by M. Z. Kelly
Brie had recently told me that she wanted me to be Lily’s godmother. Unfortunately, due to my work schedule, I wasn’t able to make the Disneyland trip, but I promised to make it up to her later.
I glanced over and saw that Leo was with our lieutenant, Ozzie Powell. They were waving for me to come over and join them.
I told Brie, “I’ll catch up with you later, probably at the autopsy.”
As Bernie and I walked over to Leo and Oz, I had mixed feelings about seeing my lieutenant. I’d recently learned that Oz might have inside knowledge about the death of my love-dad that he’d kept from me. It’s a long story, so I’ll sort out the details later. I’d been off work for a few days and hadn’t had a chance to talk to him about what I’d learned.
After Leo and I filled the lieutenant in on our crime, I said, “Brie thinks lye was used on her skin. There’s no prints. Maybe we can get her photo out to the press, see if anyone recognizes her.”
Oz nodded. “And the…her heart. It was missing?”
Our lieutenant was in his sixties, with thirty-plus years on the job. He had snowy white hair and eyes the color of tropical water. Oz had a reputation for being a good guy in a department that sometimes didn’t have the best interests of line staff at heart. We’d had a good working reputation, until now.
Leo confirmed what he’d said. “Haven’t seen anything this bad since Duvall.”
Oz explained the reference for my benefit. “A case from the nineties. He went Jeffrey Dahmer on his victims.” The lieutenant went on about the case for a moment, before apparently realizing we were exhausted and in no mood to rehash old cases. “Why don’t you both go home and get a couple hour’s sleep, then we’ll meet back at the station later this afternoon.”
Leo went to pack up his belongings. That left me alone with Oz. I told him about my issues with SID and that replacement staff had been sent out.
“You did the right thing. If one of their staff was taking pictures of the victim with his personal cell phone, I’ll see to it that he doesn’t work here anymore.”
“I appreciate that.” My eyes held on him for a moment, before I broke eye contact.
“What gives?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Something’s on your mind, Kate. I’ve seen it for a few days now. What’s going on?”
“You always could read me.”
“It’s part of the job.”
I thought about showing him the group photograph I’d recently obtained. Oz had been with my love-dad and his killer shortly before his death. They were with a Hollywood starlet named Jean Winslow, who had possibly also been murdered.
“I think there’s something…” I took a breath, trying to find the words to explain what I was feeling. I decided the timing wasn’t right and changed the subject. “I’m just worried about Brie,” I finally said. “She’s going through a rough time with her chemo and trying to work. I think it’s taking a lot out of her.”
Oz nodded, his blue eyes holding on me. “I’ll have a talk with her. She’s part of Section One now. I can reduce her hours, work around any medical issues.”
“I appreciate that.”
His eyes were still fixed on me. “You sure there’s nothing else?”
“I’m sure. See you this afternoon.”
***
Bernie and I got home a little before ten. I had moved into the Starlight Mobile Home Park in the middle of Hollywood a few days earlier and still had boxes stacked everywhere. The park was considered a historical landmark. It consisted of dozens of vintage trailers manufactured around the middle of the last century. I’d recently met a few of our neighbors and had found that most of the inhabitants of the Starlight looked like they’d been manufactured a couple of decades before their trailers.
My friends, Natalie Bump and Mo Simpson, had been able to rent a home that was right next to mine, thanks to my boyfriend Noah having connections to a woman who owned the homes. My coach, as they called the units, was something called a Delta Queen. Back in its day, the Queen was considered luxurious quarters, but it lacked any present day amenities such as a dishwasher and decent sized closets. While our new homes had reasonable rents, they also had a unique location, overlooking a cemetery. We’d speculated that if you lived at the Starlight and passed on, your body was simply thrown over the fence, where you spent eternity.
I had just slipped into my jammies when I heard a knock on my door. I opened it to find Harv Lundquist, the Starlight’s manager, standing there.
