Patterson, James: Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

I nodded my agreement.

When I first got into Homicide, I learned that crime scenes generally come in two types. The kind where the evidence is disorganized: blood spatter, broken objects, shell casings scattered around, bodies sprawled where they fell.

And then there were the scenes like this one.

Organized. Planned out.

Plenty of malice aforethought.

The victim’s clothes were neat, no bunching, no buttonholes missed. She was even wearing a seat belt, which was drawn snug across her lap and shoulder.

Had the killer cared about her?

Or was this tidy scene some kind of message for whoever found her?

“The passenger-side door was opened with a slim jim,” Clapper told us. “The surfaces have all been wiped clean. No prints to be found inside or out. And look over here.”

Clapper pointed up toward the camera mounted on a concrete pylon. It faced down the ramp, away from the Caddy.

He lifted his chin toward another camera that was pointed up the ramp toward the fifth level.

“I don’t think you’re going to catch this bird doing the vic on tape,” Clapper said. “This car is in a perfect blind spot.”

I like this about Charlie. He knows what he’s doing, shows you what he sees, but the guy doesn’t try to take over the scene. He lets you do your job, too.

I directed my flashlight beam into the interior of the car, checking off the relevant details in my mind.

The victim looked healthy, weighed about 110, stood maybe five foot or five one.

No wedding band or engagement ring.

She was wearing a crystal bead necklace, which hung below a ligature mark.

The mark itself was shallow and ropy, as if it had been made with something soft.

I saw no defensive cuts or bruises on her arms and, except for the ligature mark, no signs of violence.

I didn’t know how or why this girl had been killed, but my eyes and my gut told me that she hadn’t died in this car.

She had to have been moved here, then posed in a tableau that somebody was meant to admire.

I doubted that someone had gone to all of this trouble for me.

I hoped not.

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 10

“HAVE YOU GOT your pictures?” I asked Clapper.

There wasn’t much room to work, and I wanted to get in close for a better look at the victim.

“I’ve got more than enough for my collection,” he said. “The camera loves this girl.”

He stowed his digital Olympus in his case, snapped the lid closed.

I reached into the car and gingerly fished out the labels from the back of the victim’s pale-pink coat and then her slim black party dress.

“The coat is Narciso Rodriguez,” I called out to Jacobi. “And the dress is a little Carolina Herrera number. We’re looking at about six grand in threads here. And that’s not counting the shoes.”

Since Sex and the City, when it came to shoes, Manolo Blahnik was the man. I recognized a pair of his trademark sling-backs on the victim’s feet.

“She even smells like money,” said Jacobi.

“You’ve got a good nose, buddy.”

The fragrance the victim wore had a musky undertone calling up ballrooms and orchids, and maybe moonlit trysts under mossy trees. I was pretty sure I’d never smelled it before, though. Maybe some kind of pricey private label.

I was leaning in for another sniff, when Conklin escorted a short, fortyish white man up the steep ramp. He had a ruff of frizzy hair and small, darting eyes, almost black dots.

“I’m Dr. Lawrence Guttman,” the man huffed indignantly to Jacobi. “And yes. Thanks for asking. That is my car. What are you doing to it?”

Jacobi showed Guttman his badge, said, “Let’s walk down to my car, Dr. Guttman, take a ride to the station. Inspector Conklin and I have some questions for you, but I’m sure we can clear this all up, PDQ.”

It was then that Guttman saw the dead woman in the passenger seat of his Seville. He snapped his eyes back to Jacobi.

“My God! Who is that woman? She’s dead! W-what are you thinking?” he sputtered. “That I killed someone and left her in my car? You can’t think. . . . Are you crazy? I want my lawyer.”

Guttman’s voice was squelched by the roar and echo of a large engine coming toward us. Wheels squealed as a black Chevy van wound up and around the helix of the parking-garage ramp.

It stopped twenty feet away from where we stood, and the side doors slid open.

A woman stepped out of the driver’s seat.

Black, just over forty, substantial in every way imaginable, Claire Washburn carried herself with the dignity of her office and the confidence of a well-loved woman.

The ME had arrived.

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 11

CLAIRE IS SAN FRANCISCO’S chief medical examiner, a superb pathologist, a master of intuition, a pretty fair cellist, a happily married lady of almost twenty years, a mother of two boys, and, quite simply, my best friend in the universe.

We’d met fourteen years ago over a dead body, and since then had spent as much time together as some married couples.

We got along better, too.

We hugged right there in the garage, drawing on the love we felt for each other. When we broke from our hug, Claire put her hands on her ample hips and took in the scene.

“So, Lindsay,” she said, “who died on us today?”

“Right now, she goes by Jane Doe. Looks like she was killed by some kind of freako perfectionist, Claire. There’s not a hair out of place. You tell us, though.”

“Well, let’s see what we can see.”

Claire walked to the car with her kit and in short order took her own photos, documenting the victim from every angle, then taped paper bags over the young woman’s hands and feet.

“Lindsay,” she finally called for me, “come have a look here.”

I wedged into the narrow angle between Claire and the car door as Claire rolled up the girl’s upper lip, then rolled down the lower one, showing me the bruising by the beam of her penlight.

“See all this here, sugar? Was this young lady intubated?” Claire asked me.

“Nope. The EMTs never touched her. We waited for you.”

“So this is trauma artifact. Look at her tongue. Appears to be a laceration.”

Claire flicked her light over the furrow at the girl’s neckline.

“Unusual ligature mark,” she told me.

“I thought so, too. Don’t see any petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes,” I said, talking the talk. “Odd, isn’t it? If she was strangled?”

“All of it’s odd, girlfriend,” said Claire. “Her clothes are immaculate. Don’t see that too much with a body dump. If ever.”

“Cause of death? Time of death?”

“I’d say she went down somewhere around midnight. She’s just going into rigor. Other than that, all I know is that this girl is dead. I’ll have more for you after I examine young Jane under some decent light back at the shop.”

Claire stood and spoke to her assistant.

“Okay, Bobby. Let’s get this poor girl out of the car. Gently, please.”

I walked to the edge of the fourth floor and looked out over the tops of buildings and the creeping traffic down on Golden Gate Avenue. When I felt a little collected, I called Jacobi on my cell.

“I turned Guttman loose,” he told me. “He’d just gotten off a flight from New York, had left his car at the garage while he was out of town.”

“Alibi?”

“His alibi checks out. Someone else parked that girl in his Caddy. How’s it going over there?”

I turned, saw Claire and Bobby wrapping the victim tamale-style in the second of two sheets before inserting her into a body bag. The chalk-on-board sound of that six-foot-long zipper closing, the finality of encasing the victim in an airproof sack, feels like a gut-punch no matter how many times you’ve witnessed it.