Breakdown

Chapter 39

Two “high profile” suspects, due to return to the country in three days, qualified as “complicated” and complicated means everyone has an opinion.

Milo’s captain weighed in. So did a deputy chief who claimed to be representing the chief. Though beckoned back from Hawaii by his boss, John Nguyen bargained for a few extra days with his wife (“to avoid a shallow grave for myself”) and communicated by phone. (“No Skype, Milo, all I’ve got is aloha shirts.”)

The result of all that discussion was a decision to “fast-track” the investigation but no details about what that meant were offered by anyone above Milo.

He did what he’d planned to do all along, aided by the grudging cooperation of Dr. William Bernstein.

Imelda Soriano’s body was identified quickly using dental records provided by her family, with DNA confirmation pending once a sample harvested from her bone marrow and a cheek-scrape taken from her grief-stricken son were analyzed at the Department of Justice lab.

Maria Garcia had moved from the room she’d shared with Alicia Santos. Lorrie Mendez finally located her at a flophouse in East L.A. and after doing her own crisis intervention, pried out the fact that Alicia hadn’t seen a dentist since arriving from Mexico. But she had been seen at a walk-in clinica for a sprained wrist just prior to beginning work on St. Denis Lane.

An X-ray taken there revealed a healed hairline fracture in her radius, a defect that matched one found on the right arm of the dark-haired corpse.

Genetic material from the long-buried skeleton under Imelda was harder to obtain, but Dr. Gregor Poplawsky, working with an experienced crypt tech named Selena Merton, kept at it and managed to pull up specks of tissue from inside the left femur, yielding minute amounts of mitochondrial DNA. That and tissue taken from Zelda’s body — still unclaimed and unburied — had also been sent to the DOJ.

“Results won’t come back before the bad guys do but I’ll take bets it’s Zina,” said Milo. “Unless they killed someone else and she’s still down there.”

I said, “You’re wondering about other bodies?”

“Who the hell knows? Someone gets away with stuff for years, why stop at three? I went looking for details on the deaths of Enid’s other sibs, finally got hold of them a few hours ago. Two are clearly natural: the oldest brother died of lung cancer, the sister, ovarian. But James Finbar, the one who bothered to call Ott, is listed as exsanguination from a bleeding ulcer with associated gastritis and that doesn’t sound so different from what happened to Zelda. And Rod Salton. Speaking of which, John’s adamant: only three names on the arrest warrant, insufficient evidence on Salton.”

“Two poisonings with plant material found in Enid’s garden doesn’t impress him?”

“John knows the truth and so does his boss, but you know lawyers. At graduation they get a kit for sewing ass-covers along with their degrees. If colchicine had also been used on Salton, that might’ve been enough to squeak it through, but two different poisons means an opening for defense sharks. I’ll be searching the house later today. I luck out and find Enid’s written recipes for two flavors of witch’s brew, it’s a different story. Barring that, I’ll settle for diaries, financial documents, explicit written confessions.”

I said, “Four people and maybe her brother. The only sib remotely sympathetic to Zina, so he had to be taken care of.”

“Or she just wanted his inheritance too. Poor Jimmy had no wife, no kids, seems to be what they used to call a confirmed bachelor.”

“His will didn’t make bequests to anyone else?”

“No will on record, so far. Rich guy living off a trust, not expecting to die, he could’ve put it off.”

“Giving Enid the chance to finish him off before he filed papers.”

“Or maybe he told Enid he had plans to write a will and she did some preventive pharmacology.”

“When did he die?”

“A few months after he called Ott.”

“He could’ve had suspicions about Zina’s disappearance.”

“Would I like to have Cleveland disinter him? You bet, at some point, but right now I’m concentrating on local bodies. Meanwhile, I’m hassling with Homeland Security.”

“Over what?”

“Who gets to put the cuffs on the evil bitch.”

We spoke the following morning. The house search hadn’t uncovered any diaries or financial documents but he was smiling.

Milo said, “Papers could be in Loach’s office, or her safe, still waiting for someone who can get in there. The main thing is, other goodies abound. I found a box of Vuitton chewing gum in her nightstand drawer and Gucci sneakers that match one of the casts in her closet. Along with about three hundred other pairs of shoes. Ol’ Averell had a nice firearms collection, mostly Italian and British shotguns that haven’t been fired in a long time but also an old but recently oiled .22 Smith and Wesson revolver that I just sent to Ballistics. The finishing touch was a whole collections of books on poisons in the library, nonfiction as well as novels. They were easy to spot because everything else on the shelves was that leather-bound stuff decorators install by the yard.”

“Speaking of decorators, anything from the landscaper?”

“She’s in England at a big show, obviously I’m not going to leave a message. But the gardeners confirm they never went into the forest. White Glove is scheduled to clean today, I was careful to finish last night, kept it neat. Unless they count the guns, they’ll never know I was there.”

“Have you worked out the cuff thing with Homeland yet?”

“Still under review,” he said. “You know the feds. They’re all into process.”