Today's Reading
The forest turned out to be little more than a poorly trimmed amalgam of ficus and eugenia backed by huge, shaggy silver dollar eucalyptus. Decades ago, a plague had killed off most of the eugenia hedges in Southern California but a few survivors remain. The ficus tack-on said someone had settled for a quick fix in lieu of re-landscaping.
Getting past the greenery landed me in front of a small, flat lawn fronting a one-story, cedar-sided ranch house.
In a suburban setting, another dated sixties throwback. In Bel Air, five million bucks if you hired the right real estate agent.
A second tape barrier ran across the front door. A black Maserati convertible sat in a gravel driveway to the left of the house. Newer model, the name of a Beverly Hills dealer framing the license plate. Littered with dust and leaves. Tennis racquet and balls on the passenger seat.
When the driveway reached the house, it converted to concrete and continued, ungated, toward the rear of the property.
The only feasible entry this morning. I walked along the house. Thought about easy access to a killer.
No sign of Milo or anyone else until I reached the end of the drive and turned right and there he was along with a pair of techs, a C.I., and half a dozen uniforms with nothing to do but look official.
Milo looked the same; why wouldn't he? Tall, mastiff-jowled, top-heavy above oddly thin legs, he wore wrinkled khakis, pink-soled desert boots, a spinach-green sport coat, a white wash 'n' wear shirt with a defeated collar, and a skinny black tie patterned with something hard to make out.
Sunlight waged a full-on assault on his pale, pocked face, having its way with every pit and lump. His black hair, slicked down hours ago, had rebelled and bristled. A limp flap in front diagonaled a brow the texture of cottage cheese.
He was on his phone, saw me and nodded. Grimly, I thought. But maybe not. Who cared, anyway? He'd called. Time to focus and not get sidetracked.
I got close enough to see the tie pattern. Goose heads. Rows of beaks pointing to the right. He clicked off and said, "Thanks for coming."
Like there'd been a doubt.
I said, "What's going on?"
Instead of explaining, he waved expansively. Check it out.
* * *
Not much more to the backyard than a kidney-shaped swimming pool and concrete deck. Small, cup-shaped spa at the front of the pool.
A few feet from where we were standing, a naked man lay facing the sky. A single sizable crusted hole dotted the upper left quadrant of his chest. Blood spidered from the wound, running down from left to right and collecting on the ground. The flow dictated by the body's slight rightward cant.
No positioning. Shot and left to drop.
The blood on the deck had pooled to an amoeboid blot congealed and turned rusty with lingering scarlet highlights. The man's skin was gray, with faint pink traces of lividity visible beneath his left buttocks and thigh. No rigor or decomposition I could see.
"Is the pool heated?"
"The pool and the Jacuzzi."
Last night's temperature had floated in the mid-sixties. Warm enough for a swim but cool enough to slow down breakdown. Weather and exertion could've hastened muscle stiffening and caused it to fade more quickly. If rigor had come and gone, death had occurred sometime late at night or during the earliest morning hours.
Either way, in the darkness.
Partial darkness; a pair of outdoor fixtures just below the house's rain gutter were still on and so was a light in the pool.
...
