“Hey, what you got for me, Braden?” the ME asked as he arrived at the end of the bridge.
“I always save the best for you, Doc.”
Nakashimi examined the ground carefully before stepping down the bank toward the shape beside the creek under the green plastic sheet. Before lifting the sheet he peered closely at the surrounding area. From the bridge above him a police photographer began taking pictures.
“These footprints belong to you guys?”
“That’s right,” Borland said.
“Nobody else been down here, right? I want some pictures before I move her.”
While he waited for the photographer to finish, Nakashimi glanced over at the bystanders on the wooden overpass. An expression of distaste flickered across his normally impassive features. “If we’re not gonna sell tickets, I need a screen here. Get me another tarp, two of the deputies can hold it.”
He had two deputies hold a tarpaulin shoulder high, creating a buffer between the victim and the gawkers, some of whom called out their protests. The technician ignored them. Going down on one knee beside the body, he beckoned to Braden, “You gonna be working this, Detective?”
“Could be.”
“Unless the feds take it over, right? Isn’t this a wildlife sanctuary? Protected government land?”
Nakashimi used a voice-activated tape recorder during his examination, but Braden made his own notes. The dead girl seemed unnaturally white in the growing brightness of the morning, her nakedness a cruel atrocity, taking away any shred of dignity she might have had in death. The tech murmured into his recorder as she examined the victim’s back and legs, noting the minimal degree of rigor and lividity, both of which would help to determine the approximate time of death, examining her fingers and fingernails carefully. The latter had false nails attached, bright red and perfectly shaped except for one that had been broken off. Nakashimi, who took swabs, smears and samples as he worked, putting each into separate plastic bags, seemed surprised at the condition of the fingernails. “Either she was washed thoroughly or she didn’t put up a fight,” he noted, glancing up at Braden. “Maybe because he had her taped up good.”
“Can you tell me what kind of tape?”
“What, you think I’m a magician?” Nakashimi pursed his lips as he picked up one of the girl’s wrists. “Sticky stuff. Maybe heavy-duty package tape. There’s some residue on her ankles, too. I’ll run some tests.”
He turned the woman over. Braden heard a raw intake of breath from one of the deputies behind him. “Oh shit,” the medical technician muttered.
The girl had been battered savagely about the face and body. Lips pulped over broken teeth. Her nose was a smear. One eye—
the one that had peered sidelong at Braden when he lifted up her hair—was clear, but the flesh around the other was so swollen and discolored that the eye itself was no longer visible. Similar swelling and discoloration marked the abrasions and contusions over her chest and stomach.
Nakashimi paused as he examined her belly closely. After taking samples of blood, sand and dried mud, he used a damp sponge and a soft brush to clean the blood-smeared stomach. As he did so, something unexpected was revealed. Both the tech and Braden stared down at it in silence. The cuts that crisscrossed the victim’s abdomen were neither random slashes nor deep, penetrating wounds. The shallow cuts—three horizontal slashes and one vertical—traced a large capital letter “E.”
“Cause of death?” Braden murmured.
“We’ll have to wait and see. She’s got broken ribs, maybe a punctured lung. She was hit on the neck, the larynx may be crushed. But the cuts …” Nakashimi shook his head “… not deep enough.”
“He beat her to death.”
“That’s not a medical conclusion, Detective, but it’s a helluva good guess. Maybe I can tell you more after the cut.”
“How soon can you get to it?” Braden’s tone was flat and hard.
Nakashimi raised an eyebrow. “This is Saturday, Braden. By midnight the county morgue will be knee-deep in bodies.”
Braden stared at him. “We have a real bastard loose here.”
“You’ve got a weirdo,” the ME admitted.
“The colder she gets, the farther away he gets, you know that. How long has she been dead? There’s almost no rigor.”
“What do you need me for?” Nakashimi answered testily. “Okay, okay … she’s been dead about three hours, give or take an hour. Don’t hold me to that, but it should be pretty close.”
Braden glanced at his watch. The medical examiner’s estimate put the time of death at around four that morning. Or between three and five as the outside parameters.
Braden thought about the biker who had made the 911 call at a little after five-thirty. He wasn’t completely out of the picture.
“What else can you give me, Doc?” he said after a moment. “Did he do it with his fists? Or did he use a weapon of some kind?”
“I don’t like guessing, Detective,” Nakashimi said with a frown. “But he couldn’t have done that much damage with his fists in the ordinary way. Unless he’s like that fighter—what was his name, Duran? Hands of Stone?”
“What are you telling me?”
“You know what it looks like, Sergeant? Like someone used good old-fashioned brass knuckles. Or maybe he was holding a role of quarters when he hit her. And there’s something else. He was wearing gloves. Smooth leather gloves. There are no obvious pattern impressions in the skin. Also, lots of damage, but no obvious trace evidence of skin or tissue other than the victim’s. We won’t know for sure until I’ve done some tests.” He paused. “This was no spur of the moment thing, Braden. Your killer came prepared.”
“Was she sexually assaulted?”
