A Deadly Kind of Love Page 3

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning somebody big and important and good at snooping is maybe involved, and we should be careful what we say and where we say it.”

  “Well, you know me, I always am.”

  Tom started to make a reply. Stanley had a genuine talent for getting into trouble. But he thought better of mentioning it, and focused instead on following the directions Sandy had given them.

  THE COUNTY morgue was in the City of Riverside, west of Palm Springs, which meant backtracking for about an hour, down the same interstate they had driven in on. Sandy’s directions were precise. They found the building easily enough, and the forensic examiner, Doctor Murphy.

  The doctor was waiting for them when they arrived at the morgue. He turned out to be a tall, spare man with thick glasses and a funny tic that pulled the corner of his mouth awry every few seconds, as if he were about to spit something out of it. Stanley kept waiting for a stream of tobacco juice to erupt, or Ma Kettle to appear around a corner.

  “You’re the pair from San Francisco,” he said, and when Tom nodded, he glanced at Stanley and said, “I figured.” Neither his tone nor the look he gave them could be regarded as friendly. “Well, I was asked to let you have a look-see, and I was just getting ready to start the autopsy. Either of you likely to upchuck or faint, anything of that nature? It makes things awkward when people do that.”

  “We’ve seen it before,” Tom said.

  Murphy looked at Stanley, who only nodded.

  “Well, then.” The doctor led them along a corridor to a white-walled room, cooler than the rest of the building and with the sharp odor of disinfectant. He gave them both masks and gowns as they came in. A sheet-covered body lay on a stainless steel table, and when Tom and Stanley had donned the necessary gear, Murphy tugged the sheet off and threw it into a large hamper nearby.

  The naked body of a young blond man lay exposed on the metal surface. His eyes were closed, his mouth open, as if he were gasping for air. Except for the coloration, already graying, he might have been asleep.

  “Hell, he’s just a kid,” Tom said.

  “Eighteen, I’d say, or nineteen,” Murphy agreed.

  “Pretty,” Stanley said.

  “If you’re the sort to call boys pretty,” Murphy said in a frosty voice. He looked like he was about to spit.

  “What do you estimate for time of death?” Tom asked before the two of them could start sparring. “The body was discovered about four in the morning, as I understand it. In a room at the Winter Beach Inn.”

  Murphy nodded. “Yes, and the corpse was already cold at the time it was found. So I’d say he died between midnight and three. I’ll know more exactly when I’ve finished my exam.”

  “Detective Hammond said the victim had been bitten by a snake.”

  Doctor Murphy hesitated slightly. “That appears to be the case,” he said in a cautious tone. “He’s got puncture wounds, and the initial blood work shows Mojave toxin. That would suggest he was bitten by a green Mojave. Rattlesnake. Crotalus Scutulatus, to be precise.”

  “And that’s pretty lethal stuff, right?”

  “Mojave toxin?” Murphy nodded emphatically. “About thirty times more deadly than other rattlesnake venom, as a matter of fact.”

  “Hammond told us it’s an aggressive snake,” Tom said.

  “Very aggressive. Most rattlers, you come along the trail where they’re sunning themselves, they’re as anxious to avoid you as you are to avoid them. If you don’t, say, step on one, they’ll try to leave, get out of your way. But the Green will stay and defend his turf. Come right at you, even. They’re pretty ornery.”

  “How fast does the venom act?”

  “Now, that’s an odd thing, not as fast as other snake venoms. It’s a neurotoxin. There’s little pain with the initial bite, and the serious effects don’t kick in for a while. It starts with difficulty breathing, and after that, it gets progressively worse. Then worse still, and at that stage things deteriorate fast.”

  “But if it doesn’t happen right off the bat,” Tom said, “and if someone gets bitten, they would have time to get help?”

  “Yes, most likely. It varies, depends on the snake and where you get bitten. But most likely you would have enough time, anyway. There’s a good antivenin for it too—CroFab—if the victim gets it in time, generally within an hour even, though as I say, that can vary. Most of the hospitals around here keep it on hand or can get it quickly, for obvious reasons.”

