“One more question. Who at Santa Monica PD picked up the case?”
“Says here Detective A. Barrios.”
“Do you have a number?”
She read it off.
“Thanks.”
“Hey, it’s in my best interest,” said Szcyszcyk. “I hate sending Does to the crematorium, anytime we clear one, it’s a good thing.”
Detective Augustin Barrios had a deep, mellow voice and the speech cadence of a man resistant to excitement.
I began by running through my credentials just as I’d just done with Martha Szcyzcyk. Barrios said, “That’s great, working with a psychologist. What can I do for you, Doctor?”
“You recently picked up a case in Douglas Park. I might know your victim’s I.D.”
“Really,” he said. “Tell me.”
When I was finished he said, “Okay, I’m pulling Ms. Brand up … have a mug shot from when she was younger … I guess it’s possible.”
“She’s got a collection of mug shots, try the latest.”
“Oka-ay … yes, that’s her. Thanks, Doctor.”
“The crypt told me COD was undetermined. May I ask why?”
Barrios said, “Guess I’d better be conferring with Lieutenant Sturgis. Appreciate the tip, Doctor.”
An hour later, Milo phoned on his mobile. “Just heard from a Santa Monica D who’s all hinky about you.”
“Were you able to set his mind at ease?”
“Best I could.” He laughed. “Yeah, he’s okay, but not too pleased Brand could end up a homicide. He’d put the file away as undetermined.”
“So they said at the crypt. Barrios wouldn’t tell me why.”
“Blood on a nearby park bench fit with a bad fall. So did Deirdre having a BAL over three times the legal limit and no evidence of a struggle.”
I told him about Brand’s eroded fingerprints.
He said, “Sure, I’ve seen that. Had a vic years ago, longtime fabric dyer, too many caustics, no more whorls and swirls. Fortunately we didn’t need to I.D. him, his wife stabbed him in the backyard.” He sighed. “So now I’ve got to consider Ms. Brand as a new member of a really bad club.”
“You’re not buying into a bad fall.”
“Normally, I might, but like you always say, context.”
“Did you ask Barrios if a meal was left—”
“Just about to tell you. Exactly the cuisine you predicted, given poor Deirdre’s station in life.”
“Fast food.”
“Burger, fries, small chocolate shake from Mickey D. Arranged neatly on the bench that was used to brain her.”
“Any of it eaten?”
“Not a crumb.”
“Barrios didn’t think that was strange?”
“Barrios wasn’t looking for strange. Also, there was an empty forty and a half-empty Night Train Express nearby. Barrios figured she blitzed herself dizzy, tumbled and smashed her head against the bench before she could go for the protein.”
I said, “Wining and dining her in the style to which she’s become accustomed.”
“Bastard. But why kill her when he’d already taken the time to sue her?”
“Maybe he lost patience. Or the suit was a way to intimidate her into hiding. He follows, goes after her. Thrill of the hunt.”
“He shows up at the park, she’s not going to panic?”
“With that level of intoxication, a sneak attack doesn’t sound too challenging. When do you start surveillance?”
“Past tense. Fellinger left his office twenty minutes ago and I am presently following in a professionally unobtrusive manner. As in sitting in traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard.”
“Good luck.”
“Good luck for me could mean bad luck for another woman, as in I spot him with another potential victim and can’t do anything unless he acts out in front of me.”
“At least you’ll be there.”
“Armed and dangerous.”
I hit three freeway underpasses, showing Deirdre Brand’s photo to any homeless person willing to acknowledge my presence. The financial outlay totaled a couple hundred bucks.
No one recognized her so I drove to Douglas Park on Wilshire and Twenty-Fifth Street. Pretty place, jeweled with ponds and play areas and smooth-skinned, happy-looking people. I strolled until I spotted an outlier: a grizzled, emaciated man sitting under a magnificent date palm.
I sat down next to him and he ignored me until I slipped a twenty into a filthy hand. Flashing pale toothless gums that said his liver didn’t have much longer, he licked his lips, already tasting the fortified wine he’d buy with the money. Trying to lift himself up with shaky arms, he failed several attempts and gave up.
I positioned the mugshot in front of him.
Nothing.
“You don’t know her?”
“That’s DeeDee,” he said, as if the fact was self-evident.
“She hangs out here?”
“She fell down and kilt herself.” Pointing to a bench in the distance.
“She fall a lot?”
He thought. “There’s a first time for everything.” His laughter was wet and constricted. Drowning in his own wit.
“Who’d she hang out with?”
“No one unless she wanted money, then she could get friendly.”
Yards away, pretty women watched and conversed as their children explored the edges of a pond. A young couple snapped selfies on their phones and laughed.
I said, “Did DeeDee get friendly with anyone in particular?”
“Naw, you don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Bother the citizens, they get scairt. You got another twenty?”
I handed him a ten. He said, “Hey, just keep it comin’.”
I didn’t answer.
“You rich for a cop.”
“Salary’s okay, pension’s better.”
