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“I’m hoping to locate one of his parents soon.”
“So let him stay.” Hannah smiled. “Even if he is a psycho, there isn’t a lot here to steal.”
Decker said, “A couple of days won’t make that much of a difference. If it drags on longer than that, we’ll reevaluate.”
Rina said, “He should be in school.”
“Not our school,” Hannah said.
“Why not?” Decker said. “It’s filled with misfits anyway.”
“It’s an Orthodox day school, Abba, and I don’t think he’s Jewish.”
“Neither are half the kids in the school.”
“That’s not true,” Hannah said. “Look, I can take him to school. He’s real cute and I’m sure all the girls will fall madly in love with him. Just don’t blame me if the rabbis have a fit.”
Rina said. “Sitting around here is only going to make him feel worse.” She turned to Hannah. “Go in and tell him that you’re taking him to your school.”
“You want me to tell him?”
“Yes, I do,” Rina ordered.
“I have choir practice tonight. I won’t get home until late.”
“Take him with you,” Decker said. “I seem to recall that he plays the piano. Maybe he can accompany you guys.”
“Right!” Hannah snorted and went in to fetch Gabe from her brothers’ bedroom.
When she was gone, Decker said, “I hope this doesn’t come back to bite us.”
“It might,” Rina said. “But even God judges us for our present actions only and not on what He knows we’ll do in the future. How can we mortals do anything less?”
“That’s a nice little speech, but we mortals have to use the past to judge the future because we’re not God.” He shook his head. “What kind of a teenager doesn’t want to live with his young irresponsible aunt who parties and dopes?” “A kid too mature for his age.”
HE SAT ON one of the twin beds, his backpack at his feet, staring at nothing while other people talked about his fate. A position he had been in umpteen times before. The room was filled with athletic trophies, paperback books, comic books, CDs, and DVDs, mostly from the nineties. There were posters of Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson, one of Kobe Bryant when he was about seventeen years old. The CDs included Green Day, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam.
An utterly normal room in an utterly normal house with an utterly normal family.
What he would give to live an utterly normal life.
He was tired of dealing with a psycho for a father, a totally unpredictable maniac with a violent temper. He was sick of having a psychologically beaten-down mother—recently a physically beaten mother. He feared his dad, he loved his mom, but he was sick to death of both of them. And although he was sincerely passionate about his music and the piano, he detested growing up a prodigy. It drove him to do more and more and more and more.
All he wanted was to be fucking normal. Was that so hard of a wish to grant?
He heard the knock on the door and wiped his eyes. He looked in the mirror and noticed they were red-rimmed. Fucking-A great! The girl probably thought he was a real wuss.
Mom, where the fuck are you? Chris, what the fuck did you do with Mom?
He answered the door. “Hey.”
“Hey.” She smiled. “You know if you want to hole up here for a few days, you’re more than welcome.”
“Yeah, your dad already told me that. Thanks. I really mean that.” He bit his lower lip. “I’m sure things will sort out by then. Tell your parents I won’t be any trouble.”
“I’m enough trouble for the both of us.” She smiled. “Hate to tell you this, bud, but my mom wants you to go to school with me.”
“School?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger.”
“Right.” He laughed. What else was there to do? “Sure. Why not?”
“It’s a religious school.”
“What religion?”
“Jewish.”
“I’m Catholic.”
“It’s fine. You won’t have to do anything against your beliefs.”
“I have no beliefs except in the innate evil of human beings.” He looked at her. “Except your parents.”
“If it’s too much for you to handle, I can probably talk my mom out of it.”
“No, it’s okay.” A pause. “I’ll deal. Do I need a notebook or something?”
“I’ll get you an extra one. You’re in tenth grade, you said?”
“I was.”
“Algebra two or pre-calc?”
“Pre-calc.”
“I’ll take care of it. I also heard you play the piano.”
His eyes showed a twinkle of animation. “Do you have a piano?”
“My school does. Are you good?”
For the first time, Hannah saw a genuine smile. He said, “I can play.”
“Then maybe you can stay after school and accompany our choir. We’re terrible. We could use some sort of a lift.”
“I probably can help you out there.”
“C’mon.” She motioned him forward. “I’ll guide you through it. You may not know it, Gabe, but you’re looking at a BMOC.”
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_008d7986-e61c-5893-9691-7adc7d93003d)
BY THE TIME Decker broke for lunch, he had done enough phone work and legwork to ascertain that there had been no activity on Terry McLaughlin’s cell since four o’clock yesterday afternoon. Her major credit cards hadn’t been used other than daily charges put through by the hotel, and even those had been earlier in the day. Her name hadn’t appeared on any American or United flight manifest—either domestic or international—but Decker certainly hadn’t the means and the wherewithal to check every single airline and every single local airport. If the woman had wanted to sneak out, she could have done it in a thousand ways. More to the point, her car hadn’t been spotted. All he could do was wait for news and hope it wasn’t bad news.
Donatti wasn’t picking up his cell, either. According to Gabe, his father switched cells, often using throwaways. It could be that the number that Decker was given wasn’t the cell phone he was currently using. Decker did discover that Donatti had arrived on Saturday morning in LAX via Virgin America Airlines, the day before his meeting with his estranged wife. There was no record of his picking up any rental car. As far as locating where he had stayed before he had met with Terry, Decker started calling hotels, beginning on the west with the Ritz-Carlton in the Marina and slowly working his way eastward ho. When he was about to call the Century Plaza, there was a knock on his office door. He put down the phone. “Come in.”
Dressed in a wheat-colored shirt, brown pants, and rubber-soled flats, Marge entered his office. Her brown eyes were wide and her face was ashen. Decker felt his heart sink. “What?”
“A foreman at a construction site just found a homicide victim—a young woman hanging from the rafters—”
“Good Lord!” Decker felt sick. “Hanging?”