  “On the other hand, let’s say the victim didn’t know he had this venom in him, getting ready to take him down…?”

  The doctor thought, shook his head. “But you would know, wouldn’t you? If a snake bit you? It’s not a painful bite, as I said, not at first, but, well, these aren’t little snakes. The Mojave is big and mean and ugly. If one of them came at you, you couldn’t not see him. You’d know what was happening. If it was me, I’d be doing my damnedest to get out of his way. So, sure, you’d know, I’d think.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Anything else show up in the toxicology?”

  The coroner gave him a reluctant smile. “You’re pretty sharp, aren’t you?”

  “I worked a lot of homicides in the past. One thing I learned, there’s always surprises waiting for you, especially at this stage of the game. So, what else did you find?”

  “He had a trace of flunitrazepam in him,” Murphy said, then qualified that. “At least it looks like he did.”

  “Roofies,” Stanley said. “What do you mean, looks like?”

  “If you’re familiar with the drug, you know that the usual screening for flunitrazepam is in the urine. Obviously we didn’t get to do that. And it’s volatile. It degrades quickly. So, all I can tell you at this stage is that a trace of it showed up in the initial toxicology report. But if we retested the blood, it likely wouldn’t show at all now. That’s why we try to do an initial toxicology screen as quick as we can.”

  “So maybe a date rape thing,” Tom said.

  “If you accept that boys get raped.”

  “They do,” Stanley said.

  “Maybe.” The doctor sounded unconvinced. “It’s hard to say what it means in this case anyway. It’s not unusual for folks to take it for recreational purposes, from what I hear. And this kid looks a little loosey-goosey to me. There’s no way to know if he ingested it voluntarily or someone slipped it to him in a drink, trying to get into his pants. At this point, that’s all just conjecture. What I am prepared to say, and I expect my autopsy will confirm it, is that it was the snake venom that killed him, not the so-called roofies.”

  Tom looked down at the body on the table, his eyes going slowly up and down, studying carefully. “So where did the snake bite him?” he asked. “I heard the original officers saw the wound.”

  The coroner pointed wordlessly to the left hand. There were two puncture marks visible on the upper surface, close to the wrist. He looked blank-faced at Tom. Tom felt as if he were being tested. He leaned closer and peered intently at the marks on the hand.

  “Funny snake,” he said, straightening.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “All the venom, or most of it anyway, came from one fang. This one”—Tom pointed at one of the wounds—“is all red and swollen, typical of snake bite, but the other one is hardly swollen at all. And looking up close at them, they don’t really look like fang marks, seems to me.”

  “Which leads you to think…?”

  “It looks more to me as if he was injected with a syringe. He got the venom, or most of it, in the first wound, the one on the left.”

  “And how do you imagine this happening?”

  “Well, let’s say the victim ingested roofies—of his own volition or someone else’s doing. Either way, he’s semiconscious, maybe out cold. Easy enough for someone to inject him with a syringe. And when the venom starts to take hold, say half an hour later or something like that, the perp gives him a second stab with the needle, spaces it just so, fo
r cosmetic purposes, to make it look like a snake got him. At a glance, that’s what you’d think you saw. Or maybe he even did both wounds at the same time, but either way he didn’t reload the syringe. This one is just a hole. Maybe a little venom still in the syringe, but way less than what he got the first time. Right place for the puncture, but I never heard of a snake loading up one fang more than the other.”

  The doctor smiled and nodded in reluctant approval. “I hadn’t either. I had the same idea.”

  “So we’re talking murder.”

  “It’s one way of looking at it. I’m not entirely convinced the punctures are from a syringe and not a snake, but the autopsy should tell us. You’re right, though, the venom pattern isn’t right. It would be a very peculiar reptile.” He paused and drew his shoulders back, did that about-to-spit thing with the corner of his mouth. “Bear in mind, though, this happened in Palm Springs. Lot of hinky stuff there. A lot of queer folks. A queer snake wouldn’t surprise me.” He gave Stanley a meaningful glance.

