Immoral (36 page)

Serena beckoned her over.

“Hi,” Serena said. “You know who owns this car?”

The girl’s head bobbed. “Oh, yes. Very pretty lady. She lives upstairs.”

Cordy smiled at the girl. “Have you seen the pretty lady around here lately?‘

“I saw her on Sunday. She leaves for work. Since then, no.”

It was Wednesday evening.

“Was she with anyone when you saw her?”

The girl thought about it, then shook her head.

“You didn’t see her come back?”

“No,” the girl said. “But I go outside at night to see stars, and her car is parked right there.”

“What time was that?”

The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Late.”

“Has the car been here ever since?” Serena asked.

The girl nodded. “Yes, parked right there.”

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

Serena and Cordy headed for the stairs, dodging crumpled fast food bags and candy wrappers littering the ground. They jogged to the second floor. Cordy rapped his knuckles sharply on the door to room 204, not expecting an answer. He didn’t get one. They looked up and down the corridor to see if they had attracted any other attention, but the place was deserted.

“Gloves,” Serena said.

Cordy nodded. He extracted a slim box from his suit pocket, and they both slipped on fresh pairs of white latex gloves, which clung to their hands like a second skin.

“Some people die from these things,” Cordy said.

“Gloves?”

“Latex allergy. Like peanuts. People go into convulsions.”

“Maybe it’s the salt,” Serena said.

“On the gloves?”

“No, the peanuts. Open the damn door, Cordy.”

Cordy inserted the master key in the lower lock. Delicately, using two fingertips, he turned the door handle. The latch clicked, and he was able to push the door open. A crack of light streamed in, but the rest of the apartment was dark. Cordy took two steps inside, found the light switch, and carefully flipped it up with the point of the key.

In the light, he took a quick survey of the apartment and said, “Bull’s-eye, mama.”

Serena followed him in. Her eyes fell immediately on a dried reddish-brown stain, about two feet in diameter, in the middle of the carpet. The air in the apartment was stale, but the mineral smell of blood lingered.

“I’ll call for a forensics team,” Cordy said, sliding his cell phone out of his pocket.

Serena nodded. “And get some uniforms to start knocking on doors. We need to know when this girl was last seen, whether anyone was with her, who she hung out with, that son of thing. Once we’re done here, we can check out the Thrill Palace. Oh, and have someone run Christi Katt through the system. See what comes up.”

“Uh-huh,” Cordy said.

While Cordy connected with the station, Serena wandered around the apartment. It was a small unit with a living area in which the murder had occurred, a matchbox kitchen, and a bedroom visible through a doorway on the rear wall. Christi’s furnishings were sparse and cheap, including what looked like a garage-sale sofa and loveseat, discount-store shelving for a small television and boom box, and a few mismatched tables and chairs. The carpet was worn and gray.

Serena clicked on her recorder. “The apartment looks sterile—nothing personal. No photographs. No posters on the wall. No knickknacks or collectibles that might suggest who this girl was or what was in her head. There’s no history here.”

Serena entered the kitchen and began gingerly exploring.

“No magnets on the refrigerator. Virtually no food in the fridge and nothing more than a few cereal boxes, dried pasta, and canned soup in the cabinets. We’re not talking about Julia Child here. It looks like she just moved in, but the manager said she’s been here about a year.”

She glanced in the sink and found a heavy glass vase there, washed and left on its side. Serena retreated to the living room and began examining the shelves propped against the wall not far from the bloodstain.

“Find something?” Cordy asked.

“Maybe. There’s a vase in the sink. I’m betting it’s the murder weapon. Look here, on the shelf. There’s a lighter ring in the dust. It’s the right size and shape to match the bottom of the vase. Christi and the killer are standing here, okay? She turns her back, the killer grabs the vase and wham, splits her skull open.”

“Uh-huh,” Cordy said. “No sign of forced entry or struggle, either. I am guessing that, one, she knew her killer, and, two, the murder was an unplanned spontaneous act of passion. Anger. Jealousy. I would not rule out jealousy with this girl.”

“And you base this on what?”

Cordy put a finger on the side of his nose. “It just smells right.”

