“Did you or Mr., uh, Svanda touch anything inside the apartment?” Colin asked. He wondered why he bothered. If this was another South Bay Strangler case, the bastard never left prints. He’d been raping and murdering little old ladies all through this part of L.A. County for years now, and nobody’d laid a glove on him.
“Nothing much, anyway,” Kiyoko Nagumo said. “We watch TV. We know about fingerprints—oh, yes.”
“Okay.” Colin fought a sigh. Everybody watched TV—and everybody thought the cops always caught the bad guy right before the closing commercials. Real life, unfortunately, could be a lot messier and less conclusive. And real-life cops took the heat when it was.
“I’ve got a pretty good statement from her, Lieutenant,” Pete said as Gabe Sanchez came up the stairs to join them. “If you want to have a look at the crime scene before the forensics guys and the coroner get here—”
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Colin said resignedly. Mrs. Nagumo started crying again. Hearing about the coroner must have reminded her her sister was dead.
The door up into the courtyard was open. People milled around there, the way they always did after something bad happened. A grizzled fellow limped up to Colin and Gabe. Like anyone with an ounce of sense, he knew cops when he saw them.
“I’m Oscar Svanda,” he said. “My wife Glinda and me, we manage this building. I let Mrs. Ryan’s sister into her place, and then we seen the poor lady’s body.” He crossed himself. He looked green around the gills, and well he might. Civilians rarely saw things like that, and rarely knew how lucky they were not to.
“Gabe, why don’t you take Mr. Svanda’s statement?” Colin said. “I do want to have a look at the apartment.”
“Okay. I’ll catch up with you.” Gabe pulled a notebook from an inside pocket of his blue blazer. “You want to spell your last name for me so I make sure I have it right, Mr. Svanda . . . ?”
The other uniformed officer from the black-and-white stood at the door to apartment 71. She looked a trifle green herself. “Your first Strangler case, Heather?” Colin asked, understanding that all too well.
She managed a nod. “’Fraid so, Lieutenant.”
“Well, welcome to the club. Now you see why we hate the son of a gun so much,” Colin said grimly. Heather nodded again, this time with more conviction.
He walked inside. The furniture was that furnished-apartment blend of tacky and functional. The Naugahyde covering on the dinette chairs had orange flowers; the couch and chair were upholstered in industrial-strength fabric with a really horrible red, white, and black plaid. But everything was scrupulously clean and neat.
A faint but unmistakable odor led him into the bedroom. Eiko Ryan had been there two or three days, all right. Her long flannel nightgown was hiked up to her waist. Alive, she might have been an inch or two taller than her sister—which would have done her a hell of a lot of good trying to fight off the bastard who’d killed her.
Colin clasped his hands behind his back to make sure he didn’t touch anything. It wouldn’t matter, but he did it anyway. Habit was strong in him, and got stronger as he got older.
He heard some kind of commotion outside. He feared he knew what kind, too. Sure as hell, Heather called, “The reporters are here, Lieutenant.”
“Oh, joy,” Colin said, and went out to meet the press.
IV
Louise Ferguson felt as if she’d gone fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson, and he’d thrown nothing but body punches the whole time. They called it labor for a reason. She’d found that out when she’d had her first three kids. But she’d been in her early twenties then. Now she was old enough to be a granny. She felt every year of it, too, and about twenty more besides.
She lay on the bed, flicking the TV remote. Her roommate wasn’t there—they were running some kind of test on her. She was a Korean gal who didn’t speak a whole lot of English. When she was there, she kept stealing glances at Louise, as if to say What the hell were you doing? But the answer to that was only too obvious, wasn’t it?
James Henry Ferguson—seven pounds, nine ounces; twenty-one and a half inches—wasn’t there, either. They’d asked if she wanted him with her 24/7 or if he should stay in the nursery when she wasn’t feeding him. She’d had Rob with her all the time. Despite her own exhaustion, she’d started at his every twitch and sneeze and wiggle. And she’d learned her lesson. Vanessa and Marshall had stayed in the nursery. James Henry could damn well do the same thing.
Here was the local news. Living with Colin for so many years had given her a jaundiced view of it: blow-dried male robots and beauty-contest third runner-ups struggling to read from teleprompters. The newsies didn’t seem a whole lot smarter once she’d walked out on Colin, either.