The Beast Read online

  Marge nodded. “Looks like a stellate pattern. With that and all the blowback, we should be hunting around for a weapon: something hard with a round end.”

  “A weapon would be good. I’d also like to find some ID. It’d be nice to have the victim identified. Makes for a neater case file.”

  THE CORONER’S ASSISTANT was someone Decker had worked with on other cases. A Hispanic in her forties, Gloria was perfect for the job because she was competent, cordial, and efficient. Wearing the official black jacket with yellow lettering, she was sweating profusely in the bedroom, now christened the “sauna from hell.” Carefully, she rolled the body onto its side and scrutinized the back, the skin currently colored eggplant purple thanks to lividity—the pooling of blood to the lowest gravitational spot. The skin was beginning to slough off from the musculature underneath. “Okay. Here we go.”

  She lay the body back down and moved over to the other side. She rolled it ever so gently and pointed to a hole.

  “Looks like a bullet wound.” She lay the body back down and studied the front of the decaying corpse. “Can’t see any exit hole. The body is very swollen, so a hole may not be apparent. Did you find any bullet or bullet casings inside the apartment?”

  “Not yet,” Marge said. “But now that we know a firearm might be involved, we’ll look for something. Would the wound have been fatal?”

  “Impossible to tell until you open him up.” She stood up and regarded the bloated corpse. “There was definitely blunt force trauma to the forehead.” She pointed to the lower eye sockets. “This caved-in part is caused by the eyeballs dropping down inside the head—a natural phenomenon. But over here . . .” She pointed to the upper brown section of the skull. “Someone hit the victim with something hard.”

  “We noticed that,” Marge said. “Homicide?”

  “I’m not the medical examiner, so I don’t make the determination,” Gloria said. “But don’t go on vacation anytime soon.”

  Marge smiled. “I’ll call up SID.”

  “Thanks, Gloria.” Decker picked up a paper evidence bag, and the two of them walked into what once was Hobart Penny’s living room. “What I want to know is how the killer got past the tiger?”

  Marge said, “There was around six feet of chain on her. If she was originally chained up, she’d have a little room to move about. But possibly you could sidestep the animal. Or maybe the victim escorted the killer around the tiger.”

  “If the killer was escorted by Penny coming in, how did the killer get around the tiger coming out of the apartment once Penny was dead?”

  Marge shrugged. “Maybe the guy threw the animal meat laced with a sedative. There’s a lot of rotting meat . . . along with piles of shit, diarrhea, and vomit. Maybe the animal was poisoned.”

  Decker thought about the theory. “So the perp killed the victim with the gun and a possible whack on the head but didn’t shoot the tiger. Instead, he gave the tiger poisoned meat?”

  “Maybe he ran out of bullets. Maybe he did shoot the tiger, but unless the shot was perfect, it would probably take more than a shot from a pistol to bring it down.”

  “Do we even know if the tiger was shot?” Decker asked. “It wasn’t walking like it was injured.”

  “It sounded pretty pissed off.”

  Decker conceded the point. “So you’re figuring that the victim knew the perpetrator and escorted him by the animal to get in. Then the perp shot the victim and gave poisonous meat to the tiger?”

  “I have no idea,” Marge said. “Maybe the perp knew the victim and his habits well enough to know how to get around the animal.”

  Decker shrugged. “Possibly. Let’s go outside.”

  They went into the hallway—hot and humid and stinky. Two uniformed officers were on either side of the door, both of them wearing pained expressions. Detective Scott Oliver looked up from a sheet of paper. He had come down to the scene, dressed in a black suit and a pink shirt. He waved his hand in front of his nose. “I was just about to go out and help Wanda and Drew with interviewing the tenants. We really need to canvass the apartment building.”

  “The apartments do need to be canvassed but not by you,” Decker said. “I’m giving Marge and you the vaunted assignment to look for evidence.”

  Oliver’s shoulder’s sagged. “Lucky me.”

