The Beast (18 page)

“Nah, I wouldn’t know that.”

“You don’t recall seeing the same car model in the same color?”

“If you have information, tell me.”

“Fair enough. There’s a recently defunct massage company called Casey’s Massage and Escort. I think it used to use powder blue Priuses.”

Paxton thought a moment. “Nothing like that ticks any boxes.” He regarded his watch. “How much longer?”

“Would you like to take a break?”

“No, I’d like to know how much longer. We’ve been at this for an hour. I’ve seen those shows. The cops keep going after the guy until they get a confession.”

“What would you confess to?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why would you think I was after a confession?”

“Because that’s what you do. Can I go home?”

Decker said, “I’ll need you to give me the name of the person who complained about the noises in Penny’s apartment. I’ll need to interview him or her.”

“The Shoops—Ian and Delia. They still live there . . . next door to Penny’s old apartment. They only complained once, but I know Delia was happy when I told her the apartment was vacant. I have a feeling it wasn’t the only time they heard noise.”

“I’ll need their phone or cell numbers.”

“Whatever numbers I have are on the list I gave you.”

“I’m going to need to contact the owners about what we found. You know that.”

Paxton shuffled his feet. “I’ve already told them.”

“Good for you.”

“But I don’t see why they’d have to know about any Christmas gifts.” When Decker was silent, the man said, “Is that a yes or a no?”

Decker shrugged. “Right now, I wouldn’t see why that would be relevant. But I can’t guarantee it won’t come up in the future. Mr. Paxton, what do you think happened in those apartments?”

“
Me
?”

“You were closer to the situation than I was.”

“I don’t know if I should feel honored or if this is a trick?”

“I always ask that question. Sometimes I find that people like you are the ones who break the case.” No one spoke, but Decker could see Paxton’s shoulders relax.

“I really don’t know.” He swallowed hard. “From what I found out, the guy was obviously a nutcase with a death wish. I mean, keeping a tiger and all those poisonous snakes.”

Venomous,
Decker corrected silently. “A death wish for himself—or for others?”

“I can’t believe . . . the guy was so
old
!” Paxton blew out air. “To look at him, you’d think he couldn’t harm a flea.”

“Maybe he couldn’t,” Decker said. “Maybe he relied on other things for protection—ergo, the tiger.”

“A gun would be more practical—faster, smaller, and more deadly.”

“Sure,” Decker agreed. “But like you said, Penny was an old man. With a gun, you have to load it, lift it, aim it, and pull the trigger. There’s kickback with a gun. There’s also uncertainty. With a tiger, on the other hand, you just kinda sit back and let the animal do its thing.”

s
EEING MARGE’S EYES
encased in deep circles, Decker asked, “Are you feeling all right?”

“Just not enough sleep. I’ve been thinking too much. Or maybe it’s Saturday morning blues.”

“I thought it was Monday morning blues.”

“I’ve always been one to jump the gun.” She wore her most comfortable clothes—black pants and a soft pink cotton sweater. She needed to be babied today. “What’d you find out from Paxton?”

Decker gave her a recap, then handed her a to-do list.

Get coroner’s report on the meat packages.

Find out info on Casey’s Massage and Escort: credit card slips, Bruce Havert, Randi with an
i.
If you hit a wall, hunt around for the powder blue Priuses. Probably leased.

Interview the Shoops.

Interview neighbors again to see what they noticed from the apartments.

Find out about exotic pet dealerships—may want to contact Vignette Garrison.

Check the apartment underneath Penny for possible forensics.

Talk to a shrink.

Marge said, “Is that last item for a profile for Penny or for you personally?”

“I haven’t decided.” Decker smiled. “I am curious about what made a man like Penny tick. If you need help interviewing, feel free to call up the reserves.”

“I’ll pull Wanda and Drew for that. They have good people skills. Lee Wang is already doing the computer search for Bruce Havert and Randi and Casey’s. It does have blue Priuses. Oliver and I will check out the car dealerships. They should be open by now. Unless you want me to interview the Shoops first.”

“I’ve already set up a time with them. They can’t make it in until four tomorrow afternoon.”

