The Face of Death (9 page)

“I think…” My voice trails off. It comes to me the way it always does: swimming from out of some dark place, fully formed. “I think he liked the fact that he could do something dark out in the open. He killed this family in the middle of the day, he all but bathed in their blood, and then he stripped down and took a nice, long swim while their bodies began to bake in an unventilated home. In the meantime, the people in this neighborhood held their kids’ birthday parties and clipped their hedges and barbecued their steaks, not knowing that he was here, enjoying the day in his own way.” I look at Barry. “The feeling of triumph must have been overwhelming. Like a vampire walking around in the daylight. This scene is about power and ownership. Confidence in coming here during the day, confidence in his use of knife as the murder weapon. It fits.”

“Sick fuck,” Barry says, shaking his head. He sighs. “So, he does a few laps in the pool, maybe lies around listening to the neighbors while he pats himself on the back. The question though is sequences. You say the scene downstairs was fresh. I’ll buy that, but how does it play? He kills two vics upstairs, creates a little abstract art with their blood, comes and swims, then kills the third victim? And what’s Sarah doing while all this is happening?”

I shrug. “We don’t know yet.”

“I hate when they make me work for it.” He sighs. “Hey, Thompson!” he bellows, startling me. As if by magic, the twentysomething uniform who had tried to prevent our entrance earlier today appears.

“Yes, sir?” he asks.

“Don’t let anyone into the backyard unless the head of CSU says so.”

“Yes, sir.” He takes his place by the sliding glass door. He’s too young. Still excited about getting to be here.

“Ready to see the bedroom?” Barry asks us.

It’s a rhetorical question. We’re sniffing the trail, making things happen, putting the picture together in our heads.

Get it while it’s hot.

We leave the family room and head up the stairs, Barry taking the lead, Callie behind me. We reach the top. Barry peers into the room.

“Is it necessary for both of you to come in?” a critical voice asks. “To tramp all over everything?”

This sourness belongs to John Simmons, head of this shift’s LAPD Crime Scene Unit. He’s crabby, crusty, and absolutely untrusting of anyone but himself when it comes to handling the evidentiary part of a homicide. These traits are forgivable; he’s one of the best.

“Three, actually,” Callie says, moving forward so that he can see her too.

Simmons is not a young man. He’s been doing this for a very long time, he’s in his late fifties, and it shows. Smiles, for him, are like diamonds: rare, and only worn on the right occasions. Callie, it appears, merits one.

“Calpurnia!” he cries, grinning from ear to ear. He moves toward us, shoving Barry and me out of the way to embrace her.

Callie smiles and hugs him back while Barry looks on, bemused. I have seen this behavior before, and know its source. Barry does not.

“I did an internship under Johnny while I was getting my degree in forensics,” Callie explains to Barry.

“Very gifted,” Simmons says, fondly. “Calpurnia was one of my few successes. Someone who truly appreciates the science.”

Simmons looks over at me now. His study of my scars is frank, but it doesn’t bother me. I know the basis of his interest is judgment-free curiosity.

“Agent Barrett,” he says, nodding.

“Hello, sir.”

I’ve always called John Simmons “sir.” He’s always seemed like a “sir” to me, and he’s never disabused me of the fact. Callie is the only person I know of who calls him “Johnny,” just as he’s the only person I can imagine getting away with calling her “Calpurnia,” the given name she hates with such ferocity.

“So, Calpurnia,” he says, turning back to Callie, “I trust you’ll watch over my crime scene? Ensure nothing gets trampled or touched that shouldn’t?”

Callie raises her right hand, puts her left one on her heart. “I promise. And, Johnny?”

She tells him about the backyard. He favors her with another fond smile.

“I’ll get someone onto that directly.” He gives Barry and me a last, suspicious look before stepping aside.

We enter the room. Simmons heads downstairs to crack the whip, leaving us alone. For all his grumbling, he understands this part of it—the need to soak it in. He’s always given me the space I need to do this, never crowding me or peering over my shoulder.