“Haw?” He squinted as if faced with a tough math problem, made several more attempts to rise, succeeded the third time.
I stuck with him as he hobbled toward Wilshire. He smelled like the bottom of a clothes hamper seasoned with overcooked fish.
I gave him a five. “So DeeDee didn’t panhandle here—”
“Century City. Where the suits are.”
“She have any problems with the suits?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“Did she have hassles with anyone?”
He stopped, swayed, looked up at the sky. “DeeDee was … she kept to herself. Real omnistical-socialistic, you know?”
“Omni—”
His look said I was mentally slow. “Means no friends, you just do your thing.” He squinted. “Someone said that.”
Returning to the park, I checked the bench he’d pointed to. Plenty of pigeonshit but time had erased any trace of blood.
Why was I bothering? What difference would finding an old stain make?
Because that’s what compulsives do to allay anxiety. Even with no destination, the motor keeps running.
Someone had probably said that, too.
CHAPTER
16
By eleven p.m., Robin and I were in our pajamas watching a movie on the couch, something forgettable and pretentious based on a book no one had read.
Ninety-four minutes of meaningful looks and pointless long shots accomplished what we’d hoped: readying us for sleep.
Each of us was wired and needed the help. Robin, because an aging rock star with über-money and unter-intelligence was pressuring her to take on a massive job—fashioning dead-on copies of iconic instruments, down to scars, dents, and scratches.
“I keep telling him every company does relics. As if Charlie Christian’s 150 and Bo Diddley’s Gretsch need improvement. Not to mention the other twenty-seven he wants.”
“How long you figure it would take?”
“To do it right? Years. That’s without factoring in Uno’s ADD.”
“It’ll raise your tax bracket.”
�
��And alienate me from all my other clients and turn me into his high-paid serf. I’ve told him no twice. He insists he needs me.”
“I can understand that.”
“There may be some of that, too,” she said.
“I can always break his fingers.”
She laughed. “I need to get out of this without having him bad-mouth me all over the industry.”
“He gets nasty, I’ll break his fingers and his toes.”
“Not much of a challenge, darling, seeing as meth and tobacco and whatever have weakened his constitution. But those apes who follow him around are another story.”
I gorilla-beat my chest. Robin put her head on it and we watched for a few more minutes. An actress stared at an actor. He pretended to be contemplating something weighty. Ponderous music played, stopped, resumed. The camera swung to a steeple top. Then to an empty room. Then to a hand.
Ah, art.
Not that anything could’ve captured my interest. I’d been obsessing on three murdered women and the fact that others were likely to follow. I knew Milo was out there, somewhere, watching Grant Fellinger. Long, dreary process, no guarantee of results … the camera swung to a screen-filling blue eye, unblinking. Maybe this was the scene the critics had found “compelling.”
My cell beeped. As I read the number, Robin used the call as an excuse to turn off the TV. “Time to brush my teeth. Then I’m emailing Uno, tell him no in capital letters.”
“Bravo.”
I clicked in. “That was quick, Big Guy. You learned something.”
Milo said, “Hope you’re not too comfortable. Even if you are, you’ll want to get the hell over here.”
He rattled off an address in Mar Vista.
I said, “New catering?”
“Oh, boy. This one won’t help your appetite.”
The residence had once been the garage of a moderate-sized mock-Tudor on Grand View. Mar Vista’s name promises ocean views. Many of its streets don’t deliver but Grand View does. It was too dark to make out much of the Pacific, now, but I did spot a triangle of gloss beneath a tiara of city lights.
Taking a second for a moment of beauty before it started.
The victim was a twenty-four-year-old woman named Francesca DiMargio who worked at a bookstore in Silverlake.
Milo learned little else from her landlords, a retired couple named Eileen and Jack Forbisher who spent a lot of time “cruising.” Meaning ships, not low-riders.
They’d returned a few hours ago from a three-week voyage embarking from Puerto Vallarta, crossing the Panama Canal, and ending up back at Long Beach. Everything seemed in order until Jack Forbisher toted an armful of junk mail to the trash cans at the rear of the property.
“I get closer to the back house and what a stink,” he said. “Even with my allergies, you never forget that smell.”
“Where’ve you smelled it before?” said Milo.
“We were in India last year, they have places where dead bodies are left out in the open.” Forbisher glanced through a rear window of his family room. What he called a back house was a converted garage, now blocked by a tarp on a vertical frame and yellow tape turned bright by a standing LED lamp. “I knew right away something had died but I thought it was a possum or a raccoon or a dog.”
Eileen Forbisher, finally able to steady her voice, said, “This is disgusting, terrible, disgusting. Frankie was supposed to be watching the house for us.”
As if the dead woman had failed to live up to expectation.
Her husband said, “Obviously, she couldn’t even watch for herself.”
“Jack! How can you be so matter-of-fact?”
He shrugged.
His wife said, “Yecch, I can still smell it and I haven’t even been out there.”
“I wouldn’t let her,” said Jack Forbisher, sniffing. “You really think you smell it in here?”
