Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 18 Page 2

  THE ONLY GOOD thing about being called in the early hours of the morning was ripping through the city sans traffic. Decker zipped through empty streets, dark and misty and occasionally haloed by streetlamps. The freeway was an eerie, endless black road fading into fog. In 1994, the Southland had been pummeled by the Northridge earthquake, a terrifying ninety seconds of doomsday that had brought down buildings and had collapsed the concrete bridges of the freeways. Had the temblor occurred just a few hours later during the morning commute, the casualties would have been tens of thousands instead of under a hundred.

  The Coyote Road off-ramp was blocked by two black-and-whites, nose to nose. Decker displayed the badge around his neck to the police officers, and it took a few minutes for the cars to part to allow him forward. One of the cops directed him to the ranch. It was a straight shot—no turnoffs anywhere—and the packed dirt road seemed to go on for about a mile before the main house came into view. Once it did, it grew like a sea monster surfacing for air. The outdoor lights had been turned on to the max with almost every crevice and crack illuminated, giving the place a theme park appearance.

  The mansion was Spanish villa in style and, in its own blown-up way, harmonious with the surroundings. The final height was three stories of adobe-colored stucco with wood-railed balconies, stained-glass windows, and a red Spanish tiled roof. The structure sat on the rise of a man-made knoll. Beyond the mansion were vast, empty acres and the shadows of the foothills.

  About two hundred yards into the drive, Decker saw a parking lot filled with a half-dozen squad cars, the coroner’s van, a half-dozen TV vans with satellites and antennas, several forensic vans, and another eight unmarked cars, and there was still room to spare. The media had set up shop, with enough artificial illumination to do microsurgery because each network and cable TV station had its own lighting, its own camera and sound people, its own producers, and its own perky reporter waiting for the story. The mob longed to be closer to the hot spot, but a barrier of yellow crime scene tape, cones, and uniformed officers kept them corralled.

  After showing his badge, Decker ducked under the tape and walked the distance to the entrance on foot, passing meticulously barbered mazes of boxwood elms outlining the formal gardens. Inside the shrubbery were different groupings of spring flowers, including but not limited to roses, irises, daffodils, lilies, anemones, dahlias, zinnias, cosmos, and dozens of other types of flora he didn’t recognize. Somewhere close by were gardenias and night-blooming jasmine, infusing death with a sickly sweet fragrance. The flagstone walkway cut through several rows of blooming citrus. Lemon trees, if Decker had to make a guess.

  Two officers were guarding the front door. They recognized Decker and waved him through. The interior lights were also on full blast. The entry hall could have been a ballroom in a Spanish castle. The floor was composed of heavy planks of old, hardened wood—irregular with a patina that no contrived distressing could manufacture. The ceiling soared and was lined with massive beams that had been carved and embellished with petroglyphs, the cave figures looking like something found in the Southwest. The walls were festooned with layers of gilt paneling and held museum-sized tapestries. Decker would have probably kept gawking, enraptured by the sheer size of the place, had he not caught the eye of a uniform who motioned him forward.

  Proceeding down a half-dozen steps, he walked into a living room with double-height ceilings and more painted beams. Same hardwood on the floor, only most of it was covered with dozens of authentic-looking Navajo rugs. More gilt paneling, more tapestries along with enormous art canvases of bloody battles. The room was furnished with mammoth-sized couches, chairs, and tables. Decker was a big guy—six four, 220-plus pounds—but the scale of his surroundings made him feel positively diminutive.

  Someone was talking to him. “This place is bigger than the college I attended.”

  Decker regarded Scott Oliver, one of his crack Homicide detectives. He was in his late fifties and carried his age very well, thanks to good skin and repeated rounds of black hair dye. It was almost four in the morning, yet Oliver had dressed like a CEO at a board meeting: black pin-striped suit, red tie, and a starched and pressed white shirt.

  “It was only community college, but the campus was still pretty big.”

  “Do you know the square footage?”

  “A hundred thousand, give or take.”