“So in that case, why don’t you go home and try to salvage some of your Sabbath.”

“I want to stop by the Crypt first.”

“I’ll go with you if you want,” Marge told him.

“Nice of you, but it’s not a two-man job. At eleven in the morning, why should we both smell death?”

WITH ALL HIS
morgue visits over the years, Decker had gotten used to bodies. There were corpses laid out on the steel tables behind glass windows in the autopsy operating rooms. There were bodies wrapped up in plastic and stacked on shelves like carpets in the refrigeration room. Often, cadavers with toe tags were left in the hallway, waiting to be processed. There were not only bodies but also human remains floating in jars and sliced and diced on glass slides about to be examined under microscopes. But the one thing he couldn’t get used to, no matter how often he visited the Crypt, was the smell: that distinct fecal blend of decay, rot, and sickening sweet formaldehyde. It always caused something uncomfortable to well up inside his throat.

By the time Decker had arrived, the frozen fingers should have been thawed out and ready to be printed. The fingernails needed to
be clipped for trace evidence and studied for foreign DNA. Decker had acclimated to the underground life of a pathologist. His duties today put him inside one of the lab rooms rather than in the autopsy chambers, the closed door attenuating the stench ever so slightly. The examination space was long and narrow. If Decker held out his arms, he could span the width palm to palm with barely enough room to walk between the steel countertops covered by equipment and specimen jars.

The pathologist was a woman named Elsie Spar who by most accounts was around a hundred. Her shoulders were hunched, her hair was sparse and white, and when she talked, her dentures clacked. Decker had dealt with her before. The body may be stooped and bent, but the brain was thoroughly intact: vital and sharp with a keen intelligence and photographic recollection. She sat on a stool while Decker stood.

Elsie wasn’t one who bothered with niceties. “You got all gray.”

“Not
all
gray. If you squint, you can still see the orange streaks.” Elsie adjusted her Coke-bottle lenses. Her white lab coat swallowed up her small frame. “Nope. Just see gray. The mustache is still red. Do you dye it?”

“No.”

“That’s good to hear. More and more men are dyeing their hair—like little wusses afraid to get old. A man should look like a man, not a gender-neutralized manikin. I suppose you want to talk about the fingers.”

“I do. Can I sit down?”

“Of course. You want something to drink?” Without waiting for an answer, she poured some water into a glass beaker and took a gulp. “Don’t look so sick. It’s Evian or Fiji—something overpriced. If someone had predicted that people would pay for water when I was a little girl, I would have figured him plum nuts. Would you like a glass?”

“I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself. Anyway, the fingers. I sent over a dozen down to be printed. After we do that, we’ll take some tissue samples for
slides and DNA testing. But even without the microscopes, I’ll tell you what I think, if you want to hear.”

“That’s why I’m sitting here.”

“To me, most of the fingers look on the old side. A few may be fresher than that. Some look disarticulated postmortem.”

“Okay.” Decker was momentarily muddled. “By postmortem, do you mean corpses in cemeteries or people who were killed and then the fingers were taken off?”

“Can’t say.”

“Why do you think they’re old?”

“Freezer burn.” Elsie took a sip of water. “I’ll get a better idea once I start with the microscopic examination.”

“So why are you leaning in the direction of postmortem?”

“We defrosted the digits very slowly. You know what happens when things defrost, you get a collection of blood and water and cells and lots of other things. I would have expected to see more blood in the fluid if the fingers had been immediately severed from the bodies and flash frozen.”

“Got it. Did you see any presence of embalming solution?”

“Not in the fluid. When I check the tissue samples, I should be able to tell if the cells had been fixed. Couldn’t smell any formaldehyde, which is what the mortuary might have used a while back. There are newer and better solutions these days. Until I check the microscope, I can’t tell you anything more.”

“Okay.” His mind was still flipping through all the possibilities. “I suppose that it’s a little more palatable to deal with fingers taken from corpses than fingers taken while the victim was alive. Maybe I should contact funeral homes for missing bodies.”

“Whatever you think. That’s your domain.”

“Why would someone save a package of fingers from dead bodies?”

