Shadows of Doubt (30 page)

“Good evening my precious kitten. I trust you had a nice rest?” He said as he sauntered closer, letting his robe brush her shredded bare leg. The odd sound of plastic peeling off the soles of his feet as he stepped seemed louder than it usually did to him. It was too quiet. She wasn’t whimpering. She wasn’t struggling in the least, which was a pity. He missed the flare of those nostrils when she struggled. Yes, he had dragged it out too long, he conceded that now. The luster lacked and the bauble was no longer shiny. When he had finished circling he stopped in front of her and watched her eyes. They were weary, no longer afraid. “Such a pity, our courting is over my dear. Though I will remember you fondly, your purpose will better serve me with you dead than alive. Nothing personal, though.”

She only saw him cock his arm back. A glare of something shiny and then a blur before she was finally free.

The sound pierced her brain like a molten hot ice pick and she strug
gled to find the source to stop it. Dear God stop it! “What?!” She screamed into the phone once she figured out how.

“Lou, ya need to sit up and wake up.” Vinny’s voice registered somewhat through her post sleeping-like-the-dead fog. “Sit up Lou, don’t lay back down. You gotta get up!”

Lou sat up in bed, eyes still closed. “Why for dammit? It’s still dark out!”

“Open your eyes Lou and look out the window.”

Lou realized her eyes were still shut so she opened them to see it was dawn and there was light out. “Oh.”

“Get up and get dressed. We got a body in Westlake Village and I am halfway to your place. Dress warm, it’s freezing out.”

“Hey but I’m on desk duty.” She rubbed her eyes. “Or did I dream that?”

“Lou. Get. Up. Now. Christ how are you ever going to get a new partner that puts up with your crap?”

“I’m up!” She yelled back at him as she tried to get out of bed but wound up tripping and falling on her face. “Ow, crap!”

“Lou?!” Vinny heard the crack and started to panic.

“Shit I think I just gave myself a black eye. Or broke my nose or something really unattractive.” She looked at her hand and saw blood. “Ah Christ, there’s blood.”

“A geez Lou. Hang up.” Vinny clicked off and speed dialed Shevaun and filled her in then clicked off and drove a little faster.

Less then two minutes later Shevaun was running into Lou’s room to find her exactly where Vinny figured she would be. Laying face down on the side of her bed holding a stuffed frog to her face, apparently to staunch the bleeding.

“Hi, Momma” She said through the doll.

“Oh for pity’s sake Lou you have got to stop being so difficult to wake up! Let me see you!” Shevaun pulled the stuffed animal off of Lou’s face to see a rapidly blooming black eye and her nose gushing blood. “Dear God in Heaven!” She tried not to shout and stuffed the frog back in Lou’s face. “Keep pressure on it.”

“How bad is it?” Joe came in with a mug of coffee in one hand and an ice pack in the other. “Can you get her up in to one of the chairs?”

Shevaun hauled her daughter up and got her into a chair while Joe set the coffee down and ran to get a cloth for her nose.

“Wow, and I thought yesterday sucked.” Lou said, muffled through the frog. “I gotta get dressed. Vinny is on his way to get me.”

“Yeah, yeah, well lets stop the blood flow first, shall we?” Joe took the frog off her face and winced at the sight of her, then gently pressed the damp cloth to her nose. “Keep pressure on this and put the ice on your eye.”

“I’ll get a brush and get your clothes ready so when the bleeding stops you can just jump in them.” Shevaun dashed into the closet.

“Sorry guys. Thank you. I love you both lots!” Lou felt like a total idiot with her poor parents running around because she had fallen out of bed, again. “Hey maybe I should get rid of those bedside tables. Or pad them.”

After a few minutes, Joe came back into the room with a clean cloth. “Vinny is downstairs getting coffee, so don’t worry. He said take your time.”

“Thanks Joe. Sorry for waking you guys up so early.” Lou had looked at the time and it was barely six.

“You can pay me back by going to the gala with us on Friday.” He flashed her a wicked smile, knowing damn well she couldn’t refuse after all this. “Okay, let me see this now.” He very gently peeled back the cloth and it appeared that the bleeding had stopped. “Better, good. Now be gentle Lou! If you just mash it to wipe the blood off it’s going to start bleeding again, you understand?”

