“Oh, hell, yes, man.” Sergeant Gabe Sanchez scratched at his salt-and-pepper mustache. He kept it as bushy as regs allowed, and then a little more besides. Officious superiors got on his ass about it. Colin couldn’t have cared less. Gabe made a hell of a good cop. Next to that, what was some face fuzz? Jack diddly, that’s what.
A black-and-white had got there ahead of them. The red, yellow, and blue lights in the roof bar flashed one after another. In the glassed-off lobby, a uniformed cop was talking to a tiny, gray-haired woman who broke off every once in a while to cover her face with her hands. Seeing Colin and Sanchez, the cop waved. Colin nodded back.
Gabe Sanchez sighed. “Gotta do it,” he said.
“I’ll go in. You take a minute,” Colin told him. Gabe sent back a grateful look. He lit a cigarette as Colin climbed the stairs to the lobby. San Atanasio was as aggressively smokefree as any other SoCal city. There would have been stereophonic hell to pay had the sergeant lit up inside the car. He smoked now in quick, fierce puffs. Colin knew he’d come along as soon as he got his fix.
When Colin walked into the lobby, the cop wearing navy blue said, “Lieutenant, this is Mrs. Nagumo-Kiyoko Nagumo. She’s the one who called 911. Her sister is in apartment, uh”-he glanced at the notes he’d been taking- “apartment 71.”
“Thanks, Pete.” Colin turned to Mrs. Nagumo and showed his badge. “I’m Lieutenant Ferguson, Mrs. Nagumo. Your sister’s name is Eiko Ryan?” There were still some Japanese in San Atanasio. There’d been more before a lot of them headed south to Torrance and Palos Verdes as blacks and Mexicans moved in. Quite a few had intermarried with whites. Some of the resulting names were a lot more amusing than this one.
Mrs. Nagumo said, “That’s right. We were supposed to have lunch today. I called her. She didn’t answer. I came over to see if she was okay. She’s lived here ten years now, since her husband passed away.”
“I see.” Colin wondered how many times he’d heard stories like this. The Ryans had probably had a little tract house somewhere not far from here. After he died, even a little house might have seemed too big. Or the memories there might have hurt too much. But if Eiko Ryan wanted to stay independent, a place like this would have seemed pretty good. “What happened when you got here, ma’am?”
By the way Pete shifted from foot to foot, he’d already asked her that. Well, tough. “I buzzed. She didn’t let me in. I rang for the manager. He knows me. He let me go in. I knocked on her door. Still nothing. I went back to the manager and asked him to open the apartment. I was afraid maybe she’d fallen or something.” She was of an age-and her sister would be, too-where a fall was liable to mean a broken hip.
When she didn’t go on, Colin gently prodded her: “What happened then, Mrs. Nagumo? Oh-and when was the last time you did talk with your sister?”
“It was last Friday. When we set up lunch. This is Wednesday, so-five days ago. Mr. Svanda, he complained, but he always complains. He did what I wanted him to do.” Chances were, most people did. Mrs. Nagumo couldn’t have been taller than four feet nine, but she had immense dignity. Her grief was all the more stark on account of it. “He opened the door. . and we found her. In the bedroom. I called 911 then.” A tear ran down her wrinkled cheek.
“Did you or Mr., uh, Svanda touch anything inside the apartment?” Colin asked. He wondered why he bothered. If this was another South Bay Strangler case, the bastard never left prints. He’d been raping and murdering little old ladies all through this part of L.A. County for years now, and nobody’d laid a glove on him.
“Nothing much, anyway,” Kiyoko Nagumo said. “We watch TV. We know about fingerprints-oh, yes.”
“Okay.” Colin fought a sigh. Everybody watched TV-and everybody thought the cops always caught the bad guy right before the closing commercials. Real life, unfortunately, could be a lot messier and less conclusive. And real-life cops took the heat when it was.
“I’ve got a pretty good statement from her, Lieutenant,” Pete said as Gabe Sanchez came up the stairs to join them. “If you want to have a look at the crime scene before the forensics guys and the coroner get here-”
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Colin said resignedly. Mrs. Nagumo started crying again. Hearing about the coroner must have reminded her her sister was dead.
The door up into the courtyard was open. People milled around there, the way they always did after something bad happened. A grizzled fellow limped up to Colin and Gabe. Like anyone with an ounce of sense, he knew cops when he saw them.
“I’m Oscar Svanda,” he said. “My wife Glinda and me, we manage this building. I let Mrs. Ryan’s sister into her place, and then we seen the poor lady’s body.” He crossed himself. He looked green around the gills, and well he might. Civilians rarely saw things like that, and rarely knew how lucky they were not to.
“Gabe, why don’t you take Mr. Svanda’s statement?” Colin said. “I do want to have a look at the apartment.”
“Okay. I’ll catch up with you.” Gabe pulled a notebook from an inside pocket of his blue blazer. “You want to spell your last name for me so I make sure I have it right, Mr. Svanda. .?”
The other uniformed officer from the black-and-white stood at the door to apartment 71. She looked a trifle green herself. “Your first Strangler case, Heather?” Colin asked, understanding that all too well.
She managed a nod. “’Fraid so, Lieutenant.”
“Well, welcome to the club. Now you see why we hate the son of a gun so much,” Colin said grimly. Heather nodded again, this time with more conviction.
He walked inside. The furniture was that furnished-apartment blend of tacky and functional. The Naugahyde covering on the dinette chairs had orange flowers; the couch and chair were upholstered in industrial-strength fabric with a really horrible red, white, and black plaid. But everything was scrupulously clean and neat.
A faint but unmistakable odor led him into the bedroom. Eiko Ryan had been there two or three days, all right. Her long flannel nightgown was hiked up to her waist. Alive, she might have been an inch or two taller than her sister-which would have done her a hell of a lot of good trying to fight off the bastard who’d killed her.
Colin clasped his hands behind his back to make sure he didn’t touch anything. It wouldn’t matter, but he did it anyway. Habit was strong in him, and got stronger as he got older.
He heard some kind of commotion outside. He feared he knew what kind, too. Sure as hell, Heather called, “The reporters are here, Lieutenant.”
“Oh, joy,” Colin said, and went out to meet the press.
IV
Louise Ferguson felt as if she’d gone fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson, and he’d thrown nothing but body punches the whole time. They called it labor for a reason. She’d found that out when she’d had her first three kids. But she’d been in her early twenties then. Now she was old enough to be a granny. She felt every year of it, too, and about twenty more besides.
She lay on the bed, flicking the TV remote. Her roommate wasn’t there-they were running some kind of test on her. She was a Korean gal who didn’t speak a whole lot of English. When she was there, she kept stealing glances at Louise, as if to say What the hell were you doing? But the answer to that was only too obvious, wasn’t it?
James Henry Ferguson-seven pounds, nine ounces; twenty-one and a half inches-wasn’t there, either. They’d asked if she wanted him with her 24/7 or if he should stay in the nursery when she wasn’t feeding him. She’d had Rob with her all the time. Despite her own exhaustion, she’d started at his every twitch and sneeze and wiggle. And she’d learned her lesson. Vanessa and Marshall had stayed in the nursery. James Henry could damn well do the same thing.
Here was the local news. Living with Colin for so many years had given her a jaundiced view of it: blow-dried male robots and beauty-contest third runner-ups struggling to read from teleprompters. The newsies didn’t seem a whole lot smarter once she’d walked out on Colin, either.