Grievous Sin (21 page)

“No, not really. Well, she could have found me stuff, but it was all full time and I wanted part time. No prob, though. It’s easy to pick up part-time work as a nurse. Someone is always looking for temps. We’re much cheaper than hiring staff—no benefits or union stuff. I’m strictly fill-in.”

“You get called a lot?”

“All the time. I can pick and choose. I like that.”

“Where do you work?”

“Anywhere from a private home to a hospital.”

“Give me an example. Like yesterday, for instance. Where did you work? Or did you work?”

“Yesterday? I floated at Tujunga Memorial—late shift. Why? Are you going to check up on me?”

Marge laughed. “You watch too many cop movies.”

Tandy’s eyes blazed clear and purposeful. “Don’t watch TV, don’t watch movies. I wish I could help you with this missing baby, but I can’t.”

“Did Marie ever talk about any relative or friend of hers?”

“Just her mom. Marie didn’t talk much about herself. Too
busy listening to my problems.”

That was consistent with Paula’s statement. Marge said, “Did she ever go visit anyone out of the city?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Did she ever leave the city for any reasons? Vacations? Weekends?”

Tandy drummed her fingers against the counter again, then folded her hands. “We went camping a couple of times.”

Marge paused. “Whose idea was that?”

“Marie’s. She loved to camp. She said she could really talk to God in nature. I think she used to go off by herself on weekends and camp. She certainly was good at it. Camping wasn’t for me.”

“What do you mean she was
good
at camping?”

“Just that she seemed at home in the wilderness. She knew different plants and what you could eat and all that kind of thing. Kind of a survivalist but without the guns. She could use a knife, though. She used to cut her own timber for the campfires. Me? I prefer running water and salad bars, thank you very much.”

Tandy threw back her hair.

“Anything else? I’d really like to get back to work.”

Scribbling hurriedly, Marge finished up, flipped the top cover of her notebook closed, and laid a couple of bucks on the table. “That’s it for now.”

From inside her Honda, Marge watched Tandy return to Silver’s. She picked up the mike, called DMV, and got the make and license of her car—a black 1988 Audi. It took Marge only a few minutes to find it, resting in the back parking lot. Settling her Honda a few rows down from the Audi, Marge waited. After about ten minutes, she shifted in her seat.

If Tandy Roberts was guilty of something, she wasn’t making any sudden moves.

Marge picked up her mike and placed a call to Tujunga Memorial. As expected, the Personnel Office was closed for the day. She called the station and checked for messages. No
trace of the baby. Pete had a seven o’clock with Dr. Stan Meecham. He also planned to meet Annie Hennon at the station house’s lab around eight. Seems he had found Bellson’s dentist and X rays. Could she make it?

Marge checked her watch—quarter after seven. Twenty minutes had passed. It appeared that Tandy was going to finish up her building routine. That being the case, she probably wouldn’t be leaving for a while. Reluctantly, Marge convinced herself she had better things to do with her time than sit on her butt chasing an intuition.

She’d make the meeting with Decker and Hennon.

A scheduled meeting
brought out the nesting instinct in Meecham. When Decker first met the obstetrician, he had showed up at Meecham’s private office. The place had been a mess. This time Meecham had taken care to empty his ashtrays and garbage and neatly stack his charts on his desk. Decker knew the doc must be close to retiring, but he carried his age well. Still trim with a head full of white hair, he had shaved his snowy mustache, and his face was weathered from the sun. His nose was thin and veined. Apparently, he hadn’t given up the hooch. He wore a starched white coat over a maroon shirt and navy tie and held out his hand to Decker.

“So we meet again under lousy circumstances,” Meecham said.

Decker took the proffered hand. “Thanks for making time for me, Dr. Meecham.”

“Stan, please.” The obstetrician sat at his desk and pointed to a chair on the opposite side. “We’re old buddies by now.”

“You ever hear from the Darcy family?” Decker asked.

“From the aunt.”

“How’s the little girl doing—Katie?”

“What a memory. She’s doing remarkably well. More than you can say for Marie Bellson. You being here. You haven’t located Marie yet.”

“No, not officially.”

“Not officially…that sounds ominous.” Meecham took out a pack of cigarettes. “You smoke, don’t you?”

“Used to.”

“Oh, God, we lost another good man to
health.
”

Decker laughed. “How do you justify it, Doc?”

“Years of specialized training.” Meecham lit his smoke and blew out nicotined air. “Do you want to know the truth, Sergeant? I’ve seen every sort of inequity that disease can bring. Young, strapping women reduced to skin and bones, their bodies ravaged and disfigured by neoplasm. It hurts, let me tell you. Some people see that kind of thing, they take it as a warning to take better care of themselves. Me? I take it as a sign to have some fun. Maybe it’s stupid. But my kids are grown, I’ve got trust funds for the grandchildren, and a good life-insurance policy for my wife. I say, the hell with it.”

Meecham took a deep drag of his cigarette.

“Look at poor Marie. I saw her just a month ago, and she was doing so much better. Nothing to suggest she’d make the morning news in such an odious way. Now you tell me you haven’t officially found her. Which means what? You’ve unofficially found her?”

