Nightlife_ A Novel Part 10

"Your picture of a girl looks like my pictures of a girl. But we don't know if the apartment where we're going belongs to her. And whenever you put out a picture to the public, it strikes a lot of people as the spitting image of somebody who doesn't look that way at all."

"Three calls tipping you on the same person don't usually turn out to be nothing."

"That's why I'm nervous," she said. "I've been gritting my teeth for an hour hoping this is Tanya. But I've learned not to be too quick to a.s.sume anything about her. When we began this investigation, we all thought she was probably a kidnap victim. I'm still not sure whether some guy killed Dennis Poole because he was jealous over her and she's still running from him, or she's running because she killed him herself."

"You want a prediction?"

"Sure."

"Your first version is right."

"Which one is that? I forgot."

"The killing will turn out to be about her, but she didn't kill the guy. After you get her, you'll find out she was a drug mule who took off with somebody's shipment. Or she's a hooker who had a particularly possessive pimp, who wasn't about to let her go off with a client."

"One of those was my my first version?" first version?"

"I'm just going with the odds. You said before that they met at a hotel in Aspen and she came to visit, but n.o.body at home ever saw them together. That sounds like there was something about her that kept him from showing her off. And women don't usually do a gunshot murder on a guy unless they're married to him."

"If you want to kill somebody bigger than you are, and you've got a gun, you use it-no matter who you are."

"Maybe. But then there's the death of Brian Corey in the Hilton. They met in a bar, had dinner in Beverly Hills, and went up to his room and had s.e.x. Afterward, she leaves alone, and so do his wallet and his rental car. What does that sound like?"

"It sounds like a hooker."

"Right. And there was no gun, so she couldn't have done the murder. The girl I saw in the picture didn't throw a full-grown man off a balcony. It had to be a man, or maybe two men-somebody like the pimp. In fact, it would have to be a really uneven match, somebody who could completely overpower and silence him. There were no signs of a struggle in the room, and n.o.body on the floor heard a fight."

"You can push an elephant off a balcony if he's off balance and you give him a shove at the right time."

"Joe Pitt agrees with me."

It took an effort to hide her surprise. "Joe Pitt? When did you talk to him?"

"He gave me a call when he saw the picture in the paper. He told me he had been working on this with you, and the girl looked like the one on your tapes. He also asked us to give you our best cooperation."

"He did?"

"Yeah. He's very complimentary about you. But when we were talking about the Brian Corey thing, he figured there was no way she could have done it herself."

"Let's concentrate on getting her into custody," she said. "Then we'll find out." Catherine looked away. She had been thinking hard about Tanya Starling, but the mention of Joe Pitt was distracting her now. She wasn't sure what to think. She'd had a pleasant sensation when she had heard that he had complimented her, but then there was a suspicion that maybe the compliment had not been about her police work. He and Spengler were men, and they talked like men. And after all, he had told Spengler he disagreed with her theory. She was irritated at Pitt for calling Spengler and talking about her at all. What business did he have interfering with her investigation? No, that wasn't fair either: he had recognized Tanya's picture in the newspaper, and it was his duty to call the cops. But why hadn't he called her?

"Here's the street. The apartment is coming right up." They glided up the street and a moment later the other two unmarked cars turned off Topanga Canyon after them. Spengler pulled the car into a parking s.p.a.ce near the front steps, the next car drove around the back of the building, and the third pulled in beside Spengler.

"Well, let's see if we can scoop her up quick," he said. "Then, while she's telling us who killed those two men, you'll have plenty of time to congratulate me on being right."

"Just don't a.s.sume she's not dangerous until she's handcuffed," said Hobbes.

Spengler got out and conferred for a moment with the two officers in the car beside them, then joined Hobbes on the front steps.

The two officers stationed themselves at the building exits while Spengler and Hobbes stepped into the lobby. Hobbes stopped to check the names on the mailboxes. "Mills" with no first name was on box 5. They went up two steps into the hallway on the right, and knocked on the door to apartment 5. They waited a few seconds, listening. Then Spengler knocked again, harder. After a minute, he knocked a third time. There was no answering call, no sound of movement in the apartment.

"Let's try across the hall," said Hobbes. She knocked on the door across the hall, waited, then knocked again. "n.o.body's home in number four, either."

Spengler said, "Let's hunt down the manager."

"Apartment one. I checked the mailboxes."

They walked back to the lobby and into the opposite hallway, and knocked on the door. There was a small sign taped to it that said R. NORRIS, MANAGER. R. NORRIS, MANAGER. R. Norris was an unshaven man about forty years old who seemed to have been awakened by the knock. R. Norris was an unshaven man about forty years old who seemed to have been awakened by the knock.

