At What Cost

by James L'Etoile

  John’s footfalls sounded against the worn decking as he and the lieutenant stepped to where the bundle sat. “Was the body wrapped like this in the water?” John said.

  “No, the divers wrapped the plastic around it so we could lift it. They didn’t know how long it had been in the water,” one of the coroner’s techs said.

  “Let’s take a look,” John said.

  Paula kneeled near the head, using a pen to pull the tarp back farther. “White male in his thirties. It’s not a fresh kill, from the looks of it. There’s a lot of tissue damage here. His eyes are missing.”

  “Why did he leave the head this time?” John wondered.

  “It’s business, remember? The killer didn’t need it. Oh, check this out. This is a new twist,” Paula said as she peeled the tarp even farther back.

  “He didn’t remove the legs. They’re bent backward, probably broken at the knee and hip. He folded them up like a suitcase and bound the legs to the torso with wire.” She pointed to the narrow-gauge wire that puckered the flesh across the victim’s chest.

  “The wire looks like the stuff that left the marks on Cardozo’s body,” John said.

  “Why’d he leave him like this? Looking like he went through a hay-bale machine?”

  “I hope the poor bastard was dead before our guy went to work on him,” John said.

  John nodded to the coroner’s technician, who covered the remains with the tarp and with the assistance of the second technician, lifted the water-soaked corpse onto a gurney. They covered the body with another heavy tarp and secured it to the rails that ran down the sides of the gurney. It looked less like a human body than it did a crate ready for shipping.

  “Maybe the coroner’s office can get some dentals for an ID,” Paula said.

  “And we need a time of death. This body shows signs of decomp. He might have been killed before Daniel Cardozo. If that’s true, it changes our timeline.”

  “This might have been the source of the last delivery that Cardozo and his gangbanger friend did,” Paula said.

  “The case Cardozo and Guzman opened?”

  “Yeah. The timing fits. This guy gets his heart ripped out, Cardozo takes a peek, and then the killer takes care of his loose end—Cardozo.”

  “Which brings us back to SpongeBob SquarePants. An open-water dump seems out of character for our guy.”

  “How do you figure? He’s a frickin’ butcher,” she said.

  “This guy wasn’t butchered as precisely as Cardozo and the rest.”

  Paula bit her lower lip once more and watched the coroner’s technicians struggle as the gurney rattled up the gangway to street level. “Is he doing all this by himself? The hunting, the computer stuff, harvesting, and distribution?”

  John glanced up the gangway, where the news cameras followed the gurney in a processional toward the coroner’s van. They trolled for the shot of a dangled body part or blood-soaked sheet.

  “If we take your business theory, then what does our killer do himself, and what part of the work does he contract out?” John said.

  Lieutenant Barnes leaned close to his detectives and said, “Get whatever you need to get this done. The chief is getting pressure to get a task force now that he’s publically labeled this a serial-murder investigation, and we all know how he loves the feds in his backyard. I gotta go feed the vultures,” he said, referring to the media up on the street. “The chief’s office is calling this guy the Outcast Killer because he’s targeting gang members on the fringes of society. Can’t have the law-abiding public start to panic.” He strode off in the direction of the news cameras.

  John’s cell phone rang, and he saw the number was Dr. Kelly’s at the coroner’s office.

  “She must be in a hurry to get this one,” he said as he pushed the button to take the call. “Hi, Doc. Your guys had to fish this one out of the water, so they are on their way now,” he said.

  John listened. Frown lines deepened on his forehead. “Wait, what? You’re certain? No, I’m sorry, that’s not what I mean.” He paused and listened for a moment. “Thanks. I will pull the reports as soon as we get back.” He disconnected and pocketed the phone.

  “We have a cause of death on the first two victims. The lab was backed up, but Dr. Kelly got them to prioritize the Mercer and Johnson analysis when the third victim appeared. It was exsanguination. They were bled out. The toxicology report showed no drugs, but the oxygen and carbon monoxide levels in the tissue were off. Except for Cardozo. She confirmed that he was tortured and dissected while he was alive.”

