City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)(53)

“Keeping things simple. Caspian not having a car made me realize I didn’t see one at Cordi’s.”

“Nothing registered,” he said. “No doubt Uber et cetera for her, too. What do you think about Caspian’s lifestyle. Kinda Trappist, no?”

I said, “Like she said, it’s a vicious town.”

“She does have a point. And I think she was right, it does tell us something about Cordi. Poor guy’s scratching by, she gets him to discount his fee? She’s a complex girl, our victim, should’ve come equipped with a decoder.”

I said, “Idolized by her brother and Caspian but not too popular with anyone else we’ve talked to.”

“Including her own mother. You see any similarities between Aaron and Caspian?”

“Males with whom sex wouldn’t be an issue for her. Fits with her abandoning relationships and concentrating on becoming famous.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. So Ms. Kramm coulda just nailed the motive. You’ve heard of those involuntary celibates, hate themselves, hate women, sometimes they snap. What if one of those watched her online, got enamored, convinced himself romance was on the horizon. He managed to make personal contact, she either ignored him or rejected him. Either way, he couldn’t handle it and boom.”

I said, “You wouldn’t need celibacy, just unfulfilled fantasy. Classic celebrity stalker situation.”

“Even though she wasn’t much of a celebrity yet.”

“You don’t have to be famous anymore, just out there.”

“Yeah…I’d love to check out the correspondence her videos pulled but she set it up so it got cleaned out every month. And nothing we’ve seen recently was suspicious.”

A block later, he said, “What if the scenario featured the short-tempered Mr. Hoffgarden? Who she actually did sleep with once upon a time. She breaks it off, he goes nuts. There’s your stalker deal. You’ve spent time with him, what do you think?”

“Can’t eliminate him.”

“That’s it? Nothing he did tipped you off?”

“The brief time I spent with him focused on his parenting skills.”

“Which were nil.”

We drove a bit.

I said, “Caspian sleeping in the nude clarifies one thing. He wasn’t stripped by the bad guy. He was a neat person, so his clothes were probably folded near the sofa and the bad guy took them and the I.D. to delay identification. Or, if Caspian was mistaken for a lover, carrying him naked into the street and making sure he was found that way would be an additional way to demean him.”

“Red-hot lover sleeping on the couch?”

“Sleeping naked could still have connoted sex,” I said. “Finding Caspian was likely a surprise, the killer might not have been thinking logically. Another reason could’ve been to take trophies. That would explain why you haven’t found the clothing discarded.”

“Loco-man slavering over his stash.”

His cell began chirping something Baroque. Mercifully, he answered by the third note.

Alicia Bogomil said, “Learned a few things about Mr. Delage, Loo. Sad story.”

“Let’s hear it, kid. I took my antidepressants this morning.”

She laughed. Gave the details.

When she finished, Milo said, “Maybe I need a higher dosage.”





CHAPTER


    24


Longevity wasn’t a thing for the Banksters of Columbus, Ohio, and Alicia had the paperwork to prove it.

She met us outside Milo’s office and handed him a sheaf.

“He’s not in our system, Loo, but if you want, I can try digging around some more.”

“Good job, kiddo. Go for it.”

As she hurried off, Milo and I studied what she’d presented. Starting with death records from Social Security.

Zorena Bankster, the mother of Charles Bankster aka Caspian Delage, had passed away seven years ago, age forty-eight, from liver cancer. Two years later, her husband, Joseph Bankster, Sr., had succumbed to emphysema, age fifty-two.

Only one other relative could be located, an older brother, Joseph, Jr. Currently thirty-six years old and living in L.A.

If you could call it that.

The remainder of the paperwork revealed a disability history of nearly two decades for Caspian’s only sibling. Profound head injuries caused by a single-vehicle motorcycle accident on a highway outside of Dayton, the formerly healthy, eighteen-year-old Joseph, Jr., surviving in seriously diminished condition.

Following the death of both parents, Caspian had moved himself and his brother to L.A. and found an apartment near Skid Row for himself and a care facility downtown for the quadriplegic, minimally conscious Joseph. Just over two years ago, the brothers had shifted westward, Caspian subletting the flat on Barrington, Joseph transferred to a rest home in nearby Palms.

Round-the-clock maintenance at Palms Tudor Care Center cost six figures a year, with most of that covered by government payments.

Most, but not all; a nearly fifteen-thousand annual overage remained. Caspian Delage had assumed that obligation.

The real reason he’d lived like a monk.

I said, “Mona has no idea what Caspian was dealing with but given his closeness to Cordi, I wonder if she did.”