Catherine Hobbes stood back and waited while Spengler said, "Mr. Norris, I'm Detective Spengler, Los Angeles Police." He held his identification up so that Norris could compare the photograph with his face. "I'm very sorry we have to bother you this morning, but I have a warrant for one of your tenants. It's Miss Nancy Mills, in apartment five. She doesn't seem to be answering her door, so I'd like you to open it up for us."

"She goes out most days. She walks a lot."

Hobbes took a step closer. "You mean for fitness?"

"In the morning she goes out and jogs. Then around ten or so, she goes out again. She doesn't have a car."

Hobbes looked at Spengler. He reached into the inner pocket of his sport coat and produced some papers. "Sir, here's a copy of the warrant. I'd appreciate it if you could open the apartment for us. It will save us all some trouble if we don't have to break the door down."

Norris stared at the warrant, uncomprehending. After a moment he either found the part that permitted a search of Nancy Mills's domicile or he simply gave up. "Hold on a minute. Let me get the key."

A moment later, he returned with a set of master keys. He led the way down the hall to the apartment, unlocked it, and stepped back.

Spengler said, "Thank you, Mr. Norris." When he swung the door open, he looked in and said, "She's certainly neat, isn't she?"

"That's not it. She's gone," said Hobbes. "She's moved out." She slipped past him into the kitchen and examined the cleaning supplies on the counter.

"Are you sure?"

"It's a furnished apartment. There's nothing here that's personal." She stepped carefully along the edge of the living room to the hallway, her eyes on the floor to keep from disturbing any evidence. She continued into the bedroom and looked into the open closet.

She turned and saw Spengler standing behind her, his eyes on the empty hangers on the pole in the closet. He took the radio off his belt. "Don't hold your breath, guys. She's out of here. She must have seen her picture in the paper."

Hobbes heard a couple of tinny voices on the radio. "Roger." "Got it."

Hobbes said, "Can you please call for a forensic team? I'd like to be sure it's the same girl I've been looking for."

"Dave, call this in to the station," he said into the radio. "Let them know we'll need a forensic team. Everybody else come on in and help us canva.s.s the rest of the tenants, and see if anybody knows where she went."

Catherine Hobbes had tried to stay two steps behind Jim Spengler. Even though she carried a badge and a gun, she was only a guest in Los Angeles, and this was officially the investigation of the death of Brian Corey at a Los Angeles hotel. But it became evident almost immediately that she was a less intimidating interviewer than Spengler, so she began to take the lead.

The man in apartment 8 was not able to recall ever having seen the woman in the picture, nor could the couple in apartment 9. The others seemed to know very little about her. The person who lived across the hall from Nancy Mills was the one Catherine wanted most to talk to. She went back to knock on the door again, but the neighbor still wasn't at home.

After about twenty minutes, the forensic team arrived and set to work in Nancy Mills's apartment.

Catherine Hobbes had conducted enough interviews to persuade her that the woman who had called herself Nancy Mills had kept to herself and revealed very little. Catherine left the other detectives and returned to apartment 5, where two men and a woman were crawling on the living room carpet with rubber gloves, plastic bags, magnifiers, and tweezers, searching for physical evidence. The woman technician looked up from the carpet, and Catherine said, "Catherine Hobbes, Portland Police."

"Hi," said the woman. "I'm Toni."

"Have you noticed the streaks yet?" asked Catherine.

"Streaks?"

"Yes," said Catherine. "Look at this coffee table, and you can see what I mean. You can see it best if you look at it from the side." Catherine knelt beside the coffee table, and Toni joined her. They sighted along the top, then along the side. It was marked with a striated pattern. "See the streaks?"

"They're from washing it," said Toni. "It's been washed with a rag that was soaking wet. If you use furniture polish or wax, it forms a coating. This was just wet."

"Any fingerprints on it?"

"Not yet. And we're finding this everyplace. It's on all the furniture, the windows, the counters, even the walls. Every surface has streaks on it, because it's been washed down with a rag or cloth. You can see white cotton fibers in some spots. There were a couple of places that were still wet, so this wasn't done long ago. Maybe last night."

"No prints at all?"

"Not yet," she said. "It's pretty hard to keep prints off everything, so we undoubtedly will find some. But she sure didn't want us to. Right now we're collecting hairs. So far all of them are ten to twelve inches, light brown." Toni leaned over and picked up some hairs with a pair of tweezers. "Oh-oh."

"What?"

"More hairs. But these didn't fall out. They were pulled out."

"You mean violently?"

"Yes. See, even without magnifying them, you can spot little bits of tissue. That's the root. Judging from the length, it's probably a woman's hair, but it's a different woman. This is thicker and wavier, like a perm, and it has a gray root, so the brown is almost certainly a dye job."

Catherine Hobbes said, "Excuse me, Toni." She went to the doorway and looked down the hall. She could see Jim Spengler talking to the manager in the lobby. She walked up to them.

