Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  Loren looked at the tiny handwriting. He had been taught all his career to preserve evidence.

  He looked left and right, then tore the sheet out. He folded it in quarters and put it in his pocket, then flipped the page back to Monday’s calls.

  He called Shorty’s office, and the sheriff himself answered.

  “I want to talk to you about the drug bust,” he said.

  “Go ahead, cousin.” Shorty’s voice was genial.

  “Sheila Lowrey thinks we might have some problems,” Loren said, “now that Archuleta and Medina and Robbie Cisneros have this guy Axelrod.” He gave a brief explanation of what Lowrey thought Axelrod might try to do.

  “The thing is,” he said, “we have to make certain that everyone in both our departments is clear on the series of events and how Robbie got his injuries.”

  “No problem, cousin,” Shorty said.

  “I mean,” making himself as clear as possible, “you’ll have to talk to your people.”

  “I already have, cousin,” Shorty said. “I talked to my men the minute we delivered those guys to the jail.”

  Surprise performed a slow, ominous dance on Loren’s heart.

  “Thanks, Shorty,” he said.

  “No problem, ese.”

  Loren put the phone in its cradle. There was a sour taste in his mouth.

  He wondered if he had been wrong. And if he had been wrong, how wrong had he been?

  He looked up the medical investigator’s number in the massive desk Rolodex and dialed the number. He eventually got one of the examiner’s assistants, a man named Esquibel.

  “London’s working on another popsicle,” Esquibel reported. “But I was present at the John Doe autopsy and I’ve got the tape here. Lemme play it through headphones, and I’ll summarize it.” Loren heard the sound of shuffling papers, the snap of a recorder button. “Okay, here we go. The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished young adult Caucasian male, weight a hundred fifty pounds, seventy-three and one-half inches in length, age approximately twenty-two to twenty-eight. The body is received within a white body bag, with the closed end of the zipper covered by a ‘State of New Mexico, Office of the Chief Medical Investigator’ evidence label—”

  “Skip that,” said Loren.

  Esquibel went on to describe John Doe’s clothing, including the worn spots on the knees of his jeans, the little white circle on the back pocket consistent with a can of snuff— the Copenhagen can was described separately— and the metal collar tabs on the yoked shirt. There were no powder burns on the clothing, and Loren made a note of that. Esquibel continued with the state of rigor, postmortem lividity on the dorsal surfaces, length of scalp hair (5 cm. max), the width of pupils (0.35 cm.), the tobacco stains on the teeth, and the fact that Doe had been circumcised.

  “Beneath the left arm,” Esquibel said, “is a 1.2-centimeter circular defect, with five stellate tears radiating from the center point.” Circular defect was M.I. talk for bullet wound. “These extension tears vary from 0.7 to a maximum of 2.1 centimeters in length. The tissues are extremely swollen, blue-purple and discolored . . .”

  This went on for some time, as the M.I. opened the body with his standard Y-shaped incision, removed the organs, and weighed them. The liver weighed in at 1,700 grams, the spleen 130. “What happened,“ Esquibel said finally, “is that the guy got shot under the left arm, the missile tracking slightly downward”— missile was M.I.-speak for bullet— “and then the missile ricocheted off the fifth rib and was directed slightly upward. The missile bounced around inside, making some pretty crazy zigzags through the torso. Not uncommon, by the way. From the way the missile was flattened and its casing shattered, and from its erratic course, it’s a decent guess the missile came through the door of the car first and was tumbling when it hit Mr. Doe. The missile punctured both lungs and nicked the descending aorta. What we think happened is that he was able to function for a while after he was shot, but that eventually the aorta eroded and burst. It filled his lungs in a minute or two and he drowned.”

  “The bullet?”

  “We found it in his thorax. Caliber .41 Action Express, but I’m just a damn ignorant pathologist, so you’ll have to talk to criminalistics to make it official.”

  .41 caliber, Loren thought. There weren’t a lot of .41 caliber guns out there, and that might make finding the shooter a little easier.

