Savannah Reid 06 - Sour Grapes

by Mckevett, G A

  She felt it again . . just as she had on the field trip .

  that uneasy conviction that she wasn't alone. Something, someone was there with her. She felt their grief, their rage, their-—

  A blinding white light, a lightning bolt of pain flashed through her head, obliterating every other sensation.

  She was flying. Falling forward into the darkness. She hit hard. And she heard, rather than felt, some of her bones break—

  Lying on the cold stone, she was dimly aware of someone standing over her.

  "Are you dead?" she heard a voice ask. "Well . . ." The nudge of a foot in her broken ribs. ". . . are you?" "No," she whispered. "I don't think so."

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  "I don't think so either. You're not making this easy, you know."

  She felt hands reach beneath her . . . lift. . . and shove.

  Over and over she tumbled, farther down into the musty darkness. She landed even harder than before.

  "Are you dying?" asked a voice, but it wasn't the hateful, angry voice on the stairs. This was a soft, gentle voice . . . maybe that of a Chumash Indian child . . . or a

  saint. . . or an angel.

  "Yes," she whispered. "I believe I am."

  "Then, come with me."

  "Where?"

  "With me. You're one of us now."

  Franck felt a hand slip into hers . . . and tug. "But who are you?" she asked.

  "You know."

  After a few minutes, there were footfalls on the stone stairs, going up, out of the darkness and into the sunlight. Hurried steps, the steps of the living, not the dead.

  The dead remained behind with all the others who

  had died violently, unjustly, within the thick, adobe walls of Mission de San Carmelita.

  With her black garbage bag in her hand and a grim

  smile on her face, Savannah walked up the sidewalk to a building that held hardly any good memories for her at

  all. It was the medical examiner's complex--a drab blue-gray cement-block structure that would never be

  confused with anything more cheerful, like a discotheque or even a funeral parlor.

  Savannah had spent some of her worst moments as a

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  cop inside that building, bringing people to identify the physical remains of their loved ones. Another part of the job she had hated and didn't miss.

  This time the victim was a dead chicken, and as much compassion as she had for barnyard poultry, it wasn't as bad.

  Inside, sitting at the reception desk with his finger in his nose was the repulsive Officer Kenny Bates, another reason why Savannah avoided this place like a bad case

  of PMS.

  "Savannah, baby! It's about time you dropped in to see me!" he exclaimed as she walked through the door. "Drop dead, Bates."

  He grinned as though she had just propositioned

  him. Judging from the peanut butter between his teeth and the white bread guck stuck to his gums, she assumed he had just finished his lunch. "You miss me, don't you, baby? Been havin' hot dreams about me?"

  "I assure you, Bates, I don't. I might miss an infected hangnail, an abscessed tooth, an enormous pimple on my chin. . . but I don't miss you."

  She walked up to the desk, grabbed the sign-in clipboard, and scrawled her name across it. Not wanting the police department brass to know she was there, she usually signed a fictitious name. This time it was "Minnie Mouse." Nobody, especially the worthless Officer Kenny Bates, actually checked.

  "Give me a call sometime, honey," he said as she walked away, "and I'll take you out. Wednesday is ladies' night at Hooter Hollow. You can drink all you want for free, and we'll watch the strippers. They can. . . ah, load my gun, and then we can go to my place and I'll let you pull my trigger, if you know what I mean. What'dya say?"

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  "I say that you are a wart on the buttocks of humanity,

  Bates."

  "But you like me."

  "I despise you."

  "You want me."

  "I loathe you. All women do, Bates. Haven't you noticed that even nice ladies spit on you when you walk

  by?"

  `They don't spit on me. Nobody spits on me."

  "Check out the back of your jacket sometime."

  She chuckled as she walked down the hall, knowing that at that very moment, he would be twisting his spine out of alignment trying to see behind him. What a moron.

