Another Way to Die

by Philip Cox

Leroy looked over at Quinn, then back to Glover.

  ‘I want us to look over the apartment first, while we’re in Hollywood.’

  ‘Your investigation now. The keys are in there.’

  ‘And the car?’

  ‘Usual place. Car pound.’

  Leroy was going to ask about the car and any fingerprints, but thought better of it. He and Quinn would follow up that angle.

  Glover stood up.‘Well, gentlemen. I think we’ve all followed our orders. I have now officially passed the investigation over to you. Good luck.’ Leroy rose, half-expecting Glover to offer a handshake but none came. Instead, Glover turned on his heels and left the room.

  ‘I’ll show you gentlemen out,’ Estevez said sarcastically as he stood. He led them to the door and opened it. As Leroy and Quinn exited, Estevez said, ‘Next time, keep the fuck away from my investigations.’

  Leroy turned and smiled pleasantly. ‘Pleasure doing business with you, Jimmy.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  They stood on Orange Drive, in front of The Nirvana.

  Leroy swung round, to look back at Franklin Avenue. ‘Estevez was right. He wasn’t found far from home. Almost on his doorstep.’

  ‘At least he didn’t have to travel far,’ Leroy quipped as he walked along the twisty path to the doors. ‘Come on.’

  The four-digit code to access the main door was on the murder file. They stood to one side as a pony-tailed man with a large black laptop bag exited, engrossed in an animated conversation on his phone.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Quinn said after him.

  They stood and took in the lobby, both impressed by the level of detail and care taken here: the classic deep red of the walls, skirting, piping and electrical conduits picked out in gloss black. The ceiling was painted gold, cross beams made out in black. The only other relief from the deep red comprised two circular windows set in white recesses.

  The floor was marble, highly polished and set in narrow black and white stripes. A case of seven steps led up to the mezzanine level; they were painted black with a dark green carpet running up the centre. The balustrade and handrails running up the steps were painted gold, matching the lobby ceiling and the ornate carvings around the alcove at the top of the steps.

  Leroy looked around the lobby, nodding. ‘Very nice.’

  ‘I wonder how much they’re asking for an apartment,’ Quinn mused.

  ‘More than your pay cheque, that’s for sure. Let’s use the stairs.’

  Three lengths of blue and white tape were fixed across the door; as they had expected, nobody was on guard outside the door.

  ‘I don’t know why this is still here,’ Leroy mumbled as he cut the tape. ‘They’ve obviously finished with the place.’

  Quinn followed Leroy inside. ‘Those two are convinced he was a hooker and he was killed by one of his johns.’

  ‘Yeah, and so they’ve lost interest. Filed it in the low priority pile, under “never going to be found”. But we know different.’

  It was a one-bedroom apartment, highly polished dark-wooden flooring throughout. The door opened into a hallway about ten by ten, with a semi-circular mat in the doorway and a longer, rectangular one across the hall floor, outside the kitchen and bathroom. Across the hall was the bedroom. Leroy and Quinn looked around, but there was no sign of anything being disturbed. They gloved up and began.

  ‘Ray, they’ve not even looked in here,’ Leroy said in exasperation. ‘There’s no way the room would have been left like this.’

  ‘It’s so tidy,’ agreed Quinn, checking inside a closet.

  ‘Lazy bastards. They were convinced it was a client, they didn’t bother.’

  Quinn walked into the hallway and called Leroy. ‘It looks like it all happened in here.’

  Leroy followed Quinn to the bathroom, peering into the kitchen, which was in fact a kitchen and lounge combined, a large breakfast bar separating the two parts of the room. Then he stopped in the bathroom doorway.

  ‘Jeee-sus.’

  The bathroom resembled a bomb site. In the opposite corner stood a walk-in shower. One of the Perspex sides had been either pulled or knocked out of its base, and it lay at a forty-five-degree angle against the side of the wash basin.

  The décor here was mainly white: the floor consisted of large terracotta tiles, but every wall was tiled with smaller, white tiles. The bath, washbasin, and toilet were a matching white, with silver faucets.

