The Garden of Eden and Other Criminal Delights Page 5

  Decker smiled and shook his head. “What about Sarah’s key? Could she have left it on a desktop or in her drawer—”

  “Not a chance! She’d guard it with her life.” Adele was losing patience. “Can I go run a business now?”

  “Just bear with me for a couple of minutes. You said this was the second time you’ve shown the house.”

  “Yes. The first time was on Sunday. When can I start letting people see the place again?”

  “Not today,” Decker said. “We’re still dusting inside. You’re probably a good judge of character after dealing with lots of different people all these years, right?” Adele looked at Decker with suspicion on her face. She was short and very thin. There was well over a foot of difference in height between the two of them. “I mean, that’s your job, to read people, correct?” Decker said.

  “What are you getting at, Sergeant?”

  Marge said, “I’m the sergeant, he’s the lieutenant.”

  Decker said, “You can probably tell serious buyers from those who don’t belong. Maybe you remember someone from Sunday who looked like he or she didn’t belong? Take your time before answering.”

  “I need a smoke,” Adele said. Before she pulled out her cigarette, Decker was there with the match. She blew out a plume of vaporized tobacco and wrinkled her brow—as best she could wrinkle her brow. Botox was doing its job. The agent sighed. “The place was a mob scene.”

  “How about right before you were ready to lock up?” Decker said. “Anyone walk out of the place with you?”

  The agent paused. “Now that you mention it, there were a few people hanging around. You know, trying to sweet-talk me into looking at their offers. One couple in particular . . . wait, wait . . . there was this young guy . . . I almost locked him in the house.”

  Decker nodded. “Could you describe him to a police artist for a sketch?”

  “Yes, I think I could. And I might even be able to do you one better. He might have signed my sheet. I don’t know if it’s his real name and phone number, but it’s better than what you’ve got right now.”

  “What we’ve got is nothing,” Decker said.

  “That’s why what I’ve got is better.”

  Over the phone, Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Angelo told Decker that he had extracted scrapings from under the nails. “I’ll try to get the material into the lab sometime this week. How long the lab takes to get you a genetic profile is anyone’s guess. They’re backlogged over a year.”

  “Maybe you can put a rush on it?”

  “I can try, but you haven’t even ID’d the vic yet, let alone have a perp to match it to. This isn’t going to be high priority.”

  How right he was. Decker said, “Do the best you can.”

  “I do have other news for you. The vic was pregnant.”

  Decker cursed silently. “How many months?”

  “It wasn’t an embryo, but it wasn’t as far along as a fetus, either. Maybe a little over three months. Interesting to see if the genetic material under the nails matches to the father of the baby.”

  As he passed out copies of the composite drawing, Decker regarded the sketch and winced. It featured a nondescript man in his thirties. Adele had told the police artist that he had a young face but a receding hairline; dark eyes, thin lips, average build. She remembered that he had a mole over his right eyebrow, and that was about the only distinguishing mark on him. Decker supposed he should stop bitching. Every little bit helped.

  The detectives were sitting in the conference room in the Devonshire division of the LAPD. Five of them around the table, drinking cold coffee while comparing notes. Not much to talk about, but still the theories abounded.

  Decker said, “So this is what I think happened. This guy came in on Sunday, looking the place over, acting like a prospective buyer. That way he could open and close the closet doors and look around without arousing any suspicion. He waits until the agent has locked up, then surreptitiously unlocks the back door. Then he pretends that he didn’t know she was about to leave and says something like, ‘Hey, wait for me!’ They walk out together. She’s not going to go back and check all the doors. She just assumes he was entranced by a toilet or something. So they just walk out together. Then he comes back on Monday night to dump the body.”

  “But the agent came on Monday afternoon and checked out the closets,” Marge reminded him. “I’m sure she locked all the doors, Loo.”

  “Maybe he came through a window?” Oliver suggested. “The agent would check the doors but not the windows.”

