“Could be,” Greg said. “Or perhaps she was just trying to capitalize on a certain illicit relationship.” He fired up the computer. “Wanna bet we find more of D. L. Dakota’s deathless prose on Debra’s hard drive?”
“Sounds like a safe bet to me.”
While the computer was booting up, Greg took a closer look at the brag shelf. He noticed that the shelf wasn’t entirely full; there was an empty gap between Kisses and Curses and Prowling for Love. He ran a finger over the exposed fiberboard. “No dust. Like there was another book here until just recently.”
“Wonder where it went,” Nick said. Inspecting the desk, he pulled out a drawer under the keyboard and took out a small pile of correspondence. He sifted through the mail, piece by piece.
Greg tried to make out the return addresses on the envelopes. “Anything from Park?”
“Nope,” Nick reported. “Just bills, mostly. Gas, electric, cable . . . hang on.” He extracted a single letter from an already opened envelope and unfolded it before his eyes. “Okay, this might be something.”
“What is it?”
Nick held up the bill so Greg could see. The letterhead atop the invoice read “24/7 Storage—Safe and Secure.”
“Looks like Debra was renting a storage unit.” Nick took a second look at the address. “Only a few miles from here.”
Greg grinned. They were teetering right on the brink of that tipping point; he could feel it. “I think I know where we’re going next.”
26
“HELLO, MR. YUN,” Ray said. “I hope we’re not disturbing you.”
Brian Yun lived in a modest stucco house several miles and income brackets away from The Nile. Spanish tile adorned the roof. A fashionably xeriscaped front yard flaunted cacti, agave, and other desert blooms in lieu of a grassy lawn. Only a birdbath required more than Vegas’s annual four inches of rain.
“Dr. Langston? Ms. Sidle?” He looked surprised to find them on his doorstep. His casual attire consisted of a polo shirt, slacks, and loafers. A uniformed police officer accompanied the CSIs. Classical music played softly in the background. Yun appeared to have been enjoying a quiet evening at home before they arrived. “What are you doing here?”
Sara presented him with the papers. “We have a warrant to search the premises.”
It might not be enough to convict him, but Santana’s identification of Yun as the man to whom he had sold the coral snake had been enough to convince Judge Kim to issue a warrant. Especially once they explained what they were after.
“Search?” Yun’s eyes grew wide. “I don’t understand. What are you looking for?”
“It’s all spelled out in the warrant.” Sara pushed past him into the foyer. “Now, if you’ll just step outside with this officer.”
“Wait! Wait!” he protested. He leafed frantically through the documents, before being daunted by all the legalese. His eyes remained bugged out in horror as Ray followed Sara into the house, carrying his field kit. He hurried after them. “Stop! I need to call my lawyer.”
“Go ahead,” Ray said. “In the meantime, we’re going to get started. We may have a long night ahead of us.”
He frankly doubted that they would find anything incriminating inside the house itself. Nearly a week had passed since Rita Segura had been bitten; there had been plenty of time to clean house. Prudence dictated that they conduct a full search anyway, after they dug up what they were really looking for. Who knows? Maybe they would get lucky.
“Start with the backyard?” Sara suggested.
Ray nodded. “My thoughts exactly.”
“Wait! Where are you going?” Yun looked positively bewildered. Breaking away from the uni, he chased after the CSIs. “What do you want with my backyard?”
“Excuse me, sir,” the cop took hold of Yun’s arm. Her badge identified her as ORTEGA. Her tone brooked no dissent. “You need to come with me.”
“It’s all right, officer.” Ray wanted to observe Yun’s reaction to what they had planned. “You can let him watch.”
“Just stay out of the way,” Sara warned. “You got that?”
A sliding glass door separated the living room from the fenced-in backyard. Ray glanced around the living room as they passed through it. An even larger portrait of Fala, Yun’s late Persian, was displayed upon the mantel of a largely decorative fireplace. He nudged Sara, calling her attention to the photo. With any luck, Yun’s sentimental attachment to his cat extended to its burial arrangements.
