Land of Shadows (5 page)

“Were they cut before or after she died?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked.

Brooks said, “Don't know.”

My sister would clip off the tips of her acrylics, then soak her fingers in acetone before going to the nail shop—the shop charged if they had to take them off. Back then, I had cringed as I watched my sister doing this, as nail carcasses flew here and there, sometimes hitting me in the eye, most times landing in the space between Tori's bent leg and thigh; Technicolored nasty things that held two weeks' worth of dirt, dead skin, and, on my sister's worse days, green fungus.

Had this (Jane Doe being frugal and doing some of the work herself) been the case here? Or did we have a monster who had watched episodes of
CSI
and knew that her fingernails held vital clues to his identity?

Brooks swabbed the girl's arms and neck with cotton swabs, in the hopes that the murderer had left behind saliva or semen. As he slipped the sticks into glass vials, he said, “I'll do a rape kit when we bring her in.” He slowly exhaled. “So now, let's address this.” He shone his flashlight on the girl's neck. “See how her facial skin tone is redder than the skin tone of her arms? Could be an indicator of strangulation. You see how the bruising around her neck is in a straight-ish line? If she had hung herself, that belt would have left a bruise shaped like an upside-down V.” He studied the bruise, then shook his head. “He didn't have to choke her so damned hard.”

“See the scratches?” I whispered, pointing at her face.

There was a scratch on her right cheek that ended near the top of her lip. There was another scratch above her left eyebrow.

“Did she fight him?” Joey asked.

“I sure as hell hope so,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said.

“Could she have tied her hands herself?” I inquired.

Brooks narrowed his eyes, then cocked his head. “It's possible, but I don't think so.”

I pointed to the spot near the back of her right ear. “Her hair back there … looks like she may have been bleeding.” Brooks shone the light on that spot but didn't move her. He grunted, then nodded.

“We'll move her once Zucca gets what he needs.” With that, he closed his kit and left the closet.

Lieutenant Rodriguez clicked his teeth, then said, “Lou?”

“After Zucca does his thing,” I said, eyes still on the victim, “I wanna look around her again.”

Arturo Zucca was a fat-thin Italian-American, one of those guys that looked chubby but wasn't—six months working out on an elliptical machine and eating bags of spinach would change everything. Zucca had the eyes of an eagle and the mind of Louis Pasteur: two advanced degrees in biology and chemistry and a grand master in the USPSA shooting competition. His love of guns and science made him perfect for a job in which an ordinary person strolls into an unoccupied condo and sees no blood, no signs of struggle, nothing. That person will scan the two bedrooms, the bathrooms, the kitchen, and still see nothing except empty holes for electrical sockets and a layer of dust and grit on the countertops. That ordinary person will return to the lobby, ruffle her hair, and say, “Other than the dead girl, the flies, and the cell phone, I didn't see anything.” But Zucca saw everything because there was
always
something there. Every time you left a place, you left behind a little piece of you.

The condo was quiet, too quiet, even as seven people worked the scene. I heard my pulse racing and my shallow breathing. I heard Lieutenant Rodriguez and a forensic tech whispering. I heard cameras pop and click. And then, there were the flies …

Too much quiet. Not enough noise. And so, I passed forensic techs dusting for prints on the front door and tiptoed to the hallway to clear my mind. I glanced out the narrow window at the north end of the hallway—the construction trailer, a medical building, and a dirt lot. I swiveled away from the window to stare down the hallway. At the south end, an exit sign hung above an emergency staircase.

I toggled the switch on my radio and called Colin. “Pull a uniform and search the emergency stairs off the second floor. The bad guy could've brought her up that way.”

Zucca poked his head out of unit 1B. “Anytime, Lou.”

The videographer, a hard-built woman with chopped-off gray hair, was recording a criminalist peering into the kitchen's drainage pipe. Another criminalist, this one in the second bedroom, inched in a slow clockwise spiral, searching for a strand of hair that shouldn't have been there. Countless yellow evidence tents had been dropped in the living room, near the threshold of the master bedroom, and at the patio window.