She said, "Mr. Norris, can you tell me about the tenant who lives across the hall in apartment four?"

"Her name is Mary Tilson. She's almost always there this time of day. I'm surprised she isn't now. She usually doesn't go out until the afternoon."

"How old is she?"

"Maybe sixty or so."

"Can you describe her hair?"

"Her hair?"

"Yes. Is it long and straight, short, blond or brunette?"

"It's brown. It's not straight. Kind of wavy, maybe almost to her chin."

"Thanks. Can you excuse us for a second?" She took Spengler's arm and pulled him a few feet off. "The forensic tech just found some hairs that had been pulled out of a woman's head, like in a fight. They're six to eight inches long, brown and wavy, with a gray root."

"You mean you think they belong to the woman who lives across the hall?"

"It wouldn't hurt to take a quick look in her apartment. If she's not there and everything looks normal, fine. But somebody got some of her hair pulled out, and Toni says they don't belong to Nancy Mills."

Spengler said, "Mr. Norris, can you come with us, please?"

They reached the door of apartment 4, and the manager unlocked it. Spengler pushed the door open a few inches, and his eyes focused on something. He said, "Thank you, Mr. Norris. We'll take it from here."

He turned to Catherine as Norris was moving off. "It's not good." He stepped into the apartment, and Catherine followed. She could see the woman lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. Spengler was already hurrying to the woman, but Catherine had noticed that the outer edges of the big pool of blood were dark and dry, which meant she had been there a long time. Spengler touched her carotid artery. "She's been dead a while. Her throat was cut. And a knife-looks like a regular butcher knife-is still in her."

"I'll call the forensic people over from the other apartment."

"Yeah, thanks. We'll get them going on this."

Catherine stepped across the hall and said, "Toni, we've got a deceased victim in apartment four."

"Oh, man." Toni began to put her equipment back into the tackle box on the floor. "I had a feeling about this," she said. "Too many hairs. Come on, guys. Let's see if we can get anything fresh over there."

Jim Spengler was gathering the other detectives in the hall to tell them what had been discovered in apartment 4. Catherine approached.

She said, "The manager says Nancy Mills didn't have a car."

Spengler said, "That's right. Ron, get a description of Mary Tilson's car, check the parking s.p.a.ces downstairs and see if her car is gone. If it is, run her name and get the license and description on the air. Dave, get on the radio and let them know what we've got here."

He saw the forensic team move to the doorway and peer inside before stepping in. "Toni, you want us to call for reinforcements?"

"Thanks, Jim, but I'll call them myself as soon as I've taken a look."

"Fine." He turned back to the other police officers. "Al, see if anything is missing in the apartment, especially credit cards or ATM cards. If they are, get started on finding out if they've been used yet."

The detectives moved off, and Catherine went down the hall to Mr. Norris. She said, "I'd like to take a look at Nancy Mills's rental agreement."

They entered Mr. Norris's apartment, and he produced a file from a desk drawer. Inside were five-page lease agreements for all of the tenants. Catherine leafed through them carefully until she found the one that said Nancy Mills. Norris said, "You can take that one if you want. I've got a Xerox copy in the file, and the rental company has a duplicate original."

"Thank you," she said. "Do you have a spare file folder or an envelope?"

"Sure." He handed her a manila envelope.

"Thanks very much," she said. She slipped the agreement inside, and walked out of the room. She went down the hall and found Toni in the kitchen of apartment 4.

She said, "Toni, this is the rental agreement for Nancy Mills. I'd appreciate it if you could take it to the lab and examine it for latent prints."

Toni took it. "Sure thing. I'll try dipping it in ninhydrin to bring up the amino acids, and give you a call." She put it into a cardboard carton with her growing collection of plastic evidence bags.

Catherine turned to Spengler, who was staring down at the body of Mary Tilson. He said, "I guess this just about finishes the idea that the girl is the one doing this stuff. I can't see her cutting a woman like that and leaving her to bleed out on the floor."

Catherine walked out of the room, down the hall, and outside, where she leaned against the car and took a few breaths of air. Her mind had been fully occupied since the moment she had arrived, but now it was still racing, and there was little for her to do until either the crime-scene technicians or the officers searching for the girl gave her something new to interpret.

Her mind kept returning to Joe Pitt. She was tempted to call him and tell him what she thought of him for interfering with the relations between her and the Los Angeles police. But this was his town, where he had been the D.A.'s investigator. She had no right to tell him what to say to the L.A. police, and any homicide detective here would know him personally. He had seen the photograph in the paper and recognized Tanya, and he'd had to report it. But why had he called the L.A. homicide people, and not her? She could think of two answers, without even asking him: the newspaper had said to call Spengler, so he had. And she had essentially told him not to bother her again, and so he hadn't.

17.