The Devil's Menagerie (6 page)

“Thing is, Braden, the sheriff’s part of this liaison arrangement with the FBI’s NCAVC … the VICAP thing? This is the kind of crime they want feedback on, you know? The sheriff won’t want to let that pass. I mean, the forms are voluntary, but if I was to let him know you’d send ’em in, he’d be happy. That might keep the feds off your back too. Otherwise, you know how they are, they might want to take over the whole investigation.”

“Great,” Braden muttered, thinking of the endless pages of a VICAP questionnaire.

The NCAVC was the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, headquartered at Quantico, Virginia, the site of the FBI Academy. VICAP—the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program—was one of its most important tools. Fully operational after ten years of development, VICAP was essentially a computerized program storing data on violent crimes reported by police departments throughout the United States, cataloging and cross-referencing detailed information about the crimes, the victims, the perpetrators and their
MO
‘s and profiles. Braden had no doubt the program was a significant crime-fighting advance, enabling an investigator in Hobbs, New Mexico, say, to link a murder weapon or a fingerprint found at a local crime scene to a similar crime recorded two years previously in Boston. Not after days, weeks or months of laborious plodding, but in the nanosecond burst of a computer match. What made him feel a little old was the prospect of filling out more forms.

“Tell the sheriff to send over the forms,” he said. “I’m not sure I have them.”

Relieved, Borland plodded off to his vehicle to make a call. Left alone, Braden shook a cigarette from a nearly full pack—he was trying to cut down—and flicked his Zippo lighter with his thumb, cupping his hands to shield the flame. There was a momentary lull in the traffic on the highway, and in the silence Braden heard a familiar whirring sound.

He turned quickly. A young man on the bikers’ overpass had a camcorder snugged against his cheek, its lens staring straight at Braden.

Anger flared. Braden opened his mouth, but at the last second bit off a shout. Letting them see how easy it was to get to him would only make things worse.

Braden had put in nine years with the LAPD, the last two with the Homicide Division at Parker Center. He was a rising star in the department. They said he had a gift for it—not only for the painstaking attention to procedure and detail that were part of any homicide investigation, but also for those flashes of intuition or insight that jumped past the physical evidence toward another kind of truth.

Then came the Incident. Braden’s fifteen minutes of fame, recorded in a jumpy black-and-white video by a witness. The key moments—less than thirty seconds of film—were played over and over again on the nightly news, local and network stations,
Hard Copy
and A
Current Affair
. In those thirty seconds Braden’s career at Parker Center went down the tubes.

He blocked off the bitter memory. He kept his back to the man with the video camera and stared down at the unidentified victim of a brutal murder, his face as expressionless as a block of wood.

He was relieved when he saw the flashing light of an ambulance up on the highway and, closer, the familiar small, neat figure of the county medical examiner walking toward him.

T
ED
N
AKASHIMI LOOKED
more like a high school dropout than one of the county’s best medical technicians. He wore faded jeans with a hole in one knee, dirty Reeboks, a polo shirt with some visible stains and a red headband he used to keep his lank, shoulder-length black hair away from his face. He was short, round-faced and breezy, his brown eyes perpetually amused behind coke bottle spectacles. Braden knew for a fact that the
DA’
s prosecutors hated having to call him as an expert witness in criminal court cases, not for lack of competence but because of the impression he made on jurors. In truth, Nakashimi’s careless appearance and breezy manner disguised a sharp-eyed, serious professional, a perfectionist in a profession that measured its daily achievements with microscopic precision.

“Hey, what you got for me, Braden?” the
ME
asked as he arrived at the end of the bridge.

“I always save the best for you, Doc.”

Nakashimi examined the ground carefully before stepping down the bank toward the shape beside the creek under the green plastic sheet. Before lifting the sheet he peered closely at the surrounding area. From the bridge above him a police photographer began taking pictures.

“These footprints belong to you guys?”

“That’s right,” Borland said.

“Nobody else been down here, right? I want some pictures before I move her.”

While he waited for the photographer to finish, Nakashimi glanced over at the bystanders on the wooden overpass. An expression of distaste flickered across his normally impassive features. “If we’re not gonna sell tickets, I need a screen here. Get me another tarp, two of the deputies can hold it.”

