by E. E. Giorgi
It was a breezy day, with eastbound winds twirling dust in the air and rolling down yarns of tumbleweeds. We left our car at the end of the road, where the trees spread out to yield a glazed view of the Encino Reservoir. Wispy clouds cruised the sky and caressed the haze blanketing the San Fernando Valley. Studded in white and yellow wild flowers, the slopes were populated by the typical chaparral vegetation of sagebrush, toyon, chamisa, and scrub oaks. Black fingers of past fires scarred the slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains, stabbed here and there by the skeletons of burnt trees.
We had Huxley’s car moved away from the shrubs and all doors, including the trunk, popped opened. Insects spilled out in swarms and funneled in our ears and nostrils. My skin crawled at the sweet stench of decomposition. One of the West Valley officers turned green. He excused himself, ambled a few yards away, and barfed behind a bush, the sound of his retching adding yet another layer of pleasure to the whole experience.
Three men climbed out of the coroner’s white van and pulled a tarp-lined stretcher out of the back. I emptied Huxley’s glove compartment, set everything on the hood of our vehicle, and sifted through all the papers: car manual, registration, insurance documents, car repair receipts. “Damn it,” I mumbled. Holding the lapel of his jacket to his face, eyes watery from the repressed bouts of nausea, Satish came to tell me that no ID had been found on the body either. “How long can you hold your breath?” he asked.
“Still testing,” I replied.
“Fill your lungs and come check the trunk.”
The removal crew heaved the body out of the car. At the other end of the vehicle, Satish and I stared dumbfounded at the pool of dried blood and decomposition fluid at the bottom of the trunk. I read on my partner’s face the same questions running through my mind: a second victim? And if so, where was the body?
“A-ha! The trunk is where it happened.”
The voice made me jump. Blinded by the overwhelming reek of putrefaction, I hadn’t sensed the new presence behind me. “Vic’s been shot in the trunk and then moved afterward. Dr. Russ Cohen, pleased to meet you, Detectives.” The man stretched out a gloved hand. He had a noticeable nose, red and crinkled like an old sponge. Shreds of yellow hair randomly covered his head. “Come on over. Let me show you what I mean.”
“Dr. Ellis told us they had a new man on the team,” Satish said, as we walked to the gurney.
“Just moved from Maryland,” Cohen replied. He bent over the stretcher and stripped the gray tape from the corpse’s mouth. A maroon tongue poked out of purple lips. The face had swollen beyond recognition. Dark eye globes popped out of their sockets. Covered in blisters, the skin had taken green and gray hues, the flesh frayed by blackened vessels. There were moths crawling through the hair and maggots chewing off the flesh. The only sign of humanity left on the corpse was a cross hanging from a chain around the neck, an eerie oxymoron of gold over putrefaction.
Hideously humming in our ears, a black cloud of flies faithfully followed every movement we made. We talked while swaying our hands in all directions, looking like dancers in a clumsily choreographed ballet. We were comical and pathetic at the same time.
“My mother-in-law called yesterday,” Cohen said, his wrinkly forehead rolling up and down like a swag. “They’re having eighty-eight percent humidity right now, over there. I’m not moving back ever.” He severed the ropes around Huxley’s wrists and ankles and passed them over for us to examine. They were made of thick cord, rough to the touch.
“This is hemp,” Satish noted, pulling the two ends to test its sturdiness. “The kind they use for sailing is tarred though, and this one doesn’t seem to be. Maybe rock climbing?”
“Those are made of nylon and they come with an exterior sheath,” I replied. “Too bad they don’t sell cadaver-binding cords at hardware stores. Our job would be a hell lot easier.”
Cohen produced a shrill laugh with a feminine pitch. “Ah. I like you guys. You have a sense of humor. Must be the nice weather and all. Back east—”
“Tell us about the vic, Doc,” I interjected. I already knew more than a hundred reasons to live in Southern California and nowhere else in the world. My only problem has always been how widespread such opinions seem to be.
