CHIMERAS (Track Presius) (7 page)

“Thank you, Track,” Ellis said. “I hate to do that kind of math off the top of my head.”

*  *  *

I sat on the living room couch, opened the laptop, and pressed play. The quality of the video was grainy, with the borders obscured, and the halo of a streetlight drawing a visual cone in the middle. The perp had destroyed the CC camera at the door but overlooked the one by the property gate. I watched it, started over, and watched it again. Tarantino’s car appeared on the screen at ten seventeen p.m., waited for the gate to open, and then careened out of view. Thirty-eight minutes later, Huxley’s car pulled into the frame. Positioned behind it, the camera gave me a make and model (2003 Ford Focus, green), but not a face on the driver. A hand appeared from the window and pressed the intercom, the wind the only witness of that conversation. The light above the gate started flashing, and the entrance slowly opened. I rewound, froze the frame, and zoomed in. Something glistened on the hand.
Could be a ring
. A small watch on the wrist, round, feminine. Was it really Huxley behind the wheel? Couldn’t tell from this shot. The only other certainty the camera granted me: by eleven thirteen the perp was out, and both husband and wife were dead, according to the M.E.’s preliminary findings. I closed the laptop.

Nelson sat on an upholstered armchair across from me, a cell phone glued to her ear as she interviewed one of the Tarantinos’ friends whose number she’d found in the planner. Two men from the coroner’s office carried the first body down the stairs. The blue shroud jolted and waggled, until it was flopped on a stretcher at the bottom of the stairs and wheeled away.

“This one didn’t know anything about it,” Nelson concluded, terminating the call. She slouched back in the chair and stared vacantly at the daily planner on her lap. The two pages covering the week of October 5 were scribbled with tiny notes in black ink: one-line reminders, a name, a book title to check out at the library, plenty of doodles and exclamation points. A single entry in a slanted handwriting filled the line under Saturday, October 11: “Horowitz BDay Party,”
it read. No phone number was listed under Horowitz, not in the planner, not in the mobile.

“We could search in the database under Horowitz and DOB October 11,” Nelson offered.

“Birthday parties are not always timely.” I got up and paced around the living room. Nelson sighed and dialed another number. A cold fireplace sported several picture frames on its mantel: two men in fishing gear embracing one another and proudly showing a two-foot long salmon; a freckled girl with a braced smile posing in a cheerleader uniform; a teenager too unhappy about the huge pimple on her forehead to smile at the camera.

“Hello, this is Officer Kimberly Nelson from the LAPD.”

Glass doors to the back yard framed the blue outline of the Santa Monica Mountains. I stepped closer, pulled away the sheer curtains and stared outside. Or such were my intentions.

I sensed a lingering presence, feminine, one hand clasping the curtain. Did she look into the darkness outside? What drew her here—fear maybe? Or doubt? I inhaled. Feminine scents are elusive. Women don’t always stick to one fragrance like most men do, and their secretions change from day to day with their hormones. I can get a global picture of a feminine smell, but if I want to break it apart, get into the components of it, one woman alone is a maze of scents.

I let my hand slide down the curtain, perusing its folds and billows, searching.

“Nelson.”

“Shit! They hung up on me.”

“Nelson!”

“What?”

“Go get Diane.”

*  *  *

The afternoon glare made me squint. I reached for my sunglasses, inhaling. The air was crisp and alive.
Clean murder
, I thought.
The killer comes, fires, leaves. Not much to start off: a doubtful note and a plate number, the vehicle missing, together with its owner.

I leaned against the portico railing and checked my phone. It was three fifteen. The field unit guys were packing up their tools and loading the van. In the distance, the Mediterranean colors of the Californian scrubland weaved with the profile of the hills. Trimmed shrubs of oleanders bobbed in the breeze, their elongated leaves drooping and whispering. A row of garden lights followed the edge of the lawn. A flock of birds-of-paradise flowers guarded the east wall of the house.

The black sedan parked next to the Field Unit van blinked, and its door locks popped up. In his dark suit and gray tie, the deputy district attorney ambled out of the house, swinging his tattered briefcase in one hand. “Still here, Track?” he said, dispensing a broad smile. No crime scene could ever affect Mr. Udall’s ethereal serenity, no matter how gory the details. His jaws were stuck together in a dolphin smirk, which came with the complimentary small eyes—eerily split by thick bifocals—and matching under-bite. Worked miracles in the courtroom. He stopped at the bottom of the patio stairs, slid a hand in his pants pocket, and said, “October seems to be the month of murders. Must be a Halloween thing. The rest of my day is packed with meetings, but if you get those warrants to me tonight, I should be able to review and sign them by tomorrow morning. How does that sound?”

