Jonathan Kellerman - True Detectives

Ramone W was locked up and unavailable, but the woman who'd bitch-slapped him in public view was free and clear.

This time he parked close to the apartment building on Taft. Back to his blazer and khakis, white shirt and tie. Not pretending to be anything other than what he was as he marched up to the front door.

Unlocked, no security provisions of any sort.

That fit the urine-bitter corridor carpeted in wrinkled gray felt, the dirt-colored hallways livened by graffiti, the poorly fitted black plywood doors, some of them a good inch above the floor, souvenirs of once-thicker flooring. Missing bulbs overhead creating artificial evening. The tilting stairway banister looked as if it wouldn't stand up to a nudge.

One thing you could say for the place: quiet. Maybe all the night-prowlers were catching up on their Z's.

White metal mailboxes just inside the entrance hung askew, as if they'd been wrenched in rage. Dented, too. Definite anger-management issues.

Eight units on each of two floors. Half the boxes were unlabeled, the others were identified by any number of methods: pencil, ballpoint, plastic tape, stick-on letters.

A. Eiger had been scrawled in what looked like brown eye shadow over the slot labeled 7. Meaning, she was the one who paid the rent, not Ramone W.

Her bod gets peddled in cheap motels, she's got to freebie the clerk for a discounted rate, she's stuck with the bills. Meanwhile, Ramone chases youngblood. Maybe that's what had set her off.

Unit Seven was ground-floor rear, to the right of an unlocked back door that opened to a fetid alley lined with trash cans and sporting a luxuriant crop of weeds.

Moe stepped out, scanned; no one lurking around. He returned to the hallway, rapped Alicia Eiger's door.

Prepared to answer her dope-addled Yeah with Police. God knew what that would unleash from the denizens of this dump.

No response, mumbled or otherwise. He tried again. Put his ear to the door. Heard nothing. Then a low hum-some kind of electrical device?

A sudden tickling sensation in his ear made him jerk away with the same instinctive repugnance that had led him to toss the secondhand hoodie teeming with imaginary vermin.

This time the bugs were real.

Little black flies, circling and swooping, letting out whiny, buzzing noises.

Lots of flies. Streaming through the gap between door and carpet.

Moe had seen the same kind of insect, hovering at the sparkling glass doors leading to the administrative offices of the county coroner.

All of Mission Road's wet-work took place on the other side of a clean, pretty mini-plaza, but that didn't stop blowflies from expressing their enthusiasm anywhere they saw fit.

One of the little shitheads zoomed up suddenly and buzzed Moe's chin. He slapped it away, edged back some more. Removed his gun from his holster.

Stared at the doorknob.

Milo Sturgis always carried a pair of surgical gloves in his jacket. Moe had resolved to do the same, but had failed to follow through.

No gloves in his car, either. No reason, this was just going to be an interview. Assuming Alicia Eiger was home.

Moe bet she was.

Using a corner of his blazer, he took hold of the doorknob. Turned.

The door swung open easily. As if he'd been expected.

Some welcome.

No attempt to conceal.

Just the opposite: an ad for dead.

Alicia Eiger was splayed on the floor of a rancid kitchenette, facedown, an oversized T-shirt, once yellow, now tie-dyed crimson, yanked above her waist.

Chunky legs were parted in unmistakable display. No panties. No obvious splotches of semen. But plenty of body fluids: a torrent had issued from the woman's deactivated bladder and bowels.

Varicose veins on the backs of her calves. Add some blue to the red.

A once feisty woman, reduced to this.

Moe worked with death, but he really hadn't seen that many intact corpses. This corpse made his gut lurch. He slow-breathed himself steady, took in the scene. Realized he'd left the door to the corridor wide open, backed up, covered his hand with his sleeve and shut it.

Just me and her.

Keeping safe distance, he used his eyes like wide-angle cameras.

No sign of forced entry. No disruption at all to the shabby, barely furnished apartment.

Tiny place; a lav off to the side and the dinky kitchenette-front room combo was the totality of Eiger's-and Ray Wohr's-home-sweet-home.

No big puzzle about COD. A wood-handled knife was buried in the left side of her back. Moe counted at least ten more stab wounds ripping the T-shirt, but all that blood could be concealing others.

A front view would have to wait until the coroner's team arrived.

Oh, yeah, they couldn't arrive unless someone informed them.

After he finished with that, he reached Petra at her desk.

She said, “You found him?”

He said, “My turn to deliver bad news.”

A coroner's investigator named Maidie Johansen said, “Fools rush in, kids. Unfortunately, I'm one of those angels who fears to tread.”

Petra said, “Aw c'mon, Maidie, make a guess.”

Johansen was around sixty, a sturdy woman with indoor skin, curly gray hair, and wide brown eyes behind wire-rimmed specs. She reminded Moe of a fifth-grade teacher whose name he couldn't remember. A woman who hadn't liked him. Despite that, he'd ground away, pulled an A-minus both semesters.

Alicia Eiger's horn-rimmed specs had been revealed by the body-turn. Frames bent and twisted under her weight, but both lenses intact. No entry wounds in her chest or abdomen. Her entire front was unmarked, freakishly so when contrasted with the chopping block that had once been her back. The knife long enough to pierce vital organs but too short to come out the other end.

Fifteen wounds, by Maidie Johansen's count. She said, “One thing I will go out on a limb about: This was done with mucho force.”

Pointing to the warped blade, tagged and bagged. What looked to be a kitchen utensil, the wood now glazed an unpleasant copper. Surprisingly, Eiger's knives were a set, cheap and white-handled. Either the murder weapon was the lone mismatch or someone had come prepared for butchery.

A killer Alicia Eiger had been comfortable turning her back on.

Maidie Johansen said, “Someone sure didn't like this poor girl.” Sighing. “At least there are no pockets to go through.”

Petra said, “TOD?”

“Not a clue.”

“Jeez, Maidie, you've been doing this long enough to educate your guesses.”

Johansen drew herself up. “Child, you saying I'm a crone?”

“I'm saying give us a guess, off the record. The way the bodies are stacked over at your place, who knows how long it'll be before she gets a prelim, let alone autopsied.”

“You're one of my favorites, Detective Connor, but no dice.”

Moe said, “I saw her yesterday afternoon, so that narrows down the time frame.”

“Then that's my guess: no earlier than yesterday afternoon.”

Petra said, “Those flies-”

“Can sniff out a DB within seconds,” said Johansen. “This being interior space might theoretically slow them down but you've got a nearby door to an alley full of crap, a gap under the door. Word goes out in the fly community, it's ‘Let's hurry over and make maggots.’”

“Don't see any maggots on her.”

“They take time to hatch, Petra. Could be eggs in her nostrils or her ears, her anus or vagina. Or they're already crawling around inside. That's the point: It can't be pinned down easily. And don't go asking me about algor, rigor, livor, any of that good stuff. Dr. Srinivasan just gave us a lecture and guess what? All those calcs based on ninety-eight point six being normal body temp are off because the true normal is probably closer to ninety-seven, all the old thermometers are basically screwed up. And don't go telling me a degree and a half cooling per hour's gonna be definitive. Dr. Srinivasan gave us a lecture last week saying there's all kinds of new data that can screw up that calc.” She ticked her fingers. “Body fat, ambient room temp, humidity, seasonal variation of temp-humidity, how deep in the liver you probe.”