The Face of Death (29 page)

I note the use of the past tense regarding her father, but I don’t press her on it.

“I wanted Homicide, but I was assigned to Vice.” She shrugs. “I was a woman, and not bad looking, but I was tough. They needed someone to play hooker. I was disappointed at first, but then I started to enjoy it. I was good at it. I had a knack.”

More of that unconscious smiling. Her face is animated.

“I kept in touch with Sarah. She was getting harder and colder every year. I think I was the only thing keeping her in touch with herself, in a way. I was the only person who’d known her the whole time that really cared.” She turns her sightless eyes to the kitchen window, contemplative. “I think that’s why he came after me when he did. Not because I’d become a detective. Not because I was poking around. Because he knew I cared. He knew he could count on me to pass on his message if I thought it might help Sarah.”

“What message?” Callie asks.

“I’ll get to that. The other thing…I think it was
time
to take me away from her.” She turns her head to me. “You understand?”

“I think so. You’re talking about his overall plan for Sarah.”

“Yes. I was the last one left who knew who Sarah was, inside. The last person she could be sure of. I don’t know why he let it go on as long as he did. Maybe to give her hope.”

“So he could snatch it away,” I say.

She nods. “Yep.”

“Tell us about that day.” Callie’s voice is soothing, a gentle push.

Cathy’s hand grips the coffee cup in a reflexive motion, a brief spasm of emotion.

“It was just like any other day. That’s the thing, I think, that throws me the most. Nothing special had happened on the job, or personally. The date wasn’t significant, and the weather was as usual as it comes. The only difference between that day and another is that
he
decided it was the day.” She sips from her cup. “I’d finished up a late shift. It was past midnight when I got home. Dark. Quiet. I was tired. I let myself in and went straight for the shower. I always did that. It was symbolic for me—do a dirty job, come home and shower it off, you know.”

“Sure,” I reply.

“I got undressed, I took my shower. I put on a bathrobe and grabbed a book I was reading—something trivial and silly but entertaining—and then I poured myself a cup of coffee and took a seat right here.” She pats the arm of the easy chair with one hand. “Different chair, same location. I remember putting my coffee cup down on the table”—she goes through the motion, caught up in the memory—“and the next thing I knew, there was a rope around my neck, pulling me back, so fast, so strong. I tried to think, to do something, to get my hands up between the rope and my neck, but he was too fast. Too strong.”

“We call that a blitz attack,” Callie says, her voice kind. “In the case of a strong attacker, it’s successful most of the time. There probably wasn’t much you could have done.”

“I tell myself that too. I usually believe it.” She sips from her cup. It’s her lip that trembles, this time. “He knew what he was doing. He yanked back and up”—she grabs her own throat, demonstrating—“and I was out within seconds.” She shakes her head. “Seconds. Can you believe that? He could have killed me right then. I would never have woken up. I’d have died. But…” Her voice trails off. “But I did wake up. Over and over. He had the rope twisted around me, John Wayne Gacy–style. He’d tighten it up, cut off the blood to my brain, I’d go out. He’d loosen it and I’d come around. Then he’d tighten it up again. I woke up once and my bathrobe was gone. I was naked. I woke up again, and my hands were cuffed behind my back, my mouth was gagged. It was like drowning over and over again, and waking up in a new part of the nightmare every time. The thing that was worst of all, for some reason, was that he didn’t
speak.
”

I can hear the stress in her voice, the anxiety at this particular part of the memory.

“I remember thinking I just wanted him to say something, to explain, to make it make sense. But nothing.” Her hands are still shaking and restless. She clasps them in her lap, she rubs her arms with them. She is a portrait of unconscious, continuous, nervous motion.

“I don’t know how long it went on.” She manages a somewhat wry, somewhat sickly grin. “Too long.” The sunglasses again, looking at me. “You know.”

“I know,” I agree.

“Then I woke up and he let me stay that way. I was on my bed, hands and ankles cuffed. It took me a little bit of time to really come around. I remember wondering if he’d raped me, that if he had, I wouldn’t know for sure.”

“Did he?” I ask.

“No. No, he didn’t.”

Still no sexual pathology with females, I think to myself.

“Go on,” I say.

