"Professor, what was your disagreement with Boone?"
"Dr. Boone estimated time of death as sometime on the seventh, but my research establishes that time of death occurred no later than the fifth."
"So how does that discrepancy affect Boone's findings? How does that prove that Walsh didn't drown, that he was murdered?"
Zarinski looked confused. "It doesn't prove anything of the kind."
"You said you and Boone disagreed-"
"Not over cause of death. Cause of death isn't my area of expertise." Flies hovered around Zarinski, but he ignored them. "Postmortem interval is my subspecialty. Time of death. Boone's estimate was wrong by at least forty-eight hours."
"What about Boone's conclusion that Walsh had drowned?"
"I don't speculate outside my area of expertise."
Jimmy stared at the rotting pig bobbing in the koi pond. Zarinski might not speculate outside his expertise, but Katz did. Speculating was her job, and it was Jimmy's too. She must have figured that if Boone fucked up the time of death, he might have been wrong about the cause of death too. He looked over at the professor. "Your time-of-death theory must have impressed Katz. That's why she got into an argument with Boone last week, wasn't it?"
"Detective Katz is a fierce advocate of the scientific method. Dr. Boone kept backing up until he tripped over a chair." Zarinski peeled off his surgical gloves with a snap. "I believe the argument also had something to do with you. Detective Katz kept mentioning your name. She's quite fond of you."
"Yeah, I could tell by the way she almost broke my face."
"Aggressive action on the part of the female is quite common before mating."
"If you're a praying mantis maybe, but-"
"Female behavior is remarkably consistent across the phyla," Zarinski said idly, scooping a black beetle out of the koi pond.
"Jimmy?" called Rollo, coming up behind him. "Whoa, dude. What's that in the pool?"
Jimmy's phone rang.
"Is this Jimmy Gage?"
"Hi, who's this?" Jimmy watched Rollo filming the floating pig.
"Carmen. We met at the Healthy Life Cafe."
Jimmy heard her cough and imagined the henna redhead with a cigarette propped in the corner of her mouth. "Hey, Carmen, how are you?" He tried to contain his excitement. "Did you find that Christmas card from Stephanie?"
"You sure you're not a bill collector?"
"Cross my heart."
"Well, you got a nice face." Carmen hacked into the receiver. "Went through ten shoeboxes full of cards and magazine clippings before I found it. Stephanie's address is right there on the back, just like I remembered. Three years ago and it seems like yesterday. Makes you realize how time flies." She cleared her throat. "I'm thinking of starting some decoupage projects next weekend, getting right on it, no more excuses. You think if I decorated a lampshade for you that you'd use it?" "At our first interview, you said you saw Garrett Walsh. Now you're not sure?"
"The person I saw was quite some distance away." The realtor rooted in her purse. "I-I was showing the view from the second-floor bedroom when I saw him at the far edge of the property. I just assumed it was Mr. Walsh. I never saw anyone else there."
"You assumed it was him." Katz wasn't really annoyed-she was pleased. The realtor's assumption fit in with Zarinski's theory. She would never have thought to contact the professor if it hadn't been for Jimmy's doubts about Boone, so score one for the reporter. She didn't understand half of what Zarinski was talking about-all she knew was that the professor said that Walsh had died at least two days before Boone did. There was a problem with that. Her initial interview with the realtor had merely corroborated Boone's findings-she had seen Walsh on the afternoon of the seventh, the same day that Boone pegged his time of death. According to Zarinski, however, Walsh had already been dead two days when the realtor spotted him.
If Zarinski was right, the realtor had seen someone on the property that day, but it wasn't Walsh. It wouldn't have been Harlen Shafer either-that two-bit ex-con would have been gone as soon as he realized Walsh was dead. It wouldn't have been kids-they would have trashed the place then, not later. No, the realtor had seen someone else strolling the grounds, someone who had unfettered access to the trailer, someone who had plenty of time to look for the screenplay and notes that Jimmy was so interested in.
"Detective?" The realtor tapped her foot on the hardwood floor. "Are we finished?"
Katz slammed the door on the way out.
Chapter 39
The street sign at the intersection had been knocked down and lay half in the street. Jimmy got out of his car, walked over, and checked the sign. The broken stump gave no indication which of the streets was N.E. 47th Court; he got back into his car and picked one, checking addresses on the houses as he drove slowly past. Heat waves rose from the pavement, blurring the numbers.
Jimmy glanced at the Christmas card tucked above the car's visor. He saw a tired woman in a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sweater and a little girl dressed as an elf standing beside a blue Christmas tree.
Victorville was a small windblown town on the edge of the Mojave Desert-about ten years ago it had been touted as a bedroom community for L.A. and Orange County, the two-hour commute a trade-off for clean air and affordable housing. The town had boomed for a while, tripling in population as housing developments with names like Desert Rose, Sunset Estates, and Tumbleweed Valhalla were thrown up as fast as nonunion carpenters could work. The recession changed everything. When business soured, Victorville's eager commuters were the first fired, their hours cut or outsourced to Mexico. The new housing developments were ghost towns now, whole blocks foreclosed and abandoned, the yards reverting to sand and weeds.
Jimmy peered through the windshield, checking numbers, when a bee bumped against the glass. He thought of Saul Zarinski and his flesh flies and beetles at the koi pond. To the entomologist, the overlapping life cycles of the insects that had made a condominium of Garrett Walsh's corpse were a marvel of precision. Jimmy was impressed with the man's research, but bugs still creeped him out. He glanced at his files on the floor of the Saab, notes to himself strewn across the seat, with Zarinski's postmortem timeline highlighted in yellow. There was something there, something nagging at him. Right now, though, he wanted to talk with Stephanie Panagopolis.
Jimmy slowed. The blue rambler across the street had a Barney pup tent on the dry lawn, the bright purple fabric flapping in the constant wind. It was the only sign of children he had seen since he got off the freeway. The address on the house matched the Christmas card.
The doorbell rang the theme from Zorba the Greek.
The woman who answered the door looked like the one on the Christmas card, wearing jeans and an untucked white blouse instead of a reindeer sweater. She was even more tired-looking now than in her photo, her skin sallow, her dark hair dry and flyaway. She peered out at him from the far side of the security chain. "Can I help you?"
"Mrs. Panagopolis, my name is Jimmy Gage. I'm a reporter." Jimmy showed her his photo ID from SLAP. "I'd like to talk with you for a few minutes, if it's all right."
"I see. Well, I'm busy now. Maybe you could come back-"
"I need to talk to you about April McCoy."
She nodded. "Of course you do." She didn't move.
"I've come a long way to see you." Jimmy waited while she slowly slid the chain off the door, then followed her into the small living room. "Were you expecting me?"