The car leaned into a long climbing curve to the right as Overpeck left the Desert Freeway heading north on the West Jopak Townline. Noah tried to forget Anna-Diana. Actually, it wasn't that simple to do, considering who they were going to see now. Alex Yung was not one of Noah's favorite people.526Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwWtaoF6wHQ
"Yung didn't say anything except that she wanted us to come out and take a look at this?" he asked again.
"That's it."
"You didn't ask what it was?"
"I did, Noah, but you know Yung. Hell, it was just easier to come out here and look. Big deal. I was getting tired of the office for a change. And besides, the exterminators came through their last night.
Okay, that made more sense. It probably hadn't taken that much of a call to get Overpeck out of the office. Still, Noah didn't like being summoned everywhere by Yung. Alex Yung looked like a young Chinese-American playboy with a lean, athletic body that of itself consumed about half his salary to feed, to exercise, to tan, to coif, to dress, and to shod. Unfortunately, his taste in clothes seemed to have been influenced more by his eight years in the vice squad than by the men's fashion magazines. His wardrobe looked as if it had been confiscated by a Cuban pimp whose cousin fenced Mexican-made knockoffs of Italian ready-to-wear. Yung's hair was blow-dried, but his manner was oily, and the air of authoritarianism he had picked up from dealing with the drug dealers and ladies of the evening had never quite worn off. In short, he was an asshole.
When Yung came to homicide, Noah had to deal with ego within the first three days, which is how long it took this jerk to ask him out to dinner. He accepted, giving him the benefit of the doubt. They went to an expensive restaurant where they dined at a table for two and talked. Yung was born in a middle-class Asian-American family in San Francisco, hence his rigid adherence to conventional, middle class values. This adherence to those values made him aggressive, constantly on the lookout for, condemning and rejecting people who violated them. He made no bones about opposing the subjective, the imaginative, and the tender-minded. He believed in mystical determinants of the individual's fate, and was predisposed to think in rigid categories. To make matters worse, Yung suffered from a preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension, the identification with power figures, the overemphasis on the conventionalized attributes of the ego, the exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness. A half a steak later, after saying that, Yung talked about his misanthropy, his knowledge of the "wild and dangerous things that go on in the world" and then concluded with his worries about sexual "goings on."
Noah, fed up with Yung's arrogance, reminded him, in a not-too-friendly tone of voice, that a good policeman was a realist that learned by experience and not by reading books. He respected authority and knew how to take orders. He likes to give orders, too, and he demands respect from juveniles, criminals, and minorities.
Yung never mentioned the conversation, never, and neither did Noah. And he never forgave Noah. Even now, after three years, Alex Yung could hardly be civil to him. Their mutual antagonism was well-known to everyone in the division and was always a good subject for idle gossip, yet no one ever knew the source of their shared animosity. Yung's machismo would never allow him to repeat the conversation to anyone, under the circumstances, and Noah had long since lost interest in both the dinner encounter and Yung's damned bad attitude. Noah thought Yung at least ought to be grateful to him for that.
"I can't wait to see this," said Noah.
"Yeah," Overpeck grinned and moved into the far right lane for the Elmwood exit half a mile ahead. The traffic grew heavier now and slowed, and to their right the sun was climbing near the meridian, shriveling the desert clouds as it rose.
The Underwood condominium complex was in a district with the cloying name of Walnut Point on the southern bank of the Sitting Bull River and only blocks away from the villages of Magnolia Summit, Breezy Glen, and The Knoll at Magnolia Timbers. Just off Mago Vista near Elmwood, the complex was a mingle of small wooded lanes where the buildings were joined together like row houses, different styles and colors butting up against one another in an imperfect harmony, their various rooflines and chimneys bouncing up and down like the individual notes on a musical score. They had been around a while, maybe since the '60s, which in this city of the Modern Way gave them an established air and lent them a kind of comfortable intimacy that in an another time and place would have been called a neighborhood.
To the east a little way were the trendy, uptown Valle Grande and Pavilion Club shopping districts which were once again exhibiting a grandeur and international popularity that everyone had thought had been irreparably damaged by the real-estate disaster of the mid-'80s. But as the new decade came onstage, so did a new city, or at least a city that was beginning to realize the end of its travail was in sight. Tolumura was making a comeback and, and it wasn't apologizing for the lost time. The nouveau riche had evaporated like river mist in the harsh sunlight of hard times, leaving the old money behind to take the heat. And they'd done it. The hangers-on, who came from nowhere in particular and leeched onto good times wherever they happened to be, were gone. The city had returned to its sanity which, combined with the kind of hard-won experience that comes with the jolting reversal of fortunes, had achieved something approaching wisdom. The worst was over. And if the survivors had anything to do with the future, and they intended to, it would never again be as foolishly sublime, or as gallingly bad, as it had been.