“He started talking. He said, ‘I want you to know, Cathy, that there’s nothing personal in this. You have a part to play, that’s all. Something you have to do for Sarah.’” Her lower lip trembles. “That’s when I knew. Who he was. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before that, but it hadn’t. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ he said. ‘I’m going to beat your body and you’ll probably never be a cop again, Cathy Jones. When it’s done, you’ll tell them you have no idea who could have done this to you, or why. If you do otherwise, I’ll destroy Sarah’s face and dig out her eyes with a spoon.’”

Cathy’s voice continues, hushed.

“It didn’t register, what he was saying, but also, in a way, it did. So I did what any self-respecting detective would do. I begged. I begged like a baby. I—I wet myself.”

I hear the shame in her voice and I recognize it.

“He wants you to feel bad about that,” I say. “To be ashamed of your fear, like it means something.”

Her mouth twists. “I know. Most of the time I get that. It’s hard sometimes.”

“Yeah.”

This seems to calm her a little. She continues.

“Then he showed me something. He told me he was putting it in the drawer of my nightstand. ‘A few years from now, someone is going to come knocking, asking questions. When they do you can tell them your story and give them what’s in the drawer. Give it to them and tell them: “Symbols are only symbols.” ’”

I struggle with my impatience. What? What’s in the drawer? And what the hell is that supposed to mean, “Symbols are only symbols”?

“I don’t remember most of it. I get flashes, sometimes, big and bright, almost unreal. Like a painting with too much white in it. I remember the sounds more than the pain. Thudding noises, deep vibrations inside my skull. I guess that was him beating on my head with the pipe. I remember tasting blood, and thinking that something really bad was happening, but I wasn’t sure what. He whipped my feet so bad I couldn’t use them for a month.” Gaze back to the kitchen window. “The last thing I remember seeing, ever, was his face. Too much light on it, too bright, that God damn panty-hose stocking mask. Looking down at me and smiling. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital and wondering why I couldn’t open my eyes.”

She goes quiet. We wait her out.

“I came around after a while. Remembered. Realized I was blind.” She stops, remembering. “You know what it was that convinced me he meant what he said? About going after Sarah? About going after me?”

“What?” Callie asks.

“The way he’d told me ‘it wasn’t personal.’ I remembered him saying it, and how he looked and sounded when he did. Matter of fact. Not angry, not rushed, not crazy-looking or rage-filled, or
anything
. Normal, even smiling, like someone talking about a good book they’d just read.” She reaches for her coffee cup, finds it, takes a sip. “So I did what he said. I kept my mouth shut.”

“For what it’s worth, I think that was a wise call,” I say. “The picture we’re getting of this guy is of someone who doesn’t bluff. If you’d spoken up, he probably would have hurt Sarah, or you, or both.”

“I tell myself that a lot,” she replies, trying to smile. “Anyway.” Another sip from the cup. “He messed me up good. Fractured my skull, including shattering a line of it so bad they had to carve some of the bone away. He broke my arms and my legs with that pipe, and knocked out most of my teeth. These are implant-retained dentures. What else? Oh yeah—to this day I can’t step outside without having a full-blown panic attack.”

She stops speaking, waiting for a response. I remember the aftermath of my own attack, and recall how much I hated the aphorisms people trotted out, stock phrases they used because, really, words hadn’t been invented that were adequate.

“I don’t know what to say,” I tell her.

Her smile, this time, is warm and genuine. It catches me off guard.

“Thanks.”

She understands that I understand.

“Now, Cathy—what did he give you?”

She points toward the back of the condo. “Bedroom is on the right. It’s in the top drawer.”

Callie nods to me and gets up, heading to the bedroom.

A moment later she returns. Her face is troubled. She sits down and opens her hand, revealing what she has clasped inside.

The shiny gold glints in the light. A detective’s shield.

“It’s mine,” Cathy offers. “My shield.”

I stare at it.

Symbols are only symbols.

I’m one hundred percent stumped. I look at Callie, raise an eyebrow in query. She shrugs.

“Do you have any idea why he put special significance on this?” I ask Cathy.

“No. I wish I did, but I don’t. Believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it.”

My frustration rises. Not at Cathy. I’d come here hoping for answers, excited at that possibility. All I had was another puzzle.

