Jigsaw

CHAPTER 1

We all know the one-liner: A true friend is someone who’ll help you hide the body.

For the most part, I like people. Have never experienced social anxiety though I’ve helped others deal with it. I choose to think empathy’s been enough for my patients and so far no one’s complained.

Despite all that, I’ve got two true friends: the woman I love and live with and a homicide detective with whom I’ve worked on scores of horrific murders. What Milo Sturgis calls “those cases.”

So there you have it: a lifetime of relating but only two people who’d help me hide a body. Three, if you include Blanche, the little French bulldog to whom Robin and I have been catering for years. Dogs are way above us emotionally and canine love’s unconditional but I’m not sure what Blanche could accomplish in a pinch.

I see her and Robin daily. My contact with Milo is a different story. Occasionally social—Robin and I having dinner with him and the man he lives with—but mostly work-related.

The worst in people brings out the best in Milo and me.

I hadn’t heard from him in over a month, had assumed none of “those cases” had surfaced. But when he finally called on a Monday afternoon, he sounded low and I began to wonder.

“What’s up?”

“Can I come by?”

“Sure.”

Seven minutes later he was at the front door, meaning he’d phoned from the road, hoping I’d be available.

Today, he’d lucked out. I’d just finished a morning of child custody consults and phone chats with attorneys and judges, had planned to wind down with a run. Not just for the exercise. Looking out for speeding cars on Beverly Glen heightens my senses and I return to the house adrenalized like a fox who’s avoided the hounds.

Now that energy was pinging like a series of manic texts.

I heard the engine of his unmarked Impala and opened the door. He trudged up the stairs and walked in looking the way he’d sounded. His suit was gray and wrinkled, his shirt gray-beige and wrinkled, his tie limp and brown. Pink-soled desert boots were scuffed glossy at the toes.

Green eyes that could be startlingly bright were bleary. Bison-shoulders drooped, causing his gut to protrude. His default pallor had bleached to chalky, heightening the cruel legacy of the acne pits and welts that brocade his face.

He stood there for a second, rolled enormous hands into fists, and tugged at spiking black hair before loping past me toward the kitchen.

Improvising at our fridge is another of Milo’s defaults. When he fails to do so he’s usually distracted by a strong lead.

Today was odd. No evidence of progress in his walk but he still didn’t forage, choosing instead to settle heavily at the table and shake his head like a weary, wet mastiff.

I said, “Coffee?”

“Experience is supposed to make you smarter.”

I kept silent.

He said, “Not true?”

“It can help.”

He growled. “Put it this way: What am I always preaching to the junior D’s about?”

“Avoid assuming.”

He clicked his tongue. “Go to the head of the class. Yeah, coffee sounds okay.”

I pulled out a bag of Ethiopian beans Robin had just roasted and ground and loaded the machine.

When I produced cream and sugar, he said, “No thanks, black. To match my mood . . . ​where’s the pooch?”

“Out back with Robin.”

“Probably for the best. Just read an article, dogs can sniff out the stink of stress. Don’t want her to suffer my reek.”

I laughed reflexively.

He smiled. “Yeah, I’m whining. Figured if anyone would have something supportive to say it would be you.”

I switched to a plummy voice. What screenwriters have determined shrinks should sound like. “Sounds like you’re upset.”

He broke into laughter.

The coffee machine beeped.

“Perfect timing,” he said. “At least someone’s got it.”

I poured, we drank.

He drained his mug, chose to inhale this time before blowing out audibly.

“Okay, confession time. Doctor, I have sinned.”

I said, “Second cup?”

“If it ain’t sacramental wine, no thanks.” He inhaled deeply. “Okay, coupla weeks ago I get a morning call on a body. Apartment not far from the Westmont mall. Female victim named Sophie Barlow, sitting at her kitchen table. Her head’s tilted back, rounding her neck.”

He demonstrated.

I said, “Postmortem gravity would tug it down. What was on display, cutting or strangulation?”