Serena laughed. “Sure. Well, smell your way into the bedroom. Let’s see if this girl left any clues behind”

The bedroom was a twelve-by-twelve box, with a closet and bathroom on the right wall. Christi had a full-sized bed, a nightstand, and a small dresser. As in the rest of the apartment, the walls were bare.

“No blanket on the bed,” Serena said.

“Maybe she was hot.”

“Or maybe the killer used it to transport the body.”

Serena went into the bathroom, which included a toilet, a pedestal sink, and a shower with a pink plastic curtain. She checked for traces of blood in the sink and shower and found nothing visible. The forensics team would check it with luminol. In the medicine cabinet, she found a sparse array of toiletries. To her surprise, she found no evidence of any kind of birth control. Either Christi’s men brought the condoms or her sex life was about as exciting as Serena’s.

She returned to the bedroom, where Cordy was examining the top drawer of Christi’s nightstand. “Anything?”

Cordy shook his head. “Not much. Matchbooks from two other strip clubs. Those might be prior employers, so we can check them out. Otherwise, no letters, no postcards, no love notes, no bills, no receipts, no credit card statements. This girl was one private
senorita
.”

“My dresser drawers are a mess,” Serena said. “Ten years’ worth of shit. You could write my biography by going through it”

“Not Christi Katt. Or whoever she was.”

“Well, keep looking. Any condoms in there, by the way?”

“Why, you running low?”

Serena sighed. “How are you feeling, Cordy? You’re looking pale. It could be a latex allergy. Now tell me before you go into convulsions.”

“No condoms,” Cordy said, chuckling.

Serena explored the girl’s closet, which didn’t take long. There were a few pairs of high heels on the floor, several blouses, skirts, and dresses on hangers, and two small stacks of T-shirts and jeans on a wire shelf. She rifled through the pockets of the jeans and found only a small quantity of loose change and a few sticks of gum.

She emerged, shaking her head. “This girl is quite a little mystery. How about a wallet or keys? Find anything like that?”

“
Nada
,” Cordy said.

“That’s interesting. Where are they?”

“Maybe the killer took them.”

Serena reflected. “Maybe so. Let’s say Christi’s at home, keys and wallet in her pockets. The killer comes to the door. For some reason, she lets him in. Either she knows him or she doesn’t feel threatened. Big mistake. They talk, maybe argue, she turns her back, and it’s lights out The killer, a fastidious type, cleans the vase, wipes off prints—unless we’re really lucky—and wraps the body in a blanket from the bed. No tracking blood outside that way. He waits until it’s dark and deserted outside, hauls the body to his car, drives off, and dumps her body in the desert.”

“Uh-huh,” Cordy said. “Except the body was naked. I could see the guy taking the wallet and keys. But why leave her in the buff? Who knows, maybe a little horizontal tango with the corpse? This could be one sick dude.”

“No shortage of those,” Serena said. “Forensics can tell us whether there was sexual activity. But stripping the body down does make it seem like there’s a sex angle. Unless she had a boyfriend with her and was already naked.”

“But no condoms, right?”

“Right. So we’ve got virtually no trace of this girl’s life, and yet she had someone angry enough to kill her. Nice. I hope she made some friends at the Thrill Palace. Or at one of those other clubs.”

“Don’t take bets on that, mama,” Cordy said.

“I’m not. Look, check out the dresser, and make sure we haven’t missed anything. I want to eyeball the living room again before all the guys with big feet get here.”

She left Cordy in the bedroom. Slowly, she traversed the apartment for a second time, looking at every surface, studying the floor and the walls. In the kitchen, she checked for the garbage under the sink and found coffee grounds, orange peels, and an outdated
TV Guide
.

Back in the living room, she checked out a handful of compact discs near the boom box, opening each case carefully, but found nothing else inside. She found it mildly interesting that Christi liked jazz. Serena, too, had wallowed in jazz during her low periods as a teenager in the first few years in Vegas, before she grew up and went country. Jazz was for trouble. Country was for living.

She heard Cordy whistle, long and loud.

“What?” she called.

Cordy was silent.

