Fatal Care

by Leonard Goldberg

  Farelli walked up the lawn to the front door. He rang the bell and stepped back.

  The door cracked open, its chain still in place. An elderly woman peeked out. “Yes?” she said in a weak voice.

  Farelli showed her his shield. “Ma’am, I’m from the police department. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I could.”

  “About what?”

  “About the Russian who did some work for you.”

  “I haven’t seen him for so long,” the woman said. “Is he all right?”

  “It might be best if we talked about it inside.”

  She unchained the door and led the way into a small living room. The furniture was very old, but nicely polished. A brick fireplace was filled with red-hot ashes and bits of charred wood. The room seemed very warm to Farelli. He waited for her to sit in a padded rocking chair. Then he took a seat on the sofa across from her.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,” Farelli began. “Vladie was shot to death by some robbers.”

  The woman nodded slowly. “I was afraid of that. You know, this is not a safe neighborhood.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Farelli glanced over at the bars on the window and the chains and locks on the front door. “I understand Vladie fixed your TV cable?”

  The woman stared at the detective briefly. “That’s not against the law, is it?”

  “No, ma’am,” Farelli said. “I’m just trying to make sure we have the right fellow.” He reached into his coat pocket for the snapshot of the Russian. “Is this Vladie?”

  “That’s Vladie,” she said softly.

  “Do you know his last name?”

  “Belov,” she told him, and then spelled it out. “B-e-l-o-v.”

  Farelli jotted down the information in his notepad. “Did he live around here?”

  The woman motioned with her head to the rear of the house. “He lived in a small apartment in the backyard. When my husband was alive, he used it as a workshop. After he passed away, I made it into a small apartment to rent out.”

  “Could I take a look at it?” Farelli asked eagerly.

  “I don’t see why not,” she said. “But let me call the dog first.”

  The woman let out a sharp whistle. Farelli heard thumping sounds on the floor of the nearby kitchen. A moment later a huge rottweiler ran into the living room. He sat on his haunches next to the old woman and carefully measured Farelli.

  “This is Taffy,” the woman announced. “He makes sure nothing bad happens to me.”

  “I’ll bet,” Farelli said, thinking that Taffy was such a sweet name for a dog that could bite the ass off an elephant. “Why didn’t he bark when I came to the front door?”

  “Because I told him to be quiet.”

  The rottweiler came over and sniffed Farelli’s shoes. Apparently satisfied, he went back to his mistress.

  Farelli asked, “Will I need a key to get into Vladie’s apartment?”

  The woman shook her head. “Vladie never felt the need to lock his door with Taffy around.”

  Farelli walked through the kitchen and out into a well-kept backyard. The green lawn was closely cut, the hedges evenly trimmed. Off to the side was a small wooden structure with a door but no windows. Farelli went inside.

  There was only one room, and the furnishings were spare and old. There was a stained sink and counter on one side of the room, a fold-out sofa and scarred coffee table on the other. A phone was on the floor atop a phone book. Farelli peeked into the tiny bathroom and saw a basin and toilet, but no tub or shower. A dirty towel hung from a hook on the wall.

  Farelli stepped over to the coffee table and examined a stack of opened letters. Most were sent from Russia and addressed in English to Vladimir Belov. The letters themselves were written in Russian. Farelli got to the last envelope. It was unstamped with only Belov’s name typed on it. Inside was an employee pay statement. Vladimir Belov worked for the Family Planning Medical Center.

  Farelli quickly reached for the phone book and flipped through the yellow pages until he came to the ad for the medical center. It read:

  FAMILY PLANNING MEDICAL CENTER

  ABORTIONS UP TO 24 WEEKS

  “Son of a bitch,” Farelli muttered, ripping the yellow page out of the book.

