Victims (14 page)

The dog had sidled close. I ventured a pet of her head. She purred.

Erica Vail stared at me. “Unbelievable, she never likes guys.” Smiling. “You married?”

Milo said, “What kind of scripts does Bella like?”

“She’s eclectic,” said Vail. “But discerning. If she doesn’t whine at a page of dialogue, I give it a second look. The caliber of stuff I’m getting lately, she whines plenty.”

CHAPTER
18

O
ver the next few days, data trickled in.

Neither of Marlon Quigg’s daughters had any idea who’d want to harm their father. The same went for family friends Milo and Reed and Binchy interviewed. Belle Quigg, requestioned through a fog of sedation, repeated a mantra: Everyone loved Marlon, this had to be a maniac.

Animal Control reported thirty-three dead canines collected across the county since Quigg’s murder. Milo and the young D’s took the time to check each one. None was Louie.

Most of the dogs had been abandoned and had died of malnutrition or disease or from being hit by cars. A golden retriever mix discovered on a Canoga Park side street had been shot in the head, execution-style, and Milo took the time to contact its owners. Two college girls had shared Maximilian; both were bereft and guilt-stricken. The ex-boyfriend of one young woman was their prime suspect and a background check revealed a husky thirty-year-old with a misdemeanor record of assaults and disorderly conduct.

Milo grew excited and looked for the man. He turned out to have been on the open sea for seven months, working as a deckhand on a commercial freighter on its way to Japan.

The shelter where Marlon Quigg had adopted Louie employed no one who matched the description of the broadly built white man seen lurking near both murder scenes. With the exception of a Vietnamese American high school student and two octogenarian retirees, the staff was exclusively female.

The woman who’d handled Louie’s paperwork recalled Marlon Quigg because he’d been so easy to deal with and opined that he’d seemed the perfect match for Louie: quiet, laid-back, no-fuss kind of guy.

I thought:
Easy victim
.

Binchy and Reed visited other shelters with no better results.

Inspection of Quigg’s phone and financial records revealed nothing suspicious. An additional search of the campgrounds and interviews with a score of homeless people congregating near PCH and Sunset were futile, though one of the panhandlers, a wild-eyed, gap-toothed woman named Aggie, was certain Quigg had once driven by and given her fifty dollars.

Milo said, “Big haul.”

“Oh, yeah, he was great.”

“What kind of car was he driving, Aggie?”

“What else? Big Rolls-Royce. Like I say, some of those rich folk are nice!”

Quigg’s autopsy and lab results came in.

A significant bruise where the back of the neck met the skull suggested he’d been subjected to a single hard blow from behind. The C.I. hadn’t caught it at the scene because Quigg’s thick hair concealed it. Not a fatal blow but hard enough to stun.

No human hairs other than Quigg’s had been found on his person
but Louie had shed a few more strands onto his master’s shirt. Three additional fibers turned out to be synthetic sheepskin.

I said, “Our bad guy wears a bulky coat. Maybe it’s a cheap shearling.”

“Dressed for the hunt … in Montana … may-be.” Milo scrawled in his pad. “What do you think of that head wound?”

I said, “Classic sneak-attack sucker punch. Vita didn’t need to be blitzed because she was reeling drunk and the pizza ruse caught her off guard. If the killer’s the guy Erica Vail saw, he was near the scene three days before he did Quigg. Quigg’s walks were predictable, it wouldn’t have been much of a challenge to pretend to be taking a walk himself. Pass by and smile and wave, maybe even stop to pet Louie.”

“Friendly stalking,” he said. “Till it’s not.”

“I’d go back to Belle Quigg and ask if Marlon ever mentioned encountering anyone during his walks.”

