Jonathan Kellerman: Heartbreak Hotel

I said, “There’s some evidence of homicide?”

He didn’t answer.

I said, “From here it looks as if rigor has set in. What about livor mortis? Any pooling below the waist?”

“Sir!”

I took out my phone and speed-dialed.

Milo mastiff-growled, “Sturgis.”

“Lieutenant, this is Dr. Delaware.”

“Alex? What’s up?”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

“You in some kind of fix?”

“I’m at a death scene, Lieutenant. A patient I came to see turned up unexpectedly deceased. The first responder has some suspicions, let me put him on.”

I held out the phone. Guzman stared at it.

I said, “Lieutenant Sturgis is the senior homicide detective at West L.A. We’re cutting out the middleman.”

Guzman took the phone. “Sir, this is LAFD paramedic Guzman... yes, sir... no, sir, I’m not saying definitely, that’s not my area of expertise, sir, but I couldn’t help notice... yes, I do believe so, sir... would you like me to tell you why... sure, that makes sense... the Aventura Hotel, sir, Sunset and — you do? Great, yessir, I will totally preserve it but are you saying no need to go by procedure... sorry, sir, yessir, right away. Oh, yeah, about Dr. Delaware...”

He listened some more, returned the phone and my I.D. His face was an odd mixture of resentment and reverence.

“Man, you must have something going on with the cops. I’m supposed to tell you everything. ”

Handing me latex gloves, Guzman found another set for himself before motioning me to the right side of the bed. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you not to disturb anything, Doctor. But... anyway, take a look at this.”

Two huge fingers tweezed Thalia’s right eyelid open, then its mate. Both sclera were rosy with broken blood vessels.

I said, “Petechial hemorrhaging.”

“Didn’t notice it at first, Doc, ’cause when we got here the eyes were just a smidge open and you figure someone her age, in bed, no struggle, why shouldn’t it be natural? But after Rob — my partner — left, like a second before you got here, I was finishing up and I bent down and got closer to her eyes and saw the red and checked.”

I said, “Asphyxia or strangulation.”

“No strangulation I can see,” said Guzman. “By that I mean her neck looks clean. But I’m no doctor and someone this old, maybe the body can do things, right? Like something bursting in her brain and the blood goes into the eyes? But then I saw this, check it out.”

He pointed but I’d already noticed. The redness I’d seen around the nostrils. Up close, discreet rosy spots.

“Again, Doc, maybe nothing, but combined with the eyes? So, now I’m real curious.”

I bent closer, breathed in Chanel No. 5 and a rising must. “The bridge of her nose is swollen.”

“I don’t know what her nose looked like before, Doc.”

“I do. There’s definite swelling.” I jiggled the cartilage softly. “Doesn’t appear to be broken, more like a pressure mark. Maybe someone squeezing both nostrils.”

“Oh, boy — okay, there’s this, too.”

He lifted Thalia’s head with one hand and pointed with the other.

An oval bruise marked a spot beneath the chin, less than an inch long, purplish.

I said, “Thumb-sized. Someone forced her mouth and her nose shut.”

“That would sure do it,” said Guzman. “Poor old thing. If something was done to her, I hope she slept through it.”

Yesterday’s questions about criminal tendencies clanged in my head. Incorrigibility. Psychopaths.

Someone specific in mind? Someone she’d let into the bungalow, despite her suspicions?

Guzman said, “Maybe I’m wrong and there’s some explanation, Doc. I’d sure like to be wrong. What do you think?”

“I think you did the right thing by paying attention.”

He shrugged, ripped off his gloves, tossed them onto the floor where they landed like dead moths. Thinking better of it, he retrieved them, crushed them into a ball.

“This is pathetic, Doc. She reminds me of my great-nana.”

Guzman lifted his gear and the two of us went outside. Rob Barker and Refugia stood in the same place. Now she was talking and he was listening. Both of them looked relaxed.

Guzman shook his head. “There he goes.”

I said, “Socializing.”

“He’s got a really nice girlfriend but he’s a dog.”

“Time to tell him your suspicions?”

“Probably should, but what’s the point? All he wants to do is pick up chicks. He thinks I’m a wuss because I don’t cut corners. But he’s a good partner, real good at CPR— Doc, can I ask why you came to see the decea — Ms. Mars?”

“Sorry, I can’t say.”

“Oh. Sure. What I’m getting at, was there a serious mental problem? Not that you could explain it with that.”

“Explain what?”

“Well,” he said, “we see a whole lot more suicides than homicides but I guess that doesn’t apply here, I shouldn’t run my mouth.” A moment later: “I mean, you couldn’t clamp your own nose and mouth shut long enough, right? It would be like trying to hold your breath, you’d have to give up.”

“This wasn’t suicide, Chris.”

“No, of course not. But if she had problems, maybe she knew someone else who was willing to help her.”

“Assisted suicide.”

“It’s legal in some places, Doc. Some people don’t think it’s wrong.”

I said nothing. Guzman was one of those people with a low tolerance for silence. It didn’t take him long to say, “The thing is, the maid — the one Rob’s chatting up — told us she found the door unlocked. So she — Ms. Mars — probably let someone in that she knew. Didn’t seem to me there was any struggle and with all that jewelry in there, those antiques, it sure doesn’t look like robbery. So it makes me wonder, Doc. She was old, needed a shrink, I’m wondering if maybe some psychological thing was going on.”

I flipped back to yesterday’s session, probing my memory for allusions to suicide. Anything remotely depressive.

Just the opposite, she’d seemed ebullient.

But anyone could be fooled.

This time the silence led Guzman to move a few feet away. He looked at his watch. Barker’s and Refugia’s hips edged closer as they continued to chat.

Guzman said, “We do see some bizarre suicides. You probably have, too, working with the cops.”

“You bet.”

“What I mean, Doc, is you get a scene you’re sure is a murder then you find out it isn’t.”

“Something staged.”

“Exactly. Like this woman we had last year, must’ve really despised her husband’s guts. She ties her hands behind herself with duct tape but only after she positions the handle of his hunting knife so the blade’s sticking out between the slats of a chair. Facing out, you know? Then she gets down on her knees, right in front of the knife, and stabs herself in the head.”

He winced. “ Big blade, heavy duty. Goes right through the bone into her brain, talk about pain. The impact makes her jerk back, she falls hard enough to take the knife with her, we find it like that, sticking out of her. Top of that, she made sure to direct attention to the husband by writing in her diary that he was out to kill her and leaving the diary on a table where you couldn’t miss it.”

“Too obvious,” I said.

“That’s the first thing made the cops suspicious. But there was also physical evidence. Dust on her knees, and the shape of the bloodstains didn’t fit someone chopping her from above. What clinched it was she used gloves when she touched the knife so that only his prints would be on it. But she forgot about the inside, the only DNA there was hers. Also, the husband had a total alibi. Screwing his girlfriend in a motel.”