Preston scowled at Chic's sarcasm, and we slid in on either side. I dropped the documents I'd assembled onto the tabletop.
Preston craned his neck toward the wall of etched glass that set off the kitchen. "I wonder if that Latin guy is our waiter."
"He's got a wedding ring," I said.
"Puh-lease."
"He's eyeing the tits at eleven o'clock."
"Overcompensating."
"Before you start making the love that dare not speak its name, how 'bout we order?"
Chic glanced up uncomfortably from his menu. "Just so you know, I'm not gay or anything."
Preston aimed a withering look at him. "Honey, we wouldn't have you."
When it came time to order, Preston did his best with eye contact and inquiring about house favorites, but the waiter just gathered our menus uneasily and left.
Still unaccustomed to being in public after my media searing, I carefully glanced about. One table over, two guys in suits and another in sweatpants babbled about German financing and festival circuits. Beside them, women either too old or too rich to care if they were overheard discussed estrogen supplements. A harried woman dined with kids who, because of their scowls and designer jeans, were apparently more worldly than she was. Directly across from us, a well-dressed guy hunched over his plate, and then his entire party peeked over at me not as inconspicuously as their manner suggested they'd intended. I shifted uncomfortably.
Chic clued in to the situation first, of course, and smiled at me gently. "This, too, shall pass."
Preston said, "Let's get down to story."
While we ate our upmarket appetizers, I recapped the latest advancements. As usual, I'd stored a Bic pen behind my ear for taking notes, but I mostly doodled.
When I was done, Preston cleared his throat. "Get off the serial-killer kick. They're not so compelling."
"Just because they don't pique your interest doesn't mean we're not dealing with one. We have two bodies with a similar MO."
"As you pointed out to Detective Point-in-Time, there are noteworthy differences."
"Or" sometimes, with Preston, one did best to forge ahead "I could've become the poster boy for a copycat killer, who then elected to frame me."
"Which would mean that you did murder Genevieve."
The baldness of Preston's remark caught me off guard. I felt an almost gravitational pull toward defensiveness, toward denial of both kinds. The shrewdly decorated shrimp plate suddenly looked meaty and unappetizing.
"You can't know," Preston offered. "Not yet."
"Maybe I should take sevoflurane again and find out."
Preston stirred his drink lazily with a straw. "We don't even know for sure that you've taken sevoflurane once, Drew. I don't think we need to be breaking in to medical offices on the slim chance that if you inhale it again, it'll put you back into the September twenty-third part of your brain."
Chic said, "Frame or no frame, fastest way to get to the bottom of this is to figure out the connection between the victims, or between them and you. The boring, unobvious shit you won't be able to uncover."
"Do I hire a private detective?"
Chic shook his head, disappointed as usual, at my inability to get things done correctly. "I know a hacker, database guy. Phone bills, gas bills, airline tickets all that shit. Half of it's online for a price, and the half that ain't… well, let's just say that won't stop him. He tracks down people who skip on alimony."
"Deadbeat dads?"
"Don't be sexist, Drew-Drew. I used him last to find a woman who moved up and out on one of my nephews. He can cross-reference like a muthafucker comin' up with an alibi. Also, we need a list of all the people you've pissed off."
I removed the list I'd been working on, and we batted around a few more names, but I couldn't find any that seemed believable murderers, or even break-in artists. My neurologist, driven mad by the fallout from my noncompliance? Katherine Harriman's old man, disgraced on kielbasa-and-Bulls night, back to administer Chi-town justice? Adeline Bertrand in a ninja suit?
Finally Chic got fed up with my lack of known lethal adversaries and jumped topics. "The second body," he said. "Why rope on the ankles, tape on the wrists?"
"Tape is easier on wrists. Rope can be tricky." Preston averted his eyes, sipped his drink. "You said the cotton rope is a specialty bondage item. We could look into which places stock it around L.A."
"Let the police do the procedural shit," Chic said. "That's what they're good at."
"What are we good at?" I asked.
A long pause. "Not the procedural shit."
"I think the rope's a red herring," I said. "I think he used it to throw investigators off the trail."
The people across from us whispered a bit more, and then finally the well-dressed man stood and headed toward me. Chic said, "Handle it with a smile."
The man approached. "You're Andrew Danner, aren't you? I just wanted to let you know I'm sorry for what you went through. I don't know much about it, but I think you caught a bum break."
"Thanks very much."
We shook hands. Before leaving, he glanced over at Chic. "Nice hands, Bales, ya donkey."
He returned to his table. Preston and I got busy eating to hide our smiles as Chic nodded, egging us on. Our main courses arrived, and, my humor and appetite back, I took a few moments to indulge in my agnolotti with mascarpone. When I looked up, Chic was studying the crime-scene photos. The top one, presumably the first taken, showed Kasey Broach in peaceful repose. With no sign yet of cop or criminalist intrusion, her body seemed dropped into the composition by an ambitious graphic designer. Her bare flesh and the white film of bird shit on the hood of the abandoned car were the only smears of light in the dark scene.
Chic said, "Where'd you get these?"
I'd neglected to mention them when he'd picked me up from Parker. I told him I stole them from the interrogation room.
He whistled his admiration, then turned one print sideways, appraising the graffiti artist's terminated composition on the ramp's underbelly. "That's some serious spray work."
Preston said, "Let's focus on the body."
Chic slid a second photo out from the sheaf, this one showing a number of officers standing around or squatting by the chain-link. A hexagon outlined with police tape now staked off the corpse. Feathers dusted the spray-painted concrete, stuck to the ramp. The camera flash had brought out the glitter of shattered beer bottles.
"Lookie here," Chic said. "Our first real lead."
Preston, peering over Chic's shoulder, shrugged.
"It tells a story, Story Man, you just ain't reading it."
I seized the photo and scrutinized it. "I don't see it."
Chic slid out from the booth, bringing me with him. "Then lemme show you."
Chapter 15
There was no chalk outline, no bloodstain, no sad tendrils of crime-scene tape to commemorate the body that had been here less than seventy-two hours before. Just the crumbling asphalt, the beat-down coupe, and me and Chic. Vehicles hummed overhead. The ground smelled of urine and beer. The sun was in its descent, and Rampart was no place to get caught after dark. Chic spread his arms wide.
"Wah-lah."
"Wah-lah what?"
Chic pointed at the cloud of elaborate spray paint brightening the bottom of the freeway ramp. The artist had stretched the proportion of the piece to fit the rising concrete so that when viewed straight on it looked as if it were in normal perspective. Even so, I wasn't sure what it was. Explosions and protuberances and bubble letters, all impressively three-dimensionalized. The piece had been left unfinished, the right half fading off into gray concrete. Feathers stuck to the lower fringe, dried into the paint.