Spiral (7 page)

”Not while I’m in this chair,” said Pintana.

”All right, then how about your view on what happened.”

She folded her hands on top of the desk. Or, more accurately, on top of one of the papers covering it. ”Held, Veronica Janis, white female, was killed by drowning in the pool at her grandfather’s home. There were bruises on the ankles suggesting someone held her down there and forced her head under the water.”

”Prints?”

”Not thanks to the water. And the chlorine in it.” Cascadden said, ”Plus that houseboy fucked the crime scene all to hell.”

I looked over. ”I don’t think Duy Tranh is a houseboy.” Going back to Pintana, I asked, ”Any trace evidence?”

”Pool, pool area, and filter checked carefully for fibers and hair. We found a catalog of them, which isn’t surprising, since just about everybody at the party or the house in general used the pool in the preceding twenty-four hours.”

First no evidence, now too much. ”I understand the girl was sexually assaulted.”

Pintana gave a sidelong look at Cascadden, but apparently her partner had learned at least something about sensitivity, because he didn’t say anything. She came back to me with,
”Sí.
Evidence of violent penetration, no semen or other fluids.”

”Because of the pool water again?”

”Possibly, but the Medical Examiner did find traces of latex in the vagina, torn though it was.”

”A condom?”

”That is my belief. When I joined the unit as a detective, we were still responsible for child molestation and sexual battery as well as homicide.”

”Anything further from the autopsy?”

”Given lung and vaginal tissue, the M.E. feels the penetration probably occurred while the girl was struggling underwater.”

The Skipper had said that, but it was still troubling, ”She was raped while the killer was drowning her?”

Cascadden laughed. ”Or the fucking perp’ was getting his jollies, and he never noticed the kid wasn’t breathing real good.”

I looked at Cascadden again. Police work, and especially homicide investigation, can harden you. But this ex-Marine seemed more amused than callous.

He said, ”What’re you looking at, Beantown?”

”Nobody there calls it that.”

”Huh?”

”Nobody in Boston calls it ‘Beantown,’ any more than I’d call somebody down here a ‘redneck.’”

Cascadden clenched his fists. ‘That what you’re calling me?”

”Kyle,” from Pintana.

”Huh, boy?” coming forward a step with the fists still clenched but not yet up. ”You calling me—”

”Kyle,” from Pintana, but with a little more juice behind it. ”Enough, okay?”

Cascadden glanced at her, but kept his eyes mostly on mine, to make sure I knew he could still handle me if his partner weren’t around. Then he stepped back, shoulders against the wall, arms folded across his chest so that the eagle tatt’ was eyeing me, too.

I said to Pintana, ‘You were first on the scene?”

”No. Road patrol responded to the nine-one-one. I
got
called out.”

”Meaning you were off duty?”

”In my apartment.”

Not just ”at home.”

”How about your partner here?”

Cascadden grunted. ”Sergeant’s not my partner.”

I looked at her. ”You’re not?”

”No, Mr. Cuddy. I run the unit.”

”In Boston, that’d be a lieutenant’s slot.”

”In Lauderdale, we don’t have that rank. It’s sergeant or captain, and I’m years away from a promotion.”

”Maybe not after this case.”

Pintana watched me. ”The Held murder was so high-profile from the get-go that I’ve been riding with Kyle on it since he wasn’t partnered up at the time.”

That came as no surprise. To Cascadden, I said, ”So, you were here at the station?”

”What difference does it fucking make?”

‘You won’t let me see the logs and files, I’d like to have some idea how long people in the house would have had before the police in general and Homicide in particular got things under control.”

Cascadden started to say something, but Pintana spoke over him. ”That makes sense. Road patrol was there within five minutes after the nine-one-one.”

”And how long after the girl was found did somebody think to call it in?”

Given the confusion at the scene—family, the band members, everybody milling around—hard to say for sure, hut Mr. Tranh said he ‘ran’ for the phone.”

Same thing he’d told me. ”So say it takes him one or two minutes to get her out of the pool and dial for help. How long after the girl was killed does the M.E. estimate she was found by Mr. Tranh?”

Pintana gave me an appraising look. ”Given the temperature of the pool water, that’s pretty hazy. But most of the guests say she left the party about an hour before the body was found.”

So, adding in even the rapid police response, the killer had plenty of time to hide any evidence of condom—or even gloves to hold her.... ”Were there any latex tracings on the girl’s ankles?”

Cascadden glanced at Pintana, but she watched me with the appraising look. ”Lab says yes, in some of the cracks in the skin caused by her thrashing around.”

I thought back to what Duy Tranh had said to me about planning. ”Premeditated rather than opportunistic.” Cascadden seemed confused. Pintana picked up her pencil again before adding, ”Worse than that.”

”How do you mean?”

”Drownings are generally tough cases to make. Hard to determine whether it was intentional or accidental.”

”But I’m told the Held girl was an excellent swimmer.”

”Even excellent swimmers drown, especially if they get high before they hit the water.”

”High?”

”Lab reported cocaine in her system.”

Christ. ”We know where she got it?”

Cascadden said, ”Her shitbird father, probably.”

I stayed with Pintana. ”But the lab also reported those latex tracings from both—”

”Think about it, Mr. Cuddy. You just want to kill the girl, you leave her swimsuit on and keep her under the water by holding it. Chances are, little or no trace evidence, and the death is closed as accidental.”

I did think about it. ”But by taking off the suit, and using a condom and gloves, the killer makes it obvious.”

Pintana nodded.

I said, ”We were supposed to know it was intentional.”

Cascadden grunted. ”Less the perp’ just had to get his jollies, like I said before.”

