A World the Color of Salt (2 page)

In the back of the room there was more mess, and I could see Joe Sanders framed in the far rear door, talking to an officer, probably the patrol cop. Trudy Kunitz glided by in the back now too, measuring the room with a metal tape that zinged as she flipped it to lay it flat. Trudy is good at her job, reliable. Our department mostly works like good music. Few people fuck up. I lost sight of her as she drifted behind a stack of boxes, and I went back out the front door and around.

At the side of the building, a yellow crime-scene ribbon formed an inner perimeter within the larger outer one that extended into the parking lot. I noticed that one end of the ribbon nearest the building drooped to the asphalt near the ladies' room, but it didn't register then. The men's had masking tape on the door across the door frame. This meant someone closed the men's off for later checking, maybe because it was hot-hot, requiring further inspection.

Paper cups and taco wrappers from next door were piled against the wire fence in back. Behind the fence, eucalyptus trees caught the last rays of the sun and glowed red where the bark had split into stretched triangles, evidence of the Australian long-horn eucalyptus borer that's been feasting on thirsty trees from San Diego to Santa Barbara since 1984.

In the back of the store, standing near the door, Joe S. He saw me coming and motioned me forward. He had on the good suit. I thought he must be going somewhere this evening, speaking to some group or other. Maroon tie and a rich brown jacket, pale pink shirt, and shoes shined as though they'd never walked in murder.

When I was halfway to him, Joe said, “Sign the Order of Entry?”

“Are you giving me a bad time?” I smiled a whit.

He smiled back the same whit and said, “Just asking.”

“I had a belly-cut, not a lobotomy, you tub.”

Joe turned his head to answer somebody, then stepped just inside. When I reached him in the doorway I should have brushed by quickly, should not have let my clothes electrify, the field get set between us. I had hoped it all went sleepy-bye with the rest of my consciousness in the hospital, but no. One look in those pink-blues and I was gone again. “How you doing, Joe?” I said.

All of a sudden he got shy, all business. I moved ahead of him into the back room. With the light the way it was, his hair seemed grayer since I last saw him. Joe's a fit forty-eight, proud of his waist, and that's why when I get the chance I have to mention the slight convexity just above the place he likely takes the measure. The better to hug, if he only knew. Looking over my head, he told me, “Point of attack was up front.” Then, “You knew him,” said not like a question.

“I stop here for doughnuts on the way to work, is all. Once I went to a party with him and his friends, but it was too young a crowd for me. But yeah, he was great, Joe. A great kid. This is a rotten thing.”

He looked at me, listening to this, sorry to hear that from me. They're not all great, the victims.

He said, “Were you here this morning?”

“No.”

“You okay?”

“You mean should I be back at work?”

“Should you?”

“Thanks a whole fuckin' lot.” We'd stepped inside. He was too close now, standing so near I could smell his after-shave, but he wasn't looking at me.

He said, “I wouldn't ask if you didn't know him. Sometimes it makes a difference. You know that.”

“Well, it doesn't,” I said. Subject over. “Jerry Dwyer was a friendly, talkative, open kid. He knew his customers' names and could remember what doughnuts they liked.” Joe shook his head.

My gaze went to the back of the room and took in the back side of the white enamel door. The only blood there was along the door's edge. Off to the left, nearer the cooler, is where I knew the body would be. I stood there looking frontward
maybe thirty feet away, Joe quiet behind me, and the question no one ever has an answer for must have spelled itself on my back, because Joe placed his hand on my shoulder for a moment and then moved away: Why this one?

Dull fluorescent lights cast a filmy gray coat over everything. Crates of S & W foodstuff and cases of motor oil built verticals everywhere. The corner to my right was clogged with an old pinball machine, four boxes of Friskies cat food stacked on top. High windows along the wall let in the waning November light—Joe S. was going to have to shut the scene down pretty soon, safe the area with a guard, come back tomorrow. Fluorescent is good but not like daylight. Always there is a war with yourself in a homicide. If you're serious about justice, you must take whatever time is required to investigate thoroughly. But the more time you take, the more possibility the scene could be compromised—authorized people coming in and out, unauthorized people trespassing the scene. Not the least of the worries is budget and manpower, extending an investigation too long. We all knew this, but it was seldom mentioned.