“Sounds terrific, Mr. Udall.”

He nodded, his drooping cheeks dangling happily along. “Have a good one, Track.” He walked to his car, plopped his briefcase in the back seat, and waved. I watched him drive off jingling my car keys, except I was distracted, jingled too hard, and dropped the bunch. As I crouched to retrieve it, my nostrils detected a trace, faintly teetering with the breeze.

The porch was planked in stained redwood and railed with wrought iron rods. The pillars flanking the front steps and supporting the portico were in stucco laid over wood, with plastered Greek motifs at the top and bottom, and ivy plants crawling around them. I brushed my fingers in the fine groove between the stucco base and the wood floor and found a clump of blue fibers stuck beneath a splinter. I pulled it out and brought it to my nose. I smelled plastic, dirt, wood stain, and blood.

Nelson’s overused fragrance tickled me from behind. “What’d you find?”

“More evidence.” I stood up, reached for an evidence bag in my pocket, and sealed the fibers inside. I handed it to her and said, “Tell Diane there’s blood on it. I wanna know what the fibers are made of and whose blood this is.”

Nelson crossed her arms and gave me one of her “u-uh” looks. “You buyin’ on Friday?” she mewed.

I grinned. “Nope. Chuck’s turn. I rang the gong the most on the long shots last week.” Cops’ favorite hobby: betting booze and coffee at the shooting range.

She raised a thin, skeptical brow and then snatched the evidence bag. “As long as somebody’s buyin’,” she sang, her voice trailing down the porch stairs.

CHAPTER 10

____________

Sunday, October 12

“My brother is an atheist,” Martha Tarantino—Robert’s sister—told me, as we sat on opposite sides of a metal desk at the West L.A. police station. She spoke softly, her sentences trailing off, one finger poised in mid-air as if trying to grasp a fleeting thought. “Now, Tammy… I think
she
goes to church.” Her eyes wandered to the ceiling, where the silent blades of a fan sliced the light from an open window, the reflection pulsing on the opposite wall. The dullness of a hot Sunday afternoon draped us with hushed conversations and the rhythmical thrumming of a copier at the end the hallway. Over the interview Martha talked of her brother and sister-in-law stubbornly clinging to the present tense, while her knotty hands clenched a crumpled Kleenex.

“Cordelia will inherit everything, won’t she?” she asked at some point, her voice and movements abated by who knows what cocktail of sedatives her thoughtful physician had blessed her with. Cordelia was the Tarantinos’ only daughter, currently en route
from New York. Nelson had already arranged a meeting with her for the following morning.

After Martha Tarantino left, I studied the field interview cards compiled by the responding officers at the crime scene. The neighbor who initiated the nine-one-one call had found the victims’ Labrador roaming in his backyard. He’d rescued the dog as it looked scared, cold, and disheveled. Benedict Canyon, especially the part nestled on the Santa Monica Mountains, is home to bears, coyotes and cougars, and abandoned pets often fall prey of wildlife. After several attempts to contact the Tarantinos, the neighbor worried something might have happened to them while walking their dog the night before.

Of all other neighbors questioned by the responding officers, only one claimed to have heard two shots within the time interval framed by the CC camera. When asked what she did afterwards, the lady shrugged and said she went to bed. Next to a penciled double question mark, the interviewing officer noted, “Witness thought the noise had come from TV downstairs.”

I left the West L.A. police station musing over the religious note found by Tamara Tarantino’s body, its possible meaning, or lack thereof. Robert Tarantino didn’t believe in God, but Huxley did. He was the executive of a big genetic corporation, she worked in a genetic lab. He was dead, she had vanished and her car had turned up at the murder scene.

The squad room on the third floor of Parker Center was deserted, save for a scent still lingering in the air. I stepped inside and sniffed. Three people were in the vicinity. One was Lieutenant Gomez, but the other two I didn’t recognize. I peeked at the LT’s door, glimpsed movement through the glass panel, then slumped behind my desk.

A lazy sun poked through the Venetian blinds and drew jagged lines of light and shade on the walls. I spent the rest of the afternoon sucking on a paperclip while writing the warrants and organizing my notes, crime scene floor plans, and logs for the murder book—the blue binder where we record the chronology of
every investigation. I flipped through blood spatters,
livor mortis
, spent shells. Not much gore to stare at: no bruises, no cuts, no signs of a struggle. The shooter came, killed, and left. Somebody the victims knew well, a piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit in the hate crime picture. Then why leave the religious signature? And what about Huxley’s car? The plate number had been dispatched to all patrols in the city.

