Malicious

by Jacob Stone

  Bogle stared at his notes again. He was running out of things to ask, and none of Sangonese’s answers were helping him come up with any new ideas.

  “Can I look at Crawford’s company email account?”

  Sangonese’s thick lips curled into a frown. “I’m not sure Karl’s email is still active. Let me check on that, and I’ll get back to you.” He gave his watch an impatient glance. “We’ve been at this for fifteen minutes now. I need to get back to work.”

  Bogle pushed his chair back and got to his feet. When he reached the door, he turned back to Sangonese and gave him a hard look, trying to determine how truthful he’d been. If Sangonese felt any unease at this, he didn’t show it.

  Bogle said, “If you think of anything that could help, please call me.”

  Sangonese’s expression turned dour. “I can’t imagine what that would be,” he said.

  Chapter 8

  Star Wax was a two-year-old wax museum on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood that competed with the Hollywood Wax Museum, their gimmick being replicas of scenes from newer Hollywood movies. Morris had to circle the area before finding a parking spot three blocks away. It was only ten minutes to nine, but the sun was already bright in the sky, and he shielded his eyes from it as he made his way to the wax museum. He had picked up coffee on the drive over, but it had done little to stop the dull throbbing behind his eyes. The heat from the sun, though, felt good on the back of his neck.

  Word hadn’t spread yet about a dead body being found inside the museum, but with the official city and police vehicles parked out front, as well as the uniformed officers barricading the front entrance, a crowd of curious onlookers had gathered. Morris squeezed his way through them. He knew one of the patrolmen standing guard, and after a quick few words, he was let in.

  Doug Gilman was waiting for him inside. His normally tanned face had grown so pale and unnaturally waxen that he could almost have been mistaken for a wax figure, at least until he stepped forward and offered Morris his hand. His skin felt clammy to the touch. Gilman was a political bureaucrat who had been smart enough to get Morris involved in two previous high-profile serial killer investigations in order to get the heat off the mayor’s office, and Morris knew from experience that Gilman tended to get queasy when near dead bodies.

  “Thanks for coming,” Gilman said, his expression glum. “You made yourself clear before that MBI wasn’t going to work on any more murder investigations, but you can see why I had to call you about taking on this one.”

  “I haven’t decided anything yet,” Morris said.

  “Let’s see how you feel after you see the body.”

  The Star Wax sign out front had been made to look like a Star Wars movie poster, and as Gilman led Morris though the museum, Morris realized why. Even though only the red emergency lights were on, leaving the exhibits in a gloomy darkness, it was still enough for him to see that the first dozen of them were from Star Wars movies. He had seen the first three movies back when he was a teenager, but hadn’t seen any of the recent ones, and he didn’t recognize the characters in the exhibits until they came across one for Return of the Jedi, which showed Princess Leia in her slave girl outfit sidled up against Jabba the Hutt. That one caught his attention. As a teenager, he had a huge crush on Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia.

  As they walked through the building, they passed more replicated scenes from recent Hollywood franchises: Harry Potter, Batman and the Dark Knight, and Marvel comic book superheroes. Toward the back of the museum was a Classic Film section, and there Morris passed scenes from The Godfather, Scarface, A Clockwork Orange, Bonnie and Clyde, and On the Waterfront. As they continued on, he first spotted several crime scene specialists using flashlights to search the area, and then homicide detective Annie Walsh talking with Los Angeles’s medical examiner, Roger Smichen. The exhibit they stood near had a thin, dapper man in top hat and tails dancing with a woman in a long flowing gown. Both the figure of the man and the woman looked like they had been sculpted out of wax, but as Morris got closer to the exhibit, he noticed something was very wrong about the woman. Her back was turned to him, so he couldn’t see her face, but the way the body drooped appeared unnatural, even for wax.

  “It’s supposed to be Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers from Top Hat,” Roger Smichen said. Morris looked away from the dancing couple in the exhibit to see that Smichen and Walsh had noticed his arrival, and both stood grim-faced as they looked at him. Smichen, a cadaverously thin man in his late fifties, had grown a goatee the last time Morris had seen him, but the ME had since shaved it off, leaving his head hairless except for his sparse eyebrows. Morris had had drinks with Annie Walsh two weeks earlier, but given her severe expression and the dimness of the museum, she looked like she had aged a decade since then.

  “You didn’t bring your four-legged assistant,” Walsh said, straight-faced.

  “Nat’s got Parker today. Why’s it so dark in here?” Morris also noticed for the first time how much hotter and stuffier it was inside the building than it should’ve been, but he didn’t ask about that.

  “Only the emergency lights are running. The perp cut the electricity to kill the security system, so right now the building is running off a generator until the electric company reconnects the outside power line. It should happen soon.”

  “Do they know what time the power was cut?”

  “Edison couldn’t tell us that, but from the stopped clocks in the building, power was cut shortly after three fifteen a.m.”

  “Less than six hours ago,” Morris said.

  “She’s been dead longer than that,” Smichen volunteered. “From the body’s lividity and temperature, I’d say at least fourteen hours.”

