Diamond in the Buff by Susan Dunlap

to the deck. Martinez was talking to Pereira. A lazy or hostile crime scene supervisor can triple your work. Witnesses can leave the scene before he assigns someone to get their statements or even their names. He can leave unroped the alley through which the “responsible” ran. He can allow samples to go unlabeled, or mislabeled. He can destroy an investigation entirely. Conversely, a good crime supe. is a pearl of great price. And Martinez was the biggest pearl around. Martinez made it his business to know each of us in D.D., in what order we worked, with whom we worked best. I suspected it was he who had called Pereira, and might call Murakawa. And I wasn’t surprised when he said, “Leonard and Acosta are on the neighbors, except Sandoval. I sent Pereira there.”
    “She’s gone,” Pereira grumbled.
    “Did it look like she just left or that she hadn’t been home all night?”
    Pereira shrugged. “Nothing to suggest she’s been here. But she could have been.”
    Martinez said, “Diamond’s in the living room with Murakawa. Has been for half an hour. Murakawa looks done with him. Zagoya’s upstairs with Heling. No one else in the house.”
    “Neighbors see anything? Or hear anything?”
    “Not so far, and Leonard got the neighbors one house down. No scream. That’s what you’re asking, right, Smith?”
    “Right.”
    “No scream.”
    “What about the crash? Even if the boy didn’t scream the chaise lounge had to have made a thud when it landed.”
    Pereira shook her head. “Neighbors here, Smith, are used to tuning out the goings-on at Diamond’s. It’d take a lot more than a thud in the middle of the night to light a fire under them.”
    Martinez’s eyes narrowed, but he censored whatever rebuke he’d considered. To me he said, “Diamond’s asking for you.”
    I motioned Pereira to relieve Murakawa. “And when we’re done,” I said to her, “let’s go over your financial check on Diamond, Bev Zagoya, and Sandoval. Let’s see what it takes to run a house on Panoramic Way.”
    “Damn sight more than foot massage,” Pereira muttered. She walked into the living room and took Murakawa’s place.
    Murakawa had once planned to be a chiropractor. He emerged from the living room, glanced back at Diamond, and shook his head. “Worse kyphosis I’ve seen on a living being, his age. How could he do that to himself? Doesn’t the guy ever look in the mirror?” He paused. “Well, I guess not.” Now he looked back at the slumping Diamond and sighed. “I’d give a week’s wages to see X-rays of his thoracic and cervical vertebrae. Head slumped like that. He must have no disk space at all at his anterior vertebrae, must be bone on bone.”
    “His statement, Murakawa?”
    Murakawa handed me his notes. “You know, Smith, I don’t even think surgery could restore the normal curves to that spine, and I wouldn’t think about surgery unless …” He shook his head again. “Maybe a treatment of muscle relaxers, massage, and weekly adjustments …”
    Ignoring Murakawa’s ongoing diagnosis, I read over his notes on Diamond’s statement. Diamond had ordered dinner from Thyme-wise, the gourmet takeout shop on Solano. He and Bev Zagoya had spent the three hours from seven to ten in the living room going over plans for their presentations in the morning. Kris was still out when he went to bed. If that was true, whoever oiled the runners of the chaise had to have done so before seven or after ten. If Diamond’s statement was true.
    I took a last look down at Kris Mouskavachi’s body, then headed back though the yard below, around the switchback to the sidewalk, and onto the deck. The darkness had thinned to a cold gray. Fog draped from the tops of live oaks to the branches of the eucalypts. And the icy wind off the Bay flapped those carp flags at the corners of Diamond’s roof and ripped loose shreds of fog and carried them away.
    The light in the living room came from spots in the ceiling and over