Diamond in the Buff (10 page)

“Didn’t help. Might even be what broke his neck. He must of slipped off when the cushion went, hit his head, and then got caught on the chaise.”

I shivered, suddenly aware of the icy fog. It had soaked into my light shirt. The fabric lay cold, clammy against my back, and somehow that made me feel Kris’s death all the more.

“I can’t say for sure,” Raksen went on. “I’m just finishing the first roll of film. I’ll need to check the trajectories for the chaise and for him and the cushion, too. The runners on the chaise have oil on them.”

I shook my head ruefully. “The chaise up there just waiting for someone to oil its runner; the gate ready to be opened: it’s like the whole deck was planned to kill Kris.”

“There are no slide marks down here, Smith. The chaise, and the body, hit and struck.”

“Ambulance?” I asked, for form’s sake. If there’s the remotest chance of resuscitation we roll the ambulance.

Raksen shook his head. “No question. When I got here half of his head was purple. What I could see of his face was waxy yellow, and his eyes were already dull.”

I bent down again and balanced mostly on my downhill foot to get a view of Kris’s face. Raksen was right. The fluid in the eyes had already dried out. I felt his chin; it was cold, as I’d expected, but despite the jammed position, still pliable. I slipped my hand under Kris’s shirt. His chest was warmer, but not a whole lot.

“He slept outside, on the chaise, Smith.”

“Wonderful!” I snapped. “So much for the ever unreliable body temp.”

“Blanket’s over there.”

I flashed the light on Kris’s hand. He was clutching nothing but the metal chair arm. I stood up. “You done photographing?”

“I’ve only taken one roll, all of the body. I still need angles, and ground. I’d like to wait for more light.”

“No chance. You can’t leave the body lying here on display. Martinez will have enough trouble keeping the scene secure with all those reporters out there. Get what you need now to place the body and call the coroner. You can do the ground and the footprints—”

“What there are on this surface,” Raksen said, staring down at the dry rocky underbrush.

“Do that later. For now, finish with him, then let’s do his pockets.”

I stepped back, retracing my steps, and watched as Raksen wedged a foot against a tree trunk and aimed his Mamiya.

A four-foot-wide stripe of ground turned red, then dark, then red again; tires squealed as the patrol car took the switchback corner. Above, I could hear feet hitting the deck, Martinez’s voice, Pereira’s voice. And then one I didn’t recognize said, “What’s this gate?” He had to be eyeing the deck gate through which Kris had fallen.
“Last Exit to Brooklyn?”
Martinez said with a laugh. More footsteps tapped on the deck. Guys on beat, off-duty officers, anyone who was awake when the squeal came over the radio, or who had a friend willing to wake him, would be rolling to the scene. A 187 is always a draw, but a homicide at the well-known address of the well-known Has-Bitched Diamond would be a circus. Martinez would spend half his time just keeping the sworn officers off the evidence.

Making a wide circle, Raksen moved to the far side of the body and refocused his camera.

How many Himalayan expeditions had Kris Mouskavachi been on? Even if the number was no more than one, that meant he had chanced avalanches, blizzards, rotten rock, hidden crevasses, hazards that kill one out of ten experienced climbers. And then died falling off a Berkeley deck.

I recalled the skid marks Martinez had pointed out. Being
pushed
off a Berkeley deck.

It was another twenty minutes and several prods from me before Raksen conceded, grudgingly, that he might have enough exposures. There had been a bet once, when Raksen was handling the scene of a drug-related killing, just how long Raksen would continue to photograph the body and the scene if no one stopped him. Howard, of course, had been the creator of that contest. No one won. No one had that much patience.

Covering his hand with a plastic bag, Raksen extricated the wallet from Kris’s back pocket. It was new, leather, and held nothing but a one-dollar bill, a twenty, and a folded piece of paper with an address in Humboldt County. I copied the address.

Now Raksen called the nearest patrol officer. She lifted the body and stretched it out on its back while Raksen supported the neck so there was no question of “undertaker’s fracture” there. The hair was still glued to the stone.

Placing a plastic bag over his hand Raksen reached in the left jean pocket.

“Empty.”