“Can you tell me something?” Cathy asks.

“Of course.”

“Are you good?” she asks me. “Will you get him?”

This is the voice of the victim, breathy, a little hungry, filled with doubt and hope. I’m unable to decipher the emotions running across her features. Joy, anger, grief, hope, rage, more. A rainbow of light and dark.

I stare at her, taking in the scars at her hairline, my own face in the lenses of the sunglasses, seeing the ugliness he created, but also seeing some of the beauty that he couldn’t destroy. A terrible feeling comes over me. Pain and rage and an almost unbearable desire to kill something evil.

Callie answers for me.

“We’re the best, honey-love. The very best.”

Cathy stares at us, and I feel “seen,” blind or not.

“Okay,” she whispers. Nods. “Okay.”

“Cathy, do you want protection?” I ask.

She frowns. “Why?”

“I…we’re after this guy. At some point, he’s bound to know it. Maybe he even wants us to be after him. It might reopen his interest in the past.”

“In me, you mean.”

“It’s possible. I know he promised if you did what he said he’d leave you alone, but he’s really not to be trusted.”

She pauses, thinking, for the longest time. The moment seems to hang forever. She ends it with a shake of her head.

“No thanks. I sleep with my gun under my pillow. I have a hell of an alarm system.” Her grin is humorless. “And I kind of hope he does decide to come pay me a visit. I’d be happy to blow his ass away.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

I glance at Callie, and the unspoken goes between us:
We’ll get a car parked in front whether she wants it or not.

She takes another sip of coffee. Lukewarm by now, I’m sure. “Do me one favor?”

“Anything,” I say, meaning it.

“When this is over, let me know.”

I reach over, grip her hand.

“When this is over, I’ll have Sarah let you know.”

A pause, and then she squeezes my hand, once.

“Okay,” she says again.

She pulls her hand away, reaching for strength.

34

I’M GAZING OUT THE PASSENGER-SIDE WINDOW; I’D ASKED
Callie to drive so that I could think. We’d discussed the visit with Cathy, tried to pick apart the mystery of the shield and his stupid word game. We’d gotten nowhere.

I feel exhilarated and disconnected and let down, a cocktail of excitement and unreality. I am exhilarated because we are in motion. We’re on the hunt, and we know things we didn’t know before. I’m let down by the questions that continue to stack up without answers to go along with them.

The unreality hit me on the way to the car. Last night, while reading Sarah’s diary, I met Cathy Jones for the first time. She was a new cop, healthy, dedicated, flawed, more good than bad. Human. Meeting her today at her home, seeing her as she’s become—it’s like knowing the end of a story you haven’t read all the way through yet. Like traveling in a time machine.

My phone rings, startling me from my reverie. I glance at the caller ID, see it’s Alan.

“What’s up?” I answer.

“Something interesting,” he rumbles. “Something maybe good for us.”

I sit up straighter. “What?”

“Well, I’m standing in front of the Langstrom house. And you know what? It’s still the Langstrom house.”

I frown, perplexed. “I don’t get it.”

“I got together with Barry. We were going over the case file—and I have some thoughts on it, by the way—and I just wasn’t feeling it. I decided I needed to see the scene. Even if it is ten years later.”

“Sure.”

“Barry has a lady friend in the Hall of Records and also knows some woman in the phone company.” I can almost hear Alan rolling his eyes. “To make a long story short, we find out that the house is currently owned by—get this—The Sarah Langstrom Trust.”

“What?” The surprise in my voice is sharp. Callie shoots me a look.

“That’s what I said. I figured, okay, maybe the parents were a lot better off than we thought. Maybe there’s a future happy ending here, Sarah’s going to come into a lot of money. Turns out that one is true, but the other isn’t. The Langstroms did okay, definitely in the higher percentile of upper-middle-class. But they weren’t
rich
rich, you know?”

“So?” I ask, waiting for the explanation-as-punch-line.

“So, it turns out that the trust was set up by an anonymous donor
after
the Langstroms were murdered. Someone who was supposedly a big fan of the late Mrs. Langstrom’s work.”

“Wow,” I say, meaning it.

