Murder In the Past Tense (A Giorgio Salvatori Mystery Book 2) (20 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

By the time Giorgio made it to the office the next day, the police station was overrun by reporters. He pushed his way through the crowd in the parking lot, ignoring the shouts:

“Detective, will there be any more bodies dug up?”

“Detective, is this Sierra Madre’s first serial killer?”

He ducked inside, only to find a similar scene. Phones were ringing off the hook, and the lobby was filled with people crowding the front desk, holding pictures of loved ones that had gone missing and clamoring for attention.

“Hey, Joe,” McCready said, as he appeared through the doorway. “Glad you’re here.”

McCready took Giorgio by the arm and guided him through the melee just as an officer called out that CNN was on the phone. Sam Waters, their public information officer, hurried over from his desk to grab the call.

“Damn, it feels like aliens have finally landed,” Giorgio said, looking around.

McCready followed his gaze. “Yeah, it’s been this way since early this morning. We have officers set up in the two conference rooms doing interviews. They’re coming from all over the valley.”

“Okay, but let’s be careful,” Giorgio said. “I don’t want it released yet that all the bodies were female.”

McCready nodded. “I already sent an email out to everyone.”

“Is the captain in?”

“Yeah, he’s in with the mayor. I think the governor has even weighed in. They want this all wrapped up soon.”

Giorgio rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, good luck with that. These
aren’t
fresh kills. We’re going to have to dig for clues.” He grimaced when he realized what he’d said. “Sorry. No pun intended.  While I go see the captain, I want you to go to public records. We know the Martinellis owned the Pinney House from 1955 until 1968. I want to know who owned it for the ten years before the Martinellis moved in and also up until the present day. And I want to know about any building permits or digging permits issued for that property during that time period.”

McCready nodded. “Will do.”

Giorgio grabbed a notepad off his desk and then stepped into the captain’s office.

Captain Alvarez was sitting behind the desk, while Mayor Brunwell had stuffed his stocky frame into a captain’s chair facing the captain. Brunwell considered himself a fashionista and liked to dress in black pin-striped suits with brightly colored silk ties. Today the color was crimson to match the handkerchief in his pocket.

“Joe,” Captain Alvarez said, when Giorgio poked his head in. “C’mon in. You know the mayor,” he said, gesturing stiffly to the man in the chair.

“Good to see you, Joe,” Brunwell said. “You’ve got your work cut out for you on this one.”

“Have a seat, Joe,” Captain Alvarez said, indicating a second chair.

Giorgio sat down, acutely aware of the nervous energy in the room. He glanced at the mayor, who was shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

“Joe,” the captain began, “what do we know so far?”

Giorgio brought them up-to-date on the ten bodies they’d found, and the two men listened quietly. But when he mentioned the M.E.’s speculation that the women had been tortured, the mayor’s face flushed to match his tie.

“What do you mean?” he blurted.

“The medical examiner noted that some of the bones had multiple knife cuts, as if the person had been repeatedly stabbed. But the stabbings were in places that
wouldn’t
have been life threatening. And…some of the fingers and toes had been severed.” Giorgio paused and glanced at the captain.

“When the girl was dead, you mean?” the mayor said, with an encouraging nod of his head.

Mayor Brunwell’s presence had a tendency to make people uncomfortable. He had a curt manner and liked to jump to conclusions. Like now.

“We don’t know that yet,” Giorgio said carefully.

The mayor got up and went to the window, his hand searching his pocket. When he found his handkerchief, he pulled it out and held it to his mouth. The captain watched the mayor but didn’t say anything.

“God in heaven,” the mayor murmured from the window. “Between this and what happened at the monastery, Sierra Madre is going to be known as the murder capital of the Los Angeles basin. No one will want to move here.”

“Are these murders connected to the Lisa Farmer case, Joe?” the captain asked, redirecting the conversation.

He was tapping a pencil on his desk, something he did whenever he was processing information.

“I don’t know for sure,” Giorgio replied. “But we found one of Lisa Farmer’s earrings in a tin box that was found hidden in the wall of the basement. Her mother gave her the earrings on the afternoon the day she went missing. So, either she was
in
the home on the night of her murder, or whoever murdered her is connected to the Martinelli family.”

Both men seemed to freeze in place and just stared at him.

“But you don’t know that for a fact?” the mayor almost stuttered.  “They
can’t
be connected,” the mayor stated flatly, returning his handkerchief to his pocket. “If they were, Lisa Farmer would have been buried on the property, just like the others. But instead her body was found blocks away.”

“There’s a lot we don’t know yet,” Giorgio said.

“Then let’s not waste any time,” the mayor snapped, moving toward the door.

Both the captain and Giorgio stood up, as the mayor stopped and turned.

“The Governor called me at home this morning,” he said. “He offered his help, which I can tell you I don’t want unless it’s absolutely necessary. The last thing we need is to have some
other
law enforcement agency butting in.” He paused and turned to look directly at Giorgio. “And let’s not put out any speculation about the Martinelli family. While they don’t live here anymore, they are still a prominent family in Pasadena. I don’t want to ruffle feathers before we have something concrete.”

Giorgio winced, thinking he’d already ruffled many of those feathers and would ruffle as many more as he had to in order to get to the truth.

“We’ll tread lightly,” the captain said. “We’ll schedule a press conference for this afternoon. Will you be there?”

“Yes, of course,” Brunwell said. He regarded them for a moment and then left the room, taking the negative energy with him.

“He’s not cut out for this sort of thing,” the captain said with a sigh.

“Who is?” Giorgio replied.

Captain Alvarez turned to Giorgio. “Okay, tell Sam to schedule a press conference for four o’clock. And, Joe, I want you there, too.”

