by Matt Clemens
“ID the victim?”
“White male,” Thompson said. “Room is registered to a Jeff Bailey.”
Polk asked, “That our dead body?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. This is Mr. Farquar, the manager.”
Amari gave the manager a quick nod. Farquar’s salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back; this, with his pointy face, gave him the look of a sleek gray otter.
“Did you see anything, Mr. Farquar?”
“No. I had no idea anything had happened until the guests started burning up the phones.”
Thompson explained, “Maid found the body this morning, freaked out, started screaming.”
“Angelina is one of our best employees,” Farquar said, pointlessly.
Amari asked Thompson, “Did you talk to the maid?”
The sergeant nodded. “Nice lady. Scared out of her gourd. Probably never seen anything like that before.”
Amari noted a slight inflection in Thompson’s voice. Nothing rattled a twenty-year vet like the sarge, but this murder seemed to have gotten to him.
“Mr. Farquar,” Amari said, “the crime scene team will need to take any surveillance video you have.”
The manager blanched a little. “Um … that is … I mean to say, our clientele? It’s somewhat specialized. They come to the Star Struck expecting a certain amount of … discretion.”
The Star Struck wasn’t a flophouse by any means, but this hotel, like West Hollywood in general, had a reputation for being a haven for the gay community, whether in or out of the closet. She understood and respected their need for privacy.
But now, such considerations were as dead as the victim upstairs. They needed that security video.
Amari gave the manager a hard look.
Wilting, Farquar said, “It will be ready when your people ask for it.”
“Thank you. We appreciate your cooperation.” To Thompson, she said, “We’re going upstairs.”
Soon, on the fourth floor, elevator doors whispered open and Amari and Polk stepped out. The corridor was empty save for a uniformed officer outside what Amari assumed was room 425.
“Crime scene team and the coroner,” the young officer said, looking a trifle pale, “are already inside.”
“Thanks,” Amari said.
The door stood widely ajar.
Trailed by Polk, she went into a well-lit room with gaudy silver brocade wallpaper and white furnishings, including a bed where a sheet had been spread over a body. Two youngish crime-scene techs in blue disposable coveralls were at work—a male on the far side using an alternative light source to comb the floor for clues, a female dusting for prints in the bathroom.
Devin Talbot, a veteran assistant coroner, gave up a rumpled smile, seeing Amari. He was a compact, balding fortysomething man, with a halo of brown hair and sorrowful brown eyes.
“Anna, how the hell are you?”
“Doing fine, Dink,” she said. “Back from vacation, I see.” She didn’t know the history of the nickname, but Talbot had been “Dink” for as long as Amari had known him.
“How do you like my tan?” he asked. He was just a little paler than a fish belly. Probably went all the way to his den to read.
She said, “Thought you were George Hamilton for a second there. Let’s have a look at your customer.”
Talbot looked past her at Polk. “Close the door, will you, son?”
The young detective did so.
Talbot lifted the sheet and pulled it back to the victim’s waist.
Caucasian, probably early to mid-thirties, with short blonde hair and wide-set blue eyes staring at the ceiling. Red marks stood out on both wrists. The sheet beneath was soaked in blood, crisp and black from drying now, and Amari’s eyes immediately were drawn to two gaping wounds in the man’s chest.
“Knife?” she asked.
“Honking big knife,” Polk interjected before Talbot could answer.
Talbot offered up the same condescending smile he would give a child who had spoken out of turn. “If our weapon is a knife.”
Polk asked, “What makes you think it wouldn’t be?”
The coroner pulled the sheet back farther.
The victim’s genitals had been cut off.
“Not much bleeding,” Amari said, matter of fact.
“Postmortem wound,” Talbot said. “Our killer wanted to keep the mess to a minimum—he waited for the blood to begin to settle before he took the genitals.”
Polk asked, “Blood to settle?”
“You know this stuff, LeRon,” Amari said, mildly impatient. “Heart stops beating, gravity takes over, blood starts seeking the lowest levels.”