He had two deputies hold a tarpaulin shoulder high, creating a buffer between the victim and the gawkers, some of whom called out their protests. The technician ignored them. Going down on one knee beside the body, he beckoned to Braden, “You gonna be working this, Detective?”

“Could be.”

“Unless the feds take it over, right? Isn’t this a wildlife sanctuary? Protected government land?”

Nakashimi used a voice-activated tape recorder during his examination, but Braden made his own notes. The dead girl seemed unnaturally white in the growing brightness of the morning, her nakedness a cruel atrocity, taking away any shred of dignity she might have had in death. The tech murmured into his recorder as she examined the victim’s back and legs, noting the minimal degree of rigor and lividity, both of which would help to determine the approximate time of death, examining her fingers and fingernails carefully. The latter had false nails attached, bright red and perfectly shaped except for one that had been broken off. Nakashimi, who took swabs, smears and samples as he worked, putting each into separate plastic bags, seemed surprised at the condition of the fingernails. “Either she was washed thoroughly or she didn’t put up a fight,” he noted, glancing up at Braden. “Maybe because he had her taped up good.”

“Can you tell me what kind of tape?”

“What, you think I’m a magician?” Nakashimi pursed his lips as he picked up one of the girl’s wrists. “Sticky stuff. Maybe heavy-duty package tape. There’s some residue on her ankles, too. I’ll run some tests.”

He turned the woman over. Braden heard a raw intake of breath from one of the deputies behind him. “Oh shit,” the medical technician muttered.

The girl had been battered savagely about the face and body. Lips pulped over broken teeth. Her nose was a smear. One eye—

the one that had peered sidelong at Braden when he lifted up her hair—was clear, but the flesh around the other was so swollen and discolored that the eye itself was no longer visible. Similar swelling and discoloration marked the abrasions and contusions over her chest and stomach.

Nakashimi paused as he examined her belly closely. After taking samples of blood, sand and dried mud, he used a damp sponge and a soft brush to clean the blood-smeared stomach. As he did so, something unexpected was revealed. Both the tech and Braden stared down at it in silence. The cuts that crisscrossed the victim’s abdomen were neither random slashes nor deep, penetrating wounds. The shallow cuts—three horizontal slashes and one vertical—traced a large capital letter “E.”

“Cause of death?” Braden murmured.

“We’ll have to wait and see. She’s got broken ribs, maybe a punctured lung. She was hit on the neck, the larynx may be crushed. But the cuts …” Nakashimi shook his head “… not deep enough.”

“He beat her to death.”

“That’s not a medical conclusion, Detective, but it’s a helluva good guess. Maybe I can tell you more after the cut.”

“How soon can you get to it?” Braden’s tone was flat and hard.

Nakashimi raised an eyebrow. “This is Saturday, Braden. By midnight the county morgue will be knee-deep in bodies.”

Braden stared at him. “We have a real bastard loose here.”

“You’ve got a weirdo,” the
ME
admitted.

“The colder she gets, the farther away he gets, you know that. How long has she been dead? There’s almost no rigor.”

“What do you need me for?” Nakashimi answered testily. “Okay, okay … she’s been dead about three hours, give or take an hour. Don’t hold me to that, but it should be pretty close.”

Braden glanced at his watch. The medical examiner’s estimate put the time of death at around four that morning. Or between three and five as the outside parameters.

Braden thought about the biker who had made the 911 call at a little after five-thirty. He wasn’t completely out of the picture.

“What else can you give me, Doc?” he said after a moment. “Did he do it with his fists? Or did he use a weapon of some kind?”

“I don’t like guessing, Detective,” Nakashimi said with a frown. “But he couldn’t have done that much damage with his fists in the ordinary way. Unless he’s like that fighter—what was his name, Duran? Hands of Stone?”

“What are you telling me?”

“You know what it looks like, Sergeant? Like someone used good old-fashioned brass knuckles. Or maybe he was holding a role of quarters when he hit her. And there’s something else. He was wearing gloves. Smooth leather gloves. There are no obvious pattern impressions in the skin. Also, lots of damage, but no obvious trace evidence of skin or tissue other than the victim’s. We won’t know for sure until I’ve done some tests.” He paused. “This was no spur of the moment thing, Braden. Your killer came prepared.”

