T. Parker: Red Light

Zamorra said nothing. He faced the door with a bloodshot stare. He pointed to a small, crescent-shaped cut in the gray door paint. It was deep enough to reveal wood, just to the right of the blood spray, heart-high.

He looked at his copy. “O’Brien says that was where the casing bounced off, on its way to the dinner table. Coiner found the brass the flower vase. That was good work.”

“She had the bounce to go from.”

Zamorra slowly shook his head. “He shot her from right here, didn’t even come through the door. She opened it and zip, all she wrote.”

There was something mechanical in his voice, Merci thought, something distanced: He’s still in the hospital with his wife.

They stepped inside. The front door swung almost shut again. Bright afternoon light shot through the sliding glass door and the windows. The day was clear and cool and the sun was already low out over the ocean. Merci felt the heat coming through the glass. She noted the bullet hole in the upper left corner of the slider, the one she hadn’t noticed the night before.

Nobody’s perfect, she thought, but she expected herself to be. What was it Hess had said? Forgive yourself, Merci. You’ve got another fifty years to spend with you.

Duly noted.

The CSIs had outlined the body in dark chalk before removing it. Merci looked from the case file to her partner.

“I don’t get this. Coiner and O’Brien say she was dragged three feet into the dining room. That, from the blood smear on the carpet.”

“So he could shut the door behind him,” said Zamorra. “Her feet were in the way.”

“But why, Paul? What did he do in here? He didn’t use her sexually, at least not that we know of. He didn’t take anything we know of. He left cash, credit cards, some good prescription drugs in the medicine chest. He took a big risk coming in. He wasted time. Why?”

“Maybe he took her picture, got himself off, then hit the road.”

Merci recalled the recent unsolved murders of prostitutes: two in motels at different ends of the county, one dumped on Harbor Boulevard, down by the car dealerships. All three were streetwalkers strangled, one bludgeoned, one shot in the head.

“No semen.”

“Maybe he used a rubber. She had plenty.”

Merci thought about this but couldn’t make it fit. The whole thing seemed so efficient, so cold, so sexless. There was no evidence he’d even touched her, other than to drag her out of the way of the door.

They stood at opposite ends of the dining-room table. Merci noted the place mats, the matching cloth napkins beside them, the short crystal vase in which Lynda Coiner had found the casing. There was a nearly empty glass of water at one place, and a nearly full cup of coffee at the other. She could see the oblong smudge of lipstick near the rim of the water glass. Both were laden with black fingerprint dust. Merci could see where the tape had been lifted off the tumbler. She got down to a good angle for light and saw fingerprint dust on the glass table, too. Prints galore.

She went into the kitchen, saw the still-crusted baking pan on the counter, and the flatware, salad bowls and plates in the sink. There was a wing and a thigh in the pan. No booze glasses, no booze bottles. Standing in front of the sink you could see the ocean out a window to the right.

“Okay, Paul. So she makes dinner for someone. Her calendar said D.C. Let’s say it’s the eight-thirty arrival that Coates heard — a big man, light on his feet, familiar with his surroundings. He knocks and she answers. No loud words. No loud music. No sounds of struggle or gunshot or anything else. They eat their salad and chicken. No alcohol. At ten-ten he leaves. All’s quiet for five minutes. We know this because Alexander Coates is in his bathtub with his trusty stopwatch.”

Zamorra had moved into the living room. He stood in the sunlight looking down at Aubrey Whittaker’s high heeled shoes. His voice sounded flat, abstracted. “Then Man Friend Number Two climbs the stairs and comes down the walkway. He’s a smaller guy, wearing soft shoes. He doesn’t knock but she opens the door anyway.”

Merci leafed through the CSI reports to see if the doorbell had been dusted. Evan had worked it and found nothing. She said so.

“Maybe he wiped it,” said Zamorra. “Maybe he knocked quietly. Maybe Coates belched, splashed, yawned — just didn’t hear.”

Merci considered. “She hears the knock or the ring, goes to the door and opens it. But not before she turns on the porch light and looks through the peephole. This is important. She must have recognized him. If she didn’t, why did she open up? She’s a call girl. She’s seen a lot of things. It isn’t her nature to trust. But she opens the door.”

“She knew him,” said Zamorra. “She thought she did. If we cancel out Coates’s assumptions based on sound, we’re looking at the same guy. The simplest explanation. The dinner guest, D.C. That’s why Coates didn’t hear the knock. It was soft, because he’d just left. He knew she’d assume it was him again. A soft knock, she comes door and says who is it, and he says it’s just me, Man Friend Number One. I forgot my jacket. My cell phone. My glasses.”

Merci came into the dining room and looked at the chalk outline. “So he came to dinner knowing he was going to kill her.”

“Absolutely. That’s why he left and came back.”

“To get the gun. Because he couldn’t carry the gun in without her seeing it.”

“That’s what I get, Merci. And not just a gun, but a gun with a suppressor. We got four neighbors who were home last night, and nobody heard a shot. Nothing like a shot. You know what a racket a forty-five would make here. A covered porch and entryway, the door half open. It had to be silenced.”

Merci thought he was right: The shooter came here to shoot, she tried to take it the other way: Man Friend comes to dinner and leaves mad, by the time he gets to his car he’s furious, gets the gun and goes back up. Working girls get killed by furious johns all the time. But she couldn’t get any logic out of that one. She didn’t think Aubrey Whitaker was working that night. Call girls don’t make dinner for their clients. The bed was made up. And nobody carried a silenced .45 auto unless they planned to use it. Soon.

“All right,” she said. She hadn’t worked with Zamorra long enough to know how he reasoned, so she wanted to take things slow, get them right from the start. “Take our path back to the first fork, though, if there were two guys?”

“Then it’s connected or unconnected.”

“Connected is a lot of coming and going, a lot of personnel on the job.”

“Lots of secrets to keep,” said Zamorra. “I like one guy, period, no matter what Alexander Coates heard.”

Merci was leaning that way, too. “That could explain why he came in after he shot her.”

“Exactly. To clean his prints off of everything he touched at dinner.”

“And something else, now that I think of it.”

Zamorra looked at her.

“He wanted the brass. A semi-auto ejects to the shooter’s right. He would follow her in as she fell, look to his right for the shell. He couldn’t have heard the case hit the door because the gun just went off. Even a silenced auto is going to make a noise. He wouldn’t have noticed the nick in the paint. That was our luck. He didn’t find his casing immediately, so he pulled the girl out of the way, shut the door and looked again. But he still struck out, because he was looking in the wrong part of the apartment. Even if he’d thought of a ricochet, what are the chances of him looking into the flower vase? It was all the way to his left.”

Zamorra was nodding. “The trouble with that is, it works for Man Friend Number Two, also. If he’s connected with Man Friend Number One, then he cleans the place and looks for his brass. If he’s not connected, he likes all the fingerprints Man Friend Number One must have left, but he still wants his casing.”