  25

  Mervin Tuch was driving down Pico Boulevard toward Century City, the sunroof on his BMW open. He whistled happily, all of his problems fading away. With Lucy Rabb’s Bio-Med stock as collateral, the bank was delighted to give him a loan of five hundred thousand dollars. The bankers were particularly delighted when they learned that one hundred thousand of the loan would go to pay down the note Tuch already owed them. And had today not been Saturday, the transaction would have been signed and sealed and the money transferred. But that was no problem, Tuch thought contentedly. Monday would be soon enough.

  Let’s see now, Tuch thought on as he planned his weekend activities. Today he’d go to his office and doctor the files on the escrow accounts so they showed that funds had been inadvertently transferred to his account. An honest mistake. His law partners might not believe him, but they would accept what he told them as long as the money was repaid. It would take at least two hours for him to fix the files, Tuch decided. Maybe as much as three hours. Whatever. After he was done, he’d reward himself with lunch at the Beverly Wilshire. He’d have the barbecued chicken salad with mustard sauce. His favorite. Then he’d call Lucy and go over to the Argonaut for a quick screw.

  He felt himself stir as he thought about Lucy Rabb and her fantastic body and even more fantastic mouth. She was so great in bed. And she was also so stupid, so easy to manipulate. All he had to do was keep screwing her and she’d do whatever he wanted.

  Tuch turned left onto the Avenue of the Stars, then made another wide left and entered the underground parking of the Century Tower. He didn’t notice the black Toyota behind him.

  Tuch drove down to the second level and parked in his reserved space. The whole area was empty with no cars in sight. Lazy people, Tuch chuckled to himself. If they were as ambitious as he was, they, too, could get their hands on five hundred thousand dollars for a few hours’ work.

  Tuch heard a noise that sounded like a popping lightbulb. Then a car door nearby slammed shut. Tuch glanced from side to side and, seeing nothing unusual, looked in the rearview mirror. A black car was approaching.

  The car pulled up beside him in David Matlin’s space. But it wasn’t David Matlin. It was a young blonde. Probably some dumb secretary, Tuch thought. She got out of the Toyota and waved to him. Tuch waved back, undressing her with his eyes. Too thin. And no breasts. She approached him with a wide smile.

  “Do I know you?” Tuch asked, opening the door of his BMW to exit.

  “Stay right where you are,” Sara Ann Moore said, and pointed a revolver with a silencer at his head.

  “Wh—!”

  “Keep your mouth shut and nothing will happen to you.” Sara glanced down toward the far end of the underground parking. A car was going down the ramp to the next level. She waited for it to disappear and then turned back to Tuch. “I want your watch and wallet.”

  “Sure, sure,” Tuch mumbled nervously. He quickly stripped off his gold Rolex and handed it to her, along with his wallet. “I’ll give you whatever you want. Just don’t shoot.”

  “Are your credit cards in your wallet?”

  Tuch nodded hastily. “Everything is in there.”

  “Now turn and face the passenger side with your hands behind your back,” Sara ordered.

  “Do-don’t hurt me,” Tuch stammered, so frightened he passed a small amount of urine.

  “I’m going to tie you up and gag you,” Sara told him. “Somebody will find you later.”

  “All right,” Tuch said submissively, and turned, keeping his hands behind him. “Is this okay?”

  “Perfect,” Sara said, reaching into her oversize purse.

  She took out a large kitchen knife and plunged it deep into Mervin Tuch’s back. />
  26

  Joanna ducked under the crime scene tape and headed down the ramp to the underground parking garage at the Century Tower. Police and medical examiners were everywhere on the second level, combing the area for clues and evidence. Joanna saw Jake Sinclair and Girish Gupta in conversation beside a dark BMW. She waved and walked over to them.

  “Hey, Joanna,” Jake said, giving her a subtle wink.

  “Hi,” Joanna said warmly, and turned to Gupta. “I hope I’m not barging in on your case.”

  Gupta shook his head. “Not at all. The lieutenant has told me about this murder’s connection to the others you’ve been working on. I’m delighted to have your help, although Mr. Tuch’s death seems straightforward.”