“We found her car and a burned body inside—”

“Oh,
shit
!” Meecham rested his face in his hands. “Life’s a goddamn ill wind that blows nobody good.” He looked up. “So that’s why you called the office and asked for her dentist. You’re going to make the I.D. through dental radiographs.”

“Exactly. We’ve sent for them. I’m due to meet the forensic odontologist in about forty minutes.”

“If you want a backup, I’ll take a look at her hips. Lord knows I took enough radiographs of the region.”

“You did a D and C on her about two, three years back?”

“Sure did.”

Decker looked Meecham in the eye. “It was an abortion, wasn’t it, Doc?”

Meecham threw his body back in his chair. “Where’d you get
that
idea? No, it wasn’t a termination of a pregnancy. It
was a dilation and curettage, plain and simple. Well, not so plain and simple, actually. Nothing with Marie was plain and simple. She had a lot of medical problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Well, I suppose if she’s deceased, I don’t have to worry about confidentiality, do I?”

Decker shrugged noncommittally.

Meecham shook his head. “Aw God, the whole thing just makes me sick! Poor Marie. She’s been battling endometriosis for years. Cramping, irregular bleeding, and fibroids to boot. Her plumbing was a mess.”

“Were her problems caused by abortions in her youth?”

“You do your research.”

“Part of the job.”

Decker waited for Meecham to continue. He was slow to respond.

“Were her conditions caused by prior abortions?”

Meecham took another drag on his cigarette. “Could have been if the procedures were botched. Or her problems could have been just bad genetics. From my perspective, I didn’t care what
caused
her problems. I was only interested in
treating
them. And how are her medical problems relevant to her and a missing baby?”

“Did Marie seem more depressed than usual? Say in the last six months?”

“Ah, I see where you’re going. You think her problems may have driven her over the edge?”

“I’m asking
you.
Was she depressed over her problems?”

“Of course, she was depressed. She was only forty and had begun to go through menopause.”

Menopause!
Suddenly, Decker remembered Cindy’s mentioning menopause as a reason for doing a D and C way back when. Taking out his notepad, he said, “You want to tell me about it?”

“I suppose since she’s dead…I still feel funny talking about her to a noncolleague—no offense.”

“None taken.”

“Menopause can be quite an ordeal. Besides all the hormonal disturbances that wreak havoc on the system, there’s the emotional component. That time of life is hard for most women. At forty, cessation of menses is a bitter pill to swallow. It can do strange things to your mind.”

“Did Marie talk as if strange things were going through her head?”

“She never said she was planning on kidnapping a baby, if that’s what you mean.”

“I wasn’t referring to anything specific. I was referring more to her attitude.”

“Well, she was in hormonal flux. But she was bright enough to recognize it for what it was. We were trying a number of different therapies to help stabilize her mood swings.”

“Were they successful?”

“Yes, I’d like to think so. She said she was doing fine at work. Being home alone at night was hard for her. Depression was most likely to hit her then. I’m sure you know this, but her mother’s in a rest home. Marie doesn’t seem to have other family.”

“What about friends?”

“I’m sure she has friends, but who wants to talk about early-onset menopause with friends? I suggested she get a dog or a cat…something alive and unquestioningly loyal. And you know what, Sergeant? She
listened
! She said it helped her!”

Decker thought about the little kitten locked in Marie’s bedroom. Her legacy. It had found a home in the stallion’s stall. He supposed it would need shots and made a mental note to take it to the vet. Meecham stubbed out his cigarette.

“Anyway, the long and the short of it was,” the doctor went on, “she was a woman who suddenly saw the last vestiges of her youth snatched away. Forty ain’t that old in life. That kind of thing is bound to have an impact on the emotional makeup.”

“Certainly puts a whole new slant on the case,” Decker
said. “Everyone we’ve talked to said Marie hadn’t appeared any different than usual.”

“Like I told you, Marie said she was functioning well at work.”

“Or maybe not,” Decker said.

“I just can’t see her kidnapping a baby, Sergeant. Yes, I know what hormones gone awry can do to an otherwise intelligent being. But I can’t see Marie harming a little baby.”

“Who said she harmed anyone?”

“Or kidnapping a baby, don’t get technical.” Meecham took out another cigarette. “You told me you found Marie’s body. I’m no police professional, but that indicates foul play to me. Someone must have forced Marie to take that kid.”

“Possibly,” Decker said.

“You never told me about the baby.”

“We haven’t found the baby.”

“See, that just reinforces my theory. Marie’s dead; the baby’s not there. Someone must have killed Marie and made off with the kid.”

“If the body is Marie’s, yes, it looks that way.”

“What do you mean, ‘If the body…’?”

“We haven’t positively identified the body yet.”

Meecham’s eyes hardened. “You let me talk about one of my patients as if she were dead, and now you tell me she may be alive?”

“Doc, I never told you we positively identified—”

“Sergeant, how could you
do
that? Do you realize I just broke confidentiality!”

“Dr. Meecham, I’m looking for a three-day-old infant, and I’m going to use every avenue available to me to get information. If I misled you, I’m sorry. But at this point in the investigation, when we have diddlysquat to go on, any kind of data is valuable. While it is true that I’m trying to find Marie, my heart goes out to the infant. What did
she
ever do to deserve this shit?”