  Gilman had already told Morris that the dead woman replacing Ginger Rogers in the exhibit was the actress Heather Brandley. He moved so he could see the death mask the corpse wore. He remembered the actress from a decade-old TV show, and had thought then that she was attractive and had a perkiness about her. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was drawn as if she were in agony, and her face just seemed so shrunken. Death had a way of diminishing a person, and the rosy-colored blush coating her cheeks and the ruby-red lipstick slathered over her mouth made her appearance all that more grotesque and unnatural. The killer had propped her up so that it would appear as if she were dancing with the Fred Astaire wax figure.

  “She was cut in half?” Morris asked.

  “Not half,” Smichen said. “We were left with the top third of her body. She was cut around six inches above her belly button. I’ll be able to tell you with more certainty after I examine her in my lab, but it looks like a circular saw was used.”

  “Was it done postmortem?”

  “I can’t tell you that yet. There are no other apparent wounds or trauma, but let’s wait and see what the toxicology report reveals.”

  Morris made out the outline of a thin pole that ran the full length of what was left of the corpse’s back.

  “A telescopic support pole made of galvanized steel,” Smichen explained. “If I lifted up the gown you’d see the scaffolding that was built to support her. Screws were used to attach her hands to the wax figure’s.” He pointed to the raised round platform that the Astaire wax figure and the corpse were on. “The platform is built to spin around to make it look like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are dancing. If a museum worker hadn’t discovered that this exhibit had been tampered with, once power was restored and the museum had opened their doors, our victim would’ve been spinning in circles in front of customers.”

  “Jesus,” Gilman said.

  Morris ignored him and asked Walsh about this museum employee.

  “Greg is interviewing him now,” she said.

  Greg was Greg Malevich, another homicide detective. Morris asked, “Has the lower part of her body been found yet?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  The
gown the corpse wore not only reached the floor but puddled by where her feet would’ve been. Morris lifted it up. He saw the scaffolding, but didn’t see any blood.

  “Was she drained of blood?” Morris asked.

  Smichen said, “I doubt there’s much left in her, but no. He encased her wound with plastic sheeting to keep her from bleeding.”

  Morris considered that. “Probably so he wouldn’t make a mess transporting her.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Interesting that he was so careful yet his business card had drops of blood on it.”

  Walsh fished through an evidence bag, and took from it a plastic bag that held the standard-sized business card.

  “There are no fingerprints,” she said. “And my guess, the blood drops were added intentionally.”

  Morris wondered about that. “For what reason? Just to get our attention?”

  Walsh gestured with a shrug to show that she had no idea.

  Morris read the business card again, and felt an uneasiness in his chest as he did so. There was no doubt that R. G. Berg was planning to kill more people, and that he was challenging Morris to stop him. But that didn’t mean he had to play this killer’s game.

  “How’d he get in here?” he asked.

  “He dismantled one of the back doors after he had cut power,” Walsh said.

  “What happened to the Ginger Rogers wax figure?”

  “We haven’t found it yet,” Walsh said. “He could’ve taken it as a souvenir.”

  The lights turned on and a noticeable whirring noise from the central air conditioning interrupted the stillness in the building. Fred Astaire’s wax twin and Heather Brandley’s corpse began to spin in a ghoulish waltz.

  Smichen noted, “It looks like the power’s been restored.”

  “I’ll get that turned off,” Walsh volunteered, referring to the spinning platform.

  With the additional light shining on the exhibit, what was left of Heather Brandley’s corpse looked even sadder and more diminished each time it spun so that it faced Morris.

  “What do you say, Morris?” Gilman asked, his voice tighter than earlier. “Are you going to help us catch this psycho?”

  Morris stood staring at the grotesque spinning spectacle. He shook his head, but that was only to try to clear away the anger rising up inside him.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” he said.

  Chapter 9

  Dennis Polk, one of MBI’s investigators, breezed into the conference room, gave Doug Gilman a smirk, Greg Malevich a nod, and Annie Walsh a wink before taking a seat next to Morris. Gilman showed no response, Malevich nodded back, and Walsh glowered at Polk.

  “What, no doughnuts or nothin’?” Polk asked.

  Morris sat slumped in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyelids drooping as if he wanted to take a nap. He turned his half-lidded eyes toward Polk for a ten-count before making sense of what Polk had asked.

  “Greta’s ordering food,” he muttered.

  Polk raised an eyebrow as he looked at his boss. “Late night?” he asked.

  “The night would’ve been fine if this hadn’t happened.”

  Polk looked around the room at the morose expressions on everyone’s faces. “Driving over there was nothing on the radio about a woman being found at Star Wax who’d been cut in half—”

  “A third,” Walsh corrected.

  Polk made a face as if she were unnecessarily nitpicking him. “Okay, a third.” He turned back to Morris. “So are you going to keep me in suspense any longer? You hinted earlier this was someone famous. Who was the unlucky lady?”

  Gilman had dug through a briefcase, and now reached across the table to hand Polk the legal document that he had pulled out of it.

  “I need you to sign an NDA before you can be told anything further,” Gilman said.