Now that I don’t have my attention fixed on Sarah, I stop and really
look.

Mr. and Mrs. Dean and Laurel Kingsley, as I now know them to be, fall easily into the “fit-forties” niche. They are tanned, with good-looking faces, muscular legs, and a certain polish about them, a vitality I can still sense, even in these circumstances.

“God, he was confident,” I say. “Not just in coming here on the weekend and in the daytime. He subdued two fit, healthy parents and two teenage children.”

Dean’s eyes are wide and turning into the eyes of the dead, gray and filmy, like soap scum in a bathtub. Laurel’s eyes are closed. Both of them have their lips pulled back, reminding me of a snarling dog, or someone being forced to smile at gunpoint. Dean’s tongue protrudes, while Laurel’s teeth are clenched together.

Forever now, I think. She’ll never pull her teeth apart.

Something tells me that this carefully cared for woman would have hated that.

“He would have used a weapon to intimidate them, and it wouldn’t have been just a knife,” I say. “Not threatening enough for so many victims. It would have been a gun. Something big and scary looking.”

From the collarbone down, it’s as if they each swallowed a hand grenade.

“A single long slice on each of them,” Barry says. “He used something sharp.”

“Probably a scalpel,” I murmur. “Not clean, though. I see signs of hesitation in the wounds. Note the ragged spots?”

“Yep.”

He cut them open with a halting, trembling hand. Then he reached into them, grabbed hold of whatever he touched, and pulled, like a fisherman cleaning a fish. Standing over Mrs. Kingsley now, I’m able to make out the middle third of her spine; key organs aren’t there to block my view of it.

“Hesitation cuts are odd,” I murmur.

“Why?” Barry asks.

“Because in every other way he was confident.” I lean forward for a closer look, examining the throats this time. “When he cut their throats, it was clean, no hesitation.” I stand up. “Maybe they weren’t hesitation marks. Maybe the cuts were uneven because he was excited. He might have come to orgasm slicing them open.”

“Lovely,” Callie says.

In contrast to Dean and Laurel, the boy—Michael—is untouched. He’s white from blood loss, but he was spared the indignity of being gutted.

“Why’d he leave the boy alone?” Barry wonders.

“He either wasn’t as important—or he was the most important one of all,” I say.

Callie walks around the bed at a slow pace, examining the bodies. She casts looks around the floor, squints at the blood on the walls.

“What do you see?” I ask.

“The jugular veins of all three victims have been severed. Based on the color of the skin, they were bled dry. This was done prior to the disembowelment.”

“How can you tell that?” Barry asks.

“Not enough blood pooled in the abdominal cavities or visible on the exposed organs. Which is the general problem: Where’s the rest of the blood? I can account for place of death for one of the victims—the family room downstairs. What about the other two?” She gestures around the room. “The blood in here is primarily on the walls. There are some blotches on the carpet, but it’s not enough. The sheets and blankets from the bed are bloody, true, but the amount seems superficial.” She shakes her head. “No one had their throat cut in
this
room.”

“I noticed the same thing earlier,” I say. “They were bled out somewhere else. Where?”

A moment passes before we all gaze down the short hallway that leads from the master bedroom to the master bathroom. I move without speaking; Barry and Callie follow.

Everything becomes clear as we enter.

“Well,” Barry says, grim, “that explains it, all right.”

The bathtub is a large one, made for lazing around in, built with languor in mind. It’s a little over one-quarter full of congealing blood.

“He bled them out in the tub,” I murmur. I point to two large rusty blotches on the carpet. “Pulled them out when he was done and laid them there, next to each other.”

My mind is moving, my perception of the connectedness of things picking up speed. I turn without speaking and walk back into the bedroom. I examine the wrists and ankles of Dean and Laurel Kingsley. Callie and Barry have followed and look at me with their eyebrows raised.

