Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 05

by False Prophet

  “What good would it do if I couldn’t get in?” Marge said.

  “I don’t know…” Lilah looked down at her lap. “I’m just worried. I know something’s wrong. I just know it!”

  Marge checked her watch and looked at Decker. “What do you figure? Forty-five minutes tops if nothing’s there?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  Lilah peeked sheepishly at Decker. “Will you look for Kingston?”

  “I’ll do the honors,” Marge said. She cocked a thumb toward the front door. “Now if you two could kindly make an exit?”

  Brecht took Lilah’s elbow and guided her to the door. Before he left, he turned and said, “Again, I’m sorry for the intrusion.”

  “There you go again. Apologizing for me! I’m not sorry!”

  “Lilah—”

  “Don’t Lilah me!”

  Brecht steered her outside and shut the door. Decker could hear them arguing until one of the cars finally roared off. He let out a slow stream of breath. “You’re sure you want to do this, Marge?”

  “S’right.”

  “Want me to go with you?”

  “Nah. A guy not answering his phone calls doesn’t scream foul play. Why shouldn’t at least one of us get some sleep?”

  “You’re making me feel guilty, Marge.”

  “You better believe it, Pete.” Marge pushed limp blond wisps out of her eyes and smiled. “I left an empty California King. You might as well make the most out of the situation.”

  Decker smiled back. “Not so bad.”

  “Not so bad.”

  Rina emerged from the bedroom. “Is it safe?”

  Marge laughed. “You can come out now, Mrs. Decker. Poor Rina. What did you ever do to deserve this?”

  “What did I ever do to deserve this?” Decker said.

  Marge pointed a finger at him. “Hollander warned you. He offered to take the case.”

  Decker glanced upward, studying the ceiling. “Is that coffee I smell?”

  “I’ll get you a cup, Peter,” Rina said. “Marge?”

  “I’ll get the coffee, Rina,” Marge said. “You deal with Detective Sergeant Innocent Bystander here.” She walked into the kitchen.

  “I didn’t say I was an innocent bystander,” Decker called after her. But she was already out of sight. To Rina he said, “You actually made her coffee?”

  “It gave me something to do with my hands while I dodged her questions.”

  “I really am sorry.”

  “You don’t choose your cases.”

  “Truth be told, Marge is right. Hollander did warn me off. But you know me. I get stubborn.”

  “It’s called perseverance.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “It’s what makes you a good detective.”

  Decker smiled. “You can say the right things when you want to.”

  “Meaning I don’t always want to?”

  “No, I just meant—”

  “Forget it, Peter.” Rina tousled his hair.

  Marge returned, carrying a mug stenciled with dinosaurs. “I’m off.”

  Rina looked at Peter. “You’re not going?”

  Marge scowled. “Who needs ’im? Good night, folks. I’ll call if something’s amiss.” She sipped coffee and looked at the cup. “I’ll give this back to you in the morning.”

  “Keep it,” Decker said.

  “I can’t be bought off with stegosauri, Pete.”

  “How ’bout if I throw in a year’s supply of coffee, sugar, and whitener in individual packets?”

  “The temptation is overwhelming.” Marge wiggled her fingers and left.

  “You owe her,” Rina said.

  “Big.” Decker raised his brow. “You want to salvage the night?” He slipped his arms around Rina’s burgeoning waistline and kissed the nape of her neck. “I’ll even carry you across the threshold.”

  Rina turned and slipped her arm around his waist. “Speaking of being turned on, your damsel in distress got quite excited when you yelled at her.”

  Decker dropped his arms. “She’s not my anything—except my supreme pain in the ass.”

  “I know.” Rina picked up his hands and kissed them. “I was just being…hostile. But what I said was true. She likes your anger.”

  “Okay. Thanks for telling me. I won’t get angry around her anymore. But there was no friggin’ way I was going to let her get away with speaking to you like that.”

  “I appreciated your support, Peter.” She kissed his hands again. “You know, I was just thinking—”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Thank you, Peter.”

  Decker smiled. “What’s on your mind?”

