A World the Color of Salt

by Noreen Ayres

  “They touch anything?”

  “Would you touch anything, you see blood all over? The door was open, they see blood the first thing.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Why not?” Then he was settling into his belt, ready to defend himself, taking a modified form of the stance, astraddle something invisible.

  I said, “I’m coming into a store with something on my mind, okay? Something I want to buy. Twinkies, whatever. I’m not looking up toward the back of the store. I’m looking at things, checking which aisle my Twinkies are in.”

  “Well, that’s the deal. They’re a few feet in, they smell something,” he said, coming loose again. “Cordite, only they don’t know it. The Iranian looks up. The woman, she’s looking over the top of the stroller easing in the door.” He planed his hand out, eye level, to show me. “She looks up. Straight on. The stains don’t register at first. She’s pushing the kid down the aisle. All of a sudden the tire skuds on a shell casing. She fingers it out, looks up, starts screaming.”

  I asked him how much time he was going to give this case. He shrugged. These days, plain old robberies just don’t get much attention, burglaries less than that. Crimes of property have to wait: bike thefts, forget it; car thefts, mmm, maybe you’ll get a second phone call from an investigator, but not likely. Crimes of person—assaults, rape, murder—get manpower despite the fact that the numbers are increasing in alarming proportion. On murder the case never closes till it’s solved; because murder, to civilized minds, is still unacceptable.

  Joe walked up, and Svoboda said, “Unless you guys do your magic, we don’t have much.”

  “We’ll do what we can, Sergeant,” Joe said, and looked at me a millisecond. Probably still mad.

  I said, “Can’t you do an NCIC pattern check for stop-and-robs?”

  “I don’t think it’s refined down that far,” Svoboda said.

  “You doing the sergeant’s work now, Smokey?” Joe broke down a Styrofoam cup, one piece flipping onto the leg of his pants, and when he leaned over to pluck it off, his eyes leveled out over the store. Checking, where he’d checked before. And then he grinned a little, and that’s all that counts.

  Bud Peterson came up behind us. Joe said hello. Bud’s always nice and polite, respectful. He’s thin, with a stoop to his shoulders that makes his chin jut out when he walks. His green tie this morning sported a miniature golfer in back-swing. Most lab folks don’t wear ties; they wear knit shirts and look like they’ve been out shopping with their wives in the mall. Joe wears suits, because Joe’s been management. Bud aspires, and I wish I could say he’ll never make it.

  After Joe and Gary went off, Bud said to me, “I’ll tell you what you could do. You could go back to the coroner’s and pick up the autopsy report.”

  It was almost a shock, hearing the word autopsy. Maybe I thought the procedure wouldn’t be over so soon, yet I know how proud the coroner’s office is of how they shove them through. They do their work on a contract basis; piecework, you could say. The more bodies, the more pay. I didn’t want to think of Jerry Dwyer on the table, because the worst thing is, the dead have no privacy. Pretty woman, ugly woman; shy person, bold; the dignified and the dirtbag, it doesn’t matter: Once they wheel nude into the semipublic room, all is seen, all is known, and it isn’t done with the finesse you might imagine. I did not want to attend Jerry Dwyer’s autopsy, no matter that I saw him a mess on the floor. Most people avoid autopsies on their friends. Most people avoid them, period, unless they must be there.

  I thought about what the report would reveal—the type of slugs that would be dug out, the bullet trajectory—and knew it was important to get the report for Bud, but it irritated me. Bud Peterson is like a few people I’ve met. He seems to be passive, but underneath plays games. I think it bothers him that I’m team leader sometimes, because he’s got the seniority and hasn’t been yet. What Bud was saying was, Take a hike, will you? Give me a chance to buddy up with old Joe, maybe I can take his place when he retires. How do I know this? Bud’ll tell you. He thinks you’ll think that because he confided in you, he won’t be after your frijoles.

  “Will the report be ready so soon?” I said.

  “Only takes a couple hours, Watanabe on it. That guy can sling the guts.”

