Bones of the Barbary Coast (Cree Black Thrillers)

by Daniel Hecht

  "Then there is the cementum annulation, an indicator of tooth age. I have been troubled from the start by the limited degree of attrition and resorption I see in the wolfman's canines and incisors—these appear to be full-bodied teeth, healthy and showing relatively little wear, not the teeth of a forty-year-old who lived before the age of modern dentistry. Fortunately, in humans as in all mammals, a thin layer of cementum is added around the adult tooth root every year, allowing us to measure age by counting the layers. You cut a very thin section from the root of the teeth, then look at it through a microscope and count the cementum layers. I asked Ray to take a section and provide photomicrographs for us." Skobold ticked off the striations on the photo. "The cementum annulatum substantiates the observation that the wolfman's canines and the incisors are relatively young, growing teeth. Their age is precisely consistent with the palate indicators."

  "So," Cree said, "you're saying his lower face and dentition developed later. In a rapid and sudden growth phase in his adult years."

  "Yes."

  "Horace. How . . . can that, I mean, is it possible that—" she stopped, unwilling to embarrass herself by voicing the question.

  "Bones can be stimulated to later-age, rapid deformative development in response to changes in use, to injuries, and to growing tumors. A few, extremely rare genetic syndromes can result in rapid bone growth, deformation, or degeneration. Those are the only exceptions to predictable development."

  "We're pretty sure about that?"

  Skobold put the mandible back on the counter and turned away to fuss with his tools before replying. "Do you believe in werewolves, Ms. Black?"

  Cree thought about how to answer. "I do, yes. As a way people in the old days thought of serial killers or schizophrenics, or as a way superstitious people demonized behaviors different from their own. Last year I spent some time with a Navajo shaman, talking about Skinwalkers and Navajo Wolves, evil sorcerers who are supposed to be able to change shape. I think of that tradition as a metaphorical transformation. I've never believed in the . . . other kind, but then you tell me this stuff and I have to wonder." She grinned weakly, trying to keep it light. "How about you?"

  Skobold didn't smile. "I am a scientist. I have measured the wolfman's cranial volume, which accommodated a full-sized human brain. He was a human being. I believe we are dealing with a deformity of greater complexity than previously assumed. Clearly the genes responsible for skeletal growth were faulty and caused late-developing abnormalities. If so, it is an extremely rare syndrome, perhaps one never before clinically observed. Which is why it is so very important that we understand what happened—that we document this fellow with perfect precision and objectivity. What happened to our wolfman was not the result of some . . . supernatural event. It was encoded in his genes, which I very much hope we can study in the tissue residues I took samples of. His final shape was what you might call his genetic destiny. We must study him closely so that we may better understand the full diversity of the human condition. The rainbow of our many individual 'destinies.' "

  Beautiful, Cree thought. Horace Skobold was showing himself to be a remarkably thoughtful, eloquent man, a person she would enjoy comparing philosophical notes with if she were free to reveal what she did and what insights her profession had given her. She went back to her bones and brushes. Skobold turned his attention to the cranium, pressing pinches of putty into concavities, smoothing and rounding. He had lost his eager contentedness and now looked troubled.

  "Speaking of Ray," Cree said, "I, um, ran into him. We had coffee together."

  Skobold's eyes widened. "And?"

  "He told me the details about him and Bert, what happened back then. Understandably, he doesn't care much for Bert."

  "No."

  "He has some, what would you call it, unusual philosophical ideas. I was hoping to ask you about him, actually."

  "Ask—?"

  "You were right, he sent those dog-morph e-mails—the bones got him thinking of werewolves as a metaphor. He's saying that's what Bert is. That Bert should recognize himself."

  "That does sound like Ray."

  "But his intensity is a little frightening to me, Horace. And I'm worried that Bert will figure out he sent the e-mails and then decide Ray is his supposed serial killer. I guess I wanted to ask if you thought Ray could really be dangerous. Do you think he could be capable of . . . that?"

