CHIMERAS (Track Presius)

by E. E. Giorgi

  Satish walked to the back to check it out. I followed, sniffing. The second rack of cages was still hinged to the wall. I could smell the monkeys jumping from pen to pen, the scene forming in my head as their odors mingled and reached my nostrils. Panicky monkeys crying out, banging the cage doors. The smell of blood, one of their own. They’re scared. A new scent, an intruder. I stopped, went back, retraced it. The smell inside the sandal gave me the victim. I sensed his presence from the first door up to where he’d been found. Stop. For some reason he never made it beyond that point. But somebody else did. Somebody ran to the door at the back and—

  “Track, Diane. Come over here.” Satish was crouching by the last cage on the bottom row, the closest to the back door. “This is not fingerprint powder, is it?” he asked, pointing to a fine cloud of white particles flouring one of the steel rods. I brushed it with the tip of my pinky and brought it to my nose.

  “Track, we’re supposed to lift—”

  “It’s talc,” I said. The cage, then the wall next to it. The suspect tripped, the floor slippery with urine. He fell and slammed against the cage, then laid a hand on the wall to steady himself.

  “Talc?”

  “It makes sense, actually,” Diane interjected. “The stainless steel of these cages should have shown human fingerprints. Instead, all we could find were baby-sized ones, from the monkeys. No human prints. Both the lab guy and the intruder were wearing gloves. Lab gloves, most likely.”

  “You’re thinking glove talc?” Satish asked.

  “It would make sense, wouldn’t it? The guy touches the rod and some talc spills out.”

  “No.” I stood up, hooked both hands on my belt, and stared at the cage racks, all doors dangling with their spring bolts unlocked. “No, it makes no sense.”

  Diane sprang to her feet and frowned. “Why not?” she challenged.

  Proud lady. Her zeal came onto me in a deliciously zesty whiff, which momentarily covered the tangs surrounding us.

  I showed her with my gloved hand. “Talc would’ve come out had he raised his arm, like this. But look.” I slid a finger inside the wrist of my glove. I hadn’t used talc and had to leave that bit to her imagination. “Whatever comes out when you raise your hand goes straight into shirt cuffs or arm. If you lower your hand instead, as he would’ve to touch the rod down there, no talc comes out. It stays in the glove.”

  “Then maybe the talc was on him, from when he’d donned the gloves, and then he brushed his arm against the cage door.”

  “The pattern would be different, as in a smear. That one’s a sprinkle. It couldn’t come from a glove.”

  “Still—”

  “Okay, you two.” Satish jumped in. “I think we ought to find out why the hell a man died in here.”

  My brain was on a different frequency. I clung onto the intruder’s smell and followed it. He ran out through the back door. I left Satish and Diane discussing the philosophical differences between sprinkles and smears, and stepped into the adjacent lab. All surfaces were neat and shiny. Rows of glassware and identical tools filed like soldiers on the overhead shelves. Everything was as sterile and impersonal as a funeral home stripped out of flowers. The only exception, a metal cart sprawled on the floor: the intruder ran out in a hurry, knocked off the cart, then fled through a side door. I brought my pinky to my nose again, the tip still stained with a dab of talc. Vaguely perfumed, not a fragrance, soap rather. Could the intruder be a woman?

  I perused the room looking for a new trace. I found something else instead. Six white tanks crammed on the bottom shelf of a metal rack, their handles sticking out at the top like protruding ears. A blue label to the side of each container read, “Cryo-Cil, Nitrogen refrigerated unit.” A memory, five years earlier, in Watanabe’s lab. Cryogenic tanks, I realized, stepping closer to take a better look. Small size, most likely used for transportation, their contents shielded within an internal core, in a bubble of vacuum and insulating material. Sturdy, I considered, yet not immune to a semi-jacketed hollow point.

  “Diane!” I darted back into the animal lab. “I want the recordings from the surveillance camera at the gate,” I said. “All the way back to October 6.”

  Diane winced. “October 6? That far back?”

  “Yes. That far back.”

  * * *

  I got home shortly after dawn. There was a moment along the freeway when the sky ripened, and a palette of burning reds and carmines seeped over the outline of the mountains. It lasted only a few ephemeral minutes, then the colors dissolved and a new day was born.

