Motive

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Try Bio-Vac.”

  “Hope they’re the most reasonable,” said Forbisher. “I don’t think I should have to pay a dime but no sense fighting City Hall.” Brief glance at the diamond window. “I don’t even want to know what they’re doing back there. My wife needs to get back to normal or my life will be a living hell.”

  Milo lit up a panatela, blew out enough smoke to envelop his head for several seconds, rematerialized and led me into the backyard. Wafts of cheap tobacco didn’t help. Neither did being outdoors. The stench was overpowering, a stomach-churning, brain-searing reek that saturated the ten yards separating the main house from the structure that still looked like a garage.

  Jack Forbisher was right about one thing: Once you smelled decomp you never forgot it. Despite a steady breeze from the west, my eyes began to water. Milo dragged hard on his cigar. He turned and I spotted sheen around his nostrils. Lining his nasal passages with Vapo-Rub. He offered me the tube. I used it and it helped, but not much.

  A thousand bucks a month had gotten Francesca DiMargio a hundred fifty square feet of what real estate agents call “open plan.” The space was now filled with techs wearing white hazmat suits and gas masks. Most worked steadily. One figure stood to the side, doing nothing. He waved.

  Milo said, “Sean. He caught the call.”

  Binchy’s arms dangled at his side. Relaxed, nothing bothers him.

  Plenty to get bothered about, here.

  The thing that had once been Francesca DiMargio was a brown/​black/​green/​maroon putrid mass dissolving onto the polished cement floor at the mouth of a one-step kitchenette. Tooth and bone flashed white beneath sloughing skin. Metallic glints, at least seven that I counted, indicated the body piercings. Hard to say where they’d been located originally because so much skin had collapsed and oozed.

  Four festering limbs had been positioned in a way that evoked Kathy Hennepin. So did the use of a bedsheet to completely cover the body. What remained of the linen had been pushed aside so that the photographer could snap and pop.

  Near the corpse was a makeshift table fashioned from a giant electrical spool laid on its side, the kind used to feed wire for massive projects. Atop the raw wood surface was more decaying matter.

  On dishes.

  Welcome to dinner.

  Impossible to say what this last meal had consisted of. The crockery bearing it was white just like Frankie DiMargio’s teeth and bones where they weren’t streaked with oozing, clotted matter. The same went for silvery utensils and red glass goblets.

  A bottle of wine on the counter was obtrusively clean.

  Milo read the label. “Prosecco. Cheap.”

  The techs never let up but all of them kept their distance from the body when possible.

  Milo motioned to the nearest tech. His suit and mask evoked a Star Wars stormtrooper.

  Resonant rasp: “Yes, Lieutenant?”

  “Any idea what the food is, yet?”

  “I think I spotted some kind of fish—white, flaky. Or maybe it’s chicken. Maybe also peas, at least some kind of little round green thingies. I mean I hope they’re peas but I’m not committing ’cause what I thought was rice turned out to be dead maggots.”

  “Think of that,” said Milo. “Cuisine strong enough to kill a maggot.”

  “You know how it is, sir. Sometimes the little buggers get overenthusiastic and sink in too deep and can’t wiggle out. The lucky ones become flies.”

  “Survival of the fittest maggot,” said Milo. “The essence of police work.”

  Asthmatic laughter through the mask’s activated carbon filter. “Anything else, Lieutenant?”

  “A time of death guess would help. I won’t hold you to it.”

  “It would have to be a long time for this level of decomp, Lieutenant. For sure, days, maybe a week. Or even weeks, temperature’s not too high, the rate could’ve been slow. But I’m really not the guy to ask, you’ll have to find out from the coroner.”

  “How about cause?”

  “This much mess?”

  “No obvious wounds.”

  Trooper’s white chest heaved. “The way it looks, she’s one big wound.”

  “Don’t suppose you noticed a computer.”

  “Not so far. And there’s no closet space plus we checked the drawers, so I’d say no.”

  “How about a diary detailing who the bad guy is, including physical description, address, telephone number, and political preferences?”