  Skobold brought the skull close to his eyes to inspect some detail, then continued working the putty for another long minute before answering.

  "I can't say what Ray is capable of, or what Bert is capable of. But I must tell you that I believe deeply in the fundamental goodness of mankind. The pain we inflict and endure is not an inevitability of our nature but a tragic result of unintended consequences." He looked at her as if expecting a challenge. "I have spent forty years in this field, Ms. Black. I have viewed at close hand the aftermath of every imaginable kind of carnage. I spent two years doing reconstructive identification in mass graves in Bosnia and Rwanda. So I am well aware of the many arguments one can make to the contrary. But I still prefer to give mankind the benefit of the doubt."

  Horace stopped his work to look at her penetratingly. She returned the steady gaze, seeing it all there in his eyes, the certainty and beyond that successive layers of fear, then desperation, then determination. She suspected he saw the same in hers.

  "What about you, Ms. Black?" he asked, gaze unwavering.

  Cree thought about it, realizing how hungry she was for reassurance on that point and how elusive it was proving.

  "In general, I'd say I share your outlook. But as regards the current situation, I'm a little worried it's going to be one of those things that . . . puts our hypothesis to the test."

  "Yes," Skobold agreed sadly. "I was rather afraid it might."

  29

  THE HOMICIDE UNIT'S office on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice was a cramped labyrinth of pathways between overflowing green metal desks fronting paper-stuffed half-wall cubicles. On the walls hung drymark boards listing case actions pending, interspersed with framed photos of cops arresting people or newspaper articles reporting convictions on cases apparently dear to the hearts of the inspectors. The air was close with the smell of paper and humanity

  Bert occupied the far corner, the last and most cluttered of a row of desks. Ordinarily the unit's inspectors worked in teams, he explained, but with his job mostly paperwork at this stage he was a solo for now; his former partner was already hooked up with Bert's replacement. He gestured for Cree to sit, then settled himself into a creaking chair beneath ceiling lights that cast the pouches under his eyes into sharp relief. Cree had spent another frustrating morning searching for records for Schweitzers or Jack-sons, but she'd been thinking mainly about Bert and Cameron Raymond. She had decided to tell him about Ray, but the decision made her uneasy.

  "How's it going?" he asked.

  "Frankly, it's slow, Uncle Bert. I'm basically spinning nay wheels, so far."

  "We knew it would be slow. That's why I asked you. Big favor, I know it."

  "I did find reference to Schweitzer. I don't know much about him other than that he was a contractor, fine masonry a specialty, and that he married someone named Jackson, probably one of the people who owned the house where the terrace is now. And I took a look at one of the private collections. It's got a lot of possibility but it's in transition and disordered, so it's going to take a while to get through it. I'll go back tomorrow."

  Bert bobbed his head. "How about the bones? You and Horace make any headway?"

  "We did some measuring last night. Horace says bone development is paradoxical, meaning he's getting conflicting age indicators from different bone features. The best he can do so far is that our guy was between early twenties and early forties."

  "Huh. Too broad to help you. Well, when he does give you a number, you can put it in the bank. He's the best, Horace."

  She lowered her voice, even though none of the ne
arby desks was occupied. "He told me about you and Cameron Raymond."

  Bert went instantly poker faced. "Okay. Good."

  "Why good?"

  "Because I got to thinking about Cameron Raymond, too. After you mentioned you'd run into a guy with bad scarring named Ray."

  "Shit."

  "Yeah, 'shit' as in 'shit happens,' except around here we say 'people do shit'." Bert's voice had turned acid. "Did he tell you Cameron is an artist? Move your chair around here, you can see the latest 'art' by our friend Cameron."

  Cree scooted the chair so she could see the computer monitor, which showed a page of text. She started reading, but Bert waved his hand in front of her.

  "Just watch."

  After about a minute, she jumped as an image popped onto the screen. A dog-faced man. This one had more human features, with the canine qualities suppressed, which somehow made it even more frightening. It vanished before she could look closely at it. The image had come and gone like a subliminal thought. Bert made a low noise in his throat.

