Fifty-one years ago, Martha Joline Anderson, twenty-one, had married Pablo Gutierrez, twenty-two, at a Catholic church in Saugus. Five years later, just turned twenty-six, she’d been wedded to Richard Lee Matthias, thirty-three, at the L.A. county courthouse.
No notice of dissolution. Back to the death files where one showed up for Pablo Gutierrez. Four years after marrying Martha, he’d perished in an industrial accident at a construction site in Vernon. A year later, she’d wed Matthias.
I said, “Traditional church wedding, then widowed at twenty-five. Was she a cop by then?”
He checked. “Yup, still a rookie.”
“Richard’s the uniform you were talking about. She likely met him on the job, married him shortly after Gutierrez died.”
“A precinct affair? Makes sense.”
“When did Matthias die?”
“By the time I knew her, he was gone, hold on.” He typed fast. “Here we go,TBLobituary. Twenty-two years ago, age fifty-seven, cardiac disease.”
Thin Blue Line,the Police Protective League’s magazine. Members-only access.
I said, “Martha was only fifty when she was widowed for the second time. Maybe that’s when her life began to change.”
“Fine, she got stressed and kept it to herself. But why would she change inthatway?”
“You know what I’m going to say.”
“Yeah, yeah, human beings are complicated. But be a pal and throw out a theory, any theory.”
I said, “Any kind of obsessive behavior is an attempt to reduce anxiety. Martha may have had a tendency that ballooned under stress. The other possibility is some sort of early dementia was settling in and she realized it. That might explain the transfer out of Homicide.”
“Wanting to deal with the small stuff,” he said. “Well, if she was slipping, I sure didn’t notice. And same question: Why change in that way, specifically?”
“We’re pals, Big Guy, but that doesn’t change things.”
“Yeah, yeah, no way to predict how any individual is going to react.” He shut his eyes. Rubbed his face like washing without water. When the green irises reappeared, they were fixed in a forever-stare.
“People,” he said. “We’re basically bags of question marks.”
Opening a desk drawer, he removed another blue binder, opened it to the center, and handed it over.
“Long as we’re talking ignorance, check this out.”
White label on the front cover.Barlow, Sophie,followed by a case number.
He’d earmarked two pages of crime scene photos, all variations on a theme.
A woman sitting at a kitchen table. Smallish, beige table in a smallish, beige kitchen. Matching chair with a blue upholstered back. Slender brunette, wearing a white, ribbed tank top. Her right arm was clear, her left brocaded shoulder-to-wrist by a jungle of floral tattoos.
Pale complexion but no way to know what her skin had looked like in life.
Her head had been tilted back offering a full view of a long, graceful neck, ringed by angry pink deepening to coral red in spots.
The positioning also exposed her nostrils and a mouth slightly ajar that flashed a ribbon of white teeth. Dark hair was long and wavy. A rear shot showed it streaming over the back of the chair like a shower of sooty icicles.
On the table before her was a red plastic bowl. A directional arrow had been drawn in white, focusing attention on the bowl’s contents. Two cigarette butts. White paper, brown filter.
I said, “Just as you described.”
“For what that’s worth.”
Turning back to his desk, he busied himself with his keyboard. Wanting some sort of wisdom fromme.
