Heartbreak Hotel

Chapter 31

L.A. County’s Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center is six stories of white punctuated by red brick and glass, perched at the mouth of the Cal State L.A. campus.

The ride on the 10 East took the unmarked where tourist buses don’t venture: a sixty-five-mph drive-by of big-box discounters, car lots, and purveyors of industrial grit.

Once we got off the freeway and drove up a hill to campus, all was sunny and crisp. None of the ivy-clad antiquity of the city’s Big Two, here. This was unpretentious functionality spread across gently rolling terrain.

After nearly a decade, the crime lab still sparkles. This morning, a sky scrubbed blue by hot dry winds added extra wattage. Parking was ample. A few students and staffers strolled. The view to the west was crystalline, the Hollywood sign visible thirty miles away.

Pleasant place; you’d never know death paid the bills.

We checked in at the glassed-in reception desk and waited. White-coats and cops in blue or tan uniforms passed by. L.A. crime is handled by a pair of goliaths: LAPD tends to the four million people living and misbehaving within the city limits, the sheriff has dominion over the eight million who reside in the remainder of the county.

At Hertzberg, that leads to a curious accommodation: Labs and offices are divided up and demarcated by green and blue nameplates. Two evidence rooms, separate microscopes, but some facilities are shared. The potential for chaos seems obvious but everyone seems to get along. These are scientists and techs who take the job seriously.

The lab’s commanding officer, a trim blonde named Noreen Sharp, came out to meet us.

She said, “You’re here to arrange transfer of the Mars property. Thanks.”

Milo smiled and did that shambling aw-shucks thing. “Actually—”

“You’re not,” said Sharp. “What’s going on, Milo?”

“Noreen, I swear I’ll do it soon as I can, but right now I need to check a specific piece of evidence.”

“In the Mars bunch.”

“Yes.”

“Like what?”

He explained.

Noreen Sharp said, “I wish someone would’ve told me, we’d have logged it separately.”

“Someone didn’t know.”

She smiled. “Got it. Well if it’s not here, it never arrived. I supervised the initial loading myself due to the volume of objects and my code’s the only one that unlocks the bay. What exactly is it worth?”

“Don’t know yet, Noreen.”

“But obviously we’re talking huge. Lucky for you I’ve held on to my moral compass.”

We took the elevator down and entered a white corridor. Quiet as a Trappist monastery; the entire facility was. Any time I’d been there, it was like that. Shrine to Science.

Noreen Sharp picked up a video camera and walked us past darkened labs and the gun library to the auto bays. Stopping at one, she used her left hand to conceal her right as she punched a code into a numbered grid. Hiding the combination but doing it casually. No offense, business as usual.

The door clicked open. The interior was the size of a double garage with a high ceiling, block walls, a cement floor, and a hydraulic lift stored in a corner.

Chilly. Noreen Sharp said, “Yup, nippy, be nice for wine.” She pointed to a rear door. “You know where that leads.”

Milo said, “The loading area.”

“Got to get the cars in somehow,” she said. “Have you ever been back there?”

“Nope.”

She walked over, pushed a similar grid on the far wall, and the back door opened. Daylight over asphalt, a lot big enough for a fleet.

“Completely fenced, guys. No one gets in unless we want them to. I’m telling you this so no matter what you find, there’ll be no misunderstanding. Ms. Mars’s property arrived on one of our trucks that stopped just outside as the contents were unloaded.”

She closed the door. “Okay, all this is cataloged but it’s not arranged in any order, so you’ll have to look.”

“All this” referred to a mass of shapes in the center of the bay, wrapped in heavy-duty plastic that brought to mind bodies in the crypt, and secured by duct tape. Along with that, several cardboard boxes were marked Mars, T, along with a case number, date of death, and a stick-on label stating Deceased Personal Effects.

The sizable objects were a couple of sofas, a mattress, and a deconstructed bed canopy. Even with them, Thalia’s possessions took up a pitiably small space.

A century of life memorialized in less than half of a cold, gray room.

Milo turned to me. “See it?”

“Right there.” I pointed to a vertical package sandwiched between the cartons and what I recognized as an end table.

“Can he go over there, Noreen?”

“Sure.” She hefted the camera. “But given what we’re looking for, I’m going to video you, Doctor. For documentation.”

I made my way to the upright form. Floor lamp with a glass shade. What Milo had called a Tiffany but I knew to be improbably crude for such.

The shade, a dome studded with bubbles of red glass.

The last time I’d seen it, it had sported a red finial. Oval, faceted, of a size that made me assume cut glass.

“Can I touch it?”

Noreen Sharp said, “First point, then touch.”

I prodded the top of the shade, pushing down on taut plastic to make sure.

No need to unwrap. I’d felt and seen enough.

Where the finial had sat, just a socket.

I said, “It’s gone.”

Noreen Sharp exhaled and talked to the camera. “Dr. Alexander Delaware, a police consultant, has just identified what he feels is an absent component of what appears to be a floor lamp. The lamp in question was delivered to us wrapped precisely as it is now, as were all of Victim T. Mars’s personal effects. No one has been in this storage area since the arrival of those objects and the subsequent locking of the auto bay in which we currently stand.”

She swung the lens toward Milo.

He said, “This is Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, LAPD Homicide, West L.A. Division. I was present at the crime scene of victim T. Mars and personally oversaw the wrapping and carting of all personal effects of victim T. Mars.”

Sharp said, “Now we are going to unwrap the object in question to verify Dr. Alexander Delaware’s perception.”