  "Listen, Uncle Bert—"

  "Hang on. Keep watching."

  Soon another pop-up appeared. This one was in black and white, a medieval woodcut print of a hunchbacked upright wolflike creature ripping parts off somebody on the ground. It was there and gone, leaving its reversed afterimage on her retinas.

  "There's one more," Bert said. "But you get the idea. They might not show for a while and then they'll pop like this. I asked our IT guy about it, he said, Yeah, it's a problem, you're going along and a Viagra ad comes onto your screen. They're like a virus, they get into your computer and activate themselves. He's got some software that'll get rid of them but I'm gonna leave these on in case they end up having evidentiary value. In the meantime, I gotta live with them. Son of a bitch."

  "When did you start getting these?"

  "This morning."

  So Ray hadn't backed off. She was surprised as much as disappointed. She would have sworn he'd been sincere when he'd said he was done. It disturbed her to think he could misrepresent himself so convincingly. What had he said? The wolf you don't see. The wolf you don't know is there.

  Another inspector came into Bert's end of the room, then a second. They saw Cree, nodded, began conferring. The additional company wasn't to Bert's liking. He stood up, suggested he could use a smoke, maybe Cree wanted to go for a walk. On their way out, he introduced her to the others as his niece.

  Outside, Bert lit up immediately and blew a series of smoke signals as they walked along a block made up of seedy store fronts, mostly bail bondsmen with a scattering of convenience stores and auto glass places in between. With the heavy traffic on Bryant Street and the relentless rush from the 101 overpass, Cree had to walk close by Bert's side so they could hear each other.

  "So what are you going to do?" she asked.

  "Take a closer look at him."

  "What are you thinking? On the basis of these e-mails, Ray's your murderer?"

  Bert's mouth puckered and his eyes went flat in a way Cree did not like. "Mainly, I'm thinking that if Cameron Raymond didn't get enough back in eighty-one, there's plenty more where that came from."

  "You don't think maybe he already got more than he deserved?"

  "These scumbags, it's never just one thing! Don't think that just because he and his buddies got caught robbing that one store it was the only thing they ever did. Don't think he's been clean since then, either."

  "Horace knows Ray fairly well and thinks he's a good person."

  "Yeah, and that's something Horace and I are gonna have to talk about, him working with Raymond all these years, keeping it from me." Bert spat, the idea of Horace's betrayal heating him up. "I went through an administrative investigation over what happened. They looked up every orifice in my body, they looked back at every thing I'd ever done, personal finances, friendships, everything. It put me under the thumb for a long time, even if they clear you it's a permanent stigma, you think I wouldn't have moved up a couple more grades by now? Then the civil suit, that's months of meeting with lawyers and depositions and court dates, your bosses do not like that. You sit there in court all day, listening to them tell this bullshit about you, then you get home at night and read the same crap in the newspapers. Five, six weeks, you don't know how it'll turn out, the suspense isn't good for your digestion, okay? This was only like three years after Megan. Fran and I were holding onto our marriage by our fingernails anyway, then Raymond comes along and I'm up to my neck in shit. For Fran it was the straw that broke the camel's back. So don't tell me about poor little Cameron."

  Bert had cranked himself up again, enough that a couple passing the other way glanced at him with mild alarm. He threw his cigarette down and stepped on it without breaking stride.

  "There's something else you should know about Raymond. He came up on my radar another time. This was eight, nine years after my first thing with him, when I was just starting out in Homicide. I remembered something, it was eating at me since you clued me to him the other night, and today I went and found it. Cameron Raymond was on a witness/suspect list for a homicide in Berkeley about fourteen years ago. I wasn't lead, but I was involved because there was a possible San Francisco link. So today I got hold of the file and looked at the contact lists and sure enough there's Cameron. He was the Berkeley side's guy, so it wasn't our job to interview him. I remember now, back when his name came up, I thought, there's that little punk who cost me my marriage and nearly my job. I thought it was one hell of a coincidence that a scumbag I knew from before was now connected to a murder."

