The Museum of Desire

Chapter 32

We were back at my house by five forty. Twenty minutes to go for Moe Reed’s watch on Okash. As the unmarked idled, Milo phoned him.

Reed said, “No movement, L.T., her lights are still off and her car’s still here.”

He recapped the talk with Crispin. “Let Alicia and Sean know.”

“Kid probably saw the murderers,” said Reed, “but no facial recognition — that psychiatrist — Oliver Sacks — Liz gave me one of his books, he had the same thing.”

“The way my luck’s going, he’ll be my next potential witness.”

“He passed away, L.T.”

“Proves my point.”

Silent house, Robin working, Blanche assisting. I made coffee, drank it on my battered leather couch, and wondered if there was anything else I could do. The databases had yielded little about the woman Medina Okash had slashed but the D’s had been too busy to dig deeper, so why not give it a try?

I keyworded contessa welles. Nothing. Maybe a nickname. Or as Reed had suggested, an NYPD clerical error.

I began pairing welles with connie, constance, consuela and ran into the opposite problem: too many hits. The two most interesting were a character in a Robert B. Parker novel and a wounded Andean condor in a Peruvian bird sanctuary. Avian Connie had learned to nibble treats daintily from her keeper’s hand.

The flood of names drained quickly as I filtered by age and geography, assuming Okash’s victim was around her age, give or take five years on either side, and had lived in or near New York. I repeated the process with wells with no greater success. Returned to contessa paired with surnames that a tired desk officer might confuse with Welles.

Welch, Welsh, Walsh, Walls.

Ping.

Two bottom-of-the-page paragraphs in the Newark Star-Ledger’s online archive reported the death, two years ago, of Contessa Walls, age thirty-six.

The decedent had been found hanging in an isolation cell at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, New Jersey. Six years into a ten-year sentence for attempted murder; she’d spent most of that time in the prison’s mental health facility. At the time of her demise, she’d been in isolation due to disruptive behavior but not on suicide watch.

Note was made of a scandal the previous year involving male guards sexually abusing female inmates.

I searched for contessa walls medina okash and got a single hit. With Okash’s name crossed out, so much for that. But the content gave me a lead.

Online sympathy message posted to the O’Reilly Funeral Home in Newark a week after Walls’s death.

One woman by that name, living locally.

A convent in Bel Air? I looked up the address. Sure enough: the foothills north of Sunset and west of the U.

I went out to Robin’s studio. She had on her full-face safety helmet and overalls. The exhaust fan whirred. A rosewood guitar back was held steady on her bench. Pretty wood but toxic dust. A routing jig Robin had designed and built was clamped perpendicular to the tabletop.

She was busy channeling hair-like layers of multicolored wood binding into place. Delicate work. I held back so as not to distract her. She saw me anyway, flipped up the helmet’s plastic shield, shut off the fan with a foot pedal. “Hi, babe. What time is it?”

“Six forty.”

“I got caught up. Some of this binding is satinwood and it loves to snap. I want to do it in one swoop, avoid irregularities.”

“No prob, I’m going out for a short ride.”

“Where?”

“A convent.”

She smiled. “I won’t ask but at least it’s not a monastery.”

“Want me to pick up dinner?”

“How about fish and loaves? No, I’m fine with leftovers if you are. Big Guy coming over?”

“No plans.”

“Then we’ll definitely have enough. C’mere and give me a kiss.”