  “And I take it that would make you uncomfortable?” Stanley asked in a cool voice. “A queer snake.”

  “Let’s say I’m more comfortable with things following their rightful natures. As it says in the good book, ‘Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things, are worthy of death.’ That’s Romans, 1.32.”

  Stanley replied, “‘The soul of Jonathon was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathon loved him as his own soul.’ 1 Samuel, 18.1.”

  “That doesn’t mean they were queer,” the doctor said, his eyes frosty.

  “No, it means they loved one another,” Tom said. “Come on, Stanley, let’s get some fresh air.”

  “I’m about to start cutting,” Murphy said. “You want to stay and watch the show?”

  “No,” Tom said, shedding the gown and the mask. “We’ve seen enough.”

  Chapter Five

  “TURN HERE,” Stanley said, consulting his map. They were back in Palm Springs and looking for the Winter Beach Inn. The growing evening traffic had added half an hour to the drive time back from Riverside. It was daytime still, but the sunlight was fading, shadows spilling down the distant mountains, the air cooling noticeably.

  A wide boulevard wound graciously past what looked like some very expensive real estate, turned in a wide arc, and brought them to oversized wrought-iron gates. The gates were closed. Tom gave an intercom their names, and the gates swung inward. He drove in, past a small structure the size of a woodshed. They had a glimpse of a uniformed guard inside it, watching their progress. Stanley waggled his fingers, with no response.

  “Lots of security,” Tom said, following the drive up to a pale pink villa that sat on a slight knoll. Considering its reputation for swank, the Winter Beach Inn looked almost spartan from outside. They came to another set of gates before they got there, but these swung open for them as they approached, probably controlled from the same security office.

  If the hotel itself was plain, however, the grounds they now passed gave it the look of a mega resort and not just another Palm Springs gay motel. Pink walls high enough to guarantee privacy surrounded what appeared to be several acres of perfectly groomed, even fanciful, landscaping. Jacaranda and bougainvillea provided splashes of red and magenta, and what looked to be an authentic stream, but surely was not, cascaded over a shallow waterfall and meandered among the flowers until it formed a small lake. The sand surrounding it might well have been an oceanfront beach, as the hotel’s name implied—at least a lakefront beach, if you accepted the concept of a small lake. Of course, artificial beach or no beach, this was still the desert, as it might have been designed for Disneyland.

  The parking area in front of the hotel was mostly filled with an array of high-end automobiles. Lots of Mercedes and Jaguars, no fewer than two Rolls Royces, a Bentley, and a lone Cadillac, sitting embarrassed off by itself at a far end.

  Tom parked his Dodge truck in the welcome shade of a portico, and they got out. Wide steps led up to etched glass doors that gave crystalline glimpses of a lobby beyond, but on an impulse, Stanley led the way instead along a curving walkway—yellow brick, he noted with a smile; Judy would have approved—around to the side of the building, following the sounds of splashing water and a babble of laughing, masculine voices.

  Still another metal gate blocked the view of the pool area, but it was unlocked and swung open when Stanley pushed at it, revealing a large patio area with a turquoise-watered swimming pool.

  “Jesus,” Tom said, “that pool is larger than our entire apartment.”

  “Yes, but not by much,” Stanley said.

  A crowd of men—not a woman in sight—lounged about on the patio where dinky tables shaded by lavender umbrellas held cocktail glasses, many of them gaily decorated with their own umbrellas in a rainbow of colors. More scarlet bougainvillea cascaded down one wall, and cacti bloomed suspiciously in enormous earthen pots scattered here and there.

  One naked young man swam the length of the pool energetically, a butterfly stroke, his water-polished buttocks rising and falling from the water with each stroke. A dozen other young men, most of them splendid to behold, stood in the shallow end or sat on the tiled edge, watching his progress with keen interest, one or two of them cheering him on. Stately palm trees behind the pink wall craned their necks to ogle the well-muscled bodies about the pool.

  The bodies at the tables, many of them, were considerably less well muscled, however. The men crowding the patio seemed to divide into two distinct ranks—young and admired, or older and admiring.

