Victims

CHAPTER
18

Over the next few days, data trickled in.

Neither of Marlon Quigg’s daughters had any idea who’d want to harm their father. The same went for family friends Milo and Reed and Binchy interviewed. Belle Quigg, requestioned through a fog of sedation, repeated a mantra: Everyone loved Marlon, this had to be a maniac.

Animal Control reported thirty-three dead canines collected across the county since Quigg’s murder. Milo and the young D’s took the time to check each one. None was Louie.

Most of the dogs had been abandoned and had died of malnutrition or disease or from being hit by cars. A golden retriever mix discovered on a Canoga Park side street had been shot in the head, execution-style, and Milo took the time to contact its owners. Two college girls had shared Maximilian; both were bereft and guilt-stricken. The ex-boyfriend of one young woman was their prime suspect and a background check revealed a husky thirty-year-old with a misdemeanor record of assaults and disorderly conduct.

Milo grew excited and looked for the man. He turned out to have been on the open sea for seven months, working as a deckhand on a commercial freighter on its way to Japan.

The shelter where Marlon Quigg had adopted Louie employed no one who matched the description of the broadly built white man seen lurking near both murder scenes. With the exception of a Vietnamese American high school student and two octogenarian retirees, the staff was exclusively female.

The woman who’d handled Louie’s paperwork recalled Marlon Quigg because he’d been so easy to deal with and opined that he’d seemed the perfect match for Louie: quiet, laid-back, no-fuss kind of guy.

I thought: Easy victim.

Binchy and Reed visited other shelters with no better results.

Inspection of Quigg’s phone and financial records revealed nothing suspicious. An additional search of the campgrounds and interviews with a score of homeless people congregating near PCH and Sunset were futile, though one of the panhandlers, a wild-eyed, gap-toothed woman named Aggie, was certain Quigg had once driven by and given her fifty dollars.

Milo said, “Big haul.”

“Oh, yeah, he was great.”

“What kind of car was he driving, Aggie?”

“What else? Big Rolls-Royce. Like I say, some of those rich folk are nice!”

Quigg’s autopsy and lab results came in.

A significant bruise where the back of the neck met the skull suggested he’d been subjected to a single hard blow from behind. The C.I. hadn’t caught it at the scene because Quigg’s thick hair concealed it. Not a fatal blow but hard enough to stun.

No human hairs other than Quigg’s had been found on his person but Louie had shed a few more strands onto his master’s shirt. Three additional fibers turned out to be synthetic sheepskin.

I said, “Our bad guy wears a bulky coat. Maybe it’s a cheap shearling.”

“Dressed for the hunt… in Montana… may-be.” Milo scrawled in his pad. “What do you think of that head wound?”

I said, “Classic sneak-attack sucker punch. Vita didn’t need to be blitzed because she was reeling drunk and the pizza ruse caught her off guard. If the killer’s the guy Erica Vail saw, he was near the scene three days before he did Quigg. Quigg’s walks were predictable, it wouldn’t have been much of a challenge to pretend to be taking a walk himself. Pass by and smile and wave, maybe even stop to pet Louie.”

“Friendly stalking,” he said. “Till it’s not.”

“I’d go back to Belle Quigg and ask if Marlon ever mentioned encountering anyone during his walks.”

More writing. “On my list… so we have a good idea how each of them was done. But that still begs the big question: What turned them into victims? There’s got to be something in common but hell if I can find it. I was hoping it would be Vita’s lawsuit but it’s not shaping up that way. The suits at Well-Start ended up being a lot more forthcoming than I expected. Not because they’re nice guys, because Vita’s murder has them worried the original gag order will be rescinded, they’ll have to deal with a whole bunch of bad publicity. They actually sent a lawyer over yesterday and she showed me a lot of paper: the prelim motions, all the interviews with the accused co-workers, Shacker’s report. Which came across as a lot of shrinky bullshit, no offense. But all in all, nothing new and the mouthpiece swore the company had no connection with Quigg. I didn’t take her word for it, emailed Well-Start’s CEO’s second in command in Hartford, Connecticut. He called me personally, gave me the name of the accounting firm that does their books, greased the skids so they’d talk to me. They’d never hired Quigg nor, to their knowledge, had Quigg ever applied for a job. That was backed up by Mrs. Quigg. Marlon wasn’t a ‘seeker.’ Happy with the status quo and figuring on retiring in a few years. Despite that, I got hold of Quigg’s boss at the CPA firm and probed about Quigg doing insurance work. The firm does some but not for Well-Start and not for Well-Start’s liability carrier. And even if they had, Quigg wouldn’t have been assigned to it, he was more than busy with his supermarket account. He described ol’ Marlon the way everyone else has: pleasant, compliant, even-tempered. So why were the two of them singled out? Or maybe there is no X factor and this bastard drives around, spots random prey, stalks and studies and sets up the hunt.”

Nothing about this kind of murder was ever random but it wasn’t the time to say so.

“Meanwhile,” he said, “both cases are thawing out fast. Bastard quits right now, he may get away with it.”

He needn’t have worried about that.