by Steve Gannon
Minutes later I found the house’s electrical panel below a coat rack in the laundry. Someone had tripped every breaker. Again using my pen, I flipped them back on. With each click I could hear some distant part of the house coming alive: the refrigerator in the kitchen, a heating fan in the garage, the startup chirps of a computer in the den.
Suddenly I froze. An eerie thumping was coming from deeper in the house.
Again.
Someone was still inside.
3
Slipping out my Beretta automatic, I eased down the hallway, staying close to the wall. I listened.
The living room.
The odd thumping abruptly stopped. I considered requesting backup. Deciding against it, at least for the moment, I edged into the living room, my flashlight and weapon held in a double-handed grip.
The sound resumed. I crabbed deeper into the dim room, trying to pinpoint the noise.
The couch?
Bending, I peered under a large, L-shaped couch. The thumping increased. Still gripping the Beretta, I swept the flashlight beam along the floor. Caught in the light, two red eyes glowed from the darkness. Startled, I jumped back, almost knocking over a lamp. A moment later a fat, tan-and-white rabbit with long floppy ears hopped out, sat, and thumped the floor several times with a hind leg.
I let out a disgusted sigh, glad I hadn’t called for backup. Some things you never live down, and this would have been one of them. “What are you doing here, little fella?” I asked softly. “Nearly scared the crap out of me.”
As if in apology, the bunny took several inquisitive hops closer, then drooped its ears and regarded me solemnly. Apparently deciding I presented no threat, the rabbit then indulged in a quick preening, licking its fur with the self-absorbed fastidiousness of a cat. I watched in amazement.
After completing its cleaning, the rabbit sat up on its hind legs, sniffed once, and stared at me again. Tentatively, I reached out and stroked the soft fur of the rabbit’s head. At my touch, the animal lowered its entire body, splaying its ears like tent poles.
“I’ll be damned,” I said, slipping my hands under the animal’s body. “Come on, Buster. Can’t have you hoppin’ all over the crime scene now, can we?”
By way of response, the animal remained perfectly still, allowing me to carry it back to the laundry room. Once in its cage, it hopped to a food cup inside and began eating. “I’ll be damned,” I repeated, closing the cage door.
Leaving the rabbit to its meal, I returned to the base of the stairs and headed up, skirting the stains on the treads. Upon reaching the landing, I saw three closed doors down a hallway to the right. A set of double doors stood open to the left, leading to the master bedroom. I moved left, deciding to see the worst of it first.
I hesitated at the bedroom doorway, hair rising on the back of my neck. Murky light from the street filtered in through closed drapes, illuminating the large room in shades of gray. A man and a woman lay side by side on a king-sized bed, their eyes staring up with the unmistakable finality of death. Wraps of elastic bandages covered their mouths. Blood-soaked blankets hid their bodies from their necks down. More crimson smears marked the headboard; a dark pool of blood had congealed on the carpet.
I’ve worked homicides for a major part of my years on the Force. With few exceptions, most murders I’ve encountered have been simple, garden variety killings: drive-bys, domestic fights that escalated to a fatality, drug-related deaths, and so forth. Stupid, ugly, cruel and occasionally brutal crimes-but at least on some level understandable. “That fat bastard left the toilet seat up one time too many.” Like that. I knew this was different. Whoever had done this had taken his time. And he’d liked it.
Anyone who confronts gruesome realities on a regular basis eventually develops a method of coping. Mine is to shut off emotions I can’t afford to feel and concentrate on the forensic details of the crime. And that’s what I did now. Taking a deep breath, I entered the bedroom.
With the exception of the bodies, the room appeared undisturbed, with no sign of a struggle. The extinguished stumps of several candles were visible throughout-one on the dresser, another on a chest of drawers, a third on the nightstand beside a small black knife. Blood covered the knife blade. The adjacent candle, in its dying throes, had partially immersed the handle in wax.
As I moved into the room, I noticed a wet spot on the carpet, an oval stain the size of a watermelon. Though a spattering of blood surrounded it, another liquid appeared to have caused the main area of dampness.
