by Lynn Bohart
“Is the captain in?”
“Yeah, he’s in with the mayor. I think the governor has even weighed in. They want this all wrapped up soon.”
Giorgio rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, good luck with that. These aren’t fresh kills. We’re going to have to dig for clues.” He grimaced when he realized what he’d said. “Sorry. No pun intended. While I go see the captain, I want you to go to public records. We know the Martinellis owned the Pinney House from 1955 until 1968. I want to know who owned it for the ten years before the Martinellis moved in and also up until the present day. And I want to know about any building permits or digging permits issued for that property during that time period.”
McCready nodded. “Will do.”
Giorgio grabbed a notepad off his desk and then stepped into the captain’s office.
Captain Alvarez was sitting behind the desk, while Mayor Brunwell had stuffed his stocky frame into a captain’s chair facing the captain. Brunwell considered himself a fashionista and liked to dress in black pin-striped suits with brightly colored silk ties. Today the color was crimson to match the handkerchief in his pocket.
“Joe,” Captain Alvarez said, when Giorgio poked his head in. “C’mon in. You know the mayor,” he said, gesturing stiffly to the man in the chair.
“Good to see you, Joe,” Brunwell said. “You’ve got your work cut out for you on this one.”
“Have a seat, Joe,” Captain Alvarez said, indicating a second chair.
Giorgio sat down, acutely aware of the nervous energy in the room. He glanced at the mayor, who was shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
“Joe,” the captain began, “what do we know so far?”
Giorgio brought them up-to-date on the ten bodies they’d found, and the two men listened quietly. But when he mentioned the M.E.’s speculation that the women had been tortured, the mayor’s face flushed to match his tie.
“What do you mean?” he blurted.
“The medical examiner noted that some of the bones had multiple knife cuts, as if the person had been repeatedly stabbed. But the stabbings were in places that wouldn’t have been life threatening. And…some of the fingers and toes had been severed.” Giorgio paused and glanced at the captain.
“When the girl was dead, you mean?” the mayor said, with an encouraging nod of his head.
Mayor Brunwell’s presence had a tendency to make people uncomfortable. He had a curt manner and liked to jump to conclusions. Like now.
“We don’t know that yet,” Giorgio said carefully.
The mayor got up and went to the window, his hand searching his pocket. When he found his handkerchief, he pulled it out and held it to his mouth. The captain watched the mayor but didn’t say anything.
“God in heaven,” the mayor murmured from the window. “Between this and what happened at the monastery, Sierra Madre is going to be known as the murder capital of the Los Angeles basin. No one will want to move here.”
“Are these murders connected to the Lisa Farmer case, Joe?” the captain asked, redirecting the conversation.
He was tapping a pencil on his desk, something he did whenever he was processing information.
“I don’t know for sure,” Giorgio replied. “But we found one of Lisa Farmer’s earrings in a tin box that was found hidden in the wall of the basement. Her mother gave her the earrings on the afternoon the day she went missing. So, either she was in the home on the night of her murder, or whoever murdered her is connected to the Martinelli family.”
Both men seemed to freeze in place and just stared at him.
“But you don’t know that for a fact?” the mayor almost stuttered. “They can’t be connected,” the mayor stated flatly, returning his handkerchief to his pocket. “If they were, Lisa Farmer would have been buried on the property, just like the others. But instead her body was found blocks away.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know yet,” Giorgio said.
“Then let’s not waste any time,” the mayor snapped, moving toward the door.
Both the captain and Giorgio stood up, as the mayor stopped and turned.
“The Governor called me at home this morning,” he said. “He offered his help, which I can tell you I don’t want unless it’s absolutely necessary. The last thing we need is to have some other law enforcement agency butting in.” He paused and turned to look directly at Giorgio. “And let’s not put out any speculation about the Martinelli family. While they don’t live here anymore, they are still a prominent family in Pasadena. I don’t want to ruffle feathers before we have something concrete.”
Giorgio winced, thinking he’d already ruffled many of those feathers and would ruffle as many more as he had to in order to get to the truth.
“We’ll tread lightly,” the captain said. “We’ll schedule a press conference for this afternoon. Will you be there?”
“Yes, of course,” Brunwell said. He regarded them for a moment and then left the room, taking the negative energy with him.
“He’s not cut out for this sort of thing,” the captain said with a sigh.
“Who is?” Giorgio replied.
Captain Alvarez turned to Giorgio. “Okay, tell Sam to schedule a press conference for four o’clock. And, Joe, I want you there, too.”
Giorgio returned to his desk and had just sat down when his phone rang. He picked it up and was surprised when Detective Abrams greeted him.
“Our M.E. ruled Montgomery’s death a homicide,” Abrams reported. “No surprise there. He’d been injected with a large dose of Fentanyl right into his carotid artery. It’s an analgesic. And guess what? It’s exactly what they found in the syringe we found in the gutter. But no clear fingerprints.”
“Wow,” Giorgio murmured. He sat back. “Any news on the van?”
“Yeah, a neighbor saw a van pull towards the curb as it turned the corner and saw the driver toss something out the window. He didn’t get the license plate number, but was sure they were California plates. So it looks like you were right. Whoever did this drove into town.”
