* * * *
A suicide gets worked like a homicide until you're sure it isn't. The pleasant darkness had been replaced by the glare of work lights and headlights and the murmur of romantic radio had been supplanted by the hiss and chatter of police two-ways.
Sheriff's Search and Rescue had brought in their Dodge deuce-and-a-half with the heavy lift A-frame. A regular wrecker wouldn't have had the hundred-and-fifty-foot reach to get to the bottom of the ravine. They were walking the hook down to the demolished Golden Hawk as the lab and coroner's crews finished up at the crash site.
Assistant Coroner Michael O'Doul wheezed his way over the edge of the turnout followed by a couple of deputies carrying a sheet-wrapped form on a stretcher. Miss Dorothy Kurtz, white female adult, age thirty-two, blond, green eyes, 5'3", approximately 130 pounds, former resident of Santa Monica.
I'd found her purse in the wreck. There had been no suicide note.
Mortuary Mike's beefy features were streaked with sweat and dust and he had grass seeds stuck in his moustache.
"What do you think, man?” I asked
"It won't be official until she's posted,” he replied, “but eyeballing it, I'd say death by asphyxiation from a crushed larynx."
I nodded. “It probably happened when she did the piledriver into the wash at the bottom of the slope. You could see where the upper arc of the steering wheel caught her right across the throat."
"The car didn't roll or torch, that's something anyway,” Mike mused. “She was a real good-looking woman."
Mortuary Mike had a somewhat different view of the fairer sex. Most of the girls he met were on the quiet side.
A couple of blue serge suits crossed to where the deputies were preparing to load the body into the ambulance. “Hold the body here for a minute, O'Doul. We got somebody coming up to make a positive ID."
"You got a relative?” I asked.
"Nah, a boyfriend. A Dr. Ned Freemont. He interns at the hospital where she worked."
"Does this Dr. Freemont stand about five eleven with dark hair and does he drive a new Pontiac ragtop?” I asked.
These guys were Homicide Detectives, capital H, capital D, while I was just a pathetic little silver badge working drugs & juvenile for Metro intelligence. I should have genuflected, but the mood wasn't on me.
"Yeah, Pulaski, he does. He also admits meeting the girl up here tonight. But he's also got a solid alibi. At the time the lady was taking her high dive he was sitting in a cocktail lounge on Melrose in front of a swarm of witnesses. We've checked and the bartender remembers him. We've also talked to the other couples who were up here and their stories all match with yours and his. It's a suicide."
I glanced at the sheet-wrapped shape on the stretcher. “Yeah, I guess so."
Still...
Lisette hovered at the edge of the light pool, listening intently. Her hair was ordered, her lipstick touched up, and there wasn't a hint that her lingerie was still wadded up under Car's front seat.
Well, hardly a hint anyway.
The shorter and uglier of the blue suits openly ogled her unconfined curves. “By the way, Pulaski,” he said, leering in word and deed, “just what were you doing up here tonight?"
If he was hoping for a maidenly blush and a lowering of the eyes, he was shopping at the wrong store. The Princess had never been embarrassed over anything she'd ever done, up to and including planning a mob hit on her own stepfather. “He was being the living end, darling,” she replied, snorting Fatima smoke. “The absolute living end."
Short and ugly lost his leer and his taller partner screwed his puss into something resembling a grin. Heck, who was I to argue?
At that moment, a familiar Pontiac Bonneville pulled off the highway and drew in behind the row of sheriff's cruisers and emergency vehicles. The convertible's top was up now.
Behind us, the winch on the lifter truck started to moan and chatter.
A uniformed deputy led Dr. Ned Freemont over to where we were standing. I recognized the dark hair, not so carefully styled now, and the expensive sports coat. The intern was boyishly handsome but trying to look older. The late Miss Kurtz might have had a good five years on him. An interesting combo. And you could sense this wasn't any kind of struggling young medical student. He was coming from money, heading into money. He looked shook and his college-grad features were darkening under his next-day's beard.