Ortega kept watch over Yun as the party stepped out into the yard, which was just as tidy as his office back at The Nile. The light from inside illuminated much of the xeriscaped grounds and gardens, surrendering to shadows farther on by the fence. Tasteful terra-cotta statuary stood among the cacti. Patio furniture rested in the shadow of a large red umbrella. Ray swept the area with his flashlight. Sara did the same.
It was a cool night, but Yun was already perspiring. He ran a shaky hand through his thinning hair. “This is crazy,” he objected. “Maybe if you just tell me what you’re looking for?”
Ray saw no reason to keep it secret. “Your cat Fala’s grave. Care to point it out?”
“Over here,” Sara said, beating Yun to the punch. “I think I found it.”
The beam from her flashlight exposed a small ceramic monument, in the shape of a dozing kitten, nestled in one corner of the yard. A small selection of cat toys, including a green plastic ball and a catnip pillow, lay atop a tiny mound of earth.
Despite their somber mission, Ray was oddly moved by the obvious care and affection shown by the memorial. It was a shame they had to disturb it, but evidence was evidence. Too bad Yun allegedly hadn’t shown as much respect for the life of another human being.
“I’ll get the shovel,” he told Sara.
“Shovel?” Yun gasped as he realized what Ray had in mind. “You can’t. That’s obscene!” He started to lunge forward. Ortega’s hand dropped heavily onto Yun’s shoulder, restraining him. Yun could only quiver helplessly, visibly distraught. “I won’t allow it!”
“I’m afraid you don’t have any choice,” Sara stated. “If you look carefully, you’ll see that our warrant entitles us to exhume your cat’s remains.”
“Why are you doing this?” he moaned, his eyes tearing up.
Ray was brutally honest. “We need to know exactly how Fala died.”
27
GETTING A WARRANT to search Debra Lusky’s storage unit proved easy enough. Now that she was a murder victim as well as a suspect, protecting her privacy took a backseat to finding her killer.
“Here we go,” Nick said to Greg as he opened the unit. A pair of industrial-strength bolt cutters took care of the padlock keeping them out. A corrugated steel door rattled up and out of the way, exposing a rectangular vault roughly the size of Nick’s laundry room. Cardboard boxes and sealed plastic bins were piled neatly atop each other in order to take full advantage of the available space, alongside a set of dusty exercise equipment, a ten-speed bike, an artificial Christmas tree, and a peeling wooden rocking chair. No dead bodies, though, which put it up on some of the storage units Nick had probed over the years. The air inside the vault, although stale and stuffy, lacked the sour aroma of decomp.
The beams of their flashlights explored the unlit interior of the unit as they stepped inside. Nick was relieved to see that the vault was only about five by ten. In theory, it wouldn’t take too long to search. Even better, the boxes and bins appeared to be clearly labeled.
“A lot more organized than her office,” Greg observed. “Sure we got the right unit?”
Nick double-checked the number on the invoice. “This is the place. Guess she just wanted to be able to find all of this stuff again, without having to search through every box.”
“Too bad we can’t say the same,” Greg said. “Unless there’s a box conveniently labeled ‘Material Evidence’?”
Nick chuckled. “You wish.”
In truth, the space was small enough that
they didn’t really need two CSIs to conduct a thorough search, but it was always better to have a second person to verify any significant discoveries. An investigator operating alone could be too easily accused of planting evidence by an eager-beaver defense attorney. Two CSIs, on the other hand, meant implying a conspiracy, which was a bit harder for juries to swallow.
Nick swept his flashlight beam over the handwritten labels, scanning them along the way:
“High School.”
“College.”
“Vacation.”
“Author Copies.”
“Quilts.”
“Xmas Ornaments.”
“Z.H.”
Whoa there, he thought. His beam came to a halt on that last label. “Z.H.” he read aloud. “Think that could be short for Zombie Heat?”
“More likely than ‘Zygotic Helixes,’” replied Greg. He turned his own beam on the container in question, which was a brown cardboard box sealed with masking tape. It rested near the front of the storage space, on top of several flat plastic bins labeled “Tax Receipts/Returns.” He walked over and squinted at the carton. “Is it just me, or does this package look newer than some of these other boxes?”
