No Cure For Love (23 page)

Heffer shrugged. ‘It’s as clear-cut a faggot murder as I’ve ever seen,’ he said. ‘And we do get a few of them in Hollywood, you know.’

‘Oh?’ said Joe. ‘Care to tell us what happened?’

‘Guy’s coming home from Mom and Pop’s, maybe been at the old vino, and he feels, you know, the urge, a little frisky. So he cruises the Boulevard until he finds what he wants. It’s all out there, man, Christmas or no Christmas. Figures he’ll give himself a real Christmas present. Maybe a hot date with one of Santa’s elves. He brings the kid back here, they snort a few lines of prime coke and wham, lights out.’

‘Why?’ Joe asked.

‘Come on, man, these people don’t need motives. You know that. It’s a fucking sport to them.’

‘I mean why would a male prostitute kill a john? Only motive I can think of is money. And in case you didn’t notice it, Marillo’s wallet was still in the back pocket of his pants with a couple of hundred dollars cash in it, not to mention the credit cards. And from the blood and the scuff-marks, it looks as if Marillo was hit on the head from behind in the kitchen, soon as he got in the house, maybe even while he was opening the door, then carried up to the bedroom and killed there later. Like I said, why?’

Heffer shrugged. ‘Kid musta flipped out. Or maybe lover boy over there found them together. He’s waiting and he sees Marillo come back with some kid from the Boulevard. Loses it. Who knows? Point is,’ he went on, ‘those throat and chest wounds are classic faggot style. And the heart with the arrow, the cords around the bed rails. Ritual shit.’ He narrowed his eyes and looked at Arvo. ‘
Has
Marillo been getting threats?’

Arvo said nothing.

Heffer popped another bubble and shrugged. ‘Okay, so you don’t want to tell me. Fine. I get the feeling it’s not gonna be my case anyway. In fact, I get the feeling you real important boys from downtown want this one. Am I right? And I also get the impression that there’s a lot you’re not telling me. Am I right again? Well, excuse me for just being a fucking drone from Hollywood station. I’ll just go back home to bed, shall I, if that’s all right with you?’

‘Why don’t you do just that,’ Joe said, staring him in the eye.

Heffer held eye contact for a moment, then broke it, muttered, ‘Assholes,’ turned on his heel and took off.

‘Oh, thwarted ambition,’ mused Arvo after him.

‘More like that cat’s fast running out of lives,’ said Joe. ‘The way I hear it, the department doesn’t know where to put him next. What’s your theory?’

‘Kincaid didn’t do it,’ Arvo said. ‘Unless he’s behind it all, which I doubt.’

‘Behind all what?’

‘The letters, the Heimar murder.’

‘More speculation?’

‘Partly, but the connections are getting stronger. Listen, Joe . . .’ And Arvo told him about the faint outline of the heart he thought he had seen in the Heimar crime-scene photograph.

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ Joe asked.

‘Because I thought I might be seeing things. Forcing connections where they didn’t really exist. Then I did a lot of thinking after you told me about the pentobarbitol. Look for yourself. It
could
be some sort of optical illusion caused by the light and wet sand. There’s no report of anyone noticing it at the scene.’

‘Tide was coming in fast. Now what do you think, now you’ve seen Marillo’s body?’

‘I think that whoever’s been writing letters to Sarah Broughton abducted and killed John Heimar, buried him on the beach for her to find and drew a heart in the sand beside the body to let her know he’d done it for her.’

‘So why didn’t she say anything about the heart in her statement?’

Arvo shrugged. ‘Maybe she didn’t see it. Maybe it had all but washed away by the time
she
got there. You really have to look for it, with the light just right. Or maybe she’s keeping it back. I don’t know.’

‘Go on.’

‘I also think the same person waited for Jack Marillo in the trees behind the house here, hit him on the back of the head with some sort of hammer as he was fiddling with the key in the door, carried or dragged him upstairs, butchered him and carved the heart on his stomach.’

‘Why didn’t he cut the body in pieces this time?’