“Was she sexually assaulted?”

“Oh yeah, he tore her up in at least two places. There’s vaginal and anal tearing and bruising. But he practiced safe sex,” the
ME
added with heavy irony. “He didn’t leave us any semen.”

“And the cuts on her stomach? You read that the way I do? The letter ‘E’?”

“Could be a symbol of some kind, but it looks like an ‘E’ to me.”

“And the vaginal cut? What does that tell you?”

Nakashimi shrugged. “It means he likes to play games, Braden. The cutting is a message, maybe a signature. Or maybe he’s just laughing at us.”

The medical technician stepped back. “Let’s get the rest of the pictures and get her out of here. Maybe your perpetrator isn’t as smart as he thinks. Maybe he left something behind as a calling card that he didn’t think of. I won’t know until I get her on the table.”

“You’ll get right on it?” Braden pressed him again.

Nakashimi studied him for a long moment. “I love working on weekends, Braden, you know that. It’s the
OT.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

For a moment the
ME
was uncharacteristically serious. “Maybe we should all hope this one was personal,” he said, looking down at the body.

“Whatta ya mean, Doc?” Al Borland asked. The deputy sheriff had joined them in time to hear Nakashimi’s last comment.

“That letter he cut. The alphabet has twenty-six letters.”

A
S
B
RADEN WAS
walking back to his car, Borland caught up to him. “Wait up, Braden.”

Braden turned. The body of the murdered girl was being loaded onto the ambulance. The crowd of bystanders lingered on the pedestrian bridge. Southern Californians walked out of Dodger Stadium in the seventh inning, Braden reflected, but for a homicide they hung in there to the bitter end.

The deputy sheriff stared past Braden’s eyes into the distance, as if embarrassed. “I been on the horn to the sheriff. He agrees we should work together on this,” Borland said, as if he and Braden had reached such an agreement.

Braden tried to hide his irritation. He wanted the case, and that meant he didn’t want a jurisdictional dispute dragged out. “How would we coordinate?”

“I got this deputy I can cut loose. The one I told you about? Officer Pritkin? He’s back there at the Bright Spot with the caller. He’s green, Braden, but he’s eager. And he comes with a bonus.”

“For Chrissake, Al—”

“He’s the only cop I ever met doesn’t hate forms. And he’s in love with computers. You got to coordinate with VICAP on this, Braden, Officer Pritkin is your man.”

W
ITH THE FIRE
largely contained, Dave’s crew of volunteers were released at six o’clock Saturday morning. When he reached his street and turned into the driveway, he was just behind the paper boy who had tossed the morning Los
Angeles Times
into the rosebushes. Dave couldn’t remember anything about the drive out of the hills. It was as if he had been driving while asleep. A zombie. Appearing out of the morning mist like something from
Night of the Living Dead
.

Dumb movie, he thought. What made a cult classic? Oughta be an article in that. How about a seminar on cult films? His thoughts seemed fuzzy.

The children were still in bed, the house cool. Glenda was awake, opening the door for him, still wearing her nightgown. She had heard the car turn into the drive, heard the car door shut. They hugged silently.

“Would you like something to eat?” she asked. “Some hot chocolate?”

He shook his head. “Just sleep. I’m falling down.”

She followed him upstairs and sat on the bed while he undressed and stepped into the bathroom to shower. He stood under the warm shower for five minutes, but when he emerged it seemed to him that the smell of smoke and ash still clung to his skin. He dried himself quickly and, shivering, tumbled naked into bed.

He stared up at her. “Did you get any sleep?”

“A little.” He thought she was lying.

“If Beringer really has come back, we’re going to have to deal with it.”

She stared hard at him. “You think that’s all this is?”

Dave started to reply and thought better of it. He sank back against the pillows. Glenda stalked over to the dormer windows facing the front of the house. The shades were raised halfway—they both liked an open window and fresh air while they slept. The Battenburg lace curtains stirred in the current of cool moist air coming through the window. The streetlight just north of the house was still on, its sensor fooled by the overcast morning, and Dave could see mist curling in the yellow light and flakes of ash falling softly on the roof shingles.