“Mother and daughter,” he said. “You know I’m an atheist when it comes to coincidence.”
I said, “Daughter may have been murdered because she could direct you to Mother.”
“The bad guy is someone Lynne knows. She blabbed about Mama’s cash-stash and led him to it.”
“Could be. But how would she meet anyone?”
“On a walk to Mama’s,” he said. “And that means she might not be a victim but has lammed with him. I know Buttons and Le Gallee say she’s harmless and you agree. But I’m not giving up the comfort of cynicism yet.”
Another stretch of silence.
He switched a couple more lanes and said, “Whatever the case, the same damn conclusion:Gottafind her.”
Chapter
23
It took until Thursday at nine a.m. for him to phoneme.
“Alex.” He managed with one word to transmit weariness. I’d assumed no news was bad news, so no surprise when he said, “Found her.”
I said, “Not alive.”
“I wish. Poor thing’s body showed up at a landfill out in Irwindale, a backhoe driver saw a foot sticking out from a mountain of the garbage. Private outfit, fortunately they’re super organized and stuff gets arranged in grids. So they were able to backtrack to the garbage truck that brought her. That particular load was collected from any of a dozen dumpsters, all in alleys downtown. Whether or not downtown’s where she was killed or just an interim dump site, no idea. But Central has the case. Either way, it’s unlikely we’re gonna get a more precise fix.”
“She was recently found?”
“Nope, she was brought into the crypt a week ago, logged as a Jane Doe, and assigned to a pathologist who hadn’t looked at her yet. Then Basia, God bless her, noticed the sex and the approximate age, ran DNA, and got a match to the futon. Lots of decomp, without that it woulda taken dental records. I just called Safe Place and they have therecords but it’s moot. Spoke to Le Gallee who came across pretty broken up.”
I said, “A week ago is so soon after she left Safe Place.”
“Maybe even the same day. Some shredded pieces of industrial-sized garbage bag were wrapped around her. Basia says body gases probably inflated it and it burst. Unfortunately the bag’s common and no trace evidence was on it.”
“Oh Lord,” I said. “A foot? She was also dismembered?”
“No, everything was intact. Relatively speaking. And she was fully clothed, except for one shoe that fell off and exposed the foot. COD was blunt-force trauma to the back of the skull. Three blows with something heavy and round like a baseball bat. The Central D handling it is a guy named Hector Villalobos. I’ve got a meet with him at noon. You’re invited.”
“I’ve got an appointment until twelve fifteen, can be there late.”
“Better than never. It’s right near you. That fusion place up at the top of the Glen.”
“Convenient.”
“Intended as such for you.”
—
Domo Mario is a nouveau-Japanese-nouveau-Italian restaurant on the east side of the high-end strip mall perched atop Beverly Glen just south of Mulholland.
Crudo coexisting with sashimi. Could world peace be far off?
Working a custody consult had distracted me from the horror of Lynne Gutierrez’s death but by the time I got in the Seville for the drive, images of a gentle, slow woman ending up in a trash pile hit me hard. I’d had nothing but dry toast and coffee at seven but my appetite was dead.
Discovery of Lynne’s body hadn’t discouraged Milo nor a man of his approximate girth feasting on an array of bounty from the ocean. Two sets of chopsticks clicked rapidly. What looked like iced tea was half gone from a pair of twenty-ounce glasses.
Hector Villalobos was fifty or so, with spiky white hair, the facialfeatures of an unsuccessful prizefighter, and a bull-neck. Black suit, white shirt, gold tie, impeccable manicure. Central Division was Skid Row and sometimes worse. A smart person did what it took to feel clean.
Milo introduced us and Villalobos stood, smiled, and offered a rib-steak-sized hand. Despite the oversized paw and massive shoulders his height was a surprise. Five-eight, tops.