“I do. Can I have a slug of coffee to get the taste of blood out of my mouth?”

“Out of your mouth?” Joe looked at her nervously.

“I may have... Well you look and tell me.” She smiled wide for him and he gasped as Shevaun squeaked. “Ah crap, I knock out a tooth?”

“Drink some coffee and swish. Might just be blood you swallowed from your nosebleed.

Lou did as he said but felt the loose tooth when it hit the rim of the mug. “Crap. Mom can you call and see if I can get in to the dentist this afternoon? Please? I don’t want to keep Vinny waiting any longer.” She got up and headed to the closet, wobbling because she was still holding the ice pack over her eye. She stepped out a few minutes later in jeans and a gray turtleneck but only partially in her boots. “Joe, I hate to ask, but if I bend over my nose will start to bleed again. Can you yank these suckers on for me?”

Shevaun came up behind Lou and gingerly brushed her hair to try and erase her bed head. “Swish with some mouthwash gently and you should be good to go. No brushing though!” She paused while Joe yanked Lou’s boots on for her and fixed the cuffs of her jeans.

“There, you almost look like nothing happened!” Joe said with a grin.

“I gotta keep you guys on you’re toes somehow!” Lou said jokingly as she went into the bathroom to swish as her mother suggested. She made the mistake of looking in the mirror. “Ah Christ, I am so cute.” The black eye was only just beginning and it already looked like she had a head on collision with a mack truck. “Vinny is gonna have so much fun with this one.” She gently wiped the blood from her nose then her face and realized she had no time to try and conceal the damage. Defeated, she walked out of the bathroom and stared at her two adorable parents. “I really do love you guys. No clue why you put up with me.” She gathered up her things and Joe helped her put her coat on then kissed her gently on her uninjured cheek.

“Stay safe out there. I love you too.” He smiled at the wounded misfit.

Her mother kissed her softy as well and smiled. “Love you sweat pea. Be safe.”

“Will do. Seems I only injure myself at home!” She put the ice pack back on her eye and headed downstairs. Carefully.

The entire ride to the crime scene was a lecture from Vinny about her being more careful during the waking up process. He had gone on and on about making sure whoever her new partner was, Vinny needed time with them to train them properly. She simply took all of it because she was actually afraid if she said anything her loose tooth would fall out in mid sentence and she would never live it down. Even with the delay of the morning’s mishap they managed to beat the coroner team to the scene.

“Aw, it’s here? You didn’t tell me that. I love this course.” She took a quick look at her eye in the visor mirror and really wished she hadn’t. The bruising was deepening and encompassed not only her eye but her cheekbone as well, confirming Vinny’s theory that she had landed half her face on the table and the cell phone was responsible for the nose. “I’m telling everyone you hit me.” She informed him as she got out of the car.

Vinny chuckled. “Fine, that will mean the Captain wins the pool. He had five years before I finally beat ya down.”

“Don’t make me laugh, I’ll snort blood all over you and my tooth will come flying out.”

They walked up the pathway to the Lakewest Golf Course and were met by a uniformed deputy who escorted them around to the first hole and to a sand bunker near the cart path. The first thing Lou noticed was that the area around the body had been raked perfectly. Not even a squirrel print marred the sand. The naked body of the woman had been laid out carefully with her hands covering the pelvic region in the same manner Angela Talbott had been left. The woman appeared to be a rough forty-five years with dull black hair that was cut very short and choppy. She had no make-up on and her eyes were wide open and clouded over. Her face was heart shaped and despite her being dead, looked like she hadn’t been much of a sun person. Her lips were over inflated with collagen or silicone or some other puffing agent. Lou really couldn’t understand why anyone would want to have their lips look like an innertube. The grisly part of the crime had two parts. First was the fact that the woman’s clearly silicone enhanced breasts had been surreptitiously cut. The full circumference of each had been carved with four straight, overlapping lines that formed what could best be described as giant asterisks. The second unavoidable aspect was that the woman’s legs had basically been carved so it looked like she wearing thigh-high fishnet stockings. The slices were meticulous, almost as if the assailant had measured or even sketched the pattern and traced the lines with a very sharp blade. The cuts were just shallow enough to leave a decent impression of netting. The thick band marking, where the stockings would stop on the thigh, were apparently achieved by peeling that portion of skin straight off. It was truly monstrous in its precision.

