A couple of interesting coincidences: the four of them, the three senior citizens and the little girl, had been strangled with a rope or a cord or a wire. In each case, a different instrument was used, but it was some kind of ligature device, not the hands. And every victim had suffered severe vaginal trauma, indicating violent sexual assault, but no semen was found. Not in the nine-yearold, not in the old ladies.
These bookends of failure would be Frank Matzalanis’s legacy. That’s what he thought. When Matzalanis was facing mandatory retirement with nothing to look forward to except directing security at some godforsaken shopping mall, Martinson encouraged him to take a teaching position. Or to write a book. His memoirs, at least. He had an obligation to share his knowledge. But when Matzalanis didn’t show up for work one bright morning and didn’t call in, Arnie knew it meant the worst.
He drove to Frank’s house in Miramar, and let himself in through the front door Matzalanis had so thoughtfully left open. He’d known Martinson would come. He was in the kitchen. Happy, kitcheny yellows rang false as fire drills. Eyes squeezed tight in anticipation, finger still on the trigger, a single unuttered syllable dead on his lips.
Leviticus Williams didn’t strike Arnie as a guy who was too hung up on why. Steeled against the whims of a vicious world behind the glasses that made him look like an African dictator, Williams radiated faith in science, in his own training, in weights and measures.
Martinson said, “Good afternoon, Doc.” He called everybody in a lab coat Doc, from the dentist to the ophthalmologist to the psychiatrist they made him go see after he found Frank Matzalanis in his kitchen.
Williams was crossing the T’s on Manfred Pfiser’s autopsy report. “It’s ironic, detective, but without concerted medical attention, this man would have been coming to the close of a rather short life. He had the lungs of a coal miner, and he was in the nascent stages of heart disease. Also, his liver was enlarged to about oneand- a-half times the size of a normal organ, indicating the onset of cirrhosis, a far more painful death than the one he suffered, and a direct result of his chronic alcoholism.”
Okay, he was an alcoholic. No big deal there. Arnie knew a lot of those.
“My assumption is, he ingested a liter or more of hard liquor per day for at least the last five years, though there’s no way to be certain.” Williams’s swaying Caribbean accent made him easy to listen to, even when he got all esoteric and started babbling about things Arnie had neither the time nor the desire to hear.
“The level of alcohol in his blood at the time of death was point two-five percent, which again, just an opinion, could only be achieved over a prolonged period of consumption without producing acute alcohol poisoning.”
“So he was really loaded when he got shot.”
“He would have been extremely intoxicated,” Williams said, “yes.”
“I’m betting he liked his cocaine, too.” This cold feeling started in Arnie’s fingertips, which began to tingle. He rubbed his palms together, then on the legs of his trousers. He wasn’t cold. Just his fingers.
“It would be safe to conclude he was a drug addict, as well. In addition to a medication he took for high blood pressure, we discovered trace amounts of marijuana, and a variety of amphetamines and barbiturates. I’ve noted them individually on the report.
“An extremely high level of cocaine, which indicates habitual use. The man was a toxic time bomb. He had, in fact, ingested cocaine shortly before he died. Nasal passages clogged with undissolved powder. He also had a deviated septum that had been surgically repaired.
“Death was caused by severe trauma to the brain, a metal object entering the base of the skull, ripping through the cerebellum and shattering the jawbone, which, not incidentally, resulted in the gross exit wound you noted. There is absolutely no possibility that the wound was self-inflicted.”
Williams’s bottle-bottom lenses magnified his eyes, giving them an eerie, bulging effect. He looked up at Martinson. “Unfortunately, lividity was difficult to determine because of the temperature of the room. The airconditioning was set for sixty-eight degrees, making the body much colder than if it had lost heat in natural climatic conditions. We were forced to rely on the degree of rigor mortis, and the rate of coagulation of the blood to approximate his time of death.”
“Which in your opinion was when?”
“Not before ten p.m. and not after ten a.m. Detective, are you certain the victim was standing when he was assaulted?”
“No,” Martinson said, “I’d have to check CSU’s final report. But I was operating on that assumption.”
“If your assumption is correct, he was murdered by someone shorter than himself. From the angle and trajectory of the object, a person no taller than five feet, eight inches, and possibly shorter.”
Martinson watched Williams’s eyes move over his report one more time before he signed it. The chill in Martinson’s fingers inched past his wrists and up his arms, but he fought it, asking himself what his problem was with Williams. The man was a bit lacking in personality, without a whole lot about him to like, but that wasn’t something that should make Martinson feel like he was going to freeze solid in the man’s presence. Williams was just one of those guys with no interest and no ability to speak outside of his immediate field of expertise, kind of like Frank Matzalanis, a cop who got drunk with cops and rehashed homicides.
Leviticus Williams dedicated his life to a lonely, grisly function somebody had to perform. Without it, Martinson’s job would have been impossible, and for gratitude and a couple of cheap yuks, Arnie had compared him to a witch doctor.
Williams stood up to say goodbye. Martinson hoped he wouldn’t notice he was grasping a hand as warm as Manfred Pfiser’s.
Lili had gone back to check on Annick Mersault, and she was doing all she could to stay in her chair while Annick described the man she had seen leaving the hotel. The boyfriend, Allain Marcoux, was having a tough time, too, translating Annick’s subjective concepts into English for the Department sketch artist, an illustrator named Charlie Roth. Before Roth suggested they move to an interview room, Annick was using Ron Robotaille as her model, saying the man was handsome like Robotaille, except with a squarer chin and a thinner face.
“Thinner?” Roth was asking. “Or narrower?”
“That’s good,” Marcoux said after clearing things up with Annick, “she means narrow.”
The kissy-kissy thing Marcoux had going with this little twit was making Lili sick. She was over the gap in their ages — young or not, Annick was an adult old enough to make her own decisions. But she’d have thought a man of Marcoux’s years — he had to be as old as Martinson, and Arnie was what, forty-five? — would have the decency to be embarrassed by a gushing twenty yearold, but the sleazeball just fastened his necklace, slapped on more cologne and lapped the fawning up.
And it hurt to admit it, but Lili was jealous of Annick’s beet-faced mooning over Robotaille. It was Robotaille’s eyes she was stuck on now. The man at the hotel had eyes like his, Annick said, but the detective’s were further apart.
“Do us a favor,” Roth said, staying patient, “forget about Robotaille. Try to concentrate on the face you saw. Can you remember what the eyes were shaped like?”
Lili headed out into the squad room. Martinson was walking in, carrying an envelope. He nodded at Lili, stopped to pour himself a cup of coffee, and added two Sweet N’ Lows.
“I can’t stand to be around that French girl another minute,” Lili said.
“She’s seen too many Brigitte Bardot movies, that kid. How’s it going?”