  “It’s probably stupid.”

  “It probably isn’t. What?”

  “Her getting aroused by your fury. Maybe she likes her sex rough. Maybe her rape was…you know…her partner got carried away…and she’s trying to protect him.”

  Decker tapped his foot and digested her words. “A game gone too far? Then what about the burglary?”

  “I don’t know.” She let out a laugh, took his hand, and led him to the bedroom. “You’re the detective.”

  “Leave me with all the hard stuff, huh?”

  But she’d made an interesting point.

  He was still awake when the phone went off and he answered it before the first ring was completed, glancing at Rina. Sound asleep. That made him happy.

  “Pete?”

  “Yeah, go ahead, Marge,” he whispered.

  “I haven’t gone inside yet. Just called Burbank PD and told them what I was up to, asked them if they wanted to be part of this. They’re sending me a single black-and-white.”

  Decker hopped out of bed, tucked the receiver under his chin, and pulled on his pants. “What’s tweaking your nose?”

  “Empty lot, Pete, except for a lone Mercedes 450 SL. The clinic’s dark, the front door closed but unlocked. I’ve banged on the door. Went around to the back, banged on that door, too. Nothing. I’m not about to go and step on anyone else’s turf.”

  “Right.”

  “On top of the car and unlocked door, I shone my beam on the asphalt and found a nice trail of what could be blood drips.”

  Decker buttoned his shirt. “Freddy said it was an abortion mill. Women bleed after abortions.”

  “Yeah, in and of itself, it wouldn’t have raised any hackles. But with everything else…”

  “I’ll be down.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Four-forty-five in the morning and there was still traffic on the freeway. The city might sleep but the roadways never did. The night was cool and clear, the moon gliding over the tops of the mountains as Decker sped along the blacktop. He pushed the gas pedal to the floor and the Plymouth shot into overdrive.

  The address Marge had given him was a poorly lighted stucco and brick corner office building set behind towering eucalyptus and palm trees. There was a paved parking lot in front, spaces marked for ten cars. Decker pulled the Plymouth between Marge’s Honda and a Burbank cruiser, shut off the motor, and got out. Hands on hips, he took a quick look around. Adjacent to the clinic was an empty, weed-choked lot. The three other corners of the intersection were taken up by a Taco Bell, the skeletal remains of abandoned framing, and a discount-food-chain warehouse. Marge walked over to him.

  “Not exactly city central.”

  “Makes sense,” Decker answered. “You have an abortion clinic, you want privacy. Why give the nutcases an easy target to firebomb?”

  “Nutcases?” Marge smiled. “You’re not sympático with the right-to-lifers?”

  “I’m not sympático with firebombers.”

  “Hear, hear!” Marge led him to a uniform leaning against his cruiser. “Sergeant Decker, Officer Loomis.”

  The patrolman stuck out a spidery-fingered hand. He was tall and lean and young and Decker wondered if he’d even gone through puberty. Certainly his baby face gave no indication of needing a shave.

  Decker
took the proffered hand. “Thank your watch commander for indulging us.”

  “No problem, Sergeant.” Loomis’s voice still held a youthful strain. “Tell you the truth, for me, it’s a break from the routine.”

  “Pretty quiet around here?”

  “Yeah, this is an industrial area. I catch a lot of misfired alarms. Occasionally, there’re legit four-fifteens. What we really get are lots of assaults from the late-night bars in the field. Assholes get tanked and we come in and mop up.” He shook his head. “Same old shit.”

  Marge handed Decker a pair of gloves, then put on her own pair.

  Decker said, “You joining us inside, Officer?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Don’t touch and watch where you step.”

  “You got it.”

  Decker slipped on his gloves. “You wanna be point man, Detective Dunn?”

  “Point person. No, I’ll be backup.”

  Decker turned to Loomis. “You pass by here often?”

  “Once, maybe twice a night.”

  “Ever see this car out here at this time in the morning?”

  The young patrolman stared at the Mercedes and shook his head.

  “Ever see any car?” Marge asked.