“Your friends are meeting with the residents’ council,” Harv said. “I thought you might want to be there.”
The manager of our park was around eighty, about five feet tall, with green eyes that were about the same color as mine. He had about a dozen strands of white hair meticulously combed over a dome that looked like a speckled egg.
“What’s the meeting about?” I asked, yawning. Bernie had come over to investigate, pushing his head between the doorjamb and my leg.
“They want to evict you and your friends.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What for? We just moved in.”
“Section 1191 of the Starlight Code of Ethics; conduct detrimental to the health and welfare of the other residents.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Harv patted his speckled head. “Your friend Natalie was sunbathing by the pool yesterday. I’m afraid Maude Finch, the president of our council, and some of her friends aren’t happy about it.” Harv smiled. “Me, on the other hand, I thought it was the best thing to happen around here since Nixon was elected president.”
I exhaled and pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache surfacing. “Let me get some clothes on and I’ll come over.”
Fifteen minutes later, I’d slipped into a dress and did what I could with hair that was forever in rebellion. I found my friends sitting like a couple of accused prisoners in a meeting room at the Starlight clubhouse. From where I stood, at the back of the room, it was all blue hairs and bald heads, sitting like an elderly jury ready to pass judgment.
“Our lawyer just got here,” Natalie said, standing and pointing at me.
Natalie was in her early twenties, blond, and gorgeous. She was a native of Manchester, England, where she’d spent her formative years with a truck driving father. The experience had left my friend with a colorful vocabulary and an attitude that held nothing in reserve.
All heads turned in my direction, as Maude Finch stood and said to me, “I heard you’re a cop, not a lawyer.”
Bernie whined, maybe thinking I should give a speech like one of those talk show celebrity lawyers.
“This is Kate Sexton,” Mo said. “She’s our representative when it comes to legal matters.”
My heavyset African-American friend was also on her feet. Mo was big and loud, and sometimes prone to physicality, if the situation warranted it, and sometimes even when it didn’t.
I suppressed images of her putting Maude in a headlock as I walked to the front of the room and Mo continued, now demonstrating that the knowledge of a few legal terms can be a dangerous thing. “We demand us a writ of habeas corpus. And, believe me, this room looks like it’s full of a bunch of corpses.”
“Can you please explain what’s going on here?” I said to the president of the residents’ council before my friends could offend everyone again.
“What’s going on here,” Maude said, “is an eviction proceeding. You, your friends, and that vicious dog of yours have three days to vacate the premises.”
“Or what?” Natalie demanded. “You can’t just put us out on the street.”
“You can go live in a shelter with the rest of your kind,” Maude said. There were several shouts of encouragement, supporting her position.
“We got rights,” Mo said. “We want due process. Tell ‘em, Kate.”
I tried to keep my voice even. “According to Madeline Dupree, who rented our coaches to us, our units are grandfathered in, witho
ut any age or pet restrictions. You can’t evict us without just cause.”
Natalie started clapping. “Listen to the lady or she’ll throw all your old asses in jail for violating our rights.”
“And we’ll sue for pain and suffering,” Mo added, “We’ll end up owning this park and all your coaches.”
That got the crowd going. Several people stood up and claimed they were going to counter sue for slander. A shouting match then ensued, with Maude and her cohorts claiming they were going to hire their own lawyer. Mo then got into the legal war of words with them and said they were guilty of something she termed property malfeasance.
“You’re nothing but a bunch of old torts,” Natalie said, putting her own legal spin on the battle, even though I doubted that she knew the difference between a tort and a tart.
The verbal scrum continued for another twenty minutes before Maude Finch made her pronouncement, “You have three days to vacate the premises. In the meantime, we will be forced to seek legal recourse.”
“That’s the only kinda intercourse you’re gonna get,” Natalie said, wagging a finger at Maude. “I’ll bet you haven’t been laid since the pyramids were built.”
