Shock Treatment (31 page)

The cold remains of Fala the cat were laid out on a table in the prep room outside the morgue. Although this was ordinarily David Phillip's domain, he had opted to recuse himself from this particular examination; the helpful assistant coroner was allergic to felines.

Even dead ones.

The arid desert climate, and frigid nights, had helped to preserve the specimen at least to a degree. After a week or so in the ground, Fala bore little resemblance to the fluffy, well-groomed pet in Brian Yun's photo collection. Most of his fur had sloughed off, leaving behind a shriveled, brownish-black carcass. Dry, leathery skin was stretched tightly over the cat's skeleton. Marbled green veins protruded beneath the hide. Ray suspected that the internal organs had already turned to sludge. Determining
the cause of death was going to be difficult, but not impossible. Plastic wrap, lovingly taped around the corpse, had largely protected Fala from the elements and insects. Ray smiled grimly behind a surgical mask. Brian Yun might have cause to regret the care with which he had buried his precious Persian.

Nice of him to gift wrap the evidence for us.

Wintergreen oil, rubbed beneath Ray's nostrils, counteracted the foul odor emanating from the carcass. He peeled away the last of the hair around Fala's neck and front legs. According to his research, that was where cats and dogs were most often bitten by agitated snakes. The blackened skin resisted examination, so he deftly removed it to expose the underlying dermis; as was often the case, the inner layer had not decayed as quickly as the outer epidermis. At first, he didn't see anything, but polarized light exposed a faint, horseshoe-shaped discoloration on the cat's withered paw. The shape and size of the bruise reminded him of the bite marks he had measured on Rita Segura. He took multiple snapshots of the mark and collected a sample of the mottled dermis. A microtome could later be used to slice the sample into segments thin enough to be mounted on microscope slides. With luck, histology might find signs of tissue damage caused by the venom.

A mental image of cat versus snake played across his mind. Fala scratching Coral's back with its extended claws, only to squawk in panic as the coral snake's jaws latched onto his paw. Had Brian Yun come running at the sound of the commotion, or had he returned later to find his beloved pet already
dead? Had the snake gotten loose somehow, or had the curious cat somehow managed to get his paw into the snake's cage?

Ray suspected the latter.

But the bite marks, if that was what they were, were only the icing on the cake. Most of his hopes lay elsewhere, in Fala's opaque, clouded eyes. He was relieved to see that the frozen eyes were only partially desiccated. It was too late to try to obtain blood or urine from the corpse, but the vitreous humor within the eyes was fairly resistant to putrefaction; it often survived even when the rest of the body was badly decomposed. Using a syringe, he extracted a few cc's of the clear, thick fluid and transferred it to a sterile tube.

Next stop: toxicology.

Fortunately, they already had an exemplar of the poison in question. All the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer needed to do was match the chemical compounds.

And then, like Poe's fabled black cat, Fala might expose a criminal.

“Y
OU KNOW WHAT
the problem with zombies is?” Catherine asked. “They don't stay buried.”

She flung the rubber mask onto the table in front of Roger Park and his lawyer. The producer flinched at the sight of it. The stark decor of the interrogation suite was a far cry from his luxurious trailer, and Park appeared much less at ease in this inhospitable setting. He swallowed hard. “Where did you get that?”

“Debra Lusky's personal storage unit,” Brass stated. “Carefully wrapped in tissue paper and tucked away in a box of personal memorabilia.” He cracked a wry smile. “Who knew zombies could be so sentimental?”

“Not to mention murderers.” Catherine held the mask up so that Park could get a better look at its worm-eaten features, previously seen in close-up on the infamous zombie sex tape. Park had been confronted with the video footage only moments earlier. “Look familiar?”

The attorney, a silver-haired smoothie named Arthur Chou, placed a restraining hand on his client's arm. Chou had a reputation for getting Hollywood celebrities out of trouble; he had once managed to get an A-list date rapist acquitted despite a surfeit of DNA evidence. “Don't answer that.”

Brass ignored the lawyer, keeping Park in his sights. “Maybe we should ask your wife if she recognizes the mask . . . or the woman in the video.”

“No!” Park blurted. “You can't! She'd ruin me!”