  More rasp. “Something else I’m surprised hasn’t shown up, Lieutenant: No cell phone. Although maybe we’ll find it, with all the crap she collected, you never know.”

  “The crap” was far too much thrift-shop and dozens of taxidermy specimens. Snakes baring fangs coiled around branches. Glass-eyed heads of wolves and foxes, sheep and cows, skunks and badgers stared at one another relentlessly. Gleaming jars on makeshift shelves held what looked to be fetal creatures in suspension. Added to all that were random animal parts, including an elephant’s foot serving as a repository for black silk flowers.

  Much of the preservation appeared past its prime, pelts flea-bitten and mangy, specimens closest to the body flecked with gore. The smell got the better of me and I ran out, retraced through the yard, sidled along two cars parked side by side in the driveway. The Forbishers’ bronze Cadillac CTS and a battered black Kia that had been Frankie DiMargio’s daily ride.

  Even back at the curb, my nostrils remained saturated. I was twenty feet up the block and chewing my fourth breath mint when Milo joined me.

  “You probably didn’t need that.”

  “Glad I saw it.”

  “Why?”

  “Seeing the way she lived.”

  “Meaning?”

  “People with unusual interests often find others who share their tastes. Frankie sounds like a loner but there were times she came home late, so some sort of socializing was going on. Maybe you’ll find a tight little social group that can enlighten you.”

  “Fellow formaldehyde freaks? Can’t wait.” He lit up another cigar. “All that dead stuff she collected. To me it’s like trivializing what I see every day.”

  I said, “Obviously, death holds no fascination for you. Same for kids growing up on farms, or in places like India where bodies are displayed openly. But our culture hides it and that can make it even more terrifying. For some people, manipulating specimens helps by simulating control.”

  He smoked. “Manipulation sounds like our bad boy. You see a suit like Fellinger hooking up with someone like Frankie?”

  “Affairs of the heart, there’s no telling.”

  “Seriously, Alex.”

  “I mean it. One thing Frankie had in common with Kathy Hennepin is shyness. Someone—even a suit—who could make her feel comfortable might have an advantage.”

  He took a few steps, reversed, returned. “The food, the whole staging thing. Seeing those specimens in there got me thinking. That’s what taxidermists do, right? Arrange bodies, create tableaus. What if Fellinger—or whoever—met Frankie through her hobby and decided she’d be his specimen?”

  “Whoever? You’ve got new doubts about Fellinger?”

  “Time to think gave me doubts. Nothing happened during surveillance and let’s face it, I’ve got nothing on him but theory.”

  He dropped what was left of the cigar, ground it out with his shoe. “Another family to talk to, fun-time—let me ask you, amigo, what that tech said, everything tastes like chicken. You think chickens say everything tastes like corn?”

  CHAPTER

  17

  By one thirty a.m., nothing new had emerged from Frankie DiMargio’s crime scene.

  Milo said, “I’ll notify her parents tomorrow, give ’em a few more hours before their world changes.”

  I said, “When?”

  “I’m thinking nine, ten. You free?”

  “Give me an hour to get ready.”

  “Putting on your game face? Mine never seems to fit.”

&n
bsp; He didn’t get in contact until just after one p.m., thick-voiced and wrung-out. Rather than sleep, he’d returned to watching Grant Fellinger’s house. Fellinger’s Challenger and the BMW probably driven by his wife remained in place until seven fifty-eight a.m. when Fellinger left his house and drove the Dodge back to his office in Century City.

  Moe Reed took over the watch, allowing Milo a brief stop at home in West Hollywood, where he showered, gobbled half a cold pizza and a generous square of cold baked ziti, while reading the paper. Sitting across from Dr. Rick Silverman, who breakfasted on fruit and Rice Krispies. While reading the paper.

  “Wall Street Journal for him, Times for me. Neither of us are great in the morning, this morning we’re grumpy as hell. Finally, he got paged from the E.R. and I’m about to leave when I see I need to change my shirt, got tomato sauce on it, and that pissed me off more than anything. You think it’s a subconscious blood thing? I chose Italian out of big-time empathy?”

  I said, “You’ve always liked pizza.”

