Chapter 2
Chapter
This crime scene was twenty-five minutes from my house but seven minutes from the West L.A. station.
Yellow tape fenced off a one-story bungalow on a block of nearly identical structures five streets south of the monstrous mall at Westwood and Pico.
Many of the small, simple houses shouted pride of ownership. This one didn’t.
Mint-green stucco had faded to sludge-gray sallow in spots. The lawn was skimpy and bristly, green conceding to brown. A gray asphalt roof sported black rectangles where shingles had fled. A dirty, older beige Lexus sat in a cracked, weed-choked driveway.
Black-and-whites positioned perpendicular to the street extended the cordon beyond the death house, walling in two neighboring properties on either side. Parked in front was a black unmarked Ford. Detective Alicia Bogomil’s ride.
A few neighbors gaped from a distance but like most L.A. streets, this one reacted to daylight with isolation. The only other people in sight were uniformed officers doing what everyone else does with spare time: practicing self-hypnosis by phone.
No vans from the Hertzberg crime lab or the coroner had arrived. Same for the compact cars coroner’s investigator used.
Nothing but the initial police presence said a recently discovered body.
Milo said, “Let’s find Alicia.”
Before we took a step, she emerged from behind the Lexus and strode toward us.
Trim and purposeful, hair clipped shorter than the last time I’d seen her and tipped with magenta and peacock blue, she wore black slacks, a black leather jacket over a black T-shirt, and black flats.
Looking like anything other than what she was.
We’d met her working private security for a hotel where a hundred-year-old woman had been murdered. She’d been a major factor in closing the case and Milo had encouraged her to apply to the department. Then he’d helped fast-track her to detective.
“One of the smartest things I ever did,” he told me shortly after. “Super smart and that work ethic!”
Now she was frowning. “Wouldn’t have called you, L.T., but it’s a strange one.” Her lean avian face canted toward me. “Glad you’re here, Doc. Same reason.”
Milo said, “Thanks.”
“Sir?”
“You rescued me. We were just conferring on Sophie Barlow.”
Alicia smiled faintly. “That one. Okay, let me show you this one.”
—
The three of us gloved and bootied and Alicia led us past the Lexus toward the rear of the green house, keeping up a steady pace while reporting.
“It started a couple hours ago when a neighbor—I took her statement and had her go back to her place but she’ll be available—this neighbor called in a possible welfare check on the occupant because she hadn’t been seen in a while and mail was piling up.
I found three days’ worth but it was a pretty big pile so I could see the neighbor’s point. ”
Milo said, “Anything interesting?”
“Like what?”
“Warnings from the Black Hand.”
Alicia laughed. “Unfortunately not. All I saw were circulars and catalogs and other junk. I bagged it, it’s in my trunk.”
“How long is a while since she’d been seen?”
“Neighbor thought at least a week but she doesn’t really pay attention to comings and goings. Since it was an elderly living alone, Dispatch sent two of ours—Santos and Meade, they’re in that first Oreo whenever you want them. No answer to their door-knock so they came back here.”
She swung her arm toward a shallow strip of yard enclosed by block walls. No trees or shrubs, just a clothesline on rusted metal posts, the rope limp and filthy.
Milo looked at the back door. White and warped and set with a high fanlight window.
Alicia said, “Same thing there, so they checked that out.”
“That” was the garage. A single-car structure with old-fashioned barn doors painted deep green and left open, revealing a floor-to-ceiling hoard.
Cardboard cartons were stacked to the rafters, as were black garbage bags stuffed to corpulence.
Bound stacks of browned newspapers and an assortment of flimsy luggage created additional towers.
A collection of rusty bicycles had been stacked into a tenuous minaret.
Four grubby mattresses stored vertically pushed against random pieces of scrap wood and an equally unstable pile of transparent plastic bags crammed with matted clothing.
The only object privileged with breathing room was a chipped white deep-freeze on the right wall, plugged in and chugging. Alicia walked to it. “Ready?”
Milo said, “Do it.”
“Here we go. Again.” Biting her lip, she lifted the freezer lid with apparent tenderness.
Inside was another oversized plastic bag. Unlike the garment receptacles, this one was clouded to translucence by condensation, ice flecks, and brownish-red smears.
The contents blurred, like something preserved in aspic, but still visible.
Two scrawny, gray-white human arms had been severed from the gray-white torso on which they’d been placed.
The limbs were folded across each other in a cruel parody of stubbornness.
Both legs were bent under at the knees but appeared intact.
Same for the sunken-cheeked face topped with long, wispy white hair that stared up at us with a gaping toothless mouth and inert black eyes.
Milo turned away.
Alicia shook her head. “Yeah, it’s horrific. Meade threw up over in a corner of the yard and Santos held it in but was feeling sick when I got here and embarrassed by it. She’s new, maybe she feels she needs to prove herself.”
“Getting sick just proves she’s human.”
“That’s what I told her.”
Milo returned his attention to the frozen body, leaning in, careful not to touch anything. “Looks like the arms were cut off pretty cleanly. I can see dismembering in order to fit someone inside. But she’s small and bending the legs did the trick so why bother?”
Alicia said, “Some kind of sick message?”
Both of them looked at me.
I examined the white porcelain front of the deep-freeze, then the sides. Plenty of nicks and dents but no blood. I said so.
Alicia said, “Nothing I can see.”
“What led Meade and Santos to open it?”
“It wasn’t any great deduction, it was just there so Santos flipped the lid. She didn’t expect to find anything.”
Milo said, “Good reason to feel sick. Victim’s the occupant?”
“Haven’t verified it yet but the age and dimensions fit.” She pulled out her pad. “Five-two, a hundred pounds. Seventy-two years old, poor thing. Who would do that?”
Milo produced his pad. “Name?”
“Martha Joline Matthias.”
His eyes rounded and his arm dropped. The pad slapped against his thigh and for a moment he seemed to lose balance. “Oh Lord.”
Alicia said, “You know her, L.T.?”
“Know her and worked with her. She was one of us.”