  Again a shake of the head. “I don’t think so. But definitely not a sleek mama like a four-fifty SL. That I’d remember.”

  Decker nodded. They walked up to the front door. The flashlight’s beam fell on a small splotch of blood to the right of the threshold.

  Everyone exchanged looks. Decker banged on the door, identified them as police officers, and waited for a response.

  Nothing.

  Decker stood to the side of the door frame, turned the knob, and pushed open the door with his foot. The hinges creaked and everyone laughed.

  “Like a bad slasher flick.” Loomis giggled nervously. “Hey, we’re only blocks from the studios. Maybe someone was having fun.”

  Decker shone his light on the brown inkblot. “Except this ain’t Karo syrup.”

  Loomis was about to cross the threshold, but Decker held him back and waited.

  Nothing.

  Marge drew her .38 from her purse; Loomis freed his Beretta from his holster.

  Decker said, “As the cops say…cover me.”

  He stepped inside. Freon cold air. Then the smells. Hard to single out any one in specific—a mixture of formaldehyde, ammonia, the sweet metal of blood. He scanned the beam along the wall until he found the light switch, then flicked it on with latex-covered fingers.

  A ten-by-twelve waiting room lighted by fluorescent panels strung across an acoustical-tile ceiling. High dormer windows, the tops latched shut. The air conditioning was going strong, emitting an electronic hum. A green floral sofa, the fabric unnaturally shiny—heavily Scotchgarded. Two mismatched side chairs in shades of orange. A glass coffee table cluttered with magazines—Newsweek, Time, Life, and People as well as Teen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Tiger Beat, and Rip. A linoleum floor in a burnt-orange brick pattern. Decker had to use the extra illumination from the flashlight to find the trail of blood on that.

  Marge’s eyes fell on the magazines. “Catering to a young crowd.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “What’s Rip?” Marge asked.

  “Heavy metal,” Loomis said. “That’s music.”

  Decker said, “Something for the teenage daddies.”

  He focused the beam onto the floor, on smears of blood that trailed up to a door punched into the back wall. Next to the door was a sliding pane of frosted glass and a ledge for writing out checks. Instructions printed on a sign resting above the frosted glass: PLEASE ANNOUNCE YOUR ARRIVAL TO THE RECEPTIONIST and PAYMENT DUE AT TIME SERVICES ARE RENDERED.

  Decker tried to open the window but it was locked. Marge pushed the door with her foot and it yielded.

  “Yo, police!” she shouted. “Police officers!”

  Silence.

  They went through the door into a hallway. Decker scanned the walls until he located the light switch.

  To the right was the receptionist’s office. Small affair—one desk for the secretary, one desk for the computer, and a small filing cabinet. The odor of blood was stronger, but not as powerful as the smell of formaldehyde—so overwhelming it was making all of them dizzy. Loomis coughed. Out came the handkerchiefs for nose and mouth protection. They walked down the hallway, the path of blood thickening to blotches and dried puddles.

  Doors off the hallway leading to examining rooms. Long paper-coated padded tables with stirrups at the ends. A doctor’s stool. Shelves of chemicals and supplies. Nothing ransacked, nothing out of place.

  The formaldehyde permeated every cubic centimeter of air. Decker felt his eyes water, his nose and mouth burn. Marge let out a hacking cough.

  More examining rooms. Then, three doors at the end—one in the middle, the other two on either side of the hallway. Side doors leading to the operating rooms, stapled with placards. ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING ALLOWED. Decker entered the surgery on the left and found the lights.

  Pale-green walls, crater-shaped overhead spotlights focusing down on a center steel table fitted with stirrups. Next to the table, a four-foot stand clamped with steel tubes. Gas—blue label for nitrogen, green for oxygen. Another stand to the table’s right, this one bearing calibrated instruments for measuring gas levels in the blood. Strung across its top bar were a stethoscope and a blood-pressure cuff. Resting on the tile floor, at the foot of the operating table, was a tympani-sized vacuum attached to a clear five-foot hose, six inches in diameter. The plastic tubing had become discolored from repeated use.

