City of Fire (16 page)

What could Brant want that he didn’t think they already had?

She crossed the foyer to the study, noting the fingerprint powder on the desk. The semen stains on the white carpet had been snipped away. What little remained on the carpet pad was no longer clear but had taken on a reddish hue easy enough to spot. Stepping around the stains, she slipped on a pair of vinyl gloves and got started. The files in the lower drawers appeared work-related, the subject matter limited to the courses the victim taught at college and personal notes Brant kept from meetings at the office. When she opened the top drawer, she found the Brants’ checkbook beside a stack of unpaid bills and slowed down to take a closer look. Flipping through the register, nothing stood out except for the balance. The Brants were between paychecks. Only $159.62 remained in their bank account.

She tossed the checkbook into the drawer and moved to the closet, avoiding the fingerprint powder on the door handle. The house must have been short on storage space because she found Brant’s clothes here. On the shelf above she saw a beat-up 35 mm camera set beside three eight-by-ten manila envelopes. As she slid the envelopes out, she spotted a shoe box hidden in the back. Lena inched the box forward with her fingertips, then sat down on the floor and opened the lid.

It was a collection of memories. Letters and snapshots from his past. Brant’s family, his friends, and what looked like a number of women he’d dated from high school through college. But what caught Lena’s eye was the house Brant grew up in. Brant hadn’t come from poverty, or even a middle-class home. The fleet of Mercedeses parked before a tennis court and swimming pool added up to a life of privilege. His parents were wealthy.

Lena hadn’t expected this. Nikki and James Brant had obviously been struggling to make ends meet. She saw the balance in their checkbook, less than $200, and assumed that they were on their own. During the interview, she remembered Brant saying that he wanted a family but couldn’t afford one right now. Given the situation, she wondered why Brant hadn’t gone to his family for help. But perhaps he could, she thought. Maybe it was just another excuse. One more lie on the list of many. After all, he had enough money to buy Buddy Paladino, one of the most expensive criminal-defense attorneys in the business.

She closed the box and went through the manila folders. The first two were filled with black-and-white photographs. The third contained proof sheets taken from the negatives. Lena turned toward the window, examining the images in the light. Although there were some portraits of family members she recognized from the snapshots in the shoe box, most of the photographs were carefully framed landscapes. She shook her head as she went through the pile. At one point in his life, Brant had been interested in photography and art. Maybe he could take it up again in prison.

She got to her feet, returning the items to the shelf and entering the bath, which was attached to the study and master bedroom. The sour smell of rotting blood was stronger here. Again she ignored it, carefully examining the small room. Most of the plumbing had been ripped up from the floor and carted off to the lab as SID searched for the victim’s missing toe and any residual evidence that this was the place where the doer had cleaned up. Lena started with the medicine cabinet. She thought she might find Nikki’s prescription here, but the only medication turned out to be a muscle relaxant dated two years ago. She shook the bottle, holding it to the light. It still looked full.

It would have been easier, of course, if she had some idea of what she was really looking for. A feel for the shape of the thing and its relative size. She opened a narrow linen closet, sifting through towels. She searched the cabinet below the
sink and found nothing here as well. Then she crossed the room to the open bedroom door.

The curtains were drawn, masking the view from any neighbors who might wander onto the property for a nervous peek through the windows. Even without a dead body, the sight of the enclosed space rattled the nerves. The bedding had been taken downtown, but enough blood had seeped onto the mattress and remained on the walls to reawaken her memory of the day she’d first laid eyes on Nikki Brant. She could see the young woman on the bed with her eyes open even though she didn’t want to see it. She could still see the young woman’s foot and those horrific chest wounds.

Lena gritted her teeth and stepped into the room. The closet was on the other side of the bed. Tiptoeing around the bloodstains, she felt a sudden chill ripple between her shoulder blades as she opened the door and went through the victim’s clothing. The smell of the room was disgusting, as dense and confining as a hood. No longer able to ignore it, she sucked the vile odor into her lungs and made it the reason to keep going. To keep pressing forward.

She went through a long line of slacks and skirts. When she spotted a jacket, she reached into the pocket, felt something, and pulled it out. It was the prescription pills for nausea. Nikki Brant had been keeping them a secret, hiding the bottle in a place her husband was unlikely to look. The label indicated that five pills had been prescribed by her doctor with no refill option and warned that the drug could cause drowsiness. She opened the bottle. Only four pills remained, and it was a safe bet that Nikki Brant had been using the drug at the time of her death.

She wondered how strong it was. Whether the drug might be in play. She thought about the question Novak had asked her outside the coroner’s office.

Do you know anything about erotic asphyxiation?

She wondered if the two were connected in some way. If maybe the Brants were into something kinky and the victim had been under the influence when it went down. If maybe
the events leading to the murder were accidental, the window dressing added to cover up the result.

Lena shook it off, thinking it seemed unlikely, but making a mental note to bring it up with Novak.

The evidence bags were in her briefcase in the kitchen. Opting to log the pills in later, she slipped the prescription into her pocket and moved to the bedside table for a look inside the drawer. If the Brants were into kinky, she might find some sign of their varied sex life here, even though Novak had been through the room on Friday and hadn’t mentioned any unusual toys. Instead, what she discovered beneath a tablet of paper was anything but aberrant. From the vitamin bottles containing iron and folic acid, she figured this was the victim’s side of the bed. When she spotted the basal body thermometer, her guess was confirmed. The temperature increments were graduated by one-tenth of a degree, the device used to calculate a precise waking temperature. At the bottom of the drawer, Lena found a pocket calendar and opened it. The notations began in January. Nikki Brant had been charting her menstrual cycle—her fertility—taking her temperature every morning and recording the changes in her cervical secretions until she found the right time. The right moment.