I point at the bodies. “No marks on their wrists or their ankles. You have two adults. You get them to strip naked, you put them into a tub, one at a time, you slit their throats, one at a time, bleed them out, one at a time—does that make any sense?”

“I see what you mean,” Barry says. “They would have been fighting back. How does he get it done? I don’t think saying ‘Take a number, I’ll kill you next’ would’ve cut it.”

“Occam’s razor,” I reply. “The simplest answer: They
weren’t
fighting back.”

Barry frowns, perplexed, and then his face clears and he nods. “Right,” he says. “They were out cold. Maybe drugged.” He makes another note on his pad. “I’ll have them look for that during autopsy.”

“You know,” I say, shaking my head, “if that’s true, then that makes three bodies he had to carry, including one he’d had to have moved up the stairs.” I look at Barry. “How tall would you say Mr. Kingsley is? Six feet?”

“Six or six-one.” He nods. “Probably weighs one-ninety.”

I whistle. “He’d have to muscle Kingsley into the tub, drugged…” I shake my head. “He’s either tall or strong or both.”

“Helps.” Barry nods. “We’re not looking for a little guy.”

“Of course, there could have been two of them,” Callie says, glancing at me. “We know about tag teams, don’t we?”

She’s right. Partnerships in murder are not uncommon. My team and I have chased more than one twisted coffee klatch.

“No visible evidence of sexual violation,” Barry notes, “but that doesn’t mean much. We won’t know for sure until the medical examiner gets a good look at the bodies.”

“Have them check the boy first,” I say.

Barry raises a single eyebrow at me.

“He wasn’t gutted.” I point to Michael’s body. “And he’s clean. I think the killer washed him, postmortem. It looks like he combed his hair. It might not have been sexual—but there was something going on there. Less anger at Michael, for whatever reason.”

“Gotcha,” Barry says, jotting in his notepad.

I gaze around the room, at the streaks of blood on the walls and ceilings. In some places it seems splashed, like an artist had tossed a can of paint onto a blank canvas. But there are intricacies as well. Curls and symbols. Streaks. The most obvious thing about it is that it is everywhere.

“The blood is key to him,” I murmur. “And the disembowelment. There’s no evidence of torture on any of the victims, and they were bled out prior to being cut open. Their pain wasn’t important to him. He wanted what was inside. Especially the blood.”

“Why?” Barry asks.

“I can’t say. There’s too many possible paradigms when it comes to blood. Blood is life, you can drink blood, you can use blood to tell the future—take your pick. But it’s important.” I shake my head. “Strange.”

“What?”

“Everything I’ve seen so far points to a disorganized offender. The mutilation, the blood painting. Disorganized offenders are chaotic. They have trouble planning and they get caught up in the moment. They lose control.”

“So?”

“So how is it that the boy wasn’t gutted and Sarah is still alive? It doesn’t fit.”

Barry gives me a considering look. Shrugs.

“Let’s go see her room,” he says. “Maybe there’ll be some answers there.”

11

“
WOW,” CALLIE REMARKS.

The reason for this soft exclamation is twofold.

First, and most obvious, the words written on the blank wall next to the bed.

“Is that blood?” Barry asks.

“Yes,” Callie confirms.

The letters are large. The slashes that form them are angry, each one a mark of hate and rage.

THIS PLACE = PAIN

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Barry gripes.

“I don’t know,” I reply. “But it was important to him.”

Just like the blood and the disembowelment.

“Interesting that he wrote it in Sarah’s bedroom, don’t you think?” Callie asks.

“Yeah, yeah, puzzle puzzle cauldron bubble,” Barry grumbles. “Why can’t they ever write anything useful. Like: ‘Hi, my name is John Smith, you can find me at 222 Oak Street. I confess.’”

The second reason for Callie’s “wow” can be found in the décor. The memory of standing in Alexa’s room earlier today comes to me by comparison. Sarah’s room is about as far from froufrou girly-girl as you can get.

