Glass Houses (9 page)

twenty

The Santa Monica Detective
in Charge paced the parking lot. File tucked under her arm. Thom had barely unfolded himself from the Crown Vic's seat when she said, “My murder came first. I should take the lead, but the bully on the block called in”—she winked her fingers—“the resources card. I'm not happy.”

“Clearly,” said Thom, offering his hand. “Thom Keane. LAPD. Our resources are at your disposal.”

“Your idea of sarcasm?” she sneered.

“My idea of service.” He jiggled his outstretched hand.

They shook. The DIC held out a business card that read Anita Dhillon.

“Nice to meet you, Anita Dillon.”

“Pronounced Ah-nee-TA HILL-on. Silent D.”

Thom appreciated a lipstick swagger, but he disliked her psyching the position. It was unnecessary and unprofessional. The challenge reminded him why he hated working with other police departments. He let it go for now. He wasn't about to engage in a
power skirmish with another homicide detective—especially on her home turf—nor would he reciprocate in an overt manner.

Beyond the alpha attitude, Anita was an attractive woman. Her dark hair had sweepy bangs that teased her brows. She wore a camel suit jacket that wrapped around her waist and closed with a leather buckle. So well-tailored no bulge revealed where she stowed her firearm. He should introduce her to George. Maybe they could shop together. Share designer resources.

Anita gave Thom the file containing a copy of all the investigative paper on the Jerry Deats homicide. Including photos. He slipped the file into his briefcase.

“Aren't you going to look at it?” she said.

“Later.” He twirled the car key around his finger. “I'll follow you to the scene.”

_____

Jerry Deats lived and died in the B residence of a long skinny house crammed next to other long skinny houses in a densely populated impact zone a few blocks from the beach. His place was a studio apartment over a two-car garage with a Juliet balcony across the seaward side.

Thom approached the crime scene with his usual practicality. Curiosity at maximum. He surveyed the surrounding area slower than usual just to piss off Ah-nee-TA. He walked around the A residence. The ground floor windows were shuttered, but there were enough gaps in the slats to see that it was empty. He strolled up and down the alley checking for security cameras and motion lights. He met Anita's hateful glare when he finally stopped at the fence gate that opened to the side yard.

“No one had video of the alley,” said Anita. “You'd know that if you'd read the file.”

Thom wasn't about to tell her that he'd read the file after he saw the scene for himself. He didn't want a report to influence his investigative antennae. “These aren't Joe Schmo houses. You'd think someone would have a security camera considering that the garages face the alley. You know, thieves consider a garage the gateway into a home. Seventy percent of all burglaries are crimes of opportunity. You have robbery stats for the area?”

Anita answered with a false smile. All lips. No niceness. She opened the gate, sea-faded to ash gray, and Thom headed straight to the line of trash bins and opened the ones marked B.

“Those were empty,” said Anita, pointing to the ones marked A. “We rummaged through the Bs. Most of his garbage is still up there.” She pointed up at the apartment. “Junk mail, beer cans, empty cereal boxes. He favored Honey Nut Cheerios. Lots of milk jugs and fast food containers. The refrigerator is especially disgusting.” She jerked her head up the stairs. Thom followed and observed a porch just large enough for a café table and one chair on top of a rag mat. The
porch narrowed to form the deck. A rail of rusty wrought iron jig
gled.

“There was an ashtray here on the table,” said Anita. “Full of cigarette butts. All the same brand except for one oddball. We got a DNA profile, but no hits.”

Thom wouldn't hold his breath. Their killer was smart. He wouldn't leave his identity behind. Then again, cigarette butts were an easy plant. An oddball would especially draw attention and
would narrow the suspect field by establishing who might want to set up the DNA's owner.

Thom walked the length of the deck, gazing seaward. “Wonder how much extra rent he paid for that swipe of blue.”

Anita determinedly ignored him.

“Who found the body?” said Thom.

“If you'd read the file, you'd know that the woman across
the alley did. She saw the body through the window. You'd also know—”

Thom's palm shot up. “In due time.” He removed his business cell and clicked a photo of the rectangular shaped rim of residue on the front door.

