Cut to the Quick (12 page)

“Dillon Somerset, Mrs. Richards’s stalker, has no alibi. He claims he was at his apartment alone reading a book during the time frame of the murders. Mercer’s business partner, Scoville, was having a dinner party. His alibi is solid, but there’s a possibility of murder-for-hire, and we’re uncovering business dealings that might provide a motive. The style of the murders doesn’t suggest the work of a hit man, but maybe they were purposefully done in such a grotesque manner to throw us off. The poisoning of Mercer’s dog argues for premeditation. Could be a coincidence, but the little hairs on the back of my neck tell me it isn’t.

“What’s interesting is how Scoville’s gone dicey on us. When Nan and I interviewed him yesterday, he was cooperative through the whole thing. Even volunteered to take a polygraph, which we set up for this morning. At the end of the interview, Nan asked him whether he knew anyone who might want to do the victims harm. Then he suddenly changed. Got real quiet and insisted he had to leave. Later that night, he left a message on my voice mail that he couldn’t do the polygraph. Can’t say I was surprised. We haven’t been able to get ahold of him since.”

“Guilty knowledge?” suggested Sergeant Kendra Early. She was the second-highest-ranking officer there.

“That’s my guess,” Kissick said. “He didn’t commit the murders, but he has information about them. I think our interrogation jogged a memory loose.”

“You can’t jump to conclusions,” Ruiz interjected. “He probably just had his fill of questions. Went home and his wife, the reporter, told him not to take a polygraph as a matter of policy. She’d be savvy about things like that.”

“That’s one theory,” Kissick said.

“Do you still suspect a lone killer did the job?” Beltran asked.

“Yes, one guy. He didn’t leave fingerprints, so he wore gloves. Also, it looks like he wore women’s clothing—size eleven high heels, a wig of long blond synthetic hair, and a garment of blue rayon, based on the fibers we found beneath Mercer’s fingernails. Given the strength required to overpower the victims, it’s unlikely we’re looking for a woman, but probably a man who dressed as a woman either as a disguise or lifestyle. A mark on Mercer’s front door matches the bloody high-heeled footprints in and outside the house. Indicates that Mercer or Richards opened the door, only to have it kicked open the rest of the way by their assailant. Mercer’s right hand, likely bearing his USC class ring, is missing. Who knows why that was done, but the killer’s rage was directed toward Mercer.”

Near Vining was a photograph of Lauren Richards and her two children, Sierra, age seven, and Shane, age nine. Richards’s parents had released it to the media. The photo had been taken at the garden wedding of Richards’s brother that spring. Richards was wearing a not-so-awful bridesmaid’s dress, and her two children were adorable as flower girl and ring bearer. Lauren
Richards’s smile was fitting for the Rose Parade Princess she’d been as a senior at South Pasadena High School.

Ruiz and Caspers had made the notification visit to Richards’s parents, accompanied by a member of PPD’s volunteer clergy. Even though Vining and Ruiz had had their differences, she felt for him and Caspers having to do that job. Looking at the photograph of Richards’s children, she sensed their grief, that hollow emptiness, as if it were a vapor released into the atmosphere, available to be absorbed into the skin of the vulnerable. Vining was vulnerable. It was not a stretch to transpose her and Emily into the photograph. Richards had been thirty-six. Vining was thirty-four.

While she had leaped on the investigation of female police officer Frankie Lynde three months before, she was happy to let Ruiz and Caspers handle the Lauren Richards component of this new saga.

Lieutenant Beltran asked, “We haven’t brought up the issue of cross-dressing with either of the suspects, correct?”

“Correct,” Kissick said. “I want to keep that in our back pocket for now. Once we even ask the question, it’ll be in the wind, and size eleven heels will disappear from our bad guy’s closet. However, word of the writing in blood on the wall has already leaked out.” He grimaced.

“People are afraid there’s another Manson-style murderer out there.” Beltran looked at his watch and stood. “I’m saying little at the press conference other than releasing the tip-line number and trying to put our citizens at ease.”

“What about that message, anyway?” Sergeant Early asked. “All work. No play. What’s he trying to tell us?” African American and in her mid-forties, Early wore no makeup. Her round face gave her a cherubic look that
was undone by dark circles beneath careworn eyes. She had the sage demeanor of a kindly family elder. Standing barely 5 foot 4 inches, with short-cropped curly hair and a waistline giving way to middle age, it was easy for the uninformed to assume she was soft.

