Anonymous Rex (29 page)

It takes some time to hail a cab in Los Angeles, even at the airport, but I eventually locate one willing to take me to Pasadena. The money Dan sent me is already going quickly, as the plane ticket cost over two thousand dollars due to the last-second purchase. I resolve to pay him back as soon as I get back on my feet again, whenever that may be. Right now, I’m just about on my chin and going down quickly.

A short swing up the 110 takes us to the Arroyo Vista Parkway and Dan’s suburban house, where he was planning on spending most of
his day off. Soon enough, we pull up in front of the blue-and-white ranch home, nearly slamming into the Ford pickup parked sideways in the driveway. I pay the cabbie and hop on out.

Spread across the front stoop of Dan’s town house is today’s
Los Angeles Times
, the open pages blowing in the warm Santa Anas coming up from the south. I gingerly step over this morning’s headlines, being careful not to trod upon today’s Sunday comics, and rap on the door. It’s in dire need of fresh paint, the wood stain having long since been stripped by the omnipresent air pollutants, but it’s still a nice chunk of oak that echoes my knock back to me.

I wait. Odds are, Dan’s hanging out in the living room, plopped down in his La-Z-Boy imitation recliner, hooked into a virtual IV tube of Cheetos and Chunky Soups, squinting hard at his twenty-inch television because he’s too darned stubborn to be fitted for contact lenses. “It’s sad enough I’ve gotta wear makeup every day,” he told me once. “Ain’t no way I’m gonna mess around with contacts.” Better not to even bring up the subject of glasses.

A minute passes with no response. I try again, pounding a little harder this time. “Danny boy!” I call out, mushing my lips as close to the door as possible without causing actual skin-wood contact.
“Abre la puerta!”
Dan knows the meaning of my words—he can say “Open the door!” in over sixteen different languages and four Asian dialects. Such are the spoils that come from being a police detective in Los Angeles.

Again, nothing. I notice that Dan’s still got that door knocker up that I gave him last Christmas on a goof—an oversized, overpriced, overly gaudy gargoyle that would look out of place anywhere other than the Munsters’ home—so I grab hold of the brass beast’s nose and slam its feet onto the solid plate beneath. Now
this
is a Knock, Knock, Knock, and the heavy thumps nearly throw me off the front stoop. The brass vibrates rapidly in my hand like an overcharged joy buzzer, and I quickly let go of the gargoyle before it has a chance to vibrate into animation.

A minute. Two. Silence. I listen in at the door, straining, pressing my false ear against the wood grain. Music, perhaps, a steady beat droning on and on. It’s possible that he’s asleep—deeply so, I would imagine, not to hear that gargoyle racket—but more likely he’s out
back in his small herb garden and has the music from his living room pumped up so he can hear it outside. I head around back.

Brambles and bushes try to stop me, extending their long, thorny claws to rip at my guise. Carefully avoiding the nastier barbs, I pick my way through the brush and eventually come to the tall wooden fence that defines Dan’s modest yard. No space between these slats, but a knot in the wood provides an excellent peephole, and like a trained pervert, I set to peeping.

Oregano, basil, sage, and their culinary cohorts rise from the earth, making their way toward the sun, straining for its energy. Many a tipsy afternoon was spent sampling the delights of this well-kept piece of land. I see flowers to the left, what might be a carrot patch to the right, but there’s no LAPD sergeant in sight. Balling my hand into a tight fist, I pound the fence and yell for Dan again.

Had I not seen his car in the driveway, had he not known that I was coming in today, on this very flight, at this precise time, I might think that Dan had taken a short hop out of the house or out of town, a quick get-away-from-it-all jaunt.

A quick whiff off a passing breeze …

Scents flowing in, piggybacking on the air, swirling through my nostrils, and I can pick up everything in the area, from the herbs to the flowers to the car down the street, the chemicals from a nearby one-hour photo, the messy diaper of a newborn four houses down, and the acrid vinegar odor of that bitter, bitter Stego widow who lives next door and always comes on to Dan after she’s had a few too many.

But no Dan. Now I’m worried. Time to break and enter.

As I make my way toward the front door, I realize that there’s no way I’m getting through that slab of oak short of a battle-ax; aside from the relative impossibility of knocking it in with my meager weight, Dan’s job has taught him nothing if not to secure a house with multiple locks. Back to the garden.

