Cut to the Quick (4 page)

He said, “I think our guy brought his own chain saw, indicating premeditation. The housekeeper said she’d never seen Mercer with a tool more serious than a screwdriver. The gardeners came once a week and used their own equipment. There were no tools in his garage. Mercer did not like to get his hands dirty.”

“He was murdered by someone who certainly didn’t mind.”

Vining shuddered, recalling seeing Mercer’s dead face for the first time when the investigators had disassembled the “still life with body parts.” First to be removed was Mercer’s head, gently raised between a coroner’s gloved hands.

Vining had been focusing with moderate success on
quieting her escalating pulse as the moment of revelation grew near. When Mercer’s face was unveiled, a small gasp went up. No one there welcomed another surprise. It took Vining a moment to take in what she was seeing, the grotesqueness overwhelming her apprehension.

Mercer’s face had been clownishly made up with his own blood. They found the tool later in the kitchen garbage—Mercer’s toothbrush.

Lauren Richards’s face had held no surprises, other than shock over what was happening and the briefest struggle to prevent it.

Now riding in the Crown Vic’s passenger seat, Vining took out Lauren’s family Christmas photograph. Looking at the sweet faces of the boy and girl, she mentally heard their mother’s voice loud and clear.

Get him
.

Vining turned down the air conditioning and said to Kissick, “Our guy, or maybe he prefers to be called a gal, worked alone, and planned ahead. Mercer’s housekeeper said the Great Dane died of suspected poisoning two weeks before the murders. It’s possible she ate a poisoned rat or squirrel, but that sounds like coincidence.”

“Let’s hope Mercer had the vet do an autopsy. Mercer clearly loved the dog and would have shelled out the dough to find out what happened to her.”

In the house there had been a portrait of Mercer and Marilyn the Great Dane. Mercer’s arm circled the pooch, his right hand, the severed appendage that so far had not been located, against the dog’s broad chest. The portrait provided another clue. Mercer’s ring finger bore his USC class ring.

Driving down Melrose, Kissick passed Paramount Studios’ famous wrought-iron entry gate. He continued to North Rossmore Avenue and turned left, entering the
rarefied boundaries of Hancock Park. The neighborhood had managed to remain an old-money, largely Caucasian enclave of sprawling mansions in the middle of L.A. Encompassing the exclusive Wilshire Country Club, it was bordered by Hollywood on the north and Koreatown on the south, making it the defiant caviar middle of an encroaching lower-class sandwich.

The hustle and grit of Melrose fell away as they drove down quiet, tree-canopied streets where imposing homes were set back on manicured lawns. Signs warned that the Neighborhood Watch was in effect. Patrol cars from private security firms were highly visible, demonstrating that the citizens did not rely solely on vigilant neighbors, nor did they have sufficient confidence in the LAPD to keep the wolves at bay. Even still, the area was plagued with crime.

The residents were all but invisible, a curiosity Vining recognized from Pasadena’s well-heeled neighborhoods. Most of the vehicles on the streets were the pickup trucks of Latino workers engaged in the many rehab projects under way on the older homes, or economy cars driven by household help. Pea-green Andy Gump portable toilets were ubiquitous.

Kissick wandered the meandering streets, mistakenly turning down one cul-de-sac and then another, rolling over the speed bumps that attempted to keep traffic at the posted 15 mph. While they were stopped to look at a map, a Hummer loomed behind them. The driver, an attractive blonde holding a cell phone to her ear, blasted the horn with her free hand before zooming around.

Vining wasn’t being helpful in trying to locate the home of Mark Scoville, Mercer’s business partner. Still gazing at the Richardses’ family photograph, she said absently, “We’re dealing with a devil.”

“In a blue dress?”

“That’s
so
not funny.”

“In bad taste, but funny.” He glanced at her, goading her. “It’s funny, Vining.”

“Okay, okay … Ha ha.”

He frowned, looking for the street. “I didn’t pass it, did I?”

“So we gently break the bad news, tell Scoville we’d like to ask him some routine questions. Best to do that at the station. If he won’t go to Pasadena, we’ll find someplace private in the house to interview him. Did you check the microrecorder before we left?”