  “A business decision. He didn’t want to do anything that would compromise the sales of the product—the organs. No drugs, no gunshot wounds,” Paula said.

  “She also tissue typed the kidney that the killer gift wrapped for me. It matched Daniel Cardozo. The tissue was HIV positive. She’s e-mailing us all the reports. She also got a call from a very perturbed Trisha Woods following our visit to Central Valley Hospital.”

  “Let me guess—we’re not getting any of the reports because of your antics.”

  “Just the opposite. After Cardozo’s HIV-infected kidney appeared, Dr. Kelly told her that she needed the information from UNOS to track possible transplants back to the cadavers in her morgue. Trisha refused at first, but after Dr. Kelly demands an autopsy of Steven Gunderson’s body, the hospital board will likely overrule Trisha to avoid a public display that could potentially tarnish the hospital’s reputation.”

  “She’s going to do it? Agree to the autopsy and hand over the reports?”

  John nodded. “She may not have a choice. I guess you don’t have to join the lieutenant up there and leak anything to the press. The hospital wants it quiet.”

  “I’ll bet they do,” she said.

  Paula scuffed her shoe on a ragged, splintered section of grayed deck planking. She looked down and noticed black marks on the deck where the coroner’s technicians had rolled the gurney in and out of the crime scene. She knelt down, pushed a fingertip over the smudge, and wiped it from the surface.

  “They tracked through something when they wheeled down here from the street,” she said.

  John traced the dark streaks on the wood up and down the gangway. More than one set came down the rough-hewn walkway to the main entrance of the old steamship. Thin tracks from the coroner’s gurney traveled down and stopped at the wet puddle where the tarp-covered body had sat minutes earlier. A separate, thicker track went farther down the dock and disappeared off the edge at the stern paddle wheel.

  “You recall anyone around the end of the ship when we got here?” John said.

  Paula sat back on her haunches and looked at the now-empty dock. Her forehead drew three small creases, the kind she got when she focused on details.

  “The body was here.” She pointed to the wet plank boards. “Lieutenant Barnes and the dive-team supervisor were about five yards farther down.” She stood and walked to the spot. “They were here.” She looked down the dock. “I don’t remember anyone else.”

  “See the wheel mark at the end of the dock?” John said.

  “Yeah.” Paula followed the trail to the end of the dock and looked down into the dark river water. She turned and retraced the track with her eye. “There’s no second track.”

  “Second, as in single wheel. I saw that,” he added.

  “There is no return track either. See”—she pointed to the gurney tracks—“those have two separate sets of tracks, one set down to the body and one that led the way back out. This one was a one-way trip.”

  John walked along the trail toward Paula, stopped, and surveyed the surrounding deck surface for any other tracks, gouges, or stains. “Good catch, Detective. I missed that one.” John asked a crime-scene tech to make sure they got photos of the trails.

  The huge paddle wheel dominated the stern of the steamship. Two observation decks sat above the massive wooden wheel. John noticed two of the ship’s crew, dressed in dark-blue work uniforms, standing at the rail.
They wore harnesses with straps and buckles and leaned against the railing with their backs to the commotion on the dock below. The coveralls they wore bore dark grease stains the same color as the tracks on the dock.

  Paula followed his gaze and saw the workmen. She tilted her head toward them, indicating that she would go check them out. She boarded the ship and made for an exterior stairwell that accessed the upper deck.

  John heard the clack-clack of her boots on the stairs and saw one of the workmen toss a joint off the rail when Paula approached. The marijuana cigarette sizzled when it hit the water. The two had clearly tried to take advantage of the downtime and spark up on the deck until Paula interrupted and harshed their mellow.

  Down on the dock, the older couple who had first noticed the body in the water waited on a wooden bench until they were allowed to leave. A young officer, one John didn’t recognize, took their statements and dutifully scribbled into his notebook. The officer called out, “Detective, you need to speak with these folks?”

