The four of them stood in the bedroom's chill with the naked and funereally posed Lauralee Dowey, who stared up into eternity from startled, lidless eyes, who would go to her grave wide awake, unable to receive that last token gesture that modern men have never exorcised from their archaic past----the closing of their eyes against the awesome unknown. Noah's analytic focus was tested by the pale, lacerated body of this lonely woman upon the cold sheet. As they stood in a circle and talked, Noah was constantly aware of Dowey's waxy, recumbent form in his peripheral vision, as though waiting patiently for them to redeem her from humiliation. Her death had cost her more than her life, and the pitifully meek gesture of her politely folded hands seemed to be all that she had been permitted to salvage of her dignity.477Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI59vliE64m
Noah had seen enough in his four years in homicide to recognize the distinctions between the particularly intense malevolence of sexual homicides as compared to the homicides of other kinds. At first all killing seemed the same insofar as they were expositions of violence. The wounds might vary, but the energy the produced them had a common denominator. Yet the characteristics of sexual homicides quickly distinguished themselves. Though he might forget the details of the hundreds of stabbings, shootings and stranglings he would see during the course of his career, he would never forget the sexual homicides, not even the smallest minutiae. Nor would he forget he eerie intuition he had when he entered the presence of these victims for the first time, as if the mind that produced the horror had lingered behind with the corpse to away its last pleasure: observing the reasonable mind's revulsion at its crime.
The question was one of the division of labors. If the causes were related, and they all believed they were, then Yung and Pittman were, in a very real sense, behind in their homework. It was decided that the two detectives would stay with Overpeck, who would take them through the scene and compare its details with those in the case of Vicki San Felipe two weeks ago. When it came time for the body to go to the morgue, Yung and Pittman would follow and attend the autopsy. Overpeck would continue to go over the scene with Ball. Noah, having done most of the interviewing for the first murder, would interview Nolie Burr. When Yung and Pittman got back to the station downtown, they would have to read the report and supplements on the San Felipe case. After that, the four of them would get together and compare notes.
Leaving them in the bedroom, Noah passed Brent Brown coming back in, and walked into the living room where the two patrolmen were keeping their distance from the back of the house. He supposed they had done their ogling of the naked woman before he got there and were maintaining this uncharacteristic lack of curiosity out of respect for him. Sometimes he ran into a peculiar kind of chivalry among the younger men, particularly among the patrolmen who didn't often see naked dead women. If the victim was sexually attractive, they were startled to find that death didn't necessarily change anything in that regard, and the inappropriateness of their unexpected arousal could be distinctly disconcerting. Some of them became grave or formal or aloof, or just stayed out of his way as if they were somehow accomplices with the offender must by virtue of their sex and their own poorly controlled chemistry. It took them a while to ignore it, to shut it out, and when they couldn't do that, to joke about it. There were a lot of ways to handle it, but you couldn't afford to take it to heart. Not every time.
"Neither of you are Ball?" he asked, approaching them and glancing at their name tags.
"No, sir," one of them said, the stocky one. "He's outside----he's the one with the red moustache."
Outside, the late-morning heat was excruciating after the icy condo, and the sweat popped to the surface of Noah's skin as if he'd stepped into a blast furnace. Ball was easy to find, standing with his shift sergeant on the thick turf of manicured lawn in the solid shade of a magnolia. A gas lamp burned needlessly in the New Mexico sun nearby. Neither man was speaking, though it was obvious that they once had been. As Noah approached he noticed half a dozen cigarette butts against the street curb.
"Ball?" he asked, stepping up to the young man and extending his hand. "Detective Bain." He was incredibly young, and the blue eyes and fair skin didn't age him any. His handshake was tensely brittle. He shook hands with the sergeant too, and remembered that they'd been on a scene together two months ago. He turned to Ball, who was lighting a cigarette.
"You were the officer who found her?"
"Yes, sir."
Noah waited for him to explain.
"Just tell him the way it went down," the sergeant said to Ball. He glanced at Noah, who realized that the kid was fresh out of the academy.
"Basically I just responded to a welfare check," Ball said. His mustache was neatly trimmed, and it suited him. He blew a stream of smoke to the side, away from Noah, and it hung in the still heat for a moment then vanished. Pittman had to tell him Noah's story as Yung had related it earlier, and Ball had asked Burr if she knew of anyone who had a spare key to the condo. Burr didn't, but she said Lauralee kept a spare set of keys hidden in her car, but the car was locked and she couldn't get into it to look for them Burr had then used a door opener from his patrol unit to get into Dowey's Saab where, after a brief search, he found the spare key and used it to enter the condo.
"You went in first?" Noah asked.
"Yes, ma'am. I went in and asked her to wait in the live room while I looked around. I went straight to the bedroom, I don't know why----the door was open, and I found her." Ball's Adam's apple worked uncontrollably, and he swallowed, then took another long drag from his cigarette.
"Did Burr see her?"
"Yeah, well, I must've said something, you know, surprise to find the dead woman, and she heard me and came running in. I'd taken two steps into the bedroom, and when I turned around she was standing in the doorway right behind me."
"And that's when she saw her?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you remember her reaction?"