Nick was inclined to agree. The cartons nearer the rear of the unit looked scuffed and battered to various degrees, as though they had been shoved around more than once. There were even traces of dust and cobwebs on the older-looking containers. By contrast, the “Z.H.” box appeared freshly packed. “Wonder how long it’s been sitting here?”
“Not very long,” Greg guessed. “Looks like a recent addition.”
Camera flashes lit up the murky vault as they recorded the box’s location for posterity, before proceeding to investigate its contents. Greg kept his flashlight on the box while Nick sliced open the masking tape with an Exacto knife. He tugged open the top flaps.
Inside was at least a dozen copies of Zombie Heat, “a novelization by Lucia Duske, based on the original screenplay by Roger Park.” The lurid cover was basically just the movie poster, shrunk down to size.
Nick eyed the paperbacks dubiously. “There was a book?”
“Adapted from the original movie, apparently.” Greg helped himself to the top copy. He peered at the byline. “‘Lucia Duske.’ Maybe another pseudonym?”
“Probably,” Nick said. “But why are these tucked away here, and not on display in her office along with her other books?”
“To hide her prior association with Roger Park, just in case we came knocking on her door?” Greg stepped back toward the sunlight outside, the better to peruse the novelization. “Remember that empty gap on her bookshelf? Maybe she got spooked after Catherine and Brass grilled her and decided to bury the evidence?”
Nick nodded. “Makes sense. Guess she was hoping we’d never make the connection between Debra Lusky and ‘Lucia Duske.’”
“And that’s not all,” Greg said. “Look what I just found pressed between the pages of this copy.”
He handed a color photo to Nick, who examined it under the glare of his flashlight. The snapshot showed a smiling Debra, braces and all, posing in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. A lighted marquee advertised the world premiere of Zombie Heat. Debra proudly held up a copy of the novelization for all the world to see.
“Okay, I can see why she’d want to hide this,” Nick said. “Even if she couldn’t bring herself to destroy it.”
“The book is autographed, too,” Greg said. “Want to take a wild guess by whom?”
“Roger Park?”
“Give that man a prize.”
Greg handed the book over to Nick, who checked out the title page for himself. Great job! was scribbled across the page, above Park’s flamboyant signature.
Nick grinned. The circumstantial evidence was piling up faster than Zombie Heat’s box office returns. He inspected the copyright date, which was over three months ago.
“So much for Debra and Roger not meeting until recently,” he concluded. “It’s pretty clear they’ve known each other, and then some, long before they hatched that Shock Treatment stunt together.”
Greg completed the thought for him. “Which means Debra could have told Park all about Jill’s creepy stalker boyfriend . . . and the gun she’d bought to defend herself.”
“Giving them a convenient way to dispose of Matt Novak and his blackmail threats,” Nick said. The pieces were definitely coming together. “Now all we need to do is find that zombie mask.”
Greg stepped back to contemplate the daunting accumulation of junk before them.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get digging.”
28
RAY WAS STARTING to feel like a vet. Or perhaps the manager of a pet cemetery.
The cold remains of Fala the cat were laid out on a table in the prep room outside the morgue. Although this was ordinarily David Phillip’s domain, he had opted to recuse himself from this particular examination; the helpful assistant coroner was allergic to felines.
Even dead ones.
The arid desert climate, and frigid nights, had helped to preserve the specimen at least to a degree. After a week or so in the ground, Fala bore little resemblance to the fluffy, well-groomed pet in Brian Yun’s photo collection. Most of his fur had sloughed off, leaving behind a shriveled, brownish-black carcass. Dry, leathery skin was stretched tightly over the cat’s skeleton. Marbled green veins protruded beneath the hide. Ray suspected that the internal organs had already turned to sludge. Determining the cause of death was going to be difficult, but not impossible. Plastic wrap, lovingly taped around the corpse, had largely protected Fala from the elements and insects. Ray smiled grimly behind a surgical mask. Brian Yun might have cause to regret the care with which he had buried his precious Persian.
