“Fun,” he said.
“At the core, these are thrill crimes, Milo. They can't seriously think they're creating any societal impact. This is Leopold and Loeb taken a step further: pleasure-kill under a veneer of ideology. Pleasure at showing how brilliant they are, so just to be extra-cute, they leave a message. DVLL. Some coded in-joke the police are sure never to notice. Maybe an insult to the police, like Raymond's bloody shoes left at the Newton station. And even if the letters are discovered, they know the message will be impossible to figure out.”
“Baker,” he said. “That's exactly his style. Esoteric. Leader of the pack, sucking everyone into his goddamn games.”
A vein, thick and knotted, was throbbing at his temple, and his eyes burned. “Killers in blue. Oh shit, Alex, you know the department and I don't have a perfect marriage, but this! Just what LAPD needs after Mr. Scumbag Rodney King and the riots and Mr. Scumbag O.J. Just what this city needs!”
“Which leads me to another question,” I said. “Is Dr. Lehmann doing some butt-covering? He told me Nolan had problems Helena really didn't want to know about. I got a clear message to back off. If he knew Nolan had committed murder, he'd be under no obligation to report it unless another potential victim was in clear danger. I can see him wanting to keep the fact that his patient was homicidal quiet, for his sake and the department's- he gets lots of business from the department. But then why say anything at all? Why bother to meet with me in the first place? And now that I think about it, when I was there he tried to turn the tables. Asking me about Helena. Trying to figure out how much she knew.”
He stared at me. “Checking you out? He was in on it, too? Instead of helping Dahl, he somehow drove the asshole to eat chrome?”
“Who better than Dahl's therapist, Milo? And as police consultant, working downtown, he's someone Wes Baker may have known. Someone to whom Baker could have referred Nolan.”
“Oh, my,” he said. “Oh my, oh my… How far does it go?”
He looked at his Timex. “Where the hell is Sharavi? Haven't heard from him since he and Petra tagged Sanger to the Beverly Hills Hotel. She got Sanger's room number, went home, and Sharavi did a solo tail.”
Pulling out his cell phone, he punched.
“The mobile customer is out… Okay, let's lay out this blood-club scenario again: A bunch of Meta assholes get together, decide to play a different kind of game. How many members do you see in the club?”
“There couldn't be too many,” I said. “Too dangerous sharing a secret like that with a crowd.”
Without opening his mouth, he produced a frightening zoo-cage sound. “Okay, so Baker takes charge- he assigns Tenney to do Raymond Ortiz?”
“Maybe not specifically Raymond, just some kid at the park. A kid Tenney judged defective. Or maybe Tenney volunteered to go first and suggested Raymond because he'd seen Raymond, knew he was retarded. We know Tenney was bucking authority on the job, had been reprimanded. What better way to thumb his nose at the job than to use the job to commit murder?”
“Man with a uniform,” he said, staring at Tenney's photo.
“Average-looking man in a uniform,” I said. “Race discrimination goes both ways and this time it played in Tenney's favor: To the homeboys at the park, Tenney was just another faceless Anglo.”
He rubbed his face. “No body, because Tenney wanted to be careful not to leave physical evidence. Then after he and Baker and the others saw no progress had been made, they left the bloody shoes on the steps of the police station.”
“Blood they brushed in after they wrote DVLL,” I said. “So they'd planned it. Maybe Tenney's idea, probably Baker's. Not as clean a murder as Irit's because unlike Baker and Nolan, Tenney never fancied himself a centurion with ideals. Just an angry, hate-filled guy with a supposedly high IQ who couldn't get a better job than sweeping up dog dirt and hated the world because of it. Also, because Raymond was a boy, Tenney might not have seen the killing as a sex crime, felt no need to desexualize it. He snatched Raymond in the bathroom, got him to the van and incapacitated him or murdered him right there, drove somewhere, disposed of the body. Then he quit his job, disappeared.”
“Living at Zena's.”
“Not all this time,” I said. “Maybe he lived out of the van, maybe he crashed with other members of the club. And he won't be at Zena's for long. She said no more guests by tomorrow night. I got the sense some kind of movement's afoot.”
“Another killing?”
“Could be. What districts haven't been hit?”
“Half the city,” he said, “and the whole goddamn Valley. I could talk to Carmeli again about releasing that gag order- on the other hand, all we've got is supposition, not a shred of evidence, and if we alert Baker, anything he might have held on to will be destroyed, not a chance of ever getting to the truth- goddamn it, Alex, it's like having a map but no car- okay, onward. Irit. Baker and Dahl- they just happen to stake out the park, because they know kids go there?”
“Handicapped kids,” I said. “After Tenney got away with Raymond, I can see the group going for another retarded kid in a park. But there's a big difference between Raymond's and Irit's murders. Tenney worked in that park, was familiar with the layout. Raymond was a local kid, his class was using the park daily while the school was being painted, so Tenney had plenty of time to study him. Maybe he'd even had a run-in with Raymond. Or one of Raymond's gang-banger brothers.”
I motioned him to the door, led him out of the apartment, to the front steps.
“What?” he said.
“Just in case you don't want Carmeli to hear this,” I said. “The conservancy wasn't part of Baker and Dahl's patrol area. And Irit's school only visited once a year. So why was Irit selected as victim? Baker's into control. Manipulative, a planner. He took the time to manipulate the daily log for weeks, so I can't believe he'd choose a victim randomly. What made Irit right for him? Could it have been something to do with work after all?”
“Carmeli?”
“We've both felt he's been hostile to the police from the beginning, Milo. Made remarks about police incompetence the first time we met him. I assumed he meant the lack of progress on Irit's murder but maybe it was something else. An unpleasant experience he had with LAPD before Irit's murder.”
“A run-in with Baker?” he said. “Something bad enough to cause Baker to murder the guy's daughter?”
“Ideologically and psychologically, Baker was already there,” I said. “He wouldn't need a big push, just a nudge. If Carmeli got on his bad side- something a mere mortal might have shrugged off- that could have been it. Both of us suspect Carmeli's Mossad or something like it. More than just the deputy consul for community liaison, but that's the face he presents to the public. Events organizer- the big Israeli Independence Day parade he ran last spring. LAPD would have had to be involved, for crowd management. Wouldn't it be interesting if Baker was part of the police contingent?”
We went back inside. The phone was ringing. I picked it up.
“It's Daniel. I'm down the block. May I join you?”
“Definitely,” I said.
“I've got a key. I'll let myself in.”