  “I like that,” Decker said. “You’ll notice I’m using ‘he’ for the murderer. It could have been a she. It’s just a pain in the ass to say ‘he or she’ every time.”

  Wanda Beautemps spoke up. She was in her fifties and the newest member of Homicide. “If he was looking for a place to dump the body, then are we thinking that the girl was already dead on Sunday?”

  “Not necessarily,” Decker said. “The deputy coroner thinks that she was murdered about twenty-four hours before we found her, which would put her death sometime on Monday.”

  “So he finds the dump spot before he kills the girl?”

  “Perhaps,” Decker said. “That would imply premeditation. We’re checking everyone on the sign-in sheet, but so far we don’t have a hit. Adele’s description to the police artist is the best we have so far. If anyone identifies the guy, don’t go over and confront him. Don’t even talk to him. Let’s just identify him, find out who he is, where he lives, where he works. He could be a completely innocent schnook. Let’s try to avoid a lawsuit.” He looked at Lee Wang. “Are we anywhere close to identifying the vic?”

  Wang checked his notes, written in a sloppy hand. He always claimed his Chinese handwriting was much better than his English penmanship, except that Lee was a born-and-bred American. “Nothing from our canvassing yesterday. I’ve been checking Missing Persons in the Valley—LAPD. That’s been a fat zero. I haven’t checked Burbank or San Fernando or Simi or the city. I’ll keep working on it.”

  “Good,” Decker said. “Go out and canvass the area for this guy. And good luck.”

  “Matthew Lombard,” Marge said. “He’s thirty-one and lives about four miles away, married with two kids. He works as a junior lawyer at a downtown firm.”

  “You canvassed four miles from the house?”

  “One of the clerks at the local 7-Eleven says Matthew comes in every day for coffee and a doughnut before he goes to work. He said it could be him. The face, he wasn’t so sure, but the mole, maybe. The guy doesn’t have any kind of a sheet.”

  “All right, Margie, this is what I want you to do. Go get a black-and-white snapshot of him, put it in a six-pack, and see if Adele can pick him out. You can probably pull something off Google—yearbook graduation picture, something like that.”

  “Not a problem. Some of the search engines have a ‘show me an image’ feature. No privacy anymore. Not that anyone wants privacy, judging from the moronic reality shows on TV.”

  “That’s for certain. You tell the grocery clerk to keep quiet?”

  “I told him if he didn’t, I’d check out his green card. I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”

  The interview room had a table and four chairs. Adele Michaels sat on one side, Detective Scott Oliver across from her. She was playing with her pack of cigarettes, looking nervous. Oliver laid the photo spread—six front-face pictures, five stooges and Lombard, matched for age, race, size, and features. It took the real estate agent approximately twenty seconds.

  “That’s him!” Adele hit the black-and-white of Lombard. “That’s the guy I almost locked in the house. He kept asking me questions.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Michaels,” Oliver said.

  “Do I get to pick him out of a lineup now?”

  “No, ma’am. As far as we know, the man hasn’t done anything wrong except stay too late at your open house. If you see him again, don’t mention anything about this, okay?”
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  “Why would I see him again?”

  “Maybe he was a legitimate buyer.” Oliver shrugged. “Or . . . not accusing anyone, but sometimes people who do nasty things enjoy returning to the scene of the crime.”

  “No chance of that,” Adele said. “Body or no body, the house sold.”

  “After going through the recent Missing Persons files in the Valley, San Fernando, Burbank, and Glendale, I came up with a dozen possibilities,” Wang told Decker. They were sitting in the Loo’s office. Decker was in his chair, Wang standing over the desk. “Unfortunately—or happily, for the families—nothing panned out.”

  Decker said, “Sure it wasn’t denial?”

  “They showed me pictures of their daughters. They didn’t appear to be our vic, but if you want, I could bring them in and show them the body.”

  Decker thought a moment. “Why put them through something that awful when you’re pretty sure it’s not their loved ones? Besides, you still have the city MP to check out.”

  “I’ll start on those this afternoon.”

