"That's if you assume these two deaths are connected." Grizzly took relish in pointing that out as he turned to lead them down halls and through doors. Temple tried not to glance into side rooms they passed, but she couldn't help seeing a naked female body on a gurney. A clinician in a laboratory slicing brain material like it was pate, more technicians taking fingerprints from a head-less, legless torso burned beyond recognition.
"You okay?" Detective Alch asked softly, cupping a hand under her elbow.
"Fine. I just seemed to be walking through quicksand for a stretch there."
"Don't look, don't ask," he advised. "And don't breathe through your nose."
Temple nodded. "If I'd known I'd be visiting here I would have brought my Vick's. Maybe I'll just think of strawberries."
"Excellent idea."
By then Dr. Bahr had led his troupe into an examination room.
His white-jacketed bulk, matched by Molina's dark-coated presence, was enough to obscure the steel although Temple glimpsed a vulnerable row of toes.
"Amazing," Molina said. "And you discovered it--?"
"When I brought the body out to confirm the identity against the photocopies you faxed over."
"What do you make of this, Alch?"
The detective reluctantly shouldered his way into the line.
Temple didn't need to know. She had no curiosity except as to whether she would faint if she had to confront naked and the dead form of the chorus-girl lithe figure from time old posters of Professor Mangel's.
While she was thinking so hard about how she might react if confronted by a dead body, somehow the trio had parted like a human curtain. Temple glimpsed the waxy yellow form of an unclothed mannequin. Across the bare and bony chest were words, "she left."
No caps, no quotes, no punctuation, Temple noticed trying desperately not to inventory any other background details.
"How do you explain it showing up now! Tampering?" Molina was asking.
Grizzly Bahr shook his big, shaggy head.
"Not at all. it was always there." Once the silence had held for a suitably dramatic moment, he nodded portentously, "It was written in some kind of disappearing ink. The lights here, or changes in the body's composition. er, decomposition, brought it out in due time."
"Bizarre." Even Molina sounded impressed. "Imagine." turned to Temple. "A magician's assistant, murdered and with invisible ink. Almost as if someone is playing with us. This definitely links the two deaths."
Temple nodded miserably.
"It would seem so," Grizzly Bahr agreed with small
"It had better be disappearing ink. I'd hate to think someone was sneaking into my morgue to mess with my bodies. We've got better security than that."
"People actually' try to sneak into MEs' facilities?" Temple asked.
"All the time," Bahr boomed genially. "Especially when we have celebrity autopsies."
Temple shook her head. She wouldn't want to try any of these rolling steel beds on for size, even if Papa Bear Bahr presided in person.
Chapter 36
Can't Help Loving That Man
Safely returned to Molina's office, Temple accepted the offer of a cup of coffee. Actually, she wanted to smell it, rather than drink it.
It was just the two of them, one on one.
"You were helpful at the resale shop. Thank you." Molina actually smiled at her.
"When will you know the identity of the dead woman?"
"Detective Su is running the license now. We'll have a name and address and some vital statistics very soon. Then we have to find out 'who' she was in the larger sense, and what might have made her a victim of homicide."
"Who'd want to kill a poor woman who bought her clothes at resale shops?"
"The words 'she left' were spray-painted near the body."
Temple nodded. No need to mention that Matt Devine had told her that already. Molina knew.
The lieutenant's fingertips rapped the glass-topped desk.
"That's not what concerns me. Oh, it does, but I'd think that you'd find the death of Gloria Fuentes more . . . disturbing."
"That someone would booby-trap the body like that, to reveal the words over a day later?
That is sick."
"Sick? Or theatrical?"
"Both, I suppose."
"What is our murderer trying to tell us?"
"I don't think 'our' murderer is trying to tell me squat. And maybe it's more than one killer."
"The disappearing ink was no afterthought. Who else would have known about the words at the first death scene besides the police?" Molina paused.
Matt would have known, because Molina had told him.
The lieutenant shook her head, heavy blunt-cut hair barely shimmying at the gesture. "I don't get it," she told Temple. "You are either the strongest case of denial I've ever run across, or you know something l don't, and l can't believe that.
"Loyalty is one thing, but you are harder to crack than Susan McDougal. These women were apparently killed because they had the guts to leave someone who was bad for them."
"That's when abusive relationships turns fatal," Temple put in.
"I know that. You know that. I also know that you are not a stupid woman. So why are you sticking with Max Kinsella through thick and thin, and mostly thin? You and l know he's hiding something, that he's up to his phony green eyes in something criminal."
"Things aren't always what they seem."
" 'Things aren't always what they seem.' Things are never what they seem. Don't you see that if you continue to protect him, when he gets his comeuppance---and he will--you'll take a fall with him? He's already proven dangerous to know, painfully so."
The flat of her hands hit the desktop. "I don't get it. You could have Matt Devine with a snap of your fingers. You know where he's been at least, even if a Catholic religious vocation is foreign to you. He couldn't lie to you to save his soul. So? What's the reason? A bent for self-destruction? Am I missing something here?"
"Yes. I think you are."
"Really?"
Temple expelled a breath of frustration. "Haven't you ever really trusted anyone, no matter what the appearances?"
"Let me think."
"It's not something you have to think about: You know."
"Then, no. Trusting someone was not an option in the place and time I grew up in."
"If you had, you would understand. Since you haven't, You will never understand. And because Max and I had that total trust of each other, it will take a lot to kill it. Someone else's suspicions will never do it. Are you trying to 'turn' me, Lieutenant? Isn't that what you call getting one criminal to betray another? It won't work, because you're not dealing with criminals here."
"You are fast becoming an accessory to whatever Kinsella is up to. You can't deny you're living with him."
"Off and on. when he's in town."
"Oh." Molina grew still. "And has he been in town lately?"
"In and out."
"The times of the murders?"
"l can swear that he was out of town for the second one."
" 'Out of town' where?"
"The . . . West Coast."
Molina nodded, satisfaction glimmering in her brilliant blue eyes. Temple felt a stab of unease.
"You can swear," Molina went on, "that Kinsella was apparently out of town at that time.
But you can't prove it. Not unless you were with him wherever on the West Coast he went. For whatever reason. And you weren't, and you don't know why he went there, do you?"
"No."
"What is trust worth when it's a one-way street?"
"More than what it's worth if you've never had it, or given it, at all."
Molina stood, dismissing her, and her position. "You will regret this alliance. Someday."
"Not if my eyes were open, Lieutenant, and I promise you, no matter the appearances, they are."
Temple left, feeling as if she'd been spindled, stapled, and mutilated.
Just who was most obsessive about Max Kinsella? Temple thought she had plenty of competition on that score. And that wasn't even counting Kitty the Cutter.