CHAPTER 16
I woke up at four a.m., inspired. Minutes later, I was at the computer.
Five hours later, I was headed toward Milo’s office.
He was away from his desk. A report from the fingerprint lab sat next to the murder book. Desmond Backer’s latents had been found on a wall of the turret, just to the right of the top step, and near the bottom frame of a window hole. Brigid Ochs, still listed as Jane Doe 014, had left palm prints on the floor.
Backer’s could be explained as reaching for support while he climbed the rickety stairs, then sauntering over to enjoy the view.
The only explanation I could find for hers was a sexual position.
Milo plodded in, drinking coffee.
“Morning.”
“Zippity-do-nothing to you, as well.” He sat, drank. “No one’s budging on telling me who DSD is and I can’t find a judge who disagrees. No call-back from Hal, which isn’t his usual style, no weapons registered to Charles Rutger other than flintlocks and muskets classified as antiques. He might be nuts but he’s never been in criminal trouble. Lab sent over prints from the scene but they don’t mean much.”
“Just read the report.” I offered my interpretation. “Sounds about right.” His phone rang. He clicked to conference. “Sturgis.”
A woman said, “This is Dr. Jernigan from the coroner’s returning your call.”
“Thanks for getting back, Doctor. I was wondering if you’ve had a chance to autopsy my victims.”
“The Holmby double?” she said. “Gunshot for your male, strangulation for your female.”
“That was quick, thanks.”
“No autopsy was done,” said Jernigan. “Not necessary. We also did a rape kit on your female. No sexual assault.”
“So the semen on her leg—”
“What semen?”
“There was a stain on her leg. I saw it at the scene.”
“Not when I inspected the body. How do you know it was semen?”
“I’m not an expert—”
“Exactly.”
“Was it something else, Doctor?”
Silence. “There was no stain of any kind, Lieutenant. Sorry to cut this short, but I need to go.”
“No autopsy necessary,” said Milo.
“You’ve been doing this for a while, Lieutenant, so you know we don’t cut unnecessarily. I x-rayed both of them. There’s a bullet in his head that we’ll pull out soon as we can, no metal in her and ruptures in all the right places. For all the talk about a crime drop, we’re swamped because the powers-that-be refuse to hire any more staff and the bodies are still coming in faster than we can process. Twenty minutes ago, I received four little kids from a house fire in Willow-brook and they do need to be opened up to check for soot in the lungs. Trust me, we’re taking your case seriously, the bullet will be pulled.”
“Okay, thanks. Sorry about Bobby.”
“You knew Bobby?”
“Only Bobby I know is Bobby Norchow.”
“Norchow retired last year, this is Bobby Escobar. Bright kid, spent a couple of years with us then left to get a master’s in bio at Cal State.”
“I heard he got shot near the crypt.”
“Few blocks away, vacant lot that’s actually county property,” said Jernigan. “He was here working, we gave him a little space so he could have peace and quiet. He had three little kids, including a baby.”
“Oh, man.”
“Oh, man, indeed. For three years he goes through DBs’ pockets, now he’s one.”
“How’s the investigation going?”
“Sheriff assigned a couple of rookies and they’re calling it robbery gone bad—hey, how about a quid pro? You solve Bobby and we grant you autopsies on demand for the next five years, even when the body doesn’t merit it?” Dropping her voice. “Wish I wasn’t kidding. Bye, Lieutenant.”
He hung up, stretched his neck, produced crackle and pop. “Welcome to my world.”
I said, “Maybe I can cheer you up. Sranil.”
“What’s that?”
“An oil-rich island near Indonesia.”
“Never heard of it. And ...”
“The government is one of Masterson’s clients—major medical center still on the drawing board. Given how intimidated everyone seems by the gag agreement and the rumors of DSD being Middle Eastern, I went searching for petro-VIPs who’d lived in L.A. within the last ten years, co-referenced with Masterson. No Arabs came up but Asian royalty did: Prince Tariq of Sranil, aka Teddy. By Forbes’s last count his older brother, the sultan, is worth twelve billion. The country’s Muslim, so maybe that’s the source of the confusion. According to the blogosphere, Teddy came here five years ago to go to law school, got called back to Sranil around two years ago. That fits the Borodi construction schedule perfectly.”
“Why was he called back?”
“The prevailing wisdom is he partied too much, spent too much of his brother’s money. And guess what: The sultan’s name is Daoud—he’s the sixth of seven Daouds in the royal line—and his palace’s official name is Dar Salaam Daoud.”
“DSD ... got a full official name for Teddy?”
I pulled out my notes. “Tariq Bandar Asman Ku’amah Majur.”
He swiveled, logged onto the department’s database. “Like he’s gonna be in here—well looky here! Still on the books for ... I’m counting twenty-six parkers and three speeders. Most are on the Strip ... here’s one in B.H.—North Beverly Drive ... another on Rodeo ... Dayton ... the shopping district... five different vehicles ... Ferrari, Lamborghini, Rolls ... wonder why he didn’t weasel out of it using diplomatic immunity.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to bother. Or he got booted back home before the traffic nazis came after him.”
