Still, I signaled him to stay close as I moved off to the side. Then I reached over and punched the button.
The door slid open. Silence.
Clyde stayed quiet.
Slowly, I peered around the edge of the door.
A pair of metal handcuffs dangled from the hold bar. Above the handcuffs, someone had scratched four words into the paneling.
Smile! I’m watching you!
Etched in the paneling below the words was the outline of an erect penis.
Exactly like the one someone had drawn on the door of the Tahoe.
CHAPTER 18
We are all linked. By stardust. By dreams. By the wild miracle of life on this small planet.
A murder is the dark note that plucks the web and breaks the strand.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
Later, after more detectives had been rousted from bed, after Gabel examined the elevator with the handcuffs and the words and image scratched into the wall, after Clyde and I looked over the rest of the office building and found nothing but dust-streaked windows and stained carpet and toilets that refused to flush, after all that, my partner and I fled back into the night.
The earlier mist had condensed into fog. The atmosphere was more San Francisco noir than Rocky Mountain high.
Just like my mood.
If I had a stalker, as the van and the doll and the images of the phallus were starting to suggest, what did he have to do with the murders of Noah and Donovan? How had some weirdo who’d latched on to me managed to leave his message near the site of Donovan’s murder?
How could he know I’d be here to get the message?
Unless the stalker and the murders were linked.
Whose scent had Clyde hit on?
Clyde and I skirted around the church, heading toward the front door. I spotted Cohen standing next to Officer Murphy on the outer perimeter. Surprised, Clyde and I jogged over.
“Hey,” Cohen said as we approached. “I was just sending you a text.”
“You here for your murder fix?”
The words came out harsh. Cutting.
“Sorry,” I said. I was spooked, working to convince myself that the words and phallus in the elevator and the carved-up bodies of two young men had nothing to do with each other.
Cohen didn’t blink. He was used to my moods. “You okay?”
Moisture pearled in his dark hair as his eyes took me in.
“Sure.” I found a nod, gave it a try. “Everything all right with your cousin?”
“He’s good,” Cohen said. “He had to take a phone call.”
I tugged Cohen out of earshot of Officer Murphy. “Not that I’m not happy to see you. But . . .”
“Why am I here?”
“More or less.”
“Evan and I were on the way back when I heard about the case. There was chatter about a lot of writing at the crime scene.”
I nodded. Waited.
Cohen’s fingers brushed my hand. “Evan’s specialty is forensic semiotics.”
“Semi-what?”
“Semiotics. It’s the study of signs and something called sign process and a bunch of other things that are so far beyond me I don’t even live in Evan’s universe. But he’s spent years analyzing the writing of suspects and known killers.”
I pictured Dashiell Donovan’s body, sprawled on the altar. The dizzying spiral of words.
“Sign process,” I said flatly.
“It’s not woo-woo stuff, Sydney. Evan’s got a PhD in semiotics from Oxford. He’s found killers when the detectives have given up.”
I hesitated. I wanted the help. But I didn’t know Evan from a sheet of drywall. Except I knew that drywall never talked to the media. “You say something to Bandoni yet?”
“He told me you’re the lead, it’s your decision. But he went ahead and cleared it with Lobowitz.”
So not really my decision. But at least Bandoni was going through the motions.
“By the way.” Cohen narrowed his eyes at me. “What’d you do to get Bandoni to play second fiddle? Take his Ossa Knifefish hostage?”
“His what?”
“Len’s a collector. Exotic fish. Shall I get Evan?”
Exotic fish and Audemars Piguet watches. Bandoni was full of surprises.
“As long as Evan knows how to keep his mouth shut,” I said.
“He consults with the FBI. And Interpol. I suspect he’s on the payroll of the CIA and the NSA. The guy is a paragon of discretion. If they can trust him . . .”
“Well, then.” I straightened my shoulders, willing away my exhaustion and the trickle of unease at meeting the esteemed Dr. Evan Wilding. If he found me wanting, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. “Bring him on.”
Cohen sent a text. A moment later, a car door opened and closed down the street, then a child approached us along the sidewalk.
I gaped. “He’s a kid?”
“He’s in his thirties,” Cohen said.
Bandoni’s words came back to me. Don’t underestimate him. My partner’s warped sense of humor shining through.
No wonder he’d acted like a man with an inside joke.
Evan reached us where we stood in the glow of a streetlight and held out a hand. We shook. Cohen’s cousin had thick, curly black hair and a gentle expression anchored by vivid green eyes, which came almost to the level of my chest. To his credit, his gaze was fixed on my face.
Which was good. It felt like bad form to deck a dwarf.
Wilding took in my expression, which I worked to keep neutral, then turned to Cohen.
“Why do you persist in springing me on your friends,” he said, his deep voice rich with the accent of the British elite, “without warning them I’m a few feet short of an NBA career?”
Cohen spread his hands. “It seemed like a small thing.”
Wilding turned back to me. “I have a condition that causes dwarfism. I stand just a hair’s breadth under four-feet-five, although I prefer to round up. Most certainly child-size, you could say.”
My cheeks flamed. Wilding had heard me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Evan said. “Michael loves to do that. Pop a dwarf on the unsuspecting. Bit of an ass that way, aren’t you, cousin?”
Cohen
