“There’s an explanation for this,” the funeral director said to us. “The Richardsons are friends of mine. They asked me if anything could be done to preserve their daughter for as long as possible. Somehow they knew their little girl would be seen again.
“The condition of the body, once interred, can be in any state of decay. It depends on the ingredients. I used an arsenic solution in the embalming process, the way we used to in the old days. You’re looking at the result.”
He paused as we continued to stare.
“This is the way Mary Alice looked the day she was buried. This is the poor girl they murdered and hung.”
Chapter 15
WE GOT back to San Francisco from San Luis Obispo at seven in the morning. I didn’t know how Jamilla could drive, but she did just fine. We forced ourselves to talk most of the way back, just to keep awake. We even had a few laughs. I was bone tired and could barely keep my eyes open. When I finally closed them inside my hotel room, I saw Mary Alice Richardson in her coffin.
Inspector Hughes was drinking coffee at her desk when I arrived at the Hall of Justice at two o’clock that afternoon. She looked fresh and alert. None the worse for wear. She seemed to work as hard as I did on a case, maybe harder. I hoped it was a good thing for her.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” I asked, as I stopped to talk for a moment. My eyes went to the clutter in her work space.
I noticed a photograph of a smiling, very good-looking man propped on her desk. I was glad that she ha
d time for a love life at least. It made me think of Christine Johnson, who was now living out here on the West Coast. I felt a stab of rejection. The love of my life? Not anymore. Unfortunately, not anymore. Christine had left Washington and moved to Seattle. She liked it there a lot and was teaching school again.
Jamilla shrugged. “I woke up around noon, couldn’t get back to sleep. Maybe I’m too tired. The M.E. in Luis Obispo says he’ll send us a report late today. But listen to this. I just got an E-mail from Quantico. There have been eight murders in California and Nevada that bear some resemblance to the Golden Gate Park ones. Not all of the victims were hung. But they were bitten. The cases go back six years. So far. They’re looking back even further than that.”
“What cities?” I asked her.
She glanced down at her notes. “Sacramento—our esteemed capital. San Diego. Santa Cruz. Las Vegas. Lake Tahoe. San Jose. San Francisco. San Luis Obispo. This is so goddamn creepy, Alex. One murder like this would be enough to keep me sleepless for a month.”
“Plus the murder in Washington,” I said. “I’m going to ask the Bureau to look at the East Coast.”
She grinned sheepishly. “I already did. They’re on it.”
I teased, “So what do we do now?”
“What do cops always do when they wait? We eat doughnuts and drink coffee,” she said, and rolled her dark brown eyes. She had a natural, very attractive beauty, even on just a few hours’ sleep.
The two of us had a late breakfast at Roma’s around the corner. We talked about the case, then I asked her about other cases she’d solved. Jamilla had a lot of confidence, but she was also modest about her contributions. I liked that about her. She definitely wasn’t full of herself. When she had finished her omelette and toast, she sat there nervously tapping her finger against the table. She had several tics, seemed wired most of the time. I knew she was on the job again.
“What’s the matter?” I finally asked. “You’re holding something back, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “I got a call from KRON-TV. They’re close to doing a story that there have been several murders in California.”
I frowned. “How the hell did they find out?”
She shook her head. “Who knows? I’m going to give a reporter I know at the Examiner the okay to break the story first.”
“Hold on a second,” I said. “You sure about that?”
“I’m sure. I trust my friend as much as I trust anybody. He’ll ground the story in reality at least. Now help me figure out if there’s anything we want the killers to read in the newspapers. It’s the least my friend can do for us.”
When we got back to the Hall of Justice there was bad news. The killers had struck again.
Chapter 16
IT WAS another bad one, another hanging. Two hangings, actually.
Jamilla and I split up as soon as we arrived at the murder scene in Mill Valley. We had different ways of doing things, different crime-scene techniques. Somehow, though, I thought we would arrive at the same conclusions about this one. I could see the signs already—all of them bad.
The two bodies were hung upside down from a rack used to hold copper pots. The scene of the murders was a contemporary kitchen inside a large, very expensive house. Dawn and Gavin Brody looked to be in their mid-thirties. Like the other victims, they’d been drained of most of their blood.
The first curiosity: Although the Brodys were naked, the killers had left behind their jewelry. A pair of Rolex watches, wedding bands, a large diamond engagement ring, hoop earrings studded with countless small diamonds. The killers weren’t interested in jewels or money, and possibly they wanted us to know it.