Solomon & Lord Drop Anchor (14 page)

My life has been circumscribed by rules. I
tried not to hit after the whistle, and I never lied to a judge,
though I’ve been tempted to take a poke at one or two. But there
are games people play without rules. The hard-eyed cops know the
players, stare them down every day. Could I do that? At the moment,
filled with a mixture of anger and dread, I didn’t know.

I looked at Pam Metcalf, who seemed to be
studying me. “Of course it’s dreadful,” she said, “but
scientifically, Mr. Lassiter, it’s quite fascinating, too.”

Charlie Riggs took control. He gently pulled
the body back into the chair. “Lividity of the face and lips,
engorgement and petechial hemorrhages in the conjunctivae.”

He examined her neck. “No sign of a ligature.
Crescentic abrasions on the skin, most likely fingernail marks.
Probable cause of death, hypoxia due to throttling.”

Charlie Riggs turned to the assistant ME.
“Manual strangulation. Any evidence of sexual battery?”

“Nothing … visible,” he stammered. “No
contusions or lacerations other than the head and neck injuries. I
swabbed the genitalia. No visible semen. However, vaginal
secretions are consistent with … uh … sexual activity in close
proximity to death.”

“You’ll check the smear for spermatozoa, of
course.”

“Yes, sir. I thought I’d use methylene
blue.”

Charlie Riggs shook his head. “You’ll never
distinguish sperm cells from artifacts with that stain. Try
hematoxylin and eosin for better differentiation.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What else, what other tests?”

“Well … I don’t know.”

“What if the fellow’s had a vasectomy, or
he’s an alcoholic with cirrhosis? Won’t find any wagging tails
there, eh?”

“In that event,” the young doctor recited, as
if taking his oral exams, “acid phosphatase determination will
reveal the presence of seminal fluid. If the man’s a secreter, we
can identify A, B, or H blood types.”

“
Verus
,” Charlie said, beaming, a
professor whose student had finally caught on. “Be alert to every
detail. Don’t believe that old saw 
Mortui non
mordent—
”

“I never did,” I chimed in.

“‘Dead men carry no tales.’ Hah! They can
tell us stories 
horribile dictu
, horrible to relate,
but essential to our understanding of their deaths.”

The young doctor was nodding his head
vigorously.

“Now, what about odor?” Charlie Riggs
asked.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Vaginal odor? It’s okay to take your sweet
time with the lab tests, but you’ve got one chance to work up the
crime scene. Just don’t forget to use the old schnoz.”

“Tell him about the time you opened a stomach
and ID’ed the restaurant by smelling the beer in the barbecue
sauce,” I prompted Charlie.

“Only one ribs joint in town had sauce like
that,” Charlie said. “Wasn’t hard to figure where he had his last
supper, then a waiter identified his dining companion, a hired
killer.”

The assistant ME bit his lip, shot an
embarrassed look toward Pam Metcalf, and sank to his knees. His
head disappeared between two pale, slightly chubby thighs.

“Three-to-one the kid says he smells barbecue
sauce,” Detective Rodriguez whispered to me. He had been in the
department twenty years and had little time for rookies in any
field.

A voice without a face came from the general
vicinity of the corpse’s pudendum. “What smells should I be … uh …
looking for?”

“Anything, son!” Charlie boomed. “The latex
of a condom or a surgical glove, maybe soap, talcum, or a douche
scented with lily of the valley, even a man’s distinctive cologne.
Some men splash it on their privates, you know. Maybe we find a guy
who’s crazy for Aqua Velva.”

“Or Listerine,” Rodriguez suggested,
“depending on his proclivities.”

There was the sound of a bloodhound sniffing,
then the assistant ME picked himself up, looked sheepishly toward
Charlie, and said, “Sorry, sir, but … it’s just plain pussy to
me.”

“Oh, never mind. You’ll want to do a complete
autopsy, of course. Take a good look at the neck. I’d advise
elevating the shoulders, eviscerate the body, and remove the brain.
If you want a dry field, don’t dissect the neck until the blood has
stopped draining. Don’t let the homicide detectives rush you. Take
your time.”

The kiddie coroner nodded, then piped up,
“I’d say the assailant was right-handed, Dr. Riggs.”