  “There you go again. Doing your reality thing.”

  William and Clara DiMargio lived in an olive-green, one-story bungalow south of Pico and east of Overland. I waited ten minutes before Milo pulled up. He wore a gray suit that matched the sky, a chartreuse shirt, a tie the color of mud, the faithful desert boots, resoled for the umpteenth time. His hair was slicked and he’d shaved haphazardly, creating a grid of nicks at his jawline. His eyes were bloodshot, his head stooped.

  Three-hundred-plus homicides. Here we go again.

  A woman answered the door. Sixties, five three, black hair cut short, pretty face, small body swallowed up by a quilted blue housecoat.

  She said, “Yes?”

  “Mrs. DiMargio?”

  “That’s me, what is this?”

  Milo flashed his badge. Not the card; the card says Homicide. “Is Mr. DiMargio here?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s about your daughter Francesca. If we could come in, ma’am?”

  Clara DiMargio said, “Can I see that badge again?” But she stepped back, gripping the doorframe for support.

  A man’s voice said, “Clara?” just before its owner appeared. William DiMargio wasn’t much taller than his wife. Older than her or just aging faster, with frizzy white hair, eyelids surrendering to gravity, rough, weathered skin. An indifferently trimmed mustache spiked in all directions.

  “The police, Bill.”

  “What’s going on?” Bill DiMargio demanded. But he, too, made way for us.

  As always, Milo did his best. As always, it didn’t seem to matter.

  Clara DiMargio wailed and shook. Her husband held her at arm’s length as if he wanted to throw her away. Jut-jawed, eyes full of rage, spittle collecting at the corners of his lips as he mouth-breathed.

  I went to the kitchen and fetched water and a box of tissues, placed everything on the coffee table in front of the couple. The table was shaped like a lyre, pecan wood with tiny black freckles, resting on gilded griffon legs. A basket of wax fruit, a bronze nutcracker shaped like a crocodile, and a collection of framed photos crowded the surface.

  Most of the pictures were of conventional-looking people in their thirties—two couples, each with a pair of small children. In one picture, Clara and Bill stood among them. No one with tats and pierces.

  A single shot off to the left portrayed a cute young teenage girl who resembled Francesca Lynn DiMargio’s DMV photo if you factored out the blue-and-scarlet buzz cut, the snaky black neck tattoos, studs, hooks, and barbells inserted into eyebrows, nose, lips, and the tender space between lower lip and chin.

  Pierces everywhere but her ears. A shy girl shouting defiance with negative space?

  I studied the expression on her pre-modification face. Forced smile. Tense, preoccupied. Posing but still caught off guard.

  Clara DiMargio grew silent. Her husband removed his arm from her shoulder and scooted a few inches away.

  Milo said, “We’re so sorry for your loss, but if you could talk to us it might help find out what happened.”

  Bill said, “What happened is probably she lived like a freak and it got her.”

  His wife cried out, “Oh!” and used both hands to grab her own cheeks.

  “Like it matters now? Like she’s gonna get upset?”

  Clara howled. He set his mouth tighter and his mustache bristled.

  Milo said, “We’re open to any information you want to give.”

  Bill said, “She lived her own life, shut us out.”

  “Oh, God,” his wife whimpered.

  He shifted farther away. “Like that place she supposedly worked. Like it was a real job and we were supposed to be thrilled.”

  “Even Odd. You’ve been there?” said Milo.

  “Why would I? Being in a bookstore in a bad neighborhood at night is a job? Who buys books at night?”

  Clara dried her tears. “Frankie said people came in.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Hmmph. Well, she never told me nothing.” To us: “In the slums they’re all of a sudden big readers?”

  Clara said, “Silverlake is not the slums.”

  “Right, it’s Beverly Hills. Look. These guys are here for information, I’m giving them information. You want to tell me hanging out with losers couldn’t a had something to do with it? Gimme a break, Clara.”

  He shot up, walked into the kitchen, shaking a fist.

  Clara said, “He’s upset.”

  Milo and I sat there. Moments later, Bill DiMargio was back, empty-handed. As if spotting the water for the first time, he poured himself a glass and slurped noisily.