  Ahead, at the bend of the hall, was a pair of double stainless-steel doors. Dr. Liu's autopsy suite. The M.E.'s office was around the corner to the right, but she was seldom there. Jennifer spent most of her time in the field or performing her examinations.

  Savannah swung the door open a crack and peeked

  in. Dr. Liu was standing at a steel table, scalpel in hand, wearing surgical gloves, greens, cap, and disposable paper booties over her sneakers. Her long, black hair was tied with a brilliant pink-and-purple silk scarf.

  A corpse was on the table, its chest open, major organs removed. Dr. Liu had Barbara Matthews's heart on a scale and was dictating the numbers into a microphone

  that was suspended over the table.

  When she turned and saw Savannah, she tapped a pedal beneath the table with the toe of her shoe, turning off the microphone.

  "Hey, lady!" she said, "Did you bring me some chocolate goodies?"

  U A. Lint% rr,a 410

  Savannah laughed. "No, sorry." She held up the

  black plastic bag. 'This definitely isn't a delicacy."

  "I thought you were stopping by to get the results of

  the Matthews examination."

  "Well.. . . since I'm here, I'd be very interested in anything you have."

  She peeled off her gloves and tossed them into a biohazard

  waste can. "First, let me see what you have there."

  Savannah handed her the bag. "Actually, for the record, it's Dirk--not me--dropping this off. . . in an evidence bag."

  She reached out and took it, giving Savannah a suspicious look. "And does Dirk know that he's dropping this off to me?"

  "He will."

  "Okay."

  She glanced into the bag and made a face. "What is this mess?"

  "I suspect it's the rest of the chicken. Would you take a quick look at it. . . when you get a chance, of course . . . and let me know if it died from natural causes?"

  "And what would you consider a natural way for a

  chicken to croak?"

  "If a wolf bit it."

  "I see. And where did you find this mangled, half-rotten, disgusting . . . treasure?"

  'Tied to a wolf's neck with a piece of twine."

  Jennifer stared at her for a long moment, then shook her head. "Okay, I won't ask. And I'll check to see if it's missing a gizzard. But you owe me so-o-o-o big for this one."

  "Dirk will settle up with you."

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  "No way. His idea of payment is a Hershey's Kiss. And, while I like them, this dead chicken thing is a Godiva job."

  "I hear you. What have you got on Barbie?"

  Dr. Liu glanced at the table and a sadness crossed her face. "A perfectly healthy young woman who died a very unpleasant death."

  "I'm sure falling off that cliff wasn't very pleasant."

  "She was dead before she went over the edge. There's lividity along her left side. She was lying on it a Nhile before the body was moved."

  'Then what was the cause of death?"

  "Her sinus cavities, esophagus, bronchial tubes and ungs were chemically burned. She inhaled something lighly caustic."

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know yet. We'll have to wait for the lab remits. But I'm sure it wasn't anything she was sniffing -ecreationally. If she had been physically able to escape hat poison, she would have."

  "You said before that you think she was bound." "Yes, and I'm sure of it now. There was even a shred of tape still on one of her wrists. It looks like standard Ma t
ape, but we'll run tests on it, too. I'll see if we can dentify a brand for you, but I wouldn't bet on it. There wasn't much."

  "Any hair or fibers?"

  "Hairs were all hers. We have some dark fibers. I link they're carpet threads. Maybe from an automoAle. I'll get that for you, too."

  Savannah walked over to the table and looked down

  a the earthly remains of Barbara Matthews, Beauty 2ueen, and felt bad that she didn't feel worse.

  Not only was the young woman dead, but so few

  SOUK liKAYES 215

  people seemed to be sorry. Everyone deserved to be grieved. Even unpopular, bratty girls like Barbie.

  And, although Savannah couldn't summon an enormous amount of grief from her heart, she would do everything she could to supply justice for Barbara

  Matthews. Even unliked, ungrieved victims of murder deserved justice.