Nice of him to gift wrap the evidence for us.
Wintergreen oil, rubbed beneath Ray’s nostrils, counteracted the foul odor emanating from the carcass. He peeled away the last of the hair around Fala’s neck and front legs. According to his research, that was where cats and dogs were most often bitten by agitated snakes. The blackened skin resisted examination, so he deftly removed it to expose the underlying dermis; as was often the case, the inner layer had not decayed as quickly as the outer epidermis. At first, he didn’t see anything, but polarized light exposed a faint, horseshoe-shaped discoloration on the cat’s withered paw. The shape and size of the bruise reminded him of the bite marks he had measured on Rita Segura. He took multiple snapshots of the mark and collected a sample of the mottled dermis. A microtome could later be used to slice the sample into segments thin enough to be mounted on microscope slides. With luck, histology might find signs of tissue damage caused by the venom.
A mental image of cat versus snake played across his mind. Fala scratching Coral’s back with its extended claws, only to squawk in panic as the coral snake’s jaws latched onto his paw. Had Brian Yun come running at the sound of the commotion, or had he returned later to find his beloved pet already dead? Had the snake gotten loose somehow, or had the curious cat somehow managed to get his paw into the snake’s cage?
Ray suspected the latter.
But the bite marks, if that was what they were, were only the icing on the cake. Most of his hopes lay elsewhere, in Fala’s opaque, clouded eyes. He was relieved to see that the frozen eyes were only partially desiccated. It was too late to try to obtain blood or urine from the corpse, but the vitreous humor within the eyes was fairly resistant to putrefaction; it often survived even when the rest of the body was badly decomposed. Using a syringe, he extracted a few cc’s of the clear, thick fluid and transferred it to a sterile tube.
Next stop: toxicology.
Fortunately, they already had an exemplar of the poison in question. All the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer needed to do was match the chemical compounds.
And then, like Poe’s fabled black cat, Fala might expose a criminal.
29
“YOU KNOW WHAT the problem with zombies is?” Catherine asked
. “They don’t stay buried.”
She flung the rubber mask onto the table in front of Roger Park and his lawyer. The producer flinched at the sight of it. The stark decor of the interrogation suite was a far cry from his luxurious trailer, and Park appeared much less at ease in this inhospitable setting. He swallowed hard. “Where did you get that?”
“Debra Lusky’s personal storage unit,” Brass stated. “Carefully wrapped in tissue paper and tucked away in a box of personal memorabilia.” He cracked a wry smile. “Who knew zombies could be so sentimental?”
“Not to mention murderers.” Catherine held the mask up so that Park could get a better look at its worm-eaten features, previously seen in close-up on the infamous zombie sex tape. Park had been confronted with the video footage only moments earlier. “Look familiar?”
The attorney, a silver-haired smoothie named Arthur Chou, placed a restraining hand on his client’s arm. Chou had a reputation for getting Hollywood celebrities out of trouble; he had once managed to get an A-list date rapist acquitted despite a surfeit of DNA evidence. “Don’t answer that.”
Brass ignored the lawyer, keeping Park in his sights. “Maybe we should ask your wife if she recognizes the mask . . . or the woman in the video.”
“No!” Park blurted. “You can’t! She’d ruin me!”
“Quiet,” Chou counseled Park again. He dismissed Brass’s threat with a wave of a well-manicured hand. “I fail to see the relevance of my client’s personal life. I was under the impression this was a murder investigation, not divorce proceedings.”
Catherine was unimpressed by the lawyer’s haughty attitude. “I think your client just did a pretty good job of demonstrating its relevance. Mr. Park’s career would suffer if his wife found out he was cheating on her. That gave him a motive to dispose of Matt Novak—and Debra Lusky.”
“We did our homework,” Brass elaborated. “Seems Tricia Grantley has a controlling interest in the whole Zombie Heat franchise.” He gazed knowingly at Park. “She could kill all your big TV plans if she felt like it.”