The fingers of his left hand were entwined with Alice Zoghbie’s.
The two of them, holding hands.
I’d broken into frosty sweat, wasn’t breathing, but my brain was racing. My eyes shifted from the bodies to something else, off to the left, a few feet away. A wicker picnic basket. Propped against it, a tall green bottle, foil-topped. Champagne. Atop the basket, a pair of tiny, gold-lidded jars.
Too far for me to read the labels and I knew better than to disturb the crime scene.
Red jar, black jar. Caviar?
Champagne and caviar, an upscale picnic. Bare feet and her housedress said Alice and the man had no intention of going anywhere.
Posed.
The irony.
A bluebottle fly alighted on Alice Zoghbie’s left breast, scuttled, paused, explored some more before taking off in flight—heading toward me.
I backed away. Retreated through the gate, knowing my prints were on the handle, it wouldn’t be long before someone would want to talk to me. Leaving it open, I retraced my steps down the driveway, past the Audi, to the curb.
The old man had gone inside. The street had reverted to torpor. So many perfect lawns. Sparrows skittered. How long before the vultures arrived?
Inside the Seville, I breathed.
Last guy in L.A. without a damn cell phone.
I got out of there, drove to a gas station on Verdugo Road, sweat-drenched, collar tight. I parked near the pay phone, composed myself, got out. Other people pumped gas as I tried to look any way other than how I felt.
The killings were in Glendale PD jurisdiction, but to hell with that, I called Milo.
CHAPTER 32
“ANY IDEA WHEN he’ll be back?”
“I think he went downtown to do some paperwork,” said the clerk, a woman, one I didn’t know. “I can transfer you to Detective Korn. He works with Detective Sturgis. Your name, sir?”
“No thanks,” I said.
“You’re sure?”
She sounded nice so I gave her the ugly details and hung up before she could respond.
I drove back to L.A., hoping for an empty house. Wanting time to breathe, to sort things out.
Repulsed, still shaken. Sweat came gushing out of my pores as the image of the bodies kept smacking me across the brain.
Milo and I had visited Alice Zoghbie five days ago.
No skin sloughing, no maggots, the beginnings of the green tinge … I was no forensic pathologist, but I’d seen enough corpses to guess that not more than a couple of days had passed since the murder. Alice’s mail and phone records could clear that up….
Propped, holding hands, a picnic.
Someone canny enough to overpower a big man like Haiselden and a woman who hiked the Himalayas.
Someone they knew. A confederate. Had to be.
The feelings of disgust didn’t subside, but a new sensation joined them—strange, juvenile glee.
Not Eric, not Richard. No motive and both their whereabouts were well accounted for during the past two or three days. Same for Donny Salcido.
Propped against a tree. Geometry. Michael Burke’s trademarks. Time to give Leimert Fusco’s big black book another review.
Time to call Fusco—but Milo deserved to know first.
I was on the 134, driving much too fast, hoping for an empty house, thinking about Haiselden hiding from the civil suit only to encounter something much worse.
He’d probably been hiding out with Alice all along—I recalled the phone call she’d taken when Milo and I had visited. Afterward, she couldn’t wait to get rid of us. Probably from her pal, wanting to know if the coast was clear.
The two of them waylaid right there in Alice’s house. Someone they knew . .. someone respectable, trusted. A bright young doctor who’d apprenticed to Mate.
No doubt Glendale police had already been dispatched to the scene. Soon my prints on the gate would be lifted and within days they’d be matched to the Medical Board files in Sacramento.
Milo needed to know soon.
If I couldn’t reach him, should I go straight to Fusco? The FBI man had said he was flying up to Seattle. Wanting to check on the unsolveds—something specific about the Seattle unsolveds?
The last Seattle victim—Marissa Bonpaine. Plastic hypodermic found on the forest floor. Cataloged and forgotten.