J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“Her mother lives in town,” she says. “Somewhere around Piney Point, I think. Someone will have to call her. Is that something you’ll do?”

“We can do that.”

In the closet, a score of tightly packed clothing bags hang in disarray. The floor is lined with rope-handled shopping bags of every size and color. On the shelf over the rod, shoe boxes are packed three or four high.

“It might be better coming from you,” she says. “I only met the woman once, but we didn’t get on too well. I’d say she’s a hard woman to like, which is probably why she and Simone weren’t very close.”

The room smells of perfume. On the vanity I see half a dozen designer scents to choose from. I bend down to inspect a low bookcase, empty apart from some grocery store paperbacks. There’s a framed photo on the top shelf.

“Is this Simone?”

Dr. Hill peers at the photo and nods. Her eyes cloud and she clamps a hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shake. “She was sweet. She really was. I felt very. . fond of her. I can’t believe this is happening.”

She retreats into the hallway, leaving me alone to study the photo.

Simone Walker is pretty in the snapshot, with high cheekbones and a toothy smile, her complexion washed out by the flash. She’s dressed in a tank top and jeans, holding a red plastic cup in one hand, and the darkness behind her seems to conceal a party, though no faces are visible, just limbs. She gazes at the camera in a coy way, making me wonder who was taking the picture. It’s an innocent look. A young woman enjoying herself. At ease in her surroundings. The expression pensive, but not melancholy.

This is who I’m here for. This is her. The body out there, whatever was done to her-

I’m going to make it right. Not that I can save her. I’m too late for that.

I’m always too late for that.

Dr. Hill reappears, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “There’s something I should tell you. About her husband, Jason. Something happened you need to hear about. Remember the money she asked for? The loan? Well, she asked him and he said yes. On one condition. She had to go to bed with him first.”

“And did she?”

She nods. “The next morning there was some kind of argument and she left empty-handed. He kept calling her cell phone, and she’d send it to voicemail. When I asked her what was going on, she told me about the deal. Pretty sick. Whether it had anything to do with this, I don’t know.”

“Thanks,” I say. “We’ll check it out.”

José Aguilar waits for me at the bottom of the stairs, hands buried in the pockets of his whiskered jeans, his muscled bulk hidden under a leather bomber. His impassive, pockmarked face is so red he looks freshly boiled, but that’s normal for Aguilar.

“I heard you got pulled in,” he says. “Figured you could use a hand.”

“Nice jeans,” I say.

“You’re one to talk. What’s with the getup? Prom night?”

“Charlotte’s firm hosted a party and she dragged me along.”

“Lawyers and liquor. And you’re missing all the fun.” He nods toward the kitchen. “The lieutenant’s out there having a look at the scene, by the way.”

“I heard his voice.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Go upstairs and see if you can get anything more out of the woman who found the body. She’s giving me an odd vibe.”

“I’m on it,” he says, slipping past me.

In the kitchen, Sergeant Nixon’s not on the door, but I spot him outside shadowing my supervisor, Lt. Marcus Bascombe. Black. Six foot four. A glare that could put a hole in the ozone layer, assuming there wasn’t one already. The lieutenant is my kind of police apart from the fact he doesn’t like me. He tried to get me booted from the squad once, but that didn’t work out. Now he treats me with grudging respect. All it would take to get back on his bad side is for me to stop closing cases. I’m not planning to start now.

I plant my briefcase on the island again, throwing the flap open and digging around for my flashlight, a little Fenix that puts out plenty of light. I grab my camera, too, then head through the door. Under the pergola, the crime scene technicians are just getting started running extensions and setting up lights. Bascombe crouches near the corpse, studying the wounds to her back, while Nixon whispers some commentary.

One of the crime scene techs motions me to the table, pointing to a cloud of black dust on the metal edge. “We’ve got some prints here, a few different sets it looks like.”

“Good. Keep dusting.”

As I approach, Nix heaves a sigh and detaches himself from the lieutenant’s orbit, grateful to get away. We exchange a glance in passing.

“I’ve talked to the witness who found the body,” I tell Bascombe. “According to her, the victim was meeting a friend for lunch, but didn’t say who. I need to get a canvass started, and it wouldn’t hurt if the ME would show up and give me an approximate time of death.”

He straightens and steps away from the body. “I’ll make a call and see what the holdup is. Not that I can’t guess. That shooting on Antoine dropped three bodies, and I just came from South Central where a man drowned his seventy-three-year-old father in a bathtub and called it in as an accident.” He shakes his head. “You could see the handprints on the old man’s back where he was held down.”

“Everybody’s gone crazy,” I say.

“Just like always.”

I give him everything I have so far about Simone Walker, including Dr. Hill’s story about the sex-for-money trade with her estranged husband. Then I flick on the flashlight and do a closer exam of the body. The way she’s placed is so precise and unnatural: right-angled to the pool, bent at the waist, arms fully extended and perfectly parallel, hands resting side by side. Clean hands, too, nothing visible under the nails.

“It’s almost like. .”

“Almost like what?” Bascombe says.

I line myself up with her hands, then pantomime the motions. “Like he held her by the wrists. Like he dipped her into the water after he killed her.”

“Or fished her out.”

The big lights switch on, bathing the yard in white, glazing the mist overhead. The surrounding houses are mostly obscured by the tall fence and the screen of vegetation, reinforcing the sense of privacy. A few rooflines, a few attic windows. The lieutenant heads toward the edge of the slate, making room as the crime scene techs close in. I check the bushes for any sign of entry. Nobody scaling the fence could get down without breaking a branch. But there’s nothing.

“You see the chair down at the bottom?” I ask him. “What do you make of that?”

He goes to the end of the pool opposite the house, taking a knee next to the water.

“Okay,” he says, rising to the challenge. “How about this? She’s over by the table when he attacks. She’s sitting in the chair. He kills her, then drags the chair over with her in it, dumping them both into the pool. After she’s been in the water awhile, he pulls her out and poses her. But he leaves the chair where it fell, ’cause he doesn’t want to go in after it.”

I nod. The scenario makes sense as far as the chair goes. If it was dragged from the table to the pool and chucked in, where it’s lying is exactly what I’d expect. But what’s the point?

“Why not drag the body and leave the chair?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Find the guy and ask him. How’s that for a plan? If I was you, I’d get the canvass going, and then I’d find out where this girl’s husband lives and reel him in. The quicker you get him in an interview room, the less time he’ll have to start believing he got away with it.”

The glass door slides open and Sheila Green from the ME’s office steps through, another charter member of my fan club. Dr. Green’s boss, Alan Bridger, married my wife’s sister a few years back. They have a house in West U. Considering this scene is practically in his backyard, I’d hoped to see Bridger here. No luck.