  “Man oh man, that is…” Decker stopped talking because words were failing him. Although there was a uniformed officer at each doorway, there were no evidence markers on the floor or on the furniture. No one from CSI was busy dusting or dabbing. “Where’s the crime scene?”

  “The library.”

  “Where’s the library?”

  “Hold on,” Oliver told him. “Let me get my map.”

  TWO

  THE LABYRINTHINE HALLWAYS should have confounded any ordinary burglar’s escape route. Even with printed directions, Oliver made a couple of wrong turns.

  Decker said, “Marge told me there were four bodies.”

  “We are now up to five. The Kaffeys, a maid, and two guards.”

  “Good lord! Signs of a robbery? Anything ransacked?”

  “Nothing so obvious.” They continued down endless foyers.

  “No single perpetrator, that’s for certain. Whoever did this had a plan and a gang of people to carry it out. It had to be an inside job.”

  “Who reported the crime? The injured son?”

  “I don’t know. When we got here, the son was being loaded into the ambulance and was out of it.”

  “Any idea when the shootings occurred?”

  “Nothing definite, but rigor has started.”

  “So between four and twenty-four hours,” Decker said. “Maybe the contents of the stomachs can narrow it down. Who’s out from the morgue?”

  “Two coroner investigators and an assistant coroner. Turn right. The library should be through the double doors ahead.”

  As soon as he walked inside, Decker felt a tinge of vertigo brought on by not only the gargantuan size of the room, but the lack of corners. The library was a rotunda with a domed ceiling of steel and glass. The curved walls were covered by black walnut paneling and bookshelves and floor-to-ceiling tapestries of mythological creatures gamboling in the forests. There was a walk-in fireplace big enough to contain a raging inferno. Antique rugs sat atop the oceanic wooden floor. Lots of furniture: sofas and love seats, tables and chairs, two grand pianos, and lamps too numerous too count.

  The crime scene was a story in two parts. There was action near the fireplace and action in front of a tapestry of a gorgon devouring a young lord.

  Oliver pointed to a spot. “Gilliam Kaffey was sitting in front of the fireplace, reading a book and drinking a glass of wine; Dad and son were having a conversation in those two club chairs over there.”

  His finger was aimed at a grouping of two brown leather, nail-studded chairs where Marge Dunn was working in front of the man-eating gorgon. She was talking animatedly to one of the coroner’s investigators wearing the standard morgue issue: a black jacket with the identifying yellow lettering on back. Dunn saw Decker and Oliver and motioned them forward with a gloved hand. Marge’s hair had grown a little longer in the past few months, probably at the urging of her newest boyfriend, Will Barnes. She had on beige pants, a white shirt, and a dark brown cable-knit sweater. Rubber shoes on her feet. Decker and Oliver made their way over to the crime scene.

  Guy Kaffey was on his back in a pond of blood with a gaping gorge in his chest. Tissue and bone had exploded over the man’s face and limbs and what hadn’t spilled onto the floor was splattered on the better part of the tapestry, giving the hapless lad and his plight unasked-for verity.

  “Let me get you orientated.” Marge reached into her pocket, removed a map, and unfolded it. “This is the house and we are right…here.”

  Decker took out his notepad and glanced around the windowless room. When he commented on it, Marge said, “I was told by the sur
viving maid that the artwork here is very old and sensitive to direct light.”

  “So someone else besides the son survived the attack?” Decker asked.

  “No, she came in and discovered the bodies,” Marge said. “Her name is Ana Mendez. I have her in a room guarded by one of our men.”

  Oliver said, “We also need to interview the groundskeeper and the groomsman. They’re also being guarded by L.A.’s finest.”

  Marge said, “All of them in separate rooms.”

  “The groundskeeper is Paco Albanez—maybe around fifty-five—who’s worked here for about three years.” Oliver checked his notes. “The groomer is Riley Karns. He’s around thirty. I don’t know how long he’s been here.”

  Decker said, “Do you know who called the crime in?”

