Red Light (4 page)

She
knew what the file was. At the end of every year, Sheriff Brighton randomly
assigned an unsolved murder to each of the investigators in Homicide Detail.
It was a way of cleaning house, and every once in a while they got results.

These
results were trumpeted to the press and public, positive PR for the department,
as when a deputy saved a life or helped a woman give birth because she couldn't
make it to the hospital in time. It helped citizens to believe that even
forty-year-old cases weren't just being closed and forgotten. The detectives
either loved or hated the unsolveds, depending on whether they wanted overtime
or not.

Merci
thought that they were primarily a waste of time, overtime included. If the
dicks of yore couldn't button down their own cases, how could anyone else?

"You look
tired," said Glandis.

"So do
you."

"Up all night
with the hooker?"

"More or
less."

"A silencer.
Jesus."

Merci
had long ago lost her amazement at the speed of gossip within her department.
The air inside the county buildings was stiff with it.

Glandis
shrugged. "Let me know if I can help. I was first-year robbery-arson back
then, but I remember some things."

"Thanks, Mel.
How are we on the body-parts boy?"

Most of an
eight-year-old boy had been found dismembered, decapitated, his parts wrapped
in plastic trash bags and buried neighborhood. No arrests or suspects yet. The
case was taking fist bites out of Rayborn's soul. Wheeler and Teague got it,
good investigators, but Merci wished it was hers. It wasn't personal but it was
personal.

"We found a
kiddie raper living one street over, ex-mental patient. They haven't located
him yet."

Merci shook her head
and thought about her own son meeting such an end. A dark, svelte violence in
her shifted and stared out past its coils.

"How's
Junior Tim?"

"Totally
great in every way."

"I'd
expect that, coming from you."

He knocked twice on
her desktop with his big knuckles pivoted in shiny black shoes and turned to
Zamorra's unoccupied desk. He slapped down another unsolved file, then moved
on.

• • •

She made her usual nine
o'clock call home. Her father told her that Tim Jr., had gotten up regular
time, wolfed his breakfast and was now hurling blocks around his room. Merci
heard shrieks of delight in the background. The words
body parts in plastic
bags
shot through her mind and she banished them with force.

"Kid's
got an arm for a one-and-a-half-year-old," said Clark.

Arm in plastic.
Banished
again.

"Take
his temperature when he settles down, I—"

"Already
did, dear. Ninety-eight point six."

"After
lunch—"

"I
will."

She missed him. By
his absence she could feel his shape: a large, round, warm part of her.
Missing. Gone. Elsewhere. But there
was no
way she could be there
all the time, even if she wanted to. There was work to do. Work held her little
family together. And it held her together, too. It always had.

"We're going to
take the trike out later if it warms up. Then hit the market. We'll be here
when you get home."

Clark
had moved in with her two years ago, after her mother's death.

Merci had watched him
crawl toward his private abyss, then crawl back away from it. Tim, Jr., had a
lot to do with that turnaround. Her father was great with him. She thought of
them as The Men.

"I
miss my Men."

" 'Bye honey. We miss
you. Don't work too hard."

• • •

Noon came but Paul Zamorra
didn't. No call. No message. No word. She'd only worked with him for three
months, and this was the first time he'd done anything so unprofessional and
disrespectful.

Merci called his home
at one, got the machine. The hospital, she thought. She found the number
Zamorra had given her for his wife's room at UCI Medical Center, but decided
not to call. She felt powerless over medical conditions, and she was afraid of
what she felt no power over.

She
ran a background on Alexander Coates: clean.

She checked the
number of unsolved prostitute murders in the last two years: three.

She talked to a phone
company security manager about getting an incoming number list for Aubrey
Whittaker. She wanted it fast, no warrant, no subpoena, no bullshit, please.
He said he'd call her back.

She looked through
Aubrey Whittaker's leather-covered calendar/address book and considered some of
the names she found there. Some were first and last, most just first initials
and last names. Some even had what appeared to be credit-card numbers. Damn,
she thought, charge a nooner to the credit card and when your wife pays the
bills tell her it must have been the mobile car detail. Mobile sex detail.

Plenty
of the names had no numbers attached. Private customers, Merci thought, no YACS
middleman eating up the profit? She thought she recognized two of them and she
called a friend at the Orange County
Journal
who could run a print
search on them. She promised him a first tip in return, if any of them turned
into a story. She threw in twenty more just for good measure, guys with names
that sounded important, guys who would bend easy if she leaned on them. On the
day she was murdered, Aubrey Whittaker had a date with "Dr." at 3:45
p.m
. and "din" with
"DC," 8:30
p.m
. The day
before had four dates on the calendar.

Sunday mornings, to
Merci's astonishment, were marked by 8:30
a.m
.
entries that appeared to relate to sermons, and Aubrey's opinion of them.

Putting Christ First—Ken H., good but at times unrealistic.

Not
terribly likely, Merci thought: They must mean something else.

Six phone calls later
Merci found out that the Reverend Ken presided over Newport Maranatha Church,
and had indeed delivered sermon of that title three weeks earlier.

Yes, he knew Aubrey.
No, he didn't know she was murdered sounded somber.

He knew little of
Aubrey, except that she had joined his congregation a few weeks ago. She was
well-dressed, private, apparently unattached. She'd joined the Christian
Singles. He wasn't sure what she for a living.