  Bud plays bridge with Dr. Watanabe, noons, in the morgue conference room while they eat lunch. Nothing wrong with that, I guess. The thing is, Dr. Watanabe’s running for mayor this year.

  “You’re so couth, Bud.”

  “That’s me. Couth youth. By the way, you want to join Toastmasters? A guy dropped out.”

  “I’m not good at giving speeches.”

  “That’s what it’s for. People exactly like you.”

  I said, “Listen, I’ll check with Firearms and Trace when I’m at the lab. What about your print run, how long will it take?”

  “At least a three-day wait.”

  “Why does it take so long, Bud?”

  “That’s fast. You know how long Tox has been taking? Six to eight weeks.”

  I looked away from him, fiddling with my hair, which felt too short to me again.

  Fingerprint identification is still tricky. There has to be a print on file to check against. Though I volunteered a check with Trace on the fibers found on the door frame, we both knew it would be wasted motion. Fibers is tough duty—too many brands, and the manufacturers don’t like to reveal information that might help their competitors; we all live in our small worlds. On cases involving cars, we sometimes have to go take a test drive with a dealer in order to swipe a few carpet fibers.

  Bud said, “Put whatever you get on my desk, if you will, okay?”

  “Isn’t Joe going to want to see it first?” I needed him jumping all over my case again. I could go ask Joe if I should be getting the report for Bud first, but that seemed chickenshit.

  Bud said, “Joe’s taking tool-mark impressions now off the door, where they forced it open. Then he says he’s got a dentist’s appointment.”

  “Good,” I said, uncharitably. Bud loosened up then and tried to grin, though it fell off at one side.

  I moved away and went up to the cooler where Jerry’s body had lain.

  The mess, now darkened, reminded me how quickly the molecules of change take over, how the earth urges itself onward, into more change, and then again. By now, not even twenty-four hours later, Jerry Dwyer “was,” not “is.” Still, the face was there in my memory. The happy, friendly face with child-sized teeth. I could see him smiling at me, in the eyes as well as at the mouth. And I did not want him to be dead.

  Off to the left of the cooler, Joe was putting the plastic molding gunk used for impressions back in the kit. The light from the high windows made his hair shine silver.

  I asked him about the restrooms, remembering the tape that fluttered down.

  “Yes, somebody used it.”

  “The women’s?”

  “Yep.”

  “The new guy?”

  “Nope. Billy.”

  “Billy? He knows better.” I said, under my breath, “Much as I don’t care for Billy K., he’s smarter than that. How do you know?”

  “He told me yesterday. After you left.”

  “Christ.”

  Joe glanced at me. “Not a problem.” Dismissing me. Joe gives everybody the benefit of the doubt, likes to think good thoughts, even if they’re not reasonable, about everybody in police or forensics work. I, on the other hand, keep track of jerkhoodness. Born in late August—that makes me a Virgo, highly critical—what can I say?

  He said, “What we did find was in the men’s.”

  The little devil—I knew him well enough to know he couldn’t wait to tell me. Until eight months ago, Joe had been two notches up the ladder from me. Then he had a heart attack, a bad one. When he came back to work and into Crime Scene Investigation, he was atwinkle-twinkle, saying no more red tape, no more wall-to-wall meetings, and freedom, man, freedom.

  J
oe removed a brown bag from his satchel near the table, tugged open the staple, and held the bag open for me to see into. Inside was some kind of tool, shaped like a T. Electrical tape was wrapped around the crossbar to the vertical. He read the question on my face and said, “It was in the restroom, and no, we don’t know. The victim’s father said he doesn’t know where it came from either.”

  “When did you find this tool?”

  “After you left.”

  “When did you talk to Mr. Dwyer?”

  “Last night.”

  “Joe . . .”

  “What?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me last night instead of getting all over my case? Although I admit I was wrong—I admit that. But you’ve been grouchy with me even before I went on disability.”

  He rubbed the side of his thigh and looked away.

  I said, “This thing is probably just some repairman’s. Why would the creeps come in, go toity, leave an identifying tool for us, and then hit the store?”