“Too many toys, huh? Sultan controls the purse strings?”
“Seems to, and there could be a personality conflict. The sultan’s devout, shows relative restraint for someone that wealthy.”
“Only a dozen Rolls-Royces?”
“Three, according to the royal website,” I said. “And two are classics he inherited from his grandfather. But we’re not talking the simple life. The royal palace is something out of a storybook—think Taj Majal on steroids.”
“That mean a turret?”
“Whole bunch of turrets. The royal site also claims the sultan opens the place to the public several times a year. Same for his yacht—used for charitable fund-raisers. And a hefty percentage of oil profits gets reinvested in infrastructure and hospitals. I can’t judge the truth of any of that, because freedom of the press is nil. But the sultan could have good reason to share the wealth. Two competing rebels groups are camped in the jungles of Indonesia, itching to get their hands on his fossil fuel. One bunch thinks he’s insufficiently religious, the other’s Maoist. So far, they’ve spent more time beheading each other, but it pays to be careful.”
“Bread and circuses,” he said. “Brother Teddy’s profligate ways would be bad P.R.”
“Ergo confidentiality pledges. It’s clearly in Masterson’s best interest to keep the sultan happy. The Sranil project is one of their biggest: massive health-care complex, a med school, state-of-the-art research labs, luxury residential towers for imported doctors and nurses. A complete city based on health care, really. Phase One is an oncology center. I called my old department head at Western Pediatric and he’s actually been to Sranil as a consultant. Described the island as a strange place—skyscrapers rising from the sand, everything spookily clean and organized, but relatively primitive tribes still living in the central jungle. He also told me the sultan has personal motivation for that cancer center: One of his children was diagnosed with neuroblastoma as an infant, sent to England for treatment but died. There’s no reason to believe any of his other kids will get sick but the sultan’s being careful.”
“Help your own, buy some international goodwill in the process, keep the savages from your door,” he said. “So what’s Prince Teddy doing with himself n
owadays?”
“Since he returned, he’s completely off the radar.”
“Anything come up about why the Borodi property hasn’t been sold?”
“Maybe the sultan hasn’t gotten around to it.”
“Twelve bil,” he said, “what’s twenty million, give or take?” He swung his feet off the desk. “Interesting, Alex. Thanks, appreciated. The question is ...”
“Does it relate to the murders.”
A knock on the doorjamb made us both turn.
Moe Reed said, “I might’ve found something on DSD.”
Milo said, “Dar Salaam Daoud.”
Reed’s eyes got big. “So you know about the murder.”
“What murder?”
“The guy who owned the property on Borodi.” Flipping pages of his pad. “Tariq Asman allegedly killed someone. If my source is credible.”
Milo eyed the young detective. “I’d invite you in, but you’ve been pumping too much iron and those biceps won’t fit.”
The three of us moved to an empty interview room still reeking of intimidation. Milo made sure the taping system was off, shoved the table into the center, drew curtains across the mirror.
“Let’s hear it, Moses.”
Reed said, “I called embassies in D.C., got nowhere until I reached the Israeli embassy and some guy barks, ‘DSD? That’s not Arab, it’s Sranil.’ When I asked what Sranil was, he hung up. So I went online, learned about Sranil. Including the fact that the Indonesians don’t like it, worry it could be used one day as a base for insurgents. So I figured maybe I could take advantage of that and went over to the Indonesian consulate. It’s a suite in an office building in Mid-Wilshire, you’d never know from the outside. The front office was full of cute girls, friendly, smiling, all of them shined me on, claimed they’d never heard of Sranil. So I leave and when I get to my car, one of the girls runs out and says, ‘I’ll tell you about that place but don’t come back.’ Real nervous and she’s taken off her I.D. badge. Anyway, she made it clear she doesn’t like the Sranil tribe, they were barbaric heathens before they became Muslims, the sultan pretends to be some righteous religious dude, meanwhile he’s covering up for his brother Tariq, who’s a major lowlife. She says that’s what you’re here about, right? Which takes me by surprise but I say sure. That’s when she gets into it, telling me how there’s a rumor Tariq killed some foreign party girl in L.A., it got covered up, he split. I tried to get details out of her but she said she had no firsthand knowledge, it’s just what she heard.”
“Heard where?”
“Around,” said Reed. “That’s all she’d say.”
“And she doesn’t like Sranil.”
“So she could be badmouthing them, sure. I couldn’t find anything on the Web about any murder.”
“Foreign girl as in non-Asian?” said Milo.
“As in European, she thought Swedish, but couldn’t pinpoint. Think it means anything, Loo?”
Milo filled him in on my research.
“Interesting,” said Reed. “But I’m not seeing any obvious link to the Borodi murders.”
