Daisy could picture her mother
inside that big old house, lying under three or four blankets. Tonight
the wind would be howling. The snow would be falling. Sometimes it got
so cold in Vermont you thought you were going to die. You'd have to bundle
up whenever you ventured outside and not expose even an inch of skin. A
vicious twenty-mile-an-hour wind in the dead of winter could peel your
scalp right off your head. She saw her mother's dusky, shivering form.
Lily wore pale pink lipstick and a few swipes of rouge on her withered
cheeks. She liked to read books and drink tea. She volunteered at the local
hospital and had her bridge game.
Tomorrow, Daisy decided, she would
call her mother and apologize. Then she'd contact a group called me Los
Angeles Center for the Missing. Somebody had told her about it today.
They helped family members print and distribute missing-persons posters,
coordinated search teams and provided hotline services. Daisy realized
she could no longer count on the police. She would go back to the beach
tomorrow. She would find her sister no matter what. The blinking red sign
outside her window kept waking her up with its fiery neon glow. It was as
if the whole world had gone nuclear, only she was somehow safe. She closed
her eyes and tried to drift like a leaf on the surface of the motel pool.
The De Campo Beach crime lab occupied
the first three floors of a drab five-story building on
Thomasius
Street. The building's facade clung to its 1970s veneer like an aging
movie starlet clutching a makeup kit. The plumbing needed a major
overhaul. The walls needed a new coat of paint. The fingerprint lab was
located down in the windowless basement, a large partitioned space
full of evidence waiting to be processed-everything from postage
stamps to ATMs. The floor was sticky with chemical spills and covered with
about a pound of dust.
"Did you hear about
Bryner
?" Ramona Torres asked Jack as she placed
an eight-ounce water glass inside the superglue-fuming chamber.
"What about him?"
"Ha! I know something you
don't know. Na
na
na
na
na
na
."
"Okay, you got me." He
cracked the flimsy lid of his carryout coffee. "What happened to
Bryner
?"
"He quit."
"No kidding? That shocks the
shit out of me."
"Exactly. I thought he was a
lifer."
"For
chrissakes
,
I stand in awe of him. Maybe I should quit, too." "And do
what?"
"I
dunno
.
Have lots of frantic, wheezing sex." "You are too hilarious."
Ramona never wore her contacts when she was superglue-fuming, since
exposure to the fumes might've glued her contact lenses to her corneas.
Instead, she wore a pair of spinsterish wire-rim eyeglasses that made
her look owlish and conceited.
Jack got a big kick out of Ramona's
fresh-scrubbed earnestness. The rest of the techies who roamed the bowels
of the crime lab were a grizzled, middle-aged bunch, but Ramona was young
and unpretentious. Today her Gap jeans and tailored blouse were neatly
pressed, and she wore a silver pin in the shape of a horse. There was a
horse etched into the buckle of her belt, too. He liked that she had a
horse theme going and wondered how long she'd thought about it while
getting dressed that morning. Jack hadn't thought about anything while
getting dressed that morning; he considered just throwing on a suit and
tie to be a major accomplishment.
"The question is, Makowski…
will you ever find true love with anybody other than yourself?"
"Speaking of true love, Ramona,
when are we getting married?"
She had a lovely laugh. "You
are truly demented."
"Oh, right. I forgot. You're
way too 'edgy' for me."
"Do me a favor," she said.
"The next time you get the urge to commit matrimony, just go out and
find a woman who can't stand you, give her your paycheck and be done with
it."
The superglue-fuming chamber
was a large cabinet about eight feet long and four feet high with various
access doors and storage compartments. Next to the control panel on
top of the unit was a glass bell jar. The bell jar was eighteen inches
tall and allowed Ramona to process smaller items without having to use
the entire chamber, thereby saving on
cyanoacrylate
,
or CA, also known as superglue. Arranged on a tray were some of the
items Jack had tagged in Anna Hubbard's apartment the other day. Ramona
had been lifting prints for eight hours straight without any luck. Most
of the
latents
were "elimination prints,"
which meant they matched either the victim or others who had legitimate
excuses for being at the scene.