While I stood there not really wanting to go forward to the cooler entryway, off Joe's left an anemic-looking young man with zits, government-issue black horned-rims, and milky hair placed his elbow up on a case of cans, the better to study his notes. This had to be a rookie.

Joe said, “Hey!”

“Sir?”

“Your shirt on the box.”

The rook stared, his neck turning rosy.

“Dust,” Joe said. “Did your shirt disturb the dust?”

The rookie turned to look. “I . . . I don't think so, sir. I don't see anything.”

Joe's voice was slow, fair, not overbearing. “Take your flashlight,” he said. “Hold the beam across the top of the box. Make sure there are no prior disturbances, no finger or palm prints.” Joe glanced back at me. Actually, we all have sympathy for rooks; we were all there once.

“Yes, sir,” the rookie said, and struggled with the flashlight attached to his belt.

Joe took me by the elbow and turned me toward the door.
He said, “Do you think it's too late to go into real estate?”

“Take me with you when you go.”

Joe was talking as we walked back to the cooler. He told me how his son, David, was doing his first year in college. Midway, he stopped, turned back to the door. “You don't have to do this, Smokey.”

“I know I don't.”

“We have enough people here.”

“If I didn't want to be here I wouldn't have called to ask to be in on it, Joe.”

He swept a finger under his eye. I knew the gesture: He did it when he needed a moment to think. And then we walked the rest of the way, his left hand lightly holding my elbow. He handed me a mentholated stick, the kind you rub around your nose when you have a cold, and the kind some idiots boil down and inject for a cheap but complicated meth hit. Bodies don't smell that bad this early, but the distraction of a strong smell helps bring you back to yourself. The touch on the elbow, the quiet voice, and now this gesture of concern: These are some of the reasons he does what he does to me and my grown-up self.

I was looking down on an awful red mess. I couldn't see Jerry's face yet, the hips rolled to the side, the head away from the door opening, and I didn't want to; I stepped back. “He should have been safe here.”

Billy Katchaturian appeared behind me. Even with the menthol, the sharp smell of mothballs leaked through. Billy was from the East. People from the East smell like mothballs. I looked over. He was examining the Polaroids, about three feet from me. Joe saw this and said, “You need more, Billy?”

“No, sir, go ahead. These are good.” He held the pack of them out like a sharpie showing cards to an audience.

I moved closer in toward the cooler. A square of butcher paper was laid down where Billy K. had lodged a step stool to get overhead shots; I saw the stool's rusty black impressions on it. For some reason, I didn't want to step on the paper.

Right away I saw bone in the bubbly stew above the knee that was once Jerry's leg.

“Jesus,” I said. “They used heavy stuff.”

Joe said, “You can see bits of the slug at the top of the wound there.” He pointed with a pen.

“Almost looks like a Glaser,” I said.

“Crooks don't have them,” Joe said.

“You and I can't get them, is all.” Leaning farther in, what I could see of Jerry's head told me the downside would be worse. I'd seen Glaser safety slugs demo-ed at the range, but I'd never shot one myself. They're mean pieces of devastation with thin copper sides, designed to burst on impact.

The air in the cooler wasn't cold, the door open for so long, and I could hear the motor cycling. Moisture shone on the walls. It was a tight place, lots of open food boxes there containing the stuff Jerry or his dad would put in the microwave for us. White boxes marked “Hamburg.” In one corner, the soft-ice-cream makings. Jerry Dwyer's father was going to lose more than a son here. More than his heart, I mean.

Joe said, “We know they had a twenty-two auto up front: six casings on the floor. One slug in the Lotto machine, one in the post by the register. Three in the wall. One slug must have caught him, and then he ran.”

