L.A. Boneyard (10 page)

Jairo joined him and together they rode west toward Sunset.

The tattoo shop was a small, wooden facade over a cinder block rectangle with a garish neon sign of a Chinese dragon flowing around the word TATTOO. A multitude of curling pictures filled what remained of the window space, blocking out all the sun from entering the shop.

Inside it was dim and smelled vaguely of cheap cologne and sweat. A heavily tattooed twenty-something woman was leaning over a reclining chair where a skinny man lay, his chest exposed to the tattoo gun she held. The image of a snake winding through a skull was taking shape on his skin.

The tattoo artist stared at them for several heartbeats then scowled.

“You the cop who called?”

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75

“I am,” David said. He waited for the woman to put her needle gun away and help the man to his feet before bringing out the photo of the tattoo from the bridge toss victim. “You said on the phone you might know this tattoo.”

The tattoo artist stripped off her gloves and wiped her hands on her jeans. She made them wait while the customer paid up and left. Taking the photo, and the flower sketch he had made at the second autopsy, from David, she carried it over to a cluttered table covered with sample books, where a goosenecked lamp bathed the table in harsh white light. She dragged a stool over with her booted foot and hunched over the table, studying the images. Jairo and David took up position on either side of her. She stared at the images for several seconds, her fleshy lips pursed. Finally she nodded her hairless and heavily tattooed head.

“Yeah, I remember this.” She held up the oddly shaped image and letters. “She came in several months ago, with a picture. It was strange. Never saw anything like it before or since. She called it a goddess.” She climbed off her stool and rooted through a drawer, her tension putting David on edge. He watched her movements with a sharp eye, knowing he was being paranoid. This case was starting to get to him. Or something was.

Finally, she pulled a wide sheet of rolled up paper out. She unfurled it on the desk and David and Jairo leaned over, shoulders touching, studying the large sketch of the same image as it had appeared on the body.

“Pretty dramatic image,” Jairo said, tracing the outline of the symbol or whatever it was.

“Don’t touch it,” David said. He snapped on a pair of gloves and carefully rolled the drawing back up. “Can we take this with us?”

“Sure, I guess—”

David waited until Jairo put on his own gloves and handed the roll to him. He turned back to the tattoo artist. “You keep records of your clients?”

76 P.A. Brown

“Yeah, we offer specials to our regulars. I don’t think she ever came back, but I probably have an address on her.”

“Get it for me, will you.”

“Sure, officer—”

David stood over the heavy-set tattooed woman, feeling her tension, watching the line of sweat roll off her tattooed forehead as she pulled open the sliding drawer of a small filing cabinet beside the cash register. He wondered if there was a square inch of skin that wasn’t covered in tattoos. The soles of her feet maybe, other body parts he refused to think about. He thought of the tattoo Jairo had shown him. He’d never thought skin art was all that sexy; certainly Chris had never marred his nearly perfect body with anything but a discreet ear piercing.

Chris didn’t need to enhance anything. David, on the other hand, had never cared what he looked like. Chris insisted on buying him nice clothes, but there were still times when David couldn’t have told anyone what color socks he was wearing.

“Here she is.”

David took the flimsy sheet from her and studied it. Halyna Stakchinko. Sounded Russian or some other Eastern European country. Russian? He made a mental note to check with Immigration on that. It showed an address in Hollywood on a Leland Way. There was a phone number too. The tattoo artist seemed to have gotten over her initial reservations about talking to the cops; she became garrulous.

“I remember her,” she said. “She was a looker. I mean, this is Hollywood, right, they’re all babes, but this one...” She whistled. “She made this old dyke sit up and take notice. And I don’t usually react to the young stuff, know what I mean? Not that she was jail bait or anything,” she said quickly. “Just way out of my league. Out of everyone’s, you ask me.”

“She was an actress?”

“She could have been, but I don’t think so. Too nervous, if you know what I mean. And her accent, it was hard to understand her, so how could she act? But she had a real presence.”

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“Is this her?” David pulled out the head shot from the morgue. The tattoo artist recoiled.