He nodded. "She fainted, dead out. Like she'd been dropped with a hammer. I had to carry her----I got her out of the house. Laid her righ tdown over there in the shade. A couple who live across the street," he tossed his head toward a condo directly across from them, "must've been looking out the window. They came right over and the lady had a damp washrag or something and we got her to come around. When she got her to her feet they took her over there."
"Is that where she is now?"
"Yes, sir. I didn't get her name."
Noah thanked Ball, noticing the mist of perspiration that had accumulated in his forehead. She wanted to reassure him, but she knew better than that. Instead, she started across the street to the Mediterranean-style condo with its dun bricks and its front courtyard filled with frondly sago palms among banks of orangey snapdragons.
When he rang the doorbell the door opened immediately, and a middle-aged man with a head of longish frizzy hair that was thinning toward the front stood looking at him. He was wearing a baggy Hawaiian shirt outside a pair of faded blue jeans. His nose was rather broad, but in a handsome way, and he had extraordinarily long eyelashes.
"I'm Detective Bain." He held up his shield. "I understand Nolie Burr is here."
"Of course, sure, come on in." He shook hands with Noah. "I'm Adam McKinney." He backed away to let Noah in. "She's up here." He closed the door behind Noah and preceded the latter up the steps of the sunken entryway, talking, motioning with his hands. "Kid's had a hard time. Jesus. Can you imagine?" He stopped, turned to Noah, and put a cornered hand on Noah's arm. "Pretty bad over there?" His face was twisted in a pained contortion, anticipating Noah's answer.
"It's pretty bad," said Noah.
"Oh, God!" he hissed, keeping it just between the two of them. "Poor kid." He bit his lower lip and shook his head, his wiry hair drifting above him, and then turned and led Noah on up the steps into a living room separated from the entry by a huge terraced planter of philodendron and monsters. A woman wearing a sarong and the top of a bikini swimsuit had been sitting by Nolie on the sofa and stood up when Noah came in.
The man introduced her as Carolyn and then introduced Nolie, who remained seated, red-eyed and clutching a handful of wadded pink tissues. There was an awkward moment, and then the woman, running a pretty hand through her hair, a black bob shot through with gray, asked if she could get anything for Noah, who declined. The man and woman excused themselves, and as they walked out of the living room Noah noticed there was no outline of the bikini bottom under the material of the sarong.
Nolie Burr was dressed very smartly in a businesswoman's sharkskin blazer of silvery gray rayon and linen and pleated trousers with black heels. A collarless fuchsia blouse of crepe de chine was tucked into the trousers. She was sitting on a sofa behind a coffee table of blazed gold ceramic tiles, kneading the wad of tissues and looking up at Noah with swollen eyes and tear-matted lashes.
"You feel up to talking to me for a few minutes?"
Burr nodded readily. "Yes," she said, and quickly wiped at her nose.
"I'm sorry about your friend," Noah said, sitting in a tapestry-upholstered chair opposite the coffee table. Burr nodded. She had ginger hair with reddish highlights and a pale Irish complexion. She had cried so much and wiped her face so often with damp tissues that her makeup was vanishing, and a light spattering of freckles was now visible trailing across the top of her nose, disclosing an air of youthfulness that seemed incompatible with the mature clothes she had chosen to wear. She started tugging anxiously at the wad of tissues, her hazel eyes riveted to Noah's. "Do you have family or friends who can come get you, maybe stay with you?"
"I've got friends----at the office. I've already called them." Noah was a little shocked at her tone of voice, which had a sharp edge to it.
"Ms. Dowey was a friend of yours?"
"Yes."
"And you've known her how long?"
"Long enough." Her voice cracked, but she got control of it. "Four years, maybe three----or four. We worked at TechCube together."
"Was she married?"
"Divorced."
"How long?"
"Um----maybe---I don't know----five, six years."
"Does her ex-husband live in the city?"
"Yes."
"Do you know his name?"
It took her a second. "Stanley.....Needham."
"Did she see him very often?"
She hunched her shoulders. "It wasn't that kind of a divorce. It wasn't friendly."
"Do you where he works, or where he lives?"
"He works----I think----at a paint store."
"What's the name of the store?"
She shook her head. "I only remember her saying that's what he's doing now."
"Do you happen to know if he was ever in the military?"
Burr shut her eyes and shook her head again.
"What about relatives? The coroner's office has to notify someone."
"There's nobody in the city. I wouldn't bother with Needham. She's from North Carolina. She was away from home." Burr's eyes were still closed, her hands holding the tissue without fidgeting.
This last remark seemed an odd choice of words in light of the fact that Dowey was obviously in her mid-thirties, had been married a number of years, divorced a number of years, and surely had lived in Tolumura long enough for it to be regarded as her home. The phrase would have seemed more appropriate in reference to a college student.
"But---well----" Burr added, "I'd like to tell them myself." She cleared her throat.
"Do you know them?"
"I've met them before. They'd remember me." Her eyes were still closed.
"I'm sure the coroner's office would appreciate that. You should check with them." Noah paused, signaling a change of tone in her questioning. "What about boyfriends. Did she have anyone special?"