  The back wall held locked cabinets filled with bottles of IV medications and glucose. In the drawers were surgical instruments—elongated forceps, oversized scissors, hypodermics, foot-long needles, scalpels and spoon-sized curettes with sharpened edges.

  Nothing appeared out of place.

  The final door, blood seeping out from under the wood, the stench of formaldehyde damn near knocking Decker over. He turned the knob, then staggered backward, coughing and gagging.

  Once a personal office, it was in complete disarray. Papers, notebooks, and thick medical tomes were tossed and strewn about. Drawers had been opened and dumped, shelves emptied of their contents. A large rosewood desktop was completely cleared. Walls and furniture were spattered with blood. An area rug was crumpled into a corner. Cushions from the couch were slashed open, bits of foam piling around a freestanding hat rack like snow sloughed from a Christmas tree.

  Lots of broken glass, the shards intermingled with tiny doughy pale dolls. Wee, two-inch creatures with far-set eyes, extra-wide mouths, pudgy hands, and legs pushed up to the bellies.

  Fetuses.

  At least a dozen, maybe more, carelessly scattered through the room except for a few lucky ones who still swam unmolested in unbroken jars of formaldehyde.

  In the center of the office was a contorted body resting in a pool of blood—as lifeless as the things floating in the jars.

  Loomis gagged, then composed himself. “Want me to call it in, Sergeant?”

  Eyes burning, Decker swallowed back the bitter taste of bile. “Yeah, do that. Use your car radio.”

  “Sure thing.” Loomis ran out.

  Decker placed his glove over his covered nose. “Shit, this is bad!”

  Marge coughed, then cleared her throat. “Fucking sick!”

  “Merritt?” Decker asked.

  Marge nodded. “Yeah, it’s Merritt.”

  21

  Marge yawned and rubbed her hands together. It was still dark, dawn a good half hour away, as she sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked and listened to static coming over the squawk box. Not a lot of calls at this hour. Even perps got tired.

  She stared out the windshield. The Mercedes 450 SL now had company—three cruisers flashing their blues, a meat wagon, the police photographer’s Camry, a lab-tech van, and Pete’s old unmarked.

  “You want your dinosaur mug back?” she s
aid to Decker. “It’s in the trunk.”

  Decker reclined the driver’s seat as far back as it could go. “Keep it.”

  Marge said, “Prelim hair analysis of Ness and company should be done today. Maybe between that and this scene, we’ll come up with physical evidence that points a finger.”

  “That’d be nice.” Decker put his hands behind his head. “Someone should search Merritt’s premises ASAP—his main office and his condo. See if we can’t find something. As far as questioning the family goes, Burbank will probably do that. It’s their jurisdiction. It’s a small department but they’ve got seven people in Crimes Against Persons who rotate into Homicide.”

  “Homicide’s part of CAPS?”

  “Yeah. The division’s too small for a separate Homicide detail. Anyway, the bureau’s sending out a duo. Guy I spoke to definitely wants it, but he’s happy to cooperate, especially after I explained the circumstances. They should be here in a few minutes.”

  “What are their names?”

  Decker pulled his notebook from his pocket. “I talked to a Justice Ferris.”

  “Justice or Justin?”

  “Justice—as in blind.” Decker sat up. “What a mess!”

  “Should I go through all of Merritt’s patient files?”

  “Yeah, we should start fresh…even though I think the crimes are related.”

  “We have a robbery and rape and now a homicide.”

  “A messy homicide. Not to mention a crazy horse.” Decker smoothed his mustache. “Marge, why had Lilah suddenly agreed to go out to dinner with Merritt after all these years?”

  “Like she said, does she need an excuse to hook up with her brother? Especially after he called her in his soothing voice.”

  Decker let out a small laugh.

  “What?”

  “Soothing voice,” Decker said. “When I talked to Goldin, he specifically used the word soothing to describe Kingston Merritt with his patients. Sounds like Merritt could be a charmer if he wanted to be.”

  “Think he wanted something out of Lilah?” Marge said.