  “Luckier than the victim.”

  “What evidence are we talking about?”

  Marge said, “The CI found a bullet hole in the body. A dent in his forehead also looks like blunt force trauma. We’re looking for shell casings possibly and a weapon that fits the depression.”

  “Have we made an ID for the vic?”

  Marge said, “We found a wallet on a dresser with an old ID card belonging to Hobart Penny. It’s hard to tell if the body is him from a small picture.”

  “Any driver’s license?”

  “Not in the wallet,” Decker said. “I’ve bagged a brush, a toothbrush, and a dirty mug of coffee for DNA evidence.” He turned to Marge. “I know the man was a recluse, but what about relatives? A guy that rich . . . there must be people we could contact.”

  Marge said, “From what I read, he’s twice divorced. The last time he was married was twenty-five years ago. There are two kids from the first wife, whom he divorced thirty-five years ago. The first wife died ten years ago. From what I read, he’s also estranged from his kids because of papa’s odd behavior.”

  “Odd is an understatement. What kind of person keeps a tiger as a pet?” When no one offered any psychological insight, Decker said, “How old are his children?”

  Marge checked her notes. “The son—Darius—is around fifty-five, wealthy in his own right. He’s a lawyer and some kind of capital venture person. The daughter—Graciela—is fifty-eight. She’s a New York society woman married to a count or a baron.”

  “What about the second wife?” Oliver asked. “What happened to her?”

  “She”—a flipping of the pages of her notepad—“is still alive . . . Sabrina Talbot, fifty-eight. The marriage lasted five years.”

  “So she was twenty-eight when they married?” Oliver asked.

  “Yeah . . . he was fifty-nine. He gave her a generous settlement, and I read something about his adult children not being happy about it.” Marge looked up. “But this all happened twenty-five years ago. Who holds a grudge for that long?”

  “Someone was pissed enough to bash in his head and shoot him,” Oliver said.

  Decker said, “I’ll research the family history from the station house. I have access to a computer and it smells a lot better.” He took in Oliver’s sartorial splendor. “You might want to leave your jacket in the car and roll up your pants. Marge has shoe covers for you.”

  “Ugh,” Oliver said. “It’s going to be one of those nights.”

  “Scotty, it’s already been one of those nights,” Decker answered. “You just arrived fashionably late.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MARGE COULD ALMOST remember a time when one in the morning meant being asleep. For the last twenty years as a homicide cop, one in the morning meant a phone call directing her to a crime scene, some of them more grisly than others but all of them horrendous. At present, she and Oliver were gathering forensic evidence. Amid the mess and the outrage, there were a few directional arrows that pointed to what went down. When she spotted something shiny winking from a pile of feces, she had a good idea what it was. But that didn’t make the task any more pleasant.

  “I don’t really have to do this, do I?” Marge’s question to Oliver was not rhetorical. “I outrank you.”

  “But you also love me,” Oliver said.

  “Not that much.”

  Silence. “Flip a coin?” Oliver suggested.

  Marge pulled a quarter from her purse, tossed it in the air, and caught it. “Call.”

  “Heads.”

  She slapped the coin on the underside of her arm and took away her hand. George Washington was staring up at her. “I’m going to cry now.
”

  Oliver pretended not to hear, making busy by trying to find a weapon that matched the depression in the victim’s head. Since the coroner’s office had removed the body, he was left with only photographs of the wound. It seemed to be more round than ovoid, about an inch to an inch and a half in diameter. Oliver’s first choice was a hammer. He was attempting to locate a toolbox or a tool drawer.

  Cursing her luck, Marge bent down. The smell was atrocious. She wrinkled her nose, and then stuck two gloved fingers into a squishy mound of tiger poop. Extracting the metal, she regarded the slime-coated hunk of steel. “A twenty-two. At least I found something valuable to offset the gross factor. Can you give me a bag, please?”