"No." Burr opened her eyes. She seemed sure of it.
"Had there been anyone special, in the recent past?"
"No, I don't think so."
"What kind of men did she date in the last year or so?"
"Oh, I don't know. After a while they all seem the same-----just guys." Spoken like a woman twice her age. Burr couldn't have been more than twenty-three.
"Can you give me the names of some of the men she'd been dating so we can check with them as to when they had last seen her?" Noah made it routine.
"I know she dated a guy at TechCube. Geoffrey Stewart. He was in marketing. There was another guy, Curtis ----I think it was----Hogan, I met him at her place a few times. I don't know anything about him."
She quit.
"Is that it?" Noah asked.
Burr sighed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "Um, let me see. There was a Willard she knew from a night class; she took an accounting course at Green Meadows University."
"When?"
"Oh, last year, spring semester. For a while she dated a bank vice president...." she frowned. "......the bank......I don't know the bank, but I think his last name was Pris....Pristino. Yeah, Pristino." She looked at Noah, irritated. "I don't know. That's all I can remember."
"Did she live alone?"
Burr nodded, her hands working the wadded tissue once again.
"I understand that on Thursday evening, the last time you saw her, a group of people from your office had stopped off for drink's."
"Right. At Saffron's. That's near Fortune Plaza. We do that a lot, to wait out the traffic."
"Who was in the group?"
"We two, Jeanette Craig, Violet Poole, Maria Tyler ."
"Were all of you in separate cars?"
"Yes.....no. Jeanette and Violet were together."
"How often do you do that? Several times a week?"
"Sure, two or three times a week."
"At the same place?"
"About half the time at Saffron's. It's on the way home."
"Do you ever meet men there, or date the men you meet there?"
"Not really."
"You don't?"
"No." Burr punched a hole in her tissue with a shiny fuchsia fingernail, doubled the tissue, and punched another hole, kneading it roughly.
"Did Lauralee seem worried about anything that Thursday? Out of sorts? Anything bothering her?"
"No, nothing like that. And I've thought about it, too. Asked myself if I had noticed anything different." She ducked her head and shook it. "But this came out of nowhere----I can't imagine its having anything to do with her. I mean, that it would be related to anything. I just can't imagine that it would."
"Was she planning to go home after she left all of you at the club?"
"We all were."
"She wasn't going to stop off somewhere, the laundry, the grocery? Had she made any offhand references to something like that?"
Burr shook her head as she ran a hand through her long ginger hair.
Noah thought of Vicki San Felipe. The last time she'd been seen was by her maid and children as she was leaving home in the evening to go to exercise class. She never arrived. The next time she was seen was when the maid at the Imperial Hotel on Bath Boulevard went into the room the next morning and found her nude on the bed in the same funereal posture as Dowey.
"You had an exercise class with Ms. Dowey on Saturday morning. Where was the class?"
"The Tolumura Racquet Club," Burr said, and then pulled some more tissues from the box sitting on the coffee table and dabbed at her nose again.
Vicki San Felipe had been on her way to Anita's, a tony health club off Angelway in the Starlight area not far from San Felipe's home. Whatever else Noah might learn of the man who had killed these two women, it was already apparent that he had rarified tastes. This bastard was working territory that was squarely in the middle of two suburbs whose demographics placed them among the wealthiest in the nation.
Noah studied Burr for a moment. "Do you have any ideas about this?"
Burr's eyes flinched. "Ideas? Jesus Christ, no," she said. Her surprise was reflexive, genuine, one of those spontaneous facial reactions that occurred in an unguarded moment and told you more about someone's relationship to a particular person or situation than two weeks of background investigation could reveal. Burr ducked her head again, plying the tissues.
Noah decided to go to the heart of the issue. "What can you tell me about Ms. Dowey's sex life?"
Burr jerked her head up and looked at Noah with a mixture of resentment and anxiety. "Jesus Christ! Do you have to do this?" She started crying again, wiping at her cheeks and eyes which had already been washed of their makeup, revealing them to be paler, smaller, and less striking than she would have liked. Her unmade face now seemed at odds with her sophisticated hairstyle and assertive clothes. Her vulnerability was now as visible as her unpowdered freckles.
"The more I know about her, the better chance I have of understanding what happened," Noah persisted. "She might've been a random victim; she might not have been. I need to be able to put her private life into perspective."477Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcS1MEHXPJR
"I don't know anything about it," Burr blurted. "I don't know who----or---anything. Christ!" She started sobbing uncontrollably and couldn't talk. She buried her face in her hands and her shoulders shuddered rhythmically. Noah didn't believe her. She was too insistent, and her flustered denials seemed out of proportion to the question. She simply could've said she didn't know. But Noah had no doubts about the sincerity of her grief.477Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBGub1jyhMA
There was no reason to try to go any further with her now. Noah looked around for the absent couple, but they were nowhere to be seen. Or so he thought, until he glimpsed a wisp of bright crimson in a doorway on the other side of a round Venetian table that sat in the middle of the room. He remembered the sarong with its pattern of taupe and gold, and its crimson hem.477Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ1v2Kl2I5E