  Joanna looked down at the corpse of Mervin Tuch. He was lying facedown, his arms by his sides, his palms turned outward. His coat and shirt had been cut away to expose the gaping wound between his shoulder blades. There was congealed blood over most of his back as well as on the seat and floor of the car. Joanna slipped on a pair of gloves and probed the large wound in Tuck’s back. “Is this the only wound?”

  “Yes,” Gupta answered. “Although there is a fair amount of blood around his nose and mouth.”

  Joanna turned Tuch’s head and examined the front of it. There was frothy blood everywhere, but most of it was concentrated about his oral cavity. His lips were twisted and distorted in a permanent grimace. The handsome face of Mervin Tuch was barely recognizable.

  “His wallet and watch are missing,” Gupta went on. “According to his partners, he wore a Rolex Presidential.”

  “Gupta thinks that robbery was the motive here,” Jake said, giving Joanna a half-smile. “What do you think?”

  “Let me look at a few more things first,” Joanna said noncommittally, and went back to her examination.

  Jake stepped back, thinking this was murder regardless of what Joanna did or didn’t find. It had to be. All three victims—Edmond Rabb, Alex Mirren, and now Mervin Tuch—were interconnected, and all had been iced in a matter of weeks. Somebody wanted them dead. But who and why?

  Gupta saw the hard look on Jake’s face. “You don’t think it was just robbery?”

  “I think it was murder made to look like robbery,” Jake said.

  “But there’s no real proof of that,” Gupta argued mildly. “It still looks like robbery. To say otherwise, one would have to be guessing.”

  “But it’s a pretty good guess,” Jake told him, “because there are some things here that don’t fit. Let me count them off for you. First, it’s the murder itself. Most perps don’t kill their victims during a simple robbery. Armed robbery gets you five to ten, murder gets you life. And every perp knows that. Second, why kill him? There’s no need for it. You can bash him over the head or lock him in the trunk or keep him quiet in a dozen other ways.”

  “And then there’s the wound itself,” Joanna said from her crouch. “That’s not a simple knife wound.”

  Gupta moved in for a closer look at the gaping laceration. He saw nothing unusual except for perhaps its length. “Are you referring to the size of the wound?”

  “Exactly,” Joanna told him. “And there’s more. If you carefully examine the edges at the top of the wound, you’ll see that they are smooth and even, like a clean cut from a knife. But the edges from the middle of the wound on down are chewed up and ragged. What do you make of that?”

  Gupta thought for a moment, then his eyes brightened. “The killer used a knife with a serrated edge. Maybe a kitchen knife.”

  “That would be my guess, too,” Joanna said. “And the killer didn’t simply stab the victim. When the knife was in, he sawed away, trying to inflict as much internal damage as possible. The perpetrator wasn’t interested in just incapacitating or silencing Mervin Tuch. He wanted him dead.”

  Jake leaned over the corpse and studied the lower portion of the wound where the edges were ragged. Like Gupta, he had missed that, too. “So that’s why the guy bled out like a stuck pig.”

  Joanna nodded. “And the bleeding internally was even more massive. He had a big pulmonary hemorrhage, for sure. That’s why the blood around his mouth is so frothy. It was mixed with the air in his lungs.”

  “He probably didn’t have time to cry out for help,” Gupta surmised.

  “Even if he did, nobody would have heard him,” Joanna said. “Trying to yell when your lungs are filled with blood is like trying to scream when your head is under water.”

  Gupta stared at Joanna admiringly, again wondering if she was some sort of psychic or simply had a sixth sense for putting subtle clues together.

  A uniformed policeman hurried up to the group. “Lieutenant, Farelli would like to see you in the security room.”

  “Has he got something?” Jake asked.

  “He didn’t say,” the policeman said, and walked away.

  Jake turned to Joanna. “Do you want to go look at some surveillance film?”

  “Sure.” Joanna peeled off her gloves and tossed them into a nearby container. “But I can only stay for a little while longer.”

  “Busy, huh?”

  “The work just keeps piling up.”

  “Did you ever make that veal dinner?” Jake asked.

  “I settled for fast food,” Joanna said. “An overdone pizza.”