  Once at home I showered and shaved. The bathroom mirror insisted on portraying a tired me with dark circles underneath my eyes.

  I hate mirrors. They tend to have a mind of their own.

  I ground two cups of coffee beans and got the Bialetti Moka out. For wine and coffee you gotta leave the Italians alone. I filled the bottom of the Bialetti with water—up to the valve, strictly, not above and not below—filled the filter, then placed it on the stove.

  I keep a watchful eye on that baby as it brews my coffee. The gas must be turned off when the scent of coffee is just ripe, right in the middle of its aromatic gargles. A little too early, and not all the water has come out. A little too late and it gets a burnt aftertaste. It’s one of those things where perfection lies right between timing and precision. The point is not to get distracted.

  I slouched on the recliner and watched the morning light draw long shades on the walls. A jay screeched outside, until the trash truck turned onto the street and the rattling and clonking of trash bins sent the jay away. I thought of coffee and dawn and how everything in life reaches an exact peak of perfection and then it’s gone. The Greeks had a name for it, but I couldn’t think of it. My thoughts seemed to follow the same pattern: they came and went in waves, and by the time I felt I had the right intuition, it was gone and I couldn’t get it back. At least dawns had existed for a few million years now, and as for coffee, I could always brew a new Moka.

  There were six cryogenic tanks in the Chromo lab. Jennifer Huxley wanted new data. Jennifer Huxley is dead. How long has she been dead? Did she ever go to the Tarantino home that night or was it someone else driving her car? The religious note. It smelled foul.

  And on that last thought, I leaped out of the recliner and reached for the phone.

  “Latent Prints,” I blurted with the scratchy voice of somebody who’d just come out of bed. I had to give my name and business. As if anybody other than a frustrated cop had an interest in calling Latent Prints at eight o’clock in the morning. Really.

  “Hold on, please.”

  I held on. Latent Prints picked up in the form of a Hispanic accent asking again for my name and business.

  “Presius. I’ve got a job request sitting somewhere on your dusty shelves.” The accent didn’t like that I called her shelves dusty. I didn’t care.

  “Hold on, please.”

  I held on. Back in the kitchen the Bialetti started singing. I held on to that, too.

  “Hello?” Low, baritone voice this time, as scratchy and annoyed as mine—somebody who probably wanted to use the phone and instead found it already in use.

  “Presius—”

  “Is somebody helping you out?”

  “Not really.”

  “Hold on.”

  I held on for the third time. I was so damn pissed I forgot about the Bialetti and got there one second too late. I could smell the burnt coffee. “Fuck.”

  “Ah, no, this is Lorenzo, sir.”

  “Who?”

  “Lorenzo Agavi. I believe I’ve been assigned your request.”

  I gave him the case ID again. Just because he believed it, it didn’t mean I believed it.

  “Yes, sir.” I heard him flip over papers. “I’ve got uh— A note found on the crime scene and an envelope, both filed under the name Tarantino. Correct?” I nodded but didn’t utter a word. “Well, I just got it, sir. They’re both on my desk as we speak.”

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nbsp; “You mean you didn’t fume it yet, did you?” There was silence on the other end of the line. “The note from the crime scene. Did you fume it, yes or no?”

  “No, sir, but as I said—”

  “Great. There’s something I need you to look at before you fume it. Do you understand? And then you fume it and play all your cool tricks with it. Understood?”

  There was another pause. “Yes, sir. What is it you want me to look at? I’m listening.”

  I told him. Lorenzo Agavi understood before I could even complete the sentence. I liked this guy. Burnt coffee happens. It’s a side effect of life. But this guy—this guy I liked.

  * * *

  Detective Oscar Guerra left a note on my desk. “Lunch Monday?” it read. Laconic, as always, even in the written word. I jotted him down on my calendar: “Oscar—lunch—talk about Ilke case.” I tapped the pen against the paper. Strange little animal, the Hollywood business. Movie director Jerry White, showman Dan Horowitz, and all the beautiful, the rich, and the forever young. What did people like Medford and Tarantino have to do cavorting with them? And then there was Medford’s wife. Everybody knows Elizabeth, Detective, Horowitz had said.

