Harloff considered. “But none of the SunBlesst guards said the lock and key were bad?”
“Nope,” said Lobdell. “Not that they would.”
Harloff wrote, frowned. Wrote some more. “Go on.”
“She was approximately eight weeks pregnant,” said Nick. “The zygote was apparently healthy at the time of her death.”
“Wish it could talk,” said Lobdell.
“I do, too,” said Nick. “No drugs in her system. We believe she was an LSD user but there’s no test for that. Blood alcohol was point-zero-eight, so she was drinking moderately. Except for the decapitation, she wasn’t mutilated or tortured.”
“Pretty big exception,” said Lobdell.
“She defended herself. We got flesh and blood scrapings from under a thumbnail and three fingernails on her right hand. Type O. I had three fingers and a thumb amputated and frozen along with the scrapings.”
Nick saw the rise of Harloff’s eyebrow but the assistant sheriff said nothing.
“She’d eaten Mexican food approximately four hours before she died,” said Nick. “Gershon found it in her large intestine. I corroborated this with some take-out containers and a receipt in a wastebasket in her kitchen. Apparently she ate at home that night, with two men-‘Red’ and ‘Ho.’ Obviously they’re key, but I haven’t come up with them. Yet.”
“She have a date book?” asked Harloff.
“Yes, sir. It had the Red and Ho date, and lots more. And I found plenty of phone numbers and notes and scribbles in her house. Several pages torn from pay phone books, with names and numbers circled. Matchbooks. Business cards. She knew a lot of people. She had a wide range of friends and acquaintances.”
“Boyfriends?”
“At least one,” said Nick. “A singer. Says he was up in Los Angeles that night. The names and numbers he gave me checked out. I’ll talk to him again.”
Harloff nodded. “I guess a fallen beauty queen might have as many boyfriends as she wanted.”
“We found some of her clothes thrown off toward one corner of the packinghouse,” Nick said. “A black miniskirt and boots. No blood on them. No physiological fluids at all. So, he-or they-must have taken off those clothes before they used the saw.”
“What about that saw?” asked Harloff.
“A folding pruning saw with a ten-inch blade-‘Trim-Quick.’ It’s made by Garden Forge. Wooden handle, sells for around four dollars. It appears to be either new or very lightly used. The blade was ripped off where the bolt goes into the wood and we haven’t come up with it. Yet. Maybe he took it with him. No prints on the handle but lots of blood. All samples we took off it were type B-Janelle’s type. We’re checking Tustin area nurseries and hardware stores that might carry them.”
“How long would it take?”
“What, sir?”
“To saw off her head.”
“Gershon said that depended on how hard he worked at it. Strong man, going fast, two or three minutes.”
Harloff made a note of this, too. “Seems slow to me. Neemal see a car that night?”
“A large light-colored four-door,” said Nick. “He didn’t see it real well. He said maybe a Cadillac or a Lincoln or one of the big Chryslers. Late model.”
“His arm really have that much hair on it? The paper made him look like an ape.”
“There’s a patch of it that thick, sir. A dermatologist in Santa Ana told me it’s a type of birthmark. Rare. You see them on dark-skinned people. Neemal’s mom was Haitian.”
“Find any of those hairs on Janelle?”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t the papers love that?” Lobdell asked. “Your brother could write Wolfman stories for weeks. Then a book and a movie.”
“My brother’s story was good,” said Nick. “He played down the Wolfman stuff.”
Lobdell shrugged. “I had a birthmark like that, I might go crazy, too.”
“Neemal tried to kill his brother when he was just a child?” asked Harloff.
“Yes, sir. Set him on fire. The record is sealed but Neemal’s old juvenile investigator works Burg-Theft here.”
“But the brother lived?”
“Third-degree burns over forty percent of his body. He died of cancer at twenty-five.”
Harloff wrote again. “We’ve charged Neemal with the small stuff, so we can keep him?”
“Yes, sir,” said Nick. “Vagrancy and trespassing. We could bump it to destruction of property and indecent exposure because he was crapping in the orange grove. Judge Miller came in high, as we asked. And Neemal has no money for a bond, anyway. So he’s not going anywhere.”
“Should we work up a case for murder?”
“I don’t think so,” said Nick. “But I’ll want to interview him some more. He’s valuable as a witness. And if we cut him loose we might never see him again.”
Lobdell lit another smoke. “Speaking of cuts, you left out the Wolfman’s hands, Nicky.”
“Neemal has small cuts and abrasions,” said Nick.
“Consistent with defense wounds,” said Lobdell. “According to the examiner.”
“But apparently a few days old,” said Nick.
“Look,” said Lobdell. “In my opinion, if you have a dead beauty queen and an attempted murderer who finds her, doesn’t tell anybody, then says some regular-sized Hercules lugged her into a packinghouse, and you got his semen on her and his hands are scratched up-guess what? You charge him. They’ll just toss him back in the loony bin anyway.”
Harloff flipped a yellow page, wrote something, and underlined it twice. “Nick?”
“I’m not ready to charge him.”
“His first case as lead,” said Lobdell. “He’s being careful. Everything by the book.”
Nick nodded, staring at Lobdell. He knew Harloff saw it but he didn’t care.
“What are your conclusions so far, Nick?”
“The key is the dinner. Who are Red and Ho? They might have been the last people to see her alive. They might even be our A and O secretors. The wine and water glasses in Janelle’s cottage were covered with prints. All we could get were smudges and overlaps. Bad luck. Just a mess.”
Harloff nodded. Nick knew that Harloff had worked Crimes Against Persons for most of his career. So Harloff understood that too many prints was almost as bad as none at all.
“The doorknobs gave us nothing but Janelle,” said Nick. He felt like he was making excuses. He wanted Harloff to know he was going to get this guy if it was the last thing he did.
“But we’ve got good descriptions, sir. The Pepito’s hostess said Janelle came in with two men to pick up the order. Said they were both squares. Shirts and ties. Early thirties, both white. One was six foot one or so. Brown hair cut fairly short. Mustache. Good-looking but not overly so. Second was five-nine, short blond hair. Clean-shaven. The hostess is about Janelle’s age. I asked her if there was anything threatening about the men. Anything odd or off or maybe dangerous. Nervous, agitated. She said no. Two ‘full-on squares’ is what she said. One even wore a flag pin. Neither spoke to her. They took the food and talked to each other while Janelle paid for it. Maybe Red and Ho are unrelated to this. But I think whoever did this knew her. She’d been around the block enough to know what can happen. She wouldn’t take off with just anybody. I know it’s only speculation, but I think this guy hated her. Really hated her. The mutilation took time and it wasn’t necessary. She knew him. The NCIC wasn’t much help. They’ve got eight unsolved homicides with postmortem decapitations in eight different states but some go back ten years. Most recent is Illinois -sixty-four and it was an elderly woman. Nothing reported in California. Nothing with a saw.”