Lena stared at the woman’s notes—her hopes and dreams for a family that came to fruition but lasted only a single day. She listened to the house. The oppressive silence. Willing herself out of the black, she stepped around the bed and quickly sifted through the chest of drawers. The woman’s T-shirts, her stockings and underwear. When she found a tattered snapshot of Nikki as a young girl, her hand started shaking. Brant didn’t look more than seven or eight years old. She was standing shoulder to shoulder with a boy in front of the orphanage. Both sported bittersweet smiles, their eyes hiding fear and loneliness. Lena dropped the photograph on the chest and walked out of the room.

She took a moment to pull herself together. Then another to regain her focus.

Except for the boom box and TV, the living room was
empty. She spent the next twenty minutes in the kitchen, going through the cabinets and drawers. She worked quickly, thoroughly. She wanted to get out of the house. She needed to get away from the smell. Away from that snapshot of the victim as a girl. When she finished, she realized that she was as far away from discovering anything new or even relevant as when she began.

She glanced at her briefcase and the newspaper on the breakfast table, then pulled a chair out and sat down. What could Brant have wanted out of this nearly empty house? What was worth the risk of committing another crime and appearing even more guilty?

Her eyes rocked about the room until they came to rest on the bulletin board fixed to the wall. She hadn’t really noticed it before. A schedule of events at the art college was posted, along with lists of errands to be done and groceries needed at the store. Several notes were also tacked to the board. Back-and-forth notes written over the past ten days when James Brant claimed to be working night and day.

Lena read them, deciphering the loose script from both sides. If they were in the midst of an argument, one that would end in murder, it seemed extraordinarily civil.

She turned away, ready to leave and disappointed that her effort hadn’t paid out. Reaching for her briefcase, she glanced at the stack of newspapers on the seat beside her and guessed that it was easily a week’s worth. The section on top was opened to that idiotic story about a pregnant woman from Santa Monica who claimed she hadn’t had sex in two years. Lena flipped it over in disgust, noticing the crossword puzzle underneath. It was the same puzzle she had trouble with earlier in the week, and either Brant or Nikki had filled it in. Her eyes drifted to the bottom right section—51 DOWN—and she reread the clue referring to a contestant who won a million dollars in a reality series on TV. The answer was written in ink and seemed to fit. She tossed the paper on the pile and stood up, wondering why anyone in search of reality would seek it out on television.

And then it hit her. Her heart started pounding and that
shake came back—a second hot load of adrenaline exploding through her body.

She slid the newspaper off the pile and carefully laid it out on the table.

She noted the date at the top of the page. Not sometime last week, but Friday morning.

She studied the puzzle—the words, the lettering, the machinelike precision of the handwriting that didn’t match either the victim or her husband yet seemed so familiar now.

She rifled through the stack of newspapers on the chair. Every other puzzle remained blank.

Her eyes flicked past the kitchen counter to the boom box sitting on the living room floor. She sprinted toward it, her mind jetting ahead of her body in a jumbled blur. What she was thinking was absolutely impossible. They’d followed the evidence without bias. Brant’s alibi had fallen apart and he blew the polygraph. An eyewitness even came forward. She saw the interview last night on TV.

Memories of the Lopez case began to surface—one after the next in rapid succession. The newspaper by the bed. The CD player. What she was feeling in her gut was totally ludicrous. The MOs were entirely different. There could be no connection between the two murders. Jose Lopez was in Men’s Central Jail where he belonged. While it might be true that Lopez had been under extreme emotional distress, that he started weeping when Novak showed him the picture of his dead wife and called the woman a whore, Jose Lopez had murdered his wife and confessed.

She switched the boom box on and hit the
EJECT
button.

The tray slid out.

When she read the title on the CD, her skin flushed and the room seemed to ignite in a fiery haze. But it wasn’t Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 spewing out the heat.

This time it was one of Lena’s personal favorites. No. 7.

LENA flipped open her cell, keeping her eyes on the road as she hit her partner’s speed-dial number and bulldozed her way through weekend traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway. Novak picked up on the second ring.

“We’ve got a problem,” she said, her voice cracking.

“How big?”

“What are you doing right now?”

“Talking to Officer Marwick out of West L.A. He took the witness’s statement on Friday. Sanchez and Rhodes brought in that screenwriter. We’re trying to straighten things out. I was starting to get worried. I was just about to call you at home.”

She glanced at the clock on the dash: 10:15 a.m.

“Do you remember Terrill Visconte?” she asked.

“Teresa Lopez’s boss. The guy who won’t admit that he was doing her the night of the murder.”

“We need to find out where he was on Thursday night,” she said. “I’m thinking he’ll be clear, but we need to know for sure.”

A long moment passed. Lena thought her phone had gone dead and checked the screen for a signal. When Novak finally spoke up, his voice was low and riddled with concern.

“Where you going with this, Lena? What’s happened?”

She steered around a slow-moving Buick, working her way into the left lane as she thought it over. The implications of her discovery were ominous.

“I made another trip out to the house,” she said. “The
DNA results we get tomorrow probably won’t come back to Brant.”

It hung there. Big and heavy like a stone dropping out of the sky.

“You bringing something with you we can see?” he asked.