Diamond and Cataresco would be there most of the rest of the night. They’d map the precise position of the corpse. They’d measure the dimensions of the kitchen and how far away from the body the spent cartridge had been found. They’d supervise the taking of prints and photos, and they’d go on gathering information about the victim. They’d watch while the coroner arrived and, to determine the time of death, slid a pointed thermometer into the victim’s liver. It would make a popping noise, like bubble wrap.
Every murder cop goes about with a parasite in the heart. It’s handy, this little worm. It eats up the feelings before they have time to reach the brain. In the end, though, there’s the question: which will survive, the parasite or the man?
“I’d better go see Ricky Lee.”
“Go right ahead and be sympathetic,” said Diamond. “But before you do, take a look at this.” He slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and, squatting by the side of the body, pushed his hand under and heaved it up gently. Mae Richards’s hands were tied behind her back. The killer had sliced off the last joints, where the prints were. The ends of her fingers were stumps clogged with gore and bits of splintered bone.
Diamond said, “Not too much blood. My guess is she was tortured and killed somewhere, then dumped back here.”
I wondered why the perpetrator had bothered to cut off her fingertips, usually done, along with smashing the teeth, to prevent an easy ID of the body — but pointless if the killer was going to leave the victim lying on her own kitchen floor. Perhaps she’d put up a fight after all, and the killer was on the ball enough to know the coroner would cut her fingernails to look for blood and skin tissue.
“What about the shell under the sink?”
“What about it?” said Diamond with a shrug.
“Any ideas?”
“Nope.”
“Nope?”
“Gee, Billy, don’t start.”
“I’m sorry, excuse me, but I seem to see a dead body here. I don’t know about you, Drew, but I’m out to get the murderers.”
He was about to say something, but I held up my hand. I said, “Call me old-fashioned. Thieves I can live with. White-collar fraud, blue-collar rip-offs — be my guest. But let’s think about rapists and child abusers. Let’s think about murderers. It’s unreasonable, of course, but it seems a good idea if maybe, maybe, guys like you and me step in and take a hand. What do you think, Drew?”
“Very funny, Billy,” he said, straightening his neck, squirming in his too-neat clothes.
“I’m not joking. Maybe the shell’s not from the same weapon. Maybe it’s a decoy. Maybe the perp was simple or wired or nuts. But someone really did this lady wrong, and I’m going to find him. Or her.”
On the way out I paused, attention caught by a framed photograph on top of a bookcase in the dining area, apart from the other family snaps. It showed Ricky Lee with one arm around the woman whose body was on the kitchen floor; in the other hand he held a tennis racquet. I slipped the photo out of its frame, into my pocket, and told Cataresco to remind Diamond about the garbage bag.
“He won’t forget.”
“Remind him anyway.”
“Don’t you think you should go a little easy on him?”
“Something about Drew makes me crazy. Maybe it’s those fancy clothes he’s started wearing. I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what — he’s a loser.”
“Come on, Billy, the guy’s been having a tough time. And you’re riding him hard.”
“Fun, isn’t it?”
I started to push my way through the crowd and past the reporters into the rain. The boy Nelson was there by my car, dripping and on his own. “Hey, mister. Can I see your Beretta?” he said, as if asking for a quarter or candy.
Making a gun of my thumb and forefinger, I aimed it at him, and said, “Pow!”
IN THE CAR, glancing at my watch, I figured I could just make it, so instead of going back to the precinct, I drove through the rain to Ellen’s house, that’s to say my wife’s house, my ex-wife’s house, which once belonged to us both, and had been rebuilt, cherished by the two of us together. It was less than a mile away, where, California Avenue having been crossed, Oakwood abruptly turned into a desirable Venice neighborhood.
I was leaving my work for a little while, but this was no big issue; on the one hand there was a crime scene, a body that wasn’t going anyplace, and on the other, family obligation. A practiced observer of the various discrete portions of my life, I was accustomed to such sliding and juggling. I figured I’d let Ricky Lee stew for a while — it might even do him good. I didn’t realize this was going to be the most important investigation of my life or that along the way it would turn into something else, or rather, just that — an investigation of my life — and that even this seemingly insignificant choice would later seem fateful. For now, Mae Richards was only another body bag in Ghost Town, and I was worried more about my wife’s, my ex-wife’s, reaction should I fail to show up for the Sunday visit.
Ellen was pretty frank about what was required. For some years now she’d been saying, “I want you to be a good father to Lucy, Billy, and not just for her sake.” This meant devotion, taken as read; it also meant money, of which I had little, and showing up on time for my visits, somehow never a problem, even with the caseload. In this one area I was strangely reliable.
Lucy, eleven now, was outside and ready. On this wet gloomy day sheets of rain fell in front of the stoop, but she redeemed the weather, waving, then splashing toward me, rushing, in sneakers, jeans, and a hooded bright yellow slicker like the sun. She had a way of walking, a stooping slouch, with long strides, as if, head down, she were contemplating the entire universe and all its mysteries. She was like her mother, fearless, though where Ellen’s face was proud and strong, decided, Lucy’s was still open, radiant, and vulnerable. She didn’t want life to come and court her. She rushed toward it, as she did toward the car that Sunday, with elbows flailing.
“Hey, Luce, how ya doing? Look, I got you this.” Opening the glove compartment, I took out the pencil set I’d got from an art supply store up in Westwood. She wanted to be an artist and seemed to have the gift, a puzzle both to her mother and myself, since Ellen’s leaning was toward music and my only known talent that of wedding corpse to suspect.
Her green eyes slid down, then up again; she quickly smiled and I knew I’d got the wrong thing. The one she’d wanted came in a sandalwood box with brass fittings and cost more than $250. “They said these were the best, really.”
“They’re cool, Dad. They’re great.”
I reached out fingers to comb away drops of rain from her forehead. I’d let her down again.
When I looked at my watch, she said, “What happened this afternoon? Was there a murder? Shouldn’t you go?”
“It’s OK. There’s a guy, he can wait.”
“The suspect?”
“I doubt it, but not a good guy.”
I’d always tried to encourage in her the idea that my work was real, mundane, not like TV and the movies, though of course sometimes it couldn’t help seeming that way. “Lucy mythologizes you,” Ellen once said. “She thinks you’re some sort of a hero.” Then Ellen had smiled, adding, not without wistful regret, “For those of us who’ve lived too long with the reality, this can be