He asked Merci to
keep the name of his church out of the newspapers, if it was in her power. She
said it was and she would. He agreed to meet with her any time, or to gather up
the names and addresses of some of the Christian Singles who had known Aubrey.
Merci thanked him and asked him to have them ready by this time tomorrow.

She went to the
restroom, washed her hands and wondered what it must be like to do what Aubrey
did for a living. In the mirror she saw someone not cut out for such work, a
dark-haired, big-boned woman with an unforgiving and guileless expression on
her face. The face had some tenderness in it if you looked hard. Mostly it just
looked eager to nail you.

She watched the
coroner's team take photographs and X rays of Aubrey Whittaker's body. There
were no bullet or lead fragments left inside, so far as Merci could see. Near
the center of Aubrey's right ventricle was a small dark disturbance in the pale
muscle: probably the bullet hole, said the deputy coroner.

Merci was surprised
by the entry wound. The tear was jagged but small, but the edges of the flesh
had been lifted up and burned. The skin in a half-inch radius around the break
was scorched black. Surrounding the dark circle was another half inch of
reddened flesh. Outside of that began the undisturbed perfection of Aubrey
Whittaker's young body.

"The gun muzzle
was right up next to her dress," said the deputy. "The silk was
burned. And the skin."

The exit wound was
twice the size but showed little discoloration. A small flap had been torn in
the skin. It was nine centimeters higher than the entry wound. Merci visualized
the apartment and the angle of the shot, and her mind's eye followed a line from
Aubrey Whittaker's heart to the upper part of the sliding glass door, where the
CSIs had found the hole.

"Looks like
straight in and out," said the deputy coroner. "Didn't hit a bone, or
at least didn't hit much of one. I'd say the ammo was hard-tipped. With a
softer nose, it would have flattened more by the time it came out."

The
full medical autopsy was scheduled for late that afternoon.

Merci hovered over
Evan O'Brien's shoulder in the crime lab, watching him get the fingerprint
cards ready for CAL-ID and AFIS. Two distinct sets already, one of them
belonging to the decedent. O'Brien was the most effective fingerprint tech
Merci'd ever known. His knowledge of comparison points was matched by his
knowledge of the labyrinthine state system, which he'd helped digitize during
his tenure with CAL-ID up in Sacramento.

She watched Lynda
Coiner get the ,45-caliber Colt casing ready for the Federal DrugFire registry,
on the chance that the same weapon had been used in a narcotics-related crime.
This didn't smell like drugs to Merci, but it was worth a try.

Merci helped one of
the lab techs develop and dry the last of the crime-scene photos, which she
would need for the walk-through. One set for her, one for Zamorra. Thank God
for her college photography courses. As she stood in the twilight of the
darkroom with the blow dryer roaring she watched Aubrey Whittaker's body take
shape on the photographic paper, appearing slowly and steadily, as if conjured
by a medium.

Aubrey Whittaker, she
thought: servicer of men, sermon critic, home entertainer, Christian Single.
Change your name, leave your home, begin again.

Who are you?

She
burned two copies of the Responding Deputy Report, the lab data and the CSI
sheets.

She
didn't read any of it because she wanted to learn it fresh, there where it
happened, when she was there with just her partner. A crime scene was always
different in daylight.

She
spent a few minutes down in the impound yard, talking with Ike Sumich, a young
tech that she considered to be a real up-and-comer. Like Evan, Ike was one of
her people. Merci liked the idea of tribe; was forming one, collecting members
because they could help her and because she liked them.

Sometimes
she would look at them and imagine what they'd like thirty years from now.

Sumich
looked good in her future-vision, but he had a gut he'd need to get to the gym
to avoid.

Ike had helped her out in the case that almost got
her killed a couple of years ago. She had no pending business with him; she
just wanted to check in, let him know he had a friend in Homicide.

When
Zamorra finally came into the detective pen it was almost 3
p.m
. He was freshly shaven and his hair
was still wet from a shower, but his eyes looked empty and red.

"Are we ready
for the walk-through?" he asked.

"We're
ready."

"I'll
drive."

Merci unlocked the door and pushed it open, calling
on her memory.

"Coates heard
the noises and made the call at ten forty-five. Deputies Burns and Sungaila
arrived ten minutes later. This porch light was on and the door was ajar about
four inches. All three of them saw the blood."

She gently swung the
door inward again and watched it come back toward her. It once more stopped
four inches short of the frame. Standing in the shade of the building, she
shivered once in the cold December air. She found the CSI sheets, scanned down
the typewritten copy.

"CSIs examined
the porch for shoe prints, but between the old paint and all the foot traffic,
they couldn't find anything useful. That, from Lynda Coiner. If we believe
Alexander Coates, Aubrey's first visitor wore hard-soled shoes or boots, her
second wore soft ones. What do you make of Coates's ear-work, Paul?"

"Sixty-forty.
Sixty he's right."

"I gave him
better than that. I think we should consider two men. Were they working
together is the question. Working on what is the next question."

Zamorra said nothing.
He faced the door with a bloodshot stare. He pointed to a small,
crescent-shaped cut in the gray door paint. It was deep enough to reveal wood,
just to the right of the blood spray, heart-high.

He
looked at his copy. "O'Brien says that was where the casing bounced off,
on its way to the dinner table. Coiner found the brass the flower vase. That
was good work."

"She
had the bounce to go from."

Zamorra slowly shook his
head. "He shot her from right here, didn’t even come through the door. She
opened it and zip, all she wrote.

There was something
mechanical in his voice, Merci thought, something distanced: He's still in the
hospital with his wife.