‘I don’t know. Could be something spooked him. Or maybe he didn’t need to this time. Maybe he’d already proved that point with Heimar.’

Joe lit another cigarette and thought for a moment, then said, ‘I’d accept Heffer’s theory a lot easier if everything had happened up in the bedroom, using a weapon at hand. In my experience that kind of spontaneous violence usually happens after something triggers it, and that something usually happens in bed. If Marillo did pick up a kid on the Boulevard, he sure picked himself a real winner. How many hookers you see carrying hammers, Arvo, male or female? Maybe blades, but not hammers.’

‘Right.’

‘But Kincaid did admit that Marillo said he was coming back to the house last night. How could the killer have known he wouldn’t be away for days, especially at this time of year? It doesn’t look like this happened just by chance.’

Arvo shrugged. ‘He must have waited. If we’re dealing with the kind of killer I think we are, it wouldn’t mean anything to him, having to wait hours, maybe even days. He’s obsessed, Joe, fixated, completely focused on what he feels he has to do to gain Sarah Broughton’s love. And remember, she’s thousands of miles away.’

Joe sighed and ran his hand over his cropped salt-and-pepper hair. ‘So you think we’ve got a psycho on our hands?’

‘Looks that way.’

‘Okay, Arvo, forget Heffer, he’s history. You’re working with me on this. I’ll clear it with your lieutenant, all right?’

‘Fine by me.’

Joe looked at his watch. Sun glinted on the gold band. ‘Pretty soon we’ll have the brass and media here. It’ll be a fucking circus, believe me. Television homicide cop victim of homicide? They’ll lap it up. Especially if there’s a gay angle.
Macho
homicide cop victim of
homosexual
killing. Tailor-made.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘I’m going to look into Marillo’s background and I’m at least going to consider that he picked up some kid who went ape-shit and killed him. I’m also going to run Kincaid’s balls through the wringer. I don’t think he did it, either, for what that’s worth, but I have to do it. It’s still the most likely scenario. And I want to see that letter.’

‘No problem.’

‘And as soon as Sarah Broughton steps off that plane at LAX, I want her in my office.’

‘Let me talk to her first. You said it yourself, she’s not a suspect – if anything, she’s a victim – and a homicide cop might scare her off. Let’s face it, Marillo’s murder isn’t going to help her nerves any. They were close friends. Leave it to me, Joe. I’m used to talking to people like Sarah Broughton. It’s my job.’

Joe grinned. ‘You think a big, black, mean ugly motherfucker like me might scare the pretty white lady right out of her wits, huh?’

‘Joe, I never said you were mean.’

Joe laughed. ‘Okay. You talk to her first. But don’t go too easy on her. Remember, if what you say is right, she hasn’t come clean with us yet. Anything else?’

‘There’s a couple of leads I’m following up. I was going to talk to Jack Marillo, so you might find a message from me still on his machine when you get around to checking it out.’

Joe frowned. ‘Did you tell anyone?’

‘What?’

‘That you were going to talk to Marillo.’

‘Oh, come on Joe, you can’t be thinking he was killed to stop him talking to me?’

‘Got to consider
every
possibility at this point.’

‘Okay. No, I didn’t tell anyone. Stuart Kleigman suggested I talk to Jack. As far as I know, he’s the only one who knew outside the department. And he’d be a fool to suggest I talk to someone then go kill him before I get the chance.’

‘A fool or a very clever man covering his ass.’

Arvo shook his head. ‘Stu? Honestly, Joe, I can’t see him doing this.’

‘You got to cultivate a more suspicious nature, Arvo.’

‘Even so.’

‘Okay,’ Joe said. ‘Let’s work it this way. You follow your leads and I’ll coordinate the homicide investigations, see if I can find anything in common between Marillo and the stiff on the beach – forensics, witnesses, that kind of thing. After all, Marillo was gay, and Heimar
was
a male hooker. We shouldn’t have any trouble getting extra staff to help on this one. And you and me will have regular meetings. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

Arvo walked back down the driveway to his car and set off down the canyon, a million bits of information spinning around in his mind. At least he had forgotten his hangover.