“Any more about the driver?”
“Same description as before. But I went back out and interviewed the sisters again. They remembered that the van wasn’t a passenger van. It was one of those box-shaped commercial vans.”
“So what’s your next move?” Giorgio asked.
“I have someone calling gas stations along I-5 to see if we can get a hit on where he might have stopped for gas. Maybe he used a credit card. And we’re interviewing the neighbors whose homes border the parking lot and street. Maybe they saw something.”
“Sounds like you have it covered. Thanks for letting me know.”
“Anything new on your end?” Abrams asked.
Giorgio ran his fingers through his hair. “More like where to begin?”
He spent the next five minutes filling Abrams in on the new crime scene. Afterwards, he joined the others in helping to interview distraught relatives.
÷
Over the next two and a half hours, the duty officer managed the interview process like a triage nurse in a hospital emergency room. Giorgio took a quick break around 11:30 to grab a soda and stretch his legs. He came back to find an old man who had to be in his early nineties sitting at his desk. The man was dressed in gray slacks and a crisp white shirt. He wore glasses and was just wiping off the lenses when Giorgio stepped into the room.
“I’m Detective Salvatori,” Giorgio said, moving behind his desk.
The man looked up. “Oh, I’m…uh…Phil Carr. They told me to come on back. I’m here about my daughter.”
“Can I get you anything to drink?” Giorgio offered.
“No. Thank you. I was just wondering if…if,” he said and then stopped.
“If one of the bodies we found is your daughter,” Giorgio said.
The man nodded and Giorgio noticed a tear glistening in the corner of his eye. He took a deep breath and sat down.
“Why don’t you tell me about her?”
The old man raised a hesitant finger to his eye to wipe away the tear and then sighed. Giorgio noticed that his hand shook.
“Her name was Pat Carr. Patty,” he said, a sob getting stuck in his throat. “She disappeared back in 1963. She was twenty-one and had just gotten a job at the hospital. We only lived six blocks away, down on Mariposa Street. She would walk home every night after work. And one night…” He stopped and shifted his gray eyes to Giorgio’s, fifty years of pain etched into the folds of his face.
The nurse, Giorgio thought with alarm.
“And one night she didn’t come home,” Giorgio said.
Tears flooded his eyes. “No,” he murmured, shaking his head. “We never saw her again. The police said she probably ran away. Since she was over the age of consent, they wouldn’t do anything.”
“Had she ever run away before?” Giorgio asked.
“No,” Mr. Carr said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. “My wife and I married very young, but we doted on Patty. She was everything to us.”
“Was there a boyfriend in the picture?”
“No. Nothing like that. Patty always wanted to be a nurse. She was so excited about her new job. There was no reason for her to leave.”
“Mr. Carr, we won’t have any definitive information about these bodies until the medical examiner has had a chance to examine them. Is there anything you can tell us about Patty that might help? For instance, did she have any accidents growing up? Broken bones? Dental work? Any abnormalities?”
His eyes seemed to light up. “She broke her right ankle when she was in the seventh grade. She fell running down some steps.”
“Okay, that’s good,” Giorgio said. “I’ll let the examiner know. Anything else? What was she wearing the night she disappeared?”
“Her work outfit. A nurse’s uniform. And she wore glasses.”
The hairs on Giorgio’s neck bristled.
“Glasses?” he said.
“Yes. I have a picture,” Mr. Carr said, reaching into his pocket.
He pulled out an old picture and passed it over to Giorgio. Giorgio stared down at the picture of Pat Carr. She had short, dark hair and wore a nurse’s cap and glasses. It was the girl whose body was buried next to the tree, he was sure of it, and Giorgio’s skin went cold.
“May I keep this for now?” he asked with a slight waver to his voice. “I’ll be sure you get it back.”
The old man nodded. “She also wore her grandmother’s opal ring,” he said. “She just loved that thing. Do you think one of those bodies you found is my Patty?”
The ring raised additional hairs on the back of Giorgio’s neck. They had logged a small opal ring into evidence from the tarp that had encased the body by the tree.
Giorgio wanted to tell the old man, but he couldn’t yet. He had to let the facts come out naturally. Until then, he would have to make Mr. Carr wait.
“I don’t know,” he said with difficulty. “But I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as I have more information.”
“Please, Detective,” Mr. Carr said. “I’ve waited for over forty years. I need to know.”
Giorgio felt the pressure build in his chest. He pushed a yellow pad across the desk.
“Why don’t you give me a description of the ring and leave your contact information?”
When Mr. Carr had left, Giorgio sat back, staring at the picture of Patty and wondering what her last moments had been like. Had her killer made her cry for mercy? Had she been tortured and raped? Had she screamed out for her father, wondering why he didn’t come to rescue her?
Giorgio thought back to the night the man in the stocking cap had reached out and fondled Marie. If Grosvenor hadn’t been there, he could have grabbed her and been gone. Tony couldn’t have stopped him, and the thought churned Giorgio’s insides.
“I’m starving. Wanna get some lunch?” Rocky said from the doorway.