From behind me I heard a snicker.
“
Fantastico
,” Detective Rodriguez said. “I’ll put out a BOLO
for all right-handed guys.”

Doc Riggs was more diplomatic. “And how do
you reach that conclusion, Doctor … ?”

Charlie squinted at the name tag.

“Whitson,” the alleged doctor proclaimed.
“Well, there’s a single abrasion on the right side of the neck and
four on the left. So the assailant’s right thumb would have made
the single abrasion, the fingers of his right hand the rest.”

“Assuming she was strangled from the front,”
Charlie added politely.

“I thought of that, sir. You can tell from
the concavity of the crescents that the strangulation occurred from
the front.”

Charlie made a little tsk-tsking sound. He
didn’t want to lecture the lad in front of spectators, but he had
no choice. He examined the neck. “All I can tell is that the nail
on the ring finger is jagged. In a couple of days, it will grow
back, so the information is of very little use. As for the
crescent, the direction of the concavity can be misleading. The
crescent will be reversed, as often as not. Here, I’ll show you.
Jake, roll up your sleeve.”

“Why me?” I protested. “I haven’t forgotten
your electrocution experiment.”

“It was only two hundredths of an amp, Jake,
and I turned it off as soon as you went into muscular paralysis.
Now be a good scout.”

Everyone was watching, so the good scout
rolled up his sleeve. Charlie looked around and spotted Pamela
Metcalf, who was intently studying titles of the shelved books in
the small apartment.

“Pamela, perhaps you can inflict some pain on
Jake for a moment,” Charlie wondered cheerfully.

“Gladly,” she chimed in. She placed a cool
hand on my forearm and dug five fingernails deep into my skin.

“I’ll always remember the first time we
touched,” I told her, showing my All-Conference smile.

She dug deeper, letting up just before
severing the radial artery. I held up my arm, and sure enough, the
crescents went the opposite direction of each nail’s shape. Charlie
was explaining something about the free edge of the arch of the
nail having no purchase and therefore creating the reverse crescent
and how fallacious it was to infer much from fingernail marks. I
just looked at the little dents in my arm and said to Pamela
Metcalf, “I’ll bet you leave a mark on every man you meet.”

“With some,” she replied, “it takes a
sledgehammer.”

Having exhausted my store of witty repartee,
I stood silently, surveying the scene. The apartment was sparsely
furnished in Yuppie Modern—white tile and green plants, a
large-screen TV and CD player, a few bookshelves. There was a
galley kitchen with a few pots and pans and a cupboard containing
bran cereal, microwave popcorn, bottled spaghetti sauce, and
spinach pasta from a gourmet market. The oven was practically
sterile, indicating either an immaculate cook or no cook at all.
The refrigerator had four different flavors of yogurt, none of
which had expired, bottled water, an eyemask filled with what
looked like antifreeze, and not much else. The bedroom and bathroom
were down a hall, but I hadn’t seen them yet.

Young Dr. Whitson picked up his camera and
click-clicked through several roles of film, shooting the body, the
furniture, and even one or two of me. Charlie puttered around the
body for a while, giving more tips to the young pathologist. Pamela
Metcalf walked through the little apartment, her green eyes bright,
taking everything in, letting nothing out.

Nick Wolf motioned me onto the small balcony
where we were alone. I looked him in the eye. I was half a foot
taller, but he had impressive width. A stocky fireplug of explosive
energy. “Michelle Diamond,” he said. “Ever see her on 
Live
at Five?
”

I shook my head. Usually, Fm still working
then. If not, Fm playing volleyball on the beach or fishing with
Charlie. Afternoon television is for those in traction. Physical or
mental.

“I want you to be a special prosecutor and
lead the investigation,” Nick said. “Present a case to the grand
jury when you’ve got a suspect.”

“Why can’t your office handle it?”

He didn’t hesitate, just shrugged those big
shoulders. “Conflict of interest. I was seeing her. Not heavy-duty.
But I’d slip over here in the mornings or she’d come by my place at
night. It’s sure to come out in the investigation.

Before I could ask, he said, “I’ve been
separated for six months. Irretrievably broken and all that.”

“So the first statement I take is from you,”
I said.

He showed the hint of a smile. “Should I have
my alibi ready?”

I looked at him hard. His girlfriend’s body
was drawing flies and he makes a little joke. A used little
joke.

