Inkslingers Ball (A Forensic Handwriting Mystery)

by Sheila Lowe

  Randy Coleman showed up at last, yawning, but looking perfect, as always. His suit could have been tailored right on him. Jovanic’s partner was in his mid-thirties, fit and good-looking, with wavy black hair that was the envy of men who were mourning their own balding pates.

  Jovanic sent him to look for any sign of Dumpster Dave. While he waited for the coroner to arrive he started his chrono—notes that detailed everything he had done—and a diagram of the crime scene.

  The coroner’s investigator made it to the scene at four twenty-five bearing a cardboard tray with two large Styrofoam cups in one hand and an equipment case in the other.

  “Sorry it’s plain wrap.” She set her case on the ground and offered a cup to Jovanic. “Starbucks needs to open an all-night store in the ‘hood.’”

  The pre-dawn temperature had chilled the air and Jovanic was glad to accept the coffee with thanks. “Not to sound ungrateful, Shirl,” he added. “But, no donuts?”

  Shirley Lorraine grinned. “Bad for your cholesterol. I wouldn’t want you ending up on one of our tables with fatty arteries because of me.”

  Ash blonde with a dusting of grey, Shirley was a hot forty-five who looked thirty-two. Several years earlier when they had first met, there was an attraction and they had dated casually. But the chemistry was not quite right and after a few months they came to a mutual agreement that they made better friends than lovers. The friendship had endured and even now, during those times when they were not working a crime scene together, they stayed in touch. Jovanic was grateful that Claudia was not the jealous type. She liked Shirley, had even analyzed her handwriting for her.

  “Got a pretty nasty one for you,” Jovanic said.

  “Yeah? So what else is new.”

  He led her behind the store to the dumpster, preparing her for what she was about to find. While she gloved up, he once again propped open the lid with the stick, then hauled a plastic milk crate over from a stack near the back door of the market. Shirley was about five-six, but she needed the extra height to see into the dumpster.

  “Jesus.” She shook her head in disgust. “What the hell is wrong with people?”

  “I’ll take that as a rhetorical question.” Jovanic knew her well enough not to offer his opinion about the victim. She would want to make her own assessment first.

  Opening her bag, Shirley unfolded a heavy paper sheet and threw it over the lip of the dumpster, both to preserve any possible fingerprints and to keep her clothing away from the grimy metal surface. Next, she took out a scalpel and a digital thermometer that looked like a meat thermometer with a six-inch metal spike.

  After making a note of the ambient temperature she climbed up on the crate. Standing off to the side, Jovanic watched her run a practiced eye over the body the way he had watched her numerous times before. She was serious about her job, but for someone who spent most of her time with corpses, she was remarkably good-humored.

  After completing her visual inspection of the body, Shirley leaned into the dumpster and peeled up the bottom of the victim’s tube top. More bruised flesh. With her fingertips she felt her way along the bottom of the sternum. When she found the spot she was looking for, she incised a slit in the skin with the scalpel, then guided the thermometer through it into the liver.

  When he was still new on the job, Jovanic used to cringe, watching an ME perform this task, but his presence at hundreds of homicides over the years had hardened him. The ME’s unfortunate patient felt nothing at this further violation.

  Shirley read the digital display aloud. “91.6. She’s in rigor, but it’s not full.”

  Jovanic was aware that body temperature drops by about 1.5 degrees per hour after death. Rigor mortis begins within ninety seconds, but does not become full for about twelve hours, after which it begins to release. As he had suspected, the coroner’s investigator’s findings confirmed his guess that the victim had been killed late in the evening before being transported to the alley.

  Using a red pen, Shirley drew a circle around the slit she had made. It would tell the pathologist at autopsy that the incision was hers, and not a pre-mortem injury.

  The cell phone in the dumpster rang twice while she was inspecting the body. The first time it startled her and she nearly fell off her milk crate. The second time she turned with a stern glare to Jovanic, who was hovering at her shoulder. “No, you can’t have it until I’m done here.”

  He did his best to sound hurt. “I didn’t say anything about wanting to get that phone right now.”

  “Uh huh. But you were thinking it.”

  “It could help me find out who she is.”

  “I know. I’m nearly there.”

  When she was done, the investigator instructed her assistants to photograph and then remove the body from the dumpster.

  They might have been window dressers working with a mannequin, Jovanic thought, watching the two assistants wrestle the corpse from the dumpster as rigor continued to stiffen the muscles. Shirley Lorraine was well aware that he was itching to get his hands on the phone, but she refused to be rushed.

  The assistants placed the body on a plastic sheet on the ground and as she continued her careful inspection Jovanic was forced to wait for her to give the word. She checked the dead girl’s pockets. Finding them empty, she rolled the body onto its left side. A hank of white blonde hair fell aside, exposing a tattoo on one thin shoulder.

  That was something Jovanic could photograph and email right now to the gang division. They would compare the glamorous sugar skull design to a catalogue they maintained of tattoos worn by gang members and their associates. If this particular sugar skull was among them, it would give him a place to start in his interviews.

