot from knots. He left the cords around Marillo’s wrists for the coroner.
When the body had been freed, the first thing Jim Sung did was turn him on one side to check post-mortem lividity.
“Uh-huh,” he nodded. “Looks like the dirty deed was done up here, all right.”
Arvo could see that for himself. What blood hadn’t sprayed out into the room had collected down Marillo’s back, showing as a slight purple discoloration of the skin. It wasn’t as marked as that he had seen on other bodies. Because Marillo had lost so much blood when he was killed, there hadn’t been all that much left to sink to his back after death.
Jim Sung pressed the discoloration with his finger. It didn’t change. “See?” he said. “No blanching.”
Arvo saw. Blanching of post-mortem lividity occurred in only the early stages, before the blood had clotted.
Jim Sung inserted a rectal thermometer and turned to face the others as he held it in place. “I can’t tell you exactly how long he’s been dead,” he said, “but I’d say from all the signs it’s somewhere between eight and ten hours.”
Joe looked at his watch and nodded. “That makes it around midnight, one in the morning. Late last night, anyway.”
Jim Sung checked the temperature and made some calculations. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Body temperature bears that out.” He turned back to the body and began examining it, making notes, muttering to himself as he worked. “This should interest you guys,” he said, pointing to the back of the head.
Arvo had noticed blood on the pillow, and now he could see the reason for it. At the back of Jack Marillo’s skull was a roughly circular depression, cracked bone matted with hair, blood and brain tissue.
“Looks like some sort of hammer wound,” Joe said.
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