Urine? Have SID get a sample, along with the blood.
Drag marks on the rug led from the stain to the bed. I knelt to examine them, surmising that one or possibly both of the Larsons had been moved, either before or after they’d been killed.
Was the killer compulsively neat? Or was he trying to hide something?
I moved farther into the room. As I approached the bed, I noted that someone had stepped in the blood-puddle near the woman, explaining the tracks on the carpet and stairs. Again I withdrew my camera and took shots of the bloody footprints, then moved closer. Not touching the bed, I leaned over. The man, a muscular individual in his early thirties, stared back, his eyes red rimmed and unseeing. A lattice of petechial lesions-burst blood vessels indicative of strangulation-mottled his cheeks and the conjunctivae of his eyes. I raised the comforter. A loop of rope encircled the man’s neck. A two-foot length of galvanized pipe had been inserted through the rope coil as a tightening device. Again, I inspected the man’s face.
Something wrong with his eyes…
Thick, hemorrhagic crusts rimmed the man’s orbits. I leaned closer. Abruptly, I realized what was wrong.
Charles Larson had no eyelids.
I glanced at the knife on the nightstand. Too big. Must’ve used something smaller. A pocket knife? Scissors? All at once I saw something I’d missed earlier. In the wax beside the knife, curling like pork rinds, were the man’s missing pieces of flesh.
With a chill, I resumed my inspection. Gently folding back the covers, I saw that the man’s arms had been bound behind his back. A ligature mark from a rope or something similar traversed his chest. Visible beneath the outer edge of one shoulder, a port-wine staining of the skin-caused by blood settling under the effect of gravity-had fixed in a pattern known as postmortem lividity. The staining was immutable once set. Puzzled, I again glanced at the drag marks on the carpet.
I took several more photos, then walked to the other side of the bed, avoiding the pool of blood.
As Officer Rodriguez had indicated, Susan Larson had once been beautiful. Now, shallow knife wounds marked her face and neck in a jagged pattern of slashes. As I’d done with the husband, I folded back the covers, feeling a slight resistance from the crusted blood. I inhaled sharply as the woman’s body came into view.
Angry double arcs, the livid pattern of individual tooth marks easily visible, tattooed her upper torso. Some had suck marks at the center; some did not. Tissue was missing from several areas where the bites went clean through. Deeper wounds, apparently made by a sharp-edged instrument, punctured her chest and abdomen.
Like her husband’s, the woman’s hands had been bound. They now rested at her sides, tags of rope still cutting into her wrists. I checked under the bed. Lengths of matching rope were tied to each of the roller posts, the ends now coiled on the floor like snakes. Longer lengths lay on the bed between the bodies.
I took one of the woman’s wrists in a gloved hand and raised it slightly, noting that rigor had begun. As I replaced the hand, I noticed a series of crescent-shaped cuts on her palm. I recognized them as self-inflicted fingernail wounds, indicating she had been alive-at least for at least part of it.
I took several more shots with my camera, shielding myself from the horror by mentally ticking off future elements of the investigation: Take saliva swabs and impressions of the bites. Semen swabs, too. If nothing else, they’ll help rule out the possibility of more than one killer. There’s a lot of
blood. Maybe he cleaned up afterward. Go through the bathrooms for blood and hair.
Carefully retracing my steps, I backed from the room, passing an antique oak dresser on the way. On top, beside the stump of a candle, sat the couple’s wedding picture. The groom in the photo appeared nervous and uncomfortable in his tux, but the lens had caught his bride in a moment of unconcealed joy. In her white satin gown, the woman in the silver frame bore little resemblance to the bloodied corpse on the bed. Next to the picture I noticed a tightly rolled ten-dollar bill. Using my flashlight, I illuminated the surface of the dresser, noting a fine dusting of powder. A careless swirl of finger marks ran through it.
The killer’s? Or were the Larsons into cocaine? Have SID check for prints and get an analysis on the powder. Maybe there’s a drug connection. Doubtful, but maybe.
