“She got high.”
Kelly pointed a finger gun. “You must be a detective.”
“Did she do that a lot?”
“Enough. Not that I paid attention.”
“So the topic of impotence upset her.”
“Wouldn't it upset you?” said Kelly Sposito. “Life's tough enough, all the crap you get from men when they're at their best. Who has time for limp spaghetti?”
It was after five when Petra left the lot, and she wouldn't have minded a long, hot bath and a good meal prepared by someone else, maybe some torture at the easel. But she still needed to trade notes with Stu, and if he suggested they make their move on Ramsey tonight, she wouldn't argue.
She called the station. Stu wasn't back, but Lillian, the civilian receptionist, said, “Some stuff came for you from the coroner, Barbie.”
“Big envelope?”
“Medium big. I put it on your desk.”
“Thanks.”
She ate a tuna sandwich at the Apple Pan, washed it down with a Coke, scanned the paper- nothing on Lisa- drove back to Hollywood as quickly as the traffic would allow. By the time she arrived, the night shift had come on, but most of the D's were already out serving warrants and looking for bad guys and her desk was clear. Stu still hadn't checked in.
Inside the brown envelope were preliminary postmortem findings signed by a Dr. Wendell Kobayashi- countersigned as Schoelkopf had promised, by the head coroner, Dr. Ilie Romanescu.
Quick turnaround; usually even preliminaries took a week.
She sat down and read the two typed sheets. Traces of cocaine and alcohol had been found in Lisa Ramsey's body, enough to intoxicate but not cause stupor. Meaning she'd been easier to take by surprise. No final autopsy report yet, but the docs were able to provide a wound count and cause of death. Twenty-three cuts- close enough to Ilse Eggermann's twenty-nine. So far, the coroner was guessing that the fatal one had been the very deep abdominal slash Petra had tagged. Point of insertion just above the pubic bone, continuing eight inches upward- a vertical wound that had sliced through intestines and stomach and liver, bisecting the diaphragm, cutting off respiration.
A gutting. Street fighter's move.
As she drops, he hits her twenty-two more times.
Frenzy or fun. Or both.
Dr. Kobayashi guessed that he'd been standing close to her for that first, lethal lunge. Meaning blood on him, too, and if they lucked out and got an exchange, something he'd left on her. But fiber and fluid analysis would take several days. No footprints, as Alan Lau had noted. Either he'd taken off his shoes or gotten lucky.
She thought about what Darrell had told her about Lisa's sexual proclivities: oral sex in the car. Like a throwback to high school. Had Lisa been fixated at the cheerleader stage? Cheerleaders and older men?
Kelly had described Lisa as full of herself, but she'd ended up ministering to Darrell, wanting nothing for herself.
Sex in a car. The killer taking Lisa somewhere in a car.
Mr. Macho Ramsey, unable to function?
A chronic problem? The date Ramsey's last-ditch attempt to prove himself?
In the car? Because he and Lisa had done it before in cars?
That damn car museum! Had it been more than just a millionaire's trophy thing? Ramsey's marital aid? All that chrome and steel, big engines, reminding him he was rich, handsome, semifamous- a gazillion dollars' worth of toys all so the blood would remain in his penis?
Breshear had said Lisa seemed practiced. With Ramsey? Others? After the divorce- before?
But the phone records showed no contact with other men, no apparent social life. Maybe she'd used her work phone for personal contact. Getting those records would be a major hassle; she was sure the production company was the legal owner. She'd start the paperwork tomorrow morning.
Back to the murder night. Lisa dolling herself up.
The car, in the car, let's do it in the car.
And Ramsey couldn't cut it-
Cut. There it was again.
Unable to cut it, so Lisa unleashes the sarcasm and he cuts her.
After he'd been such a nice guy, forgiving the way she'd blabbed to the tabloid show, getting her the job at the studio, and still sending her seven grand a month.
Twenty-three in cash, a brokerage account at Merrill Lynch- she'd speak to the broker, Ghadoomian, something else for tomorrow.
Sex, money, failure.
Failure in the car, so he'd used the car to kill her?
Driving her to her final destination.
Doing her in a parking lot.
How L.A.
She needed access to PLYR 0 and PLYR 1 and every other vehicle in Ramsey's collection. For all she knew, the death car had been one of the others- that phallic Ferrari, sitting right there in front of them, Stu and the sheriff's guys gawking, unaware they were looking at a slaughterhouse on wheels.
No, too conspicuous, even for L.A. One of the others… her phone rang, had to be Stu.
But it was Alan Lau calling from Parker Center, and the criminalist sounded exhausted. “Got some initial results on those food wrappers and the urine. The food was a mixture of ground beef and ground pork, peppers, onions, a tomato-based sauce, chili powder, garlic powder, some other spices we haven't identified yet. Bread crumbs, too. Not mixed in, separate. Probably the bun. White bread.”
“Chili-burger.”
“Quite possibly. The urine was definitely human, but I hope you don't want any fancy DNA on it, 'cause we barely had enough to do a presumptive type. Even if we did, it would cost a fortune and take a long time.”
“What else did you get?” said Petra.
“Prints off the wrapping paper and also off that book you found. The book was full of them. Fulls, partials, nice ridge impressions. I'm no expert, but it looked like some matches between the wrapper and book. We sent it all to ID and so far no matches to any files. So looks like your reader isn't a big-time criminal or a government employee. Also, from the size of the finger pads, it probably is a woman.”
Bag Lady squatting on a rock, thought Petra. Eating furtively, reading some old library book that probably fed some schizo fantasy- who knew what the presidents meant to her.
Sad. If nothing turned up, it might be worth checking with the park rangers and some Hollywood patrol officers, see if one particular street woman frequented that section of Griffith.
“Thanks, Alan. Anything show up in the vacuum?”
“Just a pile of dirt, so far. For all the blood, this was a pretty clean one.”
Stu came into the squad room at 6:34 P.M., looking like prey. Petra was snacking on her second Snickers bar and wondering where Ramsey was at this very moment, what thoughts were going through his head, did he regret what he'd done or was he exulting in the memory of butchering Lisa?
She asked Stu how he was. He said fine and reported on his day with the dutiful tone of a child giving an oral report. Visits to three studios, three wells dug, wait and see. It didn't sound like enough to turn his normally clear irises rosy pink.
He removed his suit jacket and draped it neatly over the back of his chair. “No one had anything personal to say about him; he doesn't seem to hang with any particular industry crowd. The fact that he beat Lisa up makes them assume he killed her.”
“I've got something personal.” Petra told him about her talks with Breshear and Sposito, Lisa's hints about impotence.
He said, “Interesting.” As if all men went through it. Did they?
“It's a motive,” she said.
“Definitely. Too bad it's tough to verify- you trust Sposito on Breshear's alibi?”
“I called her before Breshear got to her and she wasn't the least bit hinky about it, just p.o.'d at being questioned. You don't want to keep working Breshear, do you?”