  Wang was about to leave when Marge walked into the room, dusting a speck of dirt off her black jacket lapel. She wore beige pants and had on flat shoes with rubber soles. “That’s what I love about dark colors. They never show dirt. Lord only knows why I put on light pants. I’m just asking for trouble. Do I smell coffee?”

  “I just made a fresh pot,” Decker said. “Help yourself.”

  Marge walked over to the table and poured coffee into a paper cup. Decker always provided fresh coffee for anyone who walked into his office. It made him popular with the rank and file. “Lombard works at a large firm, one of those chichi downtown places that have a million names, like Cratchet, Hatchet, and Patchet.” She checked her notes. “The actual name is Frisk, Taylor, Pollin, Berman, and Pope. They have almost fifty partners. Lombard isn’t one of them.”

  “How long has he worked there?” Decker asked.

  Marge put down her coffee and flipped through her notepad. “I don’t know if I have that . . . Oh, here we go. Five years. Stable guy.”

  Decker raised his eyebrows. “Way back, I was a lawyer for about six months.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Wang said.

  “It’s something he doesn’t advertise,” Marge said, “but it makes him handy around the PDs.”

  Decker smiled. “The point is, when I started out in law, it was well known that ambitious people don’t stick around in big firms if they don’t make junior partner by year two or three.”

  Wang said, “Maybe Lombard’s just not that ambitious.”

  “Or maybe the firm offered other benefits, like a certain lady,” Decker said. “Did you talk to anyone in the firm to see if our vic worked there?”

  “That was my next step,” Margie said.

  Wang said, “If we start showing a postmortem picture of our victim, we’re going to arouse interest at the firm. Are you worried about Lombard bolting?”

  “It’s always a possibility.” Decker thought a moment. “Body’s still in the crypt?”

  “Unless corpses can walk, I would say yes,” Wang answered.

  “Wise guy,” Decker muttered. “Okay, let’s do this. Put a little makeup on her, fix her hair, and dress her. Then have someone take another picture of her gussied up. Do you think we could convince someone in Human Resources at Cratchet, Hatchet, et cetera, that she’s still alive?”

  “Pshaw, Loo, nothing’s impossible,” Marge said. “This is Hollywood!”

  The young clerk’s brown eyes first squinted, then widened with surprise. The HR office of Frisk, Taylor, and friends was tucked into a corner of the fifteenth floor in a twenty-three-story chrome and glass building. The firm took up not only floor fifteen but sixteen and seventeen as well, anonymous corridors of Berber carpeting and white walls. Sitting in his little cubicle, the clerk studied the picture, his eyes traveling from the picture to Marge’s face. “Is that Solana?”

  Marge played along. “Yes, of course.”

  “She doesn’t look so healthy.”

  The clerk’s comment gave Marge a better ruse than the one she had originally invented. “That’s why I need to see her. She’s a diabetic.”

  “I didn’t know that. It wasn’t on her medical form when she applied for the job.” The clerk suddenly looked suspicious. “Why are you talking to me instead of Solana?”

  A logical question: Luckily, Marge was good at thinking on her feet. “Our pharmaceutical company has come out with some very important new drugs, and she was one of our subjects. But she hasn’t shown up for the last couple of days. I tried calling her at home, but no one answers. She put this place down as her employment. I hoped I might catch her here, but I don’t know what department she works in.”

  The clerk gave Marge a strange look. Then he reluctantly checked his files, jotted down some numbers, and picked up the phone. Marge could hear the voice mail kicking in—Solana’s voice.

  The victim had a voice.

  The clerk said, “Hi, Solana, it’s Jack from HR. Can you give me a call when you get in?” He hung up. “She’s not at her desk.”

  “Can you call someone else to find out if she’s even at work? We’re a little concerned.”

  He sighed heavily but cooperated. This time he actually spoke to a human on the other end of the line. “Hi, Terry, it’s Jack.” He smiled and dropped his voice. “Yes, I’m in, what do you think? Do you want me to bring the wine?”