Meecham sighed and rubbed his eyes. Decker leaned over the desk and patted his shoulder. “Thanks.”

“S’right.”

“Try not to beat your chest so hard, Stan. You helped. You didn’t harm. Isn’t that what your profession is all about?”

Meecham broke his cigarette in half and shook his head. “I heard that somewhere in my training.”

Placing the sets of radiographs side by side on the monitor, Annie Hennon studied the illuminated negatives. At that point, Decker realized you didn’t have to be an expert to tell what
didn’t
match. But he said nothing, watching Annie talk teeth into a Dictaphone, waiting patiently for her to make a diagnosis. Marge was quiet as well. Twenty minutes passed before Annie spoke.

“It’s not the same person.” Her eyes were still on the X rays. “Not by a long shot. The body’s teeth are bigger, more dense in the enamel and dentin, longer rooted. They don’t match the radiographs of Marie’s teeth. So we’ve either got two different people, or the dentist gave you the wrong set of pictures. Did the dentist or an assistant give the envelope to you?”

“My daughter picked up the envelope,” Decker said. “She told me the dentist put the X rays directly into her hands. The envelope was sealed when she delivered it to me.”

“Well, that pretty much rules out an office error.” Annie put her hands on her hips. “So if this isn’t Marie, you’ve got to assume she’s still alive, right?”

“She may or may not be,” Marge said. “The only thing we know for certain now is, she’s not the body in the car.”

“Who are we looking for?” Decker asked.

Annie flipped off the monitor’s light switch. “A big-boned female. Around five-ten, according to the length of the femurs. The anthropologist said the marks on the long bones reflected quite a bit of pull, meaning
weight.
She was probably heavy as well as tall. And she was probably black.”

“Black?” Marge asked.

“Yep.” Annie sat down. “Betcha the anthropologist says the same thing. Of course, he’d be basing his findings on
other things. I’m basing mine on the teeth. Different ethnic groups generally conform to certain tooth alignments—not foolproof, but after a while you detect patterns. I’d be even more surefooted if I had the front part of the face.” She rocked her wrist back and forth. “But with a little imagination, I can extrapolate. I bet I’d find a bignathic configuration that can be typical of blacks.”

“Black,” Marge said. “Nobody we’ve talked to mentioned that Marie was friendly with a black.” She paused. “Then again, you’ve got to ask the right questions.”

Annie stood. “This confirms what I suspected once I found the discrepancy between the finger and ring size. And it complicates the case, doesn’t it?”

Marge said, “Just one more factor.”

“You’ve been great, Annie,” Decker said. “We’ll need your report to file into evidence.”

“I’ll write up my notes from my Dictaphone and fax them to you. Is tomorrow afternoon okay?”

“Fine,” Marge said.

“You two want to take in a couple of drinks before calling it an evening?” Annie asked.

“I’ve got to get home,” Decker said.

“Ah, the new baby,” Annie said. “Have fun doing the burp, Pete.”

Decker laughed and stood. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

“I’ll bag and label evidence,” Marge said. “Meet you in the squad room. We can play postmortem there.”

“Got it.”

Decker opened the door to the lab for Hennon, both of them walking down the empty basement corridor, footsteps reverberating against the tile. At this time of the evening, the upstairs was still busy, but the lab personnel had gone home. They took the elevator up to the first floor, Decker steering Annie clear of the activity in the lobby by going through the back entrance adjacent to Booking. The evening was balmy, set under a charcoal canopy spangled with stars. It was the kind of night that invited a romantic stroll with
arms wrapped around one another’s waists. Decker wished he were home with Rina.

He and Annie ambled through the parking lot in silence, both of them enjoying the air. Annie got out the keys to her four-by-four but hesitated before unlocking the door.

“What kind of postmortem are you talking about?”

Decker smiled. “She means we’re going to swap our daily interviews.”

“You don’t interrogate your suspects together?”

“No, generally we do our interviews separately.”

“How come they always work in twosomes on TV?”

“They don’t have the budgetary constraints we do.”

“And they couldn’t do good cop, bad cop with only one person.”

“There you go.”

“Do you and Marge have a good cop, bad cop routine?”

“Mostly it’s just cop.” Decker held out his hand. “Thanks again for your help.”

Annie took it and squeezed. “Pleasure is mine, big guy.”

“Have fun with your wastrel.”

“Thanks.” Annie unlocked the car. “With a little bit of luck, I’ll learn to be dissolute.”

When Decker returned to the detectives’ squad room, Marge had checked the X rays into the evidence room and was filling out paperwork at her desk. During daylight hours, the place looked anything but high tech. But with all the activity going on, there wasn’t much time or space to take in visuals. In the dim loneliness of night, the squad room was downright depressing. The summer stuffiness certainly didn’t bring any excess cheer, the hot air an unwelcome guest that refused to depart despite open windows and fans.

Marge said, “I made a pot of fresh decaf. You can pour.”

“Usual?”

“Two teaspoons of sugar instead of one tonight. I’m living dangerously.”