Now she deposited a few drops of
glue into a glass dish in the bottom tray of the bell jar, then secured and
activated the unit. Two small fans blew the dispersing CA fumes throughout
the bell jar, evenly coating the evidence. A latent print was made up of
natural skin secretions-perspiration, sebaceous oils and dirt. Although
the sweat in a latent print dried fairly quickly-making it impossible
to trace-the amino acids could last for months. Since superglue had an
affinity for amino acids, all you needed was a few drops of glue, any
brand, heated inside an airtight chamber. After a few minutes of exposure,
the dispersing fumes would stick to the amino acids and leave a visible
print behind.
Now Ramona switched off the fans
and vented the gas. "
Hm
," she said, taking
out the water glass. "Good palm print. Large. Possibly male."
"Is he right-or left-handed?"
Jack asked.
She turned it over. "See these
top ridges? The way they flow inward toward the body? He's right-handed.
Definitely." She chose a dark red powder from her dusting kit, dusted
the water glass and lifted the palm print off with a piece of transparent
tape.
"Any fingerprints?"
"Let's see," she said,
examining the water glass, tilting it sideways, turning it upside
down. "Uh-oh. Looks like he wore Band-Aids, Jack."
"Shit." It was an old burglar's
trick. To avoid leaving your fingerprints at the scene, you simply cut
the adhesive tape off ten Band-Aids, trimmed them to the shape of your
fingertips and voila. Instant anonymity.
"I doubt he left any
latents
at the scene," she said. "Oh well. At
least we've got a decent palm print."
"Which won't be on the database."
The fingerprint database of
known criminals dated back to 1972, when the FBI first introduced a standard
system of print classification. The National Crime Information Center
served to expedite the exchange of information between most state
and local agencies. Once a print was lifted, it could be compared to a
specific suspect or else entered into a computerized database like
the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), and in less
than a second, the computer would be able to scan a set of prints against
half a million others.
Decades ago, when the bad guy was arrested,
he would be compelled to press his inky fingers onto a ten-card. After
that, his entire hand would be inked, including the palm. But with the
advent of scanning technology, the old ink-based systems were gradually
being abandoned, and now everybody used digital devices that took
only fingerprints, not palm prints. Unless a convenient palm print scanner
was developed soon, countless cases would go unsolved. It was a serious
problem, since palm prints made up 30 percent of the evidence pulled
from all crime scenes.
Jack's cell phone rang, and he checked
the number. It was his partner, William Tully. "Hey," he answered.
"I got the results off that answering
machine," Tully said in his slow, methodical way. No matter what
was going on, he always had a smile in his voice. "Fourteen messages
were from the victim's mother. Six were about the rent. Four were from
telemarketers and one was a hang-up. I had it traced back to a pay phone
on the corner of Third and
Rodecker
."
"What's at Third and
Rodecker
?"
"A car wash."
The owner of
Rubba
-Dub
Car Wash was a short, compact man with a moon-shaped face and a military
haircut. Miguel
Estavez
shuffled from foot to
foot, impatient to get back to his customers. "Yeah, that's
him," he said, handing Jack the police artist's sketch. "That's
Roy Gaines."
"Are you sure?" Jack had
to shout to be heard above the roaring sound of the high-pressure hoses.
On the roof of the car wash was a huge rubber duck. Beneath the always
open sign was a coffee shop where customers could wait their turn while
a dozen industrious employees vacuumed automobile interiors
and hand-waxed hoods in the noisy bays between the divider tarps.
"Yeah, that's definitely
him," Miguel asserted. "Roy Gaines is one of my best customers.
He always goes for the works. Pre-soak, triple-foam brush, high-pressure
rinse, undercarriage wash…"
"What kind of car does he drive?"
