City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)(6)
“Which house specifically are we talking about, sir?”
Gibbs pointed. “Three up from mine. The style-devoid structure with the horrid blue siding and the insufficient shrubbery. Want to lay odds I’m right? If your naked d.b. came from anywhere on the block, it was there.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Gibbs’s face constricted. “Is that a sincere thank-you or a get-lost thank-you?”
“Sincere,” said Moe, not sure if it was.
He went to check.
* * *
—
Despite Gibbs’s architectural critique, the house seemed decent if bland, a two-story traditional with a flat green lawn and a lush planting of birds-of-paradise looking downright avian as it shaded a neat bed of white impatiens. Moe had come to know flower varieties because his mother’s new passion was gardening. Probably her twentieth passion in as many years; breeding goldfish hadn’t worked out too well when herons discovered her shallow pond.
He did have to agree with Gibbs the Grump about the blue siding.
A welcome mat on a clean concrete stoop said Nice People Welcome. Good Intentions Tolerated.
His knock was met with silence. So was his doorbell-push. He felt eyes boring into the back of his neck, saw Rainer Gibbs back in front of his Spanish, arms crossed, watching him.
Obnoxious old coot. The scrutiny made Moe feel he was back in school reciting poetry that made no sense.
Crossing the lawn, he reached the blue house’s driveway. A gate blocking entry was unlatched. Moe chose to see it as an omen and passed through.
He’d made it nearly to the house’s rear door when he saw the blood.
Spots of blood, what looked like low-impact spatter, already beginning to rust in the sun. Not a huge amount—maybe a dozen specks that continued right up to the door. Someone else might not have noticed.
To Moe’s trained eye, enough blood to matter.
He stopped, deliberated, decided.
Time to call the boss.
CHAPTER
4
Milo phoned me just after nine a.m.
Not the typical time for one of his calls. Black skies bring out the predators and the prey, so nighttime’s the right time for the killings. Milo feels I might have something to offer.
As I sat stalled in commuter traffic on Beverly Glen heading south, another prisoner of the daylight, I figured something had happened hours ago and he’d been on the scene for a while.
Meaning complicated.
My destination was in a northeast pocket of Westwood that ran parallel to the U. I could’ve run the three miles from my house on the Glen and had done so many times. But that morning, I’d chosen to run uphill, meaning north, had jogged to Mulholland and back, was stretching out and drinking coffee.
I showered, got dressed, walked to Robin’s studio, kissed her, petted the dog, returned to the house and down the steps from the entry landing, and got in the Seville.
Crawling the three or so miles to Sunset, I slogged another westward mile to the U.’s eastern border at Hilgard Avenue, drove a few blocks before hanging a left, crossing two more quiet, leafy streets, and hooking north.
Walking distance from campus and the sororities and religious centers that lined Hilgard, but far enough from adolescent merriment to be quiet. Hilly abbreviated streets hosted two-story houses originally designed to house faculty. Professors emeritis could afford to stick around because they’d bought decades ago. Good luck to any other academic not attached to medicine, law, or business.
The yellow tape was visible half a block away, the activity massed near a boxy structure sided in royal blue.
I was entering the scene with little but curiosity. All Milo had said was, “One of those, Alex. If you’re free.”
I was because my appointment was booked late in afternoon. One of the child custody cases that pay my bills and allow me to hope I can help some kids going through the dissolution of their families.
I said, “Morning’s clear.”
“What a pal.”
* * *
—
Four black-and-whites were parked in front of the tape. In the distance, several officers conducted door-knocks.
The sole uniform guarding the tape stopped me. Young, arms crossed, almost comically grave. “No entry, sir.”
“Dr. Delaware for Lieutenant Sturgis.”
“Duck under, sir.”
Yellow, numbered plastic evidence markers marked a section of sidewalk and street not far from the entrance to the cordoned area. A second group of markers, larger, covering a wider swath, dotted the blue house’s driveway like a child’s discarded toys, and spilled over to the lawn.
Milo stood away from all that, on the sidewalk, wearing an exhausted, lint-colored sport coat, a white wash ’n’ wear shirt, a sad burnt-orange thing aspiring to be a necktie, khaki cargo pants, and tan desert boots. The boots’ soles were bright flamingo. Freshly soled. For the tenth time.
Next to him stood Detective Moses Reed, fair-haired, buzz-cut, and nearly as pink as Milo’s shoe-bottoms, in a gray suit, navy shirt, navy tie. No matter how carefully Moe’s clothes are tailored, his power lifter’s build makes them look ready to burst at the seams. This morning, the tension had traveled to his eyes.
He’s young but experienced. This had to be something.