J. Jance - Fatal Error

It took a moment for Gil to grasp what he was seeing. Two dining room chairs had been brought into the living room, one to confine the victim and one to be used as an observation post. Murder was murder, and the bloody mutilations were nothing short of appalling, but the idea of sitting and watching while your victim struggled to take his last breaths moved what had happened in this room to a whole new level.

Grass Valley, California

Gil was still struggling with that reality when the Nevada County coroner, Fred Millhouse, arrived on the scene.

“Hey, Detective Morris,” Fred said. “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this. Three in one week is more than I bargained for. Is it all right if I move this chair out of the way?”

“Just a moment,” Gil said, laying down another marker. “Let me get a photo first.”

While Fred went to work doing what he needed to do, Gil walked through the house. He was looking for evidence, yes, but he was also trying to get the feel of what he was seeing.

A good deal of the mess in the room was trash that had been there for a long time, but the wanton destruction of the model planes was recent. It had taken time to smash them one by one. If the plane smasher and the killer were one and the same, that meant that the culprit had been in the victim’s house for an extended period of time. This wasn’t a quick in and out. The killer had come here looking for something. The question was, had he found it and taken it?

Gil glanced again at the collection of electronics on the desk in the corner. Gil Morris was no geek, but he knew enough about computers to realize that the computer was a potential source of all kinds of useful information, including the names and e-mail addresses of the people the victim had corresponded with in the last days of his life. It would also tell investigators what, if anything, Richard Lowensdale had been working on at the time of his death. Gil looked around for a cell phone or a landline. At first glance, neither was visible. And if there were some way to view any of the footage from the security camera over the front door, that wasn’t readily apparent either.

Not wanting to observe Millhouse at his grim work and not wanting to be in the way, Gil let himself out of the overheated, dimly lit house into bright sunlight and a welcome January chill. He paused on the front porch long enough to search for evidence that the bloodied footsteps had exited this way. There was nothing visible to the naked eye, but luminol might reveal the microscopic presence of blood evidence. A more likely scenario told him that the perpetrator had walked around in the house long enough for the blood on the bottom of his feet to dry.

Gil stood on the porch’s top step and breathed in a lungful of fresh air. Even with the Vicks right there beneath his nostrils, some of the terrible odors of death still lingered. Gil walked down the cracked sidewalk and let himself out through the crooked gate. A patrol car was parked on the far side of the street. Officer Masters was inside and appeared to be talking on the radio.

Gil pulled the cigar out of his shirt pocket and mimed his need of a light to Masters.

When Dale Masters joined him at the rear of the black-and-white, he brought a second cigar for himself and a lighter, as well as a small metal container which, with the lid removed, served admirably as a makeshift ashtray. Leaving ashes of any kind near a crime scene was a bad idea. The black-and-white had a perfectly functioning ashtray in the front seat, but smoking in city-owned vehicles was not entirely verboten.

Once they both lit up, Gil was pleased to discover that the cigars were impressively obnoxious-the kind Linda had always regarded as “pure evil”-but the smoke helped displace the last of the noxious odors.

“Thanks,” Gil said, holding up his cigar.

“You’re welcome,” Dale said. “You lasted a whole lot longer inside there than I did. By the way, I just got off the phone with Irene in Records. She said there was a B and E at this address on the twentieth of September of this past year. According to the report, an ex-girlfriend allegedly broke into the house in broad daylight while Lowensdale was off getting his Cadillac serviced.”

“New Cadillac?”

“Old,” Masters said. “The way I understand it, it used to belong to Lowensdale’s mother.”

Gil pulled out a new three-by-five card. “Name?”

“Mother’s name?”

“No. The B and E suspect.”

“Her name’s Brenda Riley. She used to be Lowensdale’s girlfriend.”

“They caught her in the act?”

“Not exactly. Lowensdale came home, saw a broken window, and realized someone had been inside his place. Even though nothing of value had been stolen, he raised enough of a stink that the chief finally agreed to have our guys come by to do a crime scene investigation. Her prints were found everywhere. No effort to cover them up whatsoever.”

“She’s in the system?” Gil asked.

Masters nodded. “She’s been booked for a number of moving violations, DUIs as well as driving without a license, and so forth. Once we told him who the perp was, Lowensdale declined to press charges. Said it was the aftermath of a bad breakup and since nothing was taken, he was prepared to let it go.”

“Brenda Riley?” Gil asked with his pen poised to write.

“Brenda Arlene Riley,” Masters confirmed. “She lives in Sacramento. Irene in Records can give you the exact address, but you may want to check. I believe there was something in that original nine-one-one call this morning about an ex being involved in all this one way or the other.”

“Thanks,” Gil said. “I’ll look into it.”

When Masters was called back to the radio, Gil stood there with a cloud of smoke circling his head while he studied his surroundings and the cracked and peeling exterior of Richard Lowensdale’s house.

Jan Road was steep. The house was built into the flank of the hill, but the sidewalk leading up to the house was level. A cracked concrete walkway went from the front porch to a small detached garage and from the garage to a side door near the back of the house. Looking at the elevations, Gil realized that meant there was probably a basement under the house and maybe under the garage as well.

Ready to resume his examination of the house, Gil followed the walkway door to door to door. There were no visible footprints anywhere.

He went back to the small garage and opened the side door wide enough so he could peek inside. There was definitely no basement in the garage. The hard-packed dirt floor reeked of decades of old grease and oil. Above the workbench, the wall was lined with a collection of antique tools. The smell and tools hinted that the garage had long been used by a homegrown, do-it-yourself mechanic. What looked like most of a case of motor oil stood inside the remains of a cut-down cardboard box on a shelf above the work bench.

Clearly the garage had been built at a time when vehicles were smaller. Lowensdale’s ten-year-old black Cadillac Catera barely fit inside the four walls. If this had been a standard robbery, most likely the car would have been taken along with the electronics. No, this was definitely something else.

Leaving the garage, Gil went to what he assumed to be the back door of the house. The first room inside was a small utility room that held a washer and dryer, an older model top-loading set. The utility room opened into an old-fashioned kitchen complete with a single-bowl porcelain sink and knotty pine cabinets, as well as an avocado-colored fridge and matching stove that had to date from sometime in the seventies. There was no dishwasher. There was a small white microwave on the counter and the freezer was packed full of Nutrisystem food. Obviously Richard wasn’t much of a cook.