Open Season (Alex Delaware #40)

Chapter 3

Chapter

3

Marissa Adrianne French, twenty-five years old, five-five, one seventeen, brown and blue, driver of a six-year-old white Accord.

DMV photos typically bring out the worst in faces but this face had managed to dodge the indignity.

Beautiful young woman with wide, sparkling eyes, the blue of her irises so deep they came across indigo. Broad, white smile, rosy cheekbones, dimple on the right. “Brown” was chestnut laced with strands of ice blue, worn long and side-parted, with a flap that half concealed her left eye.

The address on her driver’s license was a three-digit apartment number on Coldwater Canyon Avenue in Sherman Oaks. Milo pulled up a street view. Massive gray mega-unit between Magnolia and Riverside.

Her prints were on file because Beverly Elms Gardens, where she worked as a Caregiver Level I, had required a background check. Milo looked up the facility. Olympic just east of La Brea, specializing in “Eldercare and Memory Rehabilitation.”

He called and got put on hold. Switched his phone to speaker and muttered, “Wonderful,” when too-soft rock began streaming. Returning to his keyboard, he entered his LAPD user I.D. and began searching databases.

Since the background check nineteen months ago, Marissa French hadn’t accrued any criminal charges. Nor was she listed as a crime victim or a party to a civil suit.

Milo had just logged onto NCIC when the phone said, “Can I help you?”

Female voice, flat with boredom.

Marissa French’s name elicited “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Your facility fingerprinted her.”

“If you say so.”

“She no longer works there?”

“That I couldn’t tell you.”

“Ma’am,” said Milo. “She’s dead and she listed you as her place of employment.”

A beat. “Dead.”

“Could you see if she ever worked there and if she left, is there a forwarding to a new job?”

“We don’t keep that type of information…dead…an accident?”

“I’m a homicide detective, Ms….”

“Julie. You’re saying murder.”

“It’s not a pretty situation, Julie.”

Silence.

“Julie?”

“Okay…could she be a temp?”

He rolled his eyes. “Good question.”

“I’m only saying because if she was a temp you need to talk to HR and they’re over at corporate in Buena Park. Would you like the number?”

“I would, Julie, but if you could be a doll and just check your records that would be super-helpful.”

“Not pretty, how?”

“You really don’t want to know, Julie.”

“Okay. Hold on.”

We endured several more minutes of music beaten to a sodden pulp before a new voice came on. Male, deep.

“This is Truc. Marissa A. French worked here but as a float.”

“Meaning?”

“She had no contract but agreed to be available when someone was needed to fill in on a shift.”

“On-call.”

“Yes.”

“How often did that turn out to be?”

“No idea, sir. That would require going through like a year and a half of data.”

“Giant hassle, huh?”

Truc said, “Let me see what I find.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Julie told me she got killed, I want to do what I can.”

“Thanks, Truc. Here’s my number.”

When the line went dead, he turned to me. “A float. Okay, let’s look at her social media.”

I’d been working my phone and showed him the results.

He said, “Thank you, Oracle of Delphi.”

—

The camera adored Marissa French and she reciprocated.

Her online presence was extensive and chiefly photographic. Hundreds of images, some selfies, some taken by others. Sometimes she’d posed with men and women her own age, the most common position, grinning, drink in hand, the background always a blurry crowd scene.

But most of the collection consisted of solos of Marissa French.

That might fit with not much by way of “friends.”

Despite all the images, she’d named only four.

Tori, Beth, Bethany, Yoli.

Short blond hair, long blond hair, long black hair, a pile of red waves. Each woman svelte, pretty, wearing full makeup and clothing that advertised fitness.

Never photographed as a group. Each of them stood next to Marissa in party scenes. Center screen reserved for Marissa.

As I kept looking, I realized the same went for men. Always relegated to the sides.

People as props?

Milo screen-shot the four names along with accompanying photos and emailed the lot to his desktop. The computer began chiming receipt and we returned to examining what was shaping up as Marissa French’s sadly brief legacy.

—

The photos fit into three categories.

Marissa posing on the beach in a bikini or topless with arms folded across her chest.

Marissa perched on sun-splotched hilltops in shorts and tees, hair blowing strategically.

Marissa crouching in what appeared to be a forest, looking entranced by pinecones, ferns, and stones and wearing tight western shirts, denim short-shorts, and boots with heels that mocked the notion of hiking.

What seemed to be modeling poses. But modeling’s about more than beauty and for all Marissa’s good looks, she projected a limited emotional range—smile or pout—and none of the results had produced anything better than what the DMV robot had accomplished.

A rare burst of prose followed the photographic display:

I’m available for movie work, here are my credits. xoxoxoxo M

No agency listed, just an email address.

Then the “credits.”

During the past eighteen months, Marissa French had worked as an extra on four TV pilots and three low-budget horror flicks.

Milo said, “Heard of any of them?”

I shook my head.

“Same old story, poor thing.”

I said, “Maybe she worked as a float to be available for auditions.”

“Which never came through.” He scrolled quickly through several more screens, came to the end, and was about to click off when his eyes widened.

The final photo was time-stamped Friday, eleven thirty-four p.m., and featured Marissa French in a minimal red dress with side cutouts that exposed a tight waist and a violin curve of hip.

Standing with a man. This time, not an age peer, not even close.

Mid- to late-forties and nothing prop-like about him. Unlike every other photo in Marissa’s collection, she’d given up center stage and was edged so far to the right that her left arm was out of the frame.

Easy for her companion to fill space. He was tall enough to stand well above a five-five woman wearing four-inch heels, and broad, with piled-up shoulders and a muscular torso running slightly to flab.

Middle-aged but dressed younger, in a black, scoop-necked Pink Floyd T-shirt with high-cut sleeves that emphasized bulky arms. A diamond or something pretending to be glinted from his left earlobe. A chunky gold chain dangled to the hem of the scoop.

A pug-nosed, meaty face was improbably tan where it wasn’t booze-flushed. A toothy, borderline-rodent smile was a tribute to the excesses of cosmetic dentistry. Black hair was buzzed nearly invisible at the sides, the top a curly thatch lubricated to gleaming. Framing the capped teeth were thick lips bottomed by a triangular, black soul patch.

His left arm was tattoo-sleeved. His right, un-inked, was slung over Marissa French’s bare shoulders in a casual display of ownership. Nothing in her body language said she’d signed on voluntarily. Glassy eyes said she wasn’t equipped for protest.

Both he and Marissa held oversized martini glasses filled with something red. His smile was triumphant. Hers, pathetic.

Milo said, “Joe Beef looks like he’s bagged a trophy. She’s not into it, why’s she standing for it?”

I said, “Look at her eyes.”

He studied the image. “Yeah, she is kinda hazy.”

“His size fits the video and so does the time frame.”

“Partying close to midnight and she’s dead before three.”

I said, “He takes her to his place or somewhere else where he can control the scene, makes sure she’s incapacitated. She was dumped naked so he likely did his thing or tried to. At some point, she stopped breathing so he got rid of the problem.”

Milo’s eyes swept back and forth between the two faces, alternating between revulsion and anger. Ending with a long look at the grinning man and cherry-sized lumps running up and down his jaw.

“Bastard. Who are you?”