Victims (5 page)

“Pop it.”

Flores pried open the top.

Empty but on the bottom surface of the box a piece of plain white
paper had been Scotch-taped, margins precise, just like the towels beneath the body. In the center of the paper someone had computer-printed in a large bold-faced font:

?

Milo flushed a deeper red than I’d ever seen. A pulse in his neck raced. For a moment I was worried about his health.

Then he grinned and some of the color faded. Like a joke had just been played on him and he was determined to be a good sport.

He said, “What’s this, a fucking challenge? Fine. Game on, you bastard.” To the techs: “Print every damn surface of this. Look for spots where someone would be likely to screw up and leave a partial. You don’t find anything, do it again. You tell me there’s nothing, I want it to really
be
nothing.”

Flores said, “Yes, sir.”

Sakura said, “You bet.”

Milo walked me to my car, keeping slightly ahead and making me feel I was being ushered away. He leaned in when I started up the engine.

“Thanks for showing up. I’m gonna be tied up with basics: her bank, her phone records, finding next of kin. I’m also gonna try for a face-to-face with the two doctor neighbors, I get lucky they’ll turn out to be Jack the Ripper and his nefarious little Jill. Meanwhile, if you could try that shrink—Shacker.”

“I’ll call him when I get home.”

“Thanks. What you said before, the part about Vita wanting to feel in control, I agree with. Righteous, I’m not so sure. What kind of morally upright person unloads on a little sick kid?”

I said, “Righteous is a broad category. She could’ve seen herself as the guardian of all that’s proper. Restaurants are for eating, hospitals are for sick people, disease is unappetizing, stay away. It’s a common feeling. Most people are a lot more subtle but you’d be surprised how
often sick people get stigmatized. Back when I worked in oncology, families talked about it all the time.”

He shook his head. “However she
felt
about herself, she was a major-league jerk and that means the suspect list just expanded to the entire goddamn universe.”

I shifted into Drive.

He said, “Are there diseases other than cancer that can cause baldness?”

“A few,” I said, “but cancer would be my guess.”

“And if the kid had cancer there’s a good chance she’d be treated at your old turf.”

Western Pediatric Medical, where I’d trained and worked and learned which questions to ask, which to ignore.

I said, “It’s the best place in town.”

“Hmm.”

I said, “Sorry, no.”

“No, what?”

“You’re my pal but I’m not going snooping in the oncology files.”

He poked his chest. “I would ask for such a thing? Now I know what you
really
think of me.”

“I think you’re being your usual ace-detective self.”

His nostrils flared. “Oh, man, we go too far back to spread the bullshit. Yeah, I’d love for you to dig around. You can’t do it, even discreetly?”

“There’s no way to do it discreetly. And even if there was, I wouldn’t want to be the one pointing a finger at a family that’s had more than enough to cope with.”

He exhaled. “Yeah, yeah, I’m thinking like a hunter, not a human being.”

“You’re unlikely to be losing a lead, Big Guy. Like Veronese said, no way for them to know who Vita was and where she lived.”

“Unless,” he said, “they live in the neighborhood and happened to spot her and were still pissed and decided to act.”

“They go back and carve her up?” I said. “That’s one helluva grudge.”

“True but dealing with a high level of stress could kick up the frustration level, right? What if the poor little thing passed away shortly after the confrontation? That would jam one helluva memory into Mommy and Daddy’s heads. Daddy stewed on it, started eating himself up. Eating his guts out. So to speak. He spots Vita, maybe she even snots off again. He decides to—whatever you guys call it—displace his anger.”

“That’s what we call it.” And I’d seen plenty of it. Families railing against hospital food, a misspoken phrase, anything but the core issue because you can only deal with so much. More than once I’d been called to ease a weapon away from a grieving father. But nothing at the level of the savagery visited upon Vita Berlin and I said so.

Milo said, “So if I wanna go there, I’m on my own.”

“Where I’m going is phoning Dr. Shacker. If he has an opening, I’ll prioritize a meeting.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“Oh, there are plenty of problems,” he said. “But they’re all mine.”

CHAPTER
6

I
drove home thinking about the horror, tried to switch off The Unthinkable Channel.

The body floated back into my head.