I rounded up my friends and said to them, “Let’s get out of here before we get drawn and quartered.”
We were in my front yard, a small patch of grass with three faded pink flamingos, when Harv stopped by. “Just so you know, Maude means business. Her nephew is Mean Gene.”
“Who?” I said.
“Mean Gene the suing machine. He has those ads on TV.”
Natalie’s voice pitched higher as the realization struck her. “You mean the ones where Gene and his attack trained Chiweenie growl at the camera and tell the viewers they’re gonna get rich by suing their neighbors?”
“That’s him,” Harv confirmed.
I looked at Natalie. “A Chiweenie?”
“It’s a cross between a Chihuahua and one of them wiener dogs,” Mo explained before Natalie could answer.
“We’re all gonna be livin’ on the street with dog bites on our rear ends,” Natalie whined.
Mo regarded me. “You gotta find us a lawyer, Kate. One of them guys that’s meaner than a junk yard Chihuahua.”
I sighed. “I hate lawyers, but I’ll see what I can do.” After telling Harv that we’d see him later, I told my friends, “I’ve got to catch a couple hours sleep. I was up all night.”
“You musta been working that boneyard case,” Mo said. “I heard it was some bad shit that went down there.”
Mo had been a pimp in her former life and had lots of street contacts. She and Natalie always seemed to know about my cases almost before I did.
“I heard her face was painted,” Natalie added, her hazel eyes growing wider. “Maybe the killer went Norman Bates, wanted her to look like his dead mother.”
I didn’t want to discuss the details and said, “I can’t really talk about it. It’s still early in the investigation.”
Natalie wasn’t deterred. “What about that Godfather bloke? Maybe he whacked the girl after cappin’ them drug dealers.”
“I don’t think it fits with what we know about him.” I yawned. “See you both later.”
“Wait up, there,” Mo said. “What ‘bout gettin’ us a mouthpiece before Mean Gene kicks our sorry asses to the curb?”
I sighed. “I don’t know how we’re going to afford a lawyer, but, like I said, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Wait a minute,” Natalie said as I started to leave again. “I just had me a bloody brilliant idea.” She looked at Mo. “Jimmy’s got a cousin, Hermes Krump, who was hanging ‘round his office last week. He passed the bar exam a few weeks back.”
Jimmy Sweets was their boss in the PI business my friends worked part-time when they weren’t pursuing an acting gig on a sit-com called Hollywood Girlz. He had a reputation for swimming at the bottom of the sleaze pool. It occurred to me that his cousin was probably doing the backstroke in the same pool.
“You’re not thinking of hiring one of Jimmy’s relatives,” I said.
“You got a better idea?” Mo said, putting her hands on her wide hips.
I was exhausted and tired of arguing. “Not really. I guess you can go ahead and give him a call.”
I sauntered off to bed, pulled the covers up to my neck, and thought about my life. I was living in a mobile home park with an angry horde of eighty-year-olds. If Mean Gene had his way, I would soon be living on the streets, and my fate might end up in the hands of a guy named Hermes Krump.
I closed my eyes, feeling like I was drowning in the world’s biggest sleaze pool.
SEVEN
Bernie and I got back to the station a little after one. The morning’s battle with Maude and her hanging jury had left me on edge, and I’d only gotten a couple hours of restless sleep. I decided to put it all out of my mind as I settled into Lieutenant Oz’s office, next to Leo. Darby and Buck were also there, along with our crime analysts, Selfie Rogers and Molly Wingate. Bernie took the opportunity to continue to catch up on his sleep in a corner of the room.
The lieutenant’s office, which we referred to as the bat cave, was loaded with modern crime-fighting equipment, including TV monitors and computers tied to all the national crime databases. Selfie began the summary, using Section One’s monitors to show images of last night’s events. Our crime analyst was in her twenties, and lately had a fondness for gargoyle piercings and either pink or yellow hair, depending on the day of the week.