  “Bad, huh?”

  “The worst. Let’s go look at the film.”

  “Thank you for your help,” Gupta called after her.

  “It’s always a pleasure working with you,” Joanna said, and waved good-bye.

  As they walked away, Jake took Joanna’s arm. “None of this makes any damn sense.”

  “I know.”

  “There’s no common thread to connect all these murders.”

  “I know that, too.”

  They went up some metal steps and entered a darkened room with a small screen on the far wall. The moving picture on the screen was in black-and-white. In the lower right corner of the film was the date and time.

  “You’ll never guess what we got,” Farelli called out.

  “What?” Jake asked.

  “The hitter’s car on film.”

  Jake looked at Farelli incredulously. “Are you telling me the hitter didn’t bother to take out the surveillance camera?”

  “Oh, she took out the one she saw,” Farelli said. “We found bits and pieces of one camera on the floor. My guess is she put a slug through it.”

  “But there was a second camera, huh?”

  Farelli nodded. “It was partially hidden by a light fixture. That’s why she missed it.”

  The projectionist rewound the film to Saturday morning at 10:30 and then played it forward. The picture on the screen showed Tuch’s BMW at a distance as it enters his parking space. A moment later a dark Toyota pulls in alongside him. A thin blond woman exits the Toyota and walks over to the BMW. The BMW’s front door opens, but Tuch stays inside. The blonde and Tuch appear to be talking. She reaches in her purse. They talk more. Then she pulls out a large knife and holds it high above her head.

  Everyone in the security room leaned forward to watch the actual murder on film.

  The knife comes down. Tuch’s body jerks abruptly and disappears from view. The blonde hurries back to her car and drives away.

  “Son of a bitch,” Jake murmured under his breath.

  “The car is definitely a Toyota,” Farelli told them. “But we couldn’t get a license number. The plate is small and blurred on the screen.”

  “Let’s see the frames where the hitter is walking over to Tuch’s car,” Jake requested and moved in for a better view. He kept his eyes on the screen, watching the film running backward. “Stop! Right there.”

  The still frame showed the blond hitter at the rear of her car. The license plate. It looked like a small white square. Its numbers were so indistinct they appeared to be a smudge.

  “Let the FBI people, who do photo image enhancement, study this frame and see if they can come up with a numbe
r for us.” Jake peered at the hitter. She was thin and blond, but her features weren’t sharp enough for Jake to accurately gauge her age. Early thirties, he guessed. “Also see if they can enhance the hitter’s face and give us a better picture of her.”

  “She looks so young and harmless,” Joanna said in a low voice.

  “That’s what her victims probably thought,” Jake told her. “Right up until the time she murdered them.”

  He took her arm and led her out of the security room. On the metal steps, Jake stopped and said, “You’ll never see a human being more cold-blooded than that. She’s a natural-born killer.”

  “Be careful, Jake,” Joanna warned. “If you come up against her, be very, very careful.”

  Jake’s eyes turned cold. “Oh, I have a special rule when it comes to hitters.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The second I can’t see both of their hands, I shoot.”

  “Good rule,” Joanna said, and walked on.

  27

  The receptionist at the Family Planning Medical Center placed her hand over the phone and then looked up at Jake and Farelli. “Dr. Decker is not available this morning. He’s really tied up.”

  “We’ll he’d better untie himself real quick,” Jake said. “Otherwise I’ll come back with a bench warrant.”

  “What’s that?” the receptionist asked innocently.

  “It’s something that can march him out of here in handcuffs.”

  The receptionist spoke rapidly into the phone, her eyes avoiding Jake’s. She waited for a response, wondering why the police were here and hoping the clinic hadn’t done something that could involve her in any way. She never even peeked into the back rooms where they did the things they did. And that was the God’s truth. She’d swear to it.

  The receptionist pressed the phone to her ear and listened intently; then she nodded and looked up at the detectives. “Dr. Decker is in the middle of a procedure. He’ll be with you in a few minutes.”