She pulled out the lamp, used a penknife to deftly snip the tape, took her time unwrapping as Milo held the base for stability.

Perception verified.

Noreen Sharp put the camera down. “Obviously some defense attorney can always say one of your guys or one of our guys stole it. I think we’re looking pretty solid, that’s why I always play it by the books. But you know how it is post-O.J.”

“One way to avoid that bullshit, Noreen, is for me to find the damn ruby and solve the damn case. So let’s keep this quiet.”

“Something like that missing?” she said. “I need to file papers.”

“I know that but keep them in your desk until I tell you.”

“For how long?”

“Wish I knew.”

“Hmm.”

“Please, Noreen.”

She took in the room, shook her head. “I’ll do what I can. And both of you will need to fill out incident reports, plus we’ve still got the other problem: What if I need the bay for an actual car?”

“Can you find another place for the stuff?”

“Probably, but it might have to be divided up. And given what’s happened, we’re adding another layer of complication.”

“Let the chips fall, Noreen. I’ll make sure it’s my problem, not yours.”

“Appreciate the sentiment, Milo, but it’s not always up to people at our salary grade. Meanwhile, I’m changing the code to the bay. Going to find my deputy and have him witness it and video that, too.”

She phoned an extension. “Bay Three, Arnie, A-sap.” Unflappable blue eyes scanned the space again, settled on the bubble-glass lamp. “We need some idea about what we’re dealing with in terms of value, so if you could get an appraisal? I realize it would be without an in-person inspection and less than sterling, but it’s important to document on at least a theoretical level.”

“You read my mind, Noreen.”

“A clairvoyant?” she said. “We haven’t established that division, yet.”

Reports written and signed, we got in the car and headed back to the freeway.

Milo said, “She’s right, we could use an appraisal.” Looking at his Timex. “Not exactly my field of expertise.”

I said, “I know a guy.”

He looked at me. “You always do.”

Elie Aronson sold high-quality diamonds and custom jewelry from a vault-like office in a building on Hill Street, downtown. A judge who loved his wife had referred me to Elie as a source for “When you really mean it, or have to atone.”

I’d bought a few pieces from him for Robin. Last year, we’d done an insurance appraisal. Everything from Elie had appreciated.

We were approaching downtown when I reached his cellphone. He said, “What are you looking for?”

“Information.” I explained.

“I’m having lunch, when do you want to come?”

“I can be there in ten.”

“Fifteen, I’ll be finished with my shawarma, drive slow. Then we need to go fast, in twenty-five I got an appointment. I wait for you out front, okay, and we do it chick-chock.”

He stood to the right of the building’s guarded brass doors, wearing a white shirt, pressed jeans, and red calfskin loafers. Muscular Israeli in his fifties with an unlined face, a luxuriant mass of wavy gray hair, and piercing black eyes. No trace of bling on him, not even a digital watch.

Milo pulled to the curb and I stuck my head out the passenger window. Elie looked around and got into the backseat of the unmarked.

“A police car,” he said. “Looks like I’m being arrested. How you doing, Doctor?”

“Good. You?”

“Can’t complain. Wouldn’t help anyway.”

He looked at Milo. Traffic zipped by as I made the introductions.

Milo said, “Appreciate the consult, sir.”

“Hey,” said Elie, “you guys protect me, I shouldn’t help you? Okay, show me the picture of this thing.”

I handed him the black-and-white from the museum show.

He glanced at it briefly, handed it back. “Can’t tell from that.”

Milo said, “Can you give a general idea?”

“I give you something but I don’t promise, too many iffies. First thing, is it genuine? Second, is it Burmese? Was it heat-treated? Do you got serious inclusions? Even with that it’s a tough thing. Something that size, it gets complicated. But... real, Burmese, no problems... it’s millions. How many?” He shrugged. “Could be two, could be eight, could be ten, could be twenty, if the color and clarity are super-good. But then there’s the market, another complication.”

“The market’s unstable?” said Milo.

“There’s fluctuations,” said Elie. “Also the larger the stone, the pool of customers gets small, there’s no standard, everything’s negotiable. Top of that, if it’s stolen, it’s gonna go cheap, like ten percent of value. But still, this size, a real Burmese... I don’t see it not being millions.”

I said, “What about the provenance?”

“Some guy showed it at a museum a hundred years ago? Big deal. Unless you get a collector of historicals who also has the big money. No one cares about a hundred years, these things are billions of years old.”

Milo said, “Any guess where it might end up?”

“If I’m betting, I’m putting my money on Asia, number one, an oil state, number two, Russia, number three. Maybe Russia is even two, they got oligarchs, want everything big and flashy for the twelve girlfriends.”

Milo said, “No buyers in the States?”

“I’m not saying no, Lieutenant, but that wouldn’t be my bet. Someone buys a stone this big and hot and wants to keep it here, they going to have to hide it. No way the girlfriend can go to the party with it dangling from a chain. Asia, Abu Dhabi, Russia, they don’t care.”

“Meaning it could already be gone.”

“I wish I could give you good news but that’s my other bet. Who belonged to it?”

“An old lady who got murdered.”

“Oh.” Elie shook his head. “That’s terrible, I’m sorry for her. You want, I can ask around but I don’t think I’m gonna learn anything.”

Milo said, “We’d sure appreciate anything you can do.”

“You bet.” He reached for the door handle. “Murdered for a piece of carbon. Same old story.”