“Female, I would say maximum thirty years of age.” Cohen handed the knife to one of his assistants and got a pair of tweezers in return. The assistant had a meaty face that glistened with perspiration, his cheeks so large they looked like they’d sucked his nose in. In such circumstances, it wasn’t a bad idea.
“I understand the owner of the car disappeared?” Cohen asked. He plucked a couple insects for every species he spotted and collected them in small glass containers.
“Eight days ago,” Satish confirmed.
“And apparently she just showed up.”
Satish gave me a dirty look.
“Interesting,” Cohen said. “It would certainly fit the bill.” He raised the cadaver’s arm and let it drop against the stretcher. Flakes of papery skin clung to his glove and then fell off, pirouetting in the air like plumage. “The body is limp, past rigor mortis. The type of insects, marbelization of the skin, bloated abdomen—everything tells me she’s been dead several days already.”
Cohen brushed a finger along Huxley’s left arm. “She was coiled on her side when she died. There’s livor mortis along the left leg as well. The blood pooled everywhere but in her joints. Her limbs were bent, see these clearer stripes? Right behind the knee, indicating she was in a fetal position when she died.”
I followed Cohen’s gloved hands until my eyes shifted somewhere else. There was a jade earring dangling from her left lobe. I stepped around the gurney and checked the other ear. No jade there. She lost one. Or maybe she didn’t quite lose it… An idea crossed my mind. It was just a fleeting thought, and then it was gone.
“She died on her side but we found her lying on her back,” Satish was saying.
“Correct. All the blood and fluids from the first hours post mortis are in the trunk, and the livor mortis is along her left side, not the back.”
“Shot in the trunk and then moved,” Satish agreed.
“Not right away. From the level of decomposition fluid in the trunk I believe she was left for several hours in there. Rigor mortis takes around seventy hours to completely wane.”
“Does it mean she was killed at least three days ago?”
Cohen nodded. “Three or four, I’d say on a first guess. It depends on how long the car was left out in the sun. Heat accelerates the process.”
Five days earlier Huxley’s car had driven into the Tarantinos’ property.
“Three shots,” Cohen went on, pointing to the holes gaping from the swollen body, two across the chest and one on the right shoulder. “And bruises, from bumping against the sides of the trunk. She took a ride before being killed. And the wrists—she probably fought before she was killed. I’ll be looking for defensive wounds and tissue scraps under the nails. See these?” He pointed to the swollen joints. “Micro bruises around her wrists and ankles—they’re called petechiae. Small injuries from struggling against the binds.”
The image of the woman, alive, bound, and locked in what ended up being her coffin, made me seethe. I stepped away and walked around the vehicle. Two men from the SID Field Unit were working on the trunk, one taking photos, and the second vacuuming the inner lining for fibers.
Three shots, of which only two had been deadly.
It had taken one shot each to kill Tarantino and his wife. What were the chances the killer had been the same person?
“Any slugs or casings?” I asked the criminologists searching the vehicle.
“No, sir,” one of the guys replied from behind a white facemask.
“How about a lost earring?”
Same answer. My head started toying with ideas, mere possibilities, mismatched pieces of a puzzle. Four victims, one link: Chromo. How many killers, though? I inhaled, calibrating. Re-adjusting my nose to account for a n
oisy background. And once I felt ready, I poked my head inside the vehicle and sniffed.
Smells have layers, like sounds have frequencies. Disentangling them is like trying to follow a song in a room full of loud people—you have to learn to tune out all other noises.
I grasped a faint feminine smell and tried to cling to it. Too elusive, it kept slipping away. I focused on the man’s scent, coming from the driver’s seat instead. Sweat, sour, not from exercising but from stress, all around the wheel, left by nervous and slippery hands. A bit of burnt spice in it, cilantro, maybe. It had been covered by the artificial fragrance of antibacterial sprays, the same kind lingering everywhere in Huxley’s condo. I crouched on the driver’s seat, pushed away the reek of putrefaction, and noticed something else. A tiny blob smeared on the edge of the seat.
“Hey!” I called, to nobody in particular. “There’s semen in here!”