  Polk gave him an incredulous look before raising another eyebrow at Morris.

  “Is he serious?” he asked.

  “Just sign it,” Morris said.

  Polk signed it.

  “Heather Brandley,” Morris told him.

  It took Polk a few seconds before the name registered, and then he let out a long, low whistle.

  “I haven’t seen her in anything in years, but I used to watch that show she was in. Hot Times in Miami. Damn, she looked good in a bikini.” He rubbed his chin, appearing deep in thought, which was unusual for Polk. “This is going to hit hard, especially given what happened to her. Are we waiting for Charlie and Fred?” he asked.

  “Charlie’s tied up with the Crawford missing person investigation, Fred’s still undercover in San Diego. I’ll be filling them in later.”

  “That’s too bad.” Polk looked disappointed. Needling Fred Lemmon was one of his favorite hobbies. “So who are we waiting for?”

  “Gloria Finston.”

  “The FBI profiler? The one who worked with us on the Malibu Butcher?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I like her. A smart cookie.”

  “She’s certainly that,” Morris agreed. “Doug didn’t want me showing you this until you signed the NDA, but the killer left this message behind.”

  He had a manila folder in front of him, and he took out a copy of the business card that had been pinned to Heather Brandley’s gown and handed it to Polk. As Polk looked at it, a hard, angry grin etched his face.

  “You gotta to be kidding me,” Polk said.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “This sonofabitch is challenging us. So we’re taking on the investigation, huh?”

  “Still undecided.”

  Walsh gave Morris an exasperated look. “What more do you need to make up your mind?” she asked.

  “Let’s see how this meeting goes.”

  There was a knock on the door, and MBI’s office manager, Greta Lindstrom, brought in a platter with bagels, lox, tomato, Bermuda onion slices, and cream cheese. Everyone but Gilman, who was still looking green around the gills, helped themselves to the food. Polk wolfed down a sandwich and was working on a second when there was another knock on the door, and Gloria Finston entered.

  “Sorry if I’ve been holding you up,” she announced, her thin lips forming a tiny v. “I was in San Francisco when I got the call about this murder, and took the first plane I could.”

  Finston was a slight, dark-haired woman in her forties. With her narrow face, longish, thin nose and small pale eyes, she reminded Morris of a sparrow. Smart as hell, though. Finston took the empty seat between Gilman and Walsh so that she sat across from Morris. She’d already been emailed the crime scene photos and knew about the business card that had been pinned to the victim’s body.

  “Polk hasn’t finished off the bagels yet,” Morris said. “If you want one, I’d advise you to dig in now before he does.”

  “I get hungry when I’m pissed,” Polk said. “And the card that sonofabitch left for us is doing the job.”

  Morris understood Polk’s anger because the killer’s message had the same effect on him. He asked Finston if she wanted anything to drink.

  “Tea would be lovely. Chamomile if you have any.”

  Morris called Greta on his cell phone and asked if she could bring in a cup of chamomile tea. When he got off the phone, Finston asked him if the ME would be joining them.

  Walsh spoke up. “It was tricky disengaging the victim from the crime scene.” She checked her watch. “Roger only got the body in for a postmortem examination an hour ago. He’ll be calling with his findings.”

  “That shouldn’t take long,” Polk wisecracked. “It’s not like he’s got that much to work with.”

  Morris ignored him and asked Finston whether she’d had a chance to look over the materials that had been emailed to her.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “So you know ever
ything we do. What’s your take on the killer?”

  Finston showed another of her tiny v smiles, this one with a sharper edge. “We’re dealing with a narcissistic personality, and one who is extremely detail oriented,” she said. “The precision involved in this murder is quite extraordinary. I would guess that he’s been planning this for months, if not longer, and he certainly has other murders planned. He picked Ms. Brandley for a reason. She wasn’t a random victim.”

  “It wasn’t that well planned out,” Walsh argued. “If he had repaired the power line before leaving, it’s possible customers would’ve seen Brandley’s corpse spinning around in that exhibit.”

  “I don’t think that was important to him. He left Ms. Brandley the way he did for the police, not for the public. And of course, for you, Morris.”

  “What about that message?” Morris asked.

  “He wants you involved.”

  “For what purpose? As a challenge?”

  Finston shrugged her thin shoulders. “I don’t know. The killer has worked out some sort of overarching, grandiose story that he wants to impress the world with, and for some reason he’s included you to be part of it.”

  Greg Malevich cleared his throat loudly enough to get everyone’s attention. “What if it’s not a serial killer,” he said. “Why couldn’t it be someone who wanted Heather Brandley dead, and came up with this to have us chasing after a serial killer who doesn’t exist?”

  “It’s not impossible, and it should be looked into,” Finston conceded. “But given the elaborate measures that went into this killing, the other scenario is far more likely. I’m confident that we’ll be hearing from the ME that Ms. Brandley was drugged and unconscious when she was murdered, and that will also support that we’re dealing with a serial killer who will be killing again soon.”

  “Why is that?” Malevich asked, unconvinced.

  “Because I believe our killer is only interested in telling his story, and not in the pain he inflicts on his victims.”