  “Just because you said please.” He handed her an evidence bag. “I guess the logical question was how did a bullet get inside the mound of shit? It doesn’t seem like something an animal would normally eat.”

  “Yeah, Decker and I were wondering about why the victim was shot but not the tiger. At least, I don’t think the tiger was shot. We were also thinking about how someone got around the tiger to get to the victim.”

  “What’d you come up with?”

  “The tiger was drugged by a piece of tainted meat. The tiger knew the perpetrator and didn’t view him—or her—as a threat. The tiger was chained up, so the perp could move in and out without being attacked. Or the tiger was shot, and in all the commotion, no one saw a bullet hole. Let me know if you can think of anything else. I’ll call Agent Wilner in the morning and find out the status of the big girl.”

  “Where does one take a stray tiger? Last I heard there was no pound for big cats.”

  “There are a few sanctuaries for wild animals. I seem to recall some kind of nonprofit wild animal shelter when I worked in Foothill—around two decades ago, so I don’t even know if it still exists.” Marge dropped the bullet in the bag. “We’ve got a problem.”

  “Talk to me.”

  “If we already found one bullet in poop, is there other important evidence in poop that we’re choosing to overlook?”

  Oliver glared at Marge. He said, “Why don’t we just bag it all and give it to SID?”

  “Why don’t I take these two massive piles and you take that one and that one?”

  “You can’t assign a rookie to this one?”

  “My X-ray eyes are scanning the room as we speak.” Marge turned her head to the left and to the right. “Only you and me, bud.”

  “I don’t see why I have to do this.”

  Marge said, “In case you didn’t get it the first time. I take these, you take those.”

  “How about if I canvass the neighborhood and Wanda gets her hands dirty.”

  “How about we get this over with ASAP? This is reality, not a reality show, and I don’t have all night. Actually, I do have all night, but I don’t want to use up all night.”

  Reluctantly Oliver bent down in front of the first pile of feces. “What I don’t do to earn a paycheck.”

  “At least you’ve got a job.”

  “This is disgusting.”

  “True, but irrelevant. Just go for it. Today is the first day of the rest of your life, blah, blah, blah.”

  He plunged his hand into the pile and groaned. “Frankly, Dunn, I prefer the past to present. I was younger, I had dark hair, and I had yet to pay a cent of alimony.”

  RINA WAS AN early riser, but Gabe must have gotten up with the sun. “How are you feeling?”

  “Okay.” He ran his hand over his downy scalp. His hair was beginning to grow in. It was a few days away from looking like a buzz cut. “Want some coffee? Machine’s all set, but I didn’t want to turn on the pot until you were up. Stale coffee sucks.”

  “That’s considerate of you. I’d love some coffee. How long have you been up?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “I slept a little. I’m all right.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Yeah, a little.”

  “You did terrific yesterday.”

  “No one was hammering away at me. I’m sure today will be different. It’s okay. Whatever happens . . . I mean what can I do about it?”

  Rina took down two mugs. “You’re a pretty cool character, Gabe. You’ll be fine.”

  He played with the knot on his tie. “Where’s the lieutenant?”

  “He’s still at work. It was an all-night.”

  “Wow. What’s the case?”

  “This one is for the books.” Rina smiled. “Last night, he and animal control extracted a tiger out of an apartment.”

  “A tiger?”

  “Yes, a tiger that was living in an apartment.”

  “Wow.” A pause. “Cool.”

  Rina poured the coffee and handed him a mug. “More like, wow . . . dangerous.”

  Gabe smiled and sipped. “How’d they get the tiger out?”

  “Someone from animal control shot it with a tranquilizing dart. Once it was down, they went inside and took it out in a cage.”

  “Whoa.” He sat back in the chair and was silent for a moment. “I hear a composition in this. Like double bass for the growl, and tuba for the lumbering animal, and a high-pitched staccato from the violins every time it scratches and then this like almost trumpet clarion blare for the animal control, then several measures of rest followed by an earsplitting pop as the dart goes into the body and this shimmering but electrifying strings as it loses consciousness . . . and deep bass as it’s dragged out . . .” Gabe stared at nothing in particular. “I can hear it like . . . perfectly.”

