Free To Kill a Sorcerer by Greg Mongrain Page B

ties, and short-sleeved dress shirts.
    “Well,” he said, “if it isn’t Jacques Cousteau. Nothing happened in the pool in the backyard, but I suppose you’ll want to inspect the bottom anyway, right?”
    I gave him a grin.
    The four of us stood there, Gonzales the only one inside. I held my pink hands up, thought about using them to light a cigarette, put them back at my sides. Birds tweeted. Carbon-14 decayed. The earth orbited the sun.
    Hamilton said, “Girl’s name is Jessica Patterson. Seventeen. Same as the Barlow kill. Bloody. We’re supervising the SID team as they finish collecting evidence, then we can take a closer look.”
    “They’re still in there?” The members of the Scientific Investigation Division were LAPD’s crime scene forensics specialists.
    “Yeah. And they’re still taking pictures. The medical examiner’s techs haven’t touched the body yet.”
    “What about the parents?” I asked.
    Gonzales’s mouth tightened. “We had the EMTs take them to the hospital. That was a balls-up, they never should have been allowed to view the scene.” He glanced at Kennedy, who fidgeted. “The father had to be restrained—tried to throw himself on his daughter’s body. The mother—she took one look and fainted dead away.”
    “Can you imagine?” Hamilton asked.
    “No.” Time had withered my five children, each one of their deaths as painful as the first.
    This was magnitudes worse. What must it be like to live each day, knowing your child spent her last moments being tortured and gutted by a homicidal maniac? Mr. and Mrs. Patterson must be facing the most agonizing human experience imaginable.
    Gonzales stepped back and gestured inside.
    “Welcome to the party.”
    We walked through the front door and turned into the family room.
    There she was, her body suspended from the rafters by a thin cord around her ankles. The three of us stopped a meter from the body so as not to interfere with the techs processing the physical evidence.
    I thought the photos of the Barlow kill had prepared me for this sight, but it is not possible to anticipate the shock your mind and body receive in the face of such mutilation. I studied the scene, suppressing the anger growing inside.
    Gonzales watched me. I raised my eyebrows at him.
    “I got a twenty-two-year veteran upchucking in the master bathroom,” he said, “but you stroll in here cool as dammit and look at the corpse like it’s a mannequin.”
    “Is there a question in there?” I asked.
    “Yeah. Who the fuck are you?”
    “A concerned citizen.” I turned back to the body.
    Jessica’s limp arms hung toward the floor, splattered with blood. The killer had slashed her torso vertically, then splayed the flesh to either side.
    “Other than the Barlow girl,” I said quietly to Hamilton and Gonzales, “have either of you ever seen anything like this?”
    Neither answered. Gonzales gave the tiniest shake of his head, his gaze never wavering from Jessica.
    The burning scent in the air caught my attention.
    “Incense again.” I pulled out my phone and dialed. While I was listening to it ring, I said to Hamilton, “Tell them to close the back door and any other doors.”
    “What the hell for?” Gonzales asked.
    “Keep this smell in here. There might be someone . . . hold on . . . Charlie? What are you doing right now? Can you come over to a place, take a sniff for me?” Since no one was moving in the house, I slammed the front door shut. Everyone turned to me, startled. “Hang on, Charlie.” I held my phone against my chest. “Close that!” I yelled to a uniform standing near the door leading to the backyard. He slid it shut.
    I put the phone back to my ear. “Charlie, you still there?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good, look, we’re just off the boulevard, maybe five minutes from you. On Greenleaf. Left on Van Nuys and right on Greenleaf. You can’t miss the place with the crowd. Get your driver to bring you over here, could you?