We did the ritualistic flashing of the tin and I let the homicide guys make the equally ritualistic apologies for getting the doctor out at this hour. Then came the request to have a look under the sheet.
She looked even older. They usually do dead.
Freemont gritted his teeth. “Yes, that's Dorothy."
The lead homicide man gave Mike O'Doul the nod to load up. “I hope you understand we've got some questions to ask, Doctor. We found your name in the young woman's address book and several ... personal pieces of correspondence from you in her purse. Deputy Pulaski has also identified you as being up here and speaking with Miss Kurtz shortly before her death. Do you have anything to say about that?"
His face twisted. “Only that this mess was my fault. Dorothy ... Miss Kurtz called my house earlier this evening. She asked, demanded, that I meet her at this overlook. We'd come here before. It was a favorite place for her."
"You had a relationship with Miss Kurtz?"
Freemont nodded. “We worked the same shift at Hollywood Receiving Hospital and we'd dated off and on for a while. It was just casual, from my point of view anyway. But Dorothy saw it differently. When I saw things were getting too serious, I tried to break it off, but she didn't take it well. She'd developed this fixation ... about us. About our getting married...."
He glanced at the sheet-wrapped body sliding into the back of the big Buick ambulance. “It was my fault. I never should have let it happen."
"Did she ever give you a hint she was planning on wasting herself, Doc?” Crude on my part, yeah, but I was curious to see how he'd take it.
He just looked at me, suffering like a basset hound. “No! Of course not! If she had I'd have done things differently! I'd have gotten her professional help! As it was, I came up here tonight to tell her, once and for all, it was over, that marriage just wasn't in the books! Dorothy became upset, frenzied, but I swear to God she never said a word about suicide."
The Princess and I swapped thoughtful glances. In Lisette's outburst of erotic snoopiness, she'd turned our radio off to see if we could hear anything from the interior of the Golden Hawk. If anyone had been flipping out, they'd been damn quiet about it.
"There didn't seem to be any reason to draw it out further,” Freemont continued. “I had my say and I left. I was feeling pretty lousy about the situation and I stopped for a couple of drinks on the way home. I'd just gotten back to my place when the sheriff's office called."
He gestured vaguely after the departing ambulance. “I swear, Officers, I never expected ... imagined this!” His voice broke. “I would have done something ... helped her!"
"These things happen, Doctor,” the senior homicide man said. “You might as well go on home. You'll be required to appear and testify at the coroner's inquest. You'll be notified as to the time and location."
"Thank you, Officers.” He got his voice back under control. “You'll have my full cooperation."
He squared his shoulders manfully and walked back to the Bonneville.
"That's it?” I said as he pulled away. “You're not taking this Clyde in for a shakedown?"
"Why the hell make more trouble for him or us?” the senior dick replied. “He's being straight up about the whole thing. He was going with a squirrelly dame, he broke it off, and she took a high dive. It won't be the first time."
"I know. That's what's bothering me!” I snapped back. “Am I the only one here getting the feel we're reading from a friggin’ script?"
The homicide man looked annoyed. “Look, was this guy anywhere near the scene when the death occurred?"
&n
bsp; "No."
"Was anyone near the Kurtz woman's car before it went off the edge?"
I could see where this was heading. “No."
He had a point. I might have been, uh, distracted, during the time frame leading up to the woman's death, but during the critical couple of minutes immediately before the Studebaker had gone over the edge I could testify that nobody had gone near it.
"Furthermore, Pulaski, you yourself said the car's engine was running and when you went down to the wreck, you found the transmission set in drive. The car wasn't pushed off the cliff, it was driven off. Right? And Kurtz was the only person in the vehicle."
"Yeah."
"Okay. We don't have opportunity or means. Freemont was nowhere near the death car at the time of the wreck. Nor was anyone else, as you yourself can swear to."
"How about motive?” I protested. “The victim was giving the primary suspect grief over their breakup. That's been solid for homicide plenty of times."