Polk nodded. “Yeah, I know, I knew. It was like … rhetorical.”
Amari let her young partner get away with that as she studied the wound. “Were his genitals somewhere here in the room?”
“Gone,” Talbot said with a shrug. “My guess is, the killer took everything with him.”
“A trophy?” she said.
“Damn messy one,” Polk said.
“That was rhetorical, LeRon.”
“Oh. Right. Sure.”
A killer specializing in emasculation of victims, combined with taking the genitals as trophies, had all the earmarks of someone who might strike again.
And again.
Polk was asking, “Who the hell does something like that to a guy?”
“Someone filled with rage,” Talbot said. “The uniforms who were here, when we got the call? They already had a name for him.”
Polk asked, “What?”
“Billy Shears,” Talbot said.
“Great,” Amari said. “I hope no media heard that.”
“Billy Shears?” Polk asked.
Amari turned to him. “The Beatles? ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’?”
Polk shrugged. “Before my time.”
“I thought you said you had Rock Band.”
“Yeah, but not that ancient-ass crap.”
Suddenly Amari felt very old.
Talbot said, “Anyway, the vic was stabbed twice in the chest … then the killer waited.”
“How long?” Amari asked.
“Twenty minutes, maybe,” Talbot said. “Doesn’t take as long for the blood to settle as people think.”
“There is some blood down south,” Polk noted.
“Yes,” Talbot said patiently, “but not nearly as much as if he’d been alive when this happened.”
“Let’s not go there,” Polk said with a shiver. “What the hell was our killer doing with himself, while he waited for the blood to settle?”
Talbot shrugged.
The female crime-scene tech, hearing this conversation, emerged from the bathroom. Taller than Amari, with red hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was fair and freckled and wore no makeup. Her nameplate read RYAN.
“Judging from the odor,” Ryan said, “the killer just sat back and had a cigarette. It’s a nonsmoking room, but that didn’t stop him.”
“Butts?”
“Nope. Must’ve flushed ‘em.”
The blond male crime tech, McCaffrey, was (like his partner) a stranger to Amari.
“Nothing out here,” he said. “No fingerprints, no footwear impressions in the carpeting, nothing.”
“What,” Polk said, “was he was freakin’ barefoot?”
“No,” Ryan said. “Probably wore shoe coverings, like ours.”
She held up a foot to indicate the clear plastic booties.
“Ours say ‘Police’ on the soles,” Ryan said, “so our prints don’t get confused with the criminals. But even in the bathroom on the tile floor, the electrostatic print lifter couldn’t find any footprint. This tells us something.”
Amari asked, “Which is?”
“The perp is knowledgeable. And way careful.”
Amari turned her attention to Talbot. “Dink, is this D.B. Jeff Bailey?”
“Why, is that the name on the register?”
“Yeah,�
�� Polk said.
McCaffrey called over an answer: “No ID! I bagged his clothes already.”
Amari looked down at the body, the close-clipped blond hair, the blue eyes. A third of the men in California looked like this. Hell, McCaffrey looked like this. A glance to the vic’s left hand revealed a wedding ring.
Somewhere, someone was missing this man. Probably a female who might or might not be surprised that her husband had died in a hotel like the Star Struck.
Amari said, “All right, he’s a John Doe till further notice. When we get back to the office, we’ll run his prints, check with Missing Persons, track Jeff Bailey. … LeRon, you know the drill.”
Polk nodded.
“The killer wasn’t nervous or ill at ease spending a bunch of time with a dead body.” She shook her head. “Stabbed like that, and no noise? The neighbors didn’t hear anything?”
Ryan said, “From what I got while the uniforms were clearing the rooms? Nobody heard a damn thing.”
Talbot added, “No defensive wounds on his hands or arms, but the ligature marks on his wrists tell us he was tied up.”
“Kinky sex?” Polk asked.
“Or a captive,” Amari said.
