In Cold Blonde (2 page)

The Havoc parking lot had been taken over by the LAPD; yellow police tape
and portable floodlights surrounded the Porsche, uniformed officers kept a few
gawkers behind hastily erected LAPD plastic barricades.  Two SID
technicians worked the inside of the car. The Scientific Investigative Division
was the LAPD’s version of CSI.  They dusted the car for prints, collected
fibers, and bagged anything that might be considered evidence.  Ryan and
Syd joined Lieutenant Hanrahan and Liz Kettle, one of the L.A. County Coroners,
outside the open driver’s side door.     

Syd looked at the victim.  “Ok, that’s gross.” The victim lay
slumped against the back of the driver’s seat.  His eyes were open and so
was his mouth.  Sticking out of his mouth, like a cheap cigar, was a
penis.

“His junk, I presume,” Ryan said, glancing down.  The victim’s pants
were at his knees, blood soaked the exposed thighs and pubic hair and the ragged
end of a once proud penis.

 “Is that what killed him?” Syd asked.

“No,” Ryan said.  “Not enough blood.  Isn’t that right, Liz?”

Liz was Ryan’s favorite coroner.  She had the body of a linebacker
and the mouth of a marine.  In her early fifties, thrice divorced, Liz was
on the handsome side of attractive.  She wore her salt and pepper hair pulled
back and the only make-up she wore was a touch of eyeliner to frame her
piercing blue eyes.  Liz had no patience for laziness or stupidity and her
sharp tongue scared the shit out of almost everyone.  Everyone but Ryan. 
But Ryan knew Liz better than most other cops – she was his
stepmother.  Well, one of them, anyway.  Ryan’s mother died when he
was just two years old and his dad married four more times.  Liz had been
wife number three.  She lasted six years, six of the most important years
for Ryan, age eight through fourteen.  So Ryan was used to the bluster; in
fact, he cherished it.  She’d been his favorite stepmom.

“Oh, there’s plenty of blood, but not enough to indicate he bled
out.   Something stopped his heart, which stopped the blood
flow.  Move your fat ass, Hanrahan,” she snapped.  “You’re blocking
the light.”

Hanrahan shifted to his right as Liz plucked the penis out of the victim’s
mouth then held it up to the light.

“How humiliating,” Hanrahan mumbled.

“Sort of puts everything into perspective if you ask me,” Liz said. 
“All the murder and mayhem created because you Neanderthals are always trying
to prove who has the bigger dick.  Well, here it is, fellas, in all its
flaccid glory.  Four and a half inches of shriveled meat…” Liz’s voice trailed
off as she noticed something.  “Huh, look at that, there are no hesitation
cuts before the actual amputation.”

 “So the killer had medical training?” Ryan ventured.

“Or was used to handling knives,” Liz said.

“Or has done it before,” Syd said.

“Grizzly thought but possible,” Hanrahan said, unwrapping a grape Tootsie
Roll Pop.  He’d taken to sucking the Pops when he quit smoking his beloved
Marlboros.  He turned to Ryan, “Be sure and run the specifics through
VICAP.”  The FBI’s Violent Crime Apprehension Program was an online
database used by the county’s law enforcement agency to collect and compare
violent crimes.

“The bartender said the victim met a woman inside the club, they flirted
for a few minutes then left.  About twenty minutes later a couple noticed
the body when they got to their car.”

Ryan asked, “Could the bartender tell if they knew each other?”

Hanrahan shook his head.  “She sat down next to him and he started
talking.  Could have been a prearranged date, could have been an old
friend, could have been two strangers in the night.”

“The woman’s the doer?” Syd asked.

“Or she was working with someone who was waiting out here,” Hanrahan
said.

“Robbery?” Syd asked. 

Tony Ramirez, the lead SID tech, held up an evidence bag.  Ramirez
was one of the department’s best.  A chess champion as a kid, Ramirez was
brilliant if a bit anal compulsive, which actually came in handy in his line of
work.  Forensics was all about the details. 

Inside the evidence bag was a wallet.  “Found it in his front left pocket,”
Tony said.  “It’s got three hundred eleven dollars in cash but here’s
where it gets interesting; there are credit cards in all the slots except one.”