  "Yes," Jennifer said as she walked up to stand next to

  Savannah by the table, "a perfectly healthy young

  woman. A perfectly healthy, pregnant young lady." Savannah gave her a quick sideways glance. "Really?" "Really. About eight weeks."

  "Mm-m-m." She silently reaffirmed her promise. Now there were two victims who required justice, and that doubled her burden of responsibility.

  1

  Chapter

  /9

  When Savannah returned to Villa Rosa that afterV

  V noon, she found the pageant activities centered, )nce again, on the patio surrounding the swimming lool. At one end of the area, on a stage decorated with ;old-and-silver-mylar balloons, the interview portion of he pageant was being conducted.

  On a set designed to look like a talk-show stage, the roung ladies were taking turns sitting in the guest's

  :hair, chatting with the pseudo-host, a very debonairooking Anthony Villa. But Savannah could tell that in his case, looks were deceiving. Although he was playing us role well, she got the distinct feeling Tony would lave much preferred to be walking in his vineyard.

  She spotted Dirk at the edge of the crowd, showing tall a dozen snapshots to first one, then another, of the ;iris. But as each one took a look, she shook her head, hen walked away. He had his "I'm Discouraged--I

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  Hate My Job" look on his face. Savannah wondered if what she was going to tell him would cheer him up or

  plunge him further down into the "I Hate the Whole

  World--Life Ain't Worth Diddly" mode.

  "Hey there, good-looldn'," she told him with her best Mae West impression, one hand on her hip, the other patting her hair. "If you're not getting anywhere with those youngsters, show a real woman what you've got."

  But he was in too lousy a mood even for Mae's double

  entendres. "I got squat, that's what I got." He wiped the sweat off his forehead, and Savannah noticed that he was flushed all the way up to the receding hairline

  he denied he had.

  "Why don't you come over here and sit in the shade

  a spell," she told him. "'Take a load off and all that."

  She led him over to an umbrella-covered table and

  iat him down. Dirk wasn't able to go all day long at breakneck speed the way he had when she'd first met

  him. The old fella was getting some mileage on him. While she, on the other hand, felt fresh out of the showroom.

  She sat down on the chair beside him and groaned

  Nith relief as she propped her feet in the crook of the

  :able legs. Okay, so her odometer had rolled over a few imes, too. They were still an awesome twosome. . . at east in her estimation.

  "Whose picture are you showing there?" she asked. He fanned the photos out on the table like a Las

  legas card dealer and pointed to the one in the middle, I gangly, teenage boy with stringy long hair and a sullen !xpression that looked more like a mug shot than the

  chool picture that it was. "That's Trent, the boyfriend," le told her. "I was hoping that maybe somebody saw

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  him come back later in the evening, after Ryan pitched him off the property."

  "Any luck?"

  "Nope. Nobody saw nada. They were all at that dinner thing."

  "Have you found him yet?"

  "No. But once I got the word from Dr. Jennifer this afternoon that it was murder for sure, I put an APB out on him and his dark blue Charger. By the way, she says you dropped something off to her and told her it was

  from me."

  "Did she tell you what it was?"

  "Something stupid that didn't make sense. She said to tell you not to bring her any more cowardly poultry. What the hell does that mean?"

  Savannah chuckled and shook her head. "Our Dr. Liu has a weird sense of humor. I suspect that's her way of telling me that she did the examination and it was, indeed, a gutless chicken. I had a feeling it would be."

  Dirk scowled. "Do you wanna fill me in here, or do I have to just wonder what you whacko broads are talking

  about?"

  Briefly, she told him about her new canine friend, his strange burden, and how she had relieved him of it. With every word, Dirk brightened. "All right!" he said. "And we've got the kid's fingerprints on the windowsill and the flower dish."

  "Where did you get his prints?"

  "He was in Juvie once for malicious mischief and another

  time for smacking a kid in the head with a skateboard."

