L.A. Boneyard

by P. A. Brown

18 P.A. Brown

  “Jealous or not, you’re going to have to get rid of him. Can I trust you to at least try to find the owner? Promise me that?”

  Chris played with the buttons of David’s stiff white shirt.

  “Sure, I promise. I won’t find anyone, just wait and see.”

  Still shaking his head, David gave Chris one more kiss and left. Chris sat on the patio until the sun sank over the reservoir and darkness cloaked his hillside home.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said to the dog.

  Eventually he and Sergeant headed inside.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Saturday, 6:50 AM, Vista del Valle Drive, Griffith Park, Los Angeles Dull shadows still clung to the inner boundaries of the chaparral guarding the entrance to the grave. David edged past the limp barrier tape that had been strung up to delineate the scene. A second, outer layer of tape had been put up to keep the inquisitive away, and avoid potential contamination. David nodded at the two boots, who had been assigned the task of watching the grave overnight, to prevent any further predation and keep out the curious. They both looked in need of a hot shower and eighteen hours in bed.

  As added protection, a privacy screen had been put up between the roadway and the site, which had been covered last night when it was clear the rains were going to be too heavy to continue. David kept glancing at the sky, but so far it remained hazy, but cloud free. Maybe they’d get this finished today.

  David knew it was only a matter of time before the local network affiliates showed up. There was something infinitely sexy about a body in a public park. So in your face.

  The forensic technician and the deputy coroner arrived, pulling the crime scene van up to the edge of Vista del Valle, tires sinking into the loamy earth. Jairo was right behind them, his newly washed Firehawk catching the early morning light. If it was possible, he was dressed even more sharply than the day before. He still wore the Tony Lamas. When he got closer, David could smell his cologne: Giorgio Armani—Chris wore it sometimes. It evoked a wholly unwanted reaction in him.

  He edged closer to the rim of the hole, crouching down to observe the proceedings. They had pulled the tarp back, and marked out a grid around the arm, which he could now see was clearly still attached, by a few shreds of flesh, to the buried torso underneath. So much for the idea that this might have 20 P.A. Brown

  been a dismembered body, which would have been a nightmare to solve.

  “Don’t you hate this kind of thing?” Jairo said, kneeling beside him.

  “Why’s that?”

  “You have one of the best solve records in the Northeast, this kind of scene has to throw a spanner into that.”

  “I hate all of them. There’s no such thing as a good homicide.”

  “Right, boss.”

  The day crawled by. The body was slowly uncovered, the evidence bags filled with varying bits of debris that hadn’t been collected the day before. You never knew what might prove pivotal. The rain held off, but the humidity soared. Paper bags covered both hands, though with the degree of putrefaction, David doubted the nails would yield much, even if the victim scratched the killer.

  Teresa Lopez, the deputy coroner for the county morgue, climbed out of the grave. Her Tyvek suit hung off her diminutive frame and strands of white hair broke free of her sterile cap. She shoved them back impatiently.

  “Well, she’s dead.”

  “Gee thanks, Lopez. That was inspiring.”

  Lopez gave him a lopsided grin, then trained her attention on Jairo. Her grin widened. “Well, who do we have here? You trade Martinez in for a younger model? ‘Bout time.”

  “Martinez is over in South-Central playing footsies with the carnales. I’ll tell him you were asking after him.”

  “You do that.”

  “So our victim’s female. TOD?”

  “You do live in your dreams, don’t you.”

  “All I want is a time of death. How hard can that be? I thought you were the miracle lady.”

  L.A. BONEYARD 21

  “Only on even days that end in a ‘y.’ Let me get her on a slab first. Maybe then I can help you narrow it down to what decade.”

  The digging with small trowels and camel hair brushes continued past lunch. Around two, David sent Jairo down to Hillhurst Avenue to pick up lunch at Simply Thai. He came back thirty minutes later with curry beef and some overcooked shrimp in a watery sauce. David ate anyway; it might be a long time before the chance came again.

  The body bag was prepared, the sterile rubber sheet on which the body would be placed, ready. SID cleared the last few inches of dirt, sieving each trowel-full. The senior technician pointed at something. David leaned closer and saw it was a dirt-encrusted cell phone. He watched the tech photograph it, before bagging it.

