CHIMERAS (Track Presius) (6 page)

Inside, the villa was a continuation of mismatched styles: the cotto floors, partly covered by Persian rugs in the living room, gave way to cream-colored carpet in the office. The kitchen had Spanish tiles, pueblo-style niches in the walls, and Italian appliances. A German grand piano dominated the ballroom, surrounded by walls decorated with African masks and Japanese watercolors. Bits of interrupted life recurred everywhere—a half glass of water on the kitchen counter, an open musical score on the piano, a bunch of keys casually tossed on a console, a magazine flopped upside down on the couch. They clashed with the different hues of fingerprint dust dutifully brushed on all light switches and doorknobs, and the loose crime tape rattling against the windows.

I inhaled old and new scents, smells that belonged, and ones that didn’t: I smelled blood, sifting down from the open loft, together with the first hints of decay and methane coming from the dead bodies. It mingled with a trace of male sweat and nicotine, and the metal of guns rubbing against leather holsters.

I smelled testosterone. Loads of it.

Nelson paced quietly behind me, her eyes straying wherever mine went. Voices barked upstairs. She stared at me. “So. Do we
wait here, or do we go introduce ourselves?”

I didn’t need to answer. A face emerged from across the banister of the loft and looked down at us. “Oh, look. It’s Presius. Changeover time. Beer for us, double stiff for you. And you’re welcome, by the way.”

“Glad to take it off your hands, Spencer,” I replied.

“Yeah, right.”

“Be good, Don. Let’s do this civilly, shall we?” a second voice interjected, slightly higher in pitch and diplomacy.

Nelson stiffened and mouthed,
What the—
?

They took their time as they came down the circular stairs: tasteful civilian clothes, the straps of their shoulder rig holsters visible from underneath their black jackets, their white shirts rimmed by halos of sweat and the stench of nicotine. Spencer stared at me defiantly, a strip of forehead stuck between a low hairline and a pair of bushy eyebrows. Tufts of black hair sprouted out of his wide nostrils like spider legs. He stood in front of me in a wide-legged stance, his face inches away from mine, and his clean-shaven chin scalloping down to his neck.

“Sorry, pal,” he mocked in falsetto. “We didn’t get you a murder weapon, this time.”

“It was hardly a bonus, last time.”

A robbery gone wrong in Beverly Glen, two years earlier. Spencer and his partner found the smoking nine-millimeter as Satish and I were en route, and by the time we got to the scene they claimed the case was theirs. Too damn good to let go. The battle for turf escalated, forcing Gomez to step in with a few phone calls to the Hollywood brass in order to grease the way. We got the case, and Spencer never forgot.

“Let it go, Don,” Spencer’s partner said, almost quietly. “We’re all following orders, here.” Leaner than his partner, with an angular jaw line and a buzz haircut that badly camouflaged the thinness of his hair, he squeezed Spencer’s shoulder while flashing me a somehow conciliatory smile.

Spencer wasn’t done, though. “I just hate it when some people get it easier than others,” he spat, his breath a mix of black coffee, smoke, and useless Listerine strips. “It’s not fair, ya know?”

“I didn’t hear you caught the perp already,” I replied.

Spencer narrowed his eyes in a slit of defiance. “You like free rides, huh? Is that how you got into RHD? Kissing ass?”

You like free rides
…

His sneer blurred, my surroundings went out of focus. I was seventeen, in the fucking cell they’d put me for the night, and it was cold, so freaking cold I couldn’t keep my teeth from rattling. Blood dripped down my nose, but it was nobody’s concern. The correction officer barked to my face, his breath laden with alcohol and nicotine:
You like free rides, kiddo? Well, I got news for ya. You either take your fuckin’ pill to sleep like a baby, or I’ll putcha to sleep like a baby
. He hit me again with his studded belt and slammed the heel of his boot into my shins.

It was a flash, and then the cell vanished. Not the rage, though.

“Come on, Don. Let’s go.”

Spencer’s voice resurfaced. “Yeah, let’s go. This is no longer our dump.”

I watched them turn away from me, blood pulsing in my head. I pounced on him from behind, snatched the back of his jacket, and slammed him against the wall. The glass chandelier clinked, a couple of photo frames on the piano fell. Nelson flew a hand to the pepper spray. Spencer staggered, and before he could get back at me, I clutched the collar of his shirt and pinned him to the wall. “The only reason they call you dick is because you’re a
real
dick,” I spat through clenched teeth. “Now get your ass off
my
crime scene.”

