I said, “I’m sure there are others like it.”
“Repositories for the rich we never hear about.”
“And a few regular folk from police and fire.”
“Ergo Martha…wonder why she couldn’t handle one kid.”
“Couldn’t,” I said, “or didn’t want to.”
“Ditching her daughter so she could live her best life and create a hoarder’s palace?” He shook his head. “You never know about people.”
I said, “Martha transferred out of a successful career in Homicide.That says her stress level had been high for a while. She welcomed Lynne for brief visits, maybe all she could take.”
“Happy-time sleepovers with Mom,” he said. “IfButtons and Le Gallee are being straight with us and not keeping it safe for Safe Place. You notice that even while reciting the party line, he wasn’t crazy about Lynne walking by herself. What do you think of the policy?”
“I wouldn’t have authorized it.”
“I think it’s downright nuts. Like an unfenced pool, right? All it takes is once.”
I said, “Despite her problems, Lynne’s a legal adult, so if she insisted, there’d be no way to stop her.”
“Why’d you ask about her doing crafts?”
“Crafts involve tools.”
“Oh. Like a jigsaw. Man, the way your mind works.”
“On the other hand, Le Gallee said she’d developed arthritis. If that included her arms, it’s doubtful she could’ve pulled off dismemberment.”
“Too stiff to saw? Maybe, but if we find her with a bloody blade, so much for that excuse.” He grunted. “Le Gallee was right about one thing. One way or the other, this ain’t gonna turn out well.”
—
Nearing Olympic Boulevard, he began changing lanes serially without apparent purpose. I closed my eyes and spent the time thinking. Ended up with serious doubts about Lynne Gutierrez as a viable suspect.
I was about to tell him that when his phone pinged.
He said, “Mind checking it out?”
Text from Basia Lopatinski. Final report. I read it out loud. Not much new.
Martha Matthias’s cause of death had been manual strangulation, her dismemberment postmortem and cleanly accomplished by a serrated instrument. The blood recovered from the bathroom was all hers. DNA from the futon featured a small amount of her and multiple samples consistent with a female offspring.
He said, “So we’ve verified the sleepovers. Now all I’ve got to do is find Lynne.”
I said, “The more I think about it the less I see her as a murderer. We were led in that direction by Hawkins’s description of a mentally ill woman lurching down the street. But a developmentally delayed woman everyone describes as gentle choking her mother out then cleanly severing both her arms just doesn’t fit. Let alone wrapping the corpse in plastic and managing to haul it to a deep-freeze in the garage.”
“If not her, who?”
“A psychopath with serious body strength and at least a rudimentary knowledge of anatomy. That doesn’t mean a doctor or a butcher. I’m sure there are plenty of charming YouTube instructional videos on quick and easy amputation.”
“Still,” he said, “she just happens to disappear right after the murder?”
I said nothing.
He said, “You see her as a victim like Buttons did?”
“Unfortunately for her, I do.”