He hooked his thumb toward the backseat, where their jackets were. “It’s in my pocket. I just put in new batteries. You wanna take charge? I’m thinking that’s the best strategy because we want him to talk and to talk a lot and not to feel like he needs to lawyer up.”

“What are you saying? That I won’t strike fear into his heart?”

“Who, Quick Draw? Poison Ivy?” He teased her with her two well-known monikers around the station, nicknames he knew she hated.

She had a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later. It wasn’t completely true, but had its roots in an incident five years ago in which she’d fatally shot a man who claimed his girlfriend, dead from a bullet through her eye, had killed herself. The department had deemed it a good shooting. In policy. But the monikers had been born and stuck. Unfortunately, her reputation had caused her to hesitate when she had faced another soulless killer. Because she had hesitated, T. B. Mann was free.

They found Oakwood and Rosewood and then finally Pinewood Lane.

Kissick stopped the car in front of an imposing Tudor Revival mansion set atop a low knoll surrounded by a
spike-topped fence. It was a corner house with a tall wall covered by thick vines along the side.

“That’s it,” Kissick said. “Billboards have been veddy veddy good to Scoville.”

Sprinklers sprayed waves of water across a vast lawn and formal garden of sculptured topiary and seasonal flowers even though drought conditions had been declared and water was becoming as dear as gasoline.

Even the brick house was a snub to the will of the land in earthquake country.

The two-and-a-half-story mansion had steep gables. There were dozens of narrow casement windows with diamond-shaped panes of glass in a lattice pattern. Colored glass was scattered among the clear. On the roof were several chimneys with multiple shafts, each with a decorative chimney pot. False half-timbering on the upper stories was filled with patterned brick. Creeping vines laced the walls. Large fir trees, their branches extending over the house, gave it a foreboding aura.

“That house could stand some of the rehabbing that’s going on around here,” Vining observed. “Look at the roof and the paint.”

“Still, a house that size in this neighborhood … That’s a big corner lot. His wife couldn’t earn enough cohosting that local TV morning show to support this spread.”

Kissick drove up the driveway to the callbox near the closed gate.

“The wife’s on TV?” Vining asked.

“She’s on
Hello L.A
. I watch it every morning.”

“You mean that show with the older guy and the two women who wear short skirts and low-cut tops to do their so-called news?”

“Yep.” He responded to her head-shaking with a bemused, “Except for the older guy, what’s not to like?”

“Which bimbo … I mean
newscaster
is Scoville’s wife?”

“Dena Hale.” He said her name as if savoring it.

“The big blonde.”

“She’s a healthy specimen.”

“I thought you spent your time at home reading when you’re not with your boys.”

“I do. At night. In the morning, I look at the paper and watch
Hello L.A
.”

“Just to see Dena Hale, apparently.”

“She’s hot.”

“She didn’t look so hot in her mug shot, drunk and bruised after she crashed her Ferrari on the Pacific Coast Highway a couple of years ago.” Vining hated the tinge of jealousy that roiled her blood. Her physiology was showing she cared while her mind insisted she didn’t.

“She’s been sober since then.”

“How do you know?”

“Oprah.” He gave her a mischievous smile, daring her to make a comeback.

“You know she’s in her forties. I saw her on some TV show about being forty and fabulous.”

“They say forty is the new thirty.”

“I thought fifty was the new thirty.”

“You get the point.”

“What does that make me at thirty-four?”

“Younger and hotter than Dena Hale.”

She smiled crookedly at him. “There you go again.”

“You started it.”

“Did not.”

“Did too. You gonna finish it?”

With her index finger, she slid her sunglasses down her nose and peered at him.

He cocked an eyebrow.

After a second, she pushed her sunglasses up. “Press the buzzer.”

Hot air blasted in when he rolled down the window. He pressed the call button and they heard a phone ringing through the speaker.

After several rings, a woman drowsily answered.

“Hello?”

“This is Detective Jim Kissick of the Pasadena Police. I’m here with Detective Nanette Vining. We need to speak to Mr. Mark Scoville about a matter of some importance regarding his business partner, Oliver Mercer.”

The sleep disappeared from the woman’s voice. “Pasadena … 
Police?
” Sounding as if she’d turned her head away from the phone, they heard her say, “The police are at the gate. Something about Oliver.”