  The brilliant white walls only served to accentuate the blood splatter: a fine spray across one wall, reaching as far as three feet from the floor. There was also splatter on the underside of the toilet.

  Leroy crouched studied the pedestal. ‘Look: there’s some traces of blood here.’ He pointed to the edge of the seat. ‘As if somebody hit their head on the way down.’ He stood, looked behind at the broken shower wall. ‘Something on here, also.’

  Quinn leafed through the file. ‘The forensic research team have been in here.’

  ‘That’s something, but you can bet your ass they were only instructed to sweep in here. What about the other rooms? Remember what I said this morning about the vic knowing the killer? Sure, the lock could’ve been picked: it’s not particularly sophisticated; or he could’ve been let in as he was known. Either way, we need to get the whole apartment gone over again. I don’t just mean forensically; you and I need to go through everything.’

  ‘Any DNA evidence might have degraded by now,’ Quinn cautioned. ‘It’s been nearly a week.’

  Leroy agreed. ‘They can still do it anyway. They can bitch all they like, especially about the bathroom, but I want to take a second look.’

  ‘Troy Keffer,’ said Quinn. ‘And the other name on that tattoo was Marc.’

  ‘We’ll go through everything. It looked as if he was single; at any rate that he lived alone - only one toothbrush, for starters. But there might be letters, photos, anything like that to tell us who this Marc is. Is there a laptop around? Any device?’

  Quinn leafed through the notes again. ‘Nothing here about that.’

  ‘He would have had one. Cell phone?’

  ‘The others didn’t have a cell with them.’

  ‘No, so we can assume once he’s dumped the bodies, he takes phones, iPads, that kind of stuff with him.’

  ‘To sell?’

  ‘Maybe, but more likely to remove any possible evidence. We gotta ID Marc, whoever he is. They can’t be together or close in that sense; otherwise we’d have heard from him by now. You call up the forensic team; I’ll be making a start in here.’

  While Quinn was putting in the call to the forensic team, Leroy began in the bedroom. It was what he called a male bedroom: no trace of any femininity. More like a hotel room, in fact: neutral. The bed linen was plain, and unadorned. But no mess. His own bedroom was nothing like this: his schoolteacher ex used to say he was like an untidy schoolboy at times, and on the occasions where he had cause to go through another man’s bedroom, there was invariably a degree of untidiness, even a layer of dust here and there. Troy Keffer either had somebody in to clean, or just used the place to entertain clients, if Estevez and Glover were correct in their assumption. But then the car was registered to him at this address.

  He knelt and looked under the bed. It was clear: absolutely nothing underneath. He felt underneath, along the inside edge of the bed frame. Nothing. He repeated the action the other side, the side where the digital clock rested on a little table. At the top of the bed that side, he felt something.

  ‘Son of a bitch.’ He tore off the tape attaching the gun to the bed frame. He took the gun out. It was a Sig Sauer P220. He checked the chamber: it was full.

  ‘They’ll be here in around an hour.’ Quinn joined Leroy in the bedroom. ‘Was that under the pillow?’

  ‘Duct taped to the bedframe. Which unfortunately kind of points to what Estevez and Glover were saying: that he was a hooker.’

  ‘But that doesn’t change anything, does it? He was a male escort, who
liked to dress up. That’s our theory, anyway, isn’t it?’

  Leroy got up and opened the walk-in closet. ‘Yes, and I think that’s just been proven.’ He ran his fingers over the rows of dresses and skirts. ‘What’s this here?’ he asked as he came to a small free-standing closet, which was locked. He took out a penknife and forced open the door. Inside the closet, two men’s suits were hanging up. There were also three shelves, upon which men’s underwear and tee shirts were neatly folded and placed.

  ‘Normally,’ Leroy said, ‘a transvestite, transsexual, transgender, will have their male clothing out on display, and the woman’s, the bra, the pantyhose, the panties, hidden away somewhere. This one’s different. He must have spent most of his waking hours as a woman; otherwise wouldn’t all this stuff be in there, and the suits and shorts would be out on display? Ray: do we know what he did? His job, I mean.’

  ‘Let’s see if it’s on here. Yes, here we are: he was an actor.’