Eileen said, “Putrid.”
My nose picked up nothing.
Milo said, “So then what happened, sir?”
“I poked around near the garbage and there wasn’t any dead critter and as I got closer to the back house the smell got worse. I’m still figuring nothing terrible, maybe she left and a critter got inside. Her lights were out and her door was locked so I let myself in with my key and saw what I saw.” His nose wrinkled. “I got the hell out and called 911, end of story. When can we clean up?”
“Jack,” said Eileen, “she was a person.”
“Not anymore.” He canted his head out of his wife’s view and favored us with a see-what-I-go-through? eye roll. “Anyway, I got the hell right out, don’t worry, didn’t mess up your CSI.”
Milo said, “Appreciate it, sir. What kind of person was Frankie?”
Eileen said, “Quiet. Different from us, but no problem.”
“Different, how?”
“The tattoos, the rings and studs, paper clips, whatever.”
Jack said, “Without all that crap, she’d probably be a nice-looking girl. But no personality, you’d say hi, she’d pretend not to hear you.”
“Shy,” said Eileen. “Really shy. She had trouble making eye contact.”
Jack said, “She applied to rent, I said to myself nutcase hippie, forget about it. But once you get her to talk you can see she’s basically a quiet girl, no ax to grind. I’m a good judge of character, worked in L.A. Unified for thirty years.”
I said, “Teacher?”
“Maintenance coordinator, I ran all the electrical and plumbing for the northwest sector. That means dealing with people, I can tell who’s going to be a problem and who isn’t.”
“Frankie wasn’t a problem.”
“Quiet as a mouse,” he said. “Afraid of her own shadow, one of those nerds.”
“She was so quiet,” said Eileen. “You wouldn’t know she was there.”
Milo said, “Did she have a boyfriend?”
“Never. We never saw any visitors, period.”
Jack said, “The only thing was once in a while she’d come home late. Real late, like early morning. I could hear footsteps.”
“More than one set?”
“Nah, just her. I can look out from our bedroom, sometimes I’d look and see her. You think some kind of boyfriend did it?”
Milo said, “It’s too early to think anything.”
“I sure as hell hope that’s not it. Some lunatic knowing where we live.” He puffed out his chest. “I own firearms but I’d prefer not to have to use them.”
Eileen said, “You just keep them in the safe, I hate those things.”
Jack said, “Frankie had a gun, she might still be alive.”
Eileen turned to Milo. “Are we in danger, Lieutenant? Please tell him not to play Rambo.”
“This kind of crime is generally directed against a specific victim.”
“See, Jack?”
“He has his opinion, I have mine.”
Milo said, “What else can you tell us about Frankie?”
Eileen said, “She was always timely with her rent.”
“How much did she pay.”
“Thousand a month,” said Jack. “And lucky to get it.”
“How long has she been your tenant?”
“Nine months.”
Eileen said, “And we probably spoke fifty words in all that time.”
I said, “Not a single visitor?”
“Not that we saw but nowadays we’re always traveling, so I can’t say never.”
“Did she have a lease?”
“Nope, month-to-month,” said Jack. “Leases are useless. If someone’s shifty, try recovering a dime, and if they’re honest you don’t need a lease. Month-to-month is smart, they give problems, you give ’em the gate. You think this had something to do with her lifestyle?”
“What lifestyle is that, Mr. Forbisher?”
“The holes she put in herself. That crazy stuff she collected.”
“That’s prejudice,” said Eileen.
“I don’t think prejudice is her
problem now,” said Jack.
Eileen said, “May I ask when you’ll be finished?”
Milo said, “Soon as we can.”
“And you’ll be cleaning the back house, I assume.”
Milo crossed his legs. “Strictly speaking, ma’am, we don’t clean up crime scenes.”
“What?” she said. “You expect me to get down on my hands and knees and scour all that … that horror?”
“There are services that specialize, Mrs. Forbisher. I can give you their—”
“All the taxes we pay and we have to pay more? That’s outrageous, Lieutenant!”
Jack said, “All for the better, Eileen. Something like this, you’d sure as hell want a specialist, not some cop pretending to be one.” To Milo: “Give me at least two outfits, I always comparison-shop.”
Milo passed along cards from three cleaning services.
Forbisher entered the information in an address book, writing in laboriously precise block lettering.
Eileen stood. “I can’t take the stench, need a bath. If you need anything else, Mr. Sharpshooter will tell you.”
Without his wife present, Jack Forbisher seemed more eager to help. Had more to offer than we’d expected.
The bookstore where Francesca DiMargio worked was called Even Odd.
Her parents lived close by in West L.A. “Never met ’em but you could say we’ve done business because usually the rent came from them.”
Milo said, “How much is usual?”
Forbisher thumbed his address book. “Six out of nine months. Also the damage deposit. They’re not going to be seeing any of that again.”
Milo said, “Their address, please.”
Forbisher read it off. “So tell me, which of the three cleaners is best?”
“They’re all good, sir.”
“There’s always one who stands out.”
Motive Page 13