“Is it possible,” Polk said, “he was dead before he could scream?”
“Probable,” the assistant coroner said. Talbot pointed to the lower of the two wounds. “This blow is almost certainly the first one—up and in, probably piercing the heart, the liver, and/or one of the lungs … and God only knows what else.”
Polk asked, “And this other blow?”
“That one was anger. More show, less lethal.”
“Adding insult to injury.”
“That’s right. Though what I take to be the second blow was delivered with enough force to crack the sternum and bleed like hell, it would not have been as immediately fatal, had it come first.”
Amari said, “And if the chest blow came first, someone would’ve heard him scream?”
“Yes,” Talbot said. “If our John Doe was healthy when that higher blow was struck, it would have hurt like hell, and he’d have let the world know.”
“Our vic was surprised?”
“Or asleep. And in either case, he wouldn’t have been able to put up much of a fight.”
“Any idea about the weapon?”
Talbot shook his head. “Not until I get the body back to the lab, where I can get a closer look at the wounds and run some tests. Something with a big, long blade though.”
The coroner’s crew showed up with a gurney. Amari, Polk, and Ryan waited in the hall while Talbot and McCaffrey stayed in the room keeping watch on the evidence.
“I told the manager,” Amari said to Ryan, “that you’d be by to pick up the security video.”
Ryan nodded.
Polk said, “Lovers’ quarrel?”
Amari shook her head. “Nobody’s reported so much as a raised voice. I think this is something different.”
“Robbery got out of hand?” Polk suggested. “Thief is boosting the room, guy in bed wakes up, and …”
“And the thief takes out a big pair of scissors and stabs the guy twice, then cuts off his fishing tackle for the hell of it?”
“Maybe not,” Polk admitted.
“On the other hand,” Ryan said, “his wallet is gone. Watch and cell phone, too.”
“Any luggage missing?”
“We don’t know if the John Doe had any luggage,” Ryan said. “Plenty of people use this place just to hook up.”
“Right,” Amari said. “But why leave the wedding ring?”
The trio stood silent as a small honor guard of two from the coroner’s office rolled through a gurney with a body bag filled with Jeff Bailey or John Doe or whoever the poor bastard was. As the men rolled their cargo down the hall, the only sound was the whisper of wheels on carpeting.
Amari had just heard the elevator doors close when Talbot stepped out into the hall.
“You better come back in,” the assistant coroner said.
McCaffrey was on the far side of the bed, holding up a clear plastic evidence bag that appeared empty.
“Got something?” Polk asked.
“Red hair,” McCaffrey said. “Long one. Female?”
Amari said, “Vic’s hair was blonde, and short.”
Polk asked, “Could the hair be from a previous guest?”
Ryan said, “Probably not. Bailey checked in early yesterday afternoon. That would mean clean sheets. My guess is that this …” He waved the bag around. “… belongs to the killer.”
“A hair isn’t much,” Polk said.
“But it’s something,” Amari said with an enthusiasm she didn’t really feel. “No sign of break-in—so can we assume this is an assignation gone very wrong? Victim willingly brought his killer into this room.”
“Or let him in,” Polk said.
“Right,” Amari said. “And whatever weapon the killer used to make those huge wounds came with him.”
Polk frowned. “But the killer couldn’t have hauled a bulky murder weapon in with him, if he and the victim had hooked up somewhere, hotel bar or whatever….”
Amari nodded, “And even if the victim was someone the killer knew, and it wasn’t just a casual pickup, how do you bring along a weapon like that?”
Polk was caught up in the theorizing. “So maybe the killer left after the sex, came back, with his weapon this time. And the victim went to the door, and opened up for his lover. Who is holding the weapon behind his back or something.”
“Reasonable scenario,” Amari said. “Dink, can we establish that the victim had sex shortly before he died?”
Talbot laughed harshly. “With the genitals gone, and the bed covered in blood?”
Polk gave Amari a look. “Sounds like another one of those rhetorical questions.”