“As we all know, our victim was found at the Park Hills Cemetery overlooking Hollywood last night. She was posed and painted in what the detectives believe is a re-creation of a Day of the Dead display. Preliminary analysis revealed all of the skin on her body had been removed, except for her upper torso, arms, and face.”
“Do we have a COD?” Oz asked. Our lieutenant looked tired from being up half the night.
“Nothing official. As you know, the coroner determined that her heart was removed. We’re waiting on the autopsy. Brie’s hoping to get to it this afternoon.”
She took a moment, moving through images of the crime scene. The room was silent, maybe because of the impact of seeing the terrible images again.
Molly Wingate then took over. Thanks to some excellent work on prior cases, our former secretary had recently been promoted to a crime analyst, like her counterpart. Molly was in her thirties, with dark red hair and green eyes. She was a compassionate, hard-working employee who was trying to raise two young children on her own after her cheating husband had left her.
“The paints used on the victim were oil based, typically found in art supply stores,” Molly said. “The depiction of a skeleton and the way the victim was dressed is common to Day of the Dead displays. The female figure in these ceremonies is often referred to as Catrina.”
“Where does the name come from?” Darby asked.
“It’s taken from an etching done by a Mexican printmaker in the early 1900s. Over the years, that image has become the physical re-creation of the figure used in these festivals.”
Darby scoffed. “That’s all a crock of shit, if you ask me. Some asshole whacked the girl, wanted some press, so he played dress-up, and got out his paints.”
“Speaking of press,” Selfie said, before I could tell Darby what he had simmering in his own crockpot, “I suppose by now everyone’s seen the video?”
“What are you talking about?” Leo said. “I spent the morning trying to catch up on my sleep.”
“I’ll play it for you. From what the press is saying, the clip was downloaded to the Internet late last night. No one is claiming credit, so far.”
We all watched as a shaky image of our victim and the makeshift altar was displayed on an overhead monitor. The video was about fifteen seconds long, showing an unseen subject moving in and taking a close-up of our victim’s face.
“God damn it,” I said to Leo as the video ended. “It must have been shot by that SID asshole we sent packing.�
��
“But you took his phone,” Oz said.
“Then maybe it was one of his buddies.” I looked at Selfie. “Any idea where this came from?”
She shook her pink head. “It was put up by one of the paparazzi websites and distributed to the media outlets. By the way, they’re calling our suspect ‘the Reaper’.”
“As in the grim reaper?” Leo asked.
Molly nodded. “We can try to track the source of the video, but…”
“You might as well look for Martians while you’re at it,” Darby said. He looked at Buck. “Or maybe cowboys in Hollywood.”
“I’m not gonna tell you again to knock it off,” Buck said, his handsome features hardening as he regarded his partner.
Oz saw the storm brewing and cut it off. “Enough.” He turned to our crime analysts. “What else?”
“As you know, the photograph of the victim was found at the crime scene,” Molly said. “A decision needs to be made about whether or not to release it to the press.”
“What’s the hold up?” Darby asked. “We’ve got no prints, no other identifiers. If we wait on DNA, we’re going to be playing catch-up.”
As much as I hated to admit it, he was probably right. DNA analysis could take days, and time was of the essence in homicide cases.
“Let’s take a look at the missing person cases first,” Oz said. “I’d like to spare the family from seeing the girl’s photograph on TV if we can avoid it. In the meantime, I’ll talk to Captain Dembowski and see how he wants to proceed.” He looked at Selfie and Molly. “Anything similar to our crime in VICAP?”
The FBI managed a computer database called the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It was a repository of thousands of criminal records, including homicide and sexual assault cases.
Selfie answered. “There’s lots of cases nationwide where victims have been dressed and posed.” She glanced up at the still shot of our victim on the overhead monitor. “But nothing comes close to this.”
“We’re trying to find an expert on the Day of the Dead celebrations,” Molly added. “They might be able to offer some insight into our suspect’s motivation.”