“I don’t think we should read much into it,” Kissick said. “Just like the Manson family’s ‘Helter Skelter’ message, we may not learn the meaning until we apprehend the guy.”

“Do whatever you need to get this asshole. Don’t worry about O.T. I’ll handle it with the people on the third floor.” Beltran was referring to the top floor of the building, where the chief and commanders had their offices. “Kendra, we need to get downstairs.”

Beltran and Early departed, taking the formality of the meeting with them. During the press conference, Early would stand to the side, ostensibly there to help Beltran field questions. The truth was, Beltran asked her to attend these events for P.R. She was a popular figure whenever she appeared on TV. The public liked her no-nonsense demeanor and droll sense of humor. She made him look good.

Left in the room were Vining, Kissick, Ruiz, Caspers, and Detectives Louis Jones and Doug Sproul, brought in from other desks under Early’s command to work the case.

“Helter Skelter?” Caspers shrugged. “What’s that?”

Ruiz was incredulous. “You don’t know what that is? Don’t you know about the Manson family murders?”

Caspers got defensive. “Hey, I wasn’t even born then.”

“Manson was inspired by the Beatles song ‘Helter Skelter.’ He had one of his family members write it at the home of the LaBiancas, who they murdered the night after Sharon Tate and her friends.” Kissick was a crime
encyclopedia, especially concerning notorious murders and murderers.

“They wrote
‘Healter
Skelter’ in blood on the refrigerator. Misspelled.”

“Healter”? Louis Jones shook his head. He was African American, not tall, but had a massive upper body from lifting weights every day in the station gym.

They all laughed at the supreme idiocy of criminals.

“So what about our cross-dressing psycho?” Vining mused.

“Does he like to dress as a woman or does he live as a woman?” Sproul asked. With red hair, glasses and a slight build, he looked more like a high school math teacher than a detective.

“To catch him, we’ll need to know where he is in the transgender process,” Kissick said. “Our guy may be a fetishist and dress as a woman for a sexual charge, but not as a lifestyle. Or he may be a man physiologically but living as a woman. He may be somewhere in between, with his male genitalia intact, but taking hormones to make his breasts grow and his beard shrink. He may have had a sex change operation and may
be
a female. We can’t restrict our thinking.”

The topic was making Caspers cringe. “That’s not something we see in Pasadena. That’s a West Hollywood deal.”

“Ya think?” Jones goaded him.

“What?
Here?
In
Pasadena?
”

Ruiz chuckled at Caspers’s discomfort. “You have to be careful when you’re out on the town, Alex. You not only need to run a criminal background check on your dates, you really should run their DNA, too.”

“Please …” Caspers, a perpetual-motion machine, rocked his chair back and forth. “It wouldn’t get to ‘hello.’ ”

“How can you be so sure?” Vining couldn’t resist the logical follow-up.

Caspers retracted his upper lip. “That
Crying Game
thing? Unh-huh. Fuggeddaboutit.”

Kissick passed off a guess as knowledge, just to get Caspers going. “Some of them, I hear, you can’t distinguish from a natural-born woman even when having sex.”

“Come on.… No surgery could be that good.” Caspers pointed to himself. “I would know.”

“That brings up an interesting question,” Jones began. “If a man sleeps with a woman who used to be a man, does that make the man gay?”

“Why even go there, Louis?” Caspers looked as if he might punch somebody.

“I think we could use sensitivity training,” Vining joked.

Caspers leaped on the opening. “I’ll give you sensitivity training.”

That started them laughing more.

“Okay.” Kissick attempted to get back on track. “We want warrants for Scoville’s and Somerset’s phone records. We’ve got good probable cause for Somerset. Lots of witnesses to his stalking behavior. But with Scoville, we’ll face our friend catch-22. We can’t get warrants without probable cause, but we can’t build P.C. without the phone records, which we need to track down a murder-for-hire plot. Unless he was clever enough to never use his own phones.”

“Scoville doesn’t impress me as that kind of clever,” Vining said.

Ruiz pushed his chair back, as if he’d feasted enough at the dinner table. “I wouldn’t put too much effort into Scoville. He offered to take a polygraph straight out. Like I said before, his wife probably talked him out of it.
Our time’s better spent building a case against Somerset.” He pressed his hand against his chest. “In my humble opinion.”