Giorgio returned to his desk and had just sat down when his phone rang. He picked it up and was surprised when Detective Abrams greeted him.

“Our M.E. ruled Montgomery’s death a homicide,” Abrams reported. “No surprise there. He’d been injected with a large dose of Fentanyl right into his carotid artery. It’s an analgesic. And guess what? It’s exactly what they found in the syringe we found in the gutter. But no clear fingerprints.”

“Wow,” Giorgio murmured. He sat back. “Any news on the van?”

“Yeah, a neighbor saw a van pull towards the curb as it turned the corner and saw the driver toss something out the window. He didn’t get the license plate number, but was sure they were California plates. So it looks like you were right. Whoever did this drove into town.”

“Any more about the driver?”

“Same description as before. But I went back out and interviewed the sisters again. They remembered that the van wasn’t a passenger van. It was one of those box-shaped commercial vans.”

“So what’s your next move?” Giorgio asked.

“I have someone calling gas stations along I-5 to see if we can get a hit on where he might have stopped for gas. Maybe he used a credit card. And we’re interviewing the neighbors whose homes border the parking lot and street. Maybe they saw something.”

“Sounds like you have it covered. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Anything new on your end?” Abrams asked.

Giorgio ran his fingers through his hair. “More like where to begin?”

He spent the next five minutes filling Abrams in on the new crime scene. Afterwards, he joined the others in helping to interview distraught relatives.

÷

Over the next two and a half hours, the duty officer managed the interview process like a triage nurse in a hospital emergency room. Giorgio took a quick break around 11:30 to grab a soda and stretch his legs. He came back to find an old man who had to be in his early nineties sitting at his desk. The man was dressed in gray slacks and a crisp white shirt. He wore glasses and was just wiping off the lenses when Giorgio stepped into the room.

“I’m Detective Salvatori,” Giorgio said, moving behind his desk.

The man looked up. “Oh, I’m…uh…Phil Carr. They told me to come on back. I’m here about my daughter.”

“Can I get you anything to drink?” Giorgio offered.
“No. Thank you. I was just wondering if…if,” he said and then stopped.

“If one of the bodies we found is your daughter,” Giorgio said.

The man nodded and Giorgio noticed a tear glistening in the corner of his eye. He took a deep breath and sat down.

“Why don’t you tell me about her?”

The old man raised a hesitant finger to his eye to wipe away the tear and then sighed. Giorgio noticed that his hand shook.

“Her name was Pat Carr. Patty,” he said, a sob getting stuck in his throat. “She disappeared back in 1963. She was twenty-one and had just gotten a job at the hospital. We only lived six blocks away, down on Mariposa Street. She would walk home every night after work. And one night…” He stopped and shifted his gray eyes to Giorgio’s, fifty years of pain etched into the folds of his face.

The nurse, Giorgio thought with alarm.

“And one night she didn’t come home,” Giorgio said.

Tears flooded his eyes. “No,” he murmured, shaking his head. “We never saw her again. The police said she probably ran away. Since she was over the age of consent, they wouldn’t do anything.”

“Had she ever run away before?” Giorgio asked.

“No,” Mr. Carr said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. “My wife and I married very young, but we doted on Patty. She was everything to us.”

“Was there a boyfriend in the picture?”

“No. Nothing like that. Patty always wanted to be a nurse. She was so excited about her new job. There was no reason for her to leave.”

“Mr. Carr, we won’t have any definitive information about these bodies until the medical examiner has had a chance to examine them. Is there anything you can tell us about Patty that might help? For instance, did she have any accidents growing up? Broken bones? Dental work? Any abnormalities?”

His eyes seemed to light up. “She broke her right ankle when she was in the seventh grade. She fell running down some steps.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Giorgio said. “I’ll let the examiner know. Anything else? What was she wearing the night she disappeared?”

“Her work outfit. A nurse’s uniform. And she wore glasses.”

The hairs on Giorgio’s neck bristled.

“Glasses?” he said.

“Yes. I have a picture,” Mr. Carr said, reaching into his pocket.

He pulled out an old picture and passed it over to Giorgio. Giorgio stared down at the picture of Pat Carr. She had short, dark hair and wore a nurse’s cap and glasses. It was the girl whose body was buried next to the tree, he was sure of it, and Giorgio’s skin went cold.

“May I keep this for now?” he asked with a slight waver to his voice. “I’ll be sure you get it back.”

The old man nodded. “She also wore her grandmother’s opal ring,” he said. “She just loved that thing. Do you think one of those bodies you found is my Patty?”

The ring raised additional hairs on the back of Giorgio’s neck. They had logged a small opal ring into evidence from the tarp that had encased the body by the tree.

Giorgio wanted to tell the old man, but he couldn’t yet. He had to let the facts come out naturally. Until then, he would have to make Mr. Carr wait.

“I don’t know,” he said with difficulty. “But I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as I have more information.”

“Please, Detective,” Mr. Carr said. “I’ve waited for over forty years. I need to know.”

Giorgio felt the pressure build in his chest. He pushed a yellow pad across the desk.

“Why don’t you give me a description of the ring and leave your contact information?”

When Mr. Carr had left, Giorgio sat back, staring at the picture of Patty and wondering what her last moments had been like. Had her killer made her cry for mercy? Had she been tortured and raped? Had she screamed out for her father, wondering why he didn’t come to rescue her?

Giorgio thought back to the night the man in the stocking cap had reached out and fondled Marie. If Grosvenor hadn’t been there, he could have grabbed her and been gone. Tony couldn’t have stopped him, and the thought churned Giorgio’s insides.