No spatter there. Not a speckle anywhere.
The chauffeur’s chocolate skin had turned chalky in splotches. Slightly parted lips revealed perfectly aligned white teeth.
Dental perfection courtesy a skilled dentist. A bridge had come loose and dangled awkwardly.
I peered closer. No stippling around the wound that I could see but dusky skin tone made it hard to be sure.
Rigor hadn’t set in. Or it had come and gone. The dried blood said probably the latter.
Eight to twelve hours with no obvious decomposition. Cool May weather? But it’s rarely that simple.
I stepped back and walked to the rear of the car.
Three dead people occupied the rear seat, pressed close to one another, knees touching.
Closest to the door was a white male in his thirties wearing a black sport coat, a black T-shirt and slacks, black loafers, no socks. Thick, dark hair. Lean, good-looking.
Like the chauffeur, coated with blood from the knees down, a similar pool sludging the carpet.
Unlike the chauffer, no bullet wound that I could see.
I said so to Milo.
He said, “There is none, don’t know what got him, yet.”
I turned back to the car. The good-looking man’s fly was unzipped. His limp penis rested in the upturned left palm of his nearest seat-mate.
Older woman. Sixties, maybe even seventies, full-faced with a squashed, veiny nose. Eyes shut behind steel-framed glasses. Puffy cheeks had been rouged clumsily, creating clown-like cerise circles. Heavy arms swelled the long sleeves of a black wool dress, and stout legs encased in fishnet stockings were stuffed into square-toed black pumps, instep flesh humping above the strap. Gray hair curled from beneath a black felt tam. No jewelry, no adornment.
Like the chauffeur and the man whose member she fondled, bloodied from the knees down.
Again, no bullet wounds I could see.
I circled to the opposite side of the limo. The young D’s were still there. They greeted me but didn’t move.
The final victim was a brown-skinned man, Hispanic or Middle Eastern. Thin, bony-faced, with meager, elfin features. Sparse dark hair cropped short was flecked with silver. A filmy thatch of chin hairs struggled to be a beard.
Tough to estimate his age. My mental Nikon settled on thirty-five to forty-five.
Like the three other victims, dressed in black. Baggy suit, blousy white shirt, clip-on black tie, black canvas slip-ons.
I thought of a funeral procession waylaid and slaughtered.
Male Number Two’s cause of death, obvious: bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
Washed in blood from the knees down. Nothing to do with a small-caliber wound.
I returned my attention to the woman in the center. Stern, matronly. An appearance bizarrely at odds with the organ in her hand.
I said, “Nothing makes sense.”
Milo said, “And here I was hoping for immediate wisdom.” But he didn’t sound surprised.
“Any I.D.s?”
“Let’s catch some fresh air, I’ll fill you in.”
Chapter 4
I followed him out of the tent, across a strip of cement and a wider belt of dirt, up the steps to the domed pavilion. The structure was impressive at a distance but tatty up close, brick floor cracked and buckling, cement columns crudely molded. The roof was rusting iron covered with dead vines that fought one another for space.
Vipers in a feeding frenzy.
Milo said, “Okay to sit, this area’s been gone over.” He plopped down on a flimsy-looking plastic chair and made it groan. “Lotta crap cleared away, most probably garbage from the party. Lovely stuff — condoms, cups, little baggies with remnants of granular stuff.”
The other chairs looked grubby. I stayed on my feet.
He said, “Any impression at all? I’ll take improv.”
I said, “To my eye, they’ve been dead for a while. I’d guess no more than twelve hours but maybe I’m missing something and they were partygoers from Friday night?”
“You’re not missing anything. The company that books venues swears the place was cleared out three a.m. Saturday. That wouldn’t mean much but every C.I. and tech says the condition of the bodies doesn’t match that long of a time period, even with cool weather, there’d have to be more decomp.”
“The car was moved here after three. How’d it gain access to the property?”
“Same way you and Mr. Walters did, open gate. Cleaning company asks for that, closes up when the job’s over. Nothing inside, anyway, just cheap rental furniture.”
He pulled a panatela from an inside jacket pocket. Rolled it between thick fingers but didn’t unwrap it.
I said, “Didn’t see any maggots on the bodies.”
“There weren’t any, just a few blowflies buzzing around the driver’s door when we arrived. Walters opened two doors then shut them. After he threw up. Looks like the closed car formed a sealed environment.”
“Any cameras on the property?”
“Not a one.”
“Who owns the place?”
“Don’t know yet, cleaning company punted to a rental agent and she hasn’t answered my call.”
He held up the cigar and squinted, as if close inspection would reveal secrets. “What’d you think about all that blood at the bottom?”
“Doesn’t fit the wounds,” I said. “As if it got poured on them postmortem.”
“Everything’s wrong about this picture, Alex. Holes only in the driver and the little guy? Joe Stud groped by a woman old enough to be his mother, looks like a church lady? What the hell is that, Alex? Something creepy-Oedipal? Or whatever you guys are calling it nowadays.”
I shook my head.
He said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, too early to expect wisdom.”
He looked over at the tent. “When the call came in, four bodies in a stretch, I was thinking, just what I need, a gang thing with a hip-hop angle. Or worse, some kids partying got wiped out by who-knows-who. Then I get here and it’s even crazier.”
He returned the panatela to his pocket. “Everyone’s weirded out, Alex. Even George Arredondo — the big tech — before he went scientific, he was on the job, patrol in the toughest part of Lancaster. Ten years of violent domestics, meth monsters, child murders. Nothing bothers him. This does.”
He got up, paced the pavilion, sat back down, rubbed his eyes. “Don’t hold back, I’ll settle for wild theory.”
I said, “Four victims, variation of method. So maybe they were killed separately, at different locations. At some point, they’re collected, cleaned up and costumed postmortem, placed in the car and driven up here. Then they’re splashed with blood and left to be discovered. It feels like some sort of a production. With all those steps, moving the bodies, probably more than one person. Or one bad guy who had plenty of time, a safe place to work, and the ability to escape on foot. Or he’d stashed one of those mini-bikes in the trunk.”
“A physically fit psycho,” he said. “Or a gang of zombie fiends. Wonderful. What else, keep ideating.”
The cigar made a second appearance. As I thought, he smoked. When I began talking, he stopped.
“We’re talking a killer or killers who knew the gate would be left open with no one around. That could mean a past partygoer. Or someone with a link to either the rental company or the house itself. What about the victim I.D.’s?”
He pulled out his notepad, flipped a page. “The men all had their wallets in their pant pockets, nothing on the women. The driver’s Solomon Roget, seventy-eight. I googled him. Legit livery driver, home address near Pico-Robertson, the limo’s registered to him along with a 2001 Cadillac sedan. The poor guy with his fly open is Richard Peter Gurnsey, thirty-six, Santa Monica, the little guy is Benson Mauricio Alvarez, forty-four, lives near downtown.”