“No one’s touched the body or gone in the bunker?” Vinny asked the uniforms.

“No sir.” The deputy that had led them in answered. “The groundskeeper found her when he came to prep the bunkers for the first round of golfers and he found her just like this. Said that the sprinklers go off at three in the morning and that would have erased any rake marks so whoever put her here raked afterward and it was after three.”

“Cohen and I have been guarding the bunker since we arrived.” The second deputy continued and Lou noted his name tag read Grace. “We were the first on scene.”

“Sirs...” Cohen spoke up now. “I recognize her, actually.”

Lou turned to Grace’s partner and saw the coroner team making their way up the path over his shoulder. “How do you recognize her?”

“Ma’am, she’s an old timer porn star actually.” He blushed at the implication of his information. “Her name, well screen name at least, is Katarina Purrs.” The two other deputies stifled their snickers.

“Seriously?” Lou asked him.

“Seriously.” Vinny answered and Lou’s head spun around to look at his blushing face.

A crowd had started to gather behind the police barricade as she watched Caroline and Carpesh make their way to the edge of the bunker.

“Morning kids.” Lou said with a smile then noticed the look of horror spread across Caroline’s face. She remembered her own battered face and quickly stopped smiling.

“What the hell, Lou?” Caroline stepped up to examine her injuries closer.

“If I had a dollar for every time you’ve said that to me.” Lou grinned and winced when Caroline touched her black eye.

“A wake up call.” Was all Vinny had to say to get Caroline’s eyes rolling in understanding.

“Holy Mother of God.” Caroline muttered as she caught sight of the victim over Lou’s shoulder.

Lou looked back at the bunker. “Yeah, this one is really a sick twist.”

“I gotta make a call real quick before I get in there.” Caroline stepped away and made her call then cornered Carpesh as he came up with all their kits.

“Hey Lou.” Vinny got her attention. “We need to move the perimeter back a lot. This guy had to come the same way we did to drop her. These lookie-loos are just gonna muck-up any possible evidence over there.”

Lou nodded in agreement. “Yeah, we need to get the whole damn parking lot secured. The fairway and the path too. No way he came through these course-side houses to do the drop.”

They called in for more uniforms to help with the canvass, secure the first hole and the parking lot completely. They also requested additional forensics to help sift through the sand even though Lou felt that was going to be a dead end. When the manager came out flaming mad about the expansion of the scene, Vinny threatened him with the penalty for impeding a police investigation and told him to go have breakfast somewhere. Caroline and Carpesh had carefully gone into the bunker to tend to the dead but were finding no trace that wasn’t simply part of the golf course. The fingerprint scan had yielded that the deceased was in fact legally named Katarina Purrs and had quite a few recent pops for solicitation and possession of controlled substances. Seemed Ms. Purrs liked prescription drugs. Just not her own.

The kicker was that there was no blood, again. Lou wouldn’t know for sure until they were done with the body but she would bet the farm there wasn’t much blood to be had in the victim either. A grid search was started from the top of the first hole, working down to the parking lot and other than the stray golf ball stuffed in a bush, broken tee or cigarette butt, they were coming up with nothing. Lou and the rest of the searchers walked in their line, step by step as a unit, scanning the earth for any trace of anything. When they passed the pro tee box Lou noticed media vans pulling up outside the perimeter and a considerable crowd growing. She scanned the nosy faces that had come to see death at their back door. Despite all her time on the job, Lou would never understand that. She stumbled forward when her eyes caught sight of Max behind the tape. Fortunately the deputies on each side of her caught her fall otherwise her nose would have been bleeding again. This was ridiculous and when he looked her dead in the eye, she knew that he knew he was caught.

She stepped out of the search line and looked for a way to circle back around the crowd so that no one would notice, then tucked her badge away so the bloodhound reporters wouldn’t sniff her out for a statement. She cautiously wheedled her way through the crowd and came up behind Max, grabbed his arm and yanked. It was sort of like grabbing the barrel of a tank with one hand and trying to tow it. When he turned around and looked down at her, his scowl made her think that yanking a man who was over a foot taller then her, and could probably snap her like a twig with his thumb and forefinger, probably wasn’t such a good idea.