Stepping off the porch, I nearly slip as my eye catches a small, dark stain on the ground and my body instinctively pirouettes to get a better look. It’s blood. Three, four drops maximum, but definitely blood. Dried, but only recently. I would whip out my dissolution packet and run a quick chemical test to see if it’s dino fluid, but I fear that I already know the answer. I downshift and leap for the fence.

The adrenaline rush bypasses my fatigue and I scale the wooden slats with as much skill and grace as my drained muscles will allow, my premiere fence-climbing days well behind me. As I reach the top and attempt to swing myself up and over, my left leg catches against an outcropping and down I go, end over end, toppling heavily into Dan’s basil patch. The smell is overpowering, and I stumble to my feet and backpedal away as quickly as possible even as my mouth begins to work by itself, chomping at the air where the basil should be.

The back door is closed as well, bolted tight from the inside. I pound, I knock, I shake the door with all my might, but the only sounds I can hear from within are the swinging guitars and ruffled backbeat of Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Fogerty’s tortured voice calling out to his Susie Q. Fogerty, I recently learned, is an Ornithomimus, as are Joe Cocker and Tom Waits, so you can see from whence that vocal trait arises. Paul Simon, on the other hand, is a true-blue Velociraptor, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better drug song than “Scarborough Fair,” even though rosemary and thyme have never done much for me personally.

“Dan!” I scream, my voice cracking, register climbing into the stratosphere. “Open the goddamned door!”

John Fogerty answers. “… say that you’ll be true …”

A window entrance, then, is my only option. Despite my growing paranoia, I’m still pushing myself to optimism: Dan cut himself while cooking dinner, didn’t have bandages, ran to Rite Aid to grab a small first-aid kit, maybe took a trip over to the hospital for stitches, dripped some blood on the way out. Better yet, he was coming back from grocery shopping, dropped a container of lamb chops, the blood splattered a bit, and now he’s at a friend’s house barbecuing those babies up right this very minute. If I pretend hard enough, I can almost smell the charcoal …

The screen pops out in a flash with the help of my Swiss Army blade, and I’m soon faced with a solid, yet thin, window pane, easily breakable. I’m usually above such pedestrian entry techniques, but time is short so I smash away, using my elbow to splinter the glass. I’m not worried about Dan’s security alarm—I know the code is 092474 from the time I house-sat for him last October, and if I remember correctly, I’ve got a generous forty-five seconds to turn it off.

But the alarm doesn’t activate. I cannot hear the telltale BEEP BEEP BEEP that usually drives me so insane. I wish I could.

I pull up the window and slide inside, wriggling clear of the broken glass on the floor. Creedence is rocking louder now, the way Creedence should, emanating from the den, good old John still pining for his gal. “Anybody home?” I call out over the din. “Dan? Dan, you here?”

Dan’s never been the tidiest of Brontosaurs, so I’m not surprised to see his clothing scattered about the living room in postapocalyptic fashion. A girdle here, a buckle there, a pair of guised-up underwear flopped atop the ottoman.

Though my earlier whiff on the front porch didn’t pick it up, there is indeed a lingering trace of Dan’s olive oil and motor engine scent, drifting in and out like a fading memory. I suspect it arises from the scattered clothing. Through the open wall in the living room I can see into the kitchen, over the low counter, across the breakfast table, past the Mount Olympus of dishes piled in the sink. No Dan.

His bedroom is located upstairs, and habit pulls in that direction. But Creedence beckons to me from the small den on the first floor, Fogerty having given up on Susie, now concentrating his efforts on doo, doo, doo, looking out his back door. Another rough circle of blood stains the carpet, stretching out into a long, tortured oval, leading beneath the den’s door, trailing inside …

I open and enter.

Stereo speakers, canted, lying on the floor, blasting away, shoving the music into me, pressing me backward. Pictures, ripped to ribbons, frames smashed, glass shattered. A television tube lying five feet away from its cabinet, a bookcase torn and toppled. Drapes pulled down, lightbulbs popped, Lava lamps cracked and flowing slowly, slowly onto the carpet, their phosphorescence drooping like caterpillars through the light gray fibers.

And Dan, plopped in his favorite easy chair, guise half-shredded, hair half-matted, smidgen of tuna sandwich and overturned bowl of soup on the TV tray by his side, stab wounds covering his body, pocking his flesh, blood having long since seeped through his clothing and dried into carmine stains against his rough, brittle hide. Smiling, staring through the ceiling, to the sky …

“Dan, Dan, Dan … come on … don’t … Dan …”

I’m muttering, I’m mumbling, I’m talking to myself without knowing what I’m saying as I run my hands over Dan’s body, searching for any signs of life. I press my nose into his hide, I want to find a scent, I want to find some smell, anything! Working the snaps behind my neck, buttons popping off, carelessly pulling the guise mask up and off my head to get a better whiff, I try again, unencumbered this time, sniffing, snorting, locating his scent glands and drawing them as far in as I can …

Emptiness. No scent.

Sergeant Dan Patterson is dead.

I close his eyes, inner lids first, but I am loathe to adjust the rest of his body. The police will have to be called in due time, and they’re going to be upset enough that I broke in here, damaging their crime scene. Better to leave his body … better to leave everything unmolested.

Dan didn’t go without a fight—the demolished state of the den says that much—but I don’t know whether it’s pride at Dan’s courage, the sorrow at his passing, or both that spins a tight knot in my chest, pressing hard against my throat.

“There goes the fishing trip, huh?” I ask Dan’s slumped body. “You sonofabitch, there goes the fishing trip.”

The wounds are straight-on incisions, knife stabs, the occasional slash. I don’t see the telltale markings of a dino attack like those I thought I picked up in the Raymond McBride photo—curved stabs resulting from claw jabs, parallel slashes from slices, conical depressions as a result of a biting attack, or the deep indentations of a tail spike.

According to the LED display on the front of the CD player, it’s been playing the same disk over and over for the better part of four hours, which enables me to place Dan’s demise within that time, unless the killer threw on Creedence after the murder in some sort of postslaughter uber-’60s ritual.

Dan’s thick brown tail, I notice, has been freed from the G series of belts, but from its confined position beneath the overlapping torso girdle, I doubt he got a chance to utilize it during his defense. All indications—the defensive wounds on Dan’s palms, the blood trail splattered across the room, evenly distributed, the lack of forced entry into the house other than my own recent intrusion, the undisturbed
items everywhere but this den in particular—point to a surprise attack by someone Dan knew or thought he knew, someone he invited into his den, maybe to have a bite to eat, to catch a few tunes. And then—a stab, a slice, a quick filet, Dan stumbling backward, trying to defend himself, trying to rip off his guise, to free up his claws and his tail, but all of it too slow and too late. Then it was simply, quietly over.

On the air, a new odor drifting around, looking for some nose hairs to tickle. For a brief moment I delude myself into thinking that Dan has pulled a Lazarus on me, sprung back to life, and wants to grab a pizza, but though I soon realize it is not Dan’s scent, it is somehow familiar. Nose leading the way, body following obediently behind, I search on the floor beneath Dan’s easy chair, running my fingers across the carpet, the exposed tacks biting into my polyskin fingers.

There, within my grasp now, a square of what feels like cheesecloth, double-layered. I pull it out. It’s a pouch, much like the disintegration packets I carry on me at all times. But this one doesn’t radiate that terrible stench of decay, and there’s no way the smell could have diminished over time; even empty disintegration pouches have to be burned, buried, and forgotten in some godforsaken landfill in order to conceal that rank odor.

Chlorine. That’s it. I can’t find any granules left in the pouch, but I’ve no doubt that it once held that very element. A few other scents are trying to make it into my sinuses, fighting with their stronger counterpart, but it’s of no use; that first whiff has taken hold and won’t relinquish control. I drop the pouch in the exact spot where I found it, scooting the cloth back beneath the chair in case the police should find some more meaning behind the evidence than I did.

The chaos and rampant destruction are even more evident from this lower vantage point; splintered wood and ripped wallpaper towering overhead, possessions crushed like empty soda cans. Nothing in this room was spared from the rampage, and I can only hope that Dan’s eyes had glazed and darkened before he got a chance to see the destruction that had befallen his photos, paintings, and bowling trophies.

Consolation will be long and hard in coming, but at least I have this: Dan Patterson died in his favorite easy chair. He died in the heat of battle. He died while eating a hearty lunch. He died in his home,
surrounded by pictures of those he loved. And he died while listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival, to Ornithomimus John Fogerty, which means that he passed into that great beyond borne on the kindred voice of a brother dinosaur. We should all be so lucky.