Strip Search (10 page)

The man smiled, a crooked lipless sneer that was truly chilling to behold. “Tucker. Everyone just calls me Tucker.”

I IMMEDIATELY FELT a surge of sympathy for Mrs. Asparagita Amir. Just one look at the shabby apartment where she lived and raised four children was sufficient to accomplish that goal. Her three daughters were in school at the moment, but her son, barely eleven months old, was in a cradle on the floor, sleeping soundly. She rocked the cradle as I asked my questions.

“Do you have any idea why anyone might want to hurt your husband?” I asked as gently as possible.

“My former husband.” She looked at me, her brown eyes small but direct. “No. As I told the detectives, I cannot imagine any reason for anyone to do him harm.”

A natural response. I wasn’t surprised. “Did he have a life insurance policy?”

“I do not think so. If he did, it is unlikely that I would be the beneficiary.”

“But your children—”

“He did not have contact with the children, after our marriage was discontinued.”

I frowned. “His choice, or yours?”

She glanced down at the infant in the cradle. She was a petite woman, fragile-looking, and each movement sent a tremor through her entire body. “It is the way of our people. Once a marriage is over, it is over.”

“But you’re not in New Delhi anymore. You’re in Las Vegas. The United States of America. We have laws about parental responsibility.”

“You must understand…” She paused, her eyes moving downward to the cradle and the silent figure sleeping within. “My husband has been through a very difficult period. Back in our country, he was a civil engineer, an important man with responsibilities. Engaged in important work. But he sought even greater challenges, so he came to the United States to pursue them.”

“It didn’t work out?”

“No. The prejudice against our people was too strong. Even though we have never been enemies to the United States and have never associated with those who were. The tragedy of 9/11 occurred almost immediately after we arrived in the States. The job that my husband thought he had secured here in Las Vegas disappeared. No one ever said why, but we knew. It was too…how you say?…
controversial
to have someone from the East in a position of power and prestige while politicians were on television every night, demonizing the third world. He worked very hard to find work in his field, but none was offered to him. Eventually, he was willing to take any job just to support his family, but even that was difficult. Finally he found work at that restaurant.”

So one of the top engineers in India ended up as an assistant manager at a burger joint. Pathetic. “I imagine that put quite a stress on your marriage.”

“Yes,” she said simply. “But I was his wife and I remained loyal to him. Such is my duty.” I noticed that, although she was conservatively dressed, she was not in the traditional garb of women from her country. A plain dress, no robe, no headdress.

“He must’ve been very frustrated. Wracked with guilt.”

“True. But such shame as this can be borne by any marriage with a firm foundation in faith.”

She wasn’t giving me much to work with. I decided to push the question, and watched her face very carefully as I did. “Then—why the divorce?”

Her facial expression was a strange combination of helplessness and unwillingness to defend what seemed self-evident. “He could not care for us. I was not able to earn an income, especially not with my many dependent children. I also could not appeal to the state for support so long as my husband was working, however minimal his income.”

“Divorce was economic survival,” I said, swearing once again at how stupid the law could be. “Did he visit often?”

“No. Although I believe that he wanted to do so. He was…filled with shame.”

“Because of the divorce?”

“Um…yes, because of the divorce,” she said, but what interested me most was her hesitation. There was something she was not telling me.

“Anything else?”

“Such as what?”

A direct approach wasn’t going to work. So I tried a page out of Psych 101—change the subject. So you can abruptly return to it later and try to catch her off guard. “Any problems with his co-workers? His boss?”

“I do not believe so. They knew they were very lucky to have a man of his quality to work for them. He was so…what’s the word?…overqualified. Such a contrast to most of the other young people working there.”

No doubt. “Do you suppose some of his co-workers might have been jealous of him?”

Her eyes diverted downward. As if in recognition of what she had done, she lifted the still sleeping baby into her arms and laid him against her chest. “I believe he was given to some…abuse as a result of the color of his skin. But certainly nothing that would rise to the level of inspiring anyone to do something such as what was done to him.”