“Whoa, whoa!” His buddy waved his open palms up in the air. “Let’s cut it out, guys, ok? We’re cool, right, Don?”

Spencer was seething. “Get your hands off me.”

I gave him a little taste of my own breath and snarled to his face, nice and slow, “Out of my way,” before letting go of him. He smoothened down his shirt and readjusted the straps of his holster, his short forehead glistening with a film of sweat.

“C’mon, Don. The show’s over.”

Nelson drew in a sharp breath. “Great job, Track. They probably interviewed a dozen witnesses already and found evidence they’ll never disclose.”

“They’ve been here only a couple of hours. We’ll get the field interview records from the responding officers,” I replied, distracted by a new presence I suddenly sensed, farther away, watching. I turned to the stairs.

“I uh—” The woman blushed, a round, Asian face with porcelain cheeks. “Carolyn Ling, SID evidence logger,” she quickly blurted out. She’d watched the whole scene, I could tell from the way her fingers nervously fiddled with a black strand of hair that had escaped her paper cap. “We’re ready for the walkthrough upstairs.”

Suddenly the whole Spencer exchange looked frivolous and damned stupid. Here we were again, hard-wired cops butting heads over what? Dead bodies. Like vultures circling over somebody else’s prey.

CHAPTER 9

___________

Sunday, October 12

A pair of man’s trousers lay crumpled at the foot of the bed. A purple shirt was sprawled across aquamarine blankets, and a skirt had landed atop the nightstand lamp. Skin-colored pantyhose snaked on the carpet, a black bra drew a slanted smile across one of the pillow shams. The trail of garments continued toward the bathroom, where some time earlier the air had smelled of body lotions, naked skin, and bath fragrances from the tub. I imagined husband and wife running up the stairs: he grabs her ass, and she squirms, laughing though, playing the usual game of chasing and teasing, prodding and slipping away, only to come back and prod again. They get to the bedroom giggling and touching; she unbuttons his shirt, he unfastens her bra. The water in the tub is running. Billows of steam waft up and fill the air, the fragrance of bath oils mingling with their anticipation.

It was all gone now, choked by the sweet stench of death. Behind marble vanities with brass faucets, a wall-to-wall mirror
reflected the bodies. Tamara Tarantino’s blood had coagulated into a dark-maroon clot around her prone head. Her husband was still in the tub, soaked waist down in maroon water. A round hole gaped from the middle of his forehead.

The shattered remains of a bottle of wine were scattered on the floor, a half glass still intact on the edge of the tub, while a second one had rolled off and cracked. Circular halos of dried-up foam traced a path across the marble tiles, from the bathtub to the door and then back to Tamara Tarantino’s feet.

My mind plunged backwards in time. Both naked, husband and wife slip into the tub. She goes in first, while he fills the two glasses of wine. He joins her in the water, his thighs touching hers, prompting more smooching and more giggles. Until the idyll is suddenly broken and the wife gets out. Why? She hops out of the tub in a hurry, water runs down her naked body and forms a pool on the floor. She doesn’t bother to get a towel, leaving a wake of soapy drips on the floor. She heads back to the bedroom, and when she comes back she’s wearing a bathrobe. Maybe he said something to upset her. Maybe they got into a fight and she decided the fun was over.

By my side, Nelson stiffened. “I’ll uh—I’ll go see if there’s anything interesting back in the bedroom.” She whirled on her feet, walked past the two crime scene investigators who’d escorted us upstairs, and vanished.

“So, where’s Matt Gallo?” I asked, my eyes glued to the milky way of blood spatters decorating the wall behind the tub. Matt was the CSI who’d worked most of our crime scenes in the past. I’d expected to see him there, just as I expected Satish to walk in any minute and bore me with all the technicalities and nuisances of crime scene SOPs.    

“Assigned to a different case,” the woman behind me replied. “I’m in charge on this one.” A few more seconds of silence followed. “Diane Kyle, DNA specialist,” she finally said, stretching out her hand.

“Presius,” I replied. Our gloved hands squeaked as they touched, sealing our acquaintance like the clinking of champagne glasses. On a crime scene, human contact is filtered through an antiseptic layer that wraps the body and a bubble of detachment that cushions the brain.

