Career maker.
“You’ll be a lieutenant before you’re thirty.”
“There’s a woman you’ll have to get next to, lad. You might have to fuck the pants off of her.”
A bludgeon to smash his nightmares.
He felt cocky when he left the briefing, taking the nonpsychiatric reports under his arm, promising to report for a second confab this afternoon at City Hall. He went back to his apartment, called a dozen dental labs that Karen Hiltscher hadn’t tapped and got zilch, read a dozen homosexual homicide histories without drinking or thinking of the Chateau Marmont. He then started feeling very cocky, took his 2307 Tamarind blood scrapings to the USC chemistry building and bribed a forensics classmate into typing them, hoping he could combine the wall spray pictures with the victims’ names, reconstruct and get another fix on his man. The classmate didn’t even blink at the bloodwork and did his tests; Danny took home data and put it together with the photographs.
Three victims, three different blood types–the risk of showing illegally obtained evidence was worth it. The Marty Goines AB+ blood matched the sloppiest of the wall sprays; he was the first victim, and the killer had not yet perfected his interior decorating technique. George Wiltsie and Duane Lindenaur, types O- and B+, had their blood spat out separately, Wiltsie in designs less intricate, less polished. Conclusions reinforced and conclusions gained: Marty Goines was a spur-of-the-moment victim, and the killer went at him in a total rage. Although filled with suicidal bravado–as witnessed by his bringing victims two and three to Goines’ apartment–he had to have had an ace reason for choosing Mad Marty, which could be one of three:
He knew the man and wanted to kill him out of hatred–a well-defined personal motive;
He knew the man and found him a satisfactory victim based on convenience and/or blood lust;
He did not know Marty Goines previously, but was intimately acquainted with the darktown jazz strip, and trusted himself to find a victim there.
Have his men recanvass the area.
On Wiltsie/Lindenaur:
The killer bit and gnawed and swallowed and sprayed Wiltsie’s blood first, because he was the one who most attracted him. The relative refinement of the Lindenaur blood designs denoted the killer’s satisfaction and satiation; Wiltsie, a known male prostitute, was his primary sex fix.
Tonight, double-agency sanctioned, he’d brace talent agent/procurer Felix Gordean, connected circumstantially to Wiltsie’s squeeze Duane Lindenaur–and try for a handle on who the men were.
Danny checked the clock: 8:53; the other officers should be arriving at 9:00. He decided to stick behind the lectern, got out his notepad and went over the assignments he’d laid out. A moment later, he heard a discreet throat-clearing and looked up.
A stocky blond man, thirty-fivish, was walking toward him. Danny remembered something Dudley Smith said: a Homicide Bureau “protégé” of his would be on the “team” to grease things and make sure the other men “fell in line.” He pasted on a smile and stuck out his hand; the man gave him a hard shake. “Mike Breuning. You’re Danny Upshaw?”
“Yes. Is it Sergeant?”
“I’m a sergeant, but call me Mike. Dudley sends regards and regrets–the station boss here says Gene Niles has to work the case with us. He was the catching officer, and the Bureau can’t spare any other men. C’est la vie, I always say.”
Danny winced, remembering his lies to Niles. “Who’s the fourth man?”
“One of your guys, Jack Shortell, a squadroom sergeant from the San Dimas Substation. Look, Upshaw, I’m sorry about Niles. I know he hates the Sheriff’s and he thinks the City end of the job should be shitcanned, but Dudley said to tell you, ‘Remember, you’re the boss.’ Dudley likes you, by the way. He thinks you’re a comer.”
His take on Smith was that he enjoyed hurting people. “That’s great. Tell the Lieutenant thanks for me.”
“Call him Dudley, and thank him yourself–you guys are partners on that Commie thing now. Look, here’s the others.”
Danny looked. Gene Niles was walking to the front of the room, giving a tall man with wire-frame glasses a wide berth, like all Sheriff’s personnel were disease carriers. He sat down in the first row of chairs and got out a notepad and pen–no amenities, no acknowledgment of rank. The tall man came up and gave Breuning and Danny quick shakes. He said, “I’m Jack Shortell.”