  He said, “It was on the paper-roll rack, right across the roll. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “Criminals are stupid.”

  CHAPTER

  6

  “Svoboda says he talked to a worker from next door,” I said, walking along with Joe as he was leaving.

  “That’s right.”

  “You satisfied?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well?”

  “I’ve got a dentist’s appointment.”

  I stopped. He stopped too, turning to look at me.

  I said, “The tooth hurt?”

  He grinned at me. “Guess I could reschedule.” After putting the evidence kit and satchel in the trunk of his car, he slipped the keys in his pocket and we headed back toward El Cochino. Police investigators do the field interviews, but Gary wouldn’t mind us double-checking, I was sure. Like I say, he’s not a total ass.

  We cut between the end of the chain-link fence and the scrubby bushes separating Dwyer’s from the taco stand, past the round pink tables to the front. “They serve breakfast,” Joe said as he opened the door. A whiff of heavy sweetness took my breath away. He nodded toward the overhead menu straight ahead. “Early, too. Scrambled eggs, sausage-gravy.” His eyebrows lifted as he said, “You should try it sometime.”

  I wondered just how early he’d gotten there, anyway. Or was he here other times, near my house? No. Couldn’t be. He lived in the upscale part of Tustin, where lately million-dollar homes were popping up like movie sets. Who owns all those castles? All the rich people in the world must be moving to Orange County. The time I asked who all these people could be, out loud, near Joe, he said with disgust, “Drug dealers and cops on the take.” This came on the heels of front-page stories about six L.A. cops busted for buying land and houseboats, using recovered drug money, a skim here, a skim there.

  As Joe held the door open for me, his face shut down, so that I knew he’d become official. Behind the counter, a square-faced girl looked our way as she turned to fill an order for a car at the drive-through window. Her rose-colored uniform pulled tight across the back, creating pillows under her arms. A heavy kid, Samoan-looking, with a bad case of purple acne dotting his yellow skin, filled up the window in her place. He leaned forward on the counter as he said, “May I help you?”

  “I’d like to talk to your manager, please,” Joe said.

  Then a worried look ran across the kid’s face as he passed the tortilla oven and headed to the back.

  A white man in his sixties, dressed in a white shirt and light gray pants, opened the door into the eating area. Joe told him who we were.

  “I told you people everything yesterday. I got a business to run here. It won’t run itself.”

  “This won’t take long,” Joe said. “My name is Joe Sanders, this is Miss Brandon. We are forensics personnel.”

  “You cops upset the help. They’re all the time jabbering after you been here.” He lowered his voice then because a woman with two toddlers entered, herding them, as they stumbled forward with fists in their mouths, nearer the order window. “I got one didn’t come in today because of this. You know how these people are.”

  We followed him to one of the tables in a corner. Joe slid into a molded pink bench and, before we’d even settled, had the first word. “Are you working with illegals, Mr. Smith?” We could read his name tag now, the letters barely visible, incised on a white wooden background: WILLIAM SMITH, MANAGER. “Is that why they’re upset?”

  “I do things right here. The boy who saw anything is Emilio. Your deputy already talked to him, right?”

  “Sergeant Svoboda, from the sheriff’s department, did talk to him. But we may have to ask the same questions more than once, of everybody. You understand that investigations take time, particularly for a homicide, don’t you, Mr. Smith? We have to do as thorough a job as possible.”

  “Sure, sure, a homicide.” Red blotches formed on his nearly translucent skin. “I got Emilio washing dishes. But how do I know I’m talking to you he doesn’t just hang up his apron?” Mr. Smith shifted to see behind us into the kitchen, where I imagined tortillas were being painted with refried beans and tacos slopped with filling. He shifted in his seat and rested both hands on the table, rolled into one-potato, two-potato fists. “Could be me next time. I mean, I watch myself when I’m taking receipts. I watch myself all the time.”

  Joe was nodding. He said, “That’s a good idea.”

