Gone (5 page)

“Such dexterity,” I said. “He should’ve gone to med school.”

His green eyes grew bright with amusement and grain alcohol. “Couple of weeks ago, I was giving a talk to a Neighborhood Watch group in West Hollywood Park. Crime prevention, basic stuff. I got the feeling some of the young guys weren’t paying attention. Later, one of them came up to me. Skinny, tan, Oriental tats on the arm, all that cut muscle. Said he dug the message but I was the stodgiest gay man he’d ever met.”

“Sounds like a come-on.”

“Oh, sure.” He tugged at a saggy jowl, released skin, took a swallow. “I told him I appreciated the compliment but he should be paying more attention to watching his back when he cruised. He thought that was a double entendre and left cracking up.”

“West Hollywood’s the sheriff,” I said. “Why you?”

“You know how it is. Sometimes I’m the unofficial spokesman for law enforcement when the audience is alternative.”

“Captain pressured you.”

“That, too,” he said.

I walked over to where Michaela had been found. Milo remained several feet back, reading the notes he’d taken last night.

A flash of white stood out among the weeds. Another nub of coroner’s rope. The drivers had trimmed the bindings because Michaela had been a slim girl.

I knew what had happened at the scene: her pockets emptied, her nails cleaned of detritus, hair combed out, any “product” collected. Finally, attendants had packaged her and lifted her onto a gurney and wheeled her up into a white coroner’s van. By now she’d be waiting, along with dozens of other plastic bundles, stacked neatly on a shelf in one of the large, cool rooms that line the gray hallways of the basement crypt on Mission Road.

They treat the dead with respect at Mission Road, but the backlog —
the sheer volume of bodies —
can’t help but leach out the dignity.

I picked up the rope. Smooth, substantial. As it had to be. How did it compare to the yellow binding Michaela and Dylan had purchased for their “exercise”?

Where was Dylan now?

I asked Milo if he had any idea.

He said, “First thing I did was call the number on his arrest form. Disconnected. Haven’t located his landlord. Michaela’s, either.”

“She told me she was running out of money, had a month’s grace before eviction.”

“If she did get evicted, be good to know where she’s been crashing. Think they could’ve moved in together?”

“Not if she was leveling with me,” I said. “She blamed the whole thing on him.”

I scanned the dump site. “Not much blood. Killed somewhere else?”

“Looks that way.”

“Who found the body?”

“Woman walking her poodle. Dog sniffed it out, pronto.”

“Strangled and stabbed.”

“Manual strangulation, hard enough to crush the larynx. The follow-up was five stab wounds to the chest and one to the neck.”

“Nothing around the genitalia?”

“She was fully clothed, nothing overtly sexual about the pose.”

Strangulation itself can be a sexual thing. Some lust killers describe it as the ultimate dominance. It takes a long time to stare into the face of a struggling, gasping human being and watch the life force seep out. One monster I interviewed laughed about it.

“Time goes quickly when you’re having fun, Doc.”

I said, “Anything under her nails?”

“Nothing overly interesting, let’s see what the lab comes up with. No hair fibers, either. Not even from the dog. Apparently, poodles don’t shed much.”

“Any of the wounds defensive?”

“No, she was dead before the cutting started. The neck wound was a little stick to the side, but it got the jugular.”

“Five’s too many for impulse cuts but less than you’d expect from an overkill frenzy. Any pattern?”

“With her clothes on, it was hard to see much of anything except wrinkles and blood. I’ll be at the autopsy, let you know.”

I stared at the glossy spot.

Milo said, “So she blamed Meserve for the hoax. Lots of love lost?”

“She said she’d come to hate him.”

“Hatred’s a fine motive. Let’s try to locate this movie star.”

D
ylan Meserve had cleared out of his Culver City apartment six weeks ago, failing to give notice to the company that owned the place. The firm, represented by a pinch-featured man named Ralph Jabber, had been more lax than Michaela’s landlord: Dylan owed three months back rent.

We encountered Jabber walking through the empty flat and jotting notes on a clipboard. The unit was one of fifty-eight in a three-story complex the color of ripe cantaloupe. The Seville’s tripometer put it three miles from where Michaela’s body had been found. That placed the murder scene roughly equidistant from the couple’s respective apartments and I said so to Milo.

