Chapter 45
AS A DETECTIVE, I would have liked to have spent hours in the Lowenstein-Bell house, to soak up all the details. Under the circumstances, I gave myself fifteen to twenty minutes.
I started by the pretty pool and stood at the deep end, staring down at the royal-blue racing lines painted on the bottom. Estimates were that Mary Smith had shot Marti Lowenstein-Bell from this position, a single bullet to the top of the head. Then she’d pulled the body over to her with a long-handled pool net.
The killer calmly stood right here and did the knife work without ever taking the body out of the water. The cuts on the victim’s face had been sloppy and quick, dozens of overlapping slashes. As though she were erasing her.
It was evocative of what people sometimes do to photographs, the way they symbolically get rid of someone by Xing out the face. And in fact, Mary Smith had also destroyed several family photos in the office upstairs in the house.
I looked up to where I imagined the office would be, based on file diagrams.
The logical path from here to there went through the living room, then up the limestone staircase in the main entry hall.
The killer had visited the home before the day of the murder. How exactly had that occurred? At what time? And—why? How was Mary Smith evolving?
When I passed through the house again, Michael Bell was sitting with his three small daughters, all of them blankly watching their movie. They didn’t even look up as I went by, and I didn’t want to interrupt them again if I could help it. For some reason, I remembered hugging Jannie and Day right after what happened with Little Alex in Seattle.
The upstairs hallway was a suspended bridge of wood and glass that bisected the house. I followed Mary Smith’s likely path up there, then down to an enclosed wing where Marti’s office was easy enough to find.
It was the only room with a closed door.
Inside, the office wall had conspicuous blank spots where I imagined family photos had hung. Everything else looked to be intact.
The killer is getting braver, taking more risks, but the obsession with families remains strong. The killer’s focus is powerful.
My attention went to a high-backed leather chair in front of a twenty-one-inch vertical monitor. This was the victim’s workspace and, presumably, the place where Mary Smith sat to send the e-mail to Arnold Griner at the L.A. Times.
The office also had a view of the terrace and pool below. Mary Smith could have watched Marti’s body floating facedown while she typed away. Did it repulse her? Put her into a rage? Or was she feeling gross satisfaction as she sat here looking down on her victim?
Something clicked for me. The destroyed photos here. The recent close call at the coffee house. Something Professor Papadakis had said about “avoidance.” Something else I had been thinking about that morning. Mary Smith didn’t like what she was seeing at the murder sites, did she?
The longer this went on, the more it reflected some powerful image from the past that disturbed her. Some part of herself she didn’t want to see was becoming clearer. Her response was to devolve. I hated to think about it, but she was probably losing control.
Then I corrected myself—the killer was losing control.
Chapter 46
I LAY FLAT ON MY BACK on the hotel bed that night, my head spinning in different directions, none of them worth a damn as far as I was concerned.
Mary Smith. Her pathology. Inconsistencies. Possible motivation for the murders. Nothing there so far.
Jamilla. Don’t go there either. You’re not even close to solving that.
My family back in D.C. Was I ever messing that up.
Christine and Alex Junior. Saddest of all.
I was aware that no part of my life was getting the attention it deserved lately. Everything was starting to feel like an effort. I had helped other people deal with this kind of depression, just never myself, and it seemed to me that nobody’s very good at self-analysis.
True to her word, Monnie Donnelley had already delivered some material on James Truscott. Very simply, he checked out. He was ambitious, could be considered ruthless at times, but he was a respected member of the Fourth Estate. He didn’t appear to have any connection to the Mary Smith murders.
I looked at my watch, muttered a curse, then dialed home, hoping to catch Jannie and Damon before they went off to bed.
“Hello, Cross residence. Jannie Cross speaking.”
I found myself smiling. “Is this the hugs-and-kisses store? I’d like to place an order, please.”
“Hi, Daddy. I knew you’d call.”