Switching on the radio, I amped the volume to ear-bruise. Knowing that each thunder-chunk of noise was ripping loose tiny hairs in my auditory canal but figuring a little hearing loss was worth it. But station-surfing fed me a bland stew of passionless jingly crap and nerve-scraping chatter that failed to do the trick, so I pulled over, popped the trunk, took out a battered black vinyl case I hadn’t touched in a long time.

Audiocassettes.

To anyone under thirty, as relevant as wax cylinders. The Seville has a different opinion. She’s a ’79 who rumbled out of Detroit a few months before Detroit turned her successors into Bloatmobiles. Fifteen thousand miles on the third engine with an enhanced suspension. Regular oil and filter changes keep her appeased. I retrofitted a CD player years ago, a hands-off phone system recently. But I’ve resisted
an MP3 and kept the original tape deck in place because back when I was a grad student tapes were a major luxury and I’ve got lots of them, purchased secondhand back when that mattered.

As I got back in the car, the growling in my head grew thunderous. I’ve seen a lot of bad things and I don’t get that way often but I’m pretty sure where the noise comes from: hiding from my father when he drank too much and decided someone needed to be punished. Blocking the
bump-bump
of my racing heart with imaginary white noise.

But now I couldn’t turn it off and just as amphetamines quiet a hyperactive mind, my consciousness craved something loud and dark and aggressively competitive.

Thrash metal might’ve been nice but I’d never bought any. I flipped through tapes, found something promising: ZZ Top.
Eliminator
.

I slipped the tape into the deck, started up the car, resumed the drive home. Covered a block and cranked the music louder.

Minimalistic guitar, truck-engine drum, and ominous synthesizer backup worked pretty well. Then I turned off Sunset and got close to home and the peace and beauty of Beverly Glen, the sinuous silence of the old bridal path leading up to my pretty white house, the prospect of kissing my beautiful girlfriend, patting my adorable dog, feeding the pretty fish in my pond, sparked a sly little voice:

Nice life, huh?

Then: malevolent laughter.

The house was empty and sun-suffused. Wood floors tom-tommed as I trudged to my office and left a collegial message for Dr. Bernhard Shacker. His soft, reassuring, recorded voice promised he’d get back to me as soon as possible. The kind of voice you believed. I made coffee, drank two cups without tasting, went out back and tossed pellets to the koi and tried to appreciate their slurpy gratitude and continued on to the tree-shrouded studio out back.

A saw-buzz sounded through an open window. Beautiful Girlfriend was goggled and masked and brightened by skylights set into the high sloping ceiling as she eased a piece of rosewood through a band saw. Long auburn curls were bunched under a red bandanna. Her hands were coated with purplish dust.

Adorable Dog crouched a few feet away, nibbling on one of the barbecue-sauce-crusted bones Girlfriend prepares for her with customary meticulousness.

Girlfriend smiled, kept her hands working. Dog waddled over and kissed my hand.

The saw rasped as it ate hardwood. Loud, nasty. Good.

I sat with Blanche on my lap until Robin finished working, rubbing a knobby little French bulldog head. Robin switched off the saw, placed the guitar-shaped slab on her worktable, pushed up the goggles, and lowered the mask. She had on red overalls, a black T-shirt, black-and-white Keds.

I placed Blanche on the floor and she followed me to the bench. Robin and I hugged and kissed and she mussed my hair the way I like.

“How’d it go, baby?”

I touched the rosewood. “Nice grain.”

“One of those days?” she said.

How much I talk about cases has always been an issue for us. I’ve progressed from shutting her out completely to parceling the information I think she can handle. Sometimes it works in Milo’s favor because Robin is smart and able to bring in an outsider’s perspective.

As if I’m an insider. I’m not sure what I am.

I said, “Definitely one of those.”

She touched my face. “You’re a little pale. Have you eaten?”

“Bagel before.”

“Want something now?”

“Maybe later.”

“If you change your mind,” she said.

“About food?”

“About anything.”

“Sure.” I kissed her forehead.

She eyed the rosewood. “I guess I should get back to this.”

I said, “Dinner will probably work. Maybe a little on the late side.”

“Sounds good.”

“If you get hungry sooner, I’m flexible.”

“You bet,” she said.