“My God, what—she’s dead!”

“Yes, she is, ma’am. Is this Halyna Stakchinko?” David stumbled over the name.

“What happened to her?”

“That’s what we’re trying to determine.” David glanced down at the sales record. It was dated nearly two months ago.

“Is this the last time she was in your shop?”

“N-no, she came in about four or five months ago, a couple of weeks after the first time.”

“To get another tattoo?” David was certain the woman who had been thrown onto the Harbor Freeway had only had the one tattoo.

“No, she came in with a friend who wanted a tattoo.” It didn’t surprise David when she pointed at the other image, the flower. RUZHA. “Helen—that’s what she said her name was—

wanted to help her friend find the right piece of art. It was unbelievable. They were like twin goddesses. Not that they were twins, mind you, though they were both blond. Foreigners, from the same place as far as I could tell.”

Two beautiful women, almost unnaturally beautiful. Where had they come from? And what had happened to them? “Who was her friend?” David asked. “Is she in your files, too?” Maybe they had a witness they could interview. That would be a break.

Beside him Jairo was furiously taking notes. David was pleased to see he was studying every aspect of the shop. David just wished he’d ask more questions. This was as much Jairo’s investigation as his own.

As though reading his mind, Jairo asked, “She have an address?”

“Yes, yes, she did.” The tattoo artist dug through her miniature filing cabinet. She extracted another sheet of paper.

Same address, different name: Zuzanna Konjenko.

“So they were roommates,” Jairo said when David handed both sales slips to him.

78 P.A. Brown

“They never said, but I guess so,” the tattoo artist said. “I tried to talk her into something more imaginative, but she couldn’t be talked. Some people got no imagination. Is that all, guys? I got customers...”

“She ever tell you what the letters meant? Were they words?”

“I never asked. Figured it was whatever language they were speaking. Didn’t mean anything to me, so I didn’t ask.”

David glanced up to see two leather clad biker types, alternately trying to look tough and invisible at the same time, enter the shop. David glanced from them, to Jairo who was watching the duo with glittering eyes. He gestured at the papers in his partner’s hand. “Take them?”

“Sure, sure. Hope you find out what happened to her. She was a sweet kid, even if she was foreign.”

Back outside, Jairo fell into step beside him. David paused to make notes of the names and address in his own notebook.

Then he flipped it shut and stuck it back in his jacket pocket.

He nodded at the rolled up drawing and the two sales slips.

“Log those into evidence when we get back to the station.”

“Sure, what then?”

“I talk to the Lieutenant about rolling those cases together. I think we have enough evidence to do that. After that, we go visit.”

“Think we’ll find our mystery woman?”

“We can hope. But don’t forget we have two other Jane Does to account for. They can’t find a tattoo on bones, but I’m going to let them know that the first victim needs to get a closer look. Even badly decayed skin can hold ink well enough to photograph.”

First they had to book their evidence in, followed by a phone call to the Central Division’s detective telling him what they’d found out. He followed that with a call to the victim’s number. Not surprising, there was no answer, though the phone was still active. There was an answering machine with a heavily accented message. The voice was male; David couldn’t L.A. BONEYARD
79

catch the name. David hung up before the tape could start.

They stopped at Tommy’s for a chili burger. David hadn’t had one in years. Chris was too much of a food snob to indulge in greasy pseudo fast food. He wouldn’t be caught dead in most of the places he and Martinez frequented over the years.

The day waxed hot. While they ate, standing outside Tommy’s, Jairo took his jacket off and tossed it in the car window. He set his Coke on top of the Crown Vic he had signed out that morning, and leaned over the roof of the car.

His shoulder holster was snugged under his armpit, his police issued Beretta within easy reach. He drew a lot of male and female eyes, all of which he ignored, while he took in everything and everyone around him. A poster boy for the LAPD. David had been seen that way once, until he’d committed the unpardonable sin of falling in love with a man.

Their late lunch over, they tossed their garbage and climbed back into the Crown Vic. Jairo drove. They parked under a no stopping sign and Jairo flipped an LAPD ON DUTY sign on the dash.