“Me neither, Moses, but the fact that our female vic was snooping in Masterson’s files and Masterson’s in cahoots with the Sranilese government is a start. Let’s try to find out if the rumor about Prince Tariq has any substance. Look at unsolveds during the period he lived in L.A. Spread a wide net but focus on foreign female vics.”
I said, “Our female victim was a good-looking woman. She could’ve been a party girl, too.”
“Friend of the victim,” said Reed. “Maybe she’s foreign, herself, and that’s why she faked her identity—some sort of immigration issue.”
Milo said, “Cheap clothes says maybe the party was over, maybe she was aiming for a big score. The Borodi site definitely interested her. In addition to going there with Backer, she was spotted hanging around by herself.”
“What if the site was a previous crime scene, Loo? Tariq brought a girl up there and something went wrong—could’ve even been an accident, she falls down the stairs, or out of a window hole. Or he really is a scumbag. Either way, he’s gone but Brigid knows what happened, decides to profit.”
“If she knew where it happened, why bother to snoop in the files?”
“Okay, maybe she knew about the place in general, but needed details,” said Reed. “Or she was searching for other real estate Tariq owned, thinking he might be back and she could get to him.”
I said, “Blackmail could be involved but there could also be a personal component. Avenging a friend. That would explain her bringing Backer up there to have sex.”
Milo said, “Screw you, Tariq. So to speak. But they got spotted. Twelve bil would make it easy to hire a high-grade hit man. Sultan’s already rescued Baby Bro from one murder, what’s a couple more ten thousand miles away?”
Reed said, “Plus, he’s a dictator, used to having his way.”
I said, “A dictator who opens his palace to the peasants because he knows he’s on shaky sand. A fuss about Teddy murdering a girl and getting away with it could shift the sands uncomfortably.”
Milo got up, paced. “It’s a great story and I hope to hell it’s wrong because how could we ever get to someone like that? There’s also the same big question: If Borodi was a crime scene, why hasn’t the sultan unloaded it? And why have a lame, unarmed wimp guard it part-time?”
Reed said, “What if the body’s buried there?”
“All the more so, Moses. Dig it up, dump it, move on. Why hold on to the place?”
Reed had no answer for that and neither did I.
I pulled out my cell phone. Seconds later, I was hanging up from a frosty chat with Elena Kotsos. “She’s certain Brigid wasn’t European. ‘Pure American.’ Which she clearly considers an insult.”
Milo sat back down. “Moses, stretch that net to the entire state. And thanks for coming up with this. You done good.”
“It’s my job, Loo.”
“Hey, kid, remember what I always tell you.”
“Take all of the credit, none of the blame.”
“Better than Prozac, lad. Now be off.”
CHAPTER 17
Milo ran image searches for the sultan and Prince Tariq. Two smallish men who resembled each other, with boyish faces, cleft chins, thin, precise mustaches. Full regalia, both of them smiling. Determination in the sultan’s eyes. Despite the show of perfect white teeth, discomfort in his brother’s.
Milo printed, kept surfing. female Scandinavian murder victim u.s.
A young woman from Goteborg missing three years seemed promising. Inge Samuelsson had worked as a bar hostess in various European and Asian cities, tried Las Vegas, vanished. But the final citation was happy news: She’d shown up in New Zealand, living on a commune, tending sheep.
“Lucky her,” said Milo. “South Pacific, plus all that lanolin.”
The phone rang. Sean Binchy said, “Hey, Loot, finally got employment records out of Beaudry. They really stonewalled until I threatened to go to the press, call them Constructiongate.”
“Creative, Sean.”
“I was actually joking, but they bit. A couple of suits went into an office and they must’ve called a lawyer because they came out announcing the gag agreement didn’t apply to subcontractors, they’d give me names when they found them but it would take a while, there was no central list. I said you guys do government projects, I’ve got friends at INS, they’re pretty interested in illegals working construction. And they went back to check again and said, ‘Guess what, we do have a list.’ Problem is, they keep all their old records in Costa Mesa. I’m heading there right now, but with traffic, it’s going to be a while.”
“Time for some ska punk, Sean.”
“Pardon?”
“Play a CD, go back to your roots. It’ll lighten the journey.”
“I’ve got a bunch of downloads. Third Day, MercyMe, Switch-foot. That’s all faith-based, Loot.”
“I could use some faith right no
w, Sean.”
Milo returned to the screen, broadened his search to female victims throughout Europe, had plodded through a nonproductive list when Delano Hardy stuck his head in and handed him a message slip. “Showed up in my box.”
“Thanks, Del.”
“Why I get your stuff is beyond me, we’re nowhere near each other alphabetically.”
“It’s happened before?”
“Last week,” said Hardy. “Bunch of solicitations for those fictitious charities pretend to be raising money for cops and firemen. Those, I tossed.”
Evidence Page 13
