Naked Addiction (3 page)

Norman nodded, his eyes lighting up and his mouth curling at the corners as he waited for details.

“It was her toes that stuck with me,” Goode told him, the stark image coming to mind again.

“Her toes?”

Goode pulled himself out of it. “Yeah, they were perfectly shaped, like a mannequin’s, and the nails were painted red. You could tell she was well cared-for. Follow me,” he said, leading Norman out to the alley, where the body had been covered with a tarp until the Medical Examiner’s investigator could get there. He wasn’t sure if the ME’s office was understaffed or just incompetent, but those guys usually took a long time to show up. Not a good thing during a Santa Ana. 

“See how they’re sticking out from those trash cans?”

Norman nodded again, and jotted a few more lines in his notebook.

“Hey, now,” Goode said. “I said this was off the record, so don’t go quoting me on any of this.”

The last thing he needed was for a reporter to screw up his transfer. But he kind of liked the guy and the way he breathed in Goode’s every word.  Besides, Goode was excited about working this case, and he didn’t mind sharing a few innocent details.

“Don’t worry,” Norman said. “I’m just taking down some color.”

Goode didn’t know what the hell “color” was, so he kept walking. “Since she lived on the third floor,” he said quietly, so Byron and the evidence tech couldn’t hear, “I’m thinking the murderer might have carried her down that iron staircase.”

Norman turned to see where Goode was looking—a set of metal stairs, probably a fire escape, where, coincidentally, a blond man in his late twenties, dressed in khakis and a striped dress shirt, was creeping down, as if he could go unnoticed. The blond guy climbed into a red Mustang parked on the corner and drove away, but not before Goode had mentally recorded the license plate number, not wanting to raise Norman’s suspicions by pulling out a notebook of his own. When Norman started scribbling something, Goode wondered if he was more experienced than he’d claimed.

“So, who was she?” Norman asked, his brow furrowed.

“You’ll have to get her name from the ME. And they won’t tell you that until they’ve notified next of kin.”

The cub reporter was starting to make him a tad nervous with all the questions, so Goode figured he’d better clam up. A little louder, he added, “I’ve got to get going now. The brass doesn’t like me chalking up OT talking to reporters.”

Norman looked panicked. “But wait,” he hissed. “Where am I going to get this stuff on the record? No details, no story.”

Goode told him what cops usually tell reporters: Not much. “Ask Sergeant Stone. If he won’t talk to you, he’ll issue a news release sometime soon. I’ve got to go.”

He was heading back, toward the stairs, when Norman called after him. “But if you’re the one who found the body, why can’t I—”

“See you later, Inky,” Goode said over his shoulder, chuckling. The guy had to pay his dues. Prove he was trustworthy. Maybe then Goode would think about giving him some of the good stuff.

He wrote down Mustang Man’s license number before he forgot it, then called it into dispatch. It came back to Keith Warner of La Jolla, twenty-seven years old and blond, no warrants. He copied the address underneath the license number and made some notes about where and when he’d seen the guy. If nothing else, at least he was organized.

Casting his attention back to the metal staircase, he tried to imagine the girl walking down, or being carried down unnoticed, wearing nothing but a man’s shirt. It was highly unlikely. Someone must have seen her. Maybe Mustang Man killed her in the apartment, then carried her down. Or maybe she picked the wrong time to take out her trash, interrupted a drug buy and got herself raped and strangled. He wondered if anyone had heard her scream.

Goode joined Jake, who was waiting for him on a bench in the courtyard, and took down a more detailed statement about finding the body. It didn’t take long because Jake, who was fidgeting quite a bit, didn’t have much more to say. He said he lived a few blocks away and did own some adult transportation— his mother’s hand-me-down Saab, which he drove mostly back and forth to UCSD. The address on his driver’s license was his mother’s, he said, but he’d since moved to his own place in PB, a few blocks from the victim’s apartment complex. Goode jotted down both addresses along with Jake’s home and cell numbers, in case Jake decided to take an unauthorized trip somewhere. Goode let the kid leave, but told him that he might need to answer some questions later.

