Billy had been attached to Peaty. And Billy had a temper.
Was he too dull to realize the implication of a relationship with ReynoldPeaty? Or was there no implication?
One thing was likely: The janitor’s visits had been more than dropping offlost articles.
As I drove Sixth Streettoward its terminus at San Vicente, I considered Billy’s reaction. Shock,anger, desire for vengeance.
Another sib defying Brad.
A child’s impulsiveness together with a grown man’s hormones could be adangerous combination. As Milo had pointedout, Billy had begun living on his own right around the time of Tori Giacomo’smurder and the Gaidelases’ disappearance.
Perfect opportunity for Billy and Peaty to take their friendship to a newlevel? If the two of them had become a murder team, Peaty was certain to havebeen the dominant one.
Some leadership. An outwardly creepy alcoholic voyeur and a dullard man-boydidn’t add up to the kind of planning and care that had stripped Michaela’sdumpsite of forensic detail, concealed Tori Giacomo’s body long enough toreduce it to scattered bones.
Then there was the matter of the whispering phone call from Ventura County. No way Billy could’ve pulledthat off.
Iago-prompt, courtesy of the phone lines. It had worked.
I’d hypothesized about a cruel side to the Gaidelases but there was anotherpair of performance buffs worth considering.
Nora Dowd was an eccentric dilettante and a failure as an actress, but she’dbeen skillful enough to fool her brother about breaking off with Dylan Meserve.Toss in a young lover with a penchant for rough sex and mind games and itcooked up interesting.
Maybe Brad had found no sign of struggle in Nora’s house because there’dbeen none. Travel brochures in a nightstand drawer and missing clothes plusDylan Meserve’s skip on his rent weeks ago said a long-planned trip. AlbertBeamish hadn’t seen anyone living with Nora but someone entering and exitingthe house after dark would have escaped his notice.
A woman who thought private flying was a nifty idea.
Her passport hadn’t been used recently and Meserve had never applied forone. But he’d grown up on the streets of New York, could’ve known how to obtain fake paper.Getting through passport control at LAX might be a challenge. But jetting from Santa Monica to a landingstrip in some south-of-the-border village with payoff cash would be anotherstory.
Brochures in a drawer, no real attempt to conceal. Because Nora wasconfident no one would broach her privacy?
When I stopped for a red light at Melrose,I took a closer look at the resorts she’d researched.
Pretty places in South America. Maybe formore than the climate.
 
I drove home as fast as Sunset would allow, barely took the time to look forHauser’s brown Audi. Moments after logging on to the Internet I learned that Belize, Brazil,and Ecuador all hadextradition treaties with the U.S.and that nearly all the countries without treaties were in Africa and Asia.
Hiding out in Rwanda, Burkina Faso, or Ugandawouldn’t be much fun, and I couldn’t see Nora taking well to the femininecouture of Saudi Arabia.
I studied the brochures again. Each resort was in a remote jungle area.
To be extradited you had to be found.
I pictured the scene: May-December couple checks into a luxury suite, enjoysthe beach, the bar, the pool. Nighttime’s the right time for al frescocandlelight dinners, maybe a couple’s massage. Long, hot, incandescent daysallow plenty of time to search for a leafy suburb hospitable to affluentforeigners.
Nazi war criminals had hidden for decades in Latin America, living like nobility. Why not a couple of low-profilethrill killers?
Still, if Nora and Dylan had escaped for the long run, why leave brochuresanywhere to be discovered?
Unless the packets were a misdirect.
I looked up jet leasing, air charter, and time-share companies in Southern California, compiled a surprisingly long list,spent the next two hours claiming to be Bradley Dowd experiencing a “familyemergency” and in dire need of finding his sister and his nephew, Dylan. Lotsof turndowns and the few outfits who checked their passenger logs had nolisting of Nora or Meserve. Which proved nothing if the couple had assumed newidentities.
For Milo to get subpoenas of the records,he’d need evidence of criminal behavior and all Dowd and Meserve had done wasdisappear.
Unless Dylan’s misdemeanor conviction could be used against him.
Milo would be tied up right now with“boring police stuff.” I called him anyway and described Billy Dowd’s behavior.
He said, “Interesting. Just got Michaela’s full autopsy results. Alsointeresting.”
 
We met at nine p.m., at a pizza joint on Colorado Boulevard in the heart of Pasadena’s Old Town. Hipsters and youngbusiness types feasted on thin crust and pitchers of beer.
Milo had been scoping out BNB buildings inthe eastern suburbs for evidence of Peaty’s unofficial storage, asked if Icould meet him. When I left the house at eight fifteen, the phone rang but Iignored it.
When I arrived, he was at a front booth, apart from the action, working onan eighteen-inch disk crusted with unidentifiable foodstuffs, his own pitcherhalf full and frosted. He’d doodled a happy face on the glass. The features hadmelted to something morose and psychiatrically promising.
Before I could sit, he hoisted his battered attaché case, took out acoroner’s file, and placed it across his lap. “When you’re ready. Don’t ruinyour dinner.” Munch munch.
“I ate already.”
“Not very social of you.” He massaged the pitcher, erased the face. “Wannaglass?”
I said, “No, thanks,” but he went and got one anyway, left the file on hischair.
At the front were routine forms signed by Deputy Coroner A.C. Yee, M.D. Inthe photos what had once been Michaela Brand was a department-store manikintaken apart in stages. See enough autopsy shots and you learn to reduce thehuman body to its components, try to forget it’s ever been divine. Think toomuch and you never sleep.
Milo returned and poured me a beer. “Shedied of strangulation and all the cuts were postmortem. What’s interesting areNumbers Six and Twelve.”
Six was a close-up of the right side of the neck. The wound was an inch orso long, slightly puffed at the center, as if something had been inserted inthe slot and left there long enough to create a small pouch. The coroner hadcircled the lesion and written a reference number above the ruler segment usedfor scale. I paged to the summary, found the notation.
Postmortem incision, superior border of the sternoclavicular notch, evidenceof tissue-spreading and surface exploration of the right jugular vein.
Twelve was a front view of a smooth, full-breasted female chest. Michaela’simplants spread as if deflated.
Dr. Yee had pointed to the spots where they’d been stitched up and noted,“Good healing.” In the smooth plain between the mounds were five small wounds.No pouching. Yee’s measurements made them shallow, a coup............