  All Rina heard was noise from the refrigerator. “Kind of like Peter and the Wolf on crack.”

  Gabe laughed. “Exactly.” He put down his coffee and rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “And this extraction took up the entire night?”

  “No,” Rina said. “Once animal control got the tiger out, they found a dead body inside the apartment.”

  “So the tiger killed the guy inside?”

  “From what Peter told me, the body was the result of a homicide. The tiger was incidental and had nothing to do with the man’s death.”

  “That’s really weird.”

  “As a lieutenant, Peter only works on the weird cases. Because he was up all night, he may not show up to the trial until much later.”

  “That’s okay. Life goes on.” He looked at Rina. “But you’ll be there, right?”

  “Of course I’ll be there.” She put down her coffee cup and kissed his nearly naked head. “Don’t worry. It should all be over soon—”

  The phone rang. It was a quarter to seven in the morning. Usually when that happened, it was one of the kids calling from back east. They never paid attention to the three-hour difference.

  Rina said, “Excuse me. It’s probably Hannah either wishing you luck or she’s in crisis.”

  “Either way, tell her hi for me.”

  Rina lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Hi, it’s me,” Decker said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Just tired, but that’s not why I’m calling. Last night while I was dealing with wild animals, Dylan Lashay had a stroke. He’s in the hospital in critical condition. Nurit Luke talked to his lawyers. Everyone agreed to postpone the trial indefinitely.”

  “Oh my!” A pause. “How does Wendy Hesse feel about that?”

  At the mention of Wendy Hesse’s name, Gabe picked up his head. “What’s going on?”

  Rina held up her hand to Gabe. “Could you repeat that? I couldn’t hear.”

  “I said that Wendy’s not happy, of course. Her son is dead and she wants justice, but with these new circumstances, even she isn’t in favor of dragging it out any longer. The entire case should be pled out in a couple of hours, and that, my dear, is the end. Tell Gabe, it’s over.”

  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate getting the monkey off his back.”

  “What monkey off my back?” Gabe asked.

  Decker said, “I’ll be home in a
n hour or so. Maybe we’ll all go out for breakfast before I drop off to sleep.”

  Rina smiled. “That would be great. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.” Decker disconnected the line.

  “What monkey are you talking about?” Gabe was exasperated.

  “Dylan Lashay suffered a stroke. He’s in critical condition. The trial is indefinitely postponed and will probably be pled out. To quote the Loo, ‘Tell Gabe it’s over.’”

  “Wow! That’s great!” Gabe sat back. “That’s really good news. I won’t have to go to court anymore. And Yasmine won’t have to testify, either. That’s great, great news!”

  “A big relief to you and to her, no doubt.” Rina paused. “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

  Gabe looked up. It was always better to tell the truth.

  But maybe not the whole truth.

  “Rina, I haven’t called her in over a year. I haven’t e-mailed her or texted her or talked to her on Skype or anything. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy for her.”

  “Of course you can be happy for her. And I suppose your personal life isn’t any of my business.”

  “It’s okay. I know you mean well.”

  “I do. Should I change your flight to leave tomorrow?”

  “Actually, I already changed it. I decided to stay through the weekend, if that’s okay with you guys.”

  “Of course, it’s okay.” A pause. “Can I ask you why?”

  Gabe was prepared for the question. “I’m all caught up at school. I felt that I could use the extra few days to unwind before I go into fully operational mode. I’m much more relaxed here than at school.”

  “That’s really nice. I want you to feel like this is your home, too.” Rina finished her coffee. “The Loo wants to go out for breakfast. You’re invited.”

  “I’d love to come. Can I change first?”

  “Although you look adorable in a suit, I’m sure jeans and a T-shirt would be much more comfortable.”