“You could stand to miss a couple meals yourself.”
Silverman followed him into the open apartment lobby and waited in silence for the elevator. Wondero had long ago stopped talking at moments like these, no longer able to find a rationale for the random acts of violence he encountered. As the peeling elevator doors opened, the photographer called to him. “Radio call for you, Harry.”
“Tell her I’m up to my ass at the moment.”
“I already took the liberty.”
Wondero got ugly. “And?”
“Dispatcher said this was really important.”
“Someone ought to start giving these broads urine tests.” Getting behind the wheel of his car, Wondero identified himself to the dispatcher, then listened. Saucers of water filled his eyes and made ribbons down his cheeks.
“Be there in twenty,” he said.
The two rookie cops guarding Sybil Blanchard’s apartment carefully examined Wondero’s credentials before letting him pass. Once inside, Wondero saw the same scene as before, the same familiar faces, and he supposed, the same conclusions. Four years of work had drawn him no closer to this killer than the day he’d started, and he no longer looked at each new victim as a possible solution to what had become an endless string of senseless homicides.
There was considerable activity inside the spacious apartment. Two technicians busily dusted the furniture and glasses for fingerprints, while another vacuumed the carpet for hair and minuscule clothing fibers. Down a hall in the bedroom an Asian man was taking photographs of the corpse, whose pink toes pointed to the ceiling.
The apartment, like so many in L.A., said a great deal about Sybil Blanchard’s dreams and aspirations, yet almost nothing about her past, as if part of becoming an actress or singing star required shelving your upbringing. In the same glance, Wondero saw what had probably attracted their killer to Sybil. She lived alone, no pets, and was often home during the day. He was good at speculating, and guessed that Sybil was young and impressionable. Smart, but not street smart. Otherwise she wouldn’t have opened her door to a stranger.
On the dining room table sat a flower box. Flowers are a way to a girl’s heart, he thought. He looked inside and saw the dead bird. It had been dusted and looked sugar coated.
He pushed himself down the hall to the bedroom. A detective named Marstello was taking notes while one of Silverman’s pupils examined the corpse. Standing in the doorway, Wondero halted. From the floor Sybil’s terrified eyes stared up, forever frozen.
“Close them,” he said.
The CSI tech closed Sybil’s eyes with his fingertips. He spoke slowly, his voice a monotone. “The victim appears to have died from a massive coronary. I found these in the bathroom.” He shook a bottle of pills in Wondero’s face. “Seems she had a bad ticker. The perpetrator jumped her in the hallway and they struggled on the bedroom floor, which resulted in her having a heart attack. She died almost instantly.”
“Good for you,” Wondero said to the corpse.
Marstello gave him a funny look. The tech said, “Let me show you something,” and motioned Wondero to kneel beside him. He gently parted Sybil’s fluffy brown curls and pointed at the graying roots dotting her scalp.
“It’s dyed,” Wondero said. “So what?”
“She didn’t dye her hair,” the ME explained. “I did a quick test of several strands. She was a natural brunette.”
“What are you saying?”
“She just started going gray.”
“So did I,” Wondero said sarcastically.
“Not in the last two hours.”
Wondero looked to Marstello for help. “I’m on the wrong wavelength. What’s our friend here trying to say?”
“We think she was frightened to death,” Marstello explained, being careful as he walked around the corpse. “Like the lady in Malibu last year. You remember, the rich broad with the poodles. Something scared her bad enough to cause a stroke.”
“That was the coroner’s speculation,” Wondero reminded him, remembering the case clearly, and how her dogs, locked up in a closet, had attacked the first officer on the scene.
“This isn’t speculation Harry.” From a night table Marstello picked up a pillow wrapped in a ziplock and handed it to him. A note cut and pasted from a newspaper was impaled to the pillow with a railroad spike, and Wondero read the twisted message silently.
I LeT MySeLf In.
BE bAck bEForE YOu
knoW IT.
DeAtH
Wondero sat on the bed. What had Sybil seen? He thought he knew. A killer that lacked internal control that might allow him to spare his victims the sadistic pleasures that dominated his murderous sprees. A killer that hacked up his victims and scattered their remains, a leg in the fireplace, an arm on the wet bar, the fingers clutching a beer bottle. Insanity — letters that spoke of blackness and despair that often reversed themselves, becoming wicked and perverse. Cruelty — a killer who preyed on the vulnerable and the old. A plague in human form. Sybil had met Death and surrendered to him.
“You ought to go outside Harry. Get some air.”
Wondero stared vacantly through a window. “I once read that when you die all experience is reversed. You feel the pain you inflicted during your lifetime, and suffer the way you made others suffer. Atonement for all sins. And you get an eternity to pay for what you’ve done.” He looked up at Marstello. “Do you believe that Ray?”
Marstello thought about it. “No.”
“Neither do I,” Wondero said. “But I want to.”
Chapter 2
Jay
Wondero waited until after dinner before retiring to his study to consult with his psychics.
He left his son glued to Monday night football, his wife in the kitchen making tomorrow’s casserole, his daughter in the bathroom on the phone. He liked his home this way, filled with arresting smells and lots of activity, and on the way to his study he grabbed a beer and stole a kiss from his wife.
“Rough day?” she asked.
“Yeah. Did you really tell that nasty loan officer to kiss your ass?”
“I told him to kiss my sweet ass.”
“That’s my girl.”
Two years back, when his work began disrupting their family life, Corey had started selling real estate, for no other reason than having something normal to talk about around the dinner table. Except she was great at it. Every night she told stories that put the Arabian nights to shame, and had allowed the focus of the family’s conversations to steer clear from his investigations.
Wondero went to his study and shut the door. To reduce his long work days, he often spent his nights studying evidence, with only a portable radio for company.
From a file cabinet he removed a folder marked PSI. The LAPD had put on retainer fifteen of the city’s most prominent psychics, and each week they sent Wondero their predictions as to where Death might strike again. The psychics used a variety of methods to glean their information, and it had become his job to interpret their musings and determine what might be useful.
Wondero had never believed in psychics, and thought they were all quacks. That had changed when he’d started working with them. They had predicted when Death would strike enough times to make him a believer. With their help, and a little luck, he hoped to catch their killer.
A map of downtown LA lay across his desk. Using a blue marking pen, he made an X on the street where Sybil Blanchard had died. Using a protractor, he drew a perfect circle around the blue X that had a radius of three inches. He worked off a simple formula. Any prediction that fell outside the circle was dismissed, anything within a direct hit, and worth a phone call to the psychic who’d made it to see if he or she could elaborate on their particular prediction.