The Museum of Desire: An Alex Delaware Novel(5)

The smaller tech stood and faced me. Female, young, bespectacled. “Knees hurt, I’m ready for a break.”

They both left the tent.

I inhaled through my nose, exhaled through my mouth, and stepped forward. Gloved but still careful not to touch anything, I began taking fast-action mental snapshots.

My brain works like that, registering images and saving them. Forever.

Snap one: in the driver’s seat an elderly black man.

Leaning slightly to the right.

Both hands resting in his lap.

Black chauffeur’s suit. White shirt. Black tie. White hair. Bushy white mustache.

Black hole in the left temple to his left cheek. Brown crust rimming the wound but no other blood until you got to the knees. Then, lots of it, slick as an oil slick as it glazed the lower part of both legs and descended to dove-gray leather seating and plush black carpeting.

No blood on the impeccable gray mohair roof of the limo. A partition sectioning driver from passengers was black glass but for a gold-plated audio speaker in the center.

No spatter there. Not a speckle anywhere.

The chauffeur’s chocolate skin had turned chalky in splotches. Slightly parted lips revealed perfectly aligned white teeth.

Dental perfection courtesy a skilled dentist. A bridge had come loose and dangled awkwardly.

I peered closer. No stippling around the wound that I could see but dusky skin tone made it hard to be sure.

Rigor hadn’t set in. Or it had come and gone. The dried blood said probably the latter.

Eight to twelve hours with no obvious decomposition. Cool May weather? But it’s rarely that simple.

I stepped back and walked to the rear of the car.

Three dead people occupied the rear seat, pressed close to one another, knees touching.

Closest to the door was a white male in his thirties wearing a black sport coat, a black T-shirt and slacks, black loafers, no socks. Thick, dark hair. Lean, good-looking.

Like the chauffeur, coated with blood from the knees down, a similar pool sludging the carpet.

Unlike the chauffer, no bullet wound that I could see.

I said so to Milo.

He said, “There is none, don’t know what got him, yet.”

I turned back to the car. The good-looking man’s fly was unzipped. His limp penis rested in the upturned left palm of his nearest seat-mate.

Older woman. Sixties, maybe even seventies, full-faced with a squashed, veiny nose. Eyes shut behind steel-framed glasses. Puffy cheeks had been rouged clumsily, creating clown-like cerise circles. Heavy arms swelled the long sleeves of a black wool dress, and stout legs encased in fishnet stockings were stuffed into square-toed black pumps, instep flesh humping above the strap. Gray hair curled from beneath a black felt tam. No jewelry, no adornment.

Like the chauffeur and the man whose member she fondled, bloodied from the knees down.

Again, no bullet wounds I could see.

I circled to the opposite side of the limo. The young D’s were still there. They greeted me but didn’t move.

The final victim was a brown-skinned man, Hispanic or Middle Eastern. Thin, bony-faced, with meager, elfin features. Sparse dark hair cropped short was flecked with silver. A filmy thatch of chin hairs struggled to be a beard.

Tough to estimate his age. My mental Nikon settled on thirty-five to forty-five.

Like the three other victims, dressed in black. Baggy suit, blousy white shirt, clip-on black tie, black canvas slip-ons.

I thought of a funeral procession waylaid and slaughtered.

Male Number Two’s cause of death, obvious: bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

Washed in blood from the knees down. Nothing to do with a small-caliber wound.

I returned my attention to the woman in the center. Stern, matronly. An appearance bizarrely at odds with the organ in her hand.

I said, “Nothing makes sense.”

Milo said, “And here I was hoping for immediate wisdom.” But he didn’t sound surprised.

“Any I.D.s?”

“Let’s catch some fresh air, I’ll fill you in.”





CHAPTER


    4


I followed him out of the tent, across a strip of cement and a wider belt of dirt, up the steps to the domed pavilion. The structure was impressive at a distance but tatty up close, brick floor cracked and buckling, cement columns crudely molded. The roof was rusting iron covered with dead vines that fought one another for space.

Vipers in a feeding frenzy.

Milo said, “Okay to sit, this area’s been gone over.” He plopped down on a flimsy-looking plastic chair and made it groan. “Lotta crap cleared away, most probably garbage from the party. Lovely stuff—condoms, cups, little baggies with remnants of granular stuff.”

The other chairs looked grubby. I stayed on my feet.

He said, “Any impression at all? I’ll take improv.”

I said, “To my eye, they’ve been dead for a while. I’d guess no more than twelve hours but maybe I’m missing something and they were partygoers from Friday night?”

“You’re not missing anything. The company that books venues swears the place was cleared out three a.m. Saturday. That wouldn’t mean much but every C.I. and tech says the condition of the bodies doesn’t match that long of a time period, even with cool weather, there’d have to be more decomp.”