Evidence

CHAPTER 2

Milo calls me in when the murder’s “interesting.”

Sometimes by the time I get involved, the body’s gone. If the crime scene photos are thorough, that helps. If not, it can get even more interesting.

This scene was a three-minute drive from my house and intact.

Two bodies, wrapped around each other in a sick parody of passion. Milo stood to the side as a coroner’s investigator clicked off shots.

We exchanged quiet “Heys.” Milo ’s black hair was slicked down haphazardly and his green eyes were sharp. His clothes looked slept-in, his pallid, pitted complexion matched the smog-gray sky.

June gloom in L.A. Sometimes we pretend it’s ocean mist.

I studied the bodies from a distance, stepping as far back as I could, careful not to touch the curving plywood wall. “How long have you been here?”

“An hour.”

“You don’t get to this zip code too often, Big Guy.”

“Location, location, location.”

The coroner’s investigator heard that and glanced back. A tall, pretty, square-shouldered young woman in an olive-green pantsuit, she took a long time with the camera, kneeling, leaning, crouching, standing on tiptoe to capture every angle.

“Just a few more minutes, Lieutenant.”

Milo said, “Take your time.”

The kill-spot was the third floor of a construction project on Borodi Lane in Holmby Hills. Massive frame-up of an intended mansion, the entry big enough to seat a symphony orchestra. The kill-spot looked like some sort of observation room. Or the turret of a castle.

Massive was the rule in Holmby. A whole different universe than my white box above Beverly Glen, but walking distance. I’d driven because sometimes Milo likes to think and make calls while I take the wheel.

A few rafters topped the turret, but most of the intended roof was open space. Breeze blew in. Balmy, but not enough air movement to mask the smell of wet wood and rust, mold and blood and excreta.

Male victim on top, female victim pi

His black designer jeans were rolled to midcalf. One of her smooth, tan legs hooked around his waist. Brown pumps in place on both her feet.

Final embrace, or someone wanting it to look that way. What I could see of the woman’s hands were splayed, limp. Flaccidity of death, that made sense.

But the leg propped up didn’t fit; how had it stayed in place postmortem?

The man’s legs were well muscled, coated with curls of fine blond hair. Black cashmere sweater for him, blue dress for her. I craned to see more of her, couldn’t catch anything but dress fabric. Some kind of shiny jersey. Hiked above her hips.

The man’s hair was longish, light brown, wavy. A neat ruby hole stippled by black powder punctuated the mastoid bulge behind his right ear. Blood ran down his neck, slanted toward the right, continued onto the plywood floor. Long dark strands of her hair fa

I said, “Wouldn’t her legs have relaxed?”

The C.I., still photographing, said, “If rigor’s come and gone, I’d think so.”

She worked at the crypt on Mission Road, in East L.A., had managed to maintain the rosy-cheeked glow of a habitual hiker. Lots of outdoor death scenes? Late twenties to early thirties, rusty hair tied in a high ponytail, clear blue eyes; a farm girl working the dark side.

Putting the camera aside, she got down low, she used two hands to lift the man’s midsection gingerly, peered through the resulting two-inch space. The wraparound leg collapsed like a folding chair improperly set. “Yup, looks like she was propped, Lieutenant.”

Looking back at Milo for confirmation, her hands still wedged between the bodies.

He said, “Could be.”

The C.I. raised the male victim a bit higher, studied, lowered him with tenderness. The investigators I’ve seen are generally like that: respectful, swimming in more horror than most people encounter in a lifetime, never growing jaded.

She stood, brushed dust off her trousers. “She’s not wearing panties and his penis is out. Obviously, there’s no erection so there’s no way they’d stay… co

Kneeling again, she pulled the man’s crumpled jeans high enough to search his pockets. “Okay, here we go.”

Hefting a blue vinyl wallet secured by a snap button.

Milo gloved up. “No car keys?”

“Nope, just this. Let me tag and then you can go through it. I didn’t see any civilian cars parked on the street, maybe it started as a jacking?”

“And everyone ran up here and these two started getting it on?”

“I was thinking an intended jacking, the bad guy changed his mind?”

Milo shrugged.

“Sorry, Lieutenant. For shooting my mouth.”

“At this point,” said Milo, “I’ll take anything I can get.”

“I’m new on the job,” she said. “I’m sure there’s nothing I can teach you-guess it’s time to flip them. I’ll do a liver temp and see if we can close in on TOD.”

Moments later, she was cleaning off the meat thermometer.

Milo said, “And?”

“Probably somewhere during the last twelve hours, I’m sure the docs will be able to tell you more.”

The male victim’s face was a husk of the handsome, smiling visage on the driver’s license in the blue vinyl wallet. Desmond Erik Backer, thirty-two years old last February, five eleven, one seventy, brown and brown, apartment on California Avenue in Santa Monica, an address that put it three blocks from the beach.

The wallet held two hundred dollars in fifties and twenties, two gold credit cards, a couple of wheat-colored business cards, a photo of a little blond girl around two wearing a lace-trimmed, red-velvet dress. TAG Heuer sport watch around left wrist, no other jewelry. No pale stripe of skin suggesting a wedding band, removed discreetly or otherwise.

Milo showed me the handwritten inscription on the back of the child’s portrait. Samantha, 22 mo. No one else would’ve caught the twitch in his eyelid.

He flipped to a business card. Desmond E. Backer, AIA, Gemein, Holman, and Cohen, Architects. Main Street in Venice.

“Nice watch,” he said, checking the back of the TAG for an inscription. Blank. Checking the leather label on the jeans. “Zegna.”

The C.I. said, “But her dress looks a little low-rent, don’t you think?”

She inspected the label. “Made in China, polyester… short and snug. Could she be a working girl?”

“Anything’s possible.” Milo returned the wallet. As he bagged, took notes, he continued to study the bodies.

No sign of the female victim’s purse. Generic gold hoops in her ears, three similarly nondescript silver bangles around one slender wrist. Light makeup.

He got down close to her right ear, as if wanting to impart some secret. “She shampooed recently, I can still smell it.”

The C.I. said, “I also smelled it. Suave. I use it myself.”

“Expensive?”

She chuckled. “With my pay scale?” Growing solemn as she took in the dead woman’s pale face.

Even degraded, an extremely nice-looking woman with a taut, full-breasted, somewhat low-waisted body, a smooth, oval countenance, and huge eyes, slightly down-slanted. Brown in life, filmed the color of dirty pavement by death.

Pink gloss on slack lips. Clean nails, no polish. The C.I.’s probing had revealed no bullet holes anywhere on her body, but the sclera of the woman’s eyes were marbled and speckled by hemorrhage and her long neck was swollen and bruised and bisected by an angry magenta line.

The C.I. pointed out the crusty, milky blotch on her thigh. Checked fingernails. “Doesn’t look like anything under there. Poor thing. Is it okay if I pull her dress down?”

“Do that,” said Milo. “Soon as our techies get here and print them and the room, you can transport.”