“What? We didn’t—” One of the Field Unit people emerged from behind the hood and scowled at me. In her hands was the roll of tape she’d been using to lift fibers and soil residue from the front bumper. She came around to the front door, had me step aside, and took a skeptical peek inside.
“I don’t see a thing,” she said.
“What d’you mean, you don’t see a thing? It’s right there—”
“Let me get the Orion-Lite.”
Damn it. Of course she doesn’t see it. She wobbled back brandishing the luminol-based flashlight and a ream of black sheets. With the help of the rest of the Field Unit team, we draped Huxley’s Ford to block the light from the outside. The SID woman pointed the Orion-Lite and finally saw it: a little pear-shaped ghost floating under the fluorescence of the forensic light.
“Could be bleach,” she said.
“Lift it and bag it,” I growled.
I took a few steps away from the vehicle to breathe. The air was harshly dry and dusty, and yet refreshing, compared to the acrid odor of death. Satish and Cohen stood by the medical vehicle, staring at the two assistants as they bagged the victim’s hands and feet, and then wrapped the body in tarp, both men wearing a turban of stubborn flies around their heads. The forensic photographer walked to the SDI van, retrieved his bag from the front seat, and swapped the focal lenses of his camera. At the back of the van, the other two Field people carefully packaged the bed comforter found on the corpse.
“Comforter goes to Trace Unit,” I told them. “They need to scan for fibers and fluid traces.” The two men nodded.
“I hope they had a good lunch,” one said. “This is going to ruin their appetite.”
“Yeah,” the other replied. “Definitely worth a pay raise.”
The clearly feminine print of the cover caught my attention. Lavender flowers, just like the prevailing scent in Huxley’s house, and the decorative theme in her bathroom. Of course.
“Satish!” I called. “We’ve got to go to Huxley’s place. The killer went to her apartment. He obviously has her keys, and—”
“Track.”
“And we’ve got to get her computer at work. The woman was onto something. It’s what—”
“Track, will you listen for a minute?”
“What?”
“This is not Jennifer Huxley. Until we know otherwise, this is Jane Doe.”
“What? What the hell are you talking about? If she’s not a cadaver, she’s the owner of a vehicle with a cadaver inside!”
Satish bobbed his head. “The D.A. office will never sign the warrants without a death certificate. Dr. Cohen has already sent in the request to Huxley’s dentist.”
“What about fingerprints? If they match the ones on file with the DMV—”
“For a corpse this old, we’d need to re-hydrate the tissue first,” Cohen said, handing the paperwork to one of his assistants. “Dental will be faster. I can have one of my guys X-ray her as soon as she’s delivered to the morgue.”
“We need to know her identity as soon as possible,” I said. “And we need it to keep it away from the press for as long as possible.”
Satish agreed. “Somebody killed her in the trunk and somebody brought her here for us to find. The longer their wait, the likelier they are to make a false step.”
Cohen gave us his word, then dismissed himself with a brisk handshake and shuffled off to his car. I couldn’t get my head off Huxley’s computer. She mentioned additional data she was about to obtain, her boss, Julia Cox, had told me. Data she wanted but wasn’t supposed to have. I thought of Cox’s calculated answers, the fierce defense of her work, and how she’d been vague about the leukemia study.
“We’ve got to get her computer,” I reiterated.
“Track,” Satish said in his unfazed, annoyingly reassuring tone. “Cohen has our numbers. He’ll call us as soon as he can confirm the identity. Let’s go write those damn warrants, and by early morning tomorrow we can get this computer of hers.”
“It’s going to be too fucking late.”
We both stared at the Ford, the open trunk still gaping at us. The Field Unit team packed their tools and gatherings back into the van. By the dirt road, a uniformed officer unrolled the yellow tape to let the tow truck into the cleared area.
I felt as useless as a sprinkler going off during a spring storm.
Satish scratched an old scar on his arm and tilted his head. “You know what this reminds me of, Track?” he said.
“I don’t give a damn, Satish!” I snapped. I was tired from standing in the sun, hungry, and mostly pissed off because I knew the right thing to do yet I couldn’t do it. I was hardly the ideal listener.
Not the least offended, Satish put up a perplexed face. “What? It reminds me it’s been five years since I last washed my car.”
