Severed Relations

by Rebecca Forster

  He walked through the back garden that separated his apartment from the main house. His boots were heavy on the wooden stairs that took him to the second floor. Inside his apartment, Finn took off his jacket. He laid his weapon by the bed and the shoulder holster on the dresser. He glanced at the bed; the sheets tangled from the night before when he thought that Bev still loved him.

  He left the bedroom in favor of the kitchen where he scrounged around in a nearly empty refrigerator. Finn looked at the file from the clinic, but there wasn't anything in it that he hadn't committed to memory. He thought to call Cori and tell her about Stephen Grady, or maybe even tell her about Bev, but then thought better of it. She would be asleep, or tending to the baby, or wondering where Amber had gotten herself off to. Finn knew too well that the girl caused Cori grief in that way. He also wasn't ready to admit defeat where Bev was concerned.

  When he had run out of things to distract him, Finn stood by the window. It was almost midnight and working people were in bed. Streetlights shined but there was no one standing under them. He looked up but saw no stars in the black sky over L.A. There was only one light that drew him. It burned steadily in his landlady's house.

  Kimiko was a war bride who followed the man she loved to a strange country where they made their life together. When her heart longed for the land of her birth, her husband built a sento, a Japanese bathhouse, complete with a small room for shoes, a shower where one could wash before the bath, a well-tended Japanese garden, and, in another larger room, a deep tub. Her husband was long gone. He left Kimiko with her daughter, a blind ama, two blocks of prime Los Angeles real estate, and her beloved sento that she shared with a handful of close friends who revered tradition. She also shared her bathhouse with those she felt deserving or in need, never charging for entrance as one might in Japan. Kimiko found Finn deserving because she knew what he had done for the man he saved from the bad policemen. She did not know why he was in need, but she knew he was. He did not take advantage of Kimiko's kindness and that was why, even though it was late, she did not object when he appeared at her door.

  "Kimiko-san."

  He greeted her with a slight bow, ready to beg the favor of going into the bathhouse so late. He didn't need to beg. Kimiko took one look at him, stepped back and closed her door. When she returned, her night robe was tied tight around her small frame and her outside shoes were on her tiny feet. Gracefully, she stepped onto the stoop. Finn stood back and allowed her to pass.

  "Arigato," he whispered.

  "Domo ishi masta," she murmured.

  They crossed the yard. She opened the door of the building, turned on the low lights, laid out a towel, and made sure that the water was hot. When Kimiko left him, Finn pushed aside the tatami sheet that led to the dressing room adjacent to the Japanese garden. He undressed, soaped his powerful body to wash away whatever stench death had left, took his small towel, and went to the tub. He lowered himself into the hot water and settled in with a sigh. The expression Kimiko had taught him ran like a lazy ticker tape through his mind: gokuraku, gokuraku. It meant a good feeling for body and soul, a divine pleasure. Soon, Finn O'Brien stopped thinking at all.

  In the silence, immersed in the hot water, his memory was wiped clean for a time. He did not remember the beating he took six months earlier or Bev's exact words as she walked out his door for the last time. He could not conjure up the image of his brother in a coffin, nor that of murdered little girls in their bloody beds. He could not even remember the beautiful tortured eyes of Elizabeth Barnett.

  CHAPTER 15

  DAY 3 – MORNING

  Cori and Finn finished the first day of the investigation late and started the second day early with Finn dividing the labor: him to the case book, recording evidence, processing requests to the lab, getting the tech guys going on Rachel Gerber's locked computer and broken phone, interfacing with the coroner, contacting the Parisian hotel for their records, reconstructing the crime scene, filing photos and writing the initial reports and Cori to follow up with the housekeeper, the agency that placed the nanny, Barnett's office staff and the little girls' teachers.

  Now it was day three and they were to meet up at noon to compare notes. Cori had hit the ground running and tracked down a few of the nannies in the park who had known Rachel Gerber. She spent an hour watching them come and go with their charges and was surprised to find only two who knew Rachel. The German, it seemed, was not the friendliest playmate in the sandbox. That done, Cori started in on the neighbors.