  At this point Marge cleared her throat. Jack looked miffed and held up a finger. “Okay, I’ll do the reds, let Randy do the whites . . . Right, right, right. Okay, it’s a deal. Terry, before you hang up, I’ve got someone from . . .” He looked at Marge.

  “Taykell and Company Pharmaceuticals.”

  “Someone from a drug company looking for Solana Perez. Do you know where she is? . . . I did call, and all I got was voice mail. Do you know if she’s in today? . . . Of course I’ll hold.” He glanced at Marge. “Someone’s hunting her down.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “You’re welcome. I can’t believe she actually let someone take her picture when she looked so awful. The poor thing is as white as chalk.”

  “She wasn’t feeling very well.”

  “You know, she should have listed her illness on the application. Our health insurance has to know— Hi . . . oh? For how long? Okay. Okay. Okay, I’ll see you Thursday. Bye.” The clerk exhaled. “She hasn’t been at work for three days.” He frowned. “Do you think something’s happened to her?”

  “Yes, I think something’s happened to her,” Marge said. “I’d like to see her personnel records.”

  Again Jack frowned. “Those are confidential.”

  Marge drew out her shield. “Don’t make me get a subpoena.”

  The clerk’s mouth dropped open. “You’re police? Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

  “Because if Solana was here, I could just talk to her, clear up this mess, and you’d be none the wiser. But she isn’t here and hasn’t been here for three days. That’s why I’m asking for her records.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She didn’t do anything, Jack. It’s what was done to her.”

  Jack whitened several shades. “Oh my God! That picture! Is it . . . Is she . . .”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Jack quickly excused himself and made a mad dash down the hallway. Marge heard some retching and hoped he had made it to the bathroom in time.

  The Homicide group was stuffed into Decker’s office. Lee Wang, Wanda Beautemps, Marge Dunn, and Scott Oliver were devouring several takeout pizzas. Decker was wolfing down one of his wife’s famous roast beef sandwiches. It was past seven, and they all had appetites worthy of a pack of hyenas. “First thing we’ve got to do is positively ID our victim as Solana Perez. What do we know about her?”

  Marge said, “No husband, according to her application. She’s from a border town in Texas. Her parents are Ana and Jorge Perez,
but contacting them has been hard. There’s no address or phone number. Nothing in Texas directory information. Scott and I are thinking that she’s from immigrant parents.”

  “That’s not good,” Decker said. “We’ve got to get the body ID’d. Let’s bring someone from her office down to the morgue.”

  “Not Lombard,” Oliver said. “He’ll deny knowing her, if he’s smart.”

  “No, not Lombard, or any other lawyer, for that matter. I don’t want anyone charging the department three hundred and fifty an hour. Round up a secretary.” Decker looked at Beautemps and Wang. “Lee, set something up at the crypt, say around ten tomorrow. Wanda, you go to the firm and find someone who knew Solana and can identify her. The two places aren’t too far apart. You should be in and out in an hour, especially if Lee sets up the body for camera viewing beforehand.”

  Wang said, “I was going to work on the city’s Missing Person files. I only got through a quarter of them this afternoon.”

  “You can do that afterward. Besides, it won’t be necessary if we get a positive ID.” Decker turned to Wanda. “If you don’t get a positive ID, you help go through the MP files in the city.”

  “No problem,” Wanda answered.

  “Great,” Decker said. “Now, if our body is Solana, it’s really tempting to jump to conclusions about Lombard, but let’s keep an open mind. We know Solana is missing. And we know that Lombard was in the house where the body was dumped. We know that Solana and Lombard worked in the same department.”

  “You forgot to mention that our vic was three months pregnant and he’s a married guy,” Oliver put in. “Ask the guy for a blood test. We can see if he’s the father.”

  “Even if Lombard is the father, it doesn’t mean he killed her,” Decker said.

  Marge said, “Everything’s circumstantial except him showing up at the house two days before some poor devil finds our body stuffed in a closet. With that, Lombard’s painting a nice picture for the DA.”