The carpet is black. The drapes on the windows are black and they’re pulled shut. The bed, a queen-sized four-poster, isn’t black—but the pillowcases, sheets, and comforter on it are. It all contrasts with the white of the walls.

The room itself is a good-sized room for a child. It’s about half as big as the standard-sized “kids’ room” in most homes, perhaps ten by fifteen. Even with the large bed, a dresser, a small computer desk, a bookshelf, and an end table with drawers next to the bed, space remains in the center of the room to move around in. The extra space doesn’t help. The room feels stark and isolated.

“I’m no expert,” Barry says, “but it looks to me like this kid has problems. And I’m not just talking about a bunch of dead people in her house.”

I examine the wooden end table next to the bed. It’s about the height and width of a barstool. A black alarm clock sits on top of it. Its three small drawers are what interest me the most.

“Can we get someone in here to fingerprint this?” I ask Barry. “Now, I mean?”

He shrugs. “I guess. Why?”

I relate the end of my conversation with Sarah. When I finish, Barry looks uncomfortable.

“You shouldn’t have made that promise, Smoky,” he says. “I can’t let you take the diary. Period. You
know
that.”

I look at him, startled. He’s right, I do know it. It goes against the chain of evidence, and at least a dozen other forensic rules, the violation of which would probably send John Simmons into some kind of apoplectic seizure.

“Let’s get Johnny up here,” Callie says. “I have an idea on how to handle this.”

Simmons looks around Sarah Kingsley’s bedroom. “So, Calpurnia. Explain to me what it is you’re trying to accomplish here.”

“Obviously, Johnny, Smoky can’t take the diary. My idea was to make a copy via photographs of each page.”

“You want my photographer to spend time—now—taking a picture of every page in the girl’s diary?”

“Yes.”

“Why should I give this a particular priority?”

“Because you can, honey-love, and because it’s necessary.”

“Fine, then,” he says, turning away and heading toward the door. “I’ll send Dan up.”

I stare after him, bemused at his instantaneous and complete capitulation.

“How was that so easy?” Barry asks.

“The magic word was ‘necessary,’” Callie says. “Johnny won’t tolerate wasted motion on his crime scene. But if something is needed from his team to clear a case, he’ll work them for days.” She gives us a wry smile. “I speak from experience.”

The diary is black, of course. Smooth black leather and small. It’s not masculine or feminine. It’s functional.

Blushing Dan the Photographer Man is here, camera ready.

“What we want is an image of each page, in sequence, large enough to be printed out on letter-sized paper and read.”

Dan nods. “You want to photocopy the diary with the camera.”

“Exactly right,” Callie says.

Dan blushes, again. He coughs. This proximity to Callie seems to be overwhelming him. “No—uh—problem,” he manages to stammer out. “I have a spare one gigabyte memory card I can use and let you take with you.”

“All we need then, is someone to prop it open.” She holds up her hands, showing the surgical gloves she’s already slipped on. “That would be me.”

Dan calms down once he’s back and safe behind his camera lens. Barry and I watch as he shoots. The room is quiet, punctuated by the sound of the camera firing and by Dan murmuring for Callie to turn the pages when needed.

I glimpse Sarah’s handwriting and at last see a hint of femininity. It’s precise without being prissy. A smooth, exacting cursive, written in—
surprise
—black ink.

There’s a lot of it. Page after page after page. I find myself wondering what a girl who surrounds herself with the color black writes about. I find myself wondering if I want to know.

This is a lifelong battle for me: the struggle to “unknow” things. I am
aware
of the beauty of life, when it exists. But I’m also never
unaware
of how terrible life can become, or how monstrous. Happiness, in my estimate, would be an easier state to achieve if I didn’t have to reconcile these opposing forces, if I never had to ask the question: “How can I be happy when I know, right now, at this very moment, that someone else is experiencing something terrible?”

I remember flying into Los Angeles at night with Matt and Alexa. We were coming home from a vacation. Alexa had the window seat and as we’d come down through the clouds, she’d gasped.