"Vintage '66 T-Bird, completely
renovated. Black with a red interior. It's in excellent condition.
Not even a broken taillight. I've done detail work on it myself."
"Where do you keep your records?"
"Follow me." Miguel led
the way past the automated wash with its foaming brushes and spray nozzles.
"How about a freebie, Detective?" he hollered, nodding at
Jack's 1988 Ford Topaz with its balding tires and sandblasted finish.
"I could check out the suspension for you, gratis."
"Nothing's more expensive
than a freebie, Miguel. Just get me Gaines's address."
It was four o'clock by the time
Jack had the search and seizure warrant signed by the duty judge. He followed
a maze of quiet side streets toward Paradise Road, where the stucco
ranch houses were built too close together on their narrow lots, the
whole world wanting to share the good life. He parked in front of a nine-unit
apartment house on the corner of Paradise and Foxtail, less than a dozen
blocks from the beach. These units would be pricey. The sea breeze was
strong and hot, and the apartment house was built wide and low to the ground
in accordance with the state's earthquake regulations. Jack took
the outer staircase to the second floor, where he knocked on a glossy
white door.
Nobody answered.
He knocked again, louder this time.
It looked as if Gaines wasn't home.
Jack skipped back down the stairs and found the landlord in his ground-floor
unit. "LAPD. I've got a search warrant," he said.
The morbidly obese, ponytailed
Silvio
Fortunata
barely glanced
at the warrant before escorting Jack back up the stairs to the one-bedroom
apartment. The fat man in painter's pants and a ripped
Zardoz
T-shirt looked as if he might be moments away from a heart attack. He huffed
and puffed all the way up the stairs, then stood red-faced and sweaty in
the doorway.
The apartment was as hot as a barbecue
pit. On the wall of the front foyer was a poster of the ocean. In the living
room, Jack noticed a dried-mud footprint on the floor. He could see
the rest of the neighborhood through the single-pane windows. Flowering
magnolias and Chinese bottle-brush grew in the exquisitely sculpted
garden next door, and the lawn sprinklers were on. Gaines's nearest neighbors
apparently failed to recognize that Los Angeles was in the middle of a
drought, one of the worst on record. Various parts of Southern California
had been declared water emergencies, so what were these people thinking?
"Yeah, it's like the laws of
nature don't apply to some people,"
Silvio
said, following Jack's gaze. He stood wheezing in the doorway and wore
glasses with narrow frames that made his plump face look even fuller.
"He live alone?" Jack asked.
"Far as I know."
"Does he get many visitors?"
"A few."
"Could you describe them for
me?"
"I don't pay much attention."
"Male? Female?"
"Have you ever owned a building*,
Detective?"
Silvio
said loudly. "I'm
on the phone twenty-four-seven, dealing with sublets and vacancies and
complaints about the noise, or else I'm fixing toilets and changing
lightbulbs
. To each his own, is my motto. Just as long
as the rent gets paid, you know?"
"So you never saw any of these
visitors come and go? He lives right above you." "I'm not the curious
type."
"Ever hear any strange sounds
coming from the apartment? Raised voices? Loud parties?"
"He's pretty quiet. Like I
said. My only complaint's the smell." "What smell?"
"A squirrel must've gotten
trapped in the wall and died or something. It's worse back there."
Jack nodded calmly. "Would
you mind closing the door on your way out?"
After the big man had lumbered
off, Jack prowled through the kitchen and found two forks, a knife and no
spoons in the silverware drawer. There was a coiled length of rope and
a rusty garden hoe underneath the kitchen sink. There were potted
plants on the windowsills, mismatching dishware in the cabinets and
a topological map of Southern California in one of the built-ins,
along with plenty of heavy-duty trash bags. Jack counted eleven boxes.
That was a whole lot of trash bags.