“What, the two of them reaching some kind of common ground?”

“I’m pointing out, not interpreting.”

He grunted and we walked through unguarded double glass doors into a musty-smelling lobby done up in copper foil wallpaper, pumpkin-colored industrial carpet, and U-build Scandinavian furniture made of something yellow that yearned to be wood.

Dylan Meserve’s unit was on the far end of a dark, narrow hallway. From ten yards away I could see the open door, hear the supercharged whine of an industrial vacuum cleaner.

Milo said, “So much for trace evidence,” and walked faster.

Ralph Jabber motioned to the dark little woman pushing the vacuum. She flipped a switch that quieted but didn’t silence the machine.

“What can I do for you?”

Milo flashed the badge and Jabber lowered his clipboard. I caught a glimpse of the checklist.
1. FLOORS: A. Normal Wear B. Tenant Liability
2.
WALLS…

Jabber was sallow, short, and sunken-chested, in a shiny black four-button suit over a white silk T-shirt, brown mesh loafers without socks. He had nothing to offer about his former tenant, other than the outstanding rent.

Milo asked the woman what she knew and got an uncomprehending smile. She was less than five feet tall, sturdily built, with a carved-teak face.

Ralph Jabber said, “She doesn’t know the tenants.”

The vacuum idled like a hot rod. The woman pointed to the carpet. Jabber shook his head, glanced at a Rolex too huge and diamond-encrusted to be genuine.
“El otro apartmente.”

The woman wheeled the machine out of the apartment.

Dylan Meserve had lived in a rectangular white room, maybe three hundred square feet. A single aluminum window set high on one of the long walls granted a view of gray stucco. The carpeting was coarse and oat-colored. The vest-pocket kitchenette sported orange Formica counters chipped white along various corners, prefab white cabinets smudged gray near the handles, a brown space-saver refrigerator left open.

Empty fridge. Bottles of Windex and Easy-Off and a generic brand of disinfectant sat on the counter. Scuff marks bottomed some of the walls. Little square indentations compressed the carpet where furniture had sat. From the number of dents, not much furniture.

Ralph Jabber’s clipboard lay flat against his thigh now. I wondered how he’d scored the scene.

“Three months back rent,” said Milo. “You guys are pretty flexible.”

“It’s business,” said Jabber, without enthusiasm.

“What is?”

“We don’t like evictions. Prefer to keep the vacancy rate low.”

“So you let him ride.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyone talk to Mr. Meserve about it?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“How long would Mr. Meserve have had to go before you threw him out?”

Jabber frowned. “Every situation is different.”

“Mr. Meserve asked for an extension?”

“It’s possible. Like I said, I don’t know.”

“How come?”

“I don’t handle the rents. I’m the termination-transition manager,” said Jabber.

That sounded like a euphemism for mortician.

Milo said, “Meaning…”

“I fix the place up when it’s vacant, get it ready for the new tenant.”

“Got a new tenant for this one?”

Jabber shrugged. “It won’t take long. The place is high-demand.”

Milo looked around the small dismal room. “Location, location, location.”

“You got it. Close to everything, Lieutenant. The studios, the freeways, the beach, Beverly Hills.”

“I know it’s not your area of expertise, sir, but I’m trying to trace Mr. Meserve’s activities. If he hadn’t asked for an extension, would there be some reason you’d simply let him go for three months?”

Jabber’s eyelids half closed.

Milo moved closer, used his height and bulk to advantage. Jabber stepped back. “Off the record?”

“Is it a sensitive topic, Mr. Jabber?”

“No, no, not that… to be honest, this is a big building and we’ve got others even bigger. Sometimes things get… overlooked.”

“So maybe Meserve got lucky and just sneaked by.”

Jabber shrugged.

“But eventually,” said Milo, “his failure to pay rent would’ve caught up with him.”

“Of course, yeah. Anyway, we got at least his first month and damage deposit. He’s not getting nothing back ’cause he didn’t give notice.”

“How’d you find out he was gone?”

“Phone and electricity got shut off for nonpayment. We pay the gas but the utilities notify us when the other stuff goes.”

“Kind of an early warning system.”

Jabber smiled uneasily. “Not early enough.”

“When did the phone and electricity get shut off?”

“You’d have to call the main office.”

“Or you could.”