“Oh yeah, he tore her up in at least two places. There’s vaginal and anal tearing and bruising. But he practiced safe sex,” the ME added with heavy irony. “He didn’t leave us any semen.”
“And the cuts on her stomach? You read that the way I do? The letter ‘E’?”
“Could be a symbol of some kind, but it looks like an ‘E’ to me.”
“And the vaginal cut? What does that tell you?”
Nakashimi shrugged. “It means he likes to play games, Braden. The cutting is a message, maybe a signature. Or maybe he’s just laughing at us.”
The medical technician stepped back. “Let’s get the rest of the pictures and get her out of here. Maybe your perpetrator isn’t as smart as he thinks. Maybe he left something behind as a calling card that he didn’t think of. I won’t know until I get her on the table.”
“You’ll get right on it?” Braden pressed him again.
Nakashimi studied him for a long moment. “I love working on weekends, Braden, you know that. It’s the OT.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
For a moment the ME was uncharacteristically serious. “Maybe we should all hope this one was personal,” he said, looking down at the body.
“Whatta ya mean, Doc?” Al Borland asked. The deputy sheriff had joined them in time to hear Nakashimi’s last comment.
“That letter he cut. The alphabet has twenty-six letters.”
AS BRADEN WAS walking back to his car, Borland caught up to him. “Wait up, Braden.”
Braden turned. The body of the murdered girl was being loaded onto the ambulance. The crowd of bystanders lingered on the pedestrian bridge. Southern Californians walked out of Dodger Stadium in the seventh inning, Braden reflected, but for a homicide they hung in there to the bitter end.
The deputy sheriff stared past Braden’s eyes into the distance, as if embarrassed. “I been on the horn to the sheriff. He agrees we should work together on this,” Borland said, as if he and Braden had reached such an agreement.
Braden tried to hide his irritation. He wanted the case, and that meant he didn’t want a jurisdictional dispute dragged out. “How would we coordinate?”
“I got this deputy I can cut loose. The one I told you about? Officer Pritkin? H
e’s back there at the Bright Spot with the caller. He’s green, Braden, but he’s eager. And he comes with a bonus.”
“For Chrissake, Al—”
“He’s the only cop I ever met doesn’t hate forms. And he’s in love with computers. You got to coordinate with VICAP on this, Braden, Officer Pritkin is your man.”
Six
WITH THE FIRE largely contained, Dave’s crew of volunteers were released at six o’clock Saturday morning. When he reached his street and turned into the driveway, he was just behind the paper boy who had tossed the morning Los Angeles Times into the rosebushes. Dave couldn’t remember anything about the drive out of the hills. It was as if he had been driving while asleep. A zombie. Appearing out of the morning mist like something from Night of the Living Dead.
Dumb movie, he thought. What made a cult classic? Oughta be an article in that. How about a seminar on cult films? His thoughts seemed fuzzy.
The children were still in bed, the house cool. Glenda was awake, opening the door for him, still wearing her nightgown. She had heard the car turn into the drive, heard the car door shut. They hugged silently.
“Would you like something to eat?” she asked. “Some hot chocolate?”
He shook his head. “Just sleep. I’m falling down.”
She followed him upstairs and sat on the bed while he undressed and stepped into the bathroom to shower. He stood under the warm shower for five minutes, but when he emerged it seemed to him that the smell of smoke and ash still clung to his skin. He dried himself quickly and, shivering, tumbled naked into bed.
He stared up at her. “Did you get any sleep?”
“A little.” He thought she was lying.
“If Beringer really has come back, we’re going to have to deal with it.”
She stared hard at him. “You think that’s all this is?”
Dave started to reply and thought better of it. He sank back against the pillows. Glenda stalked over to the dormer windows facing the front of the house. The shades were raised halfway—they both liked an open window and fresh air while they slept. The Battenburg lace curtains stirred in the current of cool moist air coming through the window. The streetlight just north of the house was still on, its sensor fooled by the overcast morning, and Dave could see mist curling in the yellow light and flakes of ash falling softly on the roof shingles.
Glenda had her arms folded under her breasts. Her lips were tight and there was color in her cheeks. Dave thought she looked beautiful. How many old movies had used that line? You’re beautiful when you’re angry, kid.
“I suppose you think I’m overreacting.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to. I know you. Dammit, Dave, what Ralph did last night was deliberate! Calling up out of the blue, giving us no warning, then saying something to upset Richie. He wanted to stir things up.”
“You don’t know that, honey. Maybe he just wanted to remind Richie who he was.”
“Then why hang up? Why didn’t he have anything to say to me? Or to you, for that matter?”
“Talking to Richie probably upset him—”
“Oh my God! How can you defend him like that?”
“I’m not defending him, I’m only saying we should give him the benefit of the doubt, at least for the moment.”
She stalked over to the side of the bed and stood hipshot, glaring down at him. Her breasts jiggled under the cotton knit nightshirt when she walked. The morning chill had made her nipples erect, hard under the shirt.
“You don’t know him.”
“Well, that’s true, I never even met the guy. But he couldn’t be all that bad or you wouldn’t have married him. And he wouldn’t have fathered a kid like Richie.”