Carolyn Ling handed me pen and clipboard. I signed the log and saw that Spencer and Donoghue had arrived at the scene at seven fifty a.m., confirmed the victims were deceased, and made the usual calls to the paramedics and the SID Field Unit. Several West L.A. officers were still canvassing the neighborhood trying to locate possible witnesses. The closest relatives amounted to an elderly sister and the victims’ daughter—a senior at Columbia University—who’d been notified and was currently flying back home.

“Fill me in,” I told Diane, returning the homicide log. And she did fill me in, not with words, though. Because until then I hadn’t really seen her. Garbed in the clunky SID coveralls, her scent had remained hidden away from me. As soon as we walked out of the bathroom, she removed the protective cap, and the olfactory landscape around me abruptly changed.

Diane’s auburn locks fell across her forehead and neck, bathing me in strangely familiar scents—delicate and melodic like the harmonies of a Bill Evans solo. I smelled the pearls of sweat along her hairline and the root of her hair, the detergent on the collar of her shirt and the skin enclosed within. Her scent felt engaging to my nostrils, soothing and foreign at the same time. And she had a man.
Him
I smelled when she leaned closer and asked, “Can I call you Track? I heard that’s what everybody calls you.”

For a moment I drowned in a sensory storm during which all I could think of was,
And who the hell are you
?

She stepped back, the bubble she’d enveloped me in popped, and the usual homicide tangs resurfaced: decaying tissue, coagulated blood,
livor mortis
, a surviving hint of burnt gunpowder.

Carolyn collected Nelson’s signature as well, then clutched the clipboard to her chest, and asked, “Shall I go get Peter?”

“Please,” Diane replied. “Peter’s our photographer,” she explained. She gathered the notes she’d left on a chair in the bedroom and handed me a transparent plastic folder with a white sheet of paper inside. “This was by the woman’s body.”

One corner blotched in blood, it read, “I am the Lord your God, do not have any other gods before me,” all typed in caps.
From the Bible, First Commandment
, I considered. The prayer framed in Huxley’s foyer immediately came to mind. Was it just a decoration or a statement? And what about the note I was holding: was it a signature or a way to lead us off track? Unusual choice of victims, if this truly was the course of action of a religious lunatic.

I slid a finger along the edge of the folder and brought it to my nose. “Smells foul,” I said.

Diane winced, as if finding the statement outrageous. “Everything on a crime scene smells foul.”

No. Not everything
.

“No bloody fingerprints, I suppose?” I asked, holding the folder up against the window.

“Not to the naked eye. We’ll need to fume it at the lab for regular prints.”

Nelson moved over to canvass the walk-in closet and let out a whistle. “You’ve got to see the shoes this woman had!”

I ignored Nelson’s remark and checked the small writing desk by the window. A few personal items were scattered on its surface. One by one, I picked them up and brought them to my nose: a man’s watch, a wedding ring, a cell phone, a box of Montecristo cigars. All drenched with a definitely masculine smell, expensive aftershave, distinctive deodorant fragrance. A vaguely familiar combination.

From the closet, Nelson let out another one of her high-pitched trills. “Twenty pairs of high heel pumps and still counting.”

I scowled. “You’re looking for evidence, Nelson.”

She stepped out of the closet holding one of the high heels. “Seriously? You could stab to death with one of these.”

“Too bad our vics were shot to death, not stabbed. Keep looking.”

She gave me the “Track, you’re an asshole” look and turned away. 

“We didn’t find much,” Diane admitted, staring blankly at me as I brought every object to my nose, sniffed it, and placed it back. “No forced entry, no indication the house was searched. We photographed a few depressed areas on the carpet, clearly distinct from the vics’ bare foot prints. A man’s shoe, size ten to eleven, which puts him between six and six-eight feet in height.”

“A man,” I repeated. “Did you use the lifter?”

Her brow twitched. “Nothing unusual turned up, not even a speck of dirt.”

“You didn’t even get a partial?”

“We tried several spots with the electro dust lifter and all fibers that came up were from the carpet.” She squinted, a hint of nervousness hanging from her lower lip. “We recovered a slug. It exited the second victim and entered the wall across. No spent shells, though.”

Mulling over the dustless shoe print, I opened one of the desk drawers, even though I knew Nelson had already canvassed them, and tossed around its contents. I found a daily planner and felt a tinge of annoyance. “Nelson!” I called, at which both women in the room winced. I tossed her the planner, which she caught in midair.
Good reflexes
. “Don’t overlook things like this, okay?” 

