Wounds (18 page)

He wasn't sure, but Ellis thought he saw Carmen tense. What did that mean? What had he said to trigger that?

“Forgive me, Dr. Poe, but I find it odd that you didn't mention it to me the first time we met.”

Ellis cocked his head. “Why is that?”

“Because, Professor, Rainmondi is not a common name. I would think that once you heard it you would've made the association.”

Ellis couldn't keep the slight defensive note from his words. “That was a long time ago, Detective. Decades.”

“Why didn't you mention you knew my sister?” There was no doubt now—the detective was tensing. Her eyes sparked like struck flint.

Ellis uncrossed his legs, put both feet on the floor, and scooted back in his chair. “Let me see if I have this right, Detective. You're put out with me because I didn't mention your sister when you came into my office to talk about the murder of one of my students. Do I have that right?” It was a bit of bravado he did not feel.

“As I said, it strikes me as odd.”

“Forgive me for being blunt, Detective, but you are out of line. I'm a quiet man, a loner, and you probably already picked up the fact that I'm not very social.”

“Yes.”

“I saw no reason to mention your sister, Detective. First, I remember the names of many of my fellow students, but it doesn't mean that I followed their lives outside of high school. Second, you came into my office with a very specific agenda, and that was to learn all you could about Doug Lindsey. Third, I had just learned that a student of mine had been murdered. Murder might be your stock-in-trade; it's not mine. I was stunned, hardly at my best. Perhaps you picked up on that, too.”

“What about the second time we met? In Coronado? Were you still stunned then?”

“As a matter of fact, I'm stunned to this day. It's not the kind of thing a man like me gets over quickly.”

The detective inhaled deeply and held it for a moment. “What kind of man are you, Professor?”

Time to gamble on bluster. He bristled. “I'm the kind of man unaccustomed to being accused of wrongdoing. I'm sorry if you thought I should've mentioned your sister, but let's be realistic. High school was a very long time ago.” Ellis raised a hand. “Yes, I'm aware of your sister's death. Maybe I should've offered my condolences thirty years after the fact, but the truth is, I was thinking about Doug Lindsey.”

The detective broke eye contact and spent a moment looking at the carpet to her right. From the faraway look on her features, her mind was someplace other than in this room.

Ellis sighed. “I'm sorry, Detective, if I come across too strong. I can't imagine the pain the loss of your sister has brought you. In no way do I mean to imply that Doug Lindsey's death is more important than your sister's.”

“Too strong?” She chuckled. “Trust me, that wasn't strong. Learning to speak your mind might do you some good.” She started to speak again when a sound emitted from her jacket pocket. “Excuse me.” She retrieved a smart phone, tapped the screen, and placed it to her ear. “Rainmondi.”

“I got a good-news-bad-news thing here.”

Carmen held back a smile. Bud Tock kept his sense of humor even when he was dog-tired. “I thought you were taking the rest of the day off.” Carmen did her best to deliver the line like a straight man.

“Rest of the day? Really? You're going with that? I worked all weekend and have been logging the same long hours as you. A man has to go home to his family every once in awhile or he gets divorce papers.”

“Just razzin' you. What's up?” Carmen looked at Ellis, who seemed to have shrunk several inches after his effort to sound offended by her comments. She raised a finger, indicating she would be with him in a moment. She returned her attention to Bud. “Okay, I'll bite. What's the good news?”

“We found Doug Lindsey's VW.”

“Do I want to know the bad news?”

“Does it matter? You're gonna have to hear it anyway. We found the car. We also found a body in it.”

Carmen let a vulgar expletive shoot past her lips, then looked at the professor. She mouthed the word,
Sorry.
“How come they didn't call me?”

“They did. You didn't pick up.”

“That's crazy, I've got a good signal . . . Oh, wait. The service. I muted my phone because I was in the memorial service.” She swore again. This time she didn't offer an apology.

“I sent a text, too. It has the location. I'll see you when you get here. Oh . . . a bit of advice: don't eat before you come.”

“Why?”

“Because the body has been submerged for a week.”

The image that flashed in Carmen's mind turned her stomach. “Thanks for the warning. I'm on my way. I'll apologize to your wife later.” She ended the call and stood. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Poe. Something's come up and I have to leave.”

Ellis rose and walked to the door. “May I ask if it pertains to Doug's case?”

She paused at the door. “Yes, but keep this under your hat.” She relayed Bud's message. The color drained from Poe's face.

20

W
hat Carmen Rainmondi wanted to do was stew over her conversation with Dr. Poe. In many ways, she liked the man. He was courteous, intelligent, and unassuming.

He also had a secret.

If pressed in court about that last thought, she wouldn't be able to say why she was so sure. It was instinct, something undefined in his tone or manner or eye-movement that made her think Poe wasn't showing all his cards. But instead of thinking about the short meeting in the professor's office, her mind raced ahead to what might be waiting for her at Lake Murray Community Park north of I-8 and east of College Avenue.

The location fit with the Cohen murder but not with that of Doug Lindsey—at least not on the surface. Lindsey's body was found in Balboa Park, which was much further to the southwest. Just one more confusing factoid—unless both men were killed in the same area. She had already established that the bodies had been transported from the murder scene or scenes.

Bud had been precise in the location. Lake Murray, a reservoir really, was a small body of water next to the Alvarado Water Treatment Plant on the south shore. She moved through the 6300 block of Park Ridge Boulevard and turned into a small paved lot next to a recreation building with a blue roof. To her left was a pair of baseball fields, occupied by what she took to be a local softball league. Each team had matching uniforms, but no game was underway. Instead, the athletes lined the fence on the third-base side of the nearest field. Apparently, the activity of the police by the water's edge was more interesting than running the bases.

