Guilt

CHAPTER 25

Websites on New Orleans voodoo pulled up nothing about waxed infant skeletons. The closest match was a Day of the Dead offering to the ancestral spirit Gede that sometimes included bones.

Milo looked up the date of the rite. “November first. Months off.”

I said, “People improvise.”

“Some local whack concocted his own private sacrifice?”

“Making it up’s a lot easier and more lucrative than studying theology, Big Guy. Do-it-yourself religion’s the SoCal way.”

“Another Charlie Manson. Wonderful.”

“To a devout woman like Adriana, black-arts worship would’ve been the worst kind of heresy. But Qeesha could have been attracted to an occult group because it reminded her of her time in New Orleans. If it started to bother her and she wanted out and told Adriana about it, I’m betting Adriana would’ve jumped at helping her.”

“It was Qeesha picking her up in that red car.”

“Doesn’t sound as if unregistered wheels would be a problem for Qeesha.”

“Coupla old friends trying to escape the zombie horde.”

I said, “What if Qeesha’s involvement with the horde included getting pregnant? With Daddy being a loony warlock who ended up killing her and the baby? Adriana went looking for them, paid for her loyalty.”

“Adriana bailed on the Changs three months ago but she got shot a few days ago. What happened during the interim, Alex? Are we talking about a patient bunch of freaks? Because there’s no evidence she was confined. Zero signs of abuse on her body and those lig marks were relatively fresh.”

“Maybe she was careful, snooping around without showing herself. Until she did.”

He rubbed his face. “A picture just flashed in my head.”

“Black-robed ghouls chanting ominously in the moonlight?”

“You’re getting a little scary, dude.”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Ph.D.’s in psych,” I said. “The state grants us a license to mind-read.”

“What am I thinking now?”

“You’re back in Bizarro World with no damn leads.”

“Oh, man,” he said. “This case ever closes, we’re definitely playing the stock market.”

His desk phone jangled.

Dr. Clarice Jernigan said, “New lab result. Your victim Adriana Betts was dosed up before she was shot. Nothing illegal, her blood showed high concentrations of diphenhydramine. Your basic firstgeneration antihistamine, what they put in Benadryl.”

“How much is high, Doc?”

“Not a lethal dosage but enough to sedate her profoundly or put her out completely.”

“She was knocked out first, then shot.”

“That’s the sequence, Milo. To me it says a calculated offender operating in a highly structured manner. Seeing as her murder is probably related to that infant skeleton, we’re obviously dealing with someone who operates on a different psychiatric plane. Have you spoken to Delaware recently?”

I said, “Right here, Clarice.”

“Hi, Alex. I’m thinking a sociopath with some looseness of thought around the edges, or someone downright deranged who manages to keep his craziness under wraps. Not necessarily schizophrenic but maybe an isolated paranoid delusion. Make sense?”

“It does, Clarice. I’m also wondering if we’ve got a killer who lacks physical strength.”

“He uses a downer to incapacitate her? Sure, why not? What’s your take on the baby?”

“Beyond cruel.”

“Sorry I asked.”

After she hung up, Milo said, “Lack of physical strength. As in female?”

“Ray Lhermitte pegs Qeesha as a likely murderer. What if she acquired a taste for power and became a cult queen?”

“No warlock,” he said, “a nasty little witch. That’s turning it a whole new way. You’re saying she killed Adriana? What’s the motive? And why bring Adriana back to L.A. to do it?”

“Could’ve been something religious,” I said. “Uncomfortable truths about the cult. Adriana was outraged, threatened to go to the cops. That could explain the diphenhydramine. A relatively humane way to eliminate a former friend.”

“Then why shoot her in the head? Why not just poison her straight out?”

I had no answer for that.

He said, “Qeesha as Devil Spawn. We keep jumping around like frogs on a griddle. Sit around long enough, we can probably come up with another hundred scenarios.”

He stood, hitched his trousers. “One way or the other, I need to look for Ms. D’Embo aka Chambers aka God-Knows-Who-Else.”

I said, “If she’s driving unregistered wheels she could wrongly assume that’s another layer of security.”

“So focus on the car, maybe it’s stolen.”

“Starting with people who frequent the park.”

“And there’s restricted parking at night, so check for citations. Yeah, I like it, it’s damn close to normal police work.”

Moe Reed and Sean Binchy reported nothing fruitful from the canvass of park employees, patrons, and nearby residents. Both would re-inquire about red cars and dark SUVs.

While Milo checked the grand theft auto file I stepped into the hall and phoned Holly Ruche.

She said, “I hope you’re not mad at me. For canceling.”

“I’m sure you had a good reason.”

“I–I’ll explain when I come in. If you’ll take me.”

“No problem.”

“Just like that? Do you have time tomorrow?”

I checked my book. “Eleven a.m. works.”

“Wow,” she said. “You’re not that busy, huh?”

“Looking forward to seeing you, Holly.”

“I’m so sorry. That was bratty.”

“How’s the house going?”

“The house?”

“Remodeling.”

“Oh,” she said. “Nothing’s really happening … I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. Eleven, right?”

“Right.”

“Thanks again, Dr. Delaware. You’ve been incredibly tolerant.”

I returned to Milo’s office. He said, “No vehicles were ticketed that night. These are the theft stats, not as bad as I expected.”

He showed me his notes. Sixteen thousand GTAs in the city of L.A. over the past year. The three-month total was three thousand, eight hundred fifty-four. Of those, six hundred thirty-three were red. West-side red GTAs numbered twenty-eight. Ten of those had been recovered.