She stared at it. “What do you want me to do?”

“Find out what our vics did yesterday. Any name in there, see if there’s a corresponding number on the cell phone and call them.” I passed her the mobile as well, and then motioned to Diane to resume her briefing. She stared at me in a momentary daze, then quickly averted her eyes. Between what happened downstairs and my erratic sniffing around the bodies, by now I was sure I’d made the hell of a first impression.

“It must’ve been quick,” she said. “I’m guessing five to ten minutes max from when he entered the home and when he left. No sign of a struggle; plenty of jewelry and valuables scattered around the house in plain sight and left untouched.”

“No forced entry,” I pondered. “How did he get in?” And as soon as I formulated the question I knew the answer. I walked around the California king bed and let my nose follow the invisible traces Tamara Tarantino’s wet feet had left on the carpet. The intercom button by the bedside had a smudge of dried bath foam along the edge.
She got out of the tub to let the killer into the house
.

I turned to show it to Diane, but she already picked up on my train of thoughts. “It wasn’t an intruder who did this. It was somebody they knew.”

“Somebody so close she didn’t mind letting them in while her husband was still soaking in the bathtub.”
A religious lunatic who knew them well.
I made a mental note to double-check the victims’ affiliations, if any.

Diane nodded. “Whoever wanted them dead knew how to get them at a vulnerable time.”

The medical examiner’s voice boomed from the bedroom. “Can I get those stiffs off your hands now?”

“All yours, Dr. Ellis,” I replied.

Followed by the summoned photographer—a small man with narrow shoulders, a few, wispy hairs sticking out at the sides of an egg-shaped head, and a prominent overbite partially concealed by a whimsical mustache—the M.E. strode to the bathroom, then froze at the door. His hollow eyes bulged out of their sockets as he took in the sight of the two bodies in the room. The dismay quickly vaporized from his face. “Wow. Do you ever get it in a tub, Track?”

I shrugged. “Something like this I believe you only get once, Doc.”

I glimpsed a coy smile escape Diane’s lips. It made up for the smirk sprawled on Ellis’s lipless mouth. He squeezed my shoulder, kneeled by Tamara Tarantino, and flopped his bag on the floor. “Very funny, Track. I meant the fun part, not the bullet. Jeez. My tub’s too small.”

Peter the photographer stood behind the coroner with his lens poised. “And my wife’s too large,” he said, tittering at his own joke.

Ellis rolled the body on her back. Tamara’s face was a mask of dried blood. Ellis wiped the clots off her face, and then examined the shot wound. The bullet had drilled a hole across her right temple. “Hmm. Somebody wanted her dead, that’s for sure. You pop somebody in the head like that, you don’t give them the time to blink.”

Tamara hadn’t blinked. Her eyes—two glassy wells of black—were sprung open. Despite the smears of blood and the rigor mortis, her face looked much younger than her actual forty-eight years of age.

“The husband got the same treatment. What’s your guess on the TOD?”

“With the usual disclaimer, Track: nothing confirmed until the autopsy report. And we’re talking dry stiff right here. The soaked stiff is a whole different matter, but hopefully we can assume they were killed at the same time.”

“I don’t think he would’ve entertained his wife’s killer in the tub while waiting for his turn.” In fact, the picture was clear: husband goes down first, one round straight to the forehead. Wife turns to watch him get whacked and gets the second round to the temple. Wise killer: always do the man first. Good shooter, too.

Ellis palpated the body’s face, neck, and shoulders. “Dilated pupils. Jaw and neck pretty rigid. Upper torso just starting to set.” He brandished a pair of tweezers, stuck them into the woman’s nostrils, and fished out a lump of what looked like rice grains.

“Unhatched
diptera
eggs,” Ellis explained, storing the precious find in a small jar.

Smile
, I thought, as the photographer’s flash went off.

Ellis proceeded to spread open the bathrobe and exposed the victim’s chest, blemished by purple patches of
livor mortis.
He made a one-inch-long incision below the ribcage, then carefully inserted a long thermometer probe, which he maneuvered until the tip touched the liver.

“Hmm. Internal body temperature of eighty-point-eight. Assuming the room’s temperature is at the usual seventy-two, say her body temperature decreased one-point-five degrees per hour
starting from ninety-eight-point-six—what do you get?”

“She died almost twelve hours ago.” I looked at the watch. It was eleven-forty, so around the same time the night before.