“Found some dust motes from the San Gabriel Valley?” I asked Zucca.

He surveyed the room. “Something like that.”

“I didn't see any blood,” I said, “but, of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't any.”

“Once we move the girl,” he said, “I'll use luminol.” Which glowed blue once it acted with the iron found in blood.

“I didn't see any drag marks, either,” I noted.

“Right. He must've carried her here.”

“And you'll use ninhydrin to lift prints off the closet and bedroom walls?” I asked. “He could have placed his hands there to balance himself while hanging her.”

“Yep,” Zucca said. “And I'm assuming you'll want 3D scans, inside and out.”

Pure white light burst in the world beyond the balcony.

My hand flew to my chest and I gave a small yelp. “Did the Russians just nuke us?”

“Someone finally switched on the halogens,” Zucca said with a chuckle.

“I'll never get used to that.” I saluted him, then returned to the brightly lit master bedroom for my second search of the closet.

A yellow tent now sat by the iPhone.

I pulled on a new pair of latex gloves, then picked up the device. Didn't see any fingerprints—didn't mean there weren't any. I pressed the power button and the phone's light filled the closet.

The wallpaper picture was a yellow dog, something small like a Shih Tzu.

The battery symbol indicated the phone was fully charged.

I wanted to study the call log but didn't want to smudge any possible fingerprints.

“Who the hell threw up?” one of the techs shouted from the bedroom.

“That would be my partner,” I shouted back.

“You make a note?”

“Yeah. Sorry 'bout that.”

I powered down the phone and sat it back by its little yellow tent. Needing a breath, I stepped back into the bedroom.

Over by the window, the techs were photographing Colin's vomit. Other than that, there was nothing else to photograph. No beer cans or cigarette butts, no half-smoked jays or used rubbers. Nothing to suggest a party or squatters hanging out and shooting up.

Back to the closet.

Nothing there except that phone, that belt, and that girl. There were no other items to move. No other doors to open. No couch cushions to search.

Who are you?

A Vikings cheerleader, sure.

She wasn't a strawberry, though: raggedy and desperate, giving head for crack.

No. Jane Doe had income—a fourth-generation iPhone cost $100, but then throw in the data plan … Nope, this girl wasn't poor. She was somebody's kid. She was that yellow dog's mom.

I ran my flashlight down to her feet.

And where are your shoes?

Tori had left behind one shoe, the left, a white Nike Huarache with a bloodstain the size of a quarter on the toe.

I ran the light up the girl's legs and up her torso.

Light reflected off an object stuck to the back of her shoulder.

I peered closer.

Gold cursive letters.
BABY GIRL
. A nameplate with no chain.

I stared into the girl's dead, half-mast eyes—3 percent of me still believed that the last image seen by a dying person remained fixed in her eyes. “Who did this to you, sweetie?” I didn't care about the “why.” Fuck the “why.” I wanted to know who had taken this girl's life. Unfortunately, there were no images of that monster in her cloudy corneas. There
were
specks of red, though. Blood.

“That's okay,” I whispered. “I'll find that son-of-a-bitch.”
For you. And for me.

 

8

It had been three hours since my arrival to Crase Parc and Promenade. A dead girl (another dead girl) had entered my life, this one anonymous. She had possibly left little drops of herself on the lobby floor, dripping all the way to a condo unit on the first floor, drops that were now marked with miniature orange pylons. With that cheer uniform, she may have been the same age as my sister when she disappeared. And Jane Doe had also been victimized in the same neighborhood as Tori, with the name Crase featured prominently in the background.
Again.

A part of me dismissed those similarities—
of course
there would be another dead black girl in this area, since no white ones lived here. Since the start of the new year, I had investigated a lot of murders starring this demographic. But this hadn't been a simple drug deal gone bad or a trick turned fatal. The larger part of me agreed with writer Emma Bull:
Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys.