Milo got on the phone and questioned the detectives assigned to the eighteen open cases. Seven were suspected insurance scams, all from a section of Pico-Robertson, with the reporting individuals members of a small-time Ukrainian gang. Of the remaining eleven cars, one was a four-hundred-thousand-dollar Ferrari lifted from the Palisades, the other a comparably priced Lamborghini taken in Holmby Hills, both deemed improbable choices for the car Lilly Chang had seen because of their conspicuousness and the engine noise they’d generate.

The D handling the exotics was a woman named Loretta Thayer. She said, “If your witness didn’t hear a roar that set off the Richter scale it wasn’t one of those. Same for a red Porsche Turbo I just picked up that’s not in the files yet.”

Milo said, “Spate of red hotwheel heists?”

“Interesting, no?” said Thayer. “My hunch is they’re going to the same collector overseas, probably Asia or the Mideast.”

“Toys for some oil sheik’s twelve-year-old to roll around the desert in.”

“At that age,” said Thayer, “I was happy to have roller skates.”

Milo emailed photos of Charlene Chambers/Qeesha D’Embo to Thayer and two other detectives, asked them to show the images to their victims.

Thayer called back an hour later. “Sorry, no recognition.”

“That was fast.”

“Protect and serve, Lieutenant. It helps being on the Westside, everyone’s got a computer or an iPhone, I reached them electronically.”

No calls back from the other D’s for the next half hour. Milo worked on some overdue files and I read abstracts of psych articles on his computer.

He looked at his watch. “More I think about it, more of a waste of time the car angle seems. It could be unregistered but not stolen. Or Lilly Chang remembers wrong and it wasn’t even red-hell, maybe it was a scooter. Or an RV. Or a horse and buggy.”

I said, “Power of positive thinking.”

“Wanna hear positive? Time for lunch.”

“The usual?”

“No, I’m craving vegan. Just kidding.”

We drove to a steak house a mile west of the station, sawed through a couple of T-bones, and drove back to his office where he picked up replies from the remaining auto theft detectives. None of their victims recognized Qeesha but a D II named Doug Groot said, “It’s possible one of my victims lied.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The usual tells,” said Groot. “Looking everywhere but at me, too quick on the draw, like he’d rehearsed it. Also, he just gave me a feeling from the beginning. The car was a nice one, BMW 5 series, all tricked out, only a couple of years old, low mileage. But he didn’t seem that bugged about having it boosted. Made the right speech but no emotion-again, like he’d rehearsed.”

“Insurance thing?” said Milo.

“He filed with his carrier the day after I interviewed him.”

“When did it happen?”

“Nineteen months ago.”

“What were the circumstances?”

“Taken from his driveway sometime during the night,” said Groot. “It’s not impossible, his building’s got an open carport. But supposedly he’d left it locked with the security system set and I talked to the neighbors and no one heard any alarm go off. He seemed so hinky I actually ran a check on him. But he had no obvious ties to any scammers, no record of anything.”

“What’s this solid citizen’s name?”

“Melvin Jaron Wedd, like getting married but two ‘d’s.”

“This guy really twanged your antenna, huh?”

“You know what it’s like, El Tee. Sometimes you get a feeling. Unfortunately none of mine led anywhere. The car’s never shown up.”

“Loretta said nice red wheels might be going to the Mideast.”

“Two-year-old Bimmer’s nice,” said Groot, “but probably not nice enough for that. Mexico or Central America, maybe. For all I know it’s being used to ferry around Zeta hit men.”

“What line of work is Wedd in?”

“Something showbizzy. Can I ask what your curiosity is about the car and this Chambers woman?”

“She might be a really bad girl,” said Milo. “Or a victim. Or neither and I’m spinning my wire wheels.”

Groot chuckled. “The job as usual. You want to follow up with Wedd?”

“Might as well.”

“Here’s his info.”

Milo copied, thanked Groot, clicked off. Seconds later, he’d pulled Melvin Jaron Wedd’s driver’s license.

Male white, thirty-seven, six two, one ninety, brown, brown, needs corrective lenses.

Wedd’s photo showed him with a pink, squarish face, smallish eyes, thin lips, a dark spiky haircut. He’d posed in a black V-necked T-shirt. Black-framed glasses gave him the hipster-geek look of any other Westside guy working a Mac at a Starbucks table.

“Doesn’t look like a warlock,” said Milo.

I said, “More like Clark Kent at leisure.”

He ran Wedd through the banks just in case something had popped up since Groot’s search. No criminal record, a scatter of parking tickets, the most recent thirty months ago. All paid in a timely fashion.

Then he switched to the DMV files and said, “Well, looky here.”

Wedd’s new registered vehicle was a black Ford Explorer, purchased brand-new, three weeks after the theft of the red BMW. “Be interesting if he jacked it way up and stuck on fancy rims.”

He shifted to the Web, called up an image of an Explorer enhanced that way, sent the picture to Heather Goldfeder, and asked if it resembled the SUV she’d seen.

Seconds later: cud b cant say 4 sure how r u.

He sent back a happy face emoticon.

Her instant response: me 2 xoxoxo.

The landline and cell phone Groot had given for Wedd were unresponsive to Milo’s calls. No message machine on either.

He said, “A fellow who likes his privacy. Let’s invade it.”

The address was an apartment west of Barrington and just north of Wilshire. Officially Brentwood, but not what you thought of when someone said Brentwood.

Quarter-hour drive from the station under the worst circumstances. Circumstances were favorable: i.e., Milo’s leaden foot. We made it in eight.