“Good thing you didn’t kill anyone in these past five years,” I retorted. “Gimme the car keys. I’m driving this time.”
“Oh, but you know I get even more loquacious when I’m not behind the wheel.”
“Don’t worry,” I said ambling back to his Taurus. “It won’t be a long drive. You get a beautiful view of the reservoir, while I ponder over what size burger to order at Johnny Rockets.”
He chuckled and slid onto the passenger’s seat. “The world is a can of sardines, Track. You either fit in the can or you don’t. If you fit, you get eaten. If you don’t, you need to learn to swim on your own.”
I lowered the windows, cranked up the AC, and made the lousiest U-turn in cop history.
“I hate sardines,” I growled. “They stink.”
A lonely crow cawed its farewell, and after that we vanished in a white cloud of dust.
* * *
The killer wasn’t the only one possessing a set of keys to Huxley’s apartment. I did, too. My guy had been there recently, probably in a hurry, which increased his chances of making a mistake. Maybe he left a muddy footprint this time. Maybe he had to use the john and took his gloves off, leaving a few prints in the bathroom. I don’t need a search warrant to inhale.
I waited until evening to go back. I left my Dodge by the curbside, turned the engine off, and took in the neighborhood. It was almost dusk, the sky marred by yellow smears of clouds that quickly bled into twilight. A jogger passed, dragged on a leash by a black spaniel eager for a faster gait. An illuminated bay window displayed a happy family gathered around the table, their healthy smiles straight out of a whitening toothpaste commercial. Two doors down, the muted images of a TV blinked through sheer curtains.
The air was stiff in Huxley’s place, all fragrances gone stale since my last visit. I didn’t turn the lights on. I stepped inside, inhaled, and immediately knew. The son of a bitch has been here. I flew my gun hand to the holster and released the strap.
The living room had been turned into shambles. Straight slashes marred the couch cushions and armrests. The rug was upturned, and the CD column lay flat on one side, disks strewn all over the floor. Books had been pulled from the shelves. A wilted plant had been snatched out of its pot and the dirt shoved on the ground. The desk
drawers were scattered on the floor and their contents spilled everywhere. I winced. The desk. Something was missing. Damn it, the laptop! I whirled my head around, searching. What else had been taken? The kitchen looked untouched—I took a quick glimpse and moved to the bedroom.
It was just a sigh, imperceptible, though clear enough to make me startle. It could’ve been the breeze, and yet all windows were shut and the air was still. Or a garment left precariously dangling on a hanger and finally coming to terms with gravity. My muscles tensed. I widened my nostrils and sniffed. His smell. Strong. No, not in the past. Here, and now. Damn it.
I slid the Glock out of the holster and flattened against the wall. Suddenly aware of his presence, I felt the assassin’s eyes on me, watching. I inched forward, gun low and ready.
I edged towards the bedroom door and peeked in. Again, that sound, imperceptible to human ears but not to mine. Metal over metal, oil to muffle the friction, slowly rotating. A doorknob. I saw the shadow, quick, flash in front of me. “Freeze!” I yelled, sprang after him to the bathroom and fired. No time to think, just pure instincts running wild. Get the asshole. I heard water running, bolted to the shower, and yanked off the curtains. And while I stared dumbfounded at Huxley’s laptop happily soaking at the bottom of the shower, the guy sneaked behind me and ran off.
Not contented with my great performance, I wasted another precious two seconds stepping into the shower, getting the laptop, and tossing it on the bed before running after the fugitive. By the time I got out, all I saw was the blur of a car furiously accelerating and disappearing around the street. Not a chance to get a make, let alone a glimpse at the plate number. So there I was: standing in the middle of the road, smoking gun in my hand, breathing in exhaust gas and burnt tire, and looking like an idiot who’d just showered fully clothed.
Shit.
At least I saved the laptop.
Wrong.
I later found out it would’ve actually been better to leave the computer soaking in the water. The minute I got it out, the damned thing started drying out and oxidizing. By the time we could officially seize the laptop the next day, rust had completed the damage.