  “Looks pretty posh,” Tom said.

  “The poshest, I hear,” Stanley agreed.

  One or two men turned their heads, appraising them frankly. As usual, Tom lit fires in several eyes. Stanley let the gate swing shut with a faint clang, and they started back toward the front of the building.

  “A thousand a night to start, I’m told. And up. A lot of up, apparently.”

  “A thousand a night?” Tom was astonished. “Uh, Stanley, are we going to be staying here?”

  “Of course. This is where Chris is. This is where the body was found. Where else would we want to be? Plus, I’ve heard nothing but wonderful things about this place. Why? Are you uncomfortable because it’s a gay resort?”

  “No,” Tom said, drawing it out in such a way that it was clear he was. “But a thou a night? The last number I remember from our checking account, we can afford to stay until”—he glanced at his wristwatch—“six fifteen, which is about an hour from now.”

  “Well, silly, of course we couldn’t afford it if we were paying,” Stanley said with a deprecating laugh.

  “Aren’t we?”

  Stanley paused and looked at him. “Let us sincerely hope not. Wayne said he’d arrange it.”

  “Wayne? Your…?”

  “Decorator friend, yes. This is his kind of place. He’s the one who got Chris reservations. You don’t imagine Chris could afford it either, do you?”

  Tom frowned. He wasn’t real keen on Stanley’s decorator friend. With rare exceptions—Chris was one of them—he really wasn’t keen on Stanley’s gay friends, period. “I don’t like the idea of somebody else paying our way.”

  “Don’t worry, neither would Wayne. He’s not that generous, and that’s not how things are done in this social set. Vulgar money is rarely mentioned.”

  “Well, then?”

  “What I’m expecting is that our stay will be comped by the management.”

  They had come back to the steps that led to the etched glass doors. They went up them, and Tom opened a door for Stanley.

  “Okay, why would they, though?” Tom asked. “The management, I mean. Why give us free rooms? It’s not like we’re movie stars or something.”

  “Take a look at this lobby,” Stanley said. Tom did.

  If the building’s exterior, at least as seen from the street, was a bit on the Spartan side, the interior was not. The floors were a desert of inlaid marble in varied sa
nd hues, with deep-piled red carpeting like crimson streams washing up at the reception desk, the attached bar and restaurant, the elevators. The ceiling was glass and high above, the air-conditioning silent but effective, the lighting soft and discreet. More palms stood in huge planters shaped and colored to look like outcroppings of rock. Art, expensive art, not so much imitating nature as disdaining it.

  “This is not the kind of place that likes to have any unpleasantness lingering on,” Stanley said. “But unfortunately for them, a body was found here. The owners will want that little incident resolved as quickly and as cleanly as possible, and these are the kind of people who will not altogether trust the local police force to do it with minimal damage to the establishment’s reputation. All that talk about stepping on toes—somebody has sunk a lot of money into this place. I suspect if one were to dig deep enough, there are other bodies to be found, and a careless policeman might uncover one that’s inconvenient.”

  “Which explains Hammond’s warmhearted greeting.”

  “Yes, I think so. Although the bourbon probably had something to do with that too. But we, my handsome darling, are ace detectives, come down from Baghdad by the Bay. We’re going to provide them—everybody, local police, hotel management, victims—with all the answers they need. More importantly, the kind of answers they want, and we are going to do it in record time and with a minimum of embarrassment for all concerned. And that’s worth a few nights of free sleeping accommodations, as I see it.”

  Apparently he was right in his assessment. The clerk at the desk—quite fetching, Stanley could not help noticing—greeted them with a warm smile. “You’re in the Joan Crawford suite,” he told them when he heard their names, handing over a pair of key cards. “You can go by the pool, it’s at the far end of the patio and just to the left, or you can follow that corridor over there, down the red carpet.”

  Stanley looked at the little plastic room card. “There’s no number,” he said.

  The clerk gave him another warm smile. “Oh, you can’t miss it. Think Mildred Pierce.”