The house was a trim little Craftsman cottage, nestled within rose trellises, and a profusion of fuchsia and red Bougainvillea.

Dusty fan palmettos draped over the cracked sidewalk. A narrow veranda held a couple of rusting lawn chairs. Flimsy looking lace curtains were drawn, concealing the dark interior.

The house had a stillness about it. Even before he rapped firmly on the flaking wooden door, David knew the house was empty.

Jairo moved down the veranda, peering in through the curtained window. David followed and shaded his eyes while he tried to see inside, but he couldn’t penetrate the gloomy interior.

Finally he straightened and met Jairo’s gaze.

“What now?” Jairo asked.

“Track down the owner. He may or may not have heard about his tenant. Or he can lead us to the property manager.”

“Always hated being the bearer of bad news.” Jairo’s easy grin belied that statement.

“When you find him, you can tell him.”

80 P.A. Brown

“I can—sure boss. Whatever you say.”

They returned to the Northeast Station. David called the forensic pathologist and relayed the news about the tattoo.

Fenton promised to go back and examine the original Griffith park corpse more closely. Then he added, “The anthropologist has scheduled his autopsy for this afternoon. You want to be present?”

“We’ll be there.”

David got home in time to miss a call from Chris saying he’d got in okay and would call again. Then he and Sergeant went out for a long run, burning off despair and unwanted desires, before collapsing in front of the TV to watch an insipid comedy.

That night he dreamed of Jairo, and woke in a sweat to sticky sheets, and deeper depression.

Tuesday, 3:20 PM, County Coroner’s Office, North Mission Road, East
Los Angeles

Same smell of corruption and formaldehyde, same harsh buzzing lights. Every autopsy table was occupied. White, sterile walls closed in on them.

The denuded skeleton wrapped in the comforter was wheeled out and gently transferred to the autopsy table. The forensic anthropologist, Antoine Galt, introduced himself.

There were no bone saws, or collection pails to hold samples, no scales to weigh organs. There would be no tox screens. A sample of hair had been recovered; it was already at the DNA lab waiting to be tested. The thick covering was carefully removed, its contents examined and collected. David studied what looked like several bits of plant debris and watched Galt bag each one and label them.

“Looks like several different types of vegetation. I’m no gardener, so I can’t say what kind. They’ll be sent off to a forensic botanist.”

“Might be some kind of bedding plant. Nothing like what we found at the burial site.”

“With any luck it can help pinpoint a secondary site,” Galt said.

David and Jairo stood side by side, opposite Galt, a stoop-shouldered man who looked like he spent his life bending over an autopsy table, peering down at the dead. The bones were first photographed, then X-rayed. A scanning electron microscope stood on the sidelines, in case anything like tool marks showed up and needed closer examination.

“This is most unusual,” he said in a dry, pedantic voice.

82 P.A. Brown

David leaned forward. Jairo did the same and their shoulders brushed together. “What is?”

“This woman has four gold inlay molars. Upper and lower arches.”

“And that’s three for three. Is there some new fad I haven’t heard of?” David mused, staring down at the earth-stained skull that grinned up at him. “I’ve heard of pimps getting gold grills, but women? Since when?”

“They real gold?” Jairo asked. “Or just an overlay?”

“Who would put real gold in their mouth?”

“I’ll let you know,” Galt said. He moved off. “Cranial sutures fused, so she’s not an adolescent. Auricular surface and pubic symphysial separation of nearly nine millimeters could indicate prenatal distress.”

Jairo leaned forward. “What does that mean? She was pregnant?”

“Possibly.”

David and Jairo exchanged looks. “Twice might be a coincidence,” David muttered. “This is turning into an epidemic.”

“Who kills pregnant women? Hard to believe there could be three mistakes some asshole’s trying to cover up.”

“Homicide
is
the leading cause of death among pregnant women,” Galt said.

David felt like snapping, “Don’t quote me statistics I already know,” but he knew the anthropologist was trying to be helpful.

Still, it hardly mattered if the three dead women fit some statistic; he needed to know
why
these three were dead.