“What do you make of this?”

Anita touched the edge. “Sticky.”

“Letter size. Like something taped here. There was a similar residue pattern on the Lawrence's front door. Same size, too.”

“You going to tell me about your homicide?”

“As soon as we're done here.”

Anita cut the seal and unlocked the door. She stood aside as she pushed it open. Over-scented air of garbage and decomp whooshed from the apartment. A swarm of flies followed. Thom coughed and turned his head as if he could actually evade the horribleness. His eyes watered. Death smells were always difficult—sometimes sticking in nose hairs for days.

Anita grinned at his discomfort and said, “This is a rental. It had been a bed-bath combo of the main house. Walled off and converted to a private apartment. Small, but well organized.”

Whereas the Lawrence interior was spotless, this was its polar opposite. Anita wasn't kidding. Garbage everywhere. Another three months of accumulation and the place would spontaneously combust. Fingerprint powder and chemical residue left behind by the crime scene techs blended with the filth so well he had difficulty ascertaining which was which.

In the far left corner an elevated platform served as sleeping quarters on top and office below—the like of which could be found in a dorm room. A tiny kitchenette containing a half-sized refrigerator, an oven with two-burner stove, and a sink were roughed in on top of a linoleum strip against the alley wall. Electrical conduit drooped from the attic above.

“An outlaw apartment,” said Thom. “Converted illegally. Not up to code. Unsafe. These types of units are created as an income source. How does the A owner fit into this drama? They aren't living downstairs, that's for sure.”

“We're tracking that down,” said Anita. “According to the guy next door, the main house is also a rental. He didn't know if the renters or the property owner added the apartment. It was already there when he moved in two years ago. We ran a title check. The address is owned by a holding company.”

Thom stepped up the ladder rungs to inspect the mattress. The cotton cover still damp with decomposing bodily fluids. Thom imagined the soggy insides being devoured by writhing maggots. “Deats died here?”

Anita nodded. “Straight shot to the forehead.”

Thom held up an arm in measurement. “There's about three feet of sleeping clearance. Our killer entered the apartment, waded through trash, went up this ladder, and practically laid down to get a straight-on shot. Do you find that as unreasonable as I do?”

“Maybe the killer was someone Deats knew. Someone he was sleeping with.”

“There's not a lot of room for hanky-panky up here.”

“It is still a valid possibility.”

“There's no blood here.”

“His head was on a pillow. It captured the blood.”

“Something stinks,” said Thom. “And I don't mean the mattress.” He hopped down and entered the bathroom.

The words
Dead fish
scrawled on the bathroom mirror were the same as the Lawrence scene. Capital D. Lower case letters. The creep factor amped by the blood's oxidized blackness.

“Foam brush in the sink?”

“Affirmative,” said Anita.

“What do you think the words mean?”

“We ran it through a slang dictionary and got a variety of the same theme. Someone who does nothing in bed. Turning a palm away when high-fiving. Bad kissing technique. A bad handshake. Like that. What did you come up with?”

“Off the top of my head I thought it might mean pushover, or easy prey, or someone defeated or dominated.”

Anita nodded. “Taking into consideration the manner of death that makes more sense.”

“I see it as a two-fold message,” said Thom. “One, it makes a statement about either the killer or the victims or maybe both. Two, it draws the attention of law enforcement. I bet you a hundred bucks there are more victims with dead fish written in blood on their bathroom mirrors. And if the killer is smart, like I think he is, then the next one will be in the jurisdiction of a different PD or the Sheriff's department. He'll figure that it'll be harder to connect the dots. Except he made one vital mistake.”

“What's that?”

“Those words are how we're gonna catch him. He can't hide behind jurisdictional red tape for long. You might not have wanted to work with anybody else, but you did release a law enforcement bulletin. You
do
want help because you're all about solving murder.”

As Anita chewed on Thom's words he could almost see the smug alpha softening.

