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“You got to come,” he panted, standing bent over, his hands on his knees.
“What’s up, Jim?” I only knew him by his first name, a man from somewhere in the neighborhood who walked a big dog early in the morning and sometimes stopped to talk.
“We need help,” he said. “There’s a man…I think he might be dead…”
“Where?” Lindsey asked. He gave a street number, a block away, and we rose and followed him. We moved at a quick trot west on Cypress, stepping out into the street to get around the tour-goers. Fire Station Four was five blocks away and the neighborhood had its share of current and retired cops. But there we were on our porch, and a neighbor was asking for help. We crossed Fifth Avenue and up ahead I could see a disorganized crowd gathered on the sidewalk, all turning to watch us.
We slowed to a walk and people let us through. Ahead was a two-story Monterey revival house with a perfect lawn and perfect citrus trees out front. It was the most impressive place on the block, with a long balcony and ornate railing. Its door was standing open. Jim was talking as we went up the sidewalk.
“This house was supposed to be on the tour,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “But when the committee came by this morning to help get ready, nobody answered and the door was standing open…”
By that time, we were inside.
“It’s down this hall,” he said.
Somebody
had spent a sweet inheritance on the place. Off the entryway was a living room that looked straight out of Architectural Digest: dark, Mission-style furniture, flawless barrel ceiling, ornate Spanish tile around the fireplace, and Indian pottery of a size and quality I usually saw only at the Heard Museum. There were the remains of a fire in the fireplace, but I didn’t have time to linger.
“Here,” Jim said, standing before a doorway.
I stepped into a bedroom, followed by Lindsey. It was probably a nice bedroom, with a sweet smell in the air and French doors looking out on a shaded courtyard, but I felt like an intruder. A man was asleep in the middle of a king-size bed. He was a tall, dark-haired man, lying naked atop the covers. But then my eye went to the right side of his head and I knew he wasn’t sleeping. A handle was attached to the man’s ear.
“What is that thing, Dave?” Lindsey spoke softly.
I said, “It’s an ice pick.”
We both turned to Jim.
“Who else lives here?” Lindsey asked.
Jim shook his head. “A lawyer, I think. He lived alone…
“I didn’t let anybody come in, once I found him,” he stammered. He was still sweating profusely.
I walked carefully around to one side of the bed. Before I got to the carotid pulse I could tell he was dead. His skin had that corpse coldness that you never forget once you’ve touched it.
I knew everybody in my block of Cypress, but I didn’t know this one. And even if I might recognize the man in the bed, that would have to wait for the detectives and evidence techs. His face was hidden, buried in a pillow, and all I saw was a nice haircut and a misplaced kitchen tool.
“OK.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s go over to your house and use the phone.” But as I looked over at Lindsey, I saw my ever-resourceful wife had brought her cell phone and was using it.
Later, after the city cops were through with us, we started back home. The tour organizers were expecting fifteen thousand people, and out on the sidewalk it seemed as if a few hundred were watching our show, along with an obligatory TV news crew. I bet this would have been the best house they’d see, if they could have gotten inside. And they would have received the bonus of seeing how one human being could drive an ice pick into another human being’s brain, neat as can be. I suppressed an involuntary shiver as Lindsey took my hand.
We crouched to get under the yellow tape. Then, the people on the sidewalk made way for us. Nobody talked. And that’s when I saw her. Most everybody was watching the house, and the official comings and goings. But she was watching me. At first, I might have mistaken her for a man: a young, cute man. The kind of boy who makes teenaged girls melt. She was wearing a loose, sleeveless T-shirt, the kind you see at a gym, and cargo shorts that reached to her knees, and something about her was tough looking. Her arms were muscled, and her face was what a less politically correct age would call mannish. Her hair was straw blond, carelessly pushed back under a newsboy’s cap turned backward. But her calves were shapely and smooth—a small tattoo that looked like a Chinese character decorated one ankle—and I detected breasts pushing against the T-shirt. This was an interesting, striking, androgynous person, and I needed something to take my mind off death on a Sunday morning.
“Lindsey.”
We stopped and turned, and it was the same woman. She had not quite a smile on her face.
“Hey, Lindsey,” she said again. “You’re a real cop now…”
Lindsey was still wearing her badge, on a chain around her neck. Her hand stiffened in mine, and then pulled away.
“Hello, Robin. What are you doing here?”
“I live near here. I just got back to Phoenix this winter. Are you here for the tour?”
Lindsey said nothing.
