“You know, I don’t like the word ‘tit.’ ” Berger says this matter-of-factly, as if she is telling a waiter to hold the bear-naise sauce. She looks levelly at Marino. “Do you even know what a tit is, Captain?”
Marino, for once, is without words.
“A small bird, maybe,” she goes on, shuffling through her paperwork, the energy of her hands betraying her anger. “A blow. Tit for tat, blow for blow. Etymology. And I don’t mean the study of bugs. That would be with an NEntomology. I’m talking about words. Which can offend. And can offend back. Balls, for example, can be something used in games tennis, soccer. Or refer to the very limited brains between the legs of males who talk about tits.” She glances at him with a weighty pause. “Now that we’ve crossed our language barrier, shall we proceed?” She turns expectantly to me.
Marino’s face is the color of a radish.
“You have copies of the autopsy reports already?” I know the answer, but ask her anyway.
“I’ve been through them numerous times,” she responds.
I peel tape off the cases and push them in her direction while Marino pops his knuckles and avoids our eyes. Berger slides color photographs out of an envelope. “What can you tell me?” she asks us.
“Kim Luong,” Marino begins in a workmanlike tone, reminding me of M. I. Galloway after he persisted in humiliating her. Marino is seething. “Thirty-year-old Asian, worked part-time in a West End convenience store called Quik Gary. It appears Chandonne waited until there was no one there but her. This was at night.”
“Thursday, December ninth,” Berger says as she looks at a scene photo of Luong’s mutilated, seminude body.
“Yeah. The burglar alarm went off at nineteen-sixteen,” he says as I puzzle. What did Marino and Berger talk about last night, if not this? I assumed she met with him to go over the investigative aspects of the cases, but it seems clear the two of them have not discussed the murders of Luong or Bray.
Berger frowns, looking at another photograph. “Sixteen past seven P.M.? That’s when he came into the store or when he left after the fact?”
“When he left. Went out a back door that was always armed, on a separate alarm system. So he came into the store sometime earlier than that, through the front door, probably right after dark. He had a gun, walked in, shot her as she was sitting behind the counter. Then he put up the closed sign, locked the door, and dragged her back into the storeroom so he could do his thing with her.” Marino is laconic and on good behavior, but beneath all this is a volatile concoction of chemistry that I am beginning to recognize. He wants to impress, belittle and bed Jaime Berger, and all of it is about his aching wounds of loneliness and insecurity, and his frustrations with me. As I watch him struggle to hide his embarrassment behind a wall of nonchalance, I am touched by sorrow. If only Marino wouldn’t force misery upon himself. If only he wouldn’t invite bad moments like these.
“Was she alive when he began beating and biting her?” Berger directs this at me as she slowly goes through more photographs.
“Yes,” I reply.
“Based on?”
“There was sufficient tissue response to the injuries of her face to suggest she was alive when he began beating her. What
we can’t know is whether she was conscious. Or better put,
how long she was conscious,” I say.
“I got videotapes of the scenes,” Marino offers in a voice meant to suggest he is bored.
“I want everything.” Berger makes that patently clear.
“At least I filmed the Luong and Diane Bray scenes. Not brother Thomas. We didn’t videotape him in the cargo container, which is probably a damn lucky thing.” Marino stifles a yawn, his act becoming more ridiculous and annoying.
“You went to all the scenes?” Berger asks me.
“I did.”
She looks at another photograph.
“No way I’d ever eat blue cheese again, not after spending quality time with ol’ Thomas.” Hostility bristles closer to the surface of Marino’s skin.
“You know, I was going to put on coffee,” I say to him. “Would you mind?”