“No idea, Lieutenant. I don’t work with living people. The working brain is much too complicated for me.”

“I’m more or less talking to myself.”

“I do that all the time. That way I get intelligent conversation.”

Decker’s mind was still whirling. “Did you get a chance to look at any of the meat packages?”

“Everything I checked under the scope was domestic beef or hog. If you’re going to mix human flesh in with the beef, it’s not going to look the same. And unless the guy is a professional, it wouldn’t be butchered so cleanly. But . . .” She raised a finger. “But I haven’t checked everything. It’s going to take me a while to go through the packages.”

“Understood. Anything else you want to tell me?”

“Not right now.”

“When will the fingerprinting be done?”

“Within the hour. Stick around.”

“Yes, I’ll do that. Do you think someone might have a spare computer?”

“You want to work here or upstairs?”

“I’ll work here if I have to, but upstairs is my preference.”

Elsie smiled with plastic teeth. “Smell is a little strong if you’re not used to it.”

“How do you get used to it?”

“It’s just something that I equate with work—neither good nor bad.” Elsie shrugged. “As soon as I entered medical school, that first semester with my bone box, I knew I was going to be a pathologist. The science just fascinated me. The dead tell both of us their secrets.”

“Yes, they do.”

“Pathologists, like homicide detectives, have to be inquisitive people. We’re both curious and nosy, Lieutenant, and dare I say it, just a little bit ghoulish.”

FINGERPRINTS IN TOW,
Decker returned to the station house by two in the afternoon. Lee Wang, dressed in a crewneck red sweater and black jeans, was conferring with Marge and Oliver. Decker motioned the trio into his office and then shut the door.

“New developments.” He recapped his morning with Dr. Spar
and handed Wang the envelopes. “Put these through AFIS. If we get any hits, call up an expert to see if we can come up with a definitive identification.”

Marge was taking notes. “Can I backtrack?”

“Sure.”

“So the fingers came off postmortem.”

“She thinks that some of them did.”

“From dead bodies in cemeteries or recent murder victims?”

“Could be either. She did say that the fingers didn’t contain a lot of blood in the residual fluid.”

“So if it was a murder victim, the body could have bled out,” Oliver said.

“Yep.” Decker pulled out a stack of papers and passed them out. “While I was waiting for her to look at the tissue and for the fingers to be printed, I made a list of the local cemeteries. The biggest one is right in our own backyard. We’ve got about ten more in the L.A. area. I’ve included phone numbers and the head mortician. Just give them a call and find out if they’ve had problems with stolen bodies in the past. And we are talking about the past.”

Lee Wang said, “I’ll do it.”

Decker said, “We know Penny’s a freak. He may be a homicidal freak and these are trophies.”

“That’s as good an explanation as anything,” Marge said.

Decker said, “Find out anything on the computer about Bruce Havert, Lee?”

“I found about a half dozen Bruce Haverts under forty. I’ve listed them all with phone numbers and I have pictures for four of them.” He passed around his printouts. “I haven’t made any calls so I don’t know if any of these are
the
Bruce Havert.”

Oliver said, “We can take these pictures over to Ki, the chicken lady, and to the landlord for ID.”

“Yeah, Anwar Mahadi,” Marge said. “Wish we would have had these when we checked out the dealerships. Maybe a face would have jogged a memory.”

“Yeah, what happened with that?” Decker asked.

Oliver said, “None of the dealers remember Bruce Havert leasing Priuses. He could have been using a different name, though.”

“What about the color? Powder blue is unusual, no?”

“Not for Priuses.”

Marge said, “Even if Havert was using his own name, we can’t get the dealers to divulge information about their customers without proper papers.”

Oliver said, “We’ll keep at them. Now that we have pictures, it’ll help.”

“If you don’t get anywhere, check powder blue Priuses with DMV on Monday morning,” Decker said. “It’s one of the few leads we have. Plus, George Paxton says that he saw women with massage tables going in and out of Penny’s apartment. Now we have women’s fingers. The arrow is pointing in a direction that isn’t looking good.”

“Still, the murder may be orthogonal to the package of fingers,” Marge said.