Thom removed latex gloves from his jacket pocket and snapped them on. He waded through the hoarded consumer waste in the mini office under the bed platform. “You take custody of his computer?”

“He didn't have one,” said Anita.

“Everyone who has a home has one. Desktop. Laptop. Tablet. Trust me, he had something. We just have to find it.”

“We tore this place apart.”

Thom kneeled to look under the desk. He knocked down a stack of magazines and a wave of silverfish scurried in every direction. Thom jerked back in surprise and hit the underside. Something sharp nicked his head. “Damnit,” he yelled.

“You okay in there?” said Anita, not sounding at all concerned.

“I got stuck.” He turned his head. “A dangling staple. There are a row of them. Something was attached under here.” Thom threw the magazines aside and found a black cord plugged into an outlet, stapled to the wall. Thom pulled and it came free. Snap, snap, snap. The cord's adapter was duct taped to the wall. He peeled back the tape and pulled again. Resistance. Thom jiggled the desk until the
pinched cord came free. It had been cut. He crawled out of the paper and held up his find.

“The killer took his computer. What business was this guy in?”

“Deep background hasn't been concluded. One of the neighbors stated that he was unemployed. Always here. Day and night. Sitting. Smoking.”

“Welfare or unemployment wouldn't provide enough to cover rent in this neighborhood. He had something.”

Anita shrugged. “We haven't found it yet.”

“What about family?”

“He has an estranged sister in Oregon. She thought he had died years ago and wasn't interested enough in her brother to take the time off her job to claim his body.”

“What about business papers?”

“We didn't find any. No bills even.”

Thom stood in the middle of the room and slowly turned. Eyes tracking. Something was here. A clue. A lead. There always was. Often, it's not what's present, but what's missing. Like the file on the Lawrence foster kid, Jelena Shkatova. A red flag. But how to determine what's what in a residence where the detective is a trespasser of sorts.

There was only one way to find out. Get dirty with it. Become one with the environment. Thom hung his jacket on a bathroom hook. Rolled up his shirt sleeves and went to work.

After nearly two hours of searching the closet and the living space he'd not found anything of interest. Anita hadn't helped either. She was outside making calls. She might as well have been filing her fingernails. Thom had found the cut cord within five minutes of entering. She knew her team hadn't been thorough enough. At least she could pretend to help.

The smell was suffocating. Hot. Claustrophobic. Thom wanted to be done. But he would not give up without something more. He opened the freezer. The ammonia from the refrigerator compartment leeched through the seal.
Damnit
. He really didn't want to go in there.

Thom recalled that California's natural disaster guru always did the media rounds after an earthquake or major fire. He talked about protecting possessions. What to do in an emergency. What to have in the survival kit. The freezer was a good place to store valuables he'd said. Thom pulled everything out. Opened the cardboard boxes. His search yielded nothing other than iced-through TV dinners and popsicles.

Thom held his breath and finally opened the refrigerator. Fuzzy round things oozed bacteria. On the top shelf sat a secondary reason for the stink. A warehouse-sized jar of mayonnaise. Big blue letters across the front: MAYO. Lid open. Long-handled scoop inside. Thom righted a stainless pot and began spooning the slimy-white contents into it.

Anita finally came back in. “What the hell?” she yelled.

Thom said nothing. He felt sickened. Continued to work the spoon around and around until he was certain nothing other than fat calories were in the jar. He'd vowed to never eat the stuff again. He finally gave in to the conclusion that he'd find nothing. That he was wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. But he didn't want to be wrong in front of Ah-nee-TA HILL-on.

His eyes swept the ceiling and landed on the mattress. The one Jerry Deats slept on. The one Jerry Deats died on.
No
.
Please, not in that thing
.

“Screw it,” whispered Thom. Too late to save face. Might as well go for it.

Thom reached up with both hands and gripped the edge of the mattress. He lifted it over the ledge and slowly backed away, dragging. Heavy for such a thin thing. He pressed his lips in a tight, grossed-out grimace as the mattress came free and fell with a sluggish thump on the floor. He flipped it over, found no access cuts.