MOSAICS: A Thriller Page 12

  “The dead one?” I asked.

  He nodded. “The live one doesn’t talk as much.”

  I’d thank the dead lady, but I was in no rush.

  “Show me both hands, Ricky,” I said.

  He did. His hands were empty now.

  “Step out of there. And keep showing me your hands.”

  Once he was out of the shed I said, “I brought a few pictures for you to take a good look at.”

  Vicente’s trowel went back to the cement. Ricky Vargas sat on the finished end of the retaining wall and pointed his chin to the pack of cigarettes bulging from his left shoulder, under a rolled up sleeve.

  “So long as you blow the smoke away from me,” I said.

  Ricky slid out a cig, lit it with a match, then brought it to his uncle who showed his yellowed teeth in appreciation. Ricky sat back on the wall and lit a second one for himself this time.

  Vicente smiled around the cigarette butt. “You sure you don’t want one, cop?”

  “I’m good, thanks.” I took the mug shots out of my pocket. “Ricky. You remember telling me and my partner you saw a man coming out of Amy Liu’s house the night she was killed?”

  He nodded. “Drove away in the nice Audi.”

  “That guy.” I handed him the mug shots. “Can you see him here?”

  He took the six-pack from my hand and stared at it while chewing on his cig.

  Vicente blew misty smoke out of his mouth. “It’s not bad for you. My wife, the dead one, says the stuff is bad for you. She says she don’t smoke. She says she’s gonna outlive me because she don’t smoke. She been dead thirteen years now.” He let the ashes dangle from the tip, teeth clenched around the butt and lips moving carefully around it. “Now I go to her grave and smoke myself a cig. She don’t complain no more.”

  The photos in Ricky’s hands were mug shots, all except for one, which I’d replaced with Lyons’s driver’s license photo. When Ricky came across it, he pointed to the doc with no hesitation.

  “Are you sure?”

  He took the cigarette out of his mouth and stared at it while blowing smoke out of his nostrils. “It wasn’t the first time I saw him there.”

  “What other times did you see him?”

  “He’d come in the evening, when we’d pack our stuff to leave. She’d get mad and say he’d come too early. That people would see him. But then she’d be happy.” He sneered, his still boyish features emerging through unshaved cheeks and smudges of cement. Then his nineteen-year-old eyes became old again, the smile melancholy.

  “Did you watch them?”

  He grimaced. “No, man! That’s sick!”

  Like I haven’t seen it before.

  “How did you know they were lovers, then?”

  There came the gargle again, low, then louder, until it became the rustling of an old, cracked laughter. “Some things you just know,” Vicente said.

  That was good enough for me. I put the mug shots back in my pocket.

  Ricky scrutinized me from the tip of his cigarette. “I helped you out, man.”

  “Yes, you did. I might ask you to remember our conversation today. You might have to remember it in front of a judge.”

  His smile came back, and with it the shade of melancholy. “I helped you out, man,” he repeated. He took another drag and blew smoke out of his nostrils. “I heard you guys are looking for the guy who did ’em both. The fag and the lady.”

  “And hopefully catch him before he does somebody else,” I said.

  He considered me through thin loops of smoke. “That’s crazy, man.”

  “What is? Killing?”

  He shook his head. The lizard tattooed on his shoulder winked. “You can kill a fag, if you don’t like fags. You can kill a pretty lady in a pretty house, if she done somethin’ to you. You don’t kill both.”

  I wanted to ask why not, but my phone didn’t give me the time. The display flashed Satish’s number. As I flipped it open, Vargas pointed a finger at me. “You don’t forget. I helped you out.”

  I answered the phone while walking back to the car. “What are you, a mind reader?”

  Satish pondered. “You think I could make money out of it?”

  “Not with minds. Palms, maybe, if you put some practice into it. Listen. I’ve got a wit on Lyons. Vargas. He puts him in Amy’s house the night she was killed.”

  “After the party?”

  “After the party.”