“The latter. Ligature mark’s ringing her neck, her eyes are riddled with petechial hemorrhages, and on the table in front of her is a long shoelace, probably from a sneaker.”

“More display.”

He nodded. “In answer to your next question, she’s fully clothed, no obvious signs of a sexual assault or a struggle, I’m figuring she was taken by surprise from behind by someone she trusted. Which leads me you-know-where.”

“A domestic.”

“Backing that up is a plastic bowl on the table in front of her that was used for an ashtray. In it are a couple of Marlboro Gold butts. The fact that there’s no actual ashtray or cigarettes in the entire place suggests Sophie’s not a smoker. So her guest is. By itself that doesn’t mean much, the butts could come from any visitor and why would the killer leave obvious evidence behind?”

“Like you always say, stupid criminals.”

“Thank God for them. So I was hoping that’s where it would end up. The techies tag and bag the butts and I call in some markers at Hertzberg and manage to get a relatively quick analysis. Meaning ten days for a basic DNA. A sample showed an unknown male, no surprise, someone smoked those cigs. But without a suspect, no big deal yet. Then wouldn’t you know it, we get a CODIS hit. Local guy, Michael Heck, has a bit of a felony record, turns out to be Sophie’s ex-boyfriend.”

He reached into a jacket pocket, drew out an enlarged DMV photo, and slid it across the table. Good-looking man, faint smile, late forties, with a meaty chin, thick wavy dark hair graying at the temples, and narrow, acute-blue eyes.

Keeping it in a pocket was interesting. Normally Milo totes case material in a battered, olive-green vinyl attaché case. Not enough on this case to justify it?

I said, “What’s a bit of a felony record?”

“Assault charge sixteen years ago when he was in the service, basically a bar fight in Oceanside that got pled down to misdemeanor. Unfortunately for Heck, that was after Prop 69 so the arrest was enough for DNA. Bingo, we arrest him and lock him up, he looks shell-shocked but lawyers up. It looked to be an easy one, that’s why I didn’t call you.”

I said, “Given what you had, it sounds more like logic than tunnel vision.”

“Thanks for the therapy,” he said. “Yeah, one would think and one would be wrong . . . ​you know, a second cup doesn’t sound half bad.”

I drank but despite his request Milo didn’t, circling his mug with both huge hands and staring past me.

“So what changed everything?” he said. “Nasty old reality. Two days after Heck’s arrest, a woman shows up unannounced at the station asking for me. I go downstairs, see a young redhead in a white Armani suit and big heels pushing an impressive wheelie bag. Moves fast, talks fast, shoves her business card at me fast. Wanna guess?”

“Attorney.”

“Bettina Bel Geddes, Esq., big Century City firm. Corporate litigator but she’s representing Heck in the criminal case, announces it like it’s gonna win her a Nobel. I say, ‘How can I help you?’ She says, ‘You can’t but I can help you. Let’s go up to your office, if you’re smart enough, you’ll pay attention.’ All this in front of Demetria, the civilian clerk. She’s looking at me like, Who’s this piece of work? I coulda shined Bel Geddes on, but she’s too damn happy. Won-the-lottery happy. We go upstairs, minute we’re out of the elevator, she starts orating.”

I said, “Her client’s innocent.”

“Expressed with smug self-righteousness,” he said. “She claims Heck’s got an ironclad alibi for the time of the murder, opens the wheeler and sets out to prove it. Hundred and twenty miles from the crime scene, at a hotel in La Jolla with another woman, and Bel Geddes has time-stamped CCTV footage to prove it along with a readout from those high-tech key dealies hotels use to monitor comings and goings.”

“Heck came but didn’t go.”

“Didn’t leave his room once. And if the camera and the door stuff wasn’t enough, Bel Geddes also has a stack of time-stamped room service receipts, affidavits from hotel staff, more footage from the parking lot, and a clear shot of Heck and some blonde checking out and finally leaving two days later.”