  By the eighth stop, she thought she might hurl if she had to look through one more fabulous window, onto one more marvelous yard, across one more stunning street, toward one more exceptional home. At some point every antique table, ancient rug, designer sofa, gold-rimmed teacup, and expensive knick-knack had been rendered commonplace. In the last three hours the voices of the rich folks and their servants had morphed into nothing more than white noise: none of them knew anything about anything. Bottom line, Cori Anderson was unimpressed with the entire place and the people in it until she got to the Horace's home. That one was a friggin' bull in the china shop of Fremont Place.

  From the outside it was as lovely as any other house in the neighborhood, but inside it was the exception to every rule of good breeding that had ever been written. Hal and Heidi Horace's tastes ran to the eclectic and the erotic. Cori talked to them for forty-five minutes, which was twenty minutes longer than she thought she could manage when she first laid eyes on the twosome.

  Heidi opened the door wearing a see-through nightie the color of bubble gum and teetered on matching mules with four-inch, jeweled platforms. Her hair was cotton candy in color and shape. Her nails were candy-apple red and her lips glossed in golden honey. Cori always thought she had it going on, but Heidi Horace was too scrumptious for words. Hal, though, was simply beyond words.

  Hal had an old man's body, skinny and wrinkled; the hair on his chest was silver and sparse. He had been sunning by the pool, clad only in a red Speedo, when Cori rang. It was obvious he hadn't been swimming since his comb-over was still in place and the ever-so-discreet make-up he used to try to hide a large mole near his nose was dried and cracking.

  The couple was delighted to have company – even a cop's company. Hal threw on a short terry robe, but neglected to tie the darn thing shut. When he sat down in the living room, Cori had a bird's eye view of his truly pathetic private parts. Heidi settled Cori in a chair styled like an upturned hand with the middle finger extended. She was offered coffee in a cup that sported boobs, the nipples of which colored pink when the coffee was hot. Heidi and Hal insisted she nibble some pastry. Cori accepted the seat, the coffee, the pastry and Heidi's compliments on Cori's beautiful hair. Cori returned the compliment with all sincerity. Big hair women were a rarity in Los Angeles, so meeting one of the sisterhood was always a pleasure.

  Hal was no less gracious. He told Cori she had an exceptional rack and he could get her work if she ever wanted to make some real money. She would, he warned, have to decide PDQ because those puppies would start to sag sooner than later. Cori thanked him, assured him that she was really happy doing what she was doing, and then she asked about their line of work.

  They produced art films, not porn, thank-you-very-much. They paid their taxes. Their distributors were thrilled with their movies. Actors and actresses were beating down their doors because Heidi and Hal's productions were class all the way. Heidi was a producer now but she had been one of the great actresses of her time. She would have been iconic if only she hadn't passed on Deep Throat.

  "A classic," Hall stated.

  Heidi raised her hand, so Cori called on her.

  There was one very small, uninteresting matter pending that was a nuisance. One of their actresses was underage. Just by a few years, Cori had to understand.

  "She looked thirty," Hal grumbled. "What's wrong with kids these days?"

  The girl's father had complained to the D.A. Hal and Heidi gave Cori the man's name wi
th the assurance that everyone, except this one man, loved them. Even that man actually liked them quite a bit, but most everybody loved Hal and Heidi.

  "Love us," Hal agreed.

  "That's all you can think of? This one man?" Cori pressed.

  Heidi fluttered her lashes and furrowed her brow; Hal's old man lips pulled down or maybe his chin pushed up. No, no, just that one little thing. No one had been fired recently. There were no threats against either of them that they knew of, but they would check with their secretary because maybe she forgot to tell them that someone was ticked off. She could be forgetful; the secretary wasn't as young as she used to be. No, Heidi decided, they couldn't actually be one hundred percent sure that nobody wanted them dead. She made a mental note to ask around.