"It's been solid for suicide, too, Deputy." The dick was pulling rank now. “We've got no evidence of anything other than a gaga offing herself over her boyfriend. Until we do, that's it!"
Punctuating his statement, the lift truck heaved the hulk of the Studebaker up and over the edge of the ravine, the wreck crumpled like an ivory and gold paper bag. A number of the responding units were checking themselves back into service and the detective team headed for their own car. “Tell you what, Pulaski,” the shorter and uglier of the pair called over his shoulder, “if you're so worried about it, we'll let you handle the cleanup. Maybe you can find yourselves a clue."
I muttered a reply involving warm exhaust pipes under my breath.
Lisette dropped her cigarette butt to the ground, grinding it out under the toe of her pump. “Kevin, may I ask a dumb question?"
"Be my guest."
"Is there any chance this could have been an accident? Could her foot have slipped on the brake or something and she went over the edge without meaning to?"
I shrugged. “Anything's possible. But she wasn't all that close to the edge, she was back a good twenty feet and there's no slope to the turnout. Besides, the transmission had been shifted into drive. I checked that myself. The car went off the edge under power."
She frowned as we studied the ruined Golden Hawk. The frame was too badly wrenched for towing. They'd need a flatbed to haul it to county impound.
"It just seems funny the way this car just ... dribbled over the edge,” the Princess continued. “Say this woman had worked herself into a state of suicidal hysteria. When she made up her mind to finally kill herself, wouldn't she have, you know, floored it, launching herself into the canyon?"
"You'd think so. But suicides are essentially screwball. It's hard to say what one of them might do."
The circle of lights in the night had grown smaller. Pretty much only the hoist crew and the forensics people were left and the lab guys were packing up their gear. One of them, a balding, heavyset man in chinos and a windcheater, ambled in our direction. “The dicks left you in charge of the crime scene, deputy,” he said. “You want a cast of the death car's tire tracks or should we bother?"
I stubbed a boot toe into the brick-solid hardpan. “I doubt there'll be any tracks to lift...” I looked around and my voice trailed off.
The unmarked homicide car had been backing out to the road, its headlights playing across the overlook. Now there hadn't been any rain in L.A. for over two weeks, just sunny, eighty-degree chamber-of-commerce weather, dig it? The ground of the turnout was baked pale dry, all except for one dark moisture stain over where the Studebaker had been parked.
I mean, it might be no big deal. There could be a hundred innocent reasons for something to have been spilled there. But it was there, right where Dorothy Kurtz's death ride had started.
"Swing one of those work lights over here."
I crossed to the patch of damp soil. It covered a couple of square feet. And there was a tire track in it, a partial at any rate. But the tread pattern was blurred in a funny way.
My first suspicion had been brake fluid, but it wasn't. It was plain old water, and evaporating rapidly in the warm night. I dabbed a fingertip into the mud and tasted. There was neither the metallic taint of rust nor the sweetness of antifreeze. It hadn't come from a radiator. Nor was the Golden Hawk air-conditioned, so it wasn't condenser drip.
I spat out the test and stood up. Okay, lay it out. The Hawk had been parked right ... here. I could see a couple of oil drops from its engine, the lubricant dark and not yet dust-dulled. I marked off the parking spot, scraping with the heel of my boot.
I was being watched. The Princess had followed me over and the lab guys and the crane crew. The Pontiac Bonneville had sat over ... here, close alongside, just about the swing of a car door away. It had marked its territory with a drip from its crankcase as well. I added its outline to my reconstruction, then I studied how the positions related.
Okay, that put the water stain on the right side of the Studebaker, about between the passenger door and the right rear wheel well. The tire track would have been from the right rear tire. And didn't the water stain trail off toward the edge of the overlook in a funny way?
"Photograph this,” I ordered. “Closeups and areas. And make a plaster cast of the track."
I stepped back, making room for the lab men and my own thoughts. What else might still be here?
Cigarette butts. The two cigarettes I'd seen Dorothy Kurtz light. There they both were, smoldered out on the gravel, Marlboro filter tips with lipstick marks.
Just the two.
