I growled and beat my chest with my free hand and let out a low-volume Tarzan roar. Two women power-walking our way scrunched up their lips and gave us wide berth as they passed.
“You just made their day,” she said.
*
Milo, bored. He griped so much about work stress, personal stress, the state of the world, anything at hand, that I’d never considered the concept.
When had Allison seen him last . . . two weeks ago. Late-night dinner at Café Moghul, the Indian restaurant near the West L.A. station that he uses as a second office. The proprietors believe his presence ensures them peace and security and treat him like a maharajah.
That night, Allison and I, Rick, and the big guy had been treated to a gut-stretching banquet. Allison and Milo happened to sit next to each other and ended up talking for most of the evening. It’s taken him a while to warm up to her. To the notion that I’m with someone new. Robin and I were together for over a decade, and he adores her. Robin had found happiness with another man. I thought I was dealing with that pretty well as she and I struggled to build a new kind of friendship. Except for when I wasn’t.
I was waiting for Milo to stop acting like a kid caught in a custody dispute.
The morning after the Indian dinner, he called me, and said, “You have your quirks, but when you settle on one, she’s a keeper.”
*
The day after the murder, he phoned. “No semen on the girl, no sign of sexual assault. Unless you count the spear. The same .22 was used to shoot both of them, one bullet each, right to the forehead. Your hostile or out-of-control shooter tends to empty his weapon. Meaning this was a guy with confidence. Cool, maybe with experience.”
“Confident and careful,” I said. “Also, he didn’t want to make a lot of noise.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Though given the site—the nearest house is a couple of acres away—he was probably okay on that account. Also, the gun would have gone pop pop, no big explosion. No exit wounds, the bullets bounced around the kids’ brains, did the kind of damage you’d expect from a .22.”
“Has the girl been identified?”
“Not yet. Her prints don’t appear to be in the system, though I can’t say for sure, because the computer’s been screwing up. I’ve talked to our Missing Persons guys, and they’re putting together some paper. I did a bit of calling around to other stations, but young blond girls aren’t a rare commodity when you’re talking MP. My guess is she’ll turn out to be another of Gavin’s Beverly Hills friends. Though if she was, you’d expect someone to miss her by now, and no one called or filed at B.H. on a missing girl.”
“Sleepover,” I said. “Nowadays, parents are lenient. And affluent parents are more likely to be out of town.”
“Would’ve been nice to talk to Kayla . . . meanwhile, I got the coroner to shoot some preautopsy pictures. Just got back from picking them up, have the least scary one to show around. It almost looks as if she’s sleeping. I want the Quicks to have a look at it, figure the father’s back, maybe the sister, too. I put a call in to them, but no one answered, no machine.”
“Grieving,” I said.
“And now I’m going to interrupt the process. Care to join me? In case I need help in the sensitivity department?”
CHAPTER
4
In the afternoon daylight the Quick residence was even prettier, well kept, the lawn clipped, the front yard ringed by beds of impatiens. Daytime parking was restricted to permit holders. Milo had placed an LAPD banner atop his dash, and he handed me one for the Seville. In his free hand was a manila envelope.
I put the banner in the car. “Now I’m official.”
“Hoo-hah. Here we go again.” He bent one leg and flexed his neck. Opening the envelope, he pulled out the death shot of the blond girl.
The pretty face was now a pale mask. I studied the details: ski slope nose, dimpled chin, eyebrow pierce. Lank yellow strands that the camera turned greenish. Greenish tint to the skin that was real. The bullet hole was an oversized black mole, puffy around the edges, just off center in the unlined brow. Purplish bruises had settled around the eyes—blood leaking from the brain. Bloody residue under the nose, too. Her mouth hung slightly open. Her teeth were straight and dull.