Guilt (19 page)

“This point, I’ll take anything, D.H. Got a number for him?”

“Hold on, I’ll go find it. You want, I can prime the pump by calling him first.”

“Thanks.”

“I should be thanking you,” said Hardy.

“For what?”

“Letting me pretend I’m half useful. This retirement business is like dying on your feet.”

Eighteen minutes later, a call came in from Commander Raymond Delongpre Lhermitte (Retired). In a bass voice that alternated between rasp and molasses, Lhermitte said, “Tell me why you need this, son.”

Milo obliged.

“Okay,” said Lhermitte. “You present your case well. Problem is, we’ve been dealing with some pretty bad corruption issues here. Hurricane agitated it, the waters are still roiling, and even though I’m off the job I have no desire to stir up more.”

“Me neither, sir.”

“But you’re working a whodunit so to hell with anything else.”

“That’s true.”

“As it should be,” said Lhermitte. “Fact is, I shouldn’t even care, I’m growing orchids and shooting nutria for sport, but I can’t break the bonds. To the department as well as to my beautiful, crazy city. Never found a better place to live but sometimes it seems we’ve irritated the Almighty.”

“Gotta be rough,” said Milo.

“So,” said Lhermitte, “this girl was one of the fire survivors? That was a bad one, started in a hotel and took down an entire block of old wood buildings. What was that name again?”

“Qeesha D’Embo.”

“Sounds African-phony to me, son. No, afraid I’m not aware of anyone by that name.”

“Wouldn’t expect you to know everyone, sir.”

“I know a lot of people,” said Lhermitte. “Including Clyde Bordelon.”

“A cop?”

“Unfortunately, son. Ugly piece of psychology, I’d like to think the regs we got in place now he’d never have gotten hired. But who knows, nothing’s perfect.”

“He’s still on the force?”

“No, he’s lying under dirt. Shot with his own poorly maintained service gun in the backyard of his own poorly maintained house.”

“When?”

“Coupla years ago. Still an open case.”

“Any suspects?”

“Too many suspects, son. Nasty individual that he was.”

“What kind of nasty?”

“Clyde was what’s known as an individual of loose morals. By that I don’t mean transgressions of a sexual nature, though if you told me Clyde had congress with a herd of cocaine-blinded goats I wouldn’t gasp in amazement because bottom line, the man was amoral, rules just didn’t apply to him. But the sins the
department
suspected were of a monetary nature: payoffs, bribes, hijacking cigarette and liquor trucks,
consorting with the criminal element on a variety of projects. So you can see what I mean about a plethora of suspects.”

“Any of them stand out?”

“A girl,” said Lhermitte. “A dancer, not a church-girl. But her name wasn’t Qeesha, it was Charlene Rae Chambers.”

“By dancer—”

“I mean stripper. Her stage name was CoCo. Like the dress designer. Pretty little thing, not one of ours, she was a Yankee, came up from somewhere in New York to work the pole at the Deuces Wild. One of Clyde’s favorite after-hour spots. After she started there it became his only after-hour spot.”

“Obsessed?”

“You could say that.”

“Why was she the prime?” said Milo.

“Because she was the last person seen with Clyde when he was alive and talk was he’d stalked her, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Despite her claim of being bothered, witnesses have her getting into his car that night and riding away. It took a while for our detectives to talk to her. So many suspects and all. By the time they reached her it was too late for a GSR and she had an alibi. Clyde took her straight home, she showered and slept for eight hours. Her roommate, another dancer, verified it.”

“Not exactly ironclad.”

“Oh, there’s a good chance she did it,” said Lhermitte. “Or had someone else do it for her. Matter of fact, I’d bet on her being responsible. Two days after she was interviewed, she was gone, no forwarding.”

“I’d like to send you a picture of Qeesha—”

“Then you’d have to do it by what my grand-babies call snail mail. Got no computer, no fax machine, only one phone in the house, a rotary, as old as me, made of Bakelite. Tell you what, though, I’ll make a call and see if someone still on the job can help you.”

“Appreciate it, sir. Did Charlene actually live in the fire zone?”

“Don’t know if she did or she didn’t,” said Lhermitte. “I’ll ask about that, too.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.”

By the time a New Orleans detective named Mark Montecino had emailed asking for Milo’s fax number, Milo had already pulled up two NCIC mug shots of Charlene Rae Chambers, female black, brown and brown, five four, one oh two. A DOB that would make her twenty-seven.

Her record was unimpressive: five-year-old bust for soliciting prostitution, four-year-old bust for battery on a peace officer, both filed at a precinct in Brooklyn. Dismissal on the first, four days in jail for the second.

“Couldn’t have been heavy-duty battery,” he said.

Even disheveled and wild-eyed with fright, Charlene Chambers had photographed pretty.

I said, “She looks scared.”

“That she does.”

His fax beeped. Out slid a solicitation mug shot from New Orleans. Now she was beautiful and more composed than during her previous arrests. On the paper Mark Montecino had written,
She didn’t live near the fire
.

Milo ran her through the data banks. She’d never paid taxes or registered for Social Security in New York, Louisiana, Idaho, or California. No driver’s license, no registered vehicle, red or otherwise.

“Running away,” he said, “but not because she was scared of Clyde. She was worried she’d be collared for his murder. Church folk in Idaho were charitable so she took advantage. An opportunity came up here in L.A., and she was gone.”

I said, “I know it’s a stereotype but New Orleans and voodoo aren’t strangers and waxy bones sounds like something that could be part of a hex.”

“Let’s find out,” he said, turning back to his screen. “First time in a long time
I’m
not feeling hexed.”

W
ebsites 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.”