After an unproductive search of the master bath, I proceeded down the hall. Along the way I inspected a small guest room, then a second bathroom displaying red smears on the toilet handle and tank. Upon reaching the end of the hall, I stood outside the final room. A sticker on the door proclaimed “Skateboarding Is Not a Crime.”
I opened the door and stepped inside. Toys and board games crammed the shelves of a bookcase to the right. A clutter of clothes lay nearby. Across from the door was a bunk bed. On the lower mattress, hands folded peacefully across his chest, lay a young boy wearing blue fleece pajamas. He appeared to be sleeping. I looked closer. A small black hole, as symmetrical as a ball bearing, marked the center of the child’s left temple.
I crossed the hardwood floor, stepping over a bunched-up rug. Leaning down, I examined the boy’s head wound. Stippling, powder burns, and a circular tissue-tear bordered the hole, indicating that the muzzle of the gun had been near or touching the boy’s skin when fired. No exit wound.
Small caliber. A twenty-two, maybe a twenty-five.
Examining further, I found dark fibers imbedded in the skin surrounding the entry lesion.
Steel wool from a homemade silencer?
Full rigor had stiffened the boy’s body. Lifting the child’s arms by his pajama sleeves, I pulled back the covers. Aside from the gunshot wound, the body seemed unmolested. But as I replaced the covers, I noticed a smear of red marking the comforter where the boy’s hands had rested. Again lifting the child’s stiffened arms, I inspected his palms. Jagged slashes covered the pale tissue, many continuing to the fingertips.
Not defense cuts. Something else…
I looked beneath the bed. A smear of red trailed across the dusty floor. The underside of the bed frame revealed more stains on the wire mesh supporting the mattress.
Unsuccessfully struggling to pinch off my feelings, I stared at the grim testimonial to the boy’s battle to survive. Without willing it, I pictured what must have happened. Terrified by the sounds coming from his parent’s bedroom, the boy had hidden under the bunk. Later, in the final moments of his life, he had cut his hands on the wire bed frame as he’d fought to keep from being pulled out. I wondered how long the boy had hidden there in the darkness, waiting for the killer to come.
After taking photos of the child’s body, I again attempted to disassociate myself from the brutality of the crime by concentrating on the investigation. Prints: Have SID check for latents on the electrical panel, wall switches, door knobs, knife, tourniquet pipe, candles, and the phone in the kitchen. They might be able to lift a latent from the severed eyelids, too. The killer did a neat job of it. If he wore gloves, he might have removed them to perform the excisions. Talk to the coroner about that. Hair and fibers: Take the bed sheets, sink traps and drains, and get comparison hairs and blood from the victims, the neighbor who entered, and anybody else who might have had a reason to come up here. Blood and fluids: Sample all areas. Maybe some came from the killer. And don’t forget the wet spot by the door.
Later we would do a complete search of the house, the yard, and the adjacent street area. It was a laborious procedure that often entailed getting down on one’s hands and knees and using magnifying devices, cameras, even a vacuum. Although the results rarely helped, it had to be done. As I finished my inventory, I realized something was bothering me. Everyone in Los Angeles locks the front door at night.
Why had the Larsons left theirs open? Or had they?
I checked my watch. Thirty minutes had elapsed since I had first arrived at the scene. Glancing out a bedroom window, I noticed the SID crime wagon pulling to the curb. Down the street I could still see the Channel Two news van I had noticed earlier. With renewed exasperation, I also noticed that Lauren Van Owen, a reporter who’d made her mark by following the Los Angeles crime beat, had positioned herself outside the crime-scene tape. Although granting that the attractive reporter was a competent journalist, possibly one of the best, I objected to Ms. Van Owen’s penchant for taking liberal, and in my opinion, unwarranted journalistic swipes at the LAPD whenever she got the chance. She and I had locked horns more than once, with me usually winding up on the short end of the exchange-at least in the edited portion of her interviews that appeared on the five o’clock news.
After reentering the hall, I descended the stairs and stepped out the front door. The coastal fog had lowered even more, and a bone chilling mist now hung in the air. As I reached the walkway, Van Owen, microphone in hand and cameraman in tow, made a beeline in my direction.