  “Good find,” David said. Whether the phone belonged to the victim or the perpetrator, it could yield valuable information.

  Suddenly one of the other technicians sat back on his heels.

  “Oh man.”

  David was instantly alert. The technician glanced at Lopez then at David. “You’re not going to like this.”

  “I already don’t like it,” David said. “What is it?”

  He heard Lopez suck in her breath. “A baby.” She crouched down and peered intently at the tiny corpse. “Probably a coffin birth.”

  “Ah, no,” David said.

  “What-what’s a coffin birth?” Jairo, looking more than a little green around the edges.

  “When a pregnant woman dies before the baby comes to term, the baby dies too, naturally. Once gases inside the uterus expand, they push the fetus out the birth canal—”

  Jairo backed away from the grave. David had to give him credit, he made it past the barrier tape before he threw up the pitiful lunch they’d consumed little over two hours ago.

  22 P.A. Brown

  Jairo refused to meet anyone’s eyes when he returned. Lopez handed him a stick of Wrigley’s which he took gratefully. David suppressed a smile. Got them every time. Still, he wondered what was wrong with him that he felt so little. Shouldn’t he be as horrified as Jairo by what they’d found? Except, it was too much like a hundred other crime scenes he’d attended since he’d made detective.

  Mother and child were laid out on separate sheets, then tucked into body bags. David saw the way Jairo’s wary eyes watched every move the technicians made. He dragged his gaze away and met David’s.

  “You can attend the post. Lopez will tell you when,” David said. “Make sure you take lots of notes.”

  He could tell Jairo wanted to refuse, but in the end he just grimaced and nodded curtly. “Yes. Dr. Lopez?”

  “I might be able to get to it tomorrow, early afternoon.

  Provided there aren’t any major incidents.”

  “Head over there after lunch,” David said. Jairo only nodded.

  David’s cell phone chirped. It was Chris.

  “You heading home soon?”

  David pulled his watch out; it was after five. He turned away from Jairo. “Can’t say. I doubt it. Don’t keep supper.”

  Chris sighed. “Des and I are going out to lunch tomorrow.

  But I wanted to make reservations next weekend for us.”

  “Reservations? What for?”

  “It’s Valentine’s day. I know it’s actually this weekend, but we’d never get a reservation this late. Plus I signed that contract today. Tell me we can at least do supper sometime in the next month.”

  “I’m on rotation, but not first string, so unless things get crazy I should be good next weekend.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  L.A. BONEYARD 23

  “Surprise me.” David took a deep breath, all too aware of Jairo watching him. “You have any luck finding the dog’s owner?”

  “The vet thinks if he’s a purebred he might have a microchip and we should be able to trace the owner with that.

  But—”

  “No buts, Chris, the dog’s not yo
urs. For all you know someone’s worried sick about him.”

  “Yeah, I saw how much care he got,” Chris muttered.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll track the asshole down. You don’t mind if I give him a piece of my mind, do you?”

  “Like I could stop you.” David grinned and was relieved when Chris laughed back.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t give him more than I can spare.”

  “That’s good. I’ll see you when I get there. Don’t wait up.”

  He hung up. Jairo was still staring. “Your partner?”

  “Yeah,” David said. “Come on, the day’s not getting any younger. We’ll lose our light soon.”

  Shadows replaced the weak sunlight, and a sharp breeze sprung up, rolling off Cahuenga Peak. Chillingly a coyote howled nearby. A second one yipped back.

  “Lining up at the smörgåsbord?” Jairo muttered.

  “Don’t worry, they lost their chance at this one.”

  “You got a dog?” At David’s look Jairo shrugged. “I heard you talking. We have one, big ugly lab, got an IQ of about ten.”

  “No, we don’t have a dog. Long story.”

  “You look like a dog guy to me.”

  “How’s that?

  “Some people just look like dog people. What kind of dog don’t you own?”

  “Doberman. It’s a stray, we’re taking it back.”

  “You mean you’re taking it back. Didn’t sound like Chris—

  is that his name? That Chris isn’t so sure.”

  24 P.A. Brown

  “He’ll come around.”