  Shirley pointed to the purplish discolored area of skin that showed between the tube top and Levi’s. “See how the livor mortis is pronounced on the side she was lying on? That’s where the blood pooled post mortem. She was relocated here soon after she was killed.”

  The sun was straining to push through the marine layer as dawn broke. People were already starting to leave their homes, heading to work and school, griping about access being blocked by crime scene personnel.

  Shirley Lorraine directed her helpers to get the victim into a body bag, away from the prying stares of the lookie-loos in the windows of the apartment building across the alley.

  “Can you do a blue check?” Jovanic was referring to a technology the department had started to use. With a device the size of a cell phone, an investigator could send a picture of the victim’s fingerprints to check against the law enforcement database. If the Blue Check worked—it sometimes did not—and if the victim was in the system for any reason, he could have a positive identification within moments.

  “Yeah, sure.” Shirley instructed one of her techs to take the prints from the corpse’s left and right index fingers. He held the screen against each in turn and sent it in. A few seconds later the results came back. “She’s got a juvenile record,” the investigator reported. “Name’s Angela Eliana Tedesco, AKA Angel. Wow, think her family is Italian, or what?”

  The name got Jovanic’s attention. “Did you say ‘Angel’?”

  The tech turned his screen to show Jovanic a photo of a younger version of the victim. He read the information, hardly daring to conclude what was staring him in the face. “Holy shit.”

  Shirley, who was already packing up her case, glanced up at him. “What?”

  “You hear about that tattoo parlor arson Sunday night? I’m looking for a teenager called Angel. A witness told me she’s been spending time there. Fits this girl’s description, too.”

  The main difference between the photo and the corpse was her hair, which onscreen was so black that it had to be a chemically induced color. Her sullen expression in the photo reminded him again of Annabelle when they had first met. The
kid had been a real piece of work before Claudia started helping her. She still had plenty of problems.

  “Do you believe in coincidences?” Shirley asked.

  “Not one this big.” There was no question in Jovanic’s mind that the two cases were connected. “Can you have the CSIs fume her wrists and ankles?”

  “You’re thinking there might be latents?”

  “It’s a long shot, but you never know.”

  “Okay, tell Maria what you need.”

  Jovanic went to the tech, who was standing by the SID van, waiting for the ME’s summons. He explained what he wanted. She clambered into the back of the vehicle, calling to the other assistant, a wiry Filipino trainee named Roberto Castillo, to help her. Castillo stood at the door to the cargo bay while Maria handed out a cardboard box and a coffee maker.

  “Better make it quick,” Castillo muttered, heading over to the body. “The media assholes are coming.”

  He was right. The increasing whirring of the newscopter overhead spurred Jovanic to hurry. He didn’t want telephoto lenses transmitting pictures of Angela Tedesco’s battered body to their studios before her family could be notified. Besides, with a victim this young, there would be a lot of extra pressure from the brass to solve the case.

  Carrying a bottle of water, a small container of superglue, and a heavy orange extension cord, Maria jumped down and followed her trainee. One end of the extension cord was attached to the 110 plug system in the van to provide electricity for the coffee maker, which would heat the water they needed under the hood to create humidity.

  While Jovanic watched them set up the temporary fume hood, he called Huey Hardcastle at home and told him to come to the scene. The detective had done his best to get out of doing any real work for long enough. He had run out of excuses.

  The coffee maker would take a good ten minutes to heat the water under the box and taking latent prints from skin was iffy at best. The greatest chance of success was when the corpse was freshest. Jovanic could have kicked himself for not thinking of it before the CSI techs had removed Tedesco from the dumpster.

  When Hardcastle arrived, Jovanic pointed out Maria Abadias. “When Maria over there is done fuming the vic, she’s going to put another sheet on the ground. There’s a phone in the dumpster. I need you to suit up and get it.”

  “What the fuck? Why me?”

  “Why not you, Huey?” Jovanic could feel his ire building. “It’s your turn to do the scut work. So unless you’ve got a note from mommy saying you can’t get your shoes dirty, get the fuck in the dumpster. When you find that phone, I want it right away. Same goes for a purse or anything else that looks like it might belong to the vic. You can hand the trash bags out to Maria and then we’ll sort through everything on the sheets.”

  As he walked away, Jovanic was pretty sure Hardcastle called him an asshole under his breath. He grinned to himself. He might be an asshole, but he was the asshole in charge.

  It took about thirty minutes before Hardcastle unearthed the phone, and it was ringing again when Jovanic grabbed it out of his hand. The first thing he noticed was that it was in a pink case like Annabelle’s. He almost dropped the phone when he turned it over and saw Claudia’s image on the screen. And it hit him like a bowling ball why the ringtone was so familiar.

  Jovanic did not know the song title, but there had been times when he and Annabelle were home alone together and Claudia had phoned the girl. This was the tune that played on Annabelle’s cell phone.

  Annabelle’s phone in the pink case.

  His heart was racing as he slid his finger across the screen to connect the call.

  “Claudia?” His question was met with stunned silence. “Claudia, are you there?”

  “What—Joel?”