The right one held change and two keys. Nothing worth the wait. I walked back the way I’d come to the deck. Martinez was talking to Pereira. A lazy or hostile crime scene supervisor can triple your work. Witnesses can leave the scene before he assigns someone to get their statements or even their names. He can leave unroped the alley through which the “responsible” ran. He can allow samples to go unlabeled, or mislabeled. He can destroy an investigation entirely. Conversely, a good crime supe. is a pearl of great price. And Martinez was the biggest pearl around. Martinez made it his business to know each of us in D.D., in what order we worked, with whom we worked best. I suspected it was he who had called Pereira, and might call Murakawa. And I wasn’t surprised when he said, “Leonard and Acosta are on the neighbors, except Sandoval. I sent Pereira there.”

“She’s gone,” Pereira grumbled.

“Did it look like she just left or that she hadn’t been home all night?”

Pereira shrugged. “Nothing to suggest she’s been here. But she could have been.”

Martinez said, “Diamond’s in the living room with Murakawa. Has been for half an hour. Murakawa looks done with him. Zagoya’s upstairs with Heling. No one else in the house.”

“Neighbors see anything? Or
hear
anything?”

“Not so far, and Leonard got the neighbors one house down. No scream. That’s what you’re asking, right, Smith?”

“Right.”

“No scream.”

“What about the crash? Even if the boy didn’t scream the chaise lounge had to have made a thud when it landed.”

Pereira shook her head. “Neighbors here, Smith, are used to tuning out the goings-on at Diamond’s. It’d take a lot more than a thud in the middle of the night to light a fire under them.”

Martinez’s eyes narrowed, but he censored whatever rebuke he’d considered. To me he said, “Diamond’s asking for you.”

I motioned Pereira to relieve Murakawa. “And when we’re done,” I said to her, “let’s go over your financial check on Diamond, Bev Zagoya, and Sandoval. Let’s see what it takes to run a house on Panoramic Way.”

“Damn sight more than foot massage,” Pereira muttered. She walked into the living room and took Murakawa’s place.

Murakawa had once planned to be a chiropractor. He emerged from the living room, glanced back at Diamond, and shook his head. “Worse kyphosis I’ve seen on a living being, his age. How could he do that to himself? Doesn’t the guy ever look in the mirror?” He paused. “Well, I guess not.” Now he looked back at the slumping Diamond and sighed. “I’d give a week’s wages to see X-rays of his thoracic and cervical vertebrae. Head slumped like that. He must have no disk space at all at his anterior vertebrae, must be bone on bone.”

“His statement, Murakawa?”

Murakawa handed me his notes. “You know, Smith, I don’t even think surgery could restore the normal curves to that spine, and I wouldn’t think about surgery unless …” He shook his head again. “Maybe a treatment of muscle relaxers, massage, and weekly adjustments …”

Ignoring Murakawa’s ongoing diagnosis, I read over his notes on Diamond’s statement. Diamond had ordered dinner from Thyme-wise, the gourmet takeout shop on Solano. He and Bev Zagoya had spent the three hours from seven to ten in the living room going over plans for their presentations in the morning. Kris was still out when he went to bed. If that was true, whoever oiled the runners of the chaise had to have done so before seven or after ten.
If
Diamond’s statement was true.

I took a last look down at Kris Mouskavachi’s body, then headed back though the yard below, around the switchback to the sidewalk, and onto the deck. The darkness had thinned to a cold gray. Fog draped from the tops of live oaks to the branches of the eucalypts. And the icy wind off the Bay flapped those carp flags at the corners of Diamond’s roof and ripped loose shreds of fog and carried them away.

The light in the living room came from spots in the ceiling and over the posters. White on white. Yesterday in the heat this large white room had seemed comfortable, but today it was just cold, and the thick carpet made it not warmer but merely more irritating to walk across. I glanced at Himalayan-size photographs of Himalaya. The most interesting one had to have been taken from a mountain top, down onto ice, then the brown of dirt and the ever darkening green of fields and the tan of a village. There was an arrogance to that photograph, and as I looked at it I could almost imagine the heady thrill of standing where few if any men had ever trod, looking down on the world of lesser beings.

Slumped on the edge of a huge white sectional, Hasbrouck Diamond was the picture of a lesser being. He sat slumped forward, staring down. The thick gold chain around his neck swayed back and forth in midair. The shine of his royal blue silk shirt only made his tanned face look drier, and white shorts showed shivering spindly beige thighs. He looked like he’d spent too much time with the movie types in L.A., immersed in the unreal. And yet there was no question that the man was seriously shaken.

Sitting beside him I said, “Dr. Diamond, what can you tell me about yesterday?” When he didn’t respond I prompted, “After you talked to me?”