“Quiet,” Chou counseled Park again. He dismissed Brass's threat with a wave of a well-manicured hand. “I fail to see the relevance of my client's personal life. I was under the impression this was a murder investigation, not divorce proceedings.”

Catherine was unimpressed by the lawyer's haughty attitude. “I think your client just did a pretty good job of demonstrating its relevance. Mr. Park's career would suffer if his wife found out he was cheating on her. That gave him a motive to dispose of Matt Novak—and Debra Lusky.”

“We did our homework,” Brass elaborated. “Seems Tricia Grantley has a controlling interest in the whole
Zombie Heat
franchise.” He gazed knowingly at Park. “She could kill all your big TV plans if she felt like it.”

Park blanched at the prospect. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. “Look,” he began, over Chou's protests, “I admit I had a thing with Debra. We met at the
Zombie Heat
premiere and, what can I say, we just clicked. There was this amazing chemistry between us. . . .”

“You mean you both liked your sex good and creepy,” Catherine translated.

Park glared at her. “That's not a crime.”

“So why didn't you mention this to us before?” Brass asked.

“It's just like you said,” he answered. “We were trying to keep my wife from finding out, for all sorts of personal and professional reasons.” He wiped his sweaty brow with a silk handkerchief. “I had enough catastrophes to deal with after the shooting, and telling you about my affair with Debra was not going to bring Matt back. After all, it didn't have anything to do with Matt's death.”

“Even though Novak died with a copy of the video on his person?” Brass was openly skeptical. “Here's what I think happened. Your old drinking buddy somehow got hold of one of your kinky home movies. Maybe he lifted it off your computer. Or maybe you even showed it to him in a careless moment.”

Stranger things had happened,
Catherine mused, especially where Hollywood types were concerned. According to this movie she'd seen on cable once, Bob Crane, the one-time star of
Hogan's Heroes,
had frequently taped himself having one night stands with groupies, then shared the videos with a long-time crony of his. Come to think of it, that had ended in murder too. . . .

“But then,” Brass continued, “Novak decides to blackmail you into making him a star. So you decide to get rid of him in a convenient ‘accident.' And, lucky for you, Debra knows just the right person to squeeze the trigger for you. Her old frenemy, Jill Wooten.”

“That doesn't make sense,” Park protested. “If
I was in cahoots with Debra, why would I kill her, too?” He placed a hand over his heart, feigning grief. “Believe me, what we had was very special.”

“Not special enough,” Catherine accused him. “Not once she started cracking under the pressure. We interrogated her roughly nine hours before she was murdered, and she was pretty stressed out by the end of the questioning, almost like she was on the verge of coming clean.” Catherine could see how it all played out. “I'm thinking she called you in a panic, probably on one of those disposable cell phones you harassed Jill with, and you realized you couldn't depend on her silence anymore.”

Brass picked up the narrative. “Of course, there was no time for anything tricky or elaborate this time. So you just arranged to meet her in the park . . . and shot her in the head when her back was turned.”

Park started to object, but Chou cut him off. “You two missed your callings, you know that? You should have been screenwriters.” He scoffed at their theory. “It's a colorful story, but it's all just supposition. Prove it.”

Catherine met his cocky smirk with one of her own. “We're working on it.”

“Is that all?” the lawyer demanded. “Are we done here?”

“Just one more thing,” she said.

“What's that?”

Catherine took out her cell phone. “I'd like to hear your client say ‘nuclear.'”

“I
DON'T UNDERSTAND
what I'm doing here,” Brian Yun complained. “I haven't done anything wrong.”

An interrogation room at police headquarters was probably the last place the soft-spoken assistant manager was used to spending Sunday night in. He had no police record; this was his first documented brush with the law. He fidgeted nervously in his seat, across the table from Ray and Sara. Vartann had been called away to investigate a drive-by shooting in Pahrump, but Ray figured they finally had enough evidence to pin the snake attack on Yun. A confession would wrap things up nicely.

“Really?” he said skeptically. “Then perhaps you can explain how it is that we found coral snake venom in your cat's remains. Venom identical, by the way, to that produced by the snake that bit Rita Segura.”