  Loren heard the sound of flipping pages. “No alcohol or drugs in system. No powder marks on hands or arms. Palms show calluses related to manual labor. Blood type: A positive. Body normal: no tattoos, no sign of previous wounds. Defensive bruises on both forearms, like he was trying to protect himself against somebody swinging a baseball bat.”

  “Or he got in a car crash and braced against the wheel with his arms.”

  “I was about to say that. No other bruises, no signs of restraint, bite marks, ligature marks. Skin abrasion on the first two knuckles of the left hand, possibly indicative of fistfight. Small scar on left forearm, scar on right shin, scar on ball of right thumb. All the scars were old.Silver fillings on the following teeth.”

  Loren jotted down the complicated dental jargon. “Nothing under the nails that you want to hear about. Mild gastritis at two locations in the stomach. That’s from your coffee or alcohol use. Stomach contents: coffee, potato chips, ham and American cheese on white bread, eaten approximately one hour prior to death. Heart normal. Brain normal. Lungs demonstrated tobacco or marijuana use. Liver showed mild cirrhosis consistent with heavy alcohol or drug use. Vermiform appendix present. Precancerous condition on the interior lower lip consistent with dipping snuff. No recent sexual contact. No semen in rectum, which I’m sure you’ll be happy to know.”

  “Thanks. I’m delighted.”

  “Got any idea who shot him?”

  “Not really.”

  “Because what you’ve got is a hard-drinking, fist-fighting, snuff-dipping, ham-and-cheese-eating manual laborer who got shot in somebody else’s car.”

  “I know,” Loren said. All of this, he knew, added up to someone probably not a Republican, which would make the mayor even less interested in finding out who’d shot him.

  “We’ve sent the finger, palm, and retina prints out on the LAWSAT. Nothing yet. Some tissue samples went upstairs to the histology lab. You can call criminalistics and see if they’ve done the work on the physical evidence.”

  “They won’t have. But I’ll call them.”

  “I’ll send the paperwork by the next mail. Just so you can get it all in detail.”

  “Thanks.”

  Loren called the criminalistics division and found, as he’d suspected, that they hadn’t got around to examining the victim’s clothing yet. Maybe they’d get to it by the end of the week, he was told; they were stacked up.

  “We did look at the bullets, though,” Loren was told. The voice was female and a little fussy. “Forty caliber, and there was more than one gun.”

  “Say again?”

  “One of the bullets you took out of the car was from a different gun. Two people were shooting at this guy, but only one hit him.”

  Loren, staring at the hallway in which the man died, let this information roll over him. His informant, knowing somehow that the information was important, gave him all the time he needed.

  “What caliber?” Loren said finally.

  “Both .41. Five lands and grooves, right-hand twist.”

  “Any idea what kind of gun that would be?”

  “Lots. Any Smith & Wesson, for a start.”

  “Great.” Another phone call began to flash and chime on the comm board. Loren frowned at the system and tried to remember what button to push.

  “That’s all I can tell you. If you find a gun or some brass, we can do a lot more.”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Primly. “We’ll let you know when we do the other tests.“

  Loren pushed a button, the right one, and answered. The call was a mis
sing-person query from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Loren informed the querent that his male Caucasian early-twenties John Doe was not a black female Jane Roe in her mid-teens. The querent— Roe’s mother— sounded weary. Loren wished her luck and wondered how she had found out about the death so quickly.

  Missing Children Hotline, he thought. On computer, accessible via modem.

  As he logged the call he felt depression wash over him. He didn’t know whether to be relieved the woman hadn’t found her daughter dead or grieved that the anguish would continue, maybe for years. He thought of what he’d feel if one of his daughters vanished and was amazed at the woman’s calm. He knew that if Kelly or Katrina went missing, he’d be mad with rage and grief, mad beyond all hope of sanity, until his daughter returned to him.

  Another light blinked on the comm board. Loren answered.

  “Chief Hawn, please.”

  Loren knew the voice.

  “You’re talking to him,” he said.

