Jan Burke - Nine

“How many of you have been inside to have a gander while you waited?” Ciara asked.

Black remained unperturbed. “Just me. Before that, only ones in were the couple that discovered the body.”

“The couple?” Alex asked.

“Yes, sir. The bodies were discovered by a couple that cleans the place every Wednesday. But the next-door neighbors called the owner-guy lives on the mainland-to complain about the smell. He called the cleaning people, so they showed up this morning to check on the place.”

“About what time?” Alex asked.

“A little after six.”

“Kind of early for housecleaning, wasn’t it?” Ciara asked.

“They were planning to take a quick look inside and then go fishing. They saw the bodies, hurried over to the station, and we’ve asked them to stay there so that you can talk to them, if you’d like.”

“Thanks,” Alex said. “A little later, we probably will. When did you get here?”

Black glanced at some notes. “At six-seventeen. Dale Howell-the deputy who’s back there making sure no one tries to enter through the back door-he was with me, but I’m the only one who went inside. It was obvious that there was no chance of the victims being alive, so I backed out. We secured the scene and called the station. I mentioned that this was similar to the scene in Lakewood, so-”

“Just how in the hell did you know that, Deputy Black?” Ciara asked. “We managed to keep most information about the scene off the evening news.”

He gave her a rueful grin. “I don’t want to get him in trouble, but…well, I know the guy who sang into the porcelain amphitheater.”

“The rookie who got sick?”

“Yes.”

Ciara seemed ready to say something, but Alex spoke first. “That turns out to be lucky for us, then. Any sign of forced entry?”

“No, sir, nothing obvious-but, as I said, I haven’t looked around in there much.”

Alex thanked him. Ciara and Alex put on latex gloves and entered the small house. The deputy remained outside.

It was typical of a vacation rental property: mismatched sturdy furniture, the few items of décor firmly nailed down or too heavy to lift. Nothing seemed disturbed. No sign of a struggle, just the overpowering scent of decay. As they walked toward the back, the smell became worse.

The scene in the bathroom was nearly a duplicate of the one in Lakewood, with two bodies instead of one. But here, the air was thick and close-no one had been there before them, opening windows. Alex began to feel more sympathy for the Lakewood rookie.

The bodies faced away this time, toward the wall behind the tub. Alex glanced at the mirror and saw two numbers painted in what appeared to be blood.

“Seven and eight,” he read aloud. “Hell.”

He glanced at Ciara, who was looking a little queasy. “Let’s hope that’s what it means,” she said, “and not seventy-eight.”

“Trust you to find the bright side,” he said, and she laughed.

The female victim had been strong and wiry. Her long brown hair was streaked with gray and dipped into the blood beneath her. The male was thin, his blond hair cropped close to his head. Two letters had been amateurishly tattooed on his neck: AD.

“You know of any local gangs that go by the initials ‘AD’?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Wait-isn’t that one of those El Monte groups? One of those white supremacist outfits-Aryan something or other?”

“Aryan Destiny,” he said, and frowned. He carefully positioned himself so that he could lean over the tub without disturbing the bodies.

“What are you doing?” Ciara asked. He noticed that she had moved nearer the door. Probably trying to get some air, he thought.

“I want to look at their faces.”

“Cripes, Alex-don’t fall in.”

But he wasn’t listening to her. He was staring at the faces of the victims, then back at the mirror. He closed his eyes for a moment, hoping against hope that somehow what he was seeing would change, that when he opened them again, the scene before him would be transformed. But when he opened them again, the same two lifeless faces stared back. Two faces he recognized, even in this state.

“Oh God,” he said quietly.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Ciara asked anxiously.

“We’ve got trouble,” he said, and moved back from the tub. “If we’ve ever had bigger trouble, I don’t know what it was.”

“What are you talking about? Who are they?”

“Valerie Perry and Harold Denihan.”

“What?” She stared at the bodies, then at him. She scowled and said, “You’re shitting me. Very funny, Alex.”

“I’m totally serious.”

“You’re telling me that we’ve got two more fugitives on the FBI’s Most Wanted list dead in our jurisdiction? That two criminals who committed crimes in completely different parts of the country, who have nothing to do with each other, who committed totally different crimes-that they’re both hanging over that tub?”

“Yes. We’d better call Hogan. Hell, we’d better call the captain.”

“Alex-maybe seeing Adrianos last night-”

“Take a look,” he invited, stepping past her to allow her to move into the small room.

She hesitated. “Perry and Denihan have nothing to do with each other!”

He glanced back over his shoulder. “They’ve got at least one thing in common now.”

L.A. County Sheriff’s Department

Homicide Bureau

Commerce, California

Monday, May 19, 3:15 P.M.

Hogan had a show going.

Brandon never ceased to be amazed at how quickly the lieutenant could put a presentation together. It was his forte-the ability to use computers had been no small part of Hogan’s rise within the department. Didn’t know shit about detective work, but that didn’t make him any different from most lieutenants, in Alex’s estimation.

In the time since he had received Alex’s first calls from Catalina, Hogan had managed to put together a computer “slide show.” Hogan had also loaded in photos Ciara had taken with a digital camera at the scene.

The conference room at the homicide bureau was crowded. Alex counted twenty-three people, among them Homicide Bureau Captain Bill Nelson, all of the other lieutenants, the head of the crime lab, Enrique Marquez and other detectives, as well as a public information officer, or PIO. Alex watched their faces. They were tense and serious, aware that the department was about to become the focus of a tremendous amount of attention, most of it unwanted.

Hogan had just finished going over the Adrianos case, and now a blurry photo of a smiling, narrow-faced woman appeared on the screen. Her long gray and brown hair was parted in the middle, her skin was tanned and creased. She had the look of a woman who had once been pretty but had not aged well. Nothing in her brown eyes reflected what she was capable of, which had probably been the key to her success as a killer.

“Valerie Perry was a white female, aged forty-seven,” Hogan said. Everyone had seen this one-it had probably been posted in every law enforcement department in the country, on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives flyer. Still, they stared at her face as if seeing it for the first time. “Until recently, she spent most of her time in the Phoenix area. She ran a boardinghouse and only accepted clients over sixty-five years of age, although for the past five years, most were in their eighties, and none were younger than seventy-eight. She carefully screened her tenants, making sure they were unlikely to have family members who’d be looking for them.” The next few slides were of elderly men and women. “She didn’t charge much to provide room and board, and although residents didn’t seem to stay there long, there was never a shortage of renters.