  “Well, that’s interesting. You see, I happen to be at his house right now. Together with a stiff and an SID Field Unit.”

  I stopped cold. “Is Lyons the stiff?”

  “No. His wife. Come.”

  ELEVEN

  ____________

  It was a box: a house with a slanted roof and a breezeway between the main building and the three-door garage. Still a box, if you ask me. One of those ultra-modern things that in a real estate listing would’ve had more bathrooms than bedrooms and enough zeros to make you feel astigmatic.

  It was a glass box, really, with no hint of privacy. At night it must’ve glimmered like the top of the Empire State Building. Which is why a house like that came with an eight-foot-tall property wall covered in crawling ivy.

  A swimming pool shimmered in the midday light, needlework of reflections wavering off the windowpanes of the first floor. I climbed up the cobblestone steps, walked through a maze of tapered fiberglass planters, snaked across the recliners on the poolside deck and admired the roses raining down the gazebo. The tall breezeway hung between the garage to the left and the glass-paned living area to the right. Its ceiling slanted up, hinting to a second floor at the opposite end.

  A dog barked. A female officer held her on a leash. “Lily belongs to the home owners’,” she said. “She’s in shock, poor baby. I’m keeping her out of the crime scene.”

  Lily was a golden spaniel, well groomed, with a pink ribbon on her head. And she was barking at me. “Was she inside at the time of the attack? Did anybody hear her bark?”

  The officer patted her on the back. “I’m not sure. She was with the husband when we arrived. The neighbors didn’t hear a thing. The husband was swimming in the pool when the wife was attacked. He didn’t hear or see a thing either.” Her eyes went back to the spaniel, who was now making a point of showing me her teeth. “She’s such a sweetie. I bet she got scared and went hiding.”

  Funny how the sweetie got scared when she saw the killer, but kept on barking at me.

  I turned my attention to the main entrance, a red metal door encased between glass panels. It was ajar. I pushed it open and examined the dead bolts and locks. Everything looked intact: no jimmies, no signs of forced entry.

  “Aw, aren’t you a beauty?” the officer cooed.

  “Yeah. I get that a lot.”

  There was a disapproving pause. “I was talking to Lily.” She pulled the leash and took Lily somewhere else to have their private conversation.

  No forced entry, no dog barking. It made me eager to hear Lyons’s story.

  I left the red door and stepped between the box hedges and the windowpanes to take a closer look at the glass. It was thick, the bulletproof kind. I crouched, inspected all edges, and noticed a little brown box on one corner with a tiny LED light in the middle. If robbers really wanted to cut through the glass, they’d have to come prepared.

  Inside the house, I spotted an SID tech standing at the bottom of a spiral staircase, dusting the shiny steel railing with a fingerprint brush. He saw me peeking through the windows and frowned while his right hand continued its dusting job.

  Tires screeched from the street. The length and pitch of the screeching was vaguely familiar. The car stopped, the engine was cut off.

  A door slammed.

  I inhaled.

  Past the chlorine of the swimming pool and the gas exhaust from the street, past the scent of the marina half a mile away, came a whisper of honeydew and lost childhood memories. A Bill Evans tune started playing at the back of my head.
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  I walked back to the property gate.

  “What do you mean my name’s not on your list? I called as soon as I was notified.”

  The watch officer stiffened. “Ma’am—”

  “Can’t you read my badge?”

  “Ma’am, the Field Unit’s already here, and—”

  I grabbed the yellow tape and lifted it. “She’s with me,” I told the officer.

  He had one of those square faces that narrows at the temples and widens at the jaws. The lower one opened slightly then clicked back in place. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled, with the vacant look of somebody who’s been given overriding orders and doesn’t quite know what to do.

  Diane sucked in air as if she was about to dive under water and ducked under the tape.

  “Thank you,” she said and scuttled up the cobblestone steps squeezing a large handbag under her arm. “How old is the stiff?”