More writing. “On my list … so we have a good idea how each of them was done. But that still begs the big question: What turned them into victims? There’s got to be something in common but hell if I can find it. I was hoping it would be Vita’s lawsuit but it’s not shaping up that way. The suits at Well-Start ended up being a lot more forthcoming than I expected. Not because they’re nice guys, because Vita’s murder has them worried the original gag order will be rescinded, they’ll have to deal with a whole bunch of bad publicity. They actually sent a lawyer over yesterday and she showed me a lot of paper: the prelim motions, all the interviews with the accused co-workers, Shacker’s report. Which came across as a lot of shrinky bullshit, no offense. But all in all, nothing new and the mouthpiece swore the company had no connection with Quigg. I didn’t take her word for it, emailed Well-Start’s CEO’s second in command in Hartford, Connecticut. He called me personally, gave me the name of the accounting firm that does their books, greased the skids so they’d talk to me. They’d never
hired Quigg nor, to their knowledge, had Quigg ever applied for a job. That was backed up by Mrs. Quigg. Marlon wasn’t a ‘seeker.’ Happy with the status quo and figuring on retiring in a few years. Despite
that
, I got hold of Quigg’s boss at the CPA firm and probed about Quigg doing insurance work. The firm does some but not for Well-Start and not for Well-Start’s liability carrier. And even if they had, Quigg wouldn’t have been assigned to it, he was more than busy with his supermarket account. He described ol’ Marlon the way everyone else has: pleasant, compliant, even-tempered. So why were the two of them singled out? Or maybe there is no X factor and this bastard drives around, spots random prey, stalks and studies and sets up the hunt.”

Nothing about this kind of murder was ever random but it wasn’t the time to say so.

“Meanwhile,” he said, “both cases are thawing out fast. Bastard quits right now, he may get away with it.”

He needn’t have worried about that.

CHAPTER
19

T
he following day, Milo’s mood lifted from subterranean to glum.

Belle Quigg had remembered a “nice young fellow” Marlon had met during his nightly walk.

Louie had “taken” to the man, a clear sign to Quigg that he was a person of sterling character.

Milo hmmphed. “Because we all know dogs are such great judges.” He spooned lentils onto a hillock of basmati rice. Sucked-out lobster claws were heaped in front of him, a gruesome display if you thought too much about it.

We were at his usual corner table at Café Moghul, an Indian restaurant around the corner from the station that serves as his second office. Over the years he’d handled a few disruptive psychotics wandering in from Santa Monica Boulevard. The owner, a sweet bespectacled woman who never wears the same sari twice, views him as Lord Protector and feeds him accordingly.

Today it was the lobster, plus tandoori lamb and a farm-plot’s
worth of slow-cooked vegetables enriched by clarified butter. He’d downed six glasses of iced clove tea.

With nowhere to go on the murders, I figured it for an easy day and was nursing my second Grolsch. “Marlon say anything else about this nice fellow?”

“If he did, Belle doesn’t remember. By the way, I talked to a fabric analyst at the lab and the synthetic fleece found on Quigg would definitely be consistent with a low-budget shearling-type lining. Not that it leads me anywhere.”

I said, “You heard what David Feldman said: He still hasn’t unwrapped his winter coat. The fact that our boy wears his could mean he’s originally from a cold climate.”

“Or just rummaged at the right thrift shop. But if I come across a dogsled and mittens, I’ll go with that. I find the fact that Quigg could’ve been primed for days hugely creepy. Like those wasps, stroking caterpillars into a stupor before they plunge the stinger.”

I said, “Priming could serve an additional purpose: We’ve got a wasp who enjoys playing with his food.”

“Joy of the hunt.”

“A shearling might be something a hunter would own.”

“Homicidal fore-prey.” His laughter was harsh. The woman in the sari glided over. Today’s garment was a celebration of turquoise and coral-pink and saffron-yellow. The pink matched her eyeglass frames.

“You are enjoying?”

“As always.”

“More lobster?”

Milo patted his paunch. “Couldn’t handle another bite. I’ve already demolished an entire coral reef.”

She was confused by the reference, covered with a smile. “You want more, tell me please, Lieutenant.”

“Will do, but honestly, I’m done.”