Next, Goode went up to the third floor and knocked on Tania’s next-door neighbor’s place. No answer, so he knocked again, harder. In fact, it looked like no one was home on the third floor at all. They were probably at the beach. That reminded Goode that he’d missed his date with his surfboard again, but he quickly dismissed the thought as unimportant given the circumstances.

As he was about to head into Tania’s apartment, he saw Paul Walters pull back his curtain and try to drop out of sight. But it was too late.

Goode pounded on his door like a jackhammer, and this time Paul finally opened up. He was in his late twenties, his hair was greasy and his eyes were glassy and bloodshot. The skin under his eyes was purplish, as if he hadn’t slept in a year or two. Like the type who watched a lot of MTV and rarely went outside. He wore a loose-fitting black T-shirt that said, NO DOUBT, and low-hanging jeans. Frail, pale and lanky, he couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred and forty-five pounds.

“I’m trying to sleep in here,” Paul said. “Are you trying to break down my door, dude?”

“How well did you know Tania Marcus?” Goode asked in a no-nonsense tone.

“Did you say ‘did’?” Paul asked, scowling. “As in past tense?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Shit,” he said, pausing. “Well, I know who she is, but I don’t know her, I mean, I didn’t know her. She hardly said two words to me.” Paul went into a bout of coughing, a raspy smoker’s hack.

Goode could tell a liar when he met one. He asked Paul a few more questions, and decided he was either uselessly unobservant or purposely evasive and headed for Tania’s apartment. He made a mental note that Paul Walters was a lead worth exploring further for proximity alone.

Inside, the evidence tech was dusting the glass coffee table, doorjambs and countertops, searching for the killer’s fingerprints. Two opposite corners of the table had short piles of white powder on them, most likely cocaine or crystal methamphetamine, and the surface between them was misted with the stuff. Meth was pretty popular in certain parts of San Diego County, but not so much with rich girls. They usually preferred coke or one those designer drugs.

Although Byron was supposedly in charge, Goode could see that he didn’t have a clue about drugs, so he stepped in. Coke was often cut with meth, but meth was not cut with coke, and it might be important later to be able to differentiate between the piles and where they came from. Coke and meth were both referred to as “white powder” in court, but meth usually had a more yellowish tint.

“Hey, could you bag the stuff on those two corners separately?” Goode asked the tech, who was scraping the powder from the first end of the table into a bag. “The colors and consistency look a little different.”

“Coke or meth?” Stone said as he came out of the bedroom.

“That would be my bet,” Goode said. “But you never know. I asked her to bag each corner separately.”

“Good idea,” Stone said. “Found her purse,” he added, opening it up to show him and Byron the contents. “She was twenty-four. Still has a Beverly Hills address on her driver’s license.”

Goode nodded. He had the age about right. Byron looked nonplussed.

“The kid’s got more credit cards than I’ve had in my entire life,” Stone said. “Key chain logo matches the black Porsche Carrera out in the lot. We’ll have it dusted for prints as well. A forensic examiner named London from the Regional Computer Forensic Lab is on his way to pick up her cell phone, iPad and computer so we can go through her texts, contact list, emails, Internet browser history and whatever else we can find. See what she was up to besides the drugs that might have gotten her killed. Goode, I want you to hook up with London and pursue those leads. I’ll call in the girl’s name and Beverly Hills address to see if we need LAPD to notify the parents in person. You’ll also want to follow up with a personal call later this afternoon to make contact since you were the one who found her body.
Capisce
?”

Goode nodded, jotting it all down in his notebook, as Byron waited for any further instructions.

“I’ll have Slausson run a records check on the victim to see if she’s been in trouble before or has taken out any restraining orders here or in LA,” Stone went on. “Until London gets here, let’s have you two look around the apartment and see if you can figure out who our victim was and who she was partying with.”

“Will do,” Byron said, heading off to the bedroom.

Goode was looking forward to perusing Tania Marcus’s texts, emails and web browser directory, which would answer many questions about her friends, habits, lifestyle and personal tastes. What he wasn’t looking forward to was dealing with her grieving parents, but that task came with the job.