Vining nodded as she listened, showing interest in what Ruiz was saying, but not buying it. “I like Somerset as a suspect, but I like Scoville too.” Something about Scoville radiated heat for her. There was no evidence that she could use to make her case so far but she knew better than to deny her instincts. “Scoville’s hiding something, and I want to find out what it is.”

“For the sake of expediency,” Kissick began, “I can see if my buddy over at AT&T can get us Scoville’s cell phone info off the record. We could never use it as evidence, but it could point us in the right direction.”

They came to an agreement over the work to be done and divided it among themselves.

“That’s it for now.” Kissick held up a photo of the carnage at the crime scene and passed it to Vining. “Have another look so that you don’t forget the psycho we’re dealing with.”

Caspers gave it more than a passing look.

Sproul discerned the object of Caspers’s attention. “Enough. Give it here.”

Vining got their drift. “Were you looking at Lauren Richards’s breasts?”

“That’s one hundred percent organic. No implants there.” He made a sucking noise with his teeth in regret for the loss, mostly to get Vining going, which it did.

“Can you say ‘inappropriate’?” Vining took the photograph and completed the circle by handing it back to Kissick.

He held it up. “This scab on Mercer’s arm … One of his golf buddies told me how ironic it was that Oliver had just had a tattoo removed because he was unhappy with it and a week later, he’s dead. Apparently, the tattoo
was supposed to be Mercer’s initials in Chinese.” Kissick started chuckling. “I shouldn’t laugh. Poor bastard. Mercer found out that instead of his initials, the Chinese characters spelled out ‘Demon Monkey.’ ”

Everyone broke up. Everyone except Caspers, who yet again had a perplexed look on his face.

Ruiz tapped one of Caspers’s shoulders. “You got one of those Chinese tattoos on your back, don’t you? What’s yours supposed to say?”

“It’s not
supposed
to say anything. It says ‘Crouching Tiger.’ ”

“Are you
sure?
” Vining prodded. “Was the artist Chinese?”

“Ernie up on East Colorado. That’s where everyone goes. He knows what he’s doing. He used a template.”

“Mercer’s friend said his tattoo artist used a template too,” Kissick said. “But Chinese characters are so complicated, one swirl in the wrong direction can change the whole meaning.”

“Maybe you better have someone who speaks Chinese look at it,” Sproul suggested. “Is it Mandarin, Cantonese, or—”

“Haven’t you guys had enough of kicking the new guy?” Caspers was grinning, but his irritation showed through.

“We’re just trying to help you, Alex,” Jones said.

“I’ll head down to Hunan Palace today,” Caspers said.

“When are you going? Can you pick me up some kung pao chicken?” Kissick playfully punched Caspers in the arm.

They were filing from the room when Sergeant Terrence Folke came in, followed by Officer John Chase.

Caspers greeted him. “The Chaser. What’s up?”

Chase took Caspers’s hand and patted his shoulder.
They were the same age and they partied together. “Craziness.”

Vining started toward her cubicle.

Folke carried a manila file folder and looked as if he was in no mood for frivolity. “Sorry to interrupt, but Vining, can we see you for a minute? Jim, if you can spare a moment too. It’s important.”

ELEVEN

B
ehind the
closed door of the conference room, officer Chase related the saga of Nitro’s curious sprint through Old Pasadena.

“He doesn’t have I.D. and he won’t communicate. He won’t speak, write, use sign language, blink yes or no, point.… Nothing. He looks like he’s aware of what’s going on. He can vocalize because I heard him make sounds when I had him on the ground trying to cuff him. He makes good eye contact, but he won’t talk.”

Vining didn’t know what this had to do with her. She noticed that the usually unflappable Sergeant Folke looked rattled as Chase recounted his tale. Vining had a soft spot for Folke. He had knelt beside her and radioed for an ambulance as she lay bleeding out onto the kitchen floor in the house at 835 El Alisal Road.

She had a sinking feeling in her stomach. Did she hear ghostly wind chimes or was it her imagination?

Kissick was casually leaning against the wall. “Sounds like a fifty-one fifty candidate.”

Section 5150 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code provides that if a person is determined to be a danger to himself or others because of a mental disorder, he can be involuntarily placed in a mental-health facility for seventy-two-hour evaluation and treatment.