  Nelson’s high-pitched giggles from the room next door distracted me. I got up and went looking for the detective-wannabe who was supposed to help me with the Tarantino investigation. She was sitting on Luke’s desk, happily chatting her way through tabloids, blockbusters, and TV shows.

  “You’re kidding!” I heard her shrill. “Did you watch the sequel too? It was to die for!”

  “Did you die for those papers I asked you to sort through, Nelson?”

  She startled. Luke straightened up in his chair. “Hey Track,” he said.

  Nelson sulked. “Nothing whatsoever came out of the Tarantinos’ phone logs—”

  “I’m not talking about that.”

  She rolled her eyes, hopped off Luke’s desk and mumbled a weary, “I’ll see you later, Luke.”

  I followed her to one of the common rooms, where she pointed to an open cardboard box sitting on a large metal table. Next to the box was an unrolled map of L.A. county, with a few areas between North Hollywood and Westwood marked in bright yellow. “It took me the whole day to sort through all phone logs, financial records, bank statements and what have you.”

  I reached for the coffee pot sitting on a file cabinet next to a snake of Styrofoam cups and helped myself to a lukewarm brew. I hate lukewarm American coffee. It’s even worse than American coffee. “And?” I prodded, inhaling the awakening wafts of caffeine.

  “Nothing.”

  A mouthful of coffee went the wrong way down my throat. “What d’you mean nothing? You spent the whole day and got nothing out of it? What d’you get paid for?”

  Nelson’s pretty lips twitched into a pout. She came so close to my face I smelled Luke’s aftershave on her skin. “You know, Track,” she hissed, “I used to like you a lot better before you got your D-2 promotion. Still an asshole, but at least you were fun to hang out with on Friday nights.” A disgusted look clinging to her dark eyes, she snagged my tie and tugged it. “Look at you now. All dressed up and plastered behind the I-no-longer-have-time-for-you-people shitty attitude.”

  A doorknob from across the hallway squeaked and a Rape Special lieutenant came out of one of the offices and walked straight to our room. Nelson let go of my tie and took a step back. “Sorry to disappoint you, Detective,” she said, her voice tuned back to mellow. “All payments Jennifer Huxley received were from her paychecks. You’re welcome to double-check yourself, if you want. In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and bring these back to the evidence room.” She hurdled the large cardboard box, walked out of the door, and disappeared in the meanders of our cubicle-filled floor. I coughed, readjusted the knot of my tie and nodded a brisk salute to the LT.

  Lieutenant Aberdeen was hefty and bilious and wheezed like ten overworked bellows. He drank, smoked, and had drunk and smoked his entire life. You wouldn’t have given him a day longer to live and yet he was more resilient than a nest of cockroaches. “How’s coffee today?” he asked, going for the pot.

  “Lukewarm,” I replied, staring at the map Nelson had left open on the desk. She had color-coded a few spots by date and source, and noted the key on a separate piece of paper. Behind me, I heard Aberdeen rip open two bags of sugar, empty them in his cup, and stir for a good thirty seconds.

  “The Tarantino case, I suppose?” he asked, craning his head and staring at the map.

  “Huxley, actually. I had Nelson uh— help out.”

  “Good call. She’s indicated a desire to move up in her career.” He sent a supercilious glare my way, as if wondering if I had anything to say on the matter. I tried not to and forced my eyes back to the map. There was a green dot marked along San Vicente Boulevard, about four miles away from the Esperanza Medical Center. On Nelson’s key I read, “ATM withdrawal in the amount of $500, October 6, eight fifteen p.m.” Curious, I thought. I had spotted plenty of ATM machines at the Esperanza, and even if Huxley forgot to stop at any of those, why drive four miles away from North Hollywood, where she lived, when she could’ve found another one on her way home?

  “Nelson’s okay,” I finally told Aberdeen as he sloppily drank his coffee. “She does as told. If only she’d go one step further and connect the dots in between, she’d be a hell of a copper.”

  Aberdeen slurped down the remainder of his drink, tossed the cup in the trashcan, and then nodded. “I like people who do as they’re told,” he said. “They’re my kind of people.”

  * * *

  “They just hired a new guy at Latent Prints,” I told Satish as we crossed the parking lot and walked to the entrance of the Hertzberg-Davis Center.