“Just our luck this girl will turn out to be the daughter of some filthy rich Hollywood producer and we’ll have the national media breathing down our necks,” Stone said. “Or worse yet, it’s a slow news day and those talking heads at CNN, MSNBC, HLN and FOX decide this is their latest dead-rich-white-girl-of-the-week story.”

“Let’s hope not,” Goode said.

The sergeant gave Goode one of his trademark one-eyebrow raises as he nodded toward the tech, who was now going through the trash bin in the kitchen. Apparently, Stone wanted Goode to let Byron take the lead officially, but to keep his eyes peeled for clues as well.

Nothing beats the aroma of cigarette butts stuck to the slime on soda cans, mixed with rotting fruit
, Goode thought as he watched a dozen hairy flies the size of Texas circle and dive into the bin.

“Anybody find a pack of cigarettes?” he called out.

“Not so far,” Stone said.

Because there were only two butts, Goode figured Tania wasn’t a real smoker, and the murderer may have brought his or her own. He asked the tech to put the two butts in separate bags for DNA testing on the chance that different people had smoked them, even though both sported the Camel logo. You could never be too careful.

Right on top, almost like a gift waiting for them, was a pair of cream-colored panties, edged with lace. They appeared to be fairly new, but were ripped down one side. Goode figured they might have been torn off during a rape. A DNA test and then a run through the state and federal crime and sex offender databases for any matches could help answer that question as well.

Goode held his breath as the tech dug a little deeper in the bin. Three half-eaten apples, brown between the jagged teeth marks. Droopy lettuce leaves. Carrot shavings. A
TV Guide
from two weeks ago. A month-old container of cottage cheese – no need to lift that lid. Two steak bones and an empty bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, vintage 1985.

Not bad. She lived well and had expensive tastes for such a young woman. Unless she had a sugar daddy. Or maybe Daddy himself had come to dinner.

A cursory look through the cupboards and drawers didn’t turn up anything of note, so Goode moved on to the bedroom, which prompted Byron to head to the kitchen. Goode felt an air of competition and a little resentment coming from his fellow detective, so he decided to proceed with caution. Sort of.

A stack of beauty school textbooks on Tania’s desk caught his eye next to a stack of papers marked with a logo for Head Forward School of Hair Design on La Jolla Boulevard in Bird Rock. A glossy brochure on the dresser described it as a high-end beauty school for entrepreneurs, the first of its kind in the nation. Judging by the dates, she’d only just started the program there.

“No shit,” Goode whispered.

This was some coincidence. His sister Maureen had just told him the week before that she was thinking of taking classes there after meeting a couple students at the Pumphouse, a bar in PB she frequented. Luckily her name wasn’t on the list of Tania’s classmates. Nonetheless, Goode whipped out his cell phone and called to see if she’d ever met his murder victim.

He got no answer, which was nothing new, so he left a message: “Hey, Maureen, I need your help on something. Give me a call as soon as you get a chance. Like, today would be good.” If he didn’t specify “today,” she might not call for days—or weeks—otherwise.

After a dumpy adolescence, Maureen had thinned down and turned attractive, but she still saw herself as an ugly duckling. She’d inherited their mother’s nose and mouth, and they’d both gotten their father’s brown hair and green eyes, but she was never satisfied with her appearance. She was always messing with some new hair color, spray, goop, or cream. Sometimes Goode didn’t even recognize her. He warned her about the short-short skirts and the leather boots, but she ignored him. He also got worried when she started hanging out in bars most nights, but she told him to butt out.

“You’re not my father,” she said.

Goode continued to look around Tania’s bedroom, where Slausson came in and began going through her drawers. Her shelves were lined with women’s magazines and how-to books: how to start your own business, how not to love too much, how to improve yourself. Books by several supermodels on how to stay in shape and do makeup. Unauthorized biographies of Vidal Sassoon, John Lennon, Howard Stern, and Cee Lo Green. The desk was fully equipped with a copier-fax-scanner-printer and a computer, which looked like a full business setup. This seemed curious given that she’d only just started beauty school.