“She left his money but took a credit card?” Syd asked.

“Which cards did he carry?” Ryan asked.

Tony checked his inventory.  “Master Card, Visa, Nordstrom and
Barney’s.”

“No American Express?” Ryan asked.

“Nope.”

“Then that’s what she took,” Ryan said.  “Everybody who drives a Porsche
carries American Express; they are all about status.”

Syd made a note.  “I’ll contact American Express.  If she uses
it, we can trace her.”

“I don’t think she took the card to use it,” Tony said.  “This
wasn’t about money.  Besides the cash in his wallet, there is a nine-hundred-dollar
Patik Phillip watch on his wrist and a gold signet on the pinkie of his left
hand.”

Syd was confused.  “Then why take the credit card?”

“Souvenir?” Liz asked.

“Maybe he just left it somewhere the last time he used it,” Hanrahan
said.

“We’ll check,” Ryan said. 

 “His name was Colin Wood,” Ramirez said.  “Registration in the
glove box confirms it’s his car.”  He ripped a page out of his notebook,
held it out.  “I wrote down his address for you.” 

“Thanks,” Syd said then turned to Ryan.  “It should be easier to
find a premeditated murderer than a random robbery.” 

“Right,” Ryan said.  “Though it is a little troubling the killer
didn’t even try to pretend it was a robbery.   It would have been so
easy to take the wallet and watch.  It’s like the killer
wants
us
to know it was murder…”

“I think the dick in the mouth is message enough,” Liz said. 
“Sounds
very
personal to me.”

“Old girlfriend?” Syd asked. 

“Sounds like a great place to start,” Hanrahan said.

“What about a cell phone,” Ryan asked.  “Did you find a cell phone?”

Tony held up another evidence bag.  “iPhone.  I’ve already
dusted it, so if you want to check it, it’s yours.”

“If it was an old girlfriend, her number or picture could be in that
phone,” Syd said.  Cell phones were a treasure trove of evidence, from the
phone directory to the picture and video files.  And the cell phone
cameras came in handy, too.  There were a number of cases when victims
have taken pictures of their attackers as they fled. 

Ryan took the iPhone, turned to Liz.  “Do you know what killed him?”

Liz dropped the penis in an evidence bag.  “Not until I get him on
the table.”   Liz glanced at Ramirez, “How long before you’re
finished, Tony?”

“We’re done,” Ramirez said.

“First impressions?” Ryan asked.

“We’ve got a little bit to work with.  The killer wiped off any fingerprints,
but we did find a long strand of blonde hair caught under aforementioned Patik
Phillip.”

“The woman in the bar was a blonde,” Hanrahan said.

“And there was a smudge of lipstick at the corner of his mouth, bright
red.  We swabbed a sample.”

“Can you get DNA?” Hanrahan asked.

“Only if there is any saliva which, sorry to say, is rare.  But
we’ll check.  Otherwise, we didn’t find much else.”

“Check out where they were sitting at the bar,” Ryan said.  “Maybe
she left a print there.”

“We’re on it,” Tony said.  The SID techs left as Liz waved over the
two morgue attendants waiting by a gurney at the morgue van.

“I stopped by and saw your dad yesterday,” Liz said to Ryan.

“Really,” Ryan said, surprised.  His dad had been dead for three
years. 

“My Uncle Elwood died; remember Elwood, he was the dentist.”

“Right,” Ryan said.   “He had twin boys, and they both became
dentists, too.”  Ryan remembered because Ryan’s father had been a lawyer,
as had his grandfather.  And the expectation had been that Ryan would
follow in the family’s footsteps.  But life got in the way. 

Ryan fell in love his junior year at UCLA.  Her name was Anne Reich,
a pretty brunette who grew up dirt poor in a Riverside trailer park.  Ryan
flipped for Anne; they had similar tastes in books, movies, food.  
She was smart, funny, attentive, and ambitious.  They were the perfect
couple, everyone said so, and they were soon daydreaming about getting married.
 Ryan wanted to wait until after law school, once their careers were
safely on their way.  But Anne got pregnant, and taking it as a sign, the
happy couple got married the summer before their senior year.

Then life threw a one-two punch.  First, Anne lost the baby.  A
miscarriage.  Ryan consoled Anne, told her not to worry they would have
plenty of babies.