“I was here, all day, except for a trip to the hardware store. The bulb on the projector was out. We need that for the presentation, it’s this afternoon, you know.” He swallowed. “Or it would have been. I have to call all those people. Some of them are flying up from L.A. I have to get to them before they leave for the airport. Can’t have them flying up here and find nothing. I’ll have to—”

“Dr. Diamond,” I snapped.

“Oh.” He gave his head a sharp shake, and looked up at me. “Sorry.” The dark circles under his eyes gave the illusion that they protruded more than they did normally, almost as if they were feelers. He appeared more foreign and yet because of his drained, bewildered look, more human than he had seemed yesterday. “Yesterday,” he repeated. “I was here, taking calls, going over the figures. I was here all day. I guess I could come up with a list of who I spoke to if you need it.”

“Figures?”

He looked up, brow furrowed. I tried to categorize his expression—fear, sorrow, confusion? None of those. “We had to plan, Detective. You don’t invite two hundred of the most influential people in the Bay Area, expect them to become a part of a history-making Himalayan expedition, and not have your figures straight.”

“Figures for?” I insisted.

“For everything, gear for the climbing team, the filming team, and the Sherpas, and the porters, food, air fare, arrangements for the receptions after the climb. It’s all detail work. We need to be able to tell them how many pounds of
tsampa
Bev’ll buy and how many anoraks the team will need.”

“And you discussed that with Bev? When did she get back?” I had seen her at Indian Rock around three
P.M.

“Seven or so. We worked till ten.” Self-absorbed as Hasbrouck Diamond was, he was proving to be remarkably easy to prod. His glance upward had been brief; now he was directing his answers to his knees. He probably was barely aware I was next to him.

“Where was Kris?”

“Kris?” Diamond’s pale eyebrows drew together and he began to tap his forefinger on his thigh. “Who knows? Hanging around on the Avenue, probably. He should have been here. I had expected him to help out with the planning; told him when he got back.”

“And that was?”

“Somewhere around eleven. I was getting ready for bed. I suggested that he do that too. We needed to be fresh this morn— Or I thought we would.”

“How did Kris seem then, last night?”

Diamond hesitated; his face colored and that finger tapped more heavily on his thigh, leaving a paler circle in its aftermath. “Like he always was, happy-go-lucky.”

I wondered if happy-go-lucky was really what he’d thought of Kris Mouskavachi, the charming Kathmandu wheeler-dealer. “What did you talk about with Kris?”

“Nothing. I was going to bed. He clearly wasn’t.”

“Do you know what time he did go to bed?”

All four fingers now tapped. “How would I? My bedroom’s upstairs. I wouldn’t hear him walk out onto the deck.”

“So he slept on the deck,” I prompted.

“Always,” he snapped. “He always slept on the deck.”

“Why?”

“He liked it. I gave him a room upstairs. My best guest room. He said it was bigger than his family’s living room. He said he loved it. But he never slept up there. He said he liked sleeping outside. Said it reminded him of being on an expedition.” His fingers knotted into a fist.

“Dr. Diamond, had Kris gotten any threatening calls, or even any odd calls? Did he have any friends who might have—”

He slammed his fist into his thigh and glared directly at me. “Why do you waste your time asking about Kris? It’s me she tried to kill!”

I
DIDN’T HAVE TO
ask who the “she” was Diamond was accusing of trying to murder him.

I did ask, of course. According to him, Leila Sandoval must have seen a figure sleeping under a blanket on the chaise lounge, the very chaise on which Diamond habitually sat. Naturally assuming the body was his, she had opened the gate and given the chaise a shove. Diamond said that he was in the habit of keeping a blanket next to him on the chaise lounge, in case the sun went in. He could get cold, he had reminded me. And recalling his epidermal state when sunbathing, I couldn’t help but agree.

There were nights, after parties, he went on, when he had fallen asleep out there. Recalling Pereira’s description of those parties (the social equivalent of Mr. Kepple’s mower, blower, and electric seed sower?) and the neighbors’ complaints, I could imagine Diamond falling asleep, or more likely passing out on the chaise. According to him, he had only ceased sleeping there when Kris took over the spot. And that, he added, was not something Leila Sandoval was likely to notice, particularly since, as even
I
must have realized, Sandoval hadn’t been home much lately. He had actually raised his head to watch my reaction when he added that Leila Sandoval wouldn’t have minded if she had failed to kill him, as long as she managed to make him a laughing stock and ruin Bev Zagoya’s reception this morning. “Which she did!” he had concluded with a grisly sort of triumph.