But then, what
would
inspire someone to dip another human being’s face into a vat of boiling oil? “Did your husband have much money saved?”

“None. Most of our savings were spent traveling to America. The rest was used to survive during his long months of unemployment. To feed so many mouths—much money is required. He tried taking a second job, even playing in games of chance. But nothing worked.”

All right, enough with the small talk. The time had come to cut to the heart of the matter. “Ma’am, I don’t mean to be rude, but—what was the real reason he was too embarrassed to visit his children?”

“There is no reason. He was simply a proud man. He did not want to…to seem small before his offspring.” But as she said it, I noticed her eyes darting to the left. Which clenched what I already knew—she was lying to me. Hiding something.

Unlike some behaviorists, I never put all my chips behind NLP—Neuro-Linguistic Programming—a theory based on the fact that we all depend upon an artificial construct—language—to express ourselves. Language centers have specific locations in the brain and when we access different sections, our face and body language reflect it. This gave rise to the visual lie detector test often bandied about in television and movies. If a person’s eyes move to the right, they are accessing memory banks. If a person’s eyes move to the left, they are engaging their imaginations. In other words, they’re lying.

In reality, of course, it’s never that simple. A person might look to the left because they’re lying, or it could be a personal tic, or they could have something in their eye, or something could attract their attention. They might be nervous, fidgety. Many people find it hard to maintain eye contact for long. I wouldn’t draw any conclusions from a single occurrence. On the other hand, I had a distinct feeling that Mrs. Amir was holding something back. And a gut instinct coupled with a little NLP was more than enough for me to go on.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Amir, but you’re hiding something. I don’t know what it is. But I have to insist that you tell me. It could be vital.”

“There is no…no vital.”

“I have to be the judge of that.”

“He—He—He—” Again her head turned away, but this time I had more of a sense that she was struggling for words, perhaps struggling with her conscience, more than she was trying to be deceptive. “He was a proud man.”

“That’s a reason why he would insist on seeing his children, not a reason for avoiding them.” I stared at her; she seemed to shrink before my eyes. What was it? I thought about her, how she was living, trapped up in this dingy apartment, never seeing the father of her children, making do on whatever the government sent and—

Or was there an
and
?

But why would she hide that? More likely she’d be raising the roof, complaining bitterly that—

No. I was reading her like a born-and-bred American, which she wasn’t. Her culture came with an entirely different set of guidelines. I needed to get out of my usual mind-set and access the proper owner’s manual. This divorce hadn’t been born of any adultery, disharmony, wanderlust, or even selfishness. By all appearances, it had been mutually agreed upon for the welfare of the children.

That was the key. The children.

“Mrs. Amir, how long has your ex-husband been delinquent on his child support payments?”

She looked up, startled, her eyes riveted to mine. “But—I never—how did—”

“It doesn’t matter. I know. And I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me the truth. How long?”

“It has been…almost two years now. But—”

“Have you brought any legal proceedings against him?”

“No. But those people—the DHS—they harass him, dunning him for the money he owes.”

“How did the DHS even know?”

“At the time of our divorce, the court appointed a lawyer to represent the children as their legal guardian.”

Made sense. The judge probably realized this woman would never take action against her ex-husband. So the court appointed someone who would. Even after all she had been through, this woman remained loyal. To a fault.

Or was there a more practical reason for her reluctance to speak? The fact that he owed her could make her a suspect, particularly with a bobble-head like Granger leading the investigation.

“So the DHS was hounding him for past child support. Any success?”

“No. When he had money, he would give it to me. As it was, he barely made enough to keep himself in a room at the YMCA. He walked to work each day. He ate so little he has lost more than thirty pounds since we came to America. He worked double shifts, worked late, worked holidays and all the most inconvenient times, anything to earn more money. He was constantly looking for better positions. But he found nothing.”