  I said, “Did Frankie have problems with nighttime customers?”

  “No,” said Clara. “Not that she said.”

  Bill said, “Just ’cause she didn’t say doesn’t mean nothing. She never said nothing.”

  “Oh, please, Bill.”

  “Be honest. If she had a problem, would she a told us?”

  Silence.

  Clara said, “Frankie was a good girl. She needed her freedom, is all.”

  “Which we gave her. We gave all three kids freedom but the others respected it.” Bill DiMargio’s face crumpled. He swung his head toward us, drifted from Milo to me, settled on me. Tears oozed down his weathered skin. “Lord Jesus, what happened to my baby?”

  Milo said, “Someone murdered her in her home.”

  “How? What’d they do to her?”

  “We don’t have details yet.”

  “You were there. You don’t know?”

  Milo said, “The autopsy will clear that up.”

  “I don’t understand,” said DiMargio. “You can’t just look at—what they poisoned her, you can’t tell from the outside? Some crazy drug?”

  Clara said, “I don’t want to hear this.” Her turn to escape. She walked down the hallway at the far side of the living room and turned right.

  The sound of retching. A toilet flushed.

  Bill DiMargio said, “That’s what happened? They poisoned her with some crazy dope?”

  Milo rubbed his face. “I’m afraid the body was there for a while, sir, and that makes it hard to—”

  “Ohhh!” DiMargio cupped both hands over his face.

  Clara returned, wiping her mouth, several shades paler.

  Her husband said, “Don’t ask them any questions, you won’t like the answers.”

  Both of them finished their water. I got more, took time to check out the photos on the fridge door.

  Again, everyone but Frankie.

  When I got back, Milo was saying, “… terrible to go through this. But we never know what’s going to solve a case, so whatever you can tell us—like who Frankie’s friends were—”

  “She had no friends,” said Bill.

  “We don’t know that,” said Clara.

  “We don’t? Name one.”

  Silence.

  When Clara started crying again, Bill
left for the second time, came back toting a framed photo larger than the ones on the table and thrust it at us.

  Formal portrait of Frankie DiMargio around fourteen, wearing a white dress, her hair long, brown, luxuriant. Clear skin, clear eyes. The only metal in her face, orthodontic.

  The same tentative, beleaguered smile.

  “She was a good-looking girl,” said Bill. “Until she started to mess with herself. Got her first tattoo at fifteen. But we never knew. On her back, down at the bottom, she hid it from us for a year, if I’d a found out who gave it to her, he’d be sorry. But she wouldn’t say even after I grounded and re-grounded her, took away her CDs. She was always difficult. Contrary. Wouldn’t go to parties she got invited to. Wouldn’t answer when you talked to her, like you weren’t there.”

  “Bill,” pleaded Clara.

  DiMargio’s mouth tightened. “I’m trying to be helpful. So they can solve this damn thing.”

  His wife stared at him. Stood and left for the third time, bustling straight up to the end of the hall. A door closed hard.

  Bill DiMargio said, “Now she’ll sleep all day, that’s what she does, she sleeps it away. As usual, it’s my fault—you wanna hear about Frankie? I’ll tell you. Her problem was she always had to be different. I know, I know, that’s normal, everyone has to do their own thing. Plus she’s shy, afraid of people, life is hard, I get it, she needs to express herself. But let me tell you, shy doesn’t have to be a problem, lotsa people are shy, right? And they don’t get into trouble.”

  Footsteps sounded. Bill DiMargio folded his arms across his chest. Clara returned, dressed in a black blouse and slacks, black sneakers. Sidling close to her husband, she slipped her hand into his.

  He said, “You okay, hon?”

  She sighed and turned to us. “May I tell you about our little Francesca? She was so, so, so shy. Just born that way.”

  Bill DiMargio said, “Finally, something we can agree on.”

  The history was one I’d heard hundreds of times. Quiet, somewhat withdrawn child, previously well behaved, finds a social niche among a loose band of fellow outcasts in junior high and everything changes: dress, taste in music, school performance, adventures with drugs.