  They had no money problems. They funded their own films from a trust left to Heidi from her first, very-much-older husband.

  They liked living in Fremont Place because it was pretty and they were slowing things down. Sadly, it was not a neighborly place but not for lack of trying on their part.

  They were horrified by the murders. Heidi was thinking of calling the Barnetts to ask if there was anything she could do. What did Detective Anderson think? Detective Anderson thought that she may want to put that off for a while – like a year or maybe never. Heidi pushed out a voluptuous lower lip and said she would wait. Hal was not so dense. He didn't show Cori to the door, but he thanked her for her honesty. Hal was a stand up guy.

  Cori put a little star next to Hal and Heidi's names. She would run them when she got back to the office. Now she was at her last stop before meeting up with Finn and the lady of this house had been less than welcoming.

  "I'm sure I couldn't tell you anything more, detective. I really don't know the Barnetts well. They seem quite the successful young couple." Cori turned from the living room window in time to see Rita Stigerson adjust her blouse a bit more impatiently than she would have if Cori had been looking at her all along. "As for the night before last, my husband and I returned from a dinner party about midnight and the streets were quiet, nothing out of the ordinary. We went to bed. Our bedroom is in the back of the house so we wouldn't have heard anything. My husband leaves for work at five in the morning. I was up very early with him and left before anyone knew what happened."

  "What about the maid?"

  Cori took a couple of steps around the room, her hand coming to rest on a wingback chair as she considered her hostess. Half of Cori's brain was waiting for the answer to her question but the other half was trying to figure out how old Mrs. Stigerson was: fifty-two at best, tops sixty. Cori smiled just to see if she could make Rita Stigerson do the same. Either Mrs. Stigerson literally couldn't return the friendly expression because of the Botox, or Cori wasn't as charming as she imagined. When Mrs. Stigerson sniffed and turned up her nose, Cori figured it was her charm factor that had flatlined.

  "With the children gone, there's no need for the extravagance of someone here twenty-four hours a day. Our day lady leaves about four. So you see–" The doorbell interrupted the woman's hollow expression of regret that she had nothing to offer. "Excuse me."

  Cori offered a lopsided grin as Mrs. Stigerson went for the door instead of waiting for the day lady to do the honors. She heard the front door open and the sound of well-bred voices greeting one another. Then she heard nothing. Cori imagined kisses on cheeks and whispers as Mrs. Stigerson complained that a detective was in her living room and the visitor commiserated. All this would be said in much the same way the woman might confess to having rats in the attic. When Mrs. Stigerson returned, she was accompanied by a plump, tan woman dressed in a blue Velour sweat suit that had some designer's initials embroidered in gold on the hip.

  "Detective," Mrs. Stigerson skimmed over the fact that she had forgotten Cori's last name. "This is Mrs. Mulroon. She lives a few blocks over in that lovely Cape Cod."

  Cori smiled politely and calculated the distance a few implied. The word blocks was plural. The sum of few and blocks meant that Mrs. Mulroon's house was too far removed from the scene of the crime to do Cori any good. Cori did another calculation. Mrs. Stigerson's arrogance plus Cori's distaste for it added up to time to leave. Unfortunately, getting out of town wasn't going to be easy. Mrs. Mulroon turned a staggeringly wide smile on Cori and moved every time the detective did. Finally, she planted herself. In the interest of good community relations, Cori decided to give her a minute and a half.

  "Such a horrible thing. Children. What kind of monster would do that to children?"

  Mrs. Mulroon's forehead wrinkled as she attempted to kick-start her imagination. Since Mrs. Mulroon seemed to want to work it out on her own, Cori didn't tell her that in her wildest imagination she wouldn't be able to come up with an answer.

  "I'm paying for extra security, I can tell you. You know, I remember lying awake the other night. The night it happened."

  Mrs. Mulroon put her hand on Mrs. Stigerson's arm, giving her a look that excluded Cori.