And now, I was punching through fog, grabbing for those pulleys but missing by miles, to explain away the coincidences. I squeezed shut my eyes—the halogens were too bright, my mind too fragmented, but I needed to get over it and focus. I shuffled through the field interview cards compiled by Officer Shepard. Correction: interview
card
. Just one from the security guard, who had been gnawing on chalupas and guzzling Budweiser while a girl was being strangled to death and hung in a closet.

Colin had abandoned the Dumpsters and was now chatting with Nancy Douglass, the tacky blonde reporter from the
Weekly
.

“What the hell?” My gut burned seeing him there at the tape, flapping his gums to the first hack he saw.
Dumb ass.
I barked his name.

He ended his conversation with the reporter and sauntered over to where I stood.

I wanted to rip out his trachea. “
You
don't talk to the press,” I growled at him. “
I
talk to the press, and if you do it again, I'll pack your steam trunk myself and ship you off to fuckin' Provo, Utah.”

He tried to explain himself and stammered about not saying much to Nancy, about being off the record and
blah-blah-blah
. But I had already gone deaf from anger.

After working all day and then being called back in, I needed a Billie Holiday. Vodka, grenadine, and ginger ale, all living happily ever after in my bloodstream. Unlike security guard James Mason, though, I didn't drink while on deck, so relief needed to come from a less-distilled source.

I pulled out my cell phone from my jacket pocket and moved past the black-and-whites and the coroner's van to the Porsche.

Lena had texted me a little after ten o'clock.
U ok? Told Sy about your dead girl. Oops.;)

I loved Syeeda, but she was still a journalist, freelance or not. She, too, had grown up in the Jungle and if anything dramatic occurred in this area, she had to look into it. “Looking into it” included sniffing around me and asking questions that I mostly couldn't answer on record. Hopefully, there would be no intrigue or multistory series because of tonight's murder.

Greg: he'd make me feel better. But his ringtone—pinballs—hadn't clanged since … since … that long.

I selected
GREG
'
S CELL
from my Favorites and listened as his line rang and rang.

For the last eleven years, my husband had served as confidant and court jester, coach and lover. When the boys acted like sexist jerks or I hit a roadblock in a case that seemed insurmountable, Greg would wave my bra in the air and tell me that Harriet Tubman didn't ride the bus with Madame C. J. Walker so that I could punk out. And as I stood at my car, punching through fog, grabbing for those pulleys and staring at orange pylons, that's what I needed: an “All your base are belong to us!” from the man I loved.

Greg was now in Tokyo, on day thirteen of his thirty-day stay. He was the Vice President of Creative Development for M80 Games and was now overseeing the script writing, artwork, and voice work for the company's new franchise
The Last Days.
I missed him and resented his absence, but who was I to complain? He had eaten many cartons of Drunken Noodles alone while I had spent my nights stepping in suspect pools of goop and interviewing new widows in roach-infested apartments. You know, living the glamorous life.

But Greg's phone kept ringing and ringing … ringing and ringing …

I glanced at my watch—11:07
P.M.
—and tried his hotel room phone. Okay. Yeah. Tokyo was sixteen hours ahead of LA. Which meant that it was two in the afternoon there. Which meant that he was probably in meetings. But still … I was biting my nails now, and my heart was pounding, and the chaos around me had muted. Because where was he?

In meetings.

Why wasn't he answering?

Because it's two in the afternoon. Duh.

Was it happening again?

Umm …

Colin jogged over. “Guess what?”

I wanted to throw a hammer fist to his gullet. Instead, I snapped, “I'm on the phone,” then left a message. “It's me, at a scene, call me when you can, don't know when I'll be home…” and so on. I turned my attention to Colin. “You had something to tell me? You find something in the Dumpsters?”

Colin frowned. “Other than diphtheria and possibly malaria? No, I didn't.”

“What about that staircase? Find something there?”

“Possibly. Zucca dropped tents by invisible spots on a few of the steps. Oh, and some of the techs were looking at me like I was crazy. Guess you told them that I puked?”