  “It’s just I invest a whole lot of time in these people and I don’t want them spooked. A lot of them can’t, see, handle more than one thing at a time. You can understand that, sure. They’re what you call simple.”

  I said, “What are you paying them, Mr. Smith, an hour, I mean?” Maybe I shouldn’t have interrupted the flow of things. Then again, it seemed to me the man needed to play defense awhile.

  “You want a job?” he answered. The voice was low enough but the stare told me it was hostile. His blue eyes were so pale they were almost white, with dark rims at the edge of the iris, hard to look into because they make a guy look crazy. He immediately turned his attention back to Joe. Dusted her off, he’d be thinking. In my career, I’ve been put down by experts.

  “No, thank you, Mr. Smith. I have a job.” I took out my notepad and pen, started writing and talking at the same time. “Let’s see now, you’ve got how many employees here? Six? Let’s say six, I can see.” I twisted around to look over my shoulder. “And they all have their green cards, you say. You have your regular health inspection, too, I suppose. Say, every couple of months?” I started looking around, checking how clean the place was. “How about grease disposal, Mr. Smith? You conform to EPA guidelines for grease?” I kept my head down, writing, waiting for an answer. These issues have nothing to do with us. When I looked up, there was a changed expression.

  “Emilio’s English is not that great. Talk to him. Go ahead. But ten minutes, okay?” He wasn’t asking me. He was asking Joe.

  “Let’s get to that later,” Joe said. “Right now, am I to understand you yourself saw nothing yesterday around the time of the robbery and murder?”

  “Nothing. I heard—I think I heard—some popping sounds, real fast together. I was setting some rags out back.” He glanced at me with his spooky eyes, said, “We can do that,” meaning put the rags outside to dry without an inspector jumping him.

  Joe said, “What time would you say that was?”

  “Maybe one-thirty.”

  “Not a car? You didn’t hear a car backfiring?”

  “No. Popping—like firecrackers.” His hands slid forward on the table, body English for, I have nothing to hide. He said, “I didn’t know those people over there. I saw the young one once, twice, maybe. That’s all. Big blond kid, right?” He looked at me then. I nodded, along with Joe.

  “Can we talk to Emilio, then?”

  “Would you go around, talk to him out back? We don’t need everybody stopping their work now to listen, do we?”
>
  At the rear of the restaurant we stood waiting for the door to open, looking, I guessed, at the same stiff rags Mr. Smith draped over blue plastic crates a day earlier. I said to Joe, “I hope this isn’t a waste of time.”

  “You never know.”

  The door sucked open and a tiny little person in a black shirt emerged, Indian facial structure, sunken cheeks, a slightly horsey mouth, but a softness in his expression nonetheless. He was maybe thirty-five, and his skin bore a yellow-brown cast, except for his hands, which were as pink as if he’d been scalded. He stepped out, looking back and forth at us while rubbing his palms up and down on his thighs as if they never could get dry. Mr. Smith was behind him in the doorway. I acknowledged him and said, “Thank you,” and he shut the door.

  Joe’s tone was respectful. Straight off he told Emilio we weren’t police, just from “the office.” I don’t think Emilio understood office, but I think that since Joe wasn’t a uniform, and he had me with him, Emilio relaxed. Joe asked him if he saw anything yesterday concerning what happened next door.

  Emilio looked at me for help. “You understand? You understand what he asked you?”

  “Sí.”

  “You saw a truck?” I said. “You told the officer—”

  “Sí. Verde.”

  “Green.”

  “Sí.”

  “Where was it, Emilio?”

  He pointed over toward the store. “Allí.”

  “Where, exactly?” Joe said.

  He pointed again.

  “Not in front? In one of the parking places?”

  “No.”

  “You saw it leave in a hurry?”

  “Bery hurry, sí. Yes.”

  “What were you doing when you saw it?” I asked.

  He glanced around to the side of the restaurant as if he could see himself there, and told us he was taking out the trash, the sack, as he said, demonstrating then with two hands clutched higher than his shoulders, and I realized that at about five feet he’d have a struggle all right, not dragging it along the concrete.