Peter Decker 2-Book Thriller Collection: Blindman’s Bluff, Hangman

“Multiple homicide at Coyote Ranch.”

She sat up straight. “The Kaffey place?”

“Yes, ma’am. No doubt, it’s going to be a circus by the time I arrive.”

“That’s horrible!”

“It’s going to be a nightmare in logistics. The place is around seventy acres—absolutely no way to totally wall off the area.”

“I know, it’s tremendous. About a year ago, they did a showcase home there for some kind of charity. I heard the gardens were absolutely magnificent. I wanted to go but something came up.”

“Doesn’t look like you’ll get a second chance.” Decker opened the gun safe, took out his Beretta, and slipped it into his shoulder harness. “That’s a terrible thing to say but I make no excuses. Dealing with the press in high-profile cases brings out the bastard in me.”

“They’ve called the press at three-fifteen in the morning?”

“Can’t stop death and taxes—and you can’t stop the news.” He gave her a peck on the top of her head. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.” Rina sighed. “That’s really sad. All that money is a deadly magnet for leeches, con artists, and just plain evil people.” She shook her head. “I don’t know about being too thin, but you certainly can be too rich.”

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.”

2 (#ulink_09437fce-777b-550f-999e-4131fe9e433e)

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 surviving 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.”