  “I love it when you talk business. D. If the Field Unit’s already here—”

  “—means I wasn’t called on this. Why do you think I had to yell at the guy?” Her logic was as flawless as a freshly ironed shirt. “Here, hold this.” She shoved her handbag in my arms and started donning gloves and protective booties.

  Lily and the officer were strolling by the swimming pool. They seemed to be getting along well.

  Diane slid on gloves while surveying the driveway, backed up with two cruisers, the SID van, and the L.A. county coroner’s van. “The M.E.’s already here. I want to see the stiff before they take it away. You got me into this, remember?”

  “Me?”

  “You gave me the hair to analyze.” Her cheeks were flushed from the argument with the officer. It registered in a spike in her scent. My nose sang. Bill Evans played.

  “Well, did you?”

  “Are you kidding? Do you know how long it takes to run that kind of analysis?” She pushed the red metal door open with a blue-gloved hand. “Have you seen the body already?”

  I shook my head and held the door open for her. “Just got here a few minutes ago.”

  We stepped inside, sunrays drifting through the window panels and glinting off shiny wood floors. The air was chilly, the AC blasting through air vents from the ceiling. Right off the door, we came down three steps and were enveloped in a living area, the first one of what looked like an open plan the size of a five-star hotel lobby. A tall chandelier came down from the ceiling and had me wonder if one needed a parachute to change its light bulbs. A spiral staircase coiled all the way to a loft.

  I inhaled and smelled ninhydrin and fingerprinting powder, wood floor wax and carpet cleaners. I smelled everyday life mixed with police procedural, I smelled the dog the officer was entertaining outside, and I smelled fear still lingering in the air.

  All around there were few walls and all very white, with the sole apparent function of holding some kind of modern art artifact: a red canvas, a black vase illuminated by a receding light, a crystal sculpture.

  Whoever designed the house was a minimalist.

  Whoever lived in the house put up with it.

  The first living space led to the second one through an archway and up a few steps, only to come back down again into a white kitchen with stainless steel appliances and shiny black countertops. A two-sided fireplace separated the kitchen from the rest of the open-floor space, flanked by a wet bar equipped with sink and fridge cellar.

  Next to the wet bar, shimmering in the sunlight from the windowpanes, was the most exquisite creature I’d ever seen. She stood leaning on her right side, her left leg bent as if about to step forward, and her ethereal face tilted, looking past me, past all things earthly and mundane. A veil barely hung to her hips, and part of me wanted to help her lift it up, the other part wanted to wait to see if it would fall off.

  “Wow.” Diane stepped closer and touched her. “The Venus of Milo. I’ve never seen a life-size replica before.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “Gorgeous at the Louvre, tacky in a place like this.”

  “I guess you’re right.” Diane shrugged and moved on to meet the stiff. I came to terms with the fact that Venus wasn’t going to shed the veil and stepped into the kitchen.

  Dr. Frederick Lyons was sitting on a bar stool by the kitchen island, his knotty hands wrapped around his head. Gray locks spilled between his fingers. An untouched glass of water stood in front of him.

  I said, “My condolences, Dr. Lyons.”

  He didn’t move. He didn’t give away any sign that he’d heard me.

  An officer from the Pacific Community station stood behind him. “Detective Presius?” he asked. I nodded, and we shook hands across the countertop. “We offered to take Dr. Lyons to the station, but he wishes to wait until the medical examiner is finished.”

  I tried to smell the man, but no emotion came through. No sorrow, no anger, no fear. I caught the odor of chlorine from the pool, faint, washed out by a long shower still lingering on his skin. And no booze, despite the nice assortment I’d glimpsed in the wine cabinet above the wet bar.

  Diane emerged from a sliding door to the right and handed me a pen and clipboard. “Here, sign the log. Dr. Cohen just began his examination.”

  Hell, her I could smell.

  * * *

  When I die, I want to be alone. Like elephants. They sense their time has come, leave the herd and walk to a secluded place.

  When the time comes, I want to know. So I can die alone.

  No eyes staring at me.

  No penlights shining in my eyes, no probes poking my butt hole.

