Chapter 7
Chapter
It took a couple of days for Milo to call me.
“You have any time to come by? If not, I’ll go to yours.”
I’d just finished a morning consult. Acidic custody case. It’s rare for me to have aggressively warring parents in the office together but these two had claimed they’d “raised their consciousness” and really wanted to work things out. That hadn’t ended up well.
I said, “I can be there in thirty.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
—
Milo’s workspace is a windowless closet one floor above the big detective room.
That and his ability to work cases as a lieutenant had been negotiated with a corrupt police chief about whom Milo had damaging information.
The chief, nearing retirement, assumed the pathetic allotment would drive a pariah to quit.
Soon after, the chief was dead of a heart attack on the fifth hole of a Rancho Mirage golf course.
Milo continues to enjoy the solitude as he closes murders.
When I got there the door was open. He scowled, grunted, and hoisted his bulk from his desk chair, waited until I’d settled before sinking back down and making the chair cry.
I’d squeezed into my usual spot. The only spot, really, and not much of that: a hard chair in a corner behind the desk. If Milo wheeled back carelessly, I’d be the one to get dented.
He tapped a blue binder but kept it closed. Rotating slowly, he faced me.
“Okay, first off, the prelim autopsy, Basia’s not sure when the final will come through.
Probable cause of death: strangulation, no ligature marks so maybe manual, but with the freezing, no way to be sure.
Basia said it wouldn’ta taken much force, Martha’s hyoid and what was left of her thyroid cartilage basically crumbled.
Overall condition of the body was malnourished and fragile.
Basia also doesn’t see any signs of thawing and refreezing so our working guess on TOD is reasonable.
Apart from the dog barking and the mail at the door, it fits with last time Martha was seen away from her house. ”
I said, “A week ago.”
“Six, seven days,” he said. “Four days before she was found, that discount grocery place. No video there but they remembered her as a nice old lady who kept to herself and bought mostly frozen food. I’m still waiting for her financials and her phone-dump to come through.
Phone as in landline, no mobile account. ”
He turned back to the desk, opened the blue murder book, flipped a page but paid it scant attention.
“The crime scene,” he said, “is likely the bathroom. There’s only one in the house.
It had been cleaned up but there were minute blood specks on the wall above the tub and around the drain.
Luminol picked up splotches in the tub itself and a whole lot more was found down the drain.
Basia’s tool guy can’t be sure what was used to remove the arms but something like a jigsaw would fit.
No tools in the house but if we ever find something, we can do a wound match. ”
I said, “Using a pig carcass.”
“How do you know that?”
“You told me years ago.”
“I did? What case?”
“No case. You were getting philosophical—pigs and humans, Orwell—”
He’d colored around his jowls. “I do that a lot, huh?”
“I find it educational,” I said. “Seeing as Martha paid cash, did you come across any money in the house?”
“Funny you should ask, that was my next revelation. Yeah, Alicia found a big manila envelope with a little over five thousand in hundreds and fifties stashed between some old newspapers in the bedroom. Martha’s pension was just short of four a month and she got another twelve hundred from Social Security so looks like she kept around a month’s worth on hand. ”
“Makes sense if you pay in cash. Nothing else?”
“Place is such a mess it’ll take a while to go through.
There was a cigar box with some jewelry in a box under her bed.
Looked like costume junk to me but Darlene will check at the lab.
Her TV was an old thirty-incher still attached to a roof aerial.
Not even basic cable, just local stations, and there doesn’t seem to have been a computer, anywhere.
It’s like she was living in the past, Alex. ”
I said, “Maybe she’d freeze-framed.”
“To what?”
“A happier time.”
He thought about that. “When I knew her she always looked okay. Not super talkative but quietly pleasant. But who knows, she mighta been living weird even back then and keeping it to herself.”
“Do you recall any friends at the department?”
“Nope.” Crooked smile. “Maybe that’s why she talked to me. Pair of outcasts.”
“Any reason for her to be an outcast?”
“Other than being female, not that I knew,” he said. “And honestly, Alex, she was treated well by the other D’s. Respected for her work but I guess it didn’t translate to socializing.” The smile widened. “It happens.”
I said, “Your finding no other money doesn’t mean someone else didn’t.”
“The killer scored buried treasure? I guess it’s possible but you’d really have to know where to look or take a long time rooting around. We’d been in there half a day before the envelope showed up.”
“Not the usual toss.”
He shook his head. “Godawful. Junk piled high, mouse droppings, mildew, dust you could finger-paint in. The mouse stuff got us nervous. Hantavirus or some other creepy-crawly. Once we saw it, we left and called for hazmat masks, which delayed everything another coupla hours.”
I said, “Martha was able to live with it.”
“Crazy, huh? Maybe she’d built up immunity. Or was damn lucky. Alicia was right. It’s a miracle nothing toppled over on her.”
I said, “Someone familiar with the house could’ve had an easier time finding buried treasure.”
“The daughter—or whoever the woman who visited her was,” he said.