“Not totally done,” she said. “Dessert.”

“Hmm,” he said. “
Gulab jamun
sounds good.”

“Very fine.” She glided away moving her lips. I caught two words: “My lieutenant.”

Milo caught nothing because his phone was vibrating on the table. When he processed the digital readout, his shoulders dropped.

“Sturgis, sir. Oh, hi, Maria … oh. Jesu—when? Oh. Okay. Yeah. Right away.”

Pushing away from the table, he threw cash down, swiped his chin viciously with a napkin. As I followed his trot for the door, the woman in the sari emerged from the kitchen bearing a platter of dough balls glazed with rosewater syrup and two bowls filled to the brim with rice pudding.

“There’s
kir
, too,” she said. “For extra sweet.”

“Unfortunately, life isn’t,” said Milo, shoving the door open and leaving me to catch it.

He race-walked south on Butler, heading back to the station, flushed and breathing hard and wiping his face and grinding his teeth.

I said, “What’s up?”

“What do you think?”

“Maria Thomas is a pencil-pusher. Something mindlessly bureaucratic, like a meeting you’ve been avoiding?”

He stopped short, wiped his face so hard it was almost a slap.

“Our bad boy’s back in action and instead of calling me, the watch commander went straight to His Splendiferousness. Who handed off to Maria because he didn’t want to hear the sound of my voice. Obviously I’ve been under the microscope on these murders and not engendering confidence. I’m heading over to the scene now. Don’t be surprised if they yank me off.”

He resumed his march.

I said, “Who’s the victim?”

His jaw was tight; the answer came out hoarse and strangled.

“Think plural. This time the bastard doubled his fun.”

The house was a low, wide ranch on a street of similar structures in a no-name neighborhood of West L.A.

The man had been found in the backyard, lying on his stomach, wearing a black silk bathrobe. Deep stab wounds concentrated in a tight circle at the center of his chest. A couple of coup de grâce throat slashes had severed the right jugular and carotid and the trachea.

No disembowelment, nothing similar to Vita and Quigg. I watched as Milo examined the body.

The man’s hair was long, dark, and wavy. His mustache was clipped precisely. Thirty to forty, good-sized, well muscled.

No effort to clean up the blood; the grass beneath the body was glazed a slick, unpleasant brown. No shredded lawn or damaged shrubs or other sign of struggle.

No blow from behind; this time, the C.I. had probed under the hair immediately, found no swelling or bruising.

The killer had taken on a serious foe face-to-face, dispatched him easily.

Maybe darkness had been his ally.

Milo circled the body for the fourth time.

The crime scene techs had finished their initial work and were waiting for him before leaving. Deputy Chief Maria Thomas had taken her time calling him to the scene.

Out in front of the house, the coroner’s van was waiting to transport.

Nice, sunny day on the Westside. The yard where the man in the robe lay dead was ringed with high block walls laced with trumpet vine. In Missouri, where I’d grown up, no one bothered with fences and a kid could pretend he owned the world. Behind our rattrap house was a dense black forest that yielded an occasional dead animal and two human corpses. The first had been a hunter, shot accidentally by a buddy. The second had been a little girl, five years old, my age at the time. I supposed freedom could be the stuff of bad dreams but
right now this boxy, confined space felt oppressive. Why was I thinking about that?

Because I had nothing constructive to offer.

Milo completed another circle before heading for Maria Thomas.

The D.C. had positioned herself midway up the blue house’s driveway, on the near side of two parked vehicles. Sheltered from the ugliness, she made love to her cell phone.

Blond-coiffed and trim with a preference for tailored suits, Maria had been a captain when I’d met her a couple of years ago. Well spoken, cautious, decorous, she was the ideal corporate cog. The only time I’d seen her in action, she’d screwed up big-time by usurping a detective’s role, leading to the death of a suspect in an interview room.

Somehow that disaster had earned her a promotion.

She kept Milo waiting as she talked, finally pointed to the house’s rear door but didn’t end the conversation.