I strode back to the hulk of the Golden Hawk, pausing to grab a flashlight from the tool crib of the hoist truck.
They'd pried open the driver's door of the Studebaker and now I forced it open again, leaning inside the coupe's distorted interior. Panning the light around, I found half a dozen unsmoked smokes on the floorboards and the silver cigarette case they'd spilled from. I pulled open the dashboard ashtray and found that Dorothy Kurtz was one of those people Smokey the Bear hates, a butt flipper. The ashtray hadn't been used recently.
Only two cigarettes. She might have run out of fuel for her purse lighter but the dash lighter was still in its socket. I'd been acquainted with Dorothy Kurtz long enough to know she chain-smoked under stress. And after her blowup with Freemont she'd sat in this car for a long time, but she hadn't reached for another cigarette.
What else had been funny? I sprawled across the bucket seats. Forget that taste of paradise you'd been enjoying, Pulaski, and relive those bits and pieces of the outside world you could recall. Replay the film in slow motion. What else had or hadn't happened?
Dome light!
When Dr. Freemont had climbed into the Golden Hawk the first time, the dome light had switched on automatically, like it was supposed to. But when he'd gotten out, it hadn't.
I rolled on my back and played the flashlight up at the ivory-colored strip of plastic inset in the roof liner. “Hey, somebody get me a pair of lab gloves and a screwdriver, a small Phillips-head!"
The others were clustering around the car now, peering through the broken windows. The balding guy in the windcheater thrust the gloves and the screwdriver in through the door.
Pulling on the thin rubber gloves, I carefully backed the tiny screws out of the light frame. It came free and I set the light cover aside.
The little light bulb was missing from its socket. Someone had wanted to do something around this car that required total darkness, something he didn't want the witnesses he knew would be there to be able to see.
There were traces of aluminum powder around the interior of the wreck.
"Who's the latent prints guy?"
My friend in the windcheater leaned in the driver's door again. “That's me."
"How did you cover the car's interior?"
"I dusted the door handles, steering wheel, and dashboard, the standard stuff, and I lifted two outstanding sets of fresh prints. Probably th
e woman's and the doctor's but we still have to match them against exemplars."
"How about the brake release and the gearshift lever?"
"All I got were smears there. Nothing clear."
"Could they have been wiped?"
He shrugged awkwardly. “Hard to say."
I pointed at the dome light assembly. “Did you dust this?"
"No. I didn't think anyone would have had a reason to touch it."
"Somebody did. Dust it now, inside the mount and out."
I squirmed out of the wreck, thinking hard. Okay, you son of a bitch, how'd you do it and where would you do it? You'd have to work fast. You'd have only seconds and you wouldn't want attention, either then or later. Run that mental filmstrip one more time.
I circled around to the car's passenger door. Hunkering down, I played the flashlight beam into the narrow crack between the door skin and frame.
And right there, at the bottom door angle, a little tiny bit of white fuzz. Standing, I wrenched on the door handle. It was jammed.
"Get me a wrecking bar! I gotta get this open."
I had all the help I needed. Crowbars slammed into the crack in the doorframe and strong men heaved. The door cracked and squealed wide, protesting.
A little piece of string fell out on the ground, about three inches long. One end had been knotted several times, the other was frayed from a fresh break. It went straight into an evidence envelope.
"Okay, I want light on the edge of the drop-off, aimed downslope, right where the car went over! All we got!"
Generator cables were hauled across, the work arcs were hogged into position, and everyone grabbed a big hand lantern or a five-cell, even Lisette.
It was a seventy-degree, soft-earth slope, held in place by cheat grass and spiky California holly. You could see where the Golden Hawk's wheels and belly pan had torn down through the tinder-dry ground cover and you had to thank God there hadn't been a stone to strike a spark.
Digging the heels of my boots into the crumbling soil, I followed the track of the dying Studebaker, sliding down a few feet, stopping, then playing my flashlight into the brush, looking for what had to be there to make it all work.
EQMM, July 2007 Page 13
