The Museum of Desire: An Alex Delaware Novel(29)

Milo said, “Next: phone accounts. Alvarez didn’t have one and if the woman is homeless, probably the same for her. I’ve subpoenaed Roget and Gurnsey’s cells and Roget’s landline. At the very least we’ll know who they talked to last. With the canvass over, let’s take a look at where Roget posted his ads. Now the forensics, such as they are.”

He summed up, including Basia’s asphyxiation theory for the woman and her lack of fingerprints. The latter brought frowns to three faces.

Bogomil mouthed, Wonderful.

Milo said, “Basia’s gonna try to scare up something.” He turned to me. “How about some psychological insight?”

I said, “This is more guesswork than insight. If we view the slaughter as a true multiple, it’s likely all four victims meant something to the killer. But these four are as varied as they come. So far the only commonality is the lack of local family ties but, again, why such a mixed group? Another way to look at it is one victim was the primary target and the others were added later as supporting players. To my mind, the most likely primary is Rick Gurnsey.”

I described Gurnsey’s sexual behavior.

Alicia frowned. “Bad boy who tried to sneak in the back door? Yeah, that could annoy someone.”

“If he got aggressive, he was more than an annoyance,” I said. “At the very least his behavior was high-risk. The murderer had a firearm but chose to stab him, and the lack of defense wounds says Gurnsey was caught off guard.”

“Up close and personal,” said Reed. “Cut during an intimate situation.”

“That’s how it feels to me, Moe.”

“An angry woman?” said Bogomil. “Then why the others?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “We could also be talking about an angry husband slash boyfriend. Or most likely, two people working in concert because this slaughter involved a lot of subduing and transferring.”

“Vengeful couple,” said Reed.

“Supporting players,” said Binchy. “Like casting a movie.”

I said, “Right from the beginning the crime scene’s felt theatrical to me. Given Gurnsey’s behavior, the way he was posed, his having a wider social net than the others, I’d concentrate on him. Past relationships, people he worked with.”

Bogomil said, “The woman was just as posed as Gurnsey. And choking her out was pretty up close and personal.”

I said, “It’s possible both of them were primary targets. On the other hand, her age, her looks, her possible homelessness, could be thought of as factors chosen to humiliate Gurnsey.”

“You jumped me with your alleged manhood so I’m showing it to the world, soft and small? I guess that makes sense.” She smiled. “As the girl in the room, I can say that.”

Milo said, “Hopefully we can I.D. her. We find out she’s an heiress with a big life insurance policy, we’ll shift our perspective.”

Alicia played with the pale ends of her hair. “The men were wearing normal clothes but to my eye, she was in what looked like vintage. Like someone went into the costume room and played dress-up. So yeah, there is that production feel to it.”

Binchy said, “A chauffeur’s uniform could also be seen as a costume. Choosing a chauffeur—and a car like that—is also pretty theatrical.”

Milo said, “This is good. Keep thinking and don’t be afraid to guess. Anything else?”

Silence.

“Okay, good point about the clothes, Alicia. I’ll have the lab check for labels. Onward.”

He tapped the photo of Lassie, told them about the dog blood.

They sat there.

Finally, Bogomil said, “Bastard.”



* * *



—

Meeting over, the young D’s dispersed, everyone begging off Milo’s offer to take the pastries with them.

He said, “Maybe it was the dog, ruined their appetites.” He brought the box back to his office, placed it in the scant space to the left of his computer, and shot it a longing glance. Phoning the crime lab at Cal State L.A., he spoke to the director, Noreen Sharp, about the clothing.

She said, “We talking fiber analysis?”

“A list of the labels will do just fine, Noreen.”

“Easy enough. This is some complication you got yourself, Milo. We had to use the truck bay for the limo, pulled up a fair amount of prints. The crypt hasn’t sent over your victims’ bio-data yet so I can’t tell you if they mean anything.”

“I’ll get that done for you. What do you think about the dog blood?”

“I think,” said Sharp, “that it’s bizarre and monstrous and totally over-the-top. We’ve dealt with canine transfers over the years, mostly hairs we could trace to bad guys. Dumping blood? Who’d do that? We’re still scraping away the carpet gook, it’s like cleaning grease from a barbecue. There’s a lot of surface area so we used a new computer program from Israel to tell us how many samples we need to cover enough ground. Multiple drench-spots makes it tough, the program’s not set up for that, so it probably overestimated when it came up with a hundred seventy-eight and mapped where they should come from. We’ll go with that so obviously it’s going to take time.”

“Appreciate it, Noreen.”