“Yeah. The trust doesn’t have any physical location, just a lawyer named Gibbs who administers it. He won’t give up the name of the donor right now, but he’s not being an asshole. Just abiding by the rules of the bar.”

“We’ll have to get a subpoena,” I say, still excited. “An art fan? That hits pretty close to home.”

“That’s what I thought. Anyway, Gibbs kept on proving he’s not an asshole. He said that as long as we got something in writing from Sarah saying it was okay, and he could verify it with her on the phone, he’d let us into the house. We drove over to the hospital and saw her.”

“How is she doing? How did she react to the news?”

An uncomfortable silence that communicates an uncomfortable shrug. “She was pretty shook up about it. She wants to see the house. I had to promise her we’d take her soon to get her to stay in bed.”

I sigh. “Of course we’ll take her.”

“Good. So, we got her okay, got her on the phone with Gibbs, and then the lawyer brought us over here. Guess what?” He pauses for emphasis. “The place hasn’t been entered since the Crime Scene Unit released it ten years ago.”

“Are you kidding me?” I can’t keep the disbelief out of my voice. Callie gives me another look.

“Nope. The only stuff missing are some things from what was Sarah’s room. Maybe the perp came back and took some souvenirs.”

“Give me the address,” I say without hesitating.

I get it and hang up, excited.

“Tell me,” Callie says, “or I’ll sing the national anthem, here and now, with gusto.”

This is a threat. Many things about Callie are beautiful. Her singing voice isn’t one of them.

Malibu, I’ve always thought, is a mix of the rich and the lucky. The rich are the ones who can afford to buy homes in this desirable, not-far-from-the-ocean community today. The lucky are the ones who bought before prices put most homes out of reach of the average bear.

“Beautiful,” Callie observes as we roll down the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Sure is,” I reply.

It’s just after lunch, and the sun has decided to make an appearance. The ocean is to our left, broad, blue, the world’s immovable object and unstoppable force all rolled into one. You can love the ocean, and many do, but don’t expect it to love you back. It’s too forever.

On the right the hills are crisscrossed by the snaky, windy streets that lead to various Malibu homes and neighborhoods. Lots of green as a result of the rains, I note. Not good news for the upcoming fire season.

We find our turnoff and after ten minutes and a few false starts, pull up to the given address. Alan and Barry have remained outside, Alan standing and listening as Barry leans up against Alan’s car and smokes and talks. They see us and approach as we climb out.

“Nice,” I remark, looking at the house.

“It’s a four-bedroom,” Barry says, consulting a notepad, his own Ned. “Three-thousand-plus square feet, three full baths. Bought twenty years ago for about three hundred thou, worth about a mil and a half now, and fully paid off by the mystery benefactor.”

The home is a slice of America sans California. A large, white-fenced front yard, the requisite tree made for climbing, a hand-laid flagstone path to the front door, and a general sense of comfortableness to it. The home itself is painted in off-whites and beige, and appears kept up.

“I guess there’s a management service?” I ask Alan.

He nods. “Yeah. Gardeners come out once a week, brush clearing done before fire season, new coat of paint every two years or so.”

“Two?” Barry says. “I do mine every five.”

“Salt air,” Alan explains.

“Where’s the lawyer?” I ask.

“He got a call from a client and had to go.”

“Do we have the key?” I ask.

“We do.” Alan smiles, opening a huge hand to reveal a ring with two keys on it.

“Then let’s go inside.”

When I enter the home, that sense of disconnectedness rushes over me again. I’m back in the time machine.

The problem, I think, is that Sarah’s story was too vivid. She gathered up everything she could still feel and used it to bring her story to life, to take us down to the watering hole.

I half expect Buster and Doreen to come running, and I feel a twinge of sadness when they don’t.

The home is unlit. The sunlight creeping through plantation shutters provides a dusky illumination. I move to just inside the doorway, and my shoes touch a floor of rich cherry hardwood, layered with a patina of dust. The wood continues forward into the kitchen on the right. I make out granite countertops, well-matched cabinets, and dusty stainless steel. The left is dominated by a large open room—not a living room per se, but a place to entertain. Ten people could mill around in it comfortably, twenty if they don’t mind brushing up against each other. The hardwood continues there.

