Evidence

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Evidence

  Alex Delaware [24]

  Kellerman, Jonathan

  Ballantine Books (2009)

  * * *

  Tags: Alex Delaware

  Alex Delawarettt

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  In a half-built mansion in Los Angeles, a watchman stumbles onto the bodies of a young couple—murdered and left in a gruesome postmortem embrace. Veteran homicide cop Milo Sturgis is shocked at the sight: a twisted crime that only Milo and psychologist Alex Delaware can hope to solve. While the female victim’s identity remains in question, her companion is ID’d as eco-friendly architect Desmond Backer, notorious for his power to seduce women. The deeper Milo and Alex dig for clues, the longer the list of suspects grows. But when the investigation veers suddenly in a startling direction, it’s the investigators who may wind up on the wrong end of a cornered predator’s final fury.

  Evidence

  Alex Delaware – Book 24

  By Jonathan Kellerman

  To Faye

  CHAPTER 1

  I tell the truth. They lie.

  I’m strong. They’re weak.

  I’m good.

  They’re bad.

  This was a zero job but Doyle was getting paid.

  Why anyone would shell out fifteen bucks an hour, three hours a day, five times a week, to check out the empty shell of a rich-idiot monster-house was something he’d never get.

  The look-see took fifteen minutes. If he walked slow. Rest of the time, Doyle sat around, ate his lunch, listened to Cheap Trick on his Walkman.

  Thinking about being a real cop if his knee hadn’t screwed up.

  The company said go there, he went.

  Disability all run out, he swallowed part-time, no benefits. Paying to launder his own uniform.

  One time he heard a couple of the other guys talking behind his back.

  Gimp’s lucky to get anything.

  Like it was his fault. His blood level had been .05, which wasn’t even close to illegal. That tree had jumped out of nowhere.

  Gimp made Doyle go all hot in the face and the chest but he kept his mouth shut like he always did. One day ...

  He parked the Taurus on the patch of dirt just outside the chain-link, tucked his shirt tighter.

  Seven a.m., quiet except for the stupid crows squawking.

  Rich-idiot neighborhood but the sky was a crappy milky gray just like in Burbank where Doyle’s apartment was.

  Nothing moving on Borodi Lane. As usual. The few times Doyle saw anyone it was maids and gardeners. Rich idiots paying to live here but never living here, one monster-mansion after another, blocked by big trees and high gates. No sidewalks, either. What was that all about?

  Every once in a while, some tucked-tight blonde in Rodeo Drive sweats would come jogging down the middle of the road looking miserable. Never before ten, that type slept late, had breakfast in bed, massages, whatever. Laying around in satin sheets, getting waited on by maids and butlers before building up the energy to shake those skinny butts and long legs.

  Bouncing along in the middle of the road, some Rolls-Royce comes speeding down and kaboom. Wouldn’t that be something?

  Doyle collected his camouflage-patterned lunch box from the trunk, made his way toward the three-story plywood shell. The third being that idiot castle thing—the turret. Unfinished skeleton of a house that would’ve been as big as a ... as a... Disneyland castle.

  Fantasyland. Doyle had done some pacing, figured twenty thousand square feet, minimum. Two-acre lot, maybe two and a half.

  Framed up and skinned with plywood, for some reason, he could never find out why, everything stopped and now the heap was all gray, warping, striped with rusty nail-drips.

  Crappy gray sky leaking in through rotting rafters. On hot days, Doyle tucked himself into a corner for shade.

  Out behind in the bulldozed brown dirt was an old Andy Gump accidentally left behind, chemicals still in the john. The door didn’t close good and sometimes Doyle found coyote scat inside, sometimes mouse droppings.

  When he felt like it, he just whizzed into the dirt.

  Someone paying all that money to build Fantasyland, then just stopping. Go figure.

  He’d brought a good lunch today, roast beef sandwich from Arby’s, too bad there was nothing to heat the gravy with. Opening the box, he sniffed. Not bad. He moved toward the chain-link swing gate... what the—

  Stupid thing was pulled as wide as the chain allowed, which was about two, two and a half feet. Easy for anyone but a fat idiot to squeeze through.

  The chain had always been too long to really draw the gate tight, making the lock useless, but Doyle was careful to twist it up, make it look secure when he left each day.

  Some idiot had monkeyed with it.

  He’d told the company about the chain, got ignored. What was the point of hiring a professional when you didn’t listen to his advice?

  Sidling through the gap, he rearranged the chain nice and tight. Leaving his lunch box atop raw-concrete steps, he began his routine. Standing in the middle of the first floor, saying, “Hel-lo,” and listening to his voice echo. He’d done that first day on the job, liked the echo, kinda like honking in a tunnel. Now it was a habit.