“You don’t know,” Glenda whispered.
Dave stared at her, sensing something in her that went much deeper than anger. After a moment he said, “Maybe you should tell me.
Glenda hesitated. She had never been able to bring herself to talk to Dave in any detail about Ralph. With strangers in her support group she had spilled out everything, but that was different. The people who had listened to her then were all battered women in one way or another, each with her own story to tell. There was never any need to explain.
“You’d have to know him, Dave. He can be … very cruel. He’s mean, and he doesn’t care if he hurts people—in fact, he enjoys it. What he did last night, that was to hurt me, knowing how I would react … but he didn’t care if Richie was hurt as well. And you know he was.”
“It was thoughtless,” Dave admitted. “But look, honey, he probably hasn’t been around kids much, especially his son. So if he blunders around, that’s understandable. Doesn’t make it right, but—”
Glenda shook her head sharply. “You’re not listening to me. Ralph doesn’t blunder. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s …”
Evil, she thought. Something Dave Lindstrom didn’t believe in. Dave fumbled for excuses to explain the actions of drive-by shooters, for God’s sake. Ralph Beringer was something totally alien to his experience.
Sometimes Glenda resented Dave’s seemingly idyllic youth. He had grown up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and he spoke with fondness of Jefferson High, hayrides and Halloween pranks, kolaches from Bohemitown, trips to the Amanas with his parents and summer vacations on his grandparents’ farm. He remembered it all without any warts or blemishes. On their trips back to Iowa to visit Dave’s family—the trips were less frequent now that his parents were both dead—somehow he made it all seem real. In Dave’s Cedar Rapids the Ozzie and Harriet Nelson family wouldn’t even have stood out.
Dave’s favorite Christmas movie, predictably, was It’s a Wonderful Life.
“He’s what?” Dave asked quietly.
Glenda shook her head again, still standing beside the bed. She shivered from the chill, glanced toward the window and the curtains stirring. Gooseflesh popped out on her arms. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Maybe I would if you’d tell me.”
How could she tell him now, after all these years? It would seem as if she had been hiding part of herself from him, as indeed she had. How could she even begin to make him understand?
She had tried to distance herself from the two and a half years she had lived with Ralph Beringer. Ralph was a career serviceman—a sergeant in the Air Force when he left the States eight years ago. She had married him when she was nineteen, overwhelmed by the sheer animal force of him, unable to resist his physical strength or the unsuspected wildness he tapped in her. She had been pregnant with Richie when they married, and after the baby was born she had endured increasingly violent abuse for two years before Ralph shipped out to Germany.
In Ralph’s absence she had started to attend meetings of a support group of servicemen’s wives, amazed to discover there were so many others like her trapped in brutal relationships. She had not dared to look for help while Ralph was there, but three thousand miles of ocean gave her the courage she needed. Four months of therapy and anguished soul-searching later, she wrote the Dear John letter she dreaded.
There was no reply. Ralph’s silence was more frightening than any angry call or letter. For weeks she dreaded each strident ring of the phone; when the day’s mail came she often sat staring at the accumulation of bills and trash mail without the courage to sort through it.
Then, three months after her letter, an envelope arrived addressed to her and bearing a German stamp and cancellation mark. Inside was a single sheet of notepaper. Across the sheet four words were scrawled in Ralph’s nearly illegible hand.
It’s not over, bitch.
The blunt warning—as cruel in what it left unsaid as in its vicious message—nearly undid her resolve. She wouldn’t let it happen.
Glenda had left Georgia, where Beringer had last been stationed before shipping overseas. She had wanted to sever any connection with their life together, to get as far away from him as she could, moving all the way across the United States to California.
She had not dared to conceal the move. She knew Ralph would find her if she tried to hide and punish both her and Richie for it. Instead she lived in terror of the day when he might complete his overseas service—or come back on leave.
That first Christmas in California there was another message. It came in an innocent guise—a present for Richie from his father in Germany. Because Richie saw the package and was excited over it, she could only watch helplessly while the boy eagerly tore at the gift paper wrapping. He squealed with delight over the brightly painted wooden toy, a foot-high nutcracker carved in the image of a woodsman with an ax.
Richie left the toy under the tree that Christmas Eve. Glenda could not tear her eyes from the ax in the woodsman’s hand, reflecting a red glow from a nearby tree light.
Divorced and alone with a small child, Glenda had tried to rebuild her life. She found a job as an assistant in the office of the Dean of Men at UCLA. She began learning to survive.
She had never expected to fall in love—really fall in love—but two summers after moving to Los Angeles she met David Lindstrom. He was taking summer courses at UCLA in filmmaking and screenwriting, working toward a doctorate in Dramatic Arts, when their paths crossed.
Glenda was having lunch by herself, sitting on a bench in the sun, when someone sat down beside her. Long skinny legs in jeans, a denim shirt, unruly hair and a nice smile. “You brought your lunch?” he commented. “I envy you. What’s that, peanut butter and jelly? My favorite, especially if it’s on cheap, squishy white bread—”
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