  Marge said, “We’re sorting that out. The maid said that someone called an off-duty bodyguard and maybe he called 911.”

  “It was the maid who found the surviving son lying on the floor,” Oliver said. “She thought he was dead.”

  “Who is the off-duty bodyguard that she supposedly called?” Decker asked.

  “Piet Kotsky,” Marge told him. “I spoke to him on the phone. He’s coming in from Palm Springs. It works like this…I think. The bodyguards stay on-site only when they’re working. They work in twenty-four-hour shifts, rotating through eight people. There are always two bodyguards in the main house and two men manning the guardhouse located at the entrance gate of the property. Both of those guys are dead. Gunshot wounds to the head and chest. All the camera equipment and closed-circuit TVs are smashed and destroyed.”

  “Names?” Decker asked.

  “Kotsky doesn’t know who was on duty tonight, but he said once he sees them, he can identify them.”

  “What about the two guards in the main house?”

  “They appear to be missing,” Marge said.

  “So two guards missing and two guards murdered.”

  Marge and Oliver nodded.

  “Oliver mentioned a murdered maid?”

  “In the servant’s bedroom downstairs.”

  “And how did Ana Mendez manage to dodge the bullet?”

  “She was off tonight,” Oliver said. “Her story is that she had returned to the ranch around one in the morning.”

  “How’d she get back? No public transportation for miles.”

  “She has a car.”

  “She didn’t notice the lack of guards in the guardhouse?”

  Marge said, “She went around through the back gate at the service entrance. No guards are routinely stationed there. Ana has a gate access card. She gets in, parks her car, and goes into her room. She sees the body and starts screaming for help. At this point, it gets a little muddy. She apparently went upstairs and found the other bodies.”

  “She went upstairs without knowing if there were still people in the house?” Decker asked.

  “I told you, her story’s a little confusing. Once she saw the bodies, she called Kotsky and he reported the crime…I think.”

  “I’ll talk to her again. She’s Spanish speaking?”

  “She is, although her English is pretty good.”

  Decker said, “On to the guards. Do you know who arranges their schedules?”

  Oliver said, “Kotsky makes the assignments but doesn’t arrange them. That’s done by a man named Neptune Brady who is the Kaffeys’ head bodyguard. Brady has his own bungalow on the grounds, but for the past few days, he’s been visiting his sick father in Oakland.”

  “Has anyone contacted him?”

  “Kotsky called him up and told us that Brady chartered a jet and should be here soon.” Marge paused. “We did take a brief peek inside his bungalow just to make sure no one else was dead. I didn’t rifle through his room. We’ll need a warrant to do that.”

  “Let’s put in for one in case Brady’s uncooperative.” Decker looked around the room. “Ideas on how this played out?”

  Oliver said, “Gilliam was sitting in front of the fireplace, sipping wine and reading. Marge and I think that she went down first. She’s still slumped on the couch, her book is a few feet away, covered in blood. See for yourself.”

  Decker walked over to the scene. Sprawled on the couch were the remnants of a beautiful woman. Her blue eyes were open and blank, and her blond hair was matted with caked blood. The woman’s torso had been nearly bisected at the waist by several shotgun blasts. It was sickening, and Decker involuntarily averted his eyes. There were some things he’d never get used to.

  “This is carnage,” he said. “We’ll need lots of photographs because our memories aren’t going to be able to process all of this information.”

  Marge continued, “The disturbance of someone entering the room must have drawn the attention of the father and son. We figured they went down next.”

  Oliver said, “There are two Kaffey sons. The one who was shot was the older one, Gil.”

  “Does he have immediate family who need to be notified?” Decker asked.

  “We’re working on it,” Oliver said. “No one’s called any police station to ask about him.”

  “What about the younger brother?” Decker asked.

  Marge said, “Piet Kotsky told me that the younger son’s name is Grant and he lives in New York. So does Guy’s younger brother, Mace Kaffey.”

  “Who is also in the business,” Oliver pointed out. “Both of them have been notified.”