  Didn’t take long to see everything was okay on the first floor. Space was huge, big as a ... as a... some rooms framed up but mostly pretty open so you had clear views everywhere. Like peeking through the skeleton bones of some dinosaur. In the middle of what would’ve been the entry hall was a humongous, swooping, double staircase. Just plywood, no railings, Doyle had to be careful, all he needed was a fall, screw up some other body part.

  Here we go, pain with every step. Stairs creaked like a mother but felt structurally okay. You could just could imagine what it would be like with marble on it. Like a ... big castle staircase.

  Nineteen steps, each one killed.

  The second floor was just as empty as the first, big surprise. Stopping to rub his knee and take in the western treetop view, he continued toward the rear, stopped again, kneaded some more but it didn’t do much good. Continuing to the back, he reached the smaller staircase, thirteen steps but real curvy, a killer, tucked behind a narrow wall, you had to know where to find it.

  Whoever had paid for all this was some rich idiot who didn’t appreciate what he had. If Doyle had a hundredth—a two-hundredth of something like this, he’d thank God every day.

  He’d asked the company who the owner was. They said, “Don’t pry.”

  Climbing the curvy staircase, every step crunching his knee, the pain riding up to his hip, he began counting out the thirteen stairs like he always did, trying to take his mind off the burning in his leg.

  When he called out “Nine,” he saw it.

  Oh Jesus.

  Heart thumping, mouth suddenly dry as tissue paper, he backed down two steps, reached along the right side of his gear belt.

  Touching air.

  Now he was the idiot, there’d been no gun for a long time, not since he stopped guarding jewelry stores downtown.

  Company gave him a flashlight, period, and it was in the trunk of the Taurus.

  He forced himself to look.

  Two of them.

  No one else, one good thing about the turret, it was round, mostly open to the sky, nowhere to hide.

  Doyle kept looking, felt his guts heave.

  The way they were lying, him on top of her, her legs up, one hooked around his back, it was pretty clear what they’d been doing.

  Before ...

  Doyle felt short of breath, like someone was choking him. Struggling to regain his air, he finally succeeded. Reached for his phone.

  Right in his pocket. At least something was going okay.

  CHAPTER 2

  Milo calls me in
when the murder’s “interesting.”

  Sometimes by the time I get involved, the body’s gone. If the crime scene photos are thorough, that helps. If not, it can get even more interesting.

  This scene was a three-minute drive from my house and intact.

  Two bodies, wrapped around each other in a sick parody of passion. Milo stood to the side as a coroner’s investigator clicked off shots.

  We exchanged quiet “Heys.” Milo’s black hair was slicked down haphazardly and his green eyes were sharp. His clothes looked slept-in, his pallid, pitted complexion matched the smog-gray sky.

  June gloom in L.A. Sometimes we pretend it’s ocean mist.

  I studied the bodies from a distance, stepping as far back as I could, careful not to touch the curving plywood wall. “How long have you been here?”

  “An hour.”

  “You don’t get to this zip code too often, Big Guy.”

  “Location, location, location.”

  The coroner’s investigator heard that and glanced back. A tall, pretty, square-shouldered young woman in an olive-green pantsuit, she took a long time with the camera, kneeling, leaning, crouching, standing on tiptoe to capture every angle.

  “Just a few more minutes, Lieutenant.”

  Milo said, “Take your time.”

  The kill-spot was the third floor of a construction project on Borodi Lane in Holmby Hills. Massive frame-up of an intended mansion, the entry big enough to seat a symphony orchestra. The kill-spot looked like some sort of observation room. Or the turret of a castle.

  Massive was the rule in Holmby. A whole different universe than my white box above Beverly Glen, but walking distance. I’d driven because sometimes Milo likes to think and make calls while I take the wheel.

  A few rafters topped the turret, but most of the intended roof was open space. Breeze blew in. Balmy, but not enough air movement to mask the smell of wet wood and rust, mold and blood and excreta.

  Male victim on top, female victim pinned beneath him, very little of her showing.

  His black designer jeans were rolled to midcalf. One of her smooth, tan legs hooked around his waist. Brown pumps in place on both her feet.

  Final embrace, or someone wanting it to look that way. What I could see of the woman’s hands were splayed, limp. Flaccidity of death, that made sense.

  But the leg propped up didn’t fit; how had it stayed in place postmortem?

  The man’s legs were well muscled, coated with curls of fine blond hair. Black cashmere sweater for him, blue dress for her. I craned to see more of her, couldn’t catch anything but dress fabric. Some kind of shiny jersey. Hiked above her hips.

  The man’s hair was longish, light brown, wavy. A neat ruby hole stippled by black powder punctuated the mastoid bulge behind his right ear. Blood ran down his neck, slanted toward the right, continued onto the plywood floor. Long dark strands of her hair fanned wide on the floor. Not much blood around her.

  I said, “Wouldn’t her legs have relaxed?”

  The C.I., still photographing, said, “If rigor’s come and gone, I’d think so.”