  John walked to the bench and sat next to the couple. He introduced himself and learned from Joanne Watson that she and her husband, Robert, had finished their weekly brunch and had gone out for a stroll around the deck before heading home. They had paused out on the fantail of the ship to take in the view out onto the water.

  “I thought it was a couple of salmon, you know, how they spawn rolling on their sides,” Joanne said. A crimson blush blossomed on her cheeks at the mention of fish sex.

  “Did you happen to see anything unusual? Anything out of place today?” John asked.

  Robert seemed confused and on edge. He clasped his hands together so tight that his arthritic knuckles whitened. The old man’s eyes darted and didn’t seem to settle on anything or anyone for more than a moment. “Can we go home now, Jo?” he asked his wife as he rocked in a slight back-and-forth motion. The man looked over at John. “Who are you?”

  “He told you, dear. He’s a police officer,” Joanne said.

  “Police? What happened?” The old man’s eyes widened.

  Joanne patted her husband on the thigh. “It’s all right, dear.” Then to John, “Now that you mention it, I thought it was odd that a fisherman was bringing fish down to the river.”

  “What do you mean?” John asked.

  “When we first arrived, a man nearly ran us off the ramp with his cart of fish. He pushed the thing and nearly hit Robert. The smell was horrible.”

  “He was coming down the gangway? What did the cart look like? Can you remember any markings or writing on it?”

  She paused and looked up the gangway. “No, I don’t think so. He went by so fast. It was a regular cart, you know the kind with one wheel in the front,” Joanne said.

  “Like a wheelbarrow?” John said.

  “Yes—that’s it, a wheelbarrow. I thought it was strange to deliver fish to the chef in something like that, but nowadays, they do all sorts of strange things.”

  “Mrs. Watson, did you get a look at the man with the cart? Can you tell me anything about him? Age? Height? What he wore?”

  “Who are you?” Robert asked John.

  “He’s the police, dear,” his wife said patiently. “Robert has dementia, Detective,” she said matter-of-factly. “To answer your question about the fishmonger, he had long rubber boots that came to his knees. The kind you see the people on the TV wear when their houses flood. An average-looking man, I suppose.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m not sure if it means anything . . .” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  “He had a mark, here on his neck.” She pointed to the front of her neck. “The kind the kids get.”

  “A mark? Was it a tattoo?”

  “Yes. That’s it. I never understood why anyone would do that to themselves.”

  John felt his stomach tighten with an icy knot of anticipation.

  “Close your eyes and see if you can tell me what that tattoo looked like,” he said.

  She stiffened, straightened her back, and closed her eyes. “It had a number and it looked like a bird.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes popped open. “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know yet. The number—was it the number fourteen?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember,” Joanne said. “I wish I could tell you more.”

  “You did fine, Mrs. Watson. Thanks. You and your husband are free to go. The officer got your contact information, so if we need you to take a look at some photos or anything, we can get in touch with you.”

  She stood, shook John’s hand, and reached for Robert. “Let’s take you home now.”

  The couple walked up the gangway in a slow, choppy gait.

  Paula finished with the potheads and joined John on the bench.

  “Well, that was a waste of time. Those two guys were too busy getting a buzz on to notice what was going on down here,” she said. “Get anything from the old couple?”

  “Other than I don’t want to get old?” He turned to her. “The body was dumped by someone with a West Block Norteños tattoo on his neck.”

  Less than thirty minutes later, two search-and-rescue divers went back into the dark water. Bubbles hit the river’s surface in a slow, methodical fashion, moving out from the dock and back again. The trail of air bubbles released from the divers’ regulators showed the grid search under way in the depths below.

  A rosette of bubbles grew larger, and the orange cap of a diver burst through the surface. The relief diver tossed one end of a heavy nylon strap to his supervisor. “What do you have?” the supervisor asked.