“From cable wire…at least, that’s what I’ve been told.”
“Any identification?”
“Not so far. The uniforms are at the scene, cordoning off the area.”
“Has any one cut her down?”
“No. The foreman didn’t touch her. He called 911 and the uniforms came quickly enough to preserve the scene. The coroner’s office has been notified.”
Decker looked at his watch. “It’s two in the afternoon. And the foreman just discovered the body? How long had he been at the site?”
“I don’t know, Pete.”
“What’s the location?” When Marge told him the address, Decker’s heart started racing. His brain flashed to Terry’s face with a noose around her neck. “That’s not far from where Cheryl Diggs was murdered.”
“I realize that. That’s why I’m telling you this.”
Way back when, when Chris Donatti né Chris Whitman had been a senior in high school, Cheryl Diggs had been his teen girlfriend. On the night of the senior prom, Donatti had been accused of murdering her, and soon after, he went to jail because of some noble but misguided notion that he was saving Terry McLaughlin from the ordeal of testifying at his trial. It turned out that Chris had been innocent, probably the only crime that he was ever innocent of.
Marge said, “I’m on my way with Oliver. Should I keep you updated or do you want to come?”
“I’m coming.” He picked up his jacket, his cell phone, and his camera. “I’ll take a separate car and meet you two there.”
“Anything I should be looking for?”
“Do you know what Terry McLaughlin looks like?”
“Last time I saw her, she was sixteen. A beautiful girl, as I recall.”
“She’s matured, but she’s still beautiful.” Decker slammed his fist into the palm of his hand. “Of course, if it’s her, she isn’t going to look pretty at all.”
CRIME WAS UBIQUITOUS, and while the community policed by the Devonshire substation had its share of assaults, burglaries, and thefts, it wasn’t considered high in the homicide department. So when murder did occur, it stood out as an anomaly. Hangings were as rare as L.A. snow.
Decker drove down the main boulevard, twisting and turning until he arrived at one of the more affluent residential areas. It was a planned community and the homes were two-storied with three-car garages and half-acre lots. There were a few architectural styles to choose from: Spanish, Tudor, Colonial, Italianate, and Modern, which was basically an oversize box with oversize windows. Several homes were in the process of being built.
At the given address, a sizable group of gawkers was milling about, craning their necks to see what was going on. One radio van had already arrived and no doubt several more were on the way. Decker parked about a half block away from the hubbub and walked over to the action. He flashed his badge to one of the uniforms and then ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape.
The two-story house had been framed: the rooms had been delineated, the windows were in, and the roof was on. The crowd was gathered toward the back, mostly uniformed officers, but Decker could also see flashbulbs discharging at frequent intervals. Marge, riding with her partner, Scott Oliver, had beaten him to the scene.
Scott was his usually natty self, wearing a houndstooth jacket, black slacks, a black jacquard silk tie, and a starched white shirt. As Decker got closer to the corpse, the air had turned fetid, filled with the stink of excretion. A funnel of blackflies, gnats, and other winged insects was encircling the space.
Oliver was shooing the critters away. “Get lost, bugs. Go eat the carrion.”
From his breast jacket pocket, Decker took out a tube of Vicks VapoRub and dabbed his nostrils with the ointment. He waved a hand across his face to disperse the insects as he stared at the body swinging from the rafters. The woman’s face was so discolored and bloated that she was almost unrecognizable as human. She was nude, her long dark hair vainly trying to give her some modesty. Cable wire had been looped several times around her neck, the terminus of the ligature knotted on one of the ceiling joists. Her toenails—painted red—just barely cleared the ground.
“Any ID?” Decker asked.
“None so far,” Marge answered. “Is it Terry?”
Decker stared a long time. “I’d like to say no, but honestly she’s too distorted to tell.” He took out his notebook and began to make some sketches. “What cable company services this area?”
“American Lifeline does most of the Valley,” Marge answered. “I’ll call them up and get a schedule of who’s working in the area.”
Decker said. “Find out what kind of cable wire they use. Also get someone to start calling electronic shops and computer stores in the area and find out what kind of cable they sell.”
“I’ll do that,” Oliver said.
“No, get Lee Wang to make all the calls. You and Marge start canvassing the area. I’ll bring in a couple of other Dees to help you out.” Decker continued to study the body. “Do we have any ideas who this might be?”
“Wynona Pratt is making calls to the other station houses, finding out if any young women were reported missing.”
Decker rubbed his forehead and turned to the photographer, George Stubbs, a gray-haired, stocky man in his fifties. “Are you done with her?”
“Almost.”
“Did you take close-ups of her neck?”
“I took some. I can take more.”
“Do that. Also take several snapshots of the knot on the ceiling where the cable wire is knotted.”
Marge had gloved up and was studying the body, circling it like carrion. By law, no one could touch the body until the coroner’s investigator gave the okay. “This seems like a bloodless murder. No bullet holes, no stab wounds. No defensive wounds on her hands. Her nails aren’t chipped or scratched. Her French polish manicure is like new.” She looked up. “Happen to notice if Terry had on nail polish?”
Decker thought back, trying to recall Terry’s hands. Then he noticed the hanging woman’s feet—bright red toenails. “When Terry first spoke to me, her feet were bare and I don’t recall her toenails being polished.” A pause. “She could have polished them later, after I left, but how likely is that unless she had it done in the hotel’s salon.”
Marge said, “I’ll call up and ask.”
He stared at the face. “It’s not her.”
“You’re sure.”
“Almost certain.” He regarded her features, then shook his head. “Do we have any forensics—semen, fingerprints, shoe prints, maybe some tire tracks in the area? Lots of dust and dirt, we should be able to pull something from the ground.”
“I’ve been bagging garbage,” Oliver said.