Gas chromatography and the mass spectrometer had both confirmed that the venom samples were chemically identical. The toxicology reports rested
in a folder in front of Ray, along with various photos and statements. Yun looked anxiously at the bulging folder, just like he was supposed to. He had to be wondering what else they knew.

“Guess Fala didn't like having a snake in the house,” Sara said. “What happened? Sometime when you weren't looking, the cat got at the snake? Which then retaliated?”

Once again, Ray pictured a moment of hissing, snarling chaos. “A tragic turn of events for Fala. I'm sure you were quite broken up about it, but not enough that you abandoned your plan to sneak the venomous snake into the vivarium at The Nile.”

“Why would I do something like that?” Yun argued unconvincingly. He glanced over at the oneway mirror, as though worrying who else might be listening. “There must be some sort of mistake.”

“I don't think so,” Ray said. He opened the file and slid a photo across the table. The color glossy was an enhanced close-up of the bite marks on Fala's moldering remains. Yun gagged at the photo and looked away. Afraid that he might throw up, Ray reclaimed the picture and tucked it back into the folder. He assumed he had made his point. “Fala was bitten by a snake. A coral snake.”

Yun swallowed hard. “Maybe . . . maybe it was a different snake.” He groped for an alternative explanation. “She must have been bitten in the yard, when she was playing outside. I didn't realize . . . I thought she had just died of natural causes.”

“Unlikely,” Ray pronounced. “Coral snakes are not native to Nevada.”

Yun's hopes faded. “A rattler?” he suggested feebly.

Ray shook his head. “Completely different kind of venom.”

“There's more,” Sara added. “We know you bought the snake from Fang Santana. He identified your photo. We can put you in a lineup if necessary, but why drag this out.” She ticked off the evidence on her fingers. “We know the snake was in your house. We know who you bought it from. All we need now is the why.”

Ray offered Yun a sympathetic ear. “You never wanted to hurt Ms. Segura, did you? That wasn't the plan. You were after your boss. She's the one who was supposed to get bitten, wasn't she?”

“Of course!” Yun threw up his hands in surrender. “She always had her massage every Monday morning, just like clockwork. How was I supposed to know that Rita was going to show up and take her place? I wasn't even there that morning to stop her. I came in late on purpose, so nobody would think I had anything to do with it.” Tears streamed down his face. “You have to believe me! I never wanted anybody else to get hurt!”

“But why Madame Alexandra?” Sara asked. “What did she ever do to you?”

Yun looked surprised by the question. “Are you serious? You've met her, haven't you?” Bitterness curdled his face and voice. “She swans around, treating me like a servant, even though The Nile would fall apart without me. I do all the work, and she takes all the credit . . . and all the money. She should've made me her partner years ago, but I'm still just a doormat as far as she's concerned.” He snapped his fingers while doing a cruel impression of his imperious boss. “‘Oh, Brian! Come here, Brian! Take care of this, won't you, Brian?'”

Obviously, he had been nursing a heavy-duty grudge for some time. “You could have just quit,” Sara observed.

“And let her reap the rewards of my creativity?” he scoffed. “The success of the serpentine massages was the last straw. I told you before, that was all
my
idea. But did I even get a bonus or a cut of the profits? Of course not! Instead she acted like the whole notion sprang from her own deep spiritual wisdom, spouting off about the sublime healing properties of snakes.” He laughed harshly. “
I
pulled all that bullshit off the internet for her!”

Sara still didn't get it. “So you decided to kill her?”

“No!” Yun exclaimed. “I just wanted to scare her, maybe make her sick for a while. I looked it up: coral snake venom usually takes hours to take effect. I figured she'd make it to the emergency room in time . . . but not before she got a taste of her own medicine.”

“I see.” Ray wasn't sure if he believed that Yun expected Madame Alexandra to survive, but it didn't really matter. Yun had shown a reckless disregard for human life; it would be up to the district attorney's office if they wanted to press for attempted murder. “Well, you lucked out in one respect,” he informed Yun. “I just heard from the hospital. Rita Segura has finally regained consciousness and is breathing on her own again. She's going to need plenty of observation and follow-up, but she's expected to make a full recovery in time.”