Curious, Serena returned to the bedroom. She found Cordy sitting cross-legged on the floor. The full-sized mattress had been shoved half off the bed. Next to Cordy was a small stack of newspapers. Cordy had one of the sections unfolded, and he was reading it transfixed.

“Her secret stash?” Serena asked.

Cordy nodded.

“You should have waited for the search team before touching this stuff,” Serena told him. Then she gave in to her own curiosity. “What’s in them?”

Cordy put down the paper. “So how long you figure that body’s been lying in the desert?”

Serena shrugged “A few days. Why?”

“Well, in that case, we got a problem, mama.”

Stride heard Andrea slip out of bed at six o’clock on Thursday morning to get ready for work. He opened his eyes without moving in bed and saw her, in the darkness of their bedroom, as she slid her white nightgown over her head and peeled down her panties. Her naked body had become softer and fleshier in three years but was still attractive.

“Hi,” he said softly.

Andrea didn’t look at him. “Hi yourself.”

“What was your name again?”

She shook her head. “Not funny, Jon.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Last night, he and Maggie had interrogated a suspect in a gang-related Asian drug ring until past one in the morning. There had been a string of late nights for several months.

“A phone call would sure be nice once in a while,” Andrea said. “This is three nights in a row, and I haven’t known when I’ll see you. You’re not there for me. You’re never there.”

“This case—” Stride began.

“I don’t care about the case,” she said. “If it’s not this one, it would be another one.”

Stride nodded and didn’t reply. She was right. And it was getting worse. He realized he was taking on parts of the investigations that should really be delegated down the line. Even K-2 had noticed it and asked him bluntly if he was looking for excuses to avoid going home. He said no, but deep down, he wasn’t sure.

“How’s Denise?” he asked. “I feel like I haven’t seen you since then.”

“That’s because you haven’t. You haven’t asked me anything about it. Do you care? You don’t know anything about me anymore.”

Andrea waited, with her hands on her hips. When he didn’t say anything more, she turned and stalked into the bathroom, shutting the door with a sharp click. He heard the shower running.

The problems had begun a year ago. They had spent two years in relative peace, avoiding conflicts by not talking about them, but recently the troubles between them had come into the open. It started with the issue of kids, which Andrea wanted desperately and Stride didn’t. He was too old by now. He would be over sixty by the time the kids left home.

Andrea persisted. Eighteen months after their marriage, with his reluctant acceptance, she went off the pill. They made love at every time of the day, to the point where there was no longer anything romantic about it. For all the trying, nothing happened. He tried to look disappointed that they couldn’t conceive, but he was afraid that his real relief showed in his face. He knew what Andrea believed, that if she had had a baby with her first husband, then he never would have left her, and her life would still be perfect. She was afraid that if she failed again, she would end up losing Stride, too—so she had to get pregnant.

But it was not to be.

He told her over and over that it didn’t matter to him, but misery gradually took over her face, and in the year since then, it had never really left. They were well on the road to becoming strangers.

He heard the shower shut off.

The door opened, and Andrea stood naked in the doorway, watching him. He could see beads of water on her bare skin, dripping on the carpet. She was biting her lower lip, and he could make out her face well enough in the shadows to see she had been crying. They stared at each other for a long while, silently.

It was as if she had read his thoughts, and they scared her.

“We need to talk,” she said.

He heard it in her tone. He knew it was coming. Divorce. The only question was which one of them would say the word first.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a hushed voice.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Stride told her.

He spread his arms wide, and she came to him. He folded up her wet body in his grasp. He saw anxiety in her bloodshot blue eyes. He put his hands up to her face, cupping her cheeks, and they both smiled weakly, trying to make the pain go away. He was conscious of her naked body on top of his, and he responded automatically. He shifted, wanting to enter her, but she let go and rolled off him onto her back, tugging gently on his shoulder. He followed her, sliding on top. His hands slid behind her neck. He went to kiss her, but she turned her face away. He felt her legs spreading for him, her knees bending and coming up. She didn’t move; she just held onto him as he slid into her. The sex was quick and unsatisfying. Eventually, he eased down on top of her, and they lay like that for several minutes. When he felt gentle pressure from her hands, he knew to roll off her. She kissed him, a brush of her lips, then got out of bed quickly before he could touch her.