Don’t jump to conclusions
.

I closed the binder, wrote “Find missing body” on my notepad, and then drew a box around it. My pen ran out of ink. I swore and started tossing around the jumble of papers, folders, books, a small toolbox I once brought in to fix the washer of my swivel chair—a new seat an expenditure our under-budgeted department couldn’t possibly afford—desperately looking for the most obvious thing anybody should have on a desk: a writing tool. Instead, my eyes fell on the Ziploc containing Huxley’s yellow T-shirt.

The recollection of an already encountered olfactory trail flashed before me: laundry detergent, air freshener, man cologne, woman perfume. The scratchy odor of the Montecristo cigars I’d spotted on Tarantino’s desk imprinted on Huxley’s couch.

They knew each other. He sat on her couch, shared a glass of wine, perhaps even her bed
. Was it an extramarital affair that cost Robert Tarantino his life? What if Huxley was a jealous lover? She believed the man’s heart all for herself and found he regularly had fun with his wife, too. Crimes of passion leave plenty of evidence behind though, not a clean scene like the one at the Tarantino home. And it had been Tamara Tarantino who’d let the killer in.

The door to the lieutenant’s office opened and two men filed out. Cops, no doubt, the faces vaguely familiar. Valley Bureau was as far as my memory could go.

One of the two grinned. “Detective Presius!” His memory went farther than mine. He strode to my desk and came to shake my hand. Short, with icy blue eyes, a lower body considerably smaller than the upper one, and more hair than he seemed able to handle.

“Kirk Donoghan,” he reminded me, at which I gave a
meaningful bob of the head. “And my partner, Jade Krecks.”

Kirk and Jade. It sounded just as nice as Starsky and Hutch.

“Detectives Donoghan and Krecks, from the North Hollywood station, just brought in a big fish,” Gomez explained, emerging from behind the looming figure of Kirk’s partner. “Jeremy T. White.”

A respectful silence followed.

I have no problem breaking respectful silences. “Who the hell is Jeremy White?”

Kirk broke into a rattling laughter. “You can’t be serious, Presius.
The Mantra Trilogy, Ride to Death, Samantha Young
—Jerry White directed some of the best movies in the biz.”

“I don’t suppose that’s why you guys brought him in, is it?”

I was starting to hate the rattling laughter. The partner replied this time. “We brought him in because he shot a Tate University professor this morning, ditched his gun—a Sig Sauer P-220—twenty feet away, and then went home and got drunk.”

My turn to laugh. “Right. And you found the gun, ran the registration number, got a name and address, and picked him up. I bet now you’re gonna tell me this celeb’s so dumb he even ’fessed up.”

Kirk and tall partner exchanged glances. The partner shrugged, though it looked more like his long neck sunk in his shoulders rather than the other way around. “Yeah… That’s—er—correct.”

“Look.” Kirk no longer found the whole exchange funny. “We have a witness, a student who was at the Tate library at five a.m.: he heard two shots and then a car screeching away. He didn’t get a make but swears it was a black sports car. So we grab a couple of blue suits and go to White’s mansion. There’s a black convertible Mercedes parked in the driveway. I take a peek inside and spot maroon blotches near the gas pedal, there, in plain sight—enough to get a phone warrant. We knock at White’s door, and he starts laughing and saying he’s been waiting for us all along, that the bastard slept with his wife and deserved to die. Our criminologists are shaking down his modest nine-thousand-square-foot home as
we speak. Last I heard they lifted gunpowder residue from the steering wheel of his car. And there’s the blood, waiting to be matched to the victim’s. White being a big shot and all, we booked him one of your best rooms downstairs.” He grinned.

I jacked up an eyebrow. “The big celeb claims the professor slept with his wife?”

Jeez, I’m in the wrong business
.

Gomez rubbed his mottled forehead. “He wasn’t just
any
professor, Track. He was a Nobel laureate, and quite famous, too.”

Even better
. All I could come up with were crinkled faces, bald, egg-shaped heads, and thick glasses. Mrs. Movie Director must’ve had some refined tastes.

Kirk’s partner straightened up and recited: “Vic was pronounced DOA at 0653 hours on the premises of the Tate University Campus—building 302—and later identified as Michael J. Conrad, faculty professor and 1989 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Whacked with one to the head and one to the chest.”