Neither Pintana nor I acted like we’d heard him.

I said to her, ”And the killer knew in advance that the birthday party would provide perfect timing...”

Pintana pointed at me with her pencil... because the band member’s son wanted the house security cameras off when he made his video.”

”That’s what I’m thinking, too.”

When Pintana didn’t break eye contact with me, I said, ”Any chance of my getting a look at Kalil’s video?”

Cascadden said, ”Oh, sure thing, Beantown.”

His sarcasm was still dripping when Sergeant Lourdes Pintana tapped the pencil eraser against her front teeth and said, ”Why not?”

Kyle Cascadden threw up his hands and left the room. Either he’d forgotten his sports jacket or he didn’t believe in wearing one.

I said, ”The party’s already under way.”

”Sí.”
The only Spanish word Pintana seemed to use. ”Buford and Kalil Biggs did not arrive at the very beginning of it.”

We were in her small office now, each of us with half our rumps on respective front comers of the desk, both of us staring at the monitor above her VCR.

I said, ”The house cameras were turned off by this point?”

”Approximately thirty minutes earlier. We were told that Veronica wished it so, and her grandfather made it so.”

I watched the silent images on the screen.

”Audio?”

”Kalil told us he forgot to engage it.”

The images bounced and shifted as whoever was carrying the camcorder—Kalil, probably—tried to pan the living room and the party-goers in it.

Pintana said, ”You have seen the interior of the house?”

”Yes.”

She pointed to a corner. ”That is the entrance to the corridor leading to the pool area.” The focus shifted away. ”Unfortunately, the entire tape is like this. Plenty of time for one of the guests to enter the pool area without being on camera.”

”Veronica, too?”

”Yes and no. I think he preceded her there, though.”

”You’re assuming a male did the killing?”

Pintana kept her eyes on the screen. ”I would not like to think that a woman—the ones at the party, anyway—would mimic a rape in killing another female.”

I thought about Cassandra Helides’s apparently avid interest in sex, but kept my own counsel on it.

Then I started counting the people onscreen that I could recognize. The Skipper and his wife. Duy Tranh. And now a brash, sassy girl with cornrowed, reddish-blond hair that I vaguely remembered seeing pictured on the television in a Boston bar the week before. Her gold lamé blouse was tucked into the waist of spandex tights, the material stretching over her upper thighs and buttocks. She looked at least seventeen.

”That’s Veronica?” I said.

”
Sí.
”

”I thought she was only thirteen?”

”Twelve and ten months, actually.”

Veronica and a number of adults ebbed and flowed across the none-too-steady lens. ”You’ve analyzed how much time each person is offscreen?”

”To the tenth of a second. It is hopeless. Apparently Kalil Biggs was striving for a ‘stream of consciousness’ in his cinema verité.”

”James Joyce meets Martin Scorsese.”

After a moment, Pintana said, ”Kyle would really hate you as a partner.”

Within ten minutes, there was food and drink being taken from a lavishly stocked buffet table that Kalil’s camera panned in the adjoining room. I could see what Pintana meant about the tape not being very helpful in locating who was where when.

Then we were back in the living room, focused on Veronica Held. Suddenly, she tore off her own blouse, showing a tank top underneath, budding breasts pushing against it. And Veronica began a suggestive, languid dance, her mouth and throat cords implying that she was singing.

I said, ”Is there any—”

”Kalil Biggs remembers now to click on the audio.”

And suddenly a piercing, achingly adult voice filled Pintana’s office. It wasn’t that the volume was turned up too high; it was more that Veronica’s voice carried so well. Maybe the reddish hair spurred the memory, but I was reminded of the signature song from
Annie,
‘Tomorrow,” I think it’s called.

Except the a cappella lyric coming from Veronica Held’s mouth was anything but naively optimistic.

I said, ”She’s singing a song about sex with an older man on her grandfather’s birthday?”

Pintana said, ”Not for long.”

You could hear the thunder of the Skipper’s voice even through the garbling caused by his stroke. And while Veronica pouted—in a pretty fair imitation of Cassandra, her ”stepgrandmother”—the girl did stop singing before talking off, the camera following her until she was lost in the broader adult bodies. A stocky man in his forties with a

Manchu mustache hurried after Veronica, a woman in!*er thirties with flowers in her hair—literally—following ehind him.

”The parents?”

”
Sí.
Spi Held and Jeanette Held.”

”Can you identify the others for me?”

”If I hurry.” Pintana leaned forward, pressing the pad of an index finger to the screen over the face of a thin African-American man. ”Kalil’s father, Buford Biggs, the band’s keyboardist.” The finger moved to a fat, bald man and a stolid, sandy-haired woman. ”Gordo Lazar, the band’s bass player, and Delgis Reyes, Veronica’s au pair.”

I watched Lazar and Reyes. ”They seem closer than just joint guests.”

”Each told me they are involved with one another.” A pause before, ”Romantically.”

Another skinny man—white, with a bad hair transplant—came across the screen, a drink in his hand. Pintana said, ”The band’s manager, Mitch Eisen.” Cassandra Helides followed him, also carrying a drink, this one sloshing over the sides of her glass.

”And she is the wife of Nicolas Helides. Cassandra.” Next I got a couple of frames showing a guy in his twenties, the hair wildly platinum and orange, before the VCR made a clicking, whirring noise, and the screen went to snow abruptly.

”Who was that last one?”

”Ricky Queen, the band’s drummer.”

”Kalil have to switch tapes?”

”No. You have seen all he gave us.”

Didn’t seem right. ”How many minutes of running time after Veronica left the room?”

”One minute, thirty-two seconds. The reason I told you I would have to be quick to identify the other guests.”