  She worked at the crypt on Mission Road, in East L.A., had managed to maintain the rosy-cheeked glow of a habitual hiker. Lots of outdoor death scenes? Late twenties to early thirties, rusty hair tied in a high ponytail, clear blue eyes; a farm girl working the dark side.

  Putting the camera aside, she got down low, she used two hands to lift the man’s midsection gingerly, peered through the resulting two-inch space. The wraparound leg collapsed like a folding chair improperly set. “Yup, looks like she was propped, Lieutenant.”

  Looking back at Milo for confirmation, her hands still wedged between the bodies.

  He said, “Could be.”

  The C.I. raised the male victim a bit higher, studied, lowered him with tenderness. The investigators I’ve seen are generally like that: respectful, swimming in more horror than most people encounter in a lifetime, never growing jaded.

  She stood, brushed dust off her trousers. “She’s not wearing panties and his penis is out. Obviously, there’s no erection so there’s no way they’d stay ... connected. But there is a crusty whitish stain on her thigh, so even if they were posed, looks like they consummated.”

  Kneeling again, she pulled the man’s crumpled jeans high enough to search his pockets. “Okay, here we go.”

  Hefting a blue vinyl wallet secured by a snap button.

  Milo gloved up. “No car keys?”

  “Nope, just this. Let me tag and then you can go through it. I didn’t see any civilian cars parked on the street, maybe it started as a jacking?”

  “And everyone ran up here and these two started getting it on?”

  “I was thinking an intended jacking, the bad guy changed his mind?”

  Milo shrugged.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant. For shooting my mouth.”

  “At this point,” said Milo, “I’ll take anything I can get.”

  “I’m new on the job,” she said. “I’m sure there’s nothing I can teach you—guess it’s time to flip them. I’ll do a liver temp and see if we can close in on TOD.”

  Moments later, she was cleaning off the meat thermometer.

  Milo said, “And?”

  “Probably somewhere during the last twelve hours, I’m sure the docs will be able to tell you more.”

  The male victim’s face was a husk of the handsome, smiling visage on the driver’s license in the blue vinyl wallet. Desmond Erik Backer, thirty-two years old last February, five eleven, one seventy, brown and brown, apartment on California Avenue in Santa Monica, an address that put it three blocks from the beach.

  The wallet held two hundred dollars in fifties and twenties, two gold credit cards, a couple of wheat-colored business cards, a photo of a little blond girl around two wearing a lace-trimmed, red-velvet dress. TAG Heuer sport watch around left wrist, no other jewelry. No pale stripe of skin suggesting a wedding band, removed discreetly or otherwise.

  Milo showed me the handwritten inscription on the back of the child’s portrait. Samantha, 22 mo. No one else would’ve caught the twitch in his eyelid.

  He flipped to a business card. Desmond E. Backer, AIA, Gemein, Holman, and Cohen, Architects. Main Street in Venice.

  “Nice watch,” he said, checking the back of the TAG for an inscription. Blank. Checking the leather label on the jeans. “Zegna.”

  The C.I. said, “But her dress looks a little low-rent, don’t you think?”

  She inspected the label. “Made in China, polyester ... short and snug. Could she be a working girl?”

  “Anything’s possible.” Milo returned the wallet. As he bagged, took notes, he continued to study the bodies.

  No sign of the female victim’s purse. Generic gold hoops in her ears, three similarly nondescript silver bangles around one slender wrist. Light makeup.

  He got down close to her right ear, as if wanting to impart some secret. “She shampooed recently, I can still smell it.”

  The C.I. said, “I also smelled it. Suave. I use it myself.”

  “Expensive?”

  She chuckled. “With my pay scale?” Growing solemn as she took in the dead woman’s pale face.

  Even degraded, an extremely nice-looking woman with a taut, full-breasted, somewhat low-waisted body, a smooth, oval countenance, and huge eyes, slightly down-slanted. Brown in life, filmed the color of dirty pavement by death.

  Pink gloss on slack lips. Clean nails, no polish. The C.I.’s probing had revealed no bullet holes anywhere on her body, but the sclera of the woman’s eyes were marbled and speckled by hemorrhage and her long neck was swollen and bruised and bisected by an angry magenta line.

  The C.I. pointed out the crusty, milky blotch on her thigh. Checked fingernails. “Doesn’t look like anything under there. Poor thing. Is it okay if I pull her dress down?”

  “Do that,” said Milo. “Soon as our techies get here and print them and the room, you can transport.”

  “Any ide
a how long that’ll take?”

  “You in a hurry?”

  “We do have another call, but no problem, Lieutenant.”

  “Your drivers are paid by the hour.”

  “Yes, sir. Anything else?”

  “Nothing comes to mind, Ms....” Squinting to make out her I.D. badge. “Rieffen.”

  “Lara. You’re sure there’s nothing else I can do for you, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m open to suggestions, Lara.”