The moment they turned into Long Street, Noah saw the police cars and the white crime scene unit at the end of the lane. And he saw, at next glance, the inevitable curious. But they weren't crowding around the police cars or pressing up to the yellow crime scene tape that circumscribed the parameter of violence; they were not aggressive in their inquisitiveness, not pushing to get closer as did their less sophisticated counterparts in whose frayed neighborhoods these kinds of scenes were usually played out. No, these curious were sober and physically remote. Unused to the intrusive sequelae of illegal death, they sensed the inappropriateness of it and wanted nothing to do with it. They hung back, demonstrating their censure by their aloofness. Violent death was a shabby affair. They didn't approve.
When Noah got out of the car, which Overpeck parked at the curb behind Yung and Pittman's, the morning heat enveloped him like the early-day heat of North Africa. But instead of the fragrance of bougainvilleas and frangipani, Noah smelled the sweet, weighty breath of honeysuckle, magnolia and jasmine, and heard the spit-spit-spit of a water sprinkler in between the scratchy transmissions of a patrol unit radio.
He was on the sidewalk before Overpeck, who always took his time, had even gotten out of his seat belt. With his shield hanging from the left pocket of his blazer, he hurried past the two young patrolmen manning the yellow-ribboned courtyard and approached the front door, shiny with heavy coats of wine red enamel. Noah noticed that the brass knocker in the center was already dusted with magnetic ferric oxide. The doorknob wouldn't matter. He just pushed open the door and was confronted with a heavy wash of cold air. The place was freezing!
Two other patrolmen were standing in the living room talking to Virgil McClure, the storklike coroner's investigator, and Noah spoke to them as he glanced around the light and airy living room with its vaulted ceiling reaching to the second floor. Without hesitation, he passed into a wide corridor and started toward an opened doorway from which he heard the steady, solitary voice of the CSI investigator, Jack Ball.
He approached the door, stepped inside the bedroom, and stopped. Alex Yung and his partner Todd Pittman, a quiet, thickset man in his late thirties, stood with their backs to him, blocking his view of most of the bed. He could see only the dead woman's feet and her head from the neck up, her eyes open. Both men had their hands in their pockets looking at the woman while McClure moved around the bed with an audio-video camera, narrating the setting of the body, pointing the camera at the naked woman on the bed as if she were the catatonic starlet of a porno flick. The place was as cold as a meat locker. Noah recognized the faint fragrance of cosmetics that hovers in women's bedrooms.
Almost simultaneously Yung and Pittman turned around and saw him. Yung turned back to the bed, but Pittman smiled faintly at him from under his thick, brindled mustache and raised his chin at him. No one spoke or moved for two minutes until McClure finished recording his narration and went to another room.
"Hey, Noah," Yung said, turning back to him again, reflexively wiping the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. He never said hi or hello or whattya say or how's it goin', he said hey. He was wearing a baggy gray suit and black shirt with a dove gray tie. Nodding toward the bed as both men moved apart to make room for her, he said, "Take a look."
Noah could feel their eyes on her as he approached, and the instant he glimpsed the body he knew why, even before he had gotten close enough to examine it. He knew because of instinct, that indisputable male exertion that tugged at his pelvis and pulled at the sides of his eyes. It took all of her self-control not to react, not to let him know he had seen this before, and that it scared him.
The woman was nude, waxy pale, and only slightly gaseous as she lay in the middle of the bed from which all the covers had been stripped except the bottom sheet. A pillow had been placed under her head, and she had been positioned in a funereal posture, straight out, legs together, her hands placed one on top of the other just below her lolling breasts. Slightly discolored furrows encircled her wrists where ligatures had been, and encircling her neck was a single, broader furrow punctuated with small reddish welts where the belt holes had been. Her eyes were open. Her blond hair seemed to have been freshly combed, and her battered and bloated face was freshly made up, the cosmetics expertly applied: eye shadow, eye liner, powder, and glistening lip gloss. Her lower abdomen was only now showing the first faint, blue-green discoloration of internal bacterial decomposition. There were a few bruises, seemingly random, scattered over her body and a widespread stippling of bit marks on her breasts and thighs. Noah knew when they spread her legs they would find others on the insides of her thighs and around her vulva. Both nipples were missing, excised with neat, surgical precision, and the quarter-sized wounds had turned black from exposure.
Noah knew what he was looking at, but held his tongue, his thoughts shooting way out on a string of probabilities.
"And...." Yung said, stepping back carefully to show him a chair not far from the bed. A woman's clothes were there, fastidiously folded, laid out as if they had been prepared to be packed in a suitcase. Noah looked at Yung. He was chewing gum, hard, his smoothly shaven jaw muscles rippling in front of his ears. "It's the same shit, isn't it? What you and Overpeck came onto only two weeks ago." It was bubble gum; he could smell it on his breath. Yung was almost smiling, confident, pleased with himself.
Noah turned around, looking for something else. He found the bundle of bedclothes piled next to an opened closet door. He had to give Yung credit. He must've heard talk around the squad room, and the details stuck with him. They had been out of the ordinary.
"Who is she?" Noah asked.
"Lauralee Dowey, a sales representative for TechCube. Computer Software. Offices downtown, Fortune Plaza. Thirty-eight years old, according to her driver's license."
Noah turned around to face Yung.