She pulled from the paved portion of the lot and drove over a dirt island and onto a service road that ran closer to the shore. The majority of the lake lay farther to the south, but that didn't matter. Bud told her the body and car were found in one of the finger recesses that gave Lake Murray it's odd shape. She had no trouble finding the location. Two patrol cars lined the access road, and one had left its light bar flashing in the dark, splashing blue and red swatches on the area. Carmen pulled in front of the marked cars and exited the Crown Vic.

A yellow tape barricade had marked off the length of the inlet's shoreline. Two officers monitored the perimeter. Carmen pulled back her coat enough to reveal her badge and her holster, an unnecessary motion since the Crown Vic said, “Cop.” Still, she liked to follow protocol as much as possible.

One of the officers lifted the tape. “Detective.”

“Officer.” She gave a “we're-in-the-same-club” nod and slipped beneath the crime scene tape.

The scene was surreal. Spotlights from the patrol car shone toward the water, casting long shadows in front of people and plants. Additional light from the lights around the baseball diamond helped, but she still felt as if half her vision had gone.

A tow truck from the company that provided services to the SDPD was parked just inside the tape barrier, and a long metal cable stretched from the back of the vehicle to the rear bumper of an old, beige VW Beetle. That car was old when Carmen was in high school, but the body looked to be in good condition. Someone loved the car.

“Welcome to overtime.”

She nodded to her partner. “Hey, Bud.” She studied the area and walked carefully to where he stood, several feet behind and to the side of the VW.

“Watch the tire tracks.” He pointed. “I'm gonna cast them, even though I'm sure they belong to the Bug. Also, there are some imprints over here that might belong to our man. They look like boot prints.”

“How can you tell in this stuff?” The ground leading to the water was mostly desert sand. She shone her flashlight on the ground. “There are prints everywhere.”

“Yeah, I know. Public park in the middle of a major city. Throw in a shoreline, and people flock to it like a moth to . . . whatever a moth likes. So where were you when I called?”

“Escondido. I went to the Lindsey funeral.” She didn't see any reason to talk about her discussion with Poe. “Why?”

“It took a while for you to get here.”

She shrugged. “I had dinner, hit a couple of bars, went shopping, then visited my sweet Aunt May.”

Bud's brows creased. “It wasn't a complaint, Carmen, just an observation. No need to get snippy.”

“The long hours are getting to me. So what do we have?”

“Shortly before sundown, a mother and her children saw something glinting in the water. She said it looked like a bumper to a car. She called the police. A street unit showed up about ten minutes later. He took a look and recognized the bumper style. VWs have a unique bumper arrangement. He called for a tow truck and let his supervisor know what he was looking at. We have a BOLO out for a VW so they let homicide know. Heywood was still in the office. He's a go-getter, that one.” He pointed to a figure a short distance away. Heywood stood back a few steps from the passenger side of the vehicle.

“Yeah, he is. I think he wants your job.”

“There are days when I'd give it to him.”

Carmen looked him in the eye. “Really?”

“No. I'm fishing for pity.”

She smiled. “Getting any bites?”

“Apparently not. Anyway, Heywood got wind of it and phoned me. I guess he likes me better.”

“He doesn't know you like I do.” Carmen gazed at the VW—she would have to look inside soon.

“I told him to get down here and scope things out, which he did. He oversaw the car's extraction from the lake. He also took a ton of photos. The car was almost completely out of sight. First guess is, our guy killed the passenger then drove here and pushed the car into the water. As you can see, or could see if it were daylight, the water has a great deal of moss and reeds. No wonder it took so long to find.”

“Aren't VW Bugs supposed to float?”

“They used to advertise that, but the car is a '67 so it's well over forty years old. I doubt it's as watertight as it was four decades ago.”

“And the body is in the car?”

“Oh, yeah. I hope you were kidding about stopping for dinner. Come on, I'll show you.”

“I can hardly wait.” Carmen swallowed her reluctance and followed Bud to the car.

Moving down the shallow slope leading from the access road to the ebony water, Carmen recognized a man standing next to the open door of the VW and hunched forward, peering inside. She didn't need to see his face to know it was Dr. Norman Shuffler. Why was he here?

“I thought your days in the field were over, Doc.” Carmen tried to sound upbeat.

Shuffler withdrew his torso from the car's cab and turned to face Carmen. “Ah, ‘She walks in beauty as the night.'” He wore nitrile gloves. As he turned, an odor from the car filled the area. Carmen's eyes burned, her throat constricted, and for a moment she thought she'd vomit everything she had eaten that month. How Shuffler could lean over the waterlogged corpse was beyond her.

“Um, yeah, I always look better in the dark.”

“Nonsense. You always look good.” Shuffler held his ground as if trying to keep Carmen at a distance. Silence, as thick as the stench, hung in the air. “I left standing orders at the ME office that I was to be notified of any calls that might be related to Lindsey and Cohen. This fit the bill.”

Bud had stopped his approach. He apparently had no desire to see the body again. Carmen had to look at the victim. It was her job. She had seen bad things before: dismembered bodies, brutal sexual assaults, children killed by stoned parents—she could handle this. She kept telling herself that.

Carmen didn't know how other cops did it, but she had a lead-lined curtain in her mind, one she could draw to shut the emotional, reactive part of her brain from the logical, proactive part. She took a deep breath before closing the distance and held it for a moment. Shuffler stepped aside and began talking as if conversation might calm the boiling acid vat that was her stomach.