Kirk made a big show of checking his watch. “Well, I s’pose the lawyer will be here any minute now. And we better go turn in our overtime slips.” He flashed one last smile, and his right hand—uninvited to do so—came clapping my back. “We nailed a career case today. That’s what I call a slam-dunk. Pleasure to see you, Presius.” He stretched out his hand again, then beckoned his partner to the door. Gomez left last with a slight bob of the head.

I closed the murder book on my desk and stared out the window. Downtown had turned into a geometrical maze of glimmering lights, the lives of over three million people humming in the background. My thoughts drifted off. I plucked the jacket from the back of my chair, slid it on, and then froze. Jerry
White
. How common a name is it? Still.

“Hold the elevator!” I yelled on my way out of the squad room.

*  *  *

I saw the ghost of a man through the two-way mirror.
Unshaven, wearing a sport tank and shorts, Jerry White bent over the table and buried his face in large hands. I studied him. He had well-proportioned arms, lean and muscular. His fingers laced in graying, longish locks. A dark stubble shaded his jaw, and a tiny earring shone from his right lobe. Despite his unkempt looks, White looked nothing like our usual guests down in Felony, the Jail Division on the first floor of Parker Center. He wasn’t covered in obscene tattoos, he didn’t glare with spiteful defiance, he didn’t rabidly deny any connection to the crime he was being accused of.

“So, he lawyered up, huh?”

Gomez snorted. “What’d you expect?”

It was just the two of us waiting for the lawyer, and a bored watch sergeant flipping through some magazine behind his desk. Starsky and Hutch from North Hollywood whose names I’d already forgotten had been happy to hand the hot potato over to us, as is standard procedure with VIP cases. We stared blankly at the two-sided mirror, our glum faces reflecting off the glass.

I said, “Guess he didn’t appreciate the splendor of our facilities. So, what do we know about his vic?”

Gomez rubbed his forehead so hard it turned plum red. “The Nazi professor.”

“The who?”

“Michael J. Conrad. A few years ago somebody spray-painted the word NAZI below his office window. Tate played it down as a prank, but our professor had a stigma. It all started when he publicly announced at the Nobel Prize Award ceremony that he was going to donate to Graham’s sperm bank.”

I frowned. “A sperm bank? For the freaks who think of cum as an investment?”

Gomez sniggered. “I guess you could say so. They called it ‘Repository for Germinal Choice.’ Robert Klark Graham, an eyeglass business suit, founded it in 1980. The guy had loads of money and a handful of ideas: collect semen from Nobel laureates and ‘create’ smarter people.”

“You’re friggin’ kiddin’ me,” the watch sergeant muttered. Gomez ignored him, and the rustling of magazine pages resumed.

“Conrad started giving lectures on the so-called ‘selective breeding.’ Somebody dubbed it scientific racism: with the excuse of creating a better humanity, he believed only ‘genetically advantaged’ people should be allowed to have children.”

“Genetically advantaged?”

“Brainy people. Nerds.”

“And what did he propose to do, castrate the dumbasses? We’d be out of a job!”

“The whole thing blew up. The idea of collecting, quote, high IQ sperm, end quote, made people very edgy. Tate University had to distance itself from Conrad’s statements.”

I pondered. “And White claims he killed the Nazi professor because he slept with his wife?”

“Ex-wife,” Gomez corrected. “They divorced five years ago.”

I almost laughed. “Please.”

“You wait until the news is out. TV crews are already swarming around White’s property like horseflies. This guy’s got enough money and persona to make another O.J.”

My thoughts were somewhere else. White. Jerry
White
.

“I’d like a word with him.”

Gomez’s forehead rippled. “He’s not talking. He zipped after they patted him down. His lawyer’s currently en route from Malibu.”

“Then I’ll ask for an autograph. I’ll give him a Sharpie and have him sign his Sig Sauer.”

Gomez sighed. “We went that route, you know? We praised his movies, tried to get him to relax a little and talk about his work. He’s tanked a good dose of alcohol, though, and by now he’s starting to feel the hangover.”

Our reflections in the window laced over White’s hunched shoulders.

I placed a hand on the doorknob. “Let me give it a try.”

“Track—”

“I’ll be the one talking.”

*  *  *

Interview rooms are small, uncomfortable, and lit by cold halogens. When the bulbs are at the end of their life and start flickering, nobody bothers replacing them until they’re dead. The hypnotic pulse adds to the abrasiveness of the place. You step inside and immediately feel the urge to leave. The walls reek of human sweat and stale air, the kind that makes you unbutton the collar of your shirt, or loosen the knot of your tie.