  "I was awake in my bed and those poor little things were being killed. It gives me the shivers."

  The story around the campfire came back Cori's way, and Mrs. Mulroon's other hand went to the detective's arm as if she was one of the girls again.

  "I mean, to be awake and be thinking that all was right with the world and that was happening? So frightening."

  "Things like that happen everyday of the week, ma'am," Cori assured her. Mrs. Mulroon, though, wasn't interested in dialogue. She wanted an audience.

  "Well, I'll tell you, I can't wait to get the house put back together." The plump lady sighed. She blinked. She thought. She continued on, wanting to share everything with Cori. "I suppose that's why I'm not sleeping well. We're adding on to our home – a lovely rumpus room so the children won't tear up the living room. Of course, we're redoing the bath downstairs at the same time. That's why we've been camping out in the guest room. We feel so exposed with the back of our house wide open. Well, you can see why I'm not sleeping well. Not Tom, he sleeps just fine. Well, he did until this happened."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Cori slipped her notebook into her purse and latched it. Mrs. Stigerson smiled, and raised her hand to guide Cori to the door, genuinely happy now that the detective was leaving. They didn't get far. Mrs. Mulroon was not only still talking, she was actually saying something interesting.

  "…but it was that car that really bothered me. I mean, hardly anyone ever goes out the back way."

  Cori did an about face. "The back way?"

  CHAPTER 16

  Finn stood so straight that his shoulders and back were flat against the white wall of the examining room. His knees were locked, the toes of his boots pointed forward, and his hands were crossed in front of him. He wore a white coat even though it was unnecessary since he wasn't close enough to the table to get anything on him. Still, wearing it usually made him feel official and that helped him get through situations like this. Unfortunately, the coat wasn't cutting it, so put his fists in the coat's pockets to keep from putting them through the wall. When all that did no good, Finn time-traveled back to his high school biology class and did his recitations.

  Large intestine.

  Stomach.

  Liver.

  Little heart.

  He catalogued each of the internal organs, following along with Paul Craig, the medical examiner, who was pulling apart the body on the table in the same way most people peel a banana.

  "Severe trauma to the chest and abdomen. One incision puncturing the heart. Other wounds well placed, damaging the carotid artery."

  Paul paused, grasped a Styrofoam cup and drank deeply of his coffee. Finn had declined a cup when offered. The only thing he wanted once he got outside of this room was to head to Mick's. Today it wouldn't be a pint he ordered, but two shots of the strong stuff.

  "Neither the stomach or large intestines appear to…"

  Finn zoned out and before he knew it, Paul had finished. The doctor pulled off his rubbe
r gloves with a resounding snap. He flipped off the recorder. His next comments need not be saved for posterity.

  "I've got a granddaughter this age. If I were the hysterical type this would send me right to an institution. I don't know whether to be grateful or appalled that I'm not."

  He looked at Finn, still rigid against the wall, mute because he had no answer to Paul's dilemma. The doctor smiled and answered Finn's silence instead.

  "Right you are! If you haven't got anything to add to a conversation, don't say anything at all." The doctor's usual high spirits returned, but Finn noticed he covered the small body of Alexis Barnett with a bit more care than normal. "So, come out of this meat locker and let's have a chat."

  Finn discarded the white coat and paused to let his hand rest on the table as he passed. A blessing, a gesture of comfort, whatever it was it was unnecessary to anyone but him. Paul was already seated behind the desk in his small, glass enclosed office by the time Finn joined him.

  "Coffee?" Paul held up a pot. Finn shook his head and sat on a wooden chair that wobbled. Paul didn't have many visitors so the furniture in the office had only to be serviceable. "So, how you doing these days? Settling in down there at Wilshire Division, are you?"

  "I haven't unpacked my boxes if that's what you mean."

  "There will be time for all that." Paul put a bright spin on Finn's life for him. "Nice jacket. Little hot for leather, isn't it?"