“No, she said she'd had enough of the police, too. I figured she meant her brother, didn't want to push it. Even though I thought we definitely
“Of all the people for it to happen to,” said Kathy. “She was so down to begin with. And she's such a nice person. Mostly she kept to herself, but she was always real nice.”
“Any idea where she went?” I said.
“Nope,” said Kathy. “She just said she needed a rest and we didn't want to be nosy. She had a couple suitcases in the back of the car but I don't even know if it was a driving trip or she was heading for the airport. I asked her how long she'd be away but she said she wasn't sure, she'd call to let us know if it was going to be long. If she does call, would you like me to tell her you were by?”
“Please,” I said. “And good luck with your block association.”
“Luck's what you make it,” said Greg. “God helps those who help themselves.”
Heavy traffic and bad tempers on the freeway ride back to the city. As I sat in a jam just north of the Sunset exit, I thought of the luck of the Dahl family.
Both Nolan's and Helena's homes defiled.
L.A.'s burglary rate had skyrocketed, but I'd never worshiped at the altar of coincidence and it made me edgy.
Someone out to get them?
Someone looking for something? Information about Nolan's death?
Data Helena had?
The family photo albums were all she'd taken the day I'd gone with her to Nolan's place, but maybe she'd returned, picked through the mess, discovered something that had upset her enough to cancel her therapy, quit her job, and leave town?
Or maybe it
Traffic started again, then stopped.
Honks, lifted middle fingers, shouted expletives.
Civilization.
30
That night, at eight, Robin and I were in the bath when the phone rang. She faced me, her hair up, water reaching the bottoms of her breasts.
We played toesies. The damn thing quieted.
Later, drying off, I listened to the taped message.
“It's Milo. Call me on the car phone.”
I did and he said, “Found another DVLL case. Hollywood Division, before Raymond Ortiz. Seventeen months ago.”
“Another poor kid,” I said. “How old-”
“No. Not a kid. And not retarded, either. On the contrary.”
I met him at a twenty-four-hour coffee shop on Highland north of Melrose named Boatwright's. Rocket-to-the- moon architecture, boomerang-shaped counter, three of the stools occupied by pie-eating newspaper-nosers, the Hollywood Strings on scratchy soundtrack.
He was in his usual cop's back booth, sitting opposite a dark-haired woman. He waved and she turned. She looked around twenty-five. Very thin, pretty in a severe way, she had a pointed chin and ski-slope nose, ivory skin, glossy black wedge-cut hair, glossy brown eyes. Her pantsuit was black. In front of her was a big chocolate malt in a real glass. Milo had a napkin tucked under his chin and was eating fried shrimp and onion rings and drinking iced tea.
The woman kept watching me until I got two feet away. Then she smiled, more the right thing to do than amiability. Scanning me from head to shoe, as if measuring for a suit.
“Alex, this is Detective Petra Connor, Hollywood Homicide. Petra, Dr. Alex Delaware.”
“Good to meet you,” said Connor. A little makeup added depth to eyes that didn't need any more. She had very long, very thin hands with warm, strong fingers that squeezed mine for a second, then flew back to the straw in her malt.
I slid in next to Milo.
“Something to eat?” he said.
“No, I'm fine. What's up?”
“What's up is Detective Connor is an eagle eye.”
“Pure luck,” she said in a soft voice. “Most of the time I never pay attention to memos.”
“Most of the time they're bullshit.”
She smiled and twirled the straw.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I forgot. Working with Bishop you probably never hear sullied speech.”
“I don't, but Bishop does,” said Connor.
“Her partner's a Mormon,” Milo told me. “Very smart, very straight, probably be chief one day. Petra and he picked up the case in question a while back. He's currently off with the wife and million kids in Hawaii so she's riding alone.”
“The whole thing amazes me,” she said. “Being tied into a possible serial. Because ours wasn't even a murder, just an iffy suicide. Not iffy enough to change the coroner's verdict, so we closed it as a suicide. But when I saw your memo…”
Shaking her head, she pushed the malt aside and dabbed at her lips. The lipstick she left on the straw had brown overtones. The black in her hair was real. She was probably closer to thirty than twenty-five, but not a line on her face.
“Who was the victim?” I said.
“A twenty-nine-year-old scientist named Malcolm Ponsico. Cellular physiologist, recent Ph.D. from CalTech, supposed to be some kind of genius. He lived in Pasadena, but was working at a research lab on Sunset near Vermont- Hospital Row- and that's where he did it so it was our case.”
“I used to work at Western Peds,” I said.
“Right there. Two blocks up. Place called PlasmoDerm, they do skin research, developing synthetic grafts for burn victims, that kind of thing. Ponsico's specialty was cell membranes. He killed himself with an injection of potassium chloride- the stuff they use for lethal-injection executions. Did it while working late, the cleaning lady found him at 4:00 A.M., slumped over his lab table. Big laceration right here, where his head hit the edge.”
She traced a line over well-formed black brows.
“He fell on his head when he died?”
“That's how the coroner saw it.”
“Where's the DVLL tie-in?”
“He left it typed on his computer screen. Four letters, right in the middle of the screen. Stu- Detective Bishop- and I figured it for something technical, a formula. But we asked around, just to be careful, in case it was some kind of coded suicide note. No one at PlasmoDerm knew what it meant and it didn't show up in any of Ponsico's computer files- we had one of our data-processing guys check them out. All numbers, formulas. No one seemed surprised by Ponsico writing something only he understood. He was that kind of guy- major brain in a world of his own.”
“Did he leave a message at his home?”
“No. His apartment was in perfect order. Everyone said he was a nice person, quiet, kept to himself, really into