  Savannah

  studied the face in the picture, the eyes, looking for something that would tell her whether or

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  not this young person was capable of murder. But she seldom saw anything like that in any suspect's eyes. It was amazing what people could hide.

  "I suppose Dr. Liu told you that Barbie was pregnant."

  "Yeah, she mentioned it. Do you suppose this guy's the dad?"

  "When you find him, you can ask him."

  Dirk growled. "When I find him. . . I'm gonna have a who-o-ole bunch of questions for him."

  "Hey, look," Savannah said, pointing to the opposite side of the pool. "It's Ryan and John."

  The two walked over to their table, pulled up chairs, and sat down. Ryan took a stack of folded papers from his pocket and handed it to Dirk. "Here are the cell phone records you wanted," he told him.

  "That was fast" Dirk unfolded the wad and glanced over the pages.

  John smiled, causing the ends of his silver mustache to curl upward. "Life is much simpler, old chap, when you no longer have to concern yourselves with such frivolities

  as court orders. Friends in high places work much more quickly than the justice system."

  "Is that Barbie Matthews's record?" Savannah asked, trying to see over Dirk's shoulder.

  "It sure is," Ryan replied. "She must have had her phone surgically attached to her ear. I've never seen such a phone bill."

  "Including the day she died," Dirk said, studying the columns of numbers before him. "Calls coming in, calls going out. It's gonna take me a month just to run down these numbers."

  "Is the call there from her mom?" Savannah asked.

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  "Mrs. Matthews said she called Barbie to ask why she hadn't shown up for dinner."

  "It doesn't give you the numbers of the incoming

  calls, just the times," Dirk said. "This one at 7:21 P.M. is the last one that came in. I'll bet you she was on her way out to the parking lot then. She probably got nabbed right where we found her phone."

  "Yeah," Savannah added. "They grabbed her, she dropped her phone, and when they pulled out, they ran over it and crunched it."

  Ryan leaned over and pointed to the bottom of the

  last page. "I think that's the one you'd be most interested in. The last one she called. . . at 7:05 P.M."

  Dirk nodded thoughtfully. 'True. She could've been setting up a meeting, agreeing to meet somebody there in the lot. We'll have to check with the phone company and find out whose number that is."

  "
Or. . . you could just ask us," John said.

  Dirk half grinned, half grimaced. Savannah chuckled to herself. She knew he was torn between being pleased to have information so close at hand and irked

  that the other two guys had something that he needed.

  "Well?"

  That was as gracious as Dirk ever got under such circumstances.

  "It's

  a pay phone."

  "Great. That's just friggin' peachy." Dirk shook his head, disgusted, sliding into the old "My Job Sucks" mode. "Where?"

  Ryan smiled. "In that little akove right between the men's and women's rest rooms behind the potted

  palms."

  "Here?"

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  .A. McKevett

  "That's right, my friend. Barbara Matthews was calling the public phone right here in Villa Rosa, minutes before somebody killed her. And, now that we've done the hard part. . . all you have to do is figure out who was on the other end and. . . crime solved."

  Dirk looked at Savannah. She grinned, and said, "Easy got as a wet foot on a rainy April morn." He just grunted.

  Leaving the men to look over telephone bills and

  formulate the psychological profile on the sort of person

  who would give a girl a bouquet of flowers and

  chicken entrails on the same night, Savannah made her way over to the stage where the interviews were taking

  place.

  She looked around for Atlanta, hoping to catch hers, then realized that the entire process had ended.

  But the trip over wasn't a total waste of time. Hearing one girl address another as Desiree, Savannah decided to get acquainted.

  Up close and in person the girl was very simply stunning.

  Savannah wasn't surprised that she had won numerous beauty contents. With her golden blond hair, perfect skin, and classic features, she reminded Savannah of a young Grace Belly.

  Savannah tried to reconcile that pretty face with the

  cruel, sarcastic voice she had heard on the other side of the bathroom wall. It was a difficult fit.