We followed her out of the big room and up the stairs.
When she got to the landing, she said, “First off, the prints. It’s a mess, there are tons of latents, which isn’t surprising considering it’s a john. Don’t imagine you have a list of candidates for comparison-elimination.”
“If I need one,” said Milo, “I’ll recontact everyone who used those upstairs rooms. What I’m hoping is you’ll find something that links to AFIS and we go after a nice convenient criminal.”
“Wouldn’t that be great,” said Cho. “I’ll do my best to lift everything but there’s all sorts of overlays and smudges. Top of that, the analysis will be crazy. Lab’s going to love you, Lieutenant. Even with scanning, it’s going to take time. Now the main thing. I found what looks like a needle puncture on her.”
“C.I.’s didn’t say anything about that.”
Cho shrugged. “Everyone misses stuff. Once I found it I looked for others. There aren’t any on the rest of her unclothed skin, and this doesn’t look self-administered. Unless you’ve heard of people shooting up back here.”
Hooking her arm back, she pressed a spot at the base of her own skull.
Milo said, “Needle in the head?”
“Right where the spine enters the foramen magnum—that’s a little passageway back here. I found it by accident, shifting her around so I could get prints from the walls of the cubicle. I was holding on to her shoulders trying to ease her down but my hand slipped and I reached out, got hold of her neck, and felt a bump. She’s got thick hair, you wouldn’t see it unless you parted the strands. Once they do a full autopsy at the crypt and shave her, it will be obvious. I just thought you’d want to know as soon as possible.”
“Definitely, appreciate it, Peggy.”
I said, “A bump could mean a fresh puncture. Incapacitated before she was strangled.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Cho. “Because you know how long it takes to choke someone out, and especially with a wire cutting through flesh you’d expect to see signs of a struggle—lacerations on her hands as she fought to get loose. But there are none. I didn’t even pick up any dirt under her nails, let alone skin.”
Milo said, “Needle in the back of the neck. You ever seen that before, Peggy?”
“First time for everything.”
He cracked a couple of bulky knuckles. “Killer dopes her, then takes time strangling her…show me.”
CHAPTER
5
Two burly morgue drivers waited in the hallway facing the bathroom. One played with his phone, the other raised his eyebrows. “We good to go?”
Milo said, “Not yet,” and followed Peggy Cho into the cramped fetid space. The body was prone on the floor.
Cho said, “Let me turn her.”
“Want help?”
“No, I’m fine.” She rotated the head gently, deftly parted the woman’s dark mane, and revealed a bright-red dot on the nape of a long, graceful neck.
If the injection had pierced the spinal cord, the result would’ve been blindingly painful. A high-voltage shock.
I said, “No struggle says whatever she was injected with put her out quickly.”
Cho said, “Maybe a fast-acting paralytic.”
“Or a fast-acting opioid. Fentanyl comes to mind.”
“You know, that makes sense,” said Cho. “A proper dosage for pain can take only minutes, right? Squeeze in more and we could be talking seconds.”
I said, “Margin of error’s not that great. It could also be fatal.”
“Oh, yeah, we’re seeing tons of O.D.’s.”
Milo said, “This shot probably wasn’t fatal, at least not immediately.” He pointed. “Look at all the blood around the ligature wound.”
Cho said, “You’re probably right and I don’t want to be annoying, but that could be postmortem seepage. The things I’ve seen on the job, anything’s possible.”
Milo thanked her and we headed for the stairs.
The driver with the aerial eyebrows said, “We good now?”
* * *
—
Back on the ground floor, Milo said, “Fentanyl or something like it. The shit’s all over the place, the Chinese are churning it out sending it to Mexico and the cartels are competing with Big Pharma. But there are still legit uses. Rick’s aunt was on patches for chronic pain when she was dying. Wonder if Doctors Stu and Marilee find it useful in family practice.” He blinked. “Wonder if there are veterinary applications.”
I palmed my phone, ran a search. “There are, same as for people. Chronic, intractable pain, surgical paralysis when appropriate.”
“So I keep the Burdettes on the table. Okay, let’s do the little sister and Ms. Leanza. After we see how Sean’s doing with the staff.”
* * *
—
Binchy was holding the attention of a table of people. Doing a little dance-step, gesticulating with both hands, adopting an air-guitar stance, keeping up a smiling patter.
When he saw us, he stopped abruptly. But I’d caught the tail end of his lecture.
“For my money, Rancid still rates as classic.”
Mining the riches of his ska-punk former life.
Milo drew him aside. “Anything iffy from any of them?”
“No tells that I picked up, Loot. Just the opposite, they’re coming across salt-of-the-earth.”
“Music fans.”
Binchy colored around his freckles. “That, too, but that’s not why I’m saying—”
Milo slapped his back. “Rock on, kid, just giving you a hard time. Got all their DMV data?”
“You bet.” He showed Milo a piece of paper, neatly hand-printed. “Surprisingly, every license is current but I haven’t had time to run any of them through—”
“We’ll do that later, Sean. Now I’m gonna meet your campers and go over what you did. No one blurts out a spontaneous, heartfelt confession, they’re free to go. Meanwhile, you go out back and collect all the auto data from the uniforms. Nothing iffy, you can head back to the office, leave all the info on my desk, and go home.”
“You’re sure, Loot?”
“Couldn’t be surer, you deserve some free time,” said Milo.
“I’m really okay, Loot.”
“Go, Detective. Hearth, home, wife, adorable offspring—oh, yeah, pull out the Fender bass, do a Rancid ditty, show it on YouTube—just kidding, Sean.”
* * *
—
The servers, bartenders, and janitors were Hispanic, except for the cocktail waitresses who were blond women around the same age as the bride. The deejay, a gaunt man in his twenties named Des Silver, wore a black velvet suit and a green porkpie hat. The photographer, a pudgy, patchily bearded young man in his twenties named Bradley Tomashev, wore an ill-fitting gray suit over a white T-shirt and cradled a Nikon.
No one unnecessarily avoiding eye contact or playing ocular pinball, no shaking legs, clenching and unclenching of fists, profuse sweating, tics, or other displays of undue anxiety.
That was just a spot evaluation and far from foolproof because psychopaths are better than most at staying calm under pressure and the more psychopathic, the colder their nervous systems. But you can’t hold on to people without evidence and with the crime feeling personal, the chance of a woman dolling up to attend a party where her significant other was on the job seemed remote.
Milo let everyone go, except the photographer.
* * *
—
Bradley Tomashev said, “If Brears is okay with it, yeah I can send you the file once I put it together. It’s going to take time, though. There’s tons of images.”
Milo said, “What we’re most interested in are crowd shots. Coming, going, and during.”
“Oh,” said Tomashev. “There are some but not a lot, Brears didn’t want that.”
“What did she want?”
Tomashev shifted in his chair. “Brears is my friend and she’s the bride.”
“Same question, Bradley.”
Tomashev sighed. “Don’t tell her I told you, okay? I don’t want to step in anything.”
Milo crossed his heart.
“What she wanted was basically herself. Along with a little of the normal stuff. Like the procession, the vows back at the church.”
“But otherwise, her.”
“She’s the bride, so whatever,” said Tomashev.