Past this room is more open space, edged on the right by the kitchen, leading to the living room proper, which is where the carpet begins. It’s bold, a dark brown. I move forward for a better look and smile a sad smile. The brown is matched by the rest of the living room, from paint to furniture. Decorated by a dead artist with an instinctive understanding of color.

A hallway heads off to the left from the living room, leading to the rest of the house. On the right, past a large and very comfortable-looking couch, are a series of sliding glass doors, thick-glassed, leading into what looks like a large backyard.

The house is silent, almost oppressive.

“Feels like a tomb,” Barry mutters, an echo of my own thoughts.

“It is,” I say. I turn to Alan. “Let’s go through this step-by-step.”

He flips open the case file—which I note is pretty thin—and consults it.

“No sign of forced entry,” he begins. “Perp probably got a copy of the keys. Responding officers Santos and Jones entered through the sliding glass doors from the backyard. The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Langstrom were found just inside.” He nods his head toward the spot.

We walk over and look.

“You weren’t kidding about nobody being here since CSU,” I mutter.

A square of the brown carpeting is missing, cut away by the Crime Scene Unit for the blood evidence it contained. They only took what they thought they’d need; dark splotches are still visible elsewhere, including spots on the wall and couch. Gunshots to the head are messy.

“Mr. Langstrom was handcuffed nude—they both were. Position of his body was facedown. Mrs. Langstrom ended up on her back, with her head resting right about where that missing piece of carpet is.”

I gaze down, envisioning the tableau.

“The ME notes on-site that Mr. Langstrom’s eyes show petechial hemorrhaging, and that bruising around the neck is consistent with strangulation. Autopsy confirmed.”

“Did Mrs. Langstrom get an autopsy?” I ask.

As a suicide, she might not have.

“Yeah.”

“Go on.”

“Lividity confirmed that they hadn’t been moved postmortem. They died as and where they were found. Liver temps put time of death at roughly five
A.M.
”

“That’s the first thing that reads weird to me,” Barry says.

I look at him. “What’s that?”

“TOD is five in the morning. The cops were called hours later. What kind of gun did she use?”

Alan doesn’t have to consult the file. He’s already considered the question Barry is posing. “Nine mil.”

“Loud,” Barry opines. “Noisy. She shot the dog and she shot herself. Why didn’t anyone hear anything?”

“Cathy Jones asked the same question,” Callie replies.

“Sloppy,” Alan says in disgust, shaking his head.

He’s talking about the inductive police-work. Alan spent ten years in Los Angeles Homicide before coming to the FBI, and he was known for his attention to detail and his refusal to take shortcuts. He would have thought about the sound of the gunshot if he’d been the one investigating ten years ago.

“Go on,” I tell him.

“Sarah was found outside, in a near catatonic state. No mention of a burn on her hand anywhere in the file.” The look he gives me is significant. “So when we went to see her in the hospital, I checked. She’s got a small scar there.” He frowns, more disgust. “Sloppy again. They didn’t check shit, just ate what they were spoon-fed.”

I point out what’s important. “Bad then,” I say, “but good for us now. They weren’t looking, which means that there could still be something here that will lead us to him.”

“What about the gun?” Callie asks, thoughtful.

Alan gives her a quizzical look. “What about it?”

“Did they look into it? Did the Langstroms even own a gun?”

Alan flips through the file, nodding as he finds something. “It was unregistered. Serial number filed off. Says here they figured she’d bought it on the street.” His voice becomes sarcastic. “Yeah, because Linda Langstrom would know exactly where to go to buy a hot gun. Why would she even bother? If she planned to kill herself, she wouldn’t have been worried about it being traced.”

I look at Barry. “Would the gun still be in evidence?”

“I’m guessing yes. Evidence destruction is a hassle. It takes about an hour to fill out the paperwork, and from what I’ve seen so far, the guys on this case didn’t seem inclined to go the extra mile.”

“Then let’s get it, Alan. Have Ballistics check out the gun.”

“Might have a history,” he says, nodding.

“What next?” I ask.

“Bullet was a hollow point, so there was maximum destruction on exit.” He flips a page. “Linda Langstrom’s fingerprints were found on her husband’s neck. Consistent with her being the doer. There was the note, and the antidepressants.”

“What about that?” I query, interested.