Jonathan Kellerman - Heartbreak Hotel

“After all this time, something on the tox screen?”

“That would be my guess. I need to see for myself.”

“In the mood for company?”

“You or the pooch?” He bent and rubbed Blanche’s head.

“You’ll have to settle for a biped.”

“If she knew how to drive, I wouldn’t. Let’s take the Caddy.”

I brought Blanche out to Robin and we got in the car.

Milo said, “Gotta hand it to you, how long you been driving this antique and the leather still smells great.”

“TLC and fidelity.” I drove south to Sunset as he re-texted the pathologist. By the time I was well into Beverly Hills, there’d still been no reply.

He said, “Maybe there is a big hairy guy roaming around.”

Once the sun rises, there’s no smooth way to make it to East L.A. from Bel Air. The drive to Mission Road took an hour and ten minutes. The pathologist, a new hire named Laura Robaire, wasn’t at the crypt. No one knew when she’d return or what the text had referred to.

We left the building, took a stroll around the parking lot. Milo tried calling and texting back, cursed, smoked a cigar, went over to the Seville and stared blankly through a window.

I walked and stretched. White vans pulled in and out of the loading area. Rapid transit for the dead.

I’d drifted away from him and was avoiding looking at a middle-aged couple trudging toward the north end of the building. The business end of the building; probably picking up a loved one’s effects.

Milo waved. I jogged over.

“The sixth damn time she answered. On her way over. Allegedly.”

Ten minutes later, a racing-green Jaguar S-type zoomed into a reserved slot and a honey-haired woman in her thirties got out. Five-two, maybe a hundred pounds. Lithe walk, too-young-to-be-an-M.D. face.

She flashed a quick smile. “Lieutenant?”

Milo said, “Doctor.”

“Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

“Just got here.”

Laura Robaire wore a knit top the same color as her car, skinny jeans, and bright-green flats. Her eyes were as light as green can be without being gray. Her nail polish was the color of a pine forest at dusk. Some sort of eco-statement? Or she just liked green.

She said, “Had to give a lecture crosstown, left the room and saw all of your texts. Sorry mine was enigmatic but I wanted you to see it for yourself so you could form your own impressions. Because I’m not sure I have anything you can actually use. Still, if it was me, I’d want to be informed.”

We followed her back to the south side of the crypt, took the stairs down, and ended up in the chilly, oversized closet where bodies are wrapped in plastic and stacked on shelves.

The body Robaire wanted was near the top. “I’ll call Marcel, he’s six-four.”

Milo said, “I can handle it.”

“I’m sure you could, Lieutenant, but you’ll still need help placing it on the table, rules are rules and in this case they’re reasonable. You know how it is once they’re taken apart. With snipped tendons and ligaments, there’s less internal structure, we don’t want anything sagging and slipping onto the floor.”

“That would be poor form,” said Milo.

“The poorest.” She removed a beeper from her waistband and pushed a button. “While we wait for Marcel, I’ll fill you in. This one came in early yesterday, not your jurisdiction, not even L.A., Culver City. But the moment I saw it, I knew I had to contact you.”

“Who’s the lead over there?”

“A Detective Gottlieb,” said Robaire. “I’ve never dealt with him before, then again I haven’t dealt with too many people here, just moved from Detroit.”

“The crypt, there?”

“You bet.”

“Busy place.”

“You guys do okay here, but yes, I found myself quite occupied in Detroit. I lived there because my husband had a urology fellowship. Penile repair.”

“Ouch.”

She laughed. “Sorry. But all those gunshot wounds afforded him experience. Anyway, Detective Gottlieb figured his case as a suicide and I could see why. No external wounds, nothing on X-ray, I wasn’t even figuring it for a mandatory autopsy but the age of the decedent made me consider it. Normally, I might’ve just run a tox. I also have an eager-beaver resident shadowing me so I let him cut. Internally, no surprises. But then, when we used the shaver — hi, Marcel.”

A rangy young black man stood in the doorway. “Hey, Doc.”

“I need the benefit of your superior stature.” She pointed. “Lieutenant Sturgis will help you lower it to the gurney that’s right outside.”

“Sure,” said Marcel. “If I need help.”

He didn’t. Once the body was loaded, Milo said, “I’ll drive,” and wheeled the cart to a nearby autopsy room.

The space smelled of chopped liver, copper, spoiled produce, antiseptic. Spotless, but for a red-brown splotch near the sink that made me think of the Aventura’s liverish uniforms.

Everyone gloved up. Milo and Marcel lowered the corpse to a stainless-steel table and began lifting up per Robaire’s instructions as she unraveled the plastic. Heavy-duty sheeting, rolled on in multiple layers that were nearly opaque. Lifeless flesh flashed ivory through the milky sheath.

When the face was revealed, Milo said, “Oh, shit.”

Kurt DeGraw would’ve gazed up at the ceiling if his eyes were open.

Robaire said, “You know him?”

“He managed the hotel where Victim Mars was murdered.”

“Wow. Unbelievable. Thanks, Marcel, you can go now.”

As the attendant left, Milo took out his pad.

Laura Robaire said, “He was found in his apartment yesterday morning by his cleaning woman, lying in bed with a plastic bag over his head. The bag was secured with generic packing string. Time of death estimate is sometime during the night. Lacking any broken skin and with no sign of forced entry, struggle, or ransacking, the EMTs assumed suicide and so did my investigators. The autopsy revealed pulmonary and other organ congestion consistent with asphyxia but told us nothing about manner. I was teaching my resident the importance of being hands-on, not just relying on labs. To illustrate, I palpated, and when I got to under the chin it felt swollen. So we shaved his beard.”

She tilted back DeGraw’s head. “Right here — bruises notably similar to what I found on your Victim Mars. Unlike Mars, there are no broken ribs or ocular bleeding so I still wasn’t considering it dramatic evidence, there are all sorts of ways to get a bruise. But it did make me wonder, so I ran the tox stat and when opiates, alcohol, or any other obvious CNS suppressants came back negative, I realized suicide was a less likely scenario. At that point, I made two calls, to Detective Gottlieb and to you. Even without a link, I thought you two should be talking. I expect you’ll be hearing from him. And now that you’ve established an actual link between the victims, I’m sure he’ll be happy to talk to you.”

I said, “Suicide’s unlikely because people who use bags pre-medicate.”

“I’ve never seen different, Dr. Delaware. Think about what it would entail: You don’t prep with anything to make yourself fade out, just tie a bag over your head and lie there waiting to suffocate? No matter how emotionally depressed someone is, the urge to breathe would kick in. They’d start gasping and even if they tried to fight it, there’s a good chance they’d rip off the bag. Have you observed otherwise?”

I shook my head.

She said, “I just don’t see anyone starving themselves of oxygen for up to fifteen minutes with no sign of any struggle, let alone actually going through with it. Thank God I took the time to shave him. My judgment is he was burked, so manner will definitely be listed as homicide.”