Then the knockout punch; Ryan’s father was charged with tax fraud. 
Under financial strain from paying four alimonies and caught short by the bursting
tech bubble, Ryan’s father had played a little fast and loose with the
IRS.  He was caught, convicted, disbarred and sentenced to six years in
jail.

Ryan scraped together enough money for his last year of UCLA and Anne had
her scholarship, but now there was no money for law school.  So Ryan made
a decision.  He’d work while Anne went to law school.  When she
graduated, she’d go to work and pay for his education.

Not only had Ryan loved his six years with stepmom Liz, her stories about
the Coroner’s office and police work intrigued him.  So he joined the
LAPD.  Anne thrived at UCLA law school and Ryan loved the police
force.   But it was a financial struggle.  A patrolman’s salary
barely covered the studio apartment, groceries and incidentals. 

The summer after her second year of law school Anne got a job as an
intern at a big L.A. firm, Rogers, Middleton and Roberts.  There she met
Rick Rogers, son of founding partner, Edward Rogers.  He was five years Anne’s
senior and an associate on the fast track to making partner.  He was
handsome, Harvard-educated, and rich.  He also had a huge crush on Anne
and pursued her relentlessly.  

And then one night, Anne never came home.  Frantic, Ryan worked the
phone calling hospitals, friends, family, desperately trying to find her. 
She called in the morning to say she’d fallen in love with Rick Rogers and she
wanted a divorce.  Rick sent movers to clean her things out of the
apartment while a shell-shocked Ryan looked on.  Two weeks after the
divorce was final, Rick married Anne. 

Ryan was devastated.  He tortured himself, wondering what he’d done
wrong.  Wondering what he could have done to keep Anne.  His well-planned
life had come completely unraveled.  He was supposed to quit the police
force and go to law school next year.  But without Anne’s salary to
support them, how would he afford it?

And suddenly, the idea of becoming a lawyer didn’t appeal to him very
much.  It hadn’t done much to insure his father’s happiness.  And
indirectly, law school had ruined his life with Anne.  Besides, he loved
being a cop.  He was good at it.  And it was his brothers in blue who
gathered round him when Anne dumped him.  So Ryan stayed a cop and never
thought about becoming a lawyer again. 

 “Elwood was buried at Calvary,” Liz said.  “Not far from your
dad.  So after the service I stopped by his grave.”  Ryan’s father
died of a heart attack while in prison.

“How’s he doing?”

“Still dead, but there were fresh flowers on the grave.”

Ryan nodded.  “Maggie never stopped loving him.”  Maggie was
Ryan’s father’s second wife.  She only lasted two years.  “Not even
after he dumped her for you, Liz.  Maggie visits the grave every week.” 

“Epic love,” Syd said.  “Even in the teeth of a gale.  That’s
so romantic.”

“Pathetic if you ask me,” Liz said. “Ryan’s father was a self-centered
son of a bitch who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.  I’m just sorry it
took me six years to realize it.”  Liz started for her car.  “I’ll
call you guys when I know something.” 

Hanrahan shook his head.  “I can’t imagine waking up to that every
morning.  How’d your dad do it?”

“She makes a mean blueberry pancake,” Ryan said.  “She’s also smart,
informed and passionate about life.”

“Yet she spends her days sticking her hands in dead people, go figure.” 
Hanrahan sucked the last bit of chocolate off his Tootsie Roll Pop.  “Anyway,
the bartender’s inside along with a few of the customers who got a look at the blonde.”

“Don’t suppose the bar or parking lot had a surveillance camera?” Ryan
asked.  

“No,” Hanrahan said.

Syd pointed across the street.  “There’s a 7-Eleven.  I’ll
check to see if they have a camera pointed in this direction.”

“Great idea,” Ryan said.  Syd hurried off.

Hanrahan watched Syd cross the street.  “If she was my partner, I’d
have trouble keeping my dick in my pants.”

Ryan studied Hanrahan for any sign of suspicion, found none.  “I’ve
never had a thing for redheads,” Ryan said, not crazy about lying to his
boss.  Then he sprinkled on a little extra seasoning.  “Besides,
she’s got a boyfriend.”