  “This is Bill Patience. Are you answering your own phones now? I knew there were budget cutbacks, but—”

  Loren reluctantly offered the chuckle that the comment seemed to require. “The regular guy had an errand to run. I’m filling in.”

  “Good.” Patience’s voice had a heartiness that seemed false as the devil. Loren despised it. “I’m just calling to ask if you have any information on your dead man’s identity.”

  “None that I can talk about.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sorry, Bill.”

  “It’s just that— well, we’re supposed to look into anything weird.”

  “In case the guy was a spy.”

  “More or less.” Reluctantly. Why, Loren wondered impatiently, did the guy balk at revealing what was public knowledge? It was the spies themselves who were supposed to be discreet, not the cops that hunted them.

  “I guess he’s a dead spy now,” Loren said. “Looks more like my department.”

  “I also have a complaint.”

  All lining up, Loren thought. Axelrod and Patience and Trujillo and Bonniwell and Jernigan . . .

  “A complaint?” He could hear his own false ingenuousness, as phony as Patience’s camaraderie, and for an instant loathed himself for it.

  “Who from?” he said.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Jernigan. Something about terrorizing them in their own home.”

  “She asked me to leave and I did.”

  “She says that your partner interrogated their son.”

  “Asked him a few friendly questions, maybe.” Loren cleared his throat. “This is a murder investigation, Bill,” he said. “What’s wrong with asking people questions?”

  “I’m just relaying a complaint that was made to me. I informed Mrs. Jernigan that my job was not to protect her from a legitimate police inquiry, and that if she wanted to take it any further, she could complain to your superiors.”

  Loren wondered if she would. It would sound great, wouldn’t it, her complaint coming in at the same time as Bonniwell’s and Axelrod’s?

  “Thank you for telling her that,” Loren said.

  “I don’t really care for people using my office as a clearinghouse for domestic complaints.” There was an edge in Patience’s voice. Perhaps that was the first genuine thing he’d said all along.

  “I had some questions for you,” Loren said. He heard footsteps in the corridor and saw Eloy walking toward him.

  “Whatever.”

  “Can I see your logs of who was checking in and out of your establishment on Friday and Saturday? It would serve to clear a lot of people.”

  “Sure. I can’t let the original logs off the premises, but you can come and copy them if you like. Or I can have them photocopied and sent to you.”

  Loren was suddenly conscious of the folded bit of phone log, the evidence he’d stolen, awaiting disposal in his breast pocket. Eloy, the log’s guardian, was hovering just behind him. “I’d like to look at them in person, if I can,” he said. At least he’d be able to tell if something had been ripped out.

  “Just call for an appointment.”

  “How about this afternoon?”

  There was a slight pause. “Name a time.”

  “Three o’clock?”

  “Fine. I’ll leave word at the gate.”

  “Another question.”

  “Okay.” Patience sounded a bit weary.

  “What kind of weapons do your people use?”

  Patience’s answer was prompt. “Anyone here under suspicion, Loren?”

  “What I’m trying to do is clear them more than anything else.”

  “That should be easy, then. Our standard sidearm is the Tanfoglio TZ-M. That’s an Italian copy of a Czech military sidearm, the CZ75. Thought by some,” pridefully, “to be the best in the world.”

  Loren jotted it down. “And the caliber?”

  “Nine-millimeter.”

  “Okay. And all your people carry this gun?”

  “I can’t say what private weapons my people might have in their homes, but when on duty our people are required to carry the Tanfoglio. We want to have a common ammunition used by all weapons. It’s the same with the UZIs in the jeeps.”

  Loren’s pen froze on the paper. “You’ve got UZIs in the jeeps?” he said.

  “Standard UZIs. Nine-millimeter, firing the same ammo as the pistols.”

  “This isn’t exactly known, Bill.” Loren could feel his voice rising.

  “There’s been no reason for anyone to know it.”

  “Where are they carried? What if some kid broke into a jeep and—”

  “It won’t happen.”

  “How can you say that?” A picture rose in his mind, A.J. Dunlop, in his torn black T-shirt, lank blond hair hanging down from his backward-turned gimme cap, standing in the darkness of the high school parking lot with a submachine gun in his hand. Yanking the bolt back and smiling and taking aim at the windows of the school.