The bathroom's plumbing was old
but in good working order. The tiles were Mexican-influenced. The
mirrored door of the medicine chest had been unscrewed and removed,
and now Jack stood examining the contents-a can of shaving cream, a package
of razor blades, a pair of scissors, a box of Band-Aids. He shoved the
mildewy
shower curtain aside and noticed that the
tub was ringed with flecks of dried mud and leaf debris. That was odd.
You'd expect to find sand this close to the beach, not mud. Not leaf debris.
He made a mental note of it, then went to check out the bedroom.
The bedroom housed a collection
of gym equipment, an art deco bureau and a simple frame bed with a box
spring and mattress. The slush-slush of sporadic traffic on the street below
radiated through the open windows. The bulky weight-lifting equipment
had worn grooves in the hardwood floor. About a dozen medical textbooks
were stacked on a rickety table next to the bed. Sifting through them,
Jack noticed that these books were decades out of date, from the fifties
and sixties, with random passages underlined.
A decomposing body could be detected
from ten to twenty feet away. Jack pulled out his handkerchief and clamped
it over his nose, then stood staring at the closet door. A floor-length
mirror had been removed, and only six screws and the unpainted wood remained.
He thought about the missing medicine-chest mirror. Somebody didn't like
having his image reflected back at him.
The bedroom windows were open wide,
letting in a salty sea breeze that failed to mask the underlying odor of
decay. Jack took a few steps toward the closet, and the smell became overwhelming.
He kept the handkerchief clamped over his nose as he tested the closet
door. It was locked.
He glanced around the room, settling
on the art deco bureau as the most likely place for keys to be stashed.
He opened the sticky top drawer and pushed aside a jumble of Jockey
shorts and rolled-up socks. He scooped up the coiled plastic key chain
with several skeleton keys attached and unlocked the closet door.
The stench of putrefaction was
unbelievable. It was coming from an old steamer trunk pushed against
the far wall. Jack tried the lid and found that it, too, was locked. He inserted
the key, and the lid popped open.
He drew back from the smell. The
body was in an advanced state of decomposition. Colby
Ostrow
was bent almost double so that he could fit inside
the trunk. He wore a dark blue shirt, khaki pants and loafers-the same outfit
he'd last been seen wearing. His face was discolored and bloated, the
lips nearly black. The body was cold. There was some upper-torso rigor.
The hands were fisted shut, a few strands of hair clutched in his fingers-medium-length
gray hairs that probably belonged to the victim himself, not an uncommon
occurrence in strangulation cases. Jack figured the remains were
about forty-eight hours old.
He got on his cell phone and, with
an impatience bordering on panic, waited for Tully to pick up. "Come
on, come on." Tully was the kind of guy who would do anything for
you, if it came to that. When Jack was old and dying, Tully would be at his
hospital bed. When they were seventy and retired from the force, they'd
go to the deli every day and have Sable 'n' Eggs and shoot the shit. They'd
catch up on the Lakers game. Maybe they'd even have
floorside
seats. Jack envisioned that kind of thing.
He paced back and forth in the suspect's
bedroom. "C'mon, Tully. Pick up. Pick up." He glanced out the window,
a band of perspiration forming on his upper lip. The heat was making
the asphalt glisten. He glanced at the half-eaten sandwich on a paper
plate on the
rolltop
desk. There was a neatly folded
napkin, plastic silverware and a can of soda. All the pencils were back
in their pencil cup, and the paperwork was stacked nice and neat. Bills
mostly.
He heard the sound of tires on asphalt
and looked up. A vintage black T-Bird pulled over to the curb, and the driver
got out. Roy Gaines stood over six feet tall, with dark hair and a waxy complexion.
He wore black sweats, red athletic shoes and mirrored glasses. He locked
his car with his keys the old-fashioned way, then glanced up at the apartment
house.
"Shit." Jack drew away
from the window. Too late. The suspect had already seen him.
Gaines took off like a shot.
Jack pocketed his cell phone and
bolted out the door.