“I don’t show much emotion,” Wolf said,
reading my mind. “Not in public, anyway. Maybe tonight I’ll get
drunk by myself. Maybe I’ll put my fist through a wall. But that’s
none of your business. Your job is to find the slime that did this,
get an indictment, and try the case.”

Through the glass I saw Pamela Metcalf
talking to Detective Rodriguez. He was nodding and making notes on
a little pad. Across the street the ocean breeze rattled the palm
fronds. Traffic crept along Ocean Drive, young people cruising at a
pace to see and be seen.

I came in and told Rodriguez what I wanted. A
computer whiz to print out everything inside the beige box on
Michelle Diamond’s desk and the disks in her drawer. All her
address books, appointment schedules, credit-card receipts, a list
of her friends, relatives, and coworkers, and a chronology of her
daily routine. I wanted statements from her gynecologist, her
hairdresser, her pharmacist, her landlady, her maid, and her
masseuse. I wanted to know every man she dated in the last three
years and anyone she met in the last three months. Did any
deliverymen bring her groceries or furniture or laundry? Where was
she every minute of the last week? Within forty-eight hours, I
wanted to know more about Michelle Diamond than her best friend,
her mother, or her lover ever did.

It wasn’t asking too much. Anyone who cares
to can know everything about us. Somewhere, I am sure, there is a
giant computer that stores a thousand megabytes about each of us.
What we got in geography and who we took to the senior prom. Where
we eat, what we buy, who we call. How much money we make and how
much we give away. What airlines we use, where we sleep, how much
we spend on clothes, booze, and pills. Traffic tickets, domestic
disputes, diplomas, and the books we buy. Modern life is one
sweeping, cradle-to-grave invasion of privacy. An encroachment on
our ever-narrowing space. Behind us we leave a trail of carbon
copies and floppy disks. Fodder for the snoop and the historian
alike.

In the twenty-first century, they tell us,
our houses will be smaller, our lawns nonexistent. We’ll work at
home and recycle our garbage into compost. Our bathroom scale will
record our weight, pulse, and blood pressure and transmit the
information to the company physician and anyone else with the right
seven-digit password. The computer will link us with the office,
the grocery store, and each other. The paper trail will be
obsolete, but in its place, microscopic chips and laser scanners
will transcribe details even the most astute biographer would
overlook.

* * *

“Lassiter, come take a look back here.”

It was Rodriguez, motioning me through the
bedroom and toward the bathroom. I moseyed back there and stood,
filling the doorway, peeking over Charlie Riggs’ shoulder. It was
old-fashioned but clean, a small porcelain sink, shower stall, and
toilet crammed into a room without a window. There were powders and
perfumes and white fluffy towels, and on the mirror above the sink
was a message scrawled in bloodred lipstick: Catch me if you
can, Mr. Lusk.

“We got ourselves a show-off,” I said. “Now,
who the hell is Mr. Lusk?”

“Probably some guy she was playing tag with,”
Rodriguez said, “and it looks like he caught her.”

In the mirror I saw Charlie’s jaw drop in
astonishment. It was not his usual expression. He moved closer, as
if the image might disappear at any moment. “Pamela, come here
please!”

In a moment Pamela Metcalf joined the party.
And there the four of us stood. I hoped somebody knew more than I
did.

“Mr. Lusk.” Pamela’s voice trembled.

“Yes, Mr. Lusk,” Charlie said.

“You know the hombre?” Rodriguez asked.

“George Lusk,” Charlie Riggs mumbled, shaking
his head in disbelief.

“I’ll bring him in,” Rodriguez said.

Charlie laughed but there was no pleasure in
it. “Sorry, detective. Mr. Lusk is quite dead.”

Rodriguez squinted at the mirror. “Then
who’s—”

“In the fall of 1888, in the East End of
London, the Whitechapel section, there were a series of murders of
young women.”

“I get it,” Rodriguez said. “George Lusk was
the cop who cracked the case.”

“Not exactly,” Charlie said. “He was a
private citizen who formed the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee to
patrol the streets and help the police. One day Lusk received a
parcel in the mail. It contained a kidney cut from the body of one
of the victims and a most grisly note. I can’t remember the
contents exactly, but the note concluded—”

“‘Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk,’” Pamela
Metcalf said.