I nodded. I had an idea who this man was now—and who his wife was as well. What I didn’t understand was what would bring anyone to kill him—particularly in such a horrendous way. This was a point of interest, but clearly not a motive—this poor woman wasn’t my sadistic killer and neither were her underfunded children. Whatever the motive—or perhaps I should say, mode of selection, so as not to suggest a rationality that didn’t exist—it had to be something else.

“Did your ex-husband have any…hobbies?”

“He was much too busy for that.”

“Any places he liked to go? Things he liked to do?”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“Well, I’m trying to figure out how he met the killer.”

“I do not know. He worked in that restaurant for long hours. The clientele is…not what you would find at the Bellagio.”

Point taken. So is that all it was? A psychotic customer came in for a burger and decided that poor Amir was going to be his victim? Something about that didn’t ring true. The elaborateness, the bizarreness of the murder, all spoke to something larger at work.

“Was your ex-husband particularly interested in…math?”

“He was an engineer. He was a gifted mathematician.” She lightly touched her hand to the base of her neck. “Me, not so much.”

“Me neither,” I said, smiling. “But we found what looks like some sort of mathematical equation scrawled in grease at the crime scene. Did your husband…doodle?”

“Not that I ever saw.”

“Did he pal around with other people who were mathematicians or math enthusiasts?”

“Amir did not have time for, as you say, palling around. He was a devoted, hard-working man.”

“Yes, I can see that.” This was going nowhere. Better to wrap it up, maybe leave an opening to return when I had more information. “How are you doing, ma’am?” I asked.

“I am…well.”

“This can’t be easy for you. Taking care of four children, all on your own, one of them still in diapers. And now you’re confronted with this tragedy. Are you going to be all right?”

She lowered her baby back into the cradle, then looked directly at me with penetrating milk chocolate eyes. I didn’t need NLP to perceive her guileless honesty. “Where is it written that life should be easy? Not in our sacred texts. Certainly not in your Christian Bible. I know nothing of easy, certainly not since we came to this country. But I know this. I have a duty. To my family, my children. And I will honor that duty. It is perhaps not so much that I do. But I will do it.”

SOMETHING WAS WRONG. Danielle understood that immediately. Something about the man’s manner, the brutish expression on his face. Even if Gina were trying to avoid typecasting, she knew that ultimately their films had to be entertaining. And not in any way…frightening. This guy intimidated without even speaking.

“Look,” she said, “it’s late, and I’m tired. I really don’t have the energy for an audition right now. Could you come back in the morning—”

“I’m not here to be in one of your filthy films,” he said, and before he had even finished the sentence, he sprang forward like a bull terrier released from his leash. “I left your actor lying in a heap in the parkin’ lot.” Danielle tried to back away, but she wasn’t nearly quick enough. He grabbed her right arm by the wrist and twisted it behind her at an extreme angle.

Danielle cried out. “You’re hurting me!”

“That’s why I’m here,” the man growled.

“Why?” she whimpered, fighting back tears of pain. “Why are you doing this?”

“’Cause you earned it,” he answered, snarling. “’Cause you were chosen.”

All at once, he shoved her onto the bed, decked out in crimson silk sheets for the next day’s shoot. He slammed her back against the brass headboard, making her head spin and her eyes flutter.

“Earned…it,” she managed. She had to fight unconsciousness. If she fell asleep, there was no telling what this maniac might do to her. He might be a crazed fan, bent upon raping his favorite actress. But she didn’t think so. The look in his eyes didn’t suggest sexual lust. It was just…evil.

She tried to speak again, but before she could, he had jerked her arm up and snapped a pair of prop handcuffs, dangling from the bedpost, around her wrist. But no, she thought, her brain still scrambled, those are for the guy. Mason. I’m supposed to be the dominant one. “I—I haven’t earned…anything. I’m a respectable businesswoman.”

“Really? Is that what your daughter would say?”

A cold chill spread through Danielle’s already almost insensible body. How could he know?