  ‘There’s a newsflash. How did they figure that out?’

  ‘It has DMV in parentheses.’

  ‘How would they know? Your occupation isn’t on a licence.’

  ‘No, but you have to divulge it when you apply.’

  Leroy nodded. ‘Yes, and it’s logical that he would be. Plenty of home time to entertain, if Estevez and Glover are right. How do you think he went to auditions? As a man a woman? You got a look at his face - he was pretty androgynous.’

  ‘Maybe it depended on the part.’

  ‘Probably,’ Leroy laughed. ‘There’s just clothes in here. Anything in that little bedside closet?’

  Quinn checked. ‘Zip.’

  ‘Have a look out there, any drawers, and closets. I’ll take book this wasn’t his main home. I think he leased this place to entertain, to meet clients. It’s too empty, too sterile, to be a home. It’s just like a hotel suite.’

  Leroy did one more sweep of the bedroom while Quinn checked the lounge. Having finished in the bedroom, he moved to the kitchen. ‘It’s just the same here: it’s like a, what’s that phrase? Pied a terre.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s like you have someone whose main home is in New York, but they work out here in LA. Their employer, one of the studios maybe, provides an apartment like this one. Somewhere to crash Monday through Thursday, then they fly home for the weekend. All this gear here - the toaster, the microwave - it’s all new. It’s like somebody went down to a Home Depot and bought a whole load of stuff. Anything over there?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘He doesn’t live here. Didn’t live here. This is a place of work.’

  ‘Which would explain why the women’s clothes had pride of place, and the men’s stuff hidden in a closet.’

  ‘And not much in the way of men’s stuff. Because the rest of it is in his own closet, at home.’

  ‘He might have a wife and kids at home somewhere.’

  ‘Possibly. I doubt it, not just on account of his painted nails.’

  ‘He might be listed as a missing person, too. It’s worthwhile checking.’

  Wearily, Leroy agreed. ‘They’ll be here presently. Let me have one more look at the bathroom.’ He stood in the doorway surveying the wreckage. ‘I think I had it to rights earlier. He comes back here, takes a shower. I don’t think he knew the killer; that doesn’t follow the pattern of the others. I think our killer, who we know is one clever son of a bitch, broke in. Broke in during the day and waited. He hides. He thinks, “she’s getting in the shower where she’ll be naked and off guard”. He sneaks in here, and finds not the woman he thought he was stalking, taking pictures of, but a man, butt-assed naked. There’s a struggle, some damage. Maybe that blood on the john and on the shower wall is Keffer’s, maybe it’s not. Hopefully it’s not. He must have been lying there when he was stabbed: look at the splatter marks.’

  ‘If we’re lucky, our guy sustained injury himself, that he left something here. And that it’s still viable.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. The first two, the two Jane Does, were meticulously planned and executed. We’ve been running around in circles, still no further forward than where we were at the weekend. But here…’ Leroy took one final look around the bathroom, the physical damage, the dried blood on the walls, on the furniture and on the floor. ‘Here seems to be where it all went wrong.’

  They left the apartment to the forensic team. Outside, Leroy put his hand on his hips and looked over in the direction of the hills. ‘They found him up on Orchid,’ he said, squinting into the sun. ‘Let’s go take a look up there.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  It was in fact North Orchid Avenue where Troy Keffer’s body had been found, just up from Bonita Terrace. As the road, which by now was no more than one lane, climbed farther up the hill, it made a sharp bend to the left.

  Quinn checked the location to the photographs on the Keffer file. ‘This is where the car was found. I’d better get out here.’

  Leroy waited for Quinn to exit, then pulled up. Because of the narrowness of the road, he had to park inches away from the embankment, which came to the pavement edge. This embankment ran the whole of that side: every now and then, there were steps leading from the road to homes higher up the ridge. The properties on the other side were on the same level, short driveways leading into a front yard. The nearest was around fifty yards away. Between each driveway was bushy undergrowth, sometimes encroaching onto the road.

  Quinn tapped on his phone, which was showing an area map. ‘They can’t get much traffic up here. It’s a dead end farther up. No through traffic.’

