Jonathan Kellerman - Heartbreak Hotel

I was hoping for better. Would still like to think of our planet as an evolutionary gem.

And again, moments later, describing images taken by the Hubble telescope.

I was cheered. The universe seemed... jewel-like.

Playing games? Or rehearsing a story she planned to tell me later.

There hadn’t been a later.

Robin began humming as she dried off. Warren Zevon’s “Carmelita.”

I returned to that first time in the bungalow. Nearly snagged an image but lost it — one of those tip-of-the-mind frustrations.

I gave up. Sat up. It came to me, clear as a digital photo.

Robin walked in, wrapped in a towel. “Hi, babe... are you waiting for something? Love the passion, but if you don’t mind—”

“Honey, I think I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“The ruby.” I told her where.

“Crafty,” she said. “Now, that could be a motive.”

I got dressed and phoned Milo. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“At this point I’m open to all kinds of beliefs, including ecologically justified cannibalism. What religion do you want me to convert to?”

“The Church of Cautious Optimism.” I filled him in.

He said, “Win. Ni.”

“Fifty-seven carats, that’s got to be it.”

“You just came up with this?”

“Robin led me to it.” I repeated her logic.

“That’s some smart girl you’ve got.”

“Lord Byron would be proud.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Why don’t you call the crime lab and find out?”

“No call, something like this, the evidence chain needs to be solid, I’ll check it out personally. Can you meet me in front of the station, say immediately?”

“I’ll be there sooner.”

L.A. County’s Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center is six stories of white punctuated by red brick and glass, perched at the mouth of the Cal State L.A. campus.

The ride on the 10 East took the unmarked where tourist buses don’t venture: a sixty-five-mph drive-by of big-box discounters, car lots, and purveyors of industrial grit.

Once we got off the freeway and drove up a hill to campus, all was sunny and crisp. None of the ivy-clad antiquity of the city’s Big Two, here. This was unpretentious functionality spread across gently rolling terrain.

After nearly a decade, the crime lab still sparkles. This morning, a sky scrubbed blue by hot dry winds added extra wattage. Parking was ample. A few students and staffers strolled. The view to the west was crystalline, the Hollywood sign visible thirty miles away.

Pleasant place; you’d never know death paid the bills.

We checked in at the glassed-in reception desk and waited. White-coats and cops in blue or tan uniforms passed by. L.A. crime is handled by a pair of goliaths: LAPD tends to the four million people living and misbehaving within the city limits, the sheriff has dominion over the eight million who reside in the remainder of the county.

At Hertzberg, that leads to a curious accommodation: Labs and offices are divided up and demarcated by green and blue nameplates. Two evidence rooms, separate microscopes, but some facilities are shared. The potential for chaos seems obvious but everyone seems to get along. These are scientists and techs who take the job seriously.

The lab’s commanding officer, a trim blonde named Noreen Sharp, came out to meet us.

She said, “You’re here to arrange transfer of the Mars property. Thanks.”

Milo smiled and did that shambling aw-shucks thing. “Actually—”

“You’re not,” said Sharp. “What’s going on, Milo?”

“Noreen, I swear I’ll do it soon as I can, but right now I need to check a specific piece of evidence.”

“In the Mars bunch.”

“Yes.”

“Like what?”

He explained.

Noreen Sharp said, “I wish someone would’ve told me, we’d have logged it separately.”

“Someone didn’t know.”

She smiled. “Got it. Well if it’s not here, it never arrived. I supervised the initial loading myself due to the volume of objects and my code’s the only one that unlocks the bay. What exactly is it worth?”

“Don’t know yet, Noreen.”

“But obviously we’re talking huge. Lucky for you I’ve held on to my moral compass.”

We took the elevator down and entered a white corridor. Quiet as a Trappist monastery; the entire facility was. Any time I’d been there, it was like that. Shrine to Science.

Noreen Sharp picked up a video camera and walked us past darkened labs and the gun library to the auto bays. Stopping at one, she used her left hand to conceal her right as she punched a code into a numbered grid. Hiding the combination but doing it casually. No offense, business as usual.

The door clicked open. The interior was the size of a double garage with a high ceiling, block walls, a cement floor, and a hydraulic lift stored in a corner.

Chilly. Noreen Sharp said, “Yup, nippy, be nice for wine.” She pointed to a rear door. “You know where that leads.”

Milo said, “The loading area.”

“Got to get the cars in somehow,” she said. “Have you ever been back there?”

“Nope.”

She walked over, pushed a similar grid on the far wall, and the back door opened. Daylight over asphalt, a lot big enough for a fleet.

“Completely fenced, guys. No one gets in unless we want them to. I’m telling you this so no matter what you find, there’ll be no misunderstanding. Ms. Mars’s property arrived on one of our trucks that stopped just outside as the contents were unloaded.”

She closed the door. “Okay, all this is cataloged but it’s not arranged in any order, so you’ll have to look.”

“All this” referred to a mass of shapes in the center of the bay, wrapped in heavy-duty plastic that brought to mind bodies in the crypt, and secured by duct tape. Along with that, several cardboard boxes were marked Mars, T, along with a case number, date of death, and a stick-on label stating Deceased Personal Effects.

The sizable objects were a couple of sofas, a mattress, and a deconstructed bed canopy. Even with them, Thalia’s possessions took up a pitiably small space.

A century of life memorialized in less than half of a cold, gray room.

Milo turned to me. “See it?”

“Right there.” I pointed to a vertical package sandwiched between the cartons and what I recognized as an end table.

“Can he go over there, Noreen?”

“Sure.” She hefted the camera. “But given what we’re looking for, I’m going to video you, Doctor. For documentation.”

I made my way to the upright form. Floor lamp with a glass shade. What Milo had called a Tiffany but I knew to be improbably crude for such.

The shade, a dome studded with bubbles of red glass.

The last time I’d seen it, it had sported a red finial. Oval, faceted, of a size that made me assume cut glass.

“Can I touch it?”

Noreen Sharp said, “First point, then touch.”

I prodded the top of the shade, pushing down on taut plastic to make sure.

No need to unwrap. I’d felt and seen enough.

Where the finial had sat, just a socket.

I said, “It’s gone.”

Noreen Sharp exhaled and talked to the camera. “Dr. Alexander Delaware, a police consultant, has just identified what he feels is an absent component of what appears to be a floor lamp. The lamp in question was delivered to us wrapped precisely as it is now, as were all of Victim T. Mars’s personal effects. No one has been in this storage area since the arrival of those objects and the subsequent locking of the auto bay in which we currently stand.”

She swung the lens toward Milo.

He said, “This is Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, LAPD Homicide, West L.A. Division. I was present at the crime scene of victim T. Mars and personally oversaw the wrapping and carting of all personal effects of victim T. Mars.”