“Yeah, she’s who we’re concentrating on.
I’m betting she is a daughter because I finally accessed Martha’s retirement forms and there’s a single dependent listed.
Lynne Matthias, forty-six, which would fit age-wise.
No address listed but no criminal record shows up.
You’re thinking a family reunion that went bad? ”
I said, “Happens all the time. The woman was seen going toward the back of Martha’s house. Any indication she ever stayed for a stretch of time?”
“Next to the bed there was a rolled-up futon.”
“Any sign of recent usage?”
“Nope, dusty but not caked on, so maybe occasional usage.”
“Mother and daughter bunking in together,” I said.
“Then it goes really bad,” he said. “Gotta find this woman.”
—
I sat there as he logged on to the DMV, then local crime files. He’d already searched for info on Lynne Matthias but data’s always coming in and it doesn’t hurt to be careful.
No payoff this time.
He checked out L.A. County death certificates and came up empty.
I said, “Maybe she got married and uses another surname.”
“She’s listed under Matthias in Martha’s personnel file.”
“That was a while back. She could’ve married after the file was set up. Or it was wishful thinking on Mom’s part.”
“Meaning?”
“She’s still my kid.”
“More like delusional,” he said. “Then again, Martha lived in that place.”
He tried marriage records. Several Matthiases had attempted wedded bliss but no Lynne.
But Martha showed up twice.
Fifty-one years ago, Martha Joline Anderson, twenty-one, had married Pablo Gutierrez, twenty-two, at a Catholic church in Saugus. Five years later, just turned twenty-six, she’d been wedded to Richard Lee Matthias, thirty-three, at the L.A. county courthouse.
No notice of dissolution. Back to the death files where one showed up for Pablo Gutierrez. Four years after marrying Martha, he’d perished in an industrial accident at a construction site in Vernon. A year later, she’d wed Matthias.
I said, “Traditional church wedding, then widowed at twenty-five. Was she a cop by then?”
He checked. “Yup, still a rookie.”
“Richard’s the uniform you were talking about. She likely met him on the job, married him shortly after Gutierrez died.”
“A precinct affair? Makes sense.”
“When did Matthias die?”
“By the time I knew her, he was gone, hold on.” He typed fast. “Here we go, TBL obituary. Twenty-two years ago, age fifty-seven, cardiac disease.”
Thin Blue Line, the Police Protective League’s magazine. Members-only access.
I said, “Martha was only fifty when she was widowed for the second time. Maybe that’s when her life began to change.”
“Fine, she got stressed and kept it to herself. But why would she change in that way?”
“You know what I’m going to say.”
“Yeah, yeah, human beings are complicated. But be a pal and throw out a theory, any theory.”
I said, “Any kind of obsessive behavior is an attempt to reduce anxiety. Martha may have had a tendency that ballooned under stress. The other possibility is some sort of early dementia was settling in and she realized it. That might explain the transfer out of Homicide.”
“Wanting to deal with the small stuff,” he said. “Well, if she was slipping, I sure didn’t notice. And same question: Why change in that way, specifically?”
“We’re pals, Big Guy, but that doesn’t change things.”
“Yeah, yeah, no way to predict how any individual is going to react.” He shut his eyes. Rubbed his face like washing without water. When the green irises reappeared, they were fixed in a forever-stare.
“People,” he said. “We’re basically bags of question marks.”
Opening a desk drawer, he removed another blue binder, opened it to the center, and handed it over.
“Long as we’re talking ignorance, check this out.”
White label on the front cover. Barlow, Sophie, followed by a case number.
He’d earmarked two pages of crime scene photos, all variations on a theme.
A woman sitting at a kitchen table. Smallish, beige table in a smallish, beige kitchen. Matching chair with a blue upholstered back. Slender brunette, wearing a white, ribbed tank top. Her right arm was clear, her left brocaded shoulder-to-wrist by a jungle of floral tattoos.
Pale complexion but no way to know what her skin had looked like in life.
Her head had been tilted back offering a full view of a long, graceful neck, ringed by angry pink deepening to coral red in spots.
The positioning also exposed her nostrils and a mouth slightly ajar that flashed a ribbon of white teeth. Dark hair was long and wavy. A rear shot showed it streaming over the back of the chair like a shower of sooty icicles.
On the table before her was a red plastic bowl. A directional arrow had been drawn in white, focusing attention on the bowl’s contents. Two cigarette butts. White paper, brown filter.
I said, “Just as you described.”
“For what that’s worth.”
Turning back to his desk, he busied himself with his keyboard. Wanting some sort of wisdom from me.
I said, “Tell me about her.”
“Thirty-eight years old, originally from Tulsa, widowed ten years ago, moved here, worked as an office manager at a real estate firm in Encino.”
“Any kids?”
“Nope.”
“Any love interests besides Heck?”
“Excellent question, no idea.” He swiveled around. “Gotta start doing some serious digging on her. Was about to when Alicia called about Martha.”
“Dual priorities.”
“Two whodunits,” he said. “What deity have I offended?”