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I was outside, checking messages.
He closed the pink house’s door and said, “Let’s go.”
I said, “No search?”
“No paper, John says better to wait in case the twins retract or my afterthought Miranda causes problems. Spoke to Sean and by luck Montag has the same carrier as Hoffgarden so he’s got a contact to fast-track her calls.”
“She say anything?”
“Fuck you, pig. I want a lawyer. Then some really mean stuff.Thenshe tried to bite me, failed but succeeded with another nice load of spit.” Fingering a spot on his right cheek.
I said, “Anti-police brutality.”
He laughed all the way to the Impala. Stopped and a look back at Montag’s house and shook his head. “Talk about weird. I go in prepared to be subtle, find the behemoths right there and they can’t wait to express themselves. Would you call them developmentally challenged? Or whatever the acceptable term is now.”
I said, “Probably borderline but they’re still eyewitnesses with a detailed account. You just got a gift, my friend.”
He said, “Yeah, but assembly required.”
CHAPTER
31
Assembly took the better part of that evening and the following day. Lots of moving parts.
I was home for most of it and got a morning phone report from Milo. Deputy D.A. John Nguyen had consulted with his boss who agreed that the Tabash twins’ story and the fact that Lisette Montag was the last person to talk to Tyler Hoffgarden justified an arrest warrant. With that set in place, getting a search warrant for Montag’s residence and her Explorer was a formality. Milo, his young D’s, and his army of techs worked late into the night.
The front seat of the SUV gave up a rough match to Montag’s DNA and that of Renny Tabash, sure to be refined later. The rear offered Rodney Tabash’s genetic material and Tyler Hoffgarden’s.
Perfect confirmation of the twins’ account.
In Hoffgarden’s case, sloughed skin cells were also found on the exterior of a size seven sweat sock, with the interior matching Montag’s. The final find was a scatter of barely perceptible dried blood on the back of the driver’s seat, spied and swabbed by a sharp-eyed tech.
The twins, subdued by incarceration, were represented by a lawyer named Harvey DiPaolo who shepherded their comments. DiPaolo did allow them to confirm that Montag had jammed the sock into Hoffgarden’s mouth and that, though restrained, Hoffgarden had struggled “a little” and “by accident” bumped his forehead against the seat.
Dr. Basia Lopatinski had then looked for and found minuscule lacerations—little more than scratches—on the victim’s brow.
“Between us,” she told Milo, “I probably would’ve missed it because I was concentrating on some massive edema under the bridge of what the animals left of Hoffgarden’s nose and another in his chin.”
Both swellings turned out to be resting places for two .32-caliber bullets that had lacked the momentum to exit Hoffgarden’s massively boned head.
Milo said, “How come the animals didn’t chew over there?”
“Good question,” said Basia. “Maybe these are picky Bel Air animals. Or they don’t like the smell of lead.”
The slugs were too degraded to match to a .32 FÉG PA-63 semi-auto pistol discovered in Lisette Montag’s nightstand. Hungarian military manufacture, unregistered, never reported stolen. Montag, repped by a lawyer named Alan Bloomfield, wasn’t uttering a syllable.
No need for her cooperation. Toward the end of Milo’s compulsive search of the converted garage, during which he discovered weed, cocaine, meth, Ecstasy, a host of prescription pills, and an admirable supply of beauty and hair products, he got an aha moment.
Two .32 casings wrapped in a black silk scarf and stashed in a jewelry box at the rear of an upper bedroom closet shelf. Milo drove them to the lab at six a.m., charmed a senior tech, jumped the line, and got a quick match to the gun.
“Lying on top of earrings and necklaces,” he said.
I said, “There are all kinds of adornment.”
“Guess she was proud. Must’ve hated the guy big-time, still have no idea why.”
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