CHAPTER NINE
Jessie undid her seatbelt, ready to hop out of the car as soon as it came to a stop.
Sam was driving and had used the siren and cherry light from the moment they exited the Central Station garage until they pulled up here at the Beverly Grove home of David and Yuki Tanaka.
Just twenty minutes ago, they had been reviewing more of Maria Cain’s e-mails.
That was when the call came in from Captain Parker: there was another victim, along with a green card left on a plate next to the body.
Apparently the officers from Wilshire Station knew to call HSS immediately upon arriving at the scene because they’d heard about the Cain death on the news.
Jessie had been so focused on their investigation that she hadn’t paid attention to the media frenzy. But now, as Sam rounded the corner onto the Tanaka’s street, she got a sense of just how intense the attention was.
This morning there had been two news vans outside the Cain house. Now, in addition to all the assembled law enforcement vehicles there were four news vans parked along the street near the Tanaka’s home. Two radio crews were there as well. Jessie even saw an SUV emblazoned with the TMZ logo.
She wondered if this increased interest was because of the nature of the crime. Unlike Edward Cain, who worked in finance, David Tanaka was a big-time studio executive. Crimes with a connection to the entertainment industry always seemed to draw extra attention.
“Damn,” Jessie muttered as they came to a stop just down the block from the house. “I forgot to grab my disguises from my car before we left.”
Sam looked over at her in bewilderment. “Jessie, we’re well past that.
When you ran to the restroom before we left, Jamil and Beth showed me some of the coverage online.
Everybody already knows you’re involved.
Between that and the immigrant angle, people are frothing at the mouth.
And that’s before we account for the entertainment industry element. There’s no hiding on this one.”
That answered her question pretty definitively, though not in a way she liked.
“Then I guess we just walk straight in,” she said, getting out of the car.
She marched up the sidewalk, with Sam hurrying to catch up. By the time she reached the path leading up to the Tanaka’s Mediterranean-style mansion, the various news crews had swarmed her.
“Is this the work of a serial killer, Ms. Hunt?” one female reporter asked with surprising restraint before her voice was drowned out by a cacophony of shouted questions.
“Is this a hate crime?” “Does the killer hate immigrants, women, or both?” “Is this case getting special treatment because of Edward Cain’s donations to police causes? ”
She pressed ahead, pretending to ignore all the questions. The reporter asking about Cain got a little too close, bumping into her and making her stumble slightly. She had to fight the urge to give him a shove.
Luckily, Sam did the honors, “accidentally” slamming into the guy as he tried to clear a path for them. As they ducked under the police tape, an officer held up his hand, indicating that the press couldn’t go any farther.
When they reached the front door, an officer that Jessie vaguely recognized but had never met greeted them. He was very tall—easily six foot four—with thinning brownish-gray hair and a neatly trimmed mustached. Jessie guessed that he was in his late thirties.
“Come on in,” he said, “we can do introductions away from the prying eyes of the media.”
“Thanks,” Sam said as they stepped inside the foyer and waited for him to close the door. Once he did, the noise from outside was quickly muffled.
“I’m Sergeant Garrison Matheny, Wilshire Station,” he said, shaking their hands. “Thanks for getting here so quickly.”
“Not a problem,” Sam said. “I’m Detective Sam Goodwin. This is our profiler, Jessie Hunt.”
“Good to meet you,” Jessie said.
“Likewise, Sergeant Matheny replied. “Before I fill you in, maybe you should tell me what you already know so I don’t repeat old information.”
“Our research team filled us in on the basics on the drive over,” Jessie told him.
“Please let us know if we have any of this wrong. But from what we understand, the victim is Yuki Tanaka, age 30. She’s been a resident of the U.S.
for five years and married David Tanaka three years ago.
He’s 33 and is a marketing executive with a studio.
We were told that, like the victim from this morning, she was found in the dining room with puncture wounds to the neck and chest, and that there was a green card on a plate at the table. ”
As she described what they knew, Jessie once again found herself wondering why the killer would use scissors. They seemed so inefficient compared to a traditional knife. In fact, their use seemed so intentional that she felt it had to be significant in some way. But how?
"That's all correct," Matheny said. "We've only been here for about half an hour. The M.E. and crime scene folks arrived about fifteen minutes ago."
“Any conclusions yet?” Sam asked.
“I don’t want to get anything wrong so I’ll let them update you directly,” he said.
“Here’s what I can tell you. The body was found by the couple’s housekeeper, name of Alina Arturo.