"Patrolman outside the door, Tittarelli, found her," Yung said, managing to talk and chew his gum at the same time. "Came her with the victim's friend----Nolie Burr. She works with Dowey. Last Thursday Dowey and Burr and others from their office went out for drinks after work. Victim left the bar about 6:30 P.M. That was the last time anyone saw her alive, far as we know. Next morning she didn't show up for work. Burr called her at home, but there was no answer, and they assumed she was sick. Burr called throughout the day, but never got an answer. After work she went by to check. Dowey's car was parked in front out there, just like it is now."
"Nolie doesn't live here?"
"Nope. Nolie knocks on the door," Yung continued. "No answer. She wonders about this, but goes on. Next morning, Saturday, they're supposed to have an exercise class together. When Dowey doesn't show up, Burr comes by again, still no answer. Car's still out front. She gets worried, calls the police. She tells the patrolman her story, but he doesn't want to enter the place with no evidence of foul play. He asks all the usual questions and suggests that maybe Dowey skipped for a long weekend with somebody. Burr admitted Dowey sometimes went out of town for the weekend, but she usually told someone where she was going. Officer suggests Burr should try to get in touch with Dowey does not show up for work on Monday, then call the police again. That's what she did."
"Have you talked to her?" Noah asked.
"Nope." Yung started jangling the change in his pocket. "What do you think? Same boy, huh?"
"I don't know," he lied. He knew damn well it was, and it made her queasy. Everything about it signaled brainsick. he turned around. "Zev?"
Overpeck was standing behind them, just inside the door, already looking at the dead woman, nonplussed.
"Hey, Overpeck," Yung said.
Overpeck moseyed into the room. "What have we got?" he said to Pittman, good-naturedly, gripping the top of Pittman's thick shoulder as he went past him, never taking his eyes off the bed. Pitmann gave him an amused grin, but said nothing.
"Have you guys started in here?" Noah asked.
"Shit! Noah, it's virgin," Yung said, curling his top lip. "Nobody's been in here but that patrolman, Glynda in there, and us. Only thing we've touched is the carpet under our shoes, and not very goddamn much of that." Noah was a stickler. Yung knew just what he was thinking. Had they touched anything, opened a drawer, swung a door one way or the other, touched the corpse?
Overpeck stood beside Noah at the bed, both of them staring at the woman in silence.
"Son of a bitch," he said. He knew, too.
"Can you believe it?" Noah was fighting a jittery feeling.
"I guess I'd better." Overpeck shrugged against the cold.
"What the hell are you guys talking about?" Yung tossed his head. 'Is this the same guy's work or what, goddammit?"
"I might be," Noah said without looking at him.
"Well, very goddamn good," Yung snorted. "Thank you!"
"Some advice, Yung," Overpeck said calmly. "If you don't come up with any more evidence here than we did with the other one, you're going to be in trouble. This guy's going to start doing these as regular as clockwork. He's going to nail you to the wall by your balls."
"Oh, yeah, ter-rific. You telling me you don't have any leads?"
Yung's sarcasm made Todd Pittman shift is feet. Pittman was Yung's polar opposite. Of middle height with a physique that would one day be chubby, he had large, sorrowful eyes that, together with his full mustache, reminded Noah of a young walrus. Having a benign demeanor, he kept his head down and did his work, leaving all the razzle-dazzle to his partner. Unlike Yung, who had developed his knowledge of human nature from working the streets. Pittman was not cynical and combative. He had come to homicide from crime analysis, and his investigative instincts relied more heavily on research and a logical methodology than gut feeling. Together they made a strong team, but Pittman was never comfortable with Yung's style.
Overpeck ignored Yung and moved around to the other side of the bed. "She's been knocked around a little more. I'm betting this one's got more busted under that makeup than a jaw and a nose." He nodded. "And just look at those bite marks."
Noah had already noticed them. He had never been able to acquire an indifference to the sight of teeth marks in a dead woman's flesh. Of the more common types of behavioral evidence in sex crimes, nothing affected her so strongly as these; nothing seemed more primitive or atavistic. His mind's eye always conjured up the image of mating lions, the male mounting the cringing lines from behind, sinking his bared teeth into the back of her neck as he penetrates her.
He moved closer. "There're more of them, and they're more vicious. Deeper, too."
Overpeck bent down over the dead woman and sniffed near her face. "Perfume. That bastard put perfume on her this time."
Noah nodded.
"She's clean." Overpeck was still close to the woman's face. "I don't see anything that looks like defense wounds."
Noah looked around the bedroom. "And he's either meticulous or there wasn't anything to clean up. Maybe she was...."
"God....damn....."
The tone of Overpeck's voice made Noah swing his balding head around. Yung and Pittman moved toward the bed. Overpeck was only inches away from the dead woman's face now. "Her eyes aren't open, Noah."
Noah looked at the daydreamer's eyes which, now that he studied them, seemed wider than the usual heavy-lidded gaze of the dead. He bent down opposite Overpeck, caught a waft of the perfume, and saw much of the tops of the gaping eyeballs. A wash of cold spread over him, colder than the air in the frigid room, as he made out a raw, uneven line running across the upper rear of each eyeball where its sticky tissue joined the socket. The bare, milky orbs were as naked as the woman herself. She had no eyelids!526Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbkSkABQFoN
