Carcass Trade (28 page)

It was four o'clock by the time I could punch the recall button on the car phone to reach Joe, and I asked him to hang tight there at the lab, I was bringing along a surprise.

Seen under the comparison microscope, a nick near the crotch of the wire cutters formed a shallow W. In addition, there were clear striae on the blade edges. These tiny furrows, along with the mirror-image W, would show on whatever wire the blades nipped in two, but it would take luck, a good eye, and precision camera work to capture it.

I set the camera and snapped off a highly magnified picture of the tool, and then Joe handed me the brutal wire taken off public drunk Rollie Pierson, lately of Blue Jay Campground. “The chances individual characteristics will match up are slim,” Joe said.

“I know,” I said. “But how many tries was it, five thousand, before Edison found the right filament?”

“He also believed he could invent a machine that could talk to the dead, and chewed his food thirty-two times while reciting, ‘Nature will castigate what you don't masticate.'”

“You read too much,” I said.

He gave me a squeeze around the shoulder. “I talked to Oskar Lombard over at the morgue. He had a hard time finding a next-of-kin, but he finally got the wife's sister. She's making the ID.”

I said, “Hey, look at this.”

Joe took my place at the eyepiece. “Distinct bite mark,” he said. Then he took the orange-handled wire cutters and held the blades under the glass. “Same bite on the cutters. Nice going.” He rose up, the elliptical eyepiece leaving a mark on his skin.

“We still have to tie Switchie to the evidence,” I said. “So far we have nothing but me.”

“Then let's take good care of you,” Joe said.

“I have to go out there tonight. To the Python.”

He frowned. “How long?”

“I don't know. Three, four hours.”

“I'll pick you up.”

“No.”

“Let me pick you up.”

“It's better I keep to the pattern,” I said.

“How do I know you'll be safe?”

“How do we know we won't get zonked in a drive-by leaving here? We don't.”

“You're too rational you know that?”

“Just don't say I'm hardheaded.”

“Would I do that?”

We were on a conference call to Captain Exner, telling him what we found under magnification. Joe said, “We've got a piece of recovered evidence with marks unique or identifiable to one source.”

“No other case similarities, however,” the captain said. “Isn't that right?”

“Check.”

“Then you are needlessly complicating two separate cases.” The captain's voice came through as if he were talking from a ship's hold. Someone else was in his office who would cough or say something every now and then, and maybe that's why the captain was impatient.

“But there are strong, apparently matching individual characteristics on both pieces,” Joe repeated.

“Sanders,” the captain said, “if you have anything to show me, document it and send it over. Otherwise, I have lawyers who are going to be shooting me catch-cop questions in about fifteen minutes. I gotta go. Smokey?” he said.

“Yes?”

“Do I understand you went out to that ranch without backup?”

“Yes, but—”

“No backup.”

“That's right.”

“Who's your supervisor over there?”

“Stu Hollings. Sir? Can I—?”

“Give me a written report on it.”

“Sir, is a plainclothes assigned to me yet?”

There was a pause on Captain Exner's end. Joe, sitting nearer to the phone because we were using his office, leaned closer and said, “Smokey determined the risk was minimal, Captain. Beyond that, she couldn't raise anybody when the initial contact with Blackman was made. She tried. She's a very cautious—”

“I'll be getting back to you,” he said, “eighteen hundred or so.” Six
P
.
M
. A few of us use military time but most don't except on reports.

When he hung up, I turned to Joe and said, “At least he interrupts you too. What an asshole. I'm not staying here till six o'clock.”

“Is that any way to speak of a superior?”

“You're right. He's a stupid asshole.”

“Grapevine has it one of his guys is charged with a two-eighty-eight on a female DUI.”

“Oh no.”

“Forced oral copulation under color of authority. Another cop squirreled off on him. Pressure's tough on friendships.”

“What do you say to a cup of coffee?”

We walked down to the room where the coffee maker is. Somebody put up a new sign on the bulletin board:
THERE
'
S NO RIGHT WAY TO DO A WRONG THING
.

When I make phone calls, I make a rack of them. I face phone communication the way I do housework; push hard and get it over with. First, Doug Forster, to see if he'd heard anything I hadn't on the Carbon Canyon case. He wasn't there. Then my brother; but I wasn't ready. I hung up after one ring.

I tried Ray Vega, range rider in his hot Mustang patrol car. I couldn't raise him. Hoped he was in bed with Francine or in a shower soaping some pretty girl down.

I phoned the coroner's tech, Oskar Lombard, who, I learned, was actually a reserve deputy assigned to the coroner. Reserve personnel take all the training of a regular sworn officer, but they don't get paid. Some put in more hours for free than they give at their real jobs, a sense for justice or an urge for excitement deep in their veins. I asked him to check on Meyer Singer, the molasses-slow odontologist putting teeth together on the burn case. Oskar said all the recovered teeth were back in the jaw, affixed with nondestructive putty. “I saw them myself,” he said.

“How come nobody told me?”

“You're never around.” Hm. “There was something funny about the front teeth,” he said.

“What's funny?”

“They were decalcified.”

“And what significance . . . ?”

“I'm not sure. What you get with real bad heat, I guess. Singer kept asking himself, ‘Now, why have these teeth decalcified already?' He takes out the box of jaws every time he comes in. It sits by him all day while he's working other cases.”

“Do you know if there was anything else with the teeth? Fillings, like that?”

“Yeah. There were fillings.”

“Great, Oskar. Thanks a bunch.”

“I don't know for what.”

Doug was in Les Fedders's office. I was surprised they were both still there, quitting time being fifteen minutes ago. I could tell by looking at Les that he still hadn't been briefed about what went on at the Avalos farm, and I didn't want to be the one to do it, sit there and be grilled by him and waste time.

“Doug,” I said, “whaddya know?”

“Not a whole heck of a lot.”

“See, he admits it,” I said, winking at Les.

In Les's office was the standard-issue metal office furniture, but over the chair hung a picture of the old Coca-Cola, the giant fluted bottle with the sensuous shape, and an equally voluptuous blonde, seamless teeth, curled lashes, one knee dipped in that Marilyn pose, standing in a bathing suit next to it.

Doug sat with one ankle up on the other knee, fiddling with his sneaker shoelaces. In his other hand was a sheet of paper partially filled in with names in boxes, a basketball play-off pool. His black hair gleamed as if he'd just sprayed it with oil.

“Well, there's one thing new,” I said. “The morgue says Singer put the teeth together and they're flawed. Miranda Robertson's charts showed not one cavity, as you know. His teeth are not only filled, they're chalky in the front.”

“I thought we already concluded that victim was not Miranda Robertson,” Les said. Nearby, a vase of bloated bloodred roses sat on top of a file cabinet.

“Yes, but this just makes it more solid.” I was thinking of Nathan, looking forward to telling him. “The Rollie Pierson case,” I said, “you talked to somebody but not the wife?”

“Yep. The sister-in-law. What's up?”

“Have you got her name?”

“What's on your mind?”

Doug studied his basketball chart.

“I just wondered, are you going out there for an interview?”

“It's down in San Clemente. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Can I go along?”

“You got a list of twenty questions?”

“I don't have anything special to ask. Just interested. But I don't want to get in your way, Les.”

“No problem.” He glanced at Doug. “Won't that interfere with your new job?” He grinned.

Doug grinned too, said, “I heard about that.”

“About what, Doug?”

“About you doing the model bit.”

“That was supposed to be on the QT.” Who would tell? Joe wouldn't tell.

Les lowered his eyes, then looked up.

“Hey,” Doug said, “they got any Western dancing out there? I go every night, different place. I can do twelve line dances now.”

“Good for you, Doug,” I said.

When I got home, I called Ray Vega. I just wanted to hear my friend's voice. He said it was his day off, was why I couldn't get him earlier. He said, “Let's get together for dinner.”

“What about Francine?”

“What about her?”

“Aren't you spending nights off with her?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Is that all you're going to tell me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Monty wants me at the Python at eight.”

“You're still on that?”

“Yes.”

“We'll eat first.”

“I don't know, Raymond. I'm exhausted. I should try to get a nap.”

“How can you say no to a man like me?”

“I don't know. It is hard to understand.”

He did an imitation of Andrew Dice Clay that always had me laughing; I went around saying it to myself half the time: “Treat me like the pig that I am.” Then he said, “How ‘bout if I come around after, give you a ride in my new pickup? We can go to a show after. What you want to see?”

“Ray, I
would
like to talk to you . . .”

“Great. And I get to come in this time. You wouldn't let me before.”

I was weakening now, wondering while I picked off four ants veering behind my kitchen faucet as I walked the room with the phone if I should just let him. I must have sighed.

“How's the case going, anyway?” he asked.

“That's what I'd like to talk to you about.”

His voice took on another tone. “What is it, Smokes? What's up?”

“I saw a murder.”

“What?”

“I witnessed a murder out at a ranch in Norco. I told you about the guys in the office the day of my interview, right? One of them killed a customs agent, an undercover. Slit his throat in a shed. I saw it, Ray, through an open window.”

In the silence that followed I could picture my friend's perfect face take on that calm, resolute set, that expression that would not reveal if he was about to level his nine at you or tell you to hit the road, guy, and stay out of trouble, the long lashes half closed, the mouth not needing much motion. After a bit, he said, “Hey, girl.”

“I know.”

“Who else is UC with you?”

“No one.”

“You're the UC? It?”

“I'm it. The captain's supposed to put some plainclothes on it, but I haven't seen 'em yet. Maybe I'm not supposed to.”

“What's being scammed, if customs is on it?”

“The contraband is . . .” It was still hard to say. You expect a hard laugh on the other end. “Ray, you ready for this? It's swine semen. That's what they're smuggling. Whoever has the best semen has a market edge.” I waited a second. “You forgot to laugh.”

“I'm laughing.”

“They cross borders with it both directions. Blackman's maybe smuggling precursors too. Pig semen. That's what the customs agent got killed over.”

“Motherfuckers.”

“I'm supposed to take his place, sort of. Since I was already there, like, because of my brother's ex-wife. It's weird, Raymond.”

“You're telling me.”

“Sometimes I'm scared.”

“You should be. You saw this?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry, babe.”

“It was bad.”

“Are you okay?”

“It's not that I'm so afraid for my life.”

“Hey, you definitely should be. This sounds—”

“It's not that. Did I ever tell you, Ray . . . ?”

I seldom told anyone, maybe five people in my life. I started again. “Did I ever mention my mother was pretty sick there for a while?”

“I don't think so.”

“When I was little. Maybe till I was about fourteen.”

“What are you talking about, Smokey?”

“She'd go off her cork.”

“How?”

“It made me strong, Raymond. I'm telling you. It made me strong. I'll kill somebody messes with me at a certain point, I really will.”

“That's healthy. What's the problem? You okay?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you're okay. But I'd like to know why you don't have backup.”

“Captain Honcho's busy with a deputy who forced a friendly blowjob on a civilian.”

“Oh man.”

“Yeah.”

“They've got somebody else planted,” Ray said. “They wouldn't leave you out there alone.”

“They wouldn't mean to.”

“Where's Joe in all this?”

“Sympathetic. Worried. When you think of it, though, look: If Monty suspected anything he could've already aced me easy. I was alone with him since.”

“You packing?”

“How can I? I'm either wearing biker shorts or Victoria's Secret.”

“You can do better than that.”

“I will. Don't sweat it.” And then, for no
rational
reason I could have given at the time, I said, “I guess I would like you to come along tonight” I wouldn't let Joe take me or pick me up, but I let Ray. Later I thought maybe I wanted Monty to see me with someone else, see that I had lots of friends and at least one with a lot of muscles. “Are you happy?”