  The diver shrugged, grabbed the other end of the strap, and submerged, bubbles trailing off as he went.

  In a slur of radio chatter, John picked out the word “heavy” amid the breathing and other sounds. Then the command to take up the slack must have been given, because the supervisor and relief diver began hooking the strap to an extendable boom.

  A dark-brown cloud of silt rose to the surface accompanied by sets of bubbles on either side. The divers’ heads popped above the water while they steadied the object they secured. The dive supervisor retracted the nylon strap in short, smooth bursts until a mud-and-slime-covered wheelbarrow cleared the river’s surface.

  “That what you looking for?” the dive supervisor asked.

  “I think so,” John said.

  “Hell, I coulda picked up one for you at a yard sale and saved us some time,” the relief diver said.

  The boom swung over the dock and lowered the wheelbarrow upside down to the deck planks into a nest of mud and river sludge. The remaining thick layer of silt melted off the frame like hot candle wax. The dive supervisor uncoupled the strap from around the wheel frame and pulled it away.

  “Huh,” John said. He pointed to the back end of the wheelbarrow where black-stenciled lettering appeared beneath a thin layer of river-bottom muck. “Who do we know who works at Raley Field?” he said.

  “Mario Guzman told us he worked at the ball field,” Paula said. “West Block Norteños tattoo on his neck too.”

  “Looks like Mario knows more than he told us.”

  “I don’t like him as our killer. Do you? He just doesn’t have the brains to pull it off. He could be the killer’s muscle,” she said.

  “At least he puts us closer to the killer.” John swiveled around on his heel and surveyed the dockside, the activity, and the openness of the place. The muscles along the ridge of his jaw worked while he took stock of the place. “Why did Guzman dump the body here? The other victims were dumped while no one was watching. Now he boldly walks out into public and tosses this one in the river under our noses? Why would he do that?”

  “He was in a hurry to clean up, maybe?” Paula asked.

  “If he’s sending us a message, let’s go talk to the messenger. Let’s go find Guzman,” John said.

  EIGHTEEN

  Constructed as an upscale, minor-league ballpark, Raley
Field sat a quarter mile downstream and across the river from the steamship body dump. John and Paula headed for the Tower Bridge and made for the massive light stanchions that surrounded the stadium.

  The grounds crew hustled over the field, preparing the surface for an afternoon game between the hometown River Cats and their Pacific Coast League rival, the Reno Aces. A half dozen grounds keepers swept and manicured the surface to perfection. The red dirt was smooth, and two more employees guided chalk machines, laying down the foul lines. Similar tasks took place in the grassy outfield, where mowers left a tight checkerboard pattern in their wake and the warning track got a light misting.

  John and Paula were walking the concourse above the first baseline toward home plate when a potbellied security guard in black pants and a yellow polo shirt noticed their approach.

  “Hey,” the bumblebee look-alike called out. “You can’t be here. Game don’t start for two hours. Dammit! Who left the gate open?”

  The guard trudged up the stairs from field level to the concourse, face reddened from the unwanted effort, bearing an expression that matched. “Turn . . . around,” he said between breaths.

  Paula flicked her badge out. “Who’s in charge around here?”

  The security guard tore his walkie-talkie radio from a Velcro belt clip. “Anyone seen Lamar?” the guard said.

  A voice crackled on the other end of the radio. “Lamar ain’t here today. What you need?”

  The guard looked at the two detectives, then said, “I got a couple of cops wanna talk to someone.”

  “Then talk to them. I don’t have time for their crap,” the voice responded.

  Paula’s hand snaked out and snatched the radio from the security guard. She keyed the microphone. “Make some time, or we’ll shut down the field as a crime scene.”

  John bit back a smirk and pulled on his sunglasses, masking his amusement at his partner’s diminished patience.

  “Can she do that?” the security guard asked John.

  “Yep, and I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.”

  “What crime scene is she talking about?” the man inquired in a lowered voice.