“Yes, sir.”
Officer Laski walked away, gun bouncing against her well-padded hip, rubbing her forearm across her brow. Heffer came back down the driveway and joined Joe and Arvo by the table.
“Mind if I ask a question first?” he said.
Joe raised an eyebrow. “Go ahead.”
Heffer flicked a glance toward Arvo. “What’s the TMU doing here? Why isn’t he out babysitting starlets?”
“You demonstrate a remarkable ignorance—” Arvo began, through clenched teeth, but Joe held up his hand and quieted him.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he said. “You got a point to make, Detective Heffer?”
Heffer shrugged. “Just want to know what’s missing here, that’s all.” He jerked his thumb back toward the house. “Has lover boy in there been getting threats or something?”
“Not as far as we know,” Joe said. “And as long as I know why Detective Hughes is here, that’s fine for the moment, okay?”
“You’re the boss.”
“You got that right. Now, have you got any ideas?”
Heffer shrugged. “It’s as clear-cut a faggot murder as I’ve ever seen,” he said. “And we do get a few of them in Hollywood, you know.”
“Oh?” said Joe. “Care to tell us what happened?”
“Guy’s coming home from Mom and Pop’s, maybe been at the old vino, and he feels, you know, the urge, a little frisky. So he cruises the Boulevard until he finds what he wants. It’s all out there, man, Christmas or no Christmas. Figures he’ll give himself a real Christmas present. Maybe a hot date with one of Santa’s elves. He brings the kid back here, they snort a few lines of prime coke and wham, lights out.”
“Why?” Joe asked.
“Come on, man, these people don’t need motives. You know that. It’s a fucking sport to them.”
“I mean why would a male prostitute kill a john? Only motive I can think of is money. And in case you didn’t notice it, Marillo’s wallet was still in the back pocket of his pants with a couple of hundred dollars cash in it, not to mention the credit cards. And from the blood and the scuff-marks, it looks as if Marillo was hit on the head from behind in the kitchen, soon as he got in the house, maybe even while he was opening the door, then carried up to the bedroom and killed there later. Like I said, why?”
Heffer shrugged. “Kid musta flipped out. Or maybe lover boy over there found them together. He’s waiting and he sees Marillo come back with some kid from the Boulevard. Loses it. Who knows? Point is,” he went on, “those throat and chest wounds are classic faggot style. And the heart with the arrow, the cords around the bed rails. Ritual shit.” He narrowed his eyes and looked at Arvo. “Has Marillo been getting threats?”
Arvo said nothing.
Heffer popped another bubble and shrugged. “Okay, so you don’t want to tell me. Fine. I get the feeling it’s not gonna be my case anyway. In fact, I get the feeling you real important boys from downtown want this one. Am I right? And I also get the impression that there’s a lot you’re not telling me. Am I right again? Well, excuse me for just being a fucking drone from Hollywood station. I’ll just go back home to bed, shall I, if that’s all right with you?”
“Why don’t you do just that,” Joe said, staring him in the eye.
Heffer held eye contact for a moment, then broke it, muttered, “Assholes,” turned on his heel and took off.
“Oh, thwarted ambition,” mused Arvo after him.
“More like that cat’s fast running out of lives,” said Joe. “The way I hear it, the department doesn’t know where to put him next. What’s your theory?”
“Kincaid didn’t do it,” Arvo said. “Unless he’s behind it all, which I doubt.”
“Behind all what?”
“The letters, the Heimar murder.”
“More speculation?”
“Partly, but the connections are getting stronger. Listen, Joe... ” And Arvo told him about the faint outline of the heart he thought he had seen in the Heimar crime-scene photograph.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Joe asked.
“Because I thought I might be seeing things. Forcing connections where they didn’t really exist. Then I did a lot of thinking after you told me about the pentobarbitol. Look for yourself. It could be some sort of optical illusion caused by the light and wet sand. There’s no report of anyone noticing it at the scene.”
“Tide was coming in fast. Now what do you think, now you’ve seen Marillo’s body?”
“I think that whoever’s been writing letters to Sarah Broughton abducted and killed John Heimar, buried him on the beach for her to find and drew a heart in the sand beside the body to let her know he’d done it for her.”
“So why didn’t she say anything about the heart in her statement?”
Arvo shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t see it. Maybe it had all but washed away by the time she got there. You really have to look for it, with the light just right. Or maybe she’s keeping it back. I don’t know.”
“Go on.”
“I also think the same person waited for Jack Marillo in the trees behind the house here, hit him on the back of the head with some sort of hammer as he was fiddling with the key in the door, carried or dragged him upstairs, butchered him and carved the heart on his stomach.”
“Why didn’t he cut the body in pieces this time?”
“I don’t know. Could be something spooked him. Or maybe he didn’t need to this time. Maybe he’d already proved that point with Heimar.”
Joe lit another cigarette and thought for a moment, then said, “I’d accept Heffer’s theory a lot easier if everything had happened up in the bedroom, using a weapon at hand. In my experience that kind of spontaneous violence usually happens after something triggers it, and that something usually happens in bed. If Marillo did pick up a kid on the Boulevard, he sure picked himself a real winner. How many hookers you see carrying hammers, Arvo, male or female? Maybe blades, but not hammers.”
“Right.”
“But Kincaid did admit that Marillo said he was coming back to the house last night. How could the killer have known he wouldn’t be away for days, especially at this time of year? It doesn’t look like this happened just by chance.”
Arvo shrugged. “He must have waited. If we’re dealing with the kind of killer I think we are, it wouldn’t mean anything to him, having to wait hours, maybe even days. He’s obsessed, Joe, fixated, completely focused on what he feels he has to do to gain Sarah Broughton’s love. And remember, she’s thousands of miles away.”
Joe sighed and ran his hand over his cropped salt-and-pepper hair. “So you think we’ve got a psycho on our hands?”
“Looks that way.”
“Okay, Arvo, forget Heffer, he’s history. You’re working with me on this. I’ll clear it with your lieutenant, all right?”
“Fine by me.”
Joe looked at his watch. Sun glinted on the gold band. “Pretty soon we’ll have the brass and media here. It’ll be a fucking circus, believe me. Television homicide cop victim of homicide? They’ll lap it up. Especially if there’s a gay angle. Macho homicide cop victim of homosexual killing. Tailor-made.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I’m going to look into Marillo’s background and I’m at least going to consider that he picked up some kid who went ape-shit and killed him. I’m also going to run Kincaid’s balls through the wringer. I don’t think he did it, either, for what that’s worth, but I have to do it. It’s still the most likely scenario. And I want to see that letter.”
“No problem.”
“And as soon as Sarah Broughton steps off that plane at LAX, I want her in my office.”