“Look, Mommy!”

I’d leaned over and looked through the window. I’d seen Los Angeles below, outlined in a sea of lights that stretched from horizon to horizon.

“Isn’t it pretty?” Alexa had exclaimed.

I’d smiled. “It sure is, honey.”

It had been pretty. But it was also terrifying. I knew right then, at that very moment, that sharks were swimming down there in that sea of lights. I knew that as Alexa smiled and goggled, women were getting raped down there, children were being molested, someone was screaming as they died too soon.

My dad once told me, “Given a choice, the average man would rather smile than hear the truth.”

I had found that to be true, in victims, and in myself.

It was all just wishful thinking, that hope of “unknowing.” I would read the diary and I’d let that black cursive writing take me wherever it wanted to take me, and then I’d know whatever it wanted me to know.

The sound of the camera fills the room, startling me each time it goes off, like gunfire.

It’s not quite nine o’clock when I head downstairs. John Simmons sees Barry and me and motions us over. He’s holding a digital camera in his hand.

“I thought you’d be pleased to know,” he says, “that we were able to lift a set of latent footprints from the tile. Very clean.”

“That’s great,” I reply.

“Too bad there’s no database to run it against,” Barry remarks.

“Even so, the prints
are
noteworthy.”

Barry frowns. “How’s that?”

Simmons hands over the camera. “See for yourself.”

It’s a digital 35mm SLR camera, with an LCD screen on the back so that you can preview the photos taken. The resolution on these cameras is significant enough these days that they are the primary tool used to record raised prints. The photo on the screen is small, but we can see what John is referring to.

“Are those scars?” I ask.

“I believe so.”

The sole of the foot is covered with them. They are all long and thin and horizontal, going from one side of the foot to the next, none of them lengthwise.

Barry hands the camera back to Simmons. “You seen anything like that before?”

“I have, in fact. I’ve done volunteer work for Amnesty International on three occasions, assisting in postmortem examinations of possible torture victims as well as evidence collection from suspected torture sites. These scars resemble the kind created when the soles of the feet are caned or switched.”

I wince. “I take it that’s painful?”

“Excruciating. Done inexpertly—or expertly depending on your goal, I suppose—it can be crippling, but it is generally done to punish, not to maim.”

“These on both feet?” Barry asks.

“Both.”

We’re silent, considering this turn of events. The possibility that our perpetrator had been tortured sometime in his life was germane to his profile, if nothing else.

“It fits with the picture of him as a disorganized offender,” I remark.

Even if other things don’t.

“Caning of the feet is rare here,” Simmons says. “Its use is predominant in South America and parts of the Middle East, as well as Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.”

“Anything else we should know about?” Barry asks.

“Not as yet. We’ll be capturing the contents of the filtration system, of course, so we’ll have to wait and see.”

Forensic handling of a crime scene is a process of
identification
and
individualization.
Individualization occurs when a piece of evidence comes from a unique source. Fingerprints are individualized to a single person. Bullets can, in most cases, be individualized to a specific weapon. DNA is the ultimate in individualization.

The vast majority of evidence can only be identified. Identification is the process of classifying evidence as coming from a common—but not unique—source. Metal shavings are found in the crushed skull of a victim. The shavings are examined and identified as a metal commonly used in making hammers. Identification.

The paths can cross. We have a suspect. We check to see if the suspect owns a hammer. He does. Marks on the victim’s skull match the claw of the suspect’s hammer
and
further investigation finds the victim’s DNA on the edges of the claw. We fingerprint the handle and find only the suspect’s prints on it. Identification and individualization, back and forth, conspiring to seal his fate.

It’s a laborious process, one that requires not just technical expertise, but the ability to apply logic and connect the dots. I had observed the visible, the blood in the pool water, and surmised that our suspect took a swim. Callie processed this information, saw the wet tile, and led us to an invisible footprint.