Amari was thinking, prowling the small space. “This is cold, methodical, planned. Almost … ritualistic.”
She stopped and turned to the longtime coroner’s assistant.
“Dink—I know you don’t traffic in opinions. But if I said I thought this death was more a beginning than an ending, would you disagree?”
“I wish I could,” Talbot said.
Chapter Three
Something special was on the docket for the Crime Seen group that regularly went out for lunch on Monday—with the exception of co-host Carmen Garcia, these were the “superstar” forensics experts of the show’s Killer TV segments.
Carmen had chosen Doreen’s on Sunset, one of her favorites, for a couples’ lunch where she would introduce her coworkers to Vince Clay, whom she’d been dating for several months now.
Jenny Blake would bring Chris Anderson (the computer geek-ess and the Mississippi scientist had their own kind of chemistry going now) and Laurene Chase would be there with audio tech Nancy Hughes (they had hooked up shortly after Kansas).
The other guys had their own lunch plans, Billy Choi and Michael Pall off somewhere eating meat, no doubt, while Harrow never intruded on his team’s luncheons, though he’d have been welcome.
Not long ago Carmen had been a PA in T-shirt and jeans; now the slender young brunette, so loved by the camera, was an on-air personality and co-producer in a well-tailored blue business suit, running late.
She knew Vince would be understanding. They’d only been on half a dozen dates, but Vince was always thoughtful to a fault. When he didn’t kiss her till after their third date, she’d asked if something was wrong, and he’d only said, “I just know what you’ve been through. I’m fine taking it slow.”
The world, or anyway that part of it who watched Crime Seen, was well aware that Carmen Garcia had been held hostage at the climax of the team’s first investigation—broadcast live. She appreciated Vince’s consideration—particularly since he couldn’t know that he was the first guy she’d gone out with, since that traumatic time.
Perhaps five years older than her, Vincent Clay had a small but thriving insurance agency in Westwood (a
“boutique business,” he called it, handling well-off clients personally). Laurene had given her a good amount of grief for dating somebody with such a boring job, until Carmen told her how many of Vince’s clients were in the entertainment industry.
“Everybody in this town’s in the entertainment industry,” Laurene had said, but Carmen knew she was impressed.
The über-shy Jenny, on the other hand, did not join in with the laughter, nor the ribbing, however good-natured.
Privately, Jenny had said, “Carmen, never mind them. Whatever makes you happy.”
This two-sentence speech indicated just how much Jenny had come into her own lately, in part due to her TV exposure but mostly to the blossoming romance with Chris.
Vince was waiting out front, with the valet pre-tipped and ready. Insurance man or not, Vince might have been posing for an Armani ad in that cream-colored suit, light blue shirt and no tie.
A few inches taller than the in-heels Carmen, Vince had short brown hair, a hawkish nose, high cheekbones, and pale blues eyes that jumped out of his deep tan.
Carmen turned her Prius over to the valet, and Vince opened his arms for a quick hug. She gave him a peck on the cheek.
“I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” she said. “Something came up at work. Should’ve called….”
“It happens. You’re worth waiting for.”
“You’re a figment of my imagination, aren’t you?”
“You must have a good imagination, because this figment is famished.”
They passed arm in arm through the open wrought-iron gate into the enclosed outdoor portion of the restaurant. The other women and Chris Anderson occupied four of six chairs around a circular wrought-iron table in a back corner near a brick wall.
Carmen found Doreen’s unpretentiously classy— linen tablecloths, bone china, polished silverware, elegant water glasses, a chichi ambience but with all-American comfort food. Huge umbrellas ran down through the center of the glass-topped tables nearer the sidewalk.
As usual, Laurene—a statuesque African American with gun-metal gray glasses matching her tailored gray suit—had managed to snag the chair with her back to the wall, so she could see the rest of the restaurant. Must have been a gunfighter thing—the criminalist was on loan from the Waco PD, after all….