There was a man’s voice in the background. “Let them in.”

The woman said, “Please, drive up.”

The gate rolled open. Kissick cursed when the sprinklers splattered the windshield as they drove up the long cobblestone driveway. They circled a turnabout with a fountain in the middle that was not running. It began shooting water as if someone had just turned it on.

Getting out of the car, they grabbed their jackets from the backseat and put them on. The spray from the sprinklers floated toward them. Vining turned her face toward it, letting out a sigh of pleasure.

A man and woman exited one of the home’s tall double doors and stood on the porch. They looked as if they’d been hanging out by a pool.

Vining watched as they shot nervous comments at each other. She judged by their body language that they were genuinely nonplussed by her and Kissick’s visit.

Mark Scoville wore a T-shirt over knee-length trunks with a bold floral print. Thick, dark hair curled over the
shirt’s crew neck. A belly pushed the T-shirt out over his waistband. He was more out of shape than overweight. He stood six feet tall but was stoop-shouldered and soft. His dark, curly hair had receded. He wore wire-framed aviator–style sunglasses with nearly black lenses. They looked expensive and were worth every penny because they made the spreading and balding Scoville look cool. His deep tan and the healthy impression it conveyed covered a multitude of shortcomings.

Vining knew from the information they’d pulled that Scoville was forty-five years old. He had one DUI and had received several speeding tickets over the past few years.

Dena Hale hurriedly pulled off an elastic band, releasing her long blond hair. She combed it with her fingers and again fashioned it into a ponytail. She pulled on a billed Lakers cap and pulled her hair through the opening in the back. Unlike her husband, she was edges and angles. Long tanned and toned legs extended from beneath her short white bathing suit cover-up. Big designer sunglasses with white frames and her cap hid all but her button nose and full lips. Sharp cheekbones and an adorable tilted chin complemented her heart-shaped face. Her winning smile was always turned on full blast during her television show. She was not smiling now.

The detectives flashed their shields.

“Mark Scoville?” Vining asked.

“Yes.” Scoville came down the steps to meet them.

“I’m Detective Nanette Vining and this is Detective Jim Kissick. Are you Mrs. Scoville?”

Hale nodded, remaining on the porch, holding herself with crossed arms.

The sun reflected off Scoville’s sunglasses.

“Did something happen to Oliver?”

Vining’s voice was somber. “Mr. Scoville, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Oliver Mercer was murdered.”

“Murdered?”
Scoville drew his heavy eyebrows together and his mouth gaped.

Hale gasped and ran down the steps to join her husband, clutching his arm.

They both began talking at the same time.

“My God. What happened?”

“Where? How?” Scoville tore off his sunglasses and searched Vining’s face.

She noticed his eyes were heavily bloodshot and had dark circles. “I can’t go into that right now, Mr. Scoville, but we need to get going on this investigation as soon as possible. Would you and Mrs.—”

Scoville reeled, dropping his sunglasses. “I can’t believe this. Oliver murdered?” He ran his hands through his hair. He broke away from his wife and started up the front steps. “This isn’t happening. I … I have to sit down.”

Hale scooped the sunglasses from the ground and started after her husband. She turned back to the detectives. “Please come in. It’s hot outside anyway.”

Vining caught Kissick watching Hale’s legs as she jogged ahead of them up the steps.

The interior of the house was polished woods, threadbare Oriental carpets, stiff portraits, sedate landscapes, and ornate furniture upholstered in delicate but tired fabrics. The furnishings looked as if they’d been passed down through generations or selected to appear that way. The sun shone through the tall front windows and cast diamonds of light on the hardwood floor and the long runner that extended the length of the foyer.

The old house was of a type that used to intimidate Vining. She had worked to eliminate that phobia, and it was one thing she’d managed to overcome. To her, this
house seemed musty and somehow sad. There had been laughter here, but its echoes had long ago faded.

Scoville hovered in the foyer, arms dangling at his sides. He was bathed in white sunlight from the windows that was shot with bright patches of red, blue, and green from random pieces of colored glass. The effect made him look as if he were trapped beneath a bell jar, lost and detached from the world.