  “Where’s Annabelle? I need you to tell me, right now.” He knew that the urgency in his voice would terrify her, but it couldn’t be helped.

  “But—how did you get her phone?”

  “Listen to me, Claudia! Go and check her room.”

  Her next words stopped him cold. “I’ve already checked it. She’s not in the house. Joel, what’s going on? Where are you?” He could almost hear the penny drop when she got it. “Oh my god…Annabelle?”

  “No! It’s not her.”

  He heard her sharp intake of breath. She paused, then spoke, choking with emotion. “Oh, hell, it’s Angel, isn’t it?”

  Jovanic’s attention snagged on one thing. “You know Angel?”

  “She’s the girl who helped Annabelle get the tattoo I told you about. Annabelle left her phone behind in the guy’s van. Angel was supposed to bring it over to her tonight, but she didn’t show. Oh, please don’t tell me she’s dead.”

  Chapter Ten

  Jovanic’s silence gave Claudia the answer she feared. All of a sudden her anger at Annabelle’s nighttime vanishing act hardened into a glacial mass of fear. Angel was dead and she still had Annabelle’s phone. So, where was Annabelle?

  “I’m going to get dressed and look for her.” Claudia headed for the bedroom as she spoke, pulling open dresser drawers, grabbed T-shirt, jeans, underwear.

  “Go where?” Jovanic asked. “Where are you going to look?”

  “Anywhere. I can’t just sit here.”

  “What kind of car was Angel driving?”

  “She doesn’t have a car. She was supposed to get a ride over here.” A dozen scenarios ran through Claudia’s head, none of them relieving her anxiety. “Annabelle talked to her on the phone yesterday afternoon. They must have made arrangements to pick her up after we went to bed. What the hell were they planning? Where is she?”

  She heard him take a deep breath. When he spoke, his voice was level, but knowing him inside and out the way she did, her intuition told her that underneath the calm he felt a foreboding that mirrored her own.

  “Who was supposed to drive her?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. Maybe it was her boyfriend, or that guy Crash, or—”

  “Crash? Who’s that?”

  “He’s the tattoo artist who did Annabelle’s work. We never got a chance to talk about it. He—”

  “Wait,” Jovanic interrupted. “You’re going to have to make a formal statement. Meet me at the station and you can tell me everything then.”

  “But what about Annabelle?”

  “You don’t know what kind of car she’s in or who she’s with.”

  “If she’s with Crash, he has a white van, but she didn’t tell me the make.”

  “And you don’t know if that’s who Angel was with.”

  “That’s who had Annabelle’s phone.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna run the name and see if anything comes up under that moniker. But you do know how many white vans there are driving around West L.A., right? Do you have a description of this guy?”

  Claudia felt a sudden wave of despair, realizing how little she did know. “Annabelle just referred to him as an ‘old dude.’ That could be anyone over twenty-two. I was so angry when she told me he gave her tequila, and then she was crying about being a disappointment to me. I didn’t think about asking for a description of the guy.” She zipped up her jeans and slipped into a pair of deck shoes, hearing the crunch of Jovanic’s footsteps on gravel through the phone.

  He spoke quietly, as if he didn’t want others to hear. “Don’t beat yourself up, babe. We’ll find him. Right now, I gotta turn the scene over to Randy, then I’ll meet you at the station. Forty-five minutes, okay?”

  “I guess. See you there.”

  Claudia clicked off and dragged a sweatshirt over her head. Pacific Division police station where Jovanic worked was located less than four miles from her home in Playa de la Reina. Forty-five minutes would give her time to drive the neighborhood. Whatever good that might do. She grabbed her keys
from the kitchen counter and ran down the back stairs, backed her classic 1985 Jaguar out of the garage.

  Oh, Annabelle, what have you got yourself into this time?

  At six-thirty a.m. the roads were relatively empty, but on the way down the hill Claudia found herself looking from side to side as if she were following a tennis match, though she knew the chances of her spotting Crash’s white van in the neighborhood were close to nil.

  For an instant, her hopes rose as she drove past Tyler’s and saw a girl who, from behind, resembled Annabelle. But as Claudia slowed, about to call out to her, the girl turned and it was the face of a stranger looking back at her.

  Jovanic was waiting for her at the station. He took her to the squad room, which was still empty at that time of the morning, and put his arms around her. “It’s gonna be okay,” he said, resting his cheek against her hair. “This isn’t the first time Annabelle’s given us a scare.”

  Through her fear, Claudia heard his use of “us” and felt a wave of love and gratitude that he was in her life. He had been at her side throughout the many trials she had shared with Annabelle—through kidnapping, witnessing a murder, and more. Starting at age six, the lone survivor of the automobile accident that killed her mother, Annabelle had experienced more trauma in her young life than anyone should have to.

  Claudia realized that she was trembling all over. Jovanic gave her a final squeeze, then released her and went to fetch her a chair. She clenched her hands, willing herself not to panic. She had been through too much with Annabelle to lose her now.

  “We have to call her father.”

  Perched on the edge of his desk, Jovanic shook his head. “Not yet. We don’t have anything to tell him.”