As I turned to leave, she touched my face. Her almond eyes were soft with compassion. “The bad days, long-term planning doesn’t work so well.”

I returned to my office. No call-back from Dr. Shacker. I did some paperwork, paid some bills, got on the computer.

A search of
disemboweling
and
murder
pulled up a disquieting mountain of hits: just under a hundred thousand. Nearly all were irrelevant, resulting from the use of both words in complex sentences, song lyrics by deservedly obscure bands, political hyperbole by blogo-simps who’ve never lived with anything worse than a paper cut.
(“The current administration is disemboweling civil liberties and committing premeditated murder on personal liberties with the bloody abandon of a serial killer.”)

The literal murders I found were mostly single-victim crimes: stalking outrages fueled by sexual fantasy or long-simmering resentment before building to a starburst of violence that led to mutilation and sometimes cannibalism. The crimes were generally carried out carelessly and solves were quick. In several cases, floridly psychotic suspects turned themselves in. In one instance, an offender dropped a human liver on the desk of a police receptionist and begged to be arrested because he’d done a “bad thing.”

The few open cases were of the historical variety, most notably Jack the Ripper.

The scourge of Whitechapel had engaged in abdominal mutilation and organ theft, but differences outweighed any similarities to the meticulously organized degradation visited upon Vita Berlin.

Vita’s abrasive personality said this could very well be a one-off.

I hoped to God it had nothing to do with the child she’d humiliated.

I surfed a bit more, trying
abdominal mutilation, visceral display, intestinal wounds
, had gotten nowhere when my service called.

“Dr. Delaware, it’s Louise. A Dr. Shacker just called, returning yours.”

“Thanks.”

“He’s one of you, right? A psychologist.”

“Good guess, Louise.”

“Actually, it’s more than a guess, Dr. Delaware, it’s intuition. I’ve been doing this a long time.”

“We all sound alike?”

“Actually you kind of do,” she said. “No offense, I mean that in a good way. You guys tend to be calm and patient. Surgeons don’t sound like that. Anyway, he seemed like a nice guy. Have a good day, Dr. Delaware.”

A pleasant, boyish voice said, “Bern Shacker.”

“Alex Delaware, thanks for calling back.”

“No problem,” he said. “You said this was about Vita. Does that mean you’re the lucky guy treating her now?”

“I’m afraid no one’s treating her.”

“Oh?”

“She’s been murdered.”

“My God. What happened?”

I gave him the basics.

He said, “That’s dreadful, absolutely dreadful. Murdered … and you’re calling me because …”

Because Vita had labeled him a quack. I said, “She had your card in her apartment.”

“Did she … her apartment? I’m a little—you said you were a psychologist. Why would you be in her apartment? And why, for that matter, are you following up on a murder?”

“I consult to the police and the detective in charge asked me to call you. One shrink to another.”

“Shrink,” he said. “Unfortunate term … well, I don’t really—I didn’t exactly engage in long-term therapy with Vita—this is a bit complicated. I need to make a call or two before we go any further.”

“Death and confidentiality,” I said. “The rules change every year.”

“True, but it’s not only that,” said Shacker. “Vita wasn’t a typical therapy patient. I’m not trying to be mysterious but I can’t say more until I get clearance. If I do, we can chat.”

“Appreciate it, Dr. Shacker.”

“Murder,” he said. “Unbelievable. Where are you located?”

“The Westside.”

“I’m in Beverly Hills. If we do talk, would you mind it being face-to-face? So I can document the conversation?”

“That would be fine.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Forty-three minutes later, he was true to his word. “Alex? This is Bern. The insurance attorneys have cleared me and so did my personal attorney. I’ve got an opening at six. Does that work for you?”

“Perfectly.”

“Perfectly,” he echoed. “You sound like a positive person.”

As if he’d just uncovered a character flaw.

“I try.”

“Try,” said Shacker, “is all we can do.”

CHAPTER
7

S
hacker’s building was three stories of lime and brick in the midst of Beverly Hills’ business district. Glossy navy carpeting smothered footsteps. Walls were paneled in bleached oak. A pharmacy calling itself a Dispensing Apothecarie and designed to look Victorian took up a quarter of the ground floor. The rest of the tenants were M.D.’s, D.D.S.’s, a few other psychologists.