  No smelling my dirty underwear as death inflicts its final bowel movement.

  There’s dignity in dying alone.

  What I was staring at had no dignity. Homicide never does.

  The room was filled with feminine fragrance, the glamorous and expensive kind. It was so strong it choked the first methane exhalations from the corpse and the reek of scorched skin.

  Laura Lyons lay sprawled on the floor, her face mauled. A purple grin marked her throat from ear to ear. She was wearing a light blue robe. Pink slippers lay at her side, one next to the other the way some people leave them at night before going to bed. It all felt too orderly.

  Cohen updated Satish and me on his preliminary findings. Despite the AC in full blast, his round face was red and pearled with sweat. “Body temperature’s at eighty-five. Given the AC, I’m guessing she hasn’t been dead for more than five hours. He crouched by the body and pointed a penlight to Laura’s head. “Her face is cooked.”

  Cohen retraced the ridges and valleys of Laura’s face with the beam of the penlight. It was like looking at a hillside after a mudslide. Some of the acid had spilled onto the beige sheepskin rug she lay on and left blotches of scorched fabric. The tiles were next to her head. Three, this time, in a vertical row: aquamarine, green, and red. I let the photographer take the usual set of shots then crouched, picked up the red one and brought it to my nose. Sweet and rotten, like Amy’s tiles. And a hint of nitrile rubber.

  Satish was examining a second tile. He flipped it over and showed me the back. “Look at this. This wasn’t on the set from Amy’s house.”

  A string of characters and symbols was engraved on the back of the tile he was holding. I flipped the one in my hands and noticed the same letters and numbers, only in a different order: #w 0.9, #tks -0.4, #lw 1, #m 61. The third tile also had similar combinations of hashes, numbers and characters at the back.

  “Could it be a store code?” Satish wondered.

  “Or maybe a serial number?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s interesting. We’ll run it by Electronics.” He took out his notebook and copied the engravings.

  Cohen held Laura’s chin between his thumb and index fingers and turned her head. She was just starting to set. A flap of scalp had been removed from the back of her head, right above the nape. Cohen pushed away her long, blond hair, measured the area, and then exposed the right side of her neck. He waited for the photographer to take a few
close-ups before speaking again. “The ligature mark looks exactly like the one on Amy Liu. Straight and smooth. A raised abrasion, purple in color.” He held out his measuring tape. “Sixteen centimeters long, from three centimeters below the right lobe, to half a centimeter away from the left lobe.” He shifted, his face reddening from the strain. “Hmm, this is interesting. Take a good shot at this area here,” he added, beckoning the photographer.

  Satish and I waited for the camera’s flash to go off then squatted closer. Cohen’s gloved finger pointed to the left edge of the ligature mark. The smooth indentation changed abruptly, almost cut off by an orthogonal dent less than half an inch long. The dent was less deep than the ligature mark, and it almost funneled out of it.

  “A telltale mark,” Satish said. “I’ve never seen one like that.”

  “So much for a telltale,” I said.

  Diane’s scent drifted to my nose a second before her voice. “Have you examined her feet and hands, Doctor?”

  Cohen nodded slowly, as if still pondering the telltale mark. “Only the feet. Will get to the hands shortly.”

  I flinched. “The hands?”

  Satish replied, “We noticed as you were getting here, Track. The hands have the same lesions and skin excisions as the feet. Washburn was right. The violence is escalating. He hadn’t touched Amy Liu’s hands.”

  Laura’s left hand lay by her side, her right one on the chest. The hand was pale, with soft fingers that knew no or little housework. Cohen turned her palm face up and pointed the light. Straight, blade-inflicted lesions like the ones I’d seen on Amy’s feet marked the base of Laura’s fingers. Small flaps of skin had been carved out of the heel of her hand.

  Diane’s voice was anxious. “Do you see anything in there?”

  Cohen’s assistant passed him a magnifying glass. “Hmm. Can’t see anything to the naked eye. Maybe we’ll have better luck at the morgue.”