him or during that short unlit walk to the Volvo.'
He dusted the pistol, though I was certain that five days of fetishistic fondling by the kid would have smudged over any underlying prints. Indeed, besides mine, Lloyd brought up only child-size marks, which we matched against the prints the kid had left on the Volvo flyer I'd shown him. The magazine and bullets each ofwhich Lloyd dusted and checked had been wiped clean.
Using a rotary hand tool fitted with a buffing wheel, he sanded the gouged strip where the serial number had been to a mirror finish. 'Wouldn't he know the neighbor's routines? Everything else about this guy points to meticulous preparation.'
'But I think he was getting desperate,' I said. 'Needed a fix, maybe. He's thinking less clearly here he should've picked someone who lived somewhere more secluded, like Genevieve. But for whatever reason, he wanted Broach. Which meant neighbors. Which meant he wanted a gun for backup. Once he had her safely in the car, he didn't need the gun anymore. The trash cans were at the curb, right on the way back to the freeway. He could've just slowed down and tossed the gun into one of them.'
Lloyd carried the. 22 over to a fume hood, beside a wire basket filled with guns, mags, pistols, and slides of all makes and models, samples for comparison. Quite a few had their serial numbers ground off as well. He donned goggles and gloves and clicked a button on the fume hood's overhang, the fan suctioning air out from the cube of workspace in which the gun rested. The acids and reagents ranged from clear to dark green; Lloyd applied them to the obliterated metal using cotton swabs, wiping gently in one direction. The acids ate into the steel, the smell keen and foul. The metal that had been deformed by the stamping process should erode more quickly, leaving us with a ghost impression of the numerals.
Focused on his task, Lloyd said, 'He's got an unconscious woman in the back of his wagon and he's worried about getting caught with a gun?'
'It's not just about getting caught. I think he doesn't like guns.'
Looking wonkish in his protective eyewear, Lloyd glanced up from the bubbling acid. 'Morton Frankel,' he said, 'doesn't strike me as skittish.'
'You might be surprised about the complexities of Morton Frankel. Kasey Broach was twenty years sober. The Xanax? I don't think she took it. I think he gave it to her.'
'The killer gave her Xanax? Why? She was knocked out.'
'Maybe not the whole time. Sevoflurane's difficult to regulate, and Frankel's not an anesthesiologist. Maybe she popped back into consciousness a few times especially if he kept her under for a long period.'
'Why would he care if he's a sadist?'
'Maybe he's not.'
Lloyd guffawed the broad laugh. 'Come on. This hardly matches a guy who used bondage rope to bind her wrists. So now what? He was worried about his victim's anxiety? Morton Frankel with the two rapes and a molest? What kind of killer is he?'
What I knew of Mort, I had to confess, didn't match my theory. Which meant either my suspect had to budge or my theory, my character or my plot. Then it struck me 'Frankel's in a small apartment. If he brought her there, maybe he gave her Xanax in case she stirred so she wouldn't freak out and make noise before he could adjust the sevoflurane.'
'That,' Lloyd said, 'is a valid hypothesis.' He steered the boom-mounted lamp down to a hard oblique angle to pick up contrast on the gun, and used water to rinse off the acid. 'I'm getting something.'
I leaned to squint at the emerging characters, lighter than the surrounding steel, but he moved me back from the rising fumes.
'Wait a minute,' he said. 'These aren't numbers. They're letters.'
'How is that possible?'
He applied a bit more acid, trying to get the final edges to resolve.
'He could've gouged off the number entirely, so no restoration could be performed, then stamped letters on and scratched it down again.'
Easy work for a machinist.
Lloyd took off the eyewear and threw it on the lab bench. 'Looks like our boy has a sense of humor.'
I stepped around and peered down at the frame ofthe. 22. Brought to the surface of the gouged metal, a simple message.
NICE TRY.
Chapter 31
The. 22 pressed reassuringly to the small of my back, I coasted down from Mulholland, leaving a message for Bill Kaden, Detective Three.
'Morton Frankel just got his car back from the shop today,' I said. 'He was getting a ding on the right front wheel well repaired. He caught me following him around, and we almost got into a fist-fight, but I gave him the slip. Then I figured out Kasey Broach didn't take Xanax, and I found a kid who gave me an additional sighting of a brown Volvo, putting it at Broach's apartment the night of the murder. He lives in the westernmost house backing on the parking lot. Tell his father I say hello. Oh and I also have a gun the same kid found in his trash can the day after Broach was killed. I had it thoroughly and professionally processed. There are no adult prints, no nothing except for a hidden greeting where the serial number used to be. 'Nice try,' it says. So I'm hoping all this is sufficient to move Mort up on your lengthy list of priorities. Go interview him. Pluck a hair out of his misshapen skull and run it against the unidentified sample you took off Broach's body. Whatever. But keep him from coming here. If he's our guy, I'm guessing he saved the MapQuest directions from last time he drove over to carve up my foot. If he shows up again, I'm gonna shoot him. And I have a gun with a serial number scraped off, so you'll never trace it to me.'
The beep cut me off.
There. It was out now. If Delveckio turned out to be involved in some way admittedly a long shot my keeping his partner informed might bring the heat. My instincts told me Kaden didn't have anything to do with some frame- up. And my instincts were right at least 30 percent of the time.
A coyote trotted down the slope ahead of me, an escapee from a noir novel. He lunged up a neighbor's hillside, his white-gray coat blending into the fog.
Not surprisingly, Kaden called back in a minute and a half. 'What?' he said.
I pulled into my driveway, parked, and filled him in on the day's adventures.
When I finished, there was a speechless pause. 'How'd you get the pistol processed?'
'I know a guy.'
'Okay, this has been nice and diverting so far, but now I've hit the wall. If you tangle in this investigation any further '
'You will arrest me for obstruction of justice.'
A pause. 'That's right. Ed and I are gonna come see you tomorrow, and we're gonna take the pistol and back you out of this case or '
'Throw my ass in jail.'
'It would be a mistake to take this as a bluff, Danner.'
'Why don't you come get the gun tonight?'
Kaden covered the mouthpiece for a murmured consult, then said, 'We're outside Morton Frankel's apartment.'
I felt a surge of excitement at having managed to get the proper authorities, or at least authorities, on what I hoped was the proper trail. If Delveckio and Frankel knew each other already, would Kaden pick up on it? What would he do even if he did?
'Is he there?' I asked.
'He is. We're gonna take him in for interrogation.'
'Break him.'
'We will. We're gonna sit on his pad for a few hours first.'
'Why wait?'