Jabber frowned, pulled out a cell phone, punched an auto-dial three-digit code. “Samir, there? Hey, Sammy, Ralph. I am, yeah, the usual… tell me, when did the juice get squeezed off at Overland D-14? Why? ’Cause the cops wanna know. Yeah… who knows, Sammy, they’re here now, want to talk to them yourself… okay, then, just tell me so I can get them outta —
so they can find out what they wanna know. Listen, I got six more to deal with, Sammy, including two in the Valley and it’s already eleven… yeah, yeah…”

Ninety seconds passed. Phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder, Jabber walked into the kitchenette, opened cabinets, ran his finger inside drawers. “Fine. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I will, yeah.”

He clicked off. “Utilities went four weeks ago. One of our inspectors said there’d been no mail for six weeks.”

“Four weeks ago and you just came by today.”

Jabber colored. “Like I said, it’s a big company.”

“You the owner?”

“I wish. My father-in-law.”

“That him you were talking to?”

Jabber shook his head. “Brother-in-law.”

“Family affair,” said Milo.

“By marriage,” said Jabber. His lips twisted into a tight, pale blossom. “Okay? I gotta lock up.”

“Who’s the inspector?”

“My sister-in-law. Samir’s wife. Samir has her come around, check things out. She’s not too bright, never told anyone about the no-mail.”

“You have any idea where Mr. Meserve went?”

“I wouldn’t know him if he walked in right now. Why all the questions? What’d he do?”

Milo said, “Would anyone at the company have information about him?”

“No way,” said Jabber.

“Who rented to him?”

“He probably used one of the services. Rent-Search, or one of them. It’s on-line or you can call, mostly people do it on-line.”

“How’s it work?”

“Applicant submits an application to the service, service passes it along to us. Applicant qualifies, he puts down the deposit and the first month and moves in. Once we get occupancy, we pay a commission to the service.”

“Meserve have a lease?”

“Month to month, we don’t do leases.”

“Leases don’t keep the vacancy rate down?”

“You get a bum,” said Jabber, “doesn’t matter what’s on paper.”

“What does it take to qualify as a tenant?”

“Hey,” said Jabber. “Lots of homeless would kill for a place like this.”

“You ask for references?”

“Sure.”

“Who did Meserve give?”

“Like I said, I’m just the—”

“Call your brother-in-law. Please.”

Three references: a previous landlord in Brooklyn, the manager of the Foot Locker where Dylan Meserve had worked before getting arrested, and Nora Dowd, Artistic Director of the PlayHouse, in West L.A., where the young man had been listed as a “creative consultant.”

Jabber examined what he’d written down before passing it along to Milo.

“Guy’s an actor?” He laughed.

“You rent to a lot of actors?”

“Actor means bum. Samir’s stupid.”

I followed Milo to the West L.A. station, where he parked his unmarked in the staff lot and got into the Seville.

“Meserve stopped his mail soon after he got busted,” he said. “Probably planning to rabbit if things didn’t work out in court.” He searched his notepad for the acting school’s address. “What do you think of that ‘creative consultant’ business?”

“Maybe he apprenticed to earn extra money. Michaela blamed Dylan for the hoax but obviously Nora Dowd didn’t.”

“How’d Michaela feel about that?”

“She didn’t talk about Nora’s reaction to Dylan. She was surprised at Nora’s angry reaction to her.”

“Dowd boots her but keeps him on as consultant?”

“If it’s true.”

“Meserve faked the reference?”

“Meserve’s been known to embellish.”

Milo phoned Brooklyn, located the landlord Dylan had cited as a reference. “Guy said he knew Dylan’s father because he’s a part-time musician himself and they used to gig. He has a vague memory of Dylan as a kid but never rented him an apartment.”

“Creative consultant,” I said.

“Let’s talk to the consultee.”

T
he PlayHouse was an old one-story Craftsman house on an oversized lot, just north of Venice Boulevard, in West L.A. Plank siding painted deep green with cream trim, low-set bulk topped by sweeping eaves that created a small, dim porch. The garage to the left had old-fashioned barn doors but looked freshly painted. The landscaping was from another age: a couple of four-story cocoa palms, indifferently pruned bird of paradise grown ragged, agapanthus, and calla lilies surrounding a flat, brown lawn.