On the narrow, winding trail, he had to pull over right to the trees to let the convoy past. The road wasn’t made to handle the kind of two-way traffic it was getting this morning.

The crime-scene specialists led the procession in their van, followed by a couple of local TV station vans. In one of them, Arvo noticed a well-known anchor putting the finishing touches to her red-blonde mane. He also recognized a couple of newspaper reporters following in their own cars. So word had got out already, despite Officer Laski’s discretion. Heffer? Arvo wouldn’t have been surprised.

As he watched the vans and cars pass, he heard helicopters overhead. They liked to cover every angle, the television people; if they couldn’t get to the crime scene from the ground, then they’d damn well show bird’s-eye footage. All they needed now was the ride of the fucking Valkyries.

After the reporters came Stuart Kleigman, looking ashen behind the wheel of his maroon Caddy, and behind him came Assistant Chief Summers.

When their cars were parallel, the AC glanced at Arvo and frowned. It was either recognition or puzzlement, Arvo thought, as the road cleared and he drove on. He wondered if it mattered which and decided it didn’t. Either way, the more people who saw a member of the TMU on the fringes of a celebrity homicide case, the more likely was the kind of media circus that Joe Westinghouse had mentioned.

If Arvo hadn’t realized before, he knew now that the single letter in the file back at headquarters was a time bomb waiting to go off in his face if he didn’t start making progress fast.

He knew that his original assessment of the danger level posed by the letter had been correct. He also knew that he had done the right thing in arranging to meet Joe Westinghouse to discuss the beach murder case. At least now Joe could cover him in the interim, could verify that they were pursuing the possibility of a link between the letter and the homicides.

But he also knew that all the statistics in the world can’t protect you from the random element, the unpredictable, the one that just doesn’t fit. Call him the psycho, as Joe had, or the serial killer, whatever you want, but know that he will take all you think you know, believe and understand, and turn it inside out right in front of your eyes before ripping it to shreds.

Part Three

24

Sarah’s heart sank when she walked out of customs and immigration into the waiting phalanx of reporters and cameras at the Tom Bradley Terminal of LAX. More than ten hours in the air, though, she realized, allowed plenty of time for someone to leak the details of her arrival. They would have been expecting her anyway. If she hadn’t been a star before, she probably was now. Celebrities and murder. How Hollywood loved that combination.

Even though she knew it would be getting dark outside, she wore sunglasses and kept her head down all the way to the car. Stuart and an airport security guard did their best to steer her through, but the crowd jostled and harassed them all the way to the automatic doors, shoving mini-cassette recorders in her face, flashing cameras at her, yelling questions.

‘What was your reaction to the news of your co-star’s murder, Miss Broughton?’

‘Miss Broughton, had you any idea your co-star was homosexual?’

‘Miss Broughton, what are the plans for the future of the show?’

‘Is there any truth in the rumour that Richard Romano is being considered to take Jack Marillo’s place in the series?’

As soon as they left the air-conditioned airport environment for the LA evening, still pursued by reporters brandishing microphones, Sarah felt that familiar balminess in the air, the mild warmth caressing her cheeks.

The arrivals area outside the terminal was the usual chaos of cars, limos and shuttles zipping along the half-dozen or so lanes, piles of luggage and confused tourists looking for the van stops. The air was acrid with exhaust fumes. As she ducked into the passenger seat of Stuart’s waiting Caddy, Sarah noticed the tatty airport palm trees by the concrete walls of the parking structure across the lanes of traffic. So they hadn’t been smoked out of existence yet.

When the porter had finished packing Sarah’s luggage in the trunk, Stuart tipped him and edged the Caddy into the lanes of traffic. A car pulled out behind them, but Sarah didn’t pay it any special attention.

She took off her dark glasses and looked at Stuart’s profile. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Jack . . . who would want to harm Jack?’