  “What happened to Scar Novak?”

  “He quit.”

  Novak, the previous specialist, wore gloves and facemask everywhere, not just at crime scenes. Besides the usual tools of the trade, his workstation sported a Brita pitcher, individually wrapped Styrofoam cups, a couple of bottles of Lysol, and an antibacterial gel dispenser. He cruised the hallways of Parkway—back when the SID was at the glass house—bundled up like a terrorist, gathering the concerned looks of unaware visitors. Rumors spread that the reason for constantly hiding his lower face was a deformed jaw, from which he was dubbed “Scar” Novak. Nobody knew his real first name.

  “Maybe he found a job where he didn’t have to wear a facemask all day long.”

  “Yeah. On a deserted island.” I held the door to the Fingerprint Analysis and Comparison lab. “Or maybe he conveniently left before the Maldonado tornado hit him too.”

  Maria Maldonado was a hospital technician wrongfully accused of burglary based on fingerprint evidence signed off by three of our Latent Print technicians. The Unit was under fire and the media pounded with the lingering question of how many other wrongful accusations had yet to be brought to light. Even after the advent of automated databases such as IAFIS—the FBI fingerprint database system where all prints were routinely sent for possible matches—fingerprint evidence was still analyzed by a set of human eyes and a magnifying glass.

  I let the door close behind us and added, “I have great faith in the new hire.”

  Bent over his workstation, one hand on the shaft where a Nikon camera was hinged and the other clutching a magnifying glass, Lorenzo Agavi’s most noticeable feature was his mop of black curls. He had small, green eyes, hidden behind oversized glass frames. His ears looked like they wanted to stick out of the sides of his head except there was too much hair to make it that far out. A white coat hung loose over his narrow shoulders, its billows leaving a trail of iodine fumes and ninhydrin.

  “Welcome, Detectives,” he said over a lengthy handshake. “I’ve got some really cool stuff to show you.” We followed him to a different workstation where I spotted the first commandment note and the letter Diane had found in Tarantino’s paper bin, both sealed in transparent evidence bags. Next to them were the fingerprint cards.
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br />   “I just uploaded these guys to the system.” Lorenzo logged onto the terminal on his workstation, and the photos of two enlarged fingerprints popped up on the screen. In one, the ridges and loops were well delineated, whereas the second one was blurred on one side and overlapped with a smudged partial.

  Agavi bathed me in a caffeine-laden smile. “First commandment note on the left—the only print I found on the piece of paper. The envelope instead had plenty of overlapping prints. The photo on the right is the best shot I got.” He pointed to the screen. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

  “I’m mesmerized.”

  Satish snorted. “What’s running through your overworked brains, Track?”

  “For one thing, the two are a match.”

  By my side, Agavi beamed. Buried in the overgrown Afro-mop, his face hung in reverence. I like young people: they’re so easy to impress. “You have a sharp eye, sir. My thesis advisor also has a sharp eye.”

  “Sharp eyes still get in trouble in court,” Satish rebuked.

  Agavi winked. “That’s why we have mathematical tools.”

  “Wait,” I said. “The procedure—”

  “Oh, I know.” He held up the magnifying glass next to his keyboard—one of those shaped like an upside down wine glass. “I already checked all loops and ridges by eye. But I’m sure you’ll appreciate the fact that the computer agrees with my conclusions. Same software that runs underneath IAFIS.”

  I looked at Satish and beamed. “Told you I liked him.”

  Lorenzo double clicked on the prints taken from the envelope. “I applied a fast Fourier transform software to separate the overlapping prints and clear out the background signal—plastic surgery for fingerprints.” At the click of his fingers, the images on the screen underwent the promised beautification.

  “Beautiful. Go on.”

  “I used three different algorithms to compare the topography in the two sets of prints. The first one uses harmonic functions to renormalize the distortion caused by the different touches.” Agavi was so enthralled he spoke of the software like a kid ranting over his brand new Nintendo. “The next two algorithms compare the minutiae across the two images and find all possible matches. I ran both to minimize FAR and FRR. Type I and type II errors,” he added as a magnanimous explanation. An eye-opener, this guy.