He paused, pulling his hands onto his hips and talking down to the floor, a move he makes when something's got to him. I knew .22's could do funny things—kill you in an instant, if placed in the right spot, or merely drill a hole in you like a paper punch, swell the tissue like an allergic reaction, and that's about it. One case I knew of, the victim took a round in the top of the heart, in and out. He ran two blocks home, lay on his sofa for fifteen minutes before paramedics arrived. Today he sells health insurance down the street from my bank. You can get whapped with a .22 round in the back of the head, the shell will fly apart, the pieces burrow under your scalp like worms trying to find the sun, but you live.

He said, “The one in the head, if I had to guess, would be a five-seven.”

My throat went tight. I started to walk to the back door, and then felt Joe beside me. The rook was staring at us as we passed, as if he wanted to ask Joe a question.

Joe said, “The kid was holding the door, trying to keep them out. Looks like he was a big guy. Was he?”

“Yes.”

“He might have been able to do it, except he kept slipping in his own blood. You can see that, with the smears. I think with that first shot they must have got him somewhere in the face or head, the amount of blood there was. See the spatter inside the door?”

I had. Blood on the cooler door, like on the door up front, only more of it, and lots at the bottom.

“It runs down on the floor while he's trying to keep them out,” Joe said. “He slips, keeps sliding, can't hold it. See the skids?”

I nodded.

Joe went on. “Victim's pushing, pushing. They get the pistol barrel in—there's tool marks on the edge and frame; Billy's got shots of it—they get the gun in, shoot him in the leg. He goes down,
whoom!
It's all over.”

Joe stepped closer, lightly leaned his shoulder against mine. I didn't move.

He went on. “We know there were two.”

I managed to say, “There'd be blowback from where they got him in the head.”

“Somebody's sailing around with dirty clothes. Shoes'd be good, too. We got definite sole prints.”

“Transfers anywhere?” I asked. This would be blood transferred from clothing, say, to another object. Often there are identifying fibers or other trace evidence to be found.

“We got five red fibers off the outer-door frame near the floor, don't know what they mean, could be old. We got boot-heel and sole prints. A half-palm transfer on the register. I think it's got some gunpowder residue in it. We've done about half the latents.” Latents are fingerprints not readily visible to the naked eye.

He looked around him and said, “It's going to be tough in a place like this. And no video, of course.” Video cameras in the regular chains might have captured something. Dwyer's Kwik Stop was a mom-and-pop without the mom, the mom doing something or other in the Midwest after a divorce. I remembered Jerry saying once that his mom was a good businesswoman.

“One more ‘we got,' please,” I said. “Say we got a witness.”

“Don't I wish,” he said.

“You say it happened when?” How could there be no witness, a store near a freeway? We were outside now, and the late November chill was taking its toll. I wrapped my arms around my waist.

Joe gave me his freak-of-time speech. I'd heard it a million times applied a million ways. A freak of time kills people. A freak of time makes people fall in love. With the wrong people. A freak of time sometimes puts two and two together to make a case; a freak of time puts the right judge or the right prosecutor on it to get a conviction. This freak of time bore no witness. Sometimes it works for you. Mostly it doesn't.

“Jerry Dwyer deserves these guys on a stake,” I said.

“Have at it, baby.”

“Joe . . .”

“Nobody heard me.”

“That makes it worse.”

“Sorry.”

The sky was a darkening purple because of the haze and the dying sun, and the traffic light at the intersection glowed a raw red. Next door, a tanker at the Texaco station was backing up, making dinging noises. Car engines whined up the on-ramp to the 5 South. Life was going on.

I half smiled at Joe. My third knuckle touched the back of his hand when I stopped for a second.

“What time will you be back?”

“Early.”

That meant seven. Joe was not really an early guy. Early is like five, six at the latest, but it's still dark then, and besides, most of us, unfortunately, are, I hate to say it, government workers. Look at our paychecks. I know people who work in aerospace, and those people get up
early.

“I'll be here.” I started to head out to my car when I had to ask, “How's Jennifer?”

“Fine, fine. She got a promotion.”

“She's happy, I guess?”

He shrugged.