Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 26

Little Green Apples

They were just manila folders, bland vanilla-colored poster board rectangles. He would never even notice them in most offices. But on a homicide lieutenant's desk. . . .

Matt found his glance flickering over them even as he absorbed Molina's deliberate, monotone recital of the facts surrounding two brutal murders.

Her manner reminded him of priests who sleep-talked their way through the Anointing of the Sick--a sacrament once more dramatically called Extreme Unction, the last anointing-their droning murmurs downplaying the ritual's mortal nature. Routinely looking death in the face seemed to demand a defensive stoicism.

"There aren't as many serial killers around as the media would have the public think,"

Molina was saving. "Thanks to all the books and movies, they're the superstars of the crime-entertainment industry: exotic, scary, and masters of bizarre, random murders meant to shock the public. So-called crimes of passion are much bloodier, and more intimate. Only one person, or a cluster of persons, are targeted. Of course we're now in the era of the terrorist-style murder, where anger at the one person targeted overflows to everyone nearby. That's another unsettling pattern."

"But."

"But: These two murders have earmarks of both single killing and serial killings. But: just as one swallow does not a summer make, neither do two apparently similar killings a serial "killer indicate."

"What do you think I can tell you?"

"l have no idea."

"You really want to interrogate Temple, don't you? But you can't, not without revealing the presence of the ring Max gave her."

"Oh, l can do anything. Whether l get results or not is a different matter." Her voice took on the sardonically self-mocking tone it was wont to use lately.

Matt guessed that Temple and her circle of acquaintances had become quite a crown of thorns for Lieutenant C. R. Molina.

"I am loath to think that every murder in Las Vegas has a link to Temple Barr," she went on. "Or to you. Though it's beginning to look like that in this case, too. All l ask is that you review the evidence, see if it rings any chimes of memory. Or suspicion.

You've spent enough time around her; you ought to know her methods by now, or lack of them."

Matt nodded and sat forward. He'd rather see the contents of those faceless manila folders than sit here guessing at them.

Molina spread her fingers over the folders, aware of his impatience, yet not inclined to share the evidence. Her remarkable blue eyes seemed to darken with seriousness.

"Evidence of murder is not pretty; I'm sure you know that. Evidence of violent crime is often shocking to the layperson. Remember, what you're seeing are just remains. You're looking for details, evidence, conclusions visible on the shell of a dead person, not searching for any exit wounds that might indicate the passage of a human soul. All right?"

Matt nodded. Clinical was the only way to go. He could do that. Especially when he thought how ghoulishly jealous Temple would be that Molina had shared her graphic evidence with him and not her.

Molina spun one fat folder around to face him.

He opened it gingerly, recalling the story of Pandora's Box. Only these evils were already long since loosed in the world.

"These are taken for evidence," she warned him. "Not for composition, not for aesthetic reasons at all."

The pictures were as raw as advertised.

Close-up after close-up of damaged flesh. Some were at the crime scene. Some post-autopsy. All unsparing.

He shuffled through them, aiming at the kind of detachment Molina's voice had implied.

Dead indifference.

"That is the first victim," she said as he studied them.

"Not where the ring was found ?"

"No. Though--"

Matt was glad to hear her hesitation. It gave him an excuse to lift his eyes from the photographs. Years of priesthood, intensified by months of" the audio interaction of hotline counseling, had honed his ear for what people had been about to say as well as for what they actually said.

"Though what?"

"Another funny thing about the two cases. Victim one's third left finger was narrowed at the base and slightly callused."

"As though she'd worn a wedding ring for years."

"Exactly. Yet no ring or jewelry of any kind was found at her death scene. Whereas victim number two--" Molina lifted the Baggie with the ring she had shown him earlier and pushed another manila folder across the glass-covered desktop.

"Whereas victim number two," Matt mimicked, "had a ring, not hers, in the vicinity, and her hands--" He was getting better at shuffling through the photos without being waylaid by shots that made his heart and fingers stop their routine work of beating and-riffling.

Matt frowned as he isolated the photos of the second victim's hands. "No ring depressions.

Unless the photographs--"

"I looked over the actual body. No ring depressions, although her ears were pierced."

"May I?" He reached for the ring bag.

"I'm trying to trace it," she mentioned as she passed it over.

The ring weighed down one corner of the plastic bag, like an internal anchor. Examining it through plastic was like underwater photography, not quite satisfying. It was a gold band of equal width all around, but the irregular studding of small diamonds, the geometrical slash of inlaid opal, made it more of a fashion statement than either an engagement ring or a future wedding band.

"Count on the Mystifying Max," Molina put in, "to be ambiguous even in the design and purpose of a ring. I wonder if even

Temple Barr knows what he meant by that."

"It's sophisticated," he admitted. "Doesn't seem to go with that second dead woman."

"Why do you say that?"

"She looks very Las Vegas; this ring is a work of art."

She nodded. "If you were to remove it from the bag, which I'll thank you not to do, you'd find a designer symbol next to the fourteen-carat gold stamp. Unfortunately, given Kinsella's globe-trotting past, the ring could be from any exotic corner of the world."

Matt nodded, flipping open the first folder, then the second.

