For the first time that morning, Page paused before he responded. This was an all- business side of me he hadn't seen. Not that I'm big on throwing my weight around, but fight now I had to use it. There was no way I could do a proper job in the middle of all this chaos and confusion. “Oh, and one other thing you should tell whoever's in charge,” I said.
Page turned back. “Yeah?”
“Tell them as long as I'm here, I'm in charge.”
Mary, Mary
Chapter 1 4
I COULD STILL HEAR Director Burns's voice in my head. I want to hear your take on what happened. . . . We'll have you back with your family for dinner.
But would I want to eat after this?
With two dead bodies still inside, the limousine was absolutely fetid. One of the best tricks I'd learned was to gut it out for about three minutes, until the olfactory nerves were numb. Then I would be fine. I just had to get through those three minutes that told me I was back in the homicide business.
I focused, and took in the grisly details one by one.
First came a shocker that I wasn't ready for, even though I partly knew it was coming.
Antonia Schifman's face was almost completely unrecognizable. A portion of the left side was gone altogether where she had been shot, probably at close range. What flesh remained - mostly the right eye, cheek, and her mouth - had been slashed several times. The killer, Mary Smith, had been in a frenzy - but only against Antonia Schifman, not the driver, or so it seemed.
The actress's clothing appeared to be intact. No indication of any kind of sexual assault.
And no sign of blood froth from the nostrils or mouth, which meant she'd died and stopped breathing almost immediately Who would make this kind of violent attack? Why Antonia Schifman? She'd seemed like a nice person, got good press. And everybody liked her, according to, well, everybody. So what could explain this massacre? This desecration at her home?
Agent Page appeared and leaned in over my shoulder. “What do you think the cutting is about? Some kind of reference to plastic surgery maybe?”
The young agent had shaken off every subtle and not-so- subtle clue I had dropped that I needed to be alone right now, but I didn't have the heart to dress him down.
“I don't think so,” I said. “But I don't want to speculate yet. We'll know more once she's checked in and cleaned up.” Now, please let me work, Page.
A dull-brown wash of dried blood covered the actress's ruined face. What a terrible waste. And what exactly was I supposed to relay to the president about what I'd seen here, about what had happened to his friend?
The driver, Bruno Capaletti, was still propped up at the steering wheel. A single bullet had entered his left temple before it destroyed most of his head. The blood on the empty seat next to him was smeared, possibly by his own body but more likely by the killer, who had apparently shot Antonia Schifman from the front seat. A small amount of cocaine had been found in the driver's jacket pocket. Did it mean anything? Probably not, but I couldn't rule out anything yet.
I finally stepped out and away from the limousine and took a breath of fresh air. “There's a strange disconnect going on here,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else.
“Neat and sloppy?” Page asked. “Controlled, yet out of control.”
I looked at him, and my mouth twisted into something resembling a smile. The insight surprised me a little. “Yes. Exactly” The bodies had been arranged, just so, inside the car.
But the shooting and, in particular, the cuts on Schifman's face had an angry haphazard quality to them.
There was a calling card, too. A row of children's stickers was affixed to the car door: glittery, bright-colored pictures of unicorns and rainbows. The same kind had apparently been left at the scene of the previous week's murder.
Each of the stickers was marked with a capital letter, two with an A, one with a B. What was that all about?
Page had already briefed me on the companion case to this one. Another woman in the movie business, Patsy Bennett, a successful production head, had been shot dead in a movie theater in Westwood six days prior. There were no witnesses. Bennett was the only victim that day, and there had been no knife work. But the stickers at that scene had also been marked with capital A's and a B.
Whoever was doing this certainly wanted to take credit for the murders. The murders weren't improvisatory but the killer's methods were dynamic.And evolving, of course.
“What are you thinking?” Page asked. “Do you mind if I ask? Or am I getting in the way?”