÷
The diversion was a welcome relief. They walked across the street to Mama’s Café, but it was filled with press people. They took a sharp turn and went to a pizza place around the corner instead.
“You’re pretty quiet,” Rocky said, fingering the napkin holder in a red leather booth.
Giorgio looked around to make sure they had privacy, but the place was nearly empty. “I think I just ID’d one of the girls.”
“Really?”
“It would have been the one buried under the tree,” Giorgio said, careful to keep his voice down. “They found an opal ring with her, a ring her grandmother gave her. And her father said she was a nurse. He showed me a picture and she was wearing glasses like the ones in that tin box.”
A young waitress came to take their orders. When she left, Rocky leaned into his brother.
“So, who was she?” he said quietly.
“A young girl named Patty Carr.”
Rocky’s eyes went wide. “Did you tell her father?”
“No. We’ll have to wait until the M.E. gives us more information. He described an ankle break – that might help us.”
“Detective,” a female voice chirped.
They both turned to find Mia Santana standing at the end of the table. Rocky glanced at Giorgio and slipped out of the booth.
“I have to hit the head. Be back in a minute.”
Abandoned by his brother, Giorgio turned to the reporter.
“What do you want, Ms. Santana? I don’t have any information on the bodies yet.”
“Oh, c’mon. You have an opinion. Are they connected to the Lisa Farmer case?”
The young reporter was only about five foot four and couldn’t have weighed more than 110 pounds, and yet had the tenacity of a combat veteran. He turned around to look for her cameraman, who was usually attached to her like an umbilical cord, but she was alone.
“We don’t know much of anything about them. The coroner has the remains and will let us know how they died and approximately when they died,” he said curtly.
She sat down in the booth across from Giorgio, uninvited. “Yes, but Ron Martinelli lived in that house and those bodies could have been buried during that time. If they were, then this is all connected to Lisa Farmer’s death.”
Giorgio sighed, reaching for his glass of water. “We don’t know that. Detective work can be slow and tedious. And most likely, the medical examiner won’t be able to give us an exact date as to when they went into the ground, anyway.”
“I know that,” she spat.
“Look, there will be a news conference this afternoon,” he said.
“No kidding?” she said bluntly. “Listen, I was hoping to get a scoop.”
“I don’t have a scoop,” he said in frustration.
“What about Jimmy Finn? We know he’s still alive. I tried to talk to him yesterday, but the manager wouldn’t give me access.”
Giorgio arched his eyebrows. “You’ve done your homework.”
“Yes, I have. I’m actually pretty good at what I do.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he said.
“But you don’t approve,” she said, a look of reproach in her eyes.
He shrugged. “It’s not that. I just have a job to do, and the press is always…interrupting me.”
“We have a job to do, too,” she said with all the confidence her twenty-plus years could muster. “So are you officially reopening the Lisa Farmer case?”
He sighed. “Let’s just say that at this point we’re not satisfied with the information we have.”
She had no way of knowing about Carson Montgomery’s death up in Seattle, Alex Springer’s death, or the earring. And he wasn’t about to tell her.
“Will you let me know if you do reopen the case?”
Her enthusiasm was palpable. Giorgio couldn’t help but admire her. She was young and ambitious and trying to make it in a big media market.
“Look,” he said. “If something breaks on the Pinney House case, I’ll let you know. But right now, we’re treating the two cases separately.”
/> “That’s great. Thanks. Here’s my card,” she said, passing it over. “That’s my cell phone. Day or night.”
He glanced at the card and then at her.
She couldn’t have been much older than Patty Carr was when she was killed. And like Patty Carr, Mia Santana was pretty and petite – just like all the victims found buried at the Pinney House.
“I’ll give you a call,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
After lunch, Giorgio made a quick trip to the Prairie Café to see Carson Montgomery’s son again.
“I’m sorry about your father,” Giorgio said when the man sat down. “I meant to come see you sooner, but…”
“That’s okay,” Monty said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I heard about the bodies you discovered yesterday.” He stared at the table a moment, his eyes glazed over. With a deep sigh, he said, “I never meant to put my dad in danger when I told you about the phone call.”
“You didn’t get your father killed,” Giorgio reassured him. “Whoever did this was in motion before you ever contacted me.”
That brought a glimmer of hope to his eyes. “You think so?”
“I know so,” Giorgio said.
He nodded. “I guess I was right, though. My dad knew something about that locker check – something he’d been carrying around for over forty years. And it finally got him killed.”
“It looks that way,” Giorgio said. “Monty, do you know anyone who owns a blue or gray van?”
He looked up. “Um…no. Not that I can think of.”
“Think hard. Have you seen a van like that lately? Maybe around your neighborhood or outside the café?”
He shook his head. “No. The detective from Seattle asked me that, too. I haven’t seen anything like that.”
“How about a Jeep Wrangler?”
He thought a moment and then shook his head.
“Well, your father was visited by someone driving a van the day he was killed. A young man wearing a blond wig came to see him – said he was your dad’s great nephew.”
Montgomery furrowed his brows. “Like I told Detective Abrams, I don’t know of any great nephews in the family.”