She said she usually comes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
But the Tanakas were having a dinner party tonight and Yuki asked if she could come today as well.
Arturo said that when she arrived, the door was unlocked. ”
“Is the husband here?” Sam asked.
“No,” Matheny explained. “Apparently, he had to attend some studio premiere events in New York this weekend. We tried to reach out but he’s on a flight back right now.
We don’t believe he’s aware of what happened yet and sent officers to meet him when he lands at LAX.
We want to get to him before the media does. ”
As Jessie listened, she noticed that the hallway leading away from them had paw print tracks. As she squinted, she got an odd shiver up her spine. The prints had the rusty color of blood to them.
“What’s this all about?” she asked pointing at them.
“Those are from the Tanaka’s miniature schnauzer. It’s covered in the blood. We think that she curled up near the body. There’s a dog-sized indentation in a bloody section of carpeting next to Tanaka’s head.”
Jessie allowed a moment for his words to sink in.
The thought of Yuki Tanaka’s small dog snuggling up next to her dead owner gave her a new kind of pang.
The awfulness of this case matched that of any other she’d encountered.
But somehow that detail unsettled her in a way she’d never experienced before.
“Can you take us to the dining room please?” she asked quietly.
Matheny led the way, although they could have found it themselves just by following the paw prints.
“Where’s the housekeeper now?” Sam asked as they walked down the hall.
“She’s in the backyard with a support officer,” Matheny said. “She’s clearly in shock but was able to answer our questions coherently. Hopefully she can do the same for you.”
When they reached the dining room, Jessie was slightly surprised to see that Cheryl Gallagher was here too.
The deputy medical examiner was on the other side of the dining room table.
Yuki Tanaka was not sitting in the chair next to the plate with the green card.
Jessie noted that the chair had blood stains on the back.
She suspected that the body might have slipped off the chair and was lying on the carpet, which would explain how Mitzi got so close and bloody. Gallagher looked up and saw them.
“When I heard about the circumstances of the case, I volunteered,” she said, answering their unasked question. “I figured that if anyone could pick up on patterns between the crime scenes, it would be me.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Sam said. “Pick up on any yet?”
“Yes,” she answered. “It appears that the killer once again used scissors as the murder weapon, maybe even the same pair. The wounds are similar in depth and angle to those suffered by Maria Cain. And like before, the puncture points are duller than one would expect with a traditional knife. There are also these.”
She pointed to a section of the curtain cords that had obviously been snipped.
“But it looks like those cords weren’t strong enough to keep her in the chair,” Jessie gathered.
“It seems not,” Gallagher agreed. “When you come over, you’ll see that some of them are still wrapped around her. But others came loose and those that remained apparently couldn’t keep her upright in the chair. Did you want to look now?”
Jessie nodded. She and Sam walked around the table.
Once there, she allowed a moment for the scene to wash over her.
Yuki Tanaka was slumped on her side on the carpet.
Her long black hair, knotted in dry blood at the ends, obscured her face.
She was wearing cream capri pants and a V-necked top that exposed the gashes in her flesh.
To the side of her was the aforementioned pool of blood, complete with the indentation where Mitzi must have settled, hoping her owner would eventually wake up.
Jessie felt a pit of empathetic pain rise in her gut and made no effort to fight it off.
She intended to use the feeling as fuel to catch whoever had committed this atrocity.
But even amidst her compassion for Yuki, she noticed that something was missing.
Usually, these kinds of murderous attacks evoked not just empathy in her but also a sense of righteous vengeance.
That was nowhere to be found now. She wondered if her cold-blooded elimination of Ash Pierce was somehow connected.
Had that moment—that choice—shut something off in her temporarily? Or maybe for good?
“The blood looks pretty dry,” Sam noted.
“Good catch,” Gallagher said. “It’s one of the many things, including the state of the body, that makes me suspect Tanaka was killed before Maria Cain.”
“How much before?” Jessie wondered.
“Noting all the standard cautions about preliminary data, I’d say approximately 36 to 44 hours ago.”
“It’s almost 2 P.M. now,” Sam said doing the mental math, “So that would place it between 6 P.M. and 2 A.M. on Friday night?”
“That’s a good general range,” Gallagher confirmed.
“So the first victim was killed on Friday night and the second on Saturday night,” Jessie summed up. “That doesn’t bode well for tonight.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment as the anxiety of that realization saturated the room. Jessie broke the silence. “We need to talk to the housekeeper.”