  “By who? Kotsky? Brady?”

  Marge and Oliver shrugged ignorance.

  “Back to the crime scene,” Decker said. “Any idea what Guy and Gil were doing?”

  Oliver said, “They could have been talking business, but we didn’t find papers.”

  Marge said, “Guy Kaffey probably stood up and saw what was happening to his wife. Then he was blown backward. The son was a little quicker and started running away when the bullets caught him. He went down a few feet away from one of the doors out of here.”

  “And the shooters didn’t bother to check to make sure he was dead?”

  Marge shrugged. “Maybe something distracted the shooters and they fled.”

  Decker said, “We have one, two, three…six doors in the room. So we could have a band of shooters with each one coming in from a different door and overwhelming the couple. Any idea of what could have sent a posse of murderers out of the ranch without finishing off the son?”

  Oliver shrugged. “Maybe an alarm, although we haven’t decoded the system yet. Maybe the maid coming into the house. But she didn’t see anyone leave.”

  Decker thought a moment. “If everyone was drinking and relaxing, it probably wasn’t too late: after dinner but early enough for a nightcap—around ten or eleven.”

  “Around,” Marge said.

  “And the groomer and the groundskeeper,” Decker said, “were they in the house when you arrived?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said that they live here?”

  Oliver said, “In the bungalows on the grounds.”

  “So how did they find out about the murders? Did someone get them or were they awakened by the noise or…”

  The two detectives shrugged.

  “We’re going to be camped out here for a while.” Again, Decker massaged his aching head. “Let’s let CSI, the photographers, and the coroner investigators do their things here in the library. We’ve still got a couple of other crime scenes and witnesses to interview. Where are the other bodies?”

  Marge showed him the area on her map. Decker said, “I could use one of those.”

  Oliver gave his to the boss. “I’ll get another one.”

  “Thanks,” Decker said. “You two take over the other crime scenes, and I’ll talk to the witnesses, especially the Spanish speakers. I’ll see if we can piece together a time frame and a chain of events.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Marge said. “Ana is in this room.” She showed him on the map. “Albanez is here and Karns is here.”

  Decker marked the rooms on the map
. Then he wrote each name on the top of a piece of paper in his notebook. There were a slew of players. He might as well start the scorecard.

  CURLED UP IN a chair, Ana Mendez had just about disappeared. She seemed to be in her late thirties and was diminutive in size—under five feet—with almond skin stretched over a broad forehead and pronounced cheekbones. Her mouth was wide, her eyes round and dark. Her hair had been clipped into a pageboy, giving her face the appearance of someone staring out the window with two black drapes on the side and her short bangs being the valence curtain.

  The maid had been sleeping, but woke up when Decker walked into the room. She rubbed her eyes, swollen from crying and squinting in the bright artificial light. He noticed that her white housekeeper’s uniform was smeared with brown stains and made a mental note to give the clothing to CSI.

  Decker asked her to start from the beginning. This was her story.

  Ana’s day off went from Monday evening to Tuesday evening. Usually she returned to the ranch earlier in the evening, but last night was a special function at her church, including a short midnight prayer service. She left afterward, around 12:30, and drove back to the ranch, arriving around an hour later. The mansion was entirely enclosed with heavy, wrought-iron fencing that had spikes on top, so most of the gates were unguarded. She had a card key for the gate closest to the kitchen. After she entered the premises, she drove to the service lot, parking her car behind the kitchen. She walked down a flight of steps to the service wing and used her bedroom key to get inside the building. When Decker asked about an alarm, she told him that the servants’ quarters was alarmed, but it wasn’t connected to the main house. The mansion had its own security system. This way, the help could go in and out without disturbing the Kaffeys’ safety system.

  Her eyes swelled with tears when she described what she saw in the bedroom. She had turned on the light and there was blood everywhere—on the walls, on the carpet, on the two twin beds. But the worst part was Alicia: she was lying on her back and wasn’t moving. Her face had been shot off. It was horrible. Terrifying. She started screaming.