“Detective Kane!”
Ignoring her, I strode down the flagstones toward a group of men gathered beside the SID crime wagon. As I drew nearer, I spotted the blocky outline of Frank Tremmel, the criminalist who would be responsible for the collection and preservation of all trace evidence taken from the scene. Nearby stood a slightly stooped Asian whom I recognized as a technician from latent prints, and a third officer from the photo section.
“Detective Kane!” shouted the newswoman again. “Give us a minute?”
“Not right now, Van Owen,” I said.
“How many people were murdered?” she called, shadowing me the length of the crime ribbon, cameraman trailing behind.
“No comment. We haven’t even notified the next of kin.”
“Is it true that the circumstances of the murders are identical to those of a family killed last month in Orange County?”
“No comment.”
“Is this the work of the Candlelight Killer?”
Annoyed by her persistence, I turned. Van Owen stood her ground, her blue eyes assaying me calmly, an amused smile playing across her lips. Even in the mist she looked good-long legs, trim calves, strong, square shoulders-her trademark natural blond hair worn shoulder length despite the current convention that newswomen coif their hair short. “What’re you doing out here with us peons, Van Owen?” I asked with exaggerated politeness. “I thought you were a hotshot news anchor now.”
Over the past year Lauren had increasingly substituted as co-anchor on the five o’clock news, and last September she’d permanently moved up to that position. “I still take the juicy ones,” she replied. “Come on, Kane. How many victims were-”
“Damn, Van Owen, can’t you take a hint? We’re going to be making a statement as soon as we’ve got the facts and notified relatives. In the meantime, why don’t you-”
“Everybody else will be here by then,” Lauren broke in. “C’mon, give me something. It’s the work of the candlelight guy, isn’t it?”
It has always irritated me that reporters routinely glorify killers by tagging them with pet names like the “Hillside Strangler,” or the “Midnight Stalker,” or apparently one last month in Orange County, the “Candlelight Killer.” As far as I’m concerned, they’re all scum. “I don’t know yet,” I said, recalling the candles in the Larson’s bedroom and hoping there was no connection. “Now, how about backing off and letting me do my job?”
“Of course, Detective,” said Lauren with a disarming smile. Then, turning toward the house but watching me from the corner of her eye, she lowered her microphone and unbuttoned her camel-colored jacket. “Think you�
��ll catch him?” she asked, taking a deep breath that caused her breasts to lift against the fabric of her blouse.
“Yeah. Sooner or later, we’ll get this maggot,” I answered. I turned on my heel and started walking. “I only wish we could close cases as fast as certain reporters find out about them.”
Lauren matched my steps. “Maggot,” she mused. “I like it.”
“Glad you approve,” I muttered under my breath, realizing with renewed irritation that the cameraman was still shooting.
Noticing my glance at the camera, Lauren signaled her associate to shut down. Then, “Hey, Kane? When you’re done here, how about giving me a couple minutes over a cup of coffee? There’re some things I want to run by you concerning the Orange County murders.”
“Sorry, Van Owen, I’m booked. Maybe I can squeeze you in later. Say, sometime in the next century.”
“Thanks,” Lauren laughed. “I look forward to it.”
Officer Morrison had just finished recording the SID team’s names and serial numbers when I walked up. Tremmel was the first to notice my arrival. “Hey, Dan,” he said. “You’re lookin’ uglier than ever. How’s Kate?”
“Fine, Frank. How ’bout Millie? Still hoping to wake up someday and find herself married to a skinny cop?”
“Yeah,” the stocky criminalist answered. “She’s got me on a new diet, one of those programs where they send you all your food. It’s only been a few months since I started, and I’ve already lost two hundred and ninety-one dollars.”
“Good work, Frank,” I said. “Keep it up.”
“Right,” he said. Then, indicating the technicians with him, “This is Ed Noda and Vern Harrison.”
After shaking hands with the other two members of the forensic unit, I gave them my initial assessment of the scene, indicating specific areas I wanted covered. Then, as the three-member team started toward the house, I called to Morrison. “Hey, kid. You get that info I wanted from DMV?”
