Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 7

Dead Dahlia

Molina faced an office full of loose ends: crime scene photos; detectives' reports; Alch and Su sitting across from her, asking as many questions as they answered.

She studied the overview photo now front and center again. A woman's body, twisting in death, her half-visible face frozen in an unvoiced scream. It reminded her of the artist Munch's agonized Expressionistic figure from the painting called "The Scream." the one that novelty manufacturers printed on large blow-up balloons and sold as a symbol of modern angst for entertainment value.

"I could see the ligature mark in the parking lot," she said.

"The . . . implement was gone, but not forgotten," Su noted. One of her mandarin--orange-enameled fingernails expertly flicked a photo from its place in the pile into Full view.

"Interesting. Some sort of cord, possibly wire with nodules along the length."

"Barbed wire."

Alch nodded. "You could call it that. But not as sharp as the varieties you customarily think of."

"Do you know how many varieties of barbed wire there ate?"

Su's dry but eager academic voice added. "Hundreds."

"And Nevada uses every one. I bet." Molina predicted.

"Maybe." Su had not yet finished her research.

"Stab wounds?" Molina asked. The medical examiner's report would contain it all, but the clinical detail often obscured the humanity of the death and the motive, the feel of the death scene.

Su leaned forward. Alch never did, but he answered. "Another oddity. Some tiny defense cuts on the hands. Not many. She was choked to semi-consciousness first. A slash in the throat after she was dead."

"Ah." Molina nodded at her detectives. The gratuitous blow, not the killing one, testified the most. Neck-slashers wanted to silence. Maybe they wanted to silence the victim. More often they wanted to silence the internalized voice in their own heads, the one that said they would die unless they killed.

"And did she leave anything?"

Alch shook his head. "We rousted the restaurant staff and the band within thirty hours.

None of them admit to recognizing her description, although we don't have a photo a civilian could see past to recognize someone with. They all left from the small employee parking lot on the west side of the building, just as you indicated, Lieutenant."

He gave her a particularly boyish look from under graying eye-brows. "You said you were there alone, and the last customer to leave. You patronize the place often?"

"You're a good detective. Morey. I'm a music buff. That's why I go there. Not everybody shares my enthusiasm."

"The band guys say they stayed late to jam."

"Yeah."

"And did they let you listen in on the session, 'cause you're a regular?"

"Yeah. I'm a regular."

"That's what they said too. They said you left when they knocked off, about three A.M."

She nodded. "It's my only vice, Morey. I've got a great sitter for Mariah, stays all night."

"Solitary vice."

Molina shrugged. "In my position--"

Su was rapping her lethal nails on the glass desktop, impatient to talk about something of substance, like wounds or possible suspects.

Alch got the picture. In her position, Molina couldn't socialize regularly in the cop bars around town, and didn't care to anyway.

She didn't dare date inside the department, and her hours and single parenthood kept her off the streets, except on occasion when she went to the Blue Dahlia.

If she had to, Molina would let Alch and Su in on her avocation. But not unless it was absolutely necessary, Carmen worked as a pressure-reliever only because she was a figment of everyone's imagination. The moment she became too real, she would have to die.

And Carmen Molina really didn't want two women to have died in the Blue Dahlia parking lot that Friday night.

"So we've got a mystery woman," Alch summed up, gathering the scattered materials into the manila folder and rapping it sharply on the glass so no untidy ends poked out.

Molina nodded. " 'She left.' A lot of women have, and have ended up dead for it. Just make sure that we don't end up with a mystery killer."