  Leroy stepped backwards to the spot where Keffer’s car was found. ‘It’s an ideal spot for our guy to leave Keffer here. Quiet, secluded, no lighting, a narrow street, and a sharp bend. Unlikely to be seen leaving the vehicle here; likely that at some time, somebody’s going to run into it. Literally. Were any door to door enquiries made?’

  Quinn checked the file. ‘Nothing about that here.’

  ‘There’s a surprise. The car was facing up the hill, like ours, so he wouldn’t have had to go up to the end and make a U-turn. To do that, he would have had to have used somebody’s driveway, and that could mean getting noticed. He would have left the car here, as he did before, then walked back down to where, I guess, he left his own vehicle. We need to knock on the doors - we might as well start up at the dead end - down to… what was that cross street called?’

  Quinn looked at the map. ‘Bonita Terrace.’

  ‘Okay. Down as far as Bonita; no, let’s make it down to Franklin. Just the houses, not the apartment buildings, unless there’s somebody hanging around outside or on a balcony. It would be unusual for them to see anybody walking down the hill. They might recall something.’

  They climbed the last hundred yards to the end of the road, to the dead end. Then, calling on each door, slowly made their way back down. When they reached Bonita Terrace, Leroy sent Quinn back up to get the Taurus, which he parked at the intersection.

  ‘Well done, Ray,’ grinned Leroy. ‘Let’s carry on.’

  From this intersection down to Franklin Avenue, the houses became fewer, and the apartment buildings more numerous. On the corner of Orchid and Franklin, across from the Magic Castle Hotel, was a three floor condo, with long balconies facing onto Orchid Avenue. It resembled a motel, although was in fact not.

  ‘Let’s try in there,’ Leroy said. ‘With those balconies, a resident may have been sitting out there, watching the world go by, taking in the sun. They might have seen something unusual.’

  An hour later, they had drawn a blank, as they had all the way down from the dead end. They returned to the spot on the corner. A block away, they could see the top floor and green roof of The Nirvana.

  ‘Dumped almost in view of his home,’ Leroy observed. He took out his phone. ‘I’m going to call about Keffer’s car. They’ve had it long enough: they should have checked it over forensically by now. There might be something we can follow up. There’s diddly squa
t so far for us here.’

  He called the number for the Hertzberg-Davis Center, although getting connected not to the ME offices, but the vehicle lab. Quinn donned his sunglasses, and leaned on the wall, arms folded, while Leroy made the call.

  ‘Detective Leroy, West LA, I’m calling about the orange Ford Fiesta you have.’

  ‘………’

  ‘No, it’s been transferred to us.’

  ‘………’

  ‘Long story. Have you been able to check the vehicle yet?’

  ‘………’

  ‘And?’

  ‘………’

  ‘You’re kidding? Can you send a picture over? To this number?’

  ‘………’

  ‘I’ll wait for it now.’

  Leroy hung up and looked over at Quinn.

  ‘Well?’ Quinn asked.

  ‘It’s been checked over; they found prints, but they’ve not been uploaded yet.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Backlog, he tells me. But they found an old business card down the back of one of the seats.’ His phone pinged. ‘Here it is.’

  Leroy looked at the picture, then showed Quinn. It was a standard white business card. Printed in red was the name Marc Simon. Below, in black, it read Residential electrician. A cell phone number and email address were printed below.

  ‘Marc Simon,’ Quinn read out. He looked at Leroy. ‘As in Troy and Marc?’

  Leroy nodded, and put his phone back into its pouch. ‘As in Troy and Marc.’

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ‘So let’s call him,’ Quinn said as Leroy put away his phone.

  Leroy shook his head. ‘Think about it. He’s the killer. An electrician, with duct tape and electrical wire. We call him on his cell, say “Peek-a-boo, LAPD here”, and then he’s over the border by nightfall. Call this number in, get it tracked.’

  Leroy passed the card to Quinn and himself leaned on the wall while Quinn called the station. It took four minutes to get a fix.

  ‘He’s in Los Feliz.’

  ‘That’s not far from here. Five minutes tops.’