  Cree felt a shiver of wariness. She couldn't tell whether it came from the possibility that Ray was a murderer or the fact that Bert's theory was ramifying in this direction. "Tell me about it."

  "It was a nasty one, a slice and dice. With those, first thing you gotta consider is a jealous lover, so the Berkeley cops looked at the vic's girlfriend and any other boyfriends she might have had. And who do you think she threw over, like two years earlier, for the guy who got killed? Your buddy Ray. They talked to him a couple of times."

  "But they didn't arrest him?"

  "No. I told the Berkeley people they should take a closer look at him.

  But they didn't. In fact, they nailed somebody else. A weak case, I thought."

  "And what did the jury think, Uncle Bert?"

  He waved his hand as if swatting at gnats. "Never came to trial. Guy hung himself in holding. Berkeley dicks figured that was tantamount to a confession."

  "So now what are you going to do?" Cree asked.

  "Whatever I think necessary."

  "Did you talk to the people in Berkeley about why Ray wasn't a suspect? It seems to me you should respect their judgment."

  Bert flashed her a look that was at once insulted and disdainful as he brought out another cigarette, put it to his lips, took it away and spat some tobacco. "Next order of business. Where we at with the wolfman? What's next? We need some headway on this thing."

  Cree bristled at his way of cutting off discussion, his whole way of talking to her. She let the chill show in her voice: "We're meeting for a short session tonight. Horace has some other commitment later."

  "I was hoping you could come over to my place, maybe tomorrow, look at some more stuff I've put together. On that other thing."

  They had stopped at a streetlight as a bunch of motorcyclists went past, racketing Ninja-style Japanese bikes in every color. Cree stared at the glistening rainbow parade, fighting the temptation to return Bert's dismissive treatment.

  When the din faded, Bert cleared his throat uneasily. "Maybe we could grab dinner first. Least I can do is feed you right while you're down here."

  "We'll see how my schedule is."

  He heard that as it was intended. He lit his cigarette and didn't say anything as they crossed the street and started along the next block.

  "What I mean is," Bert continued, "fuck me. I'm sorry."

  That pulled Cree up short. They stopped and faced
each other in front of an Italian-style cafe with the smell of roasting coffee gusting out its front door. Bert frowned down at his cigarette, lifted his eyes with some effort to Cree's.

  "You're pissed because of the way I talk. I'm working on it, Cree. I'm a little rough around the edges. Guys who spend too long in the cop shop, we get like this. You gotta know you're good for me, okay? I mean it. You show me I got a lot of catching up to do, learn how to be a human being again. Stick with it, yeah?"

  She hadn't thought him capable of so much introspection or humility. Surprise: Just when you wanted to kick him, he showed a lopsided charm. He stood there with a hat-in-hand expression, waiting for some response, wary of her.

  "What am I gonna do with this guy?" she said at last. The wrords came all the way from Brooklyn, something she must have heard her mother say. She had to grin as she took his arm and turned him toward the cafe entrance. "You're breaking my heart," she said. "Buy me a cup of coffee."

  30

  RAY'S ADDRESS WAS listed in the phone book. It took Cree a while to find the place, over on the east side in an area of warehouses and port-related businesses. Several nearby streets ended in encampments of homeless people with rows of defunct cars, stretched tarps, trashcan firepits. Ray's street dead-ended at an overgrown chain-link fence, and at first she thought she must have the address wrong. But her mental lens shifted when she pulled up at the huge dirty-brick warehouse and saw Ray's minivan parked in front. She thought of the industrial places her artist friends had moved into in New York, Philadelphia, Seattle; maybe this was a Bay Area equivalent.

  It was six o'clock. The sky was still bright, but the sun was getting low and putting shadows along the buildings, and Cree briefly wondered if she was being smart or crazy in coming here.

  She went up to the steel door and pushed long and hard on the doorbell button. A harsh bleat echoed inside, followed by the sound of barking from the fenced storage yard to the left. She couldn't see the dogs, but their fury disturbed her.