"This woman was found at the Blue Dahlia; this one at the church parking lot ?"

"That's right. The first victim is probably in her early fifties.

The second is forty-something. We're not sure because there are tiny scars along her hairline."

"A face lift. Already?"

"You were the one who said she looked like Las Vegas; Las Vegas is full of women who've made a point of making themselves look younger."

"They're so different."

"And one really big difference." Molina pulled a third folder from her desk drawer and tossed it onto the desk, like a winning card in a game of poker.

He opened it, braced for more carnage . . .

. . . and saw a photograph of the side of a car. "She left," read the straggling black spray paint over the driver's side door.

"This looks like--"

"My car," Molina said ruefully. "At least, my car did look that until l had the door repainted after it had been through a forensic examination."

"Body number one was found near your car?"

"Next to it. On the Blue Dahlia lot."

"When?"

"You want date or time?"

"Both."

"Tuesday, at about three AM. I had stayed late to jam with the band."

Matt repeated the differences. "No ring, no makeup. Older."

"Clothes considerably plainer than those on body number two."

"Less well dressed, and found in a club parking lot. Whereas Miss Las Vegas is found in a no-name church parking lot miles away, and only how many days later?"

"Two. Yes, that's awfully soon for a serial killer to strike again."

"Both strangled?"

"We don't know what was used on the first. A knotted scarf--missing, naturally--may have been used on the second victim. It could have been hers. In both cases, whatever strangled the victims was prepared in advance. Knotted at regular intervals."

"Aren't there garrotes that are made like that?"

"There are garrotes made every which way. But the marks on that first victim are puzzling.

We've made a list of all sorts of thing, and nothing quite fits the size of the knots, or the spacing, which is very close, or the pattern."

Matt stared at the first victim's neck; small, regular bruises circled the skin like a tattooed necklace of beads.

"This reminds me of something."

"A similar death ?"

"Nothing grisly like that. Something about the size and spacing of the marks. You tried electrical cord, of course?"

Molina consulted her list. "Number nine: electrical cord; knots too misshapen and too large."

"What about that other kind of cord? Gosh, what was it?

Fabric-wrapped. Old-fashioned."

"You're saying she was strangled with vintage cord ?"

"I think they still use it on . . . I know! Irons."

"Oh. We hadn't thought of that one, no. I bet it wouldn't knot tightly enough to produce such close-set contusions, though."

"I don't know. I'd have to try it."

"Do you even have an iron?"

"Uh, no."

"Then leave the crime reenactment to us, okay?" She leaned down to open the bottom drawer in her desk. "That brings us to the clothes." Two brown paper bags hit the desk like hag lunches for giants, along with latex gloves, his and hers. "See what you make of them." Matt's gloved hands hovered over the first bag.

"It's okay. Forensics has sucked everything off them they can use."

"It's not that. Clothes are so much more personal than photographs."

"Skip it, then."

"No! Those throat marks are bothering me. It's like I can almost visualize something that would fit them."

"Don't tell me! You're discovering psychic depths you never knew you had."

"No. Not that, it's a memory problem. Maybe something they wore--"

Matt gingerly removed the contents of the first bag. When he was done he had a motley pile: snakeskin-print gray leggings, a purple knit tunic, a yellow jog bra, something lacy and shiny he let remain in a crumpled pile, a hair clip with a purple chiffon bow attached.

"Not exactly church wear." Molina commented.

"These days, who knows? This woman would have worn jewelry."

"And lots of it. You're right. inexpensive stuff, for the most part. So who would have taken it, and why?"

"And why leave a really fine ring behind in its place?"

"The good ring could have been dropped accidentally. It's clear in both of these cases that the killer or killers went to some lengths to make sure the victims weren't identified, at least not too quickly, if at all."

"So then who they are is a clue to why they were killed."

"Maybe. Only the Strawberry Lady's bag left."

Matt tackled the second paper bag while Molina shoveled clothes back into the first one.

"Why do you call her the Strawberry Lady?" he asked, unsealing the bag. The odor drove his face back a foot. "Never mind.

I recognize that stuff."

"So do we all. Rest room. car and inadvertent sinus freshener.

And I used to like the scent of strawberries."

"It's really overwhelming coming out of this bag." Matt pulled out more folded clothes: skirt, jacket, blouse, all man-made fabrics like the other woman's. These felt of better quality, though, and the design was more conventional.

Matt pushed the clothes back before he was forced to confront more dead women's underwear. "I'm no expert on women's clothes. Temple would know about that." He paused in pushing the bag back over to Molina's side of the desk. "Except--"

"Yes?"

"That deodorizer odor. I've smelled it in less concentrated form somewhere else than in a car or a rest room."

"where?"

"I don't know. But wherever it was, I was there with Temple. I remember afterwards, after getting away from that awful strawberry scent, wherever it was, that her hair smelled of green apple, which was much better."

"Green apple, huh? Did you know that they're using green apple, scent as a diet aid? Take a sniff to get over what you crave. That work for you?"

"I don't need to lose weight," Matt said, ignoring her jibe.

"And l think you'd better brace yourself. You can't go around Temple on this one. You'll just have to ask for her help."