  “I can’t precisely reveal the details,” Patience said, “but there’s a security system in place to keep those guns from getting into the wrong hands.”

  “I’m not encouraged,” Loren said.

  “I’ll show it to you,” Patience said. “When you’re over here this afternoon.”

  Loren said goodbye and hung up the phone. He looked up at Eloy. “How’d it go?” he said.

  Eloy tugged at his foam collar. “Man, Chief. She asked me the same questions about fifty different ways. I feel like I’ve been through an interrogation. She should work for us, you know. Not for the D.A.’s office.”

  “She’s sharp,” Loren said.

  “Am I gonna have to testify under oath and everything?”

  There was a funny tone in Eloy’s voice. Loren looked at him. “Could be. You got a problem with it?”

  Eloy looked uneasy. “Guess not, Chief,” he said.

  Another chime came from the comm board. Eloy and Loren both looked at it. “Another missing offspring, Chief,” Eloy said, and reached for the phone.

  Loren rose, thinking of all the missing offspring in the world wandering from one place to another, rootless, ID-less, in worn boots and faded Levi’s, to be turned into victims by person or persons unknown.

  Just like John Doe.

  Loren walked into his office. He was going to solve this one, he thought. For all the parents of all the Johns and Janes who would never be found, who would cluster around computer terminals linked to the Missing Children Hotline and make hopeless phone calls to every little town where some pathetic corpse had got itself shot in someone else’s car. . .

  CHAPTER TEN

  The maglev was three coaches long and a burnished silver. Growing clouds overhead did not dim its luster. The streamlined coach on either end was shaped like the semi-wadcutter rounds that had killed John Doe; the one in the middle, blunt-ended, was connected to the others by a ribbed plastic shield. The gray-on-red ATL symbol gleamed confidently on each coach, like the eyes old mariners used to paint on their ships.
r />   Even at rest the train made a loud, grating, humming sound. As if impatient to take off.

  Loren took off his shades and stepped off the worn wood platform into the front coach. The inside walls were cream-colored, the wide seats— shaped plastic— were orange. The high-backed seats, tall enough to include padded headrests, faced both ways. He looked left and right. There were no other passengers. And no engineer— the maglev was entirely computer-controlled.

  He sat in the front seat and looked out the window at the old AT&SF station. It was a classic southwestern design, a two-story brown adobe with a graceful little false front on top that displayed the Santa Fe logo. Though the building was still used for administrative purposes, the Santa Fe trains didn’t come into Atocha anymore, only served to connect the Atocha copper pit with El Paso. And now that the pit was closed, the trains would vanish altogether, taking up the iron rails behind them. The station might be boarded up and left to the weather and the vandals, like most of the old Santa Fe stops in the Southwest, while local people removed the ties for use in construction.

  Loren wondered if ATL would buy or rent the old station then, just to keep their terminus from looking ratty. Replace the blue and white Santa Fe logo with their own gray-on-red sigil, a nineteenth-century monolithic symbol with its twenty-first-century equivalent.

  The scenery darkened. The bright sun had been hidden by a cloud.

  “The doors are closing,” a female voice said. “Stand clear of the doors.”

  Loren looked behind him as the doors rumbled shut. The voice repeated the instructions in Spanish. “Thank you!” said the voice cheerily. “Muchas gracias!” It sounded as if the woman were right over his shoulder, and had perhaps received her training in human relations at Walt Disney World— it had a kind of forced cheerfulness that Loren had only heard in totally artificial environments where people had to work hard at being ingenuous. Beyond that slightly emphatic quality, her voice was natural and didn’t seem computer-generated. Loren might have been more comfortable had it been otherwise.

  “Please take your seat,” the voice said. “Please remain in your seat for the entire trip. Do not attempt to move or stand during acceleration or deceleration. The ATL Maglev Express is designed to travel in excess of two hundred forty miles per hour, though this journey is so brief that speeds will not exceed two hundred. Thank you.”