  Jairo snorted. “How long have you been together?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything? Listen, we’re here to work, not jaw about family pets.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  Smart ass. Like he didn’t get enough of that from Chris.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Saturday, 5:20 PM, Vista del Valle Drive, Griffith Park, Los Angeles The coroner’s wagon trundled back out onto the road, followed by the eager hordes of media people who had showed up midday, trying to snatch a look at the grisly discovery. It must have been a busy news day; it usually didn’t take that long.

  Buzzards took longer to find a corpse than a reporter. They crowded around the barrier tape, jostling and yelling at David.

  “Come on, David,” a cameraman he recognized from Channel 5 trained his shoulder cam on them. “Throw us a bone here. Who’s the vic?”

  “No can do, guys. You know better than that. Next of kin and all that.”

  Roz Parnell, a reporter for the L.A Times, leaned over the yellow tape, her large breasts nearly popping out of her low cut blouse. She knew her charms were wasted on him. Instead her gaze arrowed in on Jairo. “Maybe your friend here can talk to us. How about it, sugar, what’s the scoop? Get your name in the paper.”

  David was surprised when Jairo blushed and turned away from the reporters. David met Roz’s eyes. He smoothed the hair of his mustache. “Guess not everyone needs their fifteen minutes.”

  The final shadows of the day crept out of the chaparral, and pooled in the grave, where the SID technicians still labored.

  David decided he’d sign off, and release the site, once full darkness fell. They wouldn’t get anything else done tonight, and he knew the brass would be getting heat if the park road was closed for another day.

  “Come on,” he said. “Grab a flashlight and let’s do one more grid.”

  26 P.A. Brown

  “You really think you’re going to find anything else?”

  “Who knows. I’d rather take the time now than realize later we missed something. You only get one—”

  “One chance,” Jairo said. “I know. I know. I took the academy course too.”

  Jairo took the flashlight out of the trunk of his Firehawk. He flicked it on as he approached the grave, the beam sweeping across David’s feet, revealing the mud coating his wool pants.

  David tuned everything out as he focused on the disturbed ground beyond the original grave, not knowing what he was looking for, only knowing he’d recognize it when he saw it.

  The technicians were stowing their gear away. “Thanks, guys. Let’s call it a day—”

  David put his hand on Jairo’s arm, stilling the sweeping beam of light. He pointed straight down at his toes. He crouched down, ignoring the wet earth seeping into his knees when they brushed the ground.

  “What is it?”

  David motioned the nearest tech to bring him an evidence bag. While he waited, he skimmed a pair of nitrile gloves on. He scooped something out of the mud and slid it into the bag.

  He handed it up to the tech. “What’s it look like to you?”

  The Tyvek-suited man turned the baggie over in his gloved hands. “Looks like a proximal phalanx.” He caught David’s look. “Finger bone.”

  “Human?”

  “Unless there’s a missing bear in the area, yes. Did you know that bear paws look almost identical to human—”

  “Okay.” David waved them all out of the grave. He flipped his phone open and said to whoever answered, “I want a cadaver dog down here pronto. And bring some spots with you.

  And the generator.”

  “I take it this means we’re not going home,” Jairo said.

  L.A. BONEYARD 27

  “You’re not on the four-ten anymore. You don’t get to clock out at a sane hour and get three days off. Better call your wife. We’re going to be here a while. Pray the weather holds.”

  Jairo pulled out his cell and spoke in soft Spanish to whoever answered.

  Finally he said, “Te quiero mi amor. Don’t forget to take the dog out,” and disconnected.

  He glanced at David’s empty hands. “I take it you’re not calling?”

  “He knows better than to expect me.”

  “You’re not going to tell me he likes it.”

  “No,” David said shortly. “He doesn’t like it.”

  It took over ninety minutes for the cadaver dog and his handler to arrive. They started out where David directed them, in the already excavated grave, confirming his suspicions. The dog almost immediately went into alert mode, barking at the ground to the left of the hole’s center.

  “How do you know it’s not just smelling the other corpse?”

  “They’re not that easily fooled.” Once the SID technicians got to work excavating the new patch of ground, David pulled the dog handler aside, with Jairo at his side. “Can you start a spiral search? I hope I’m wrong, but let’s make sure there aren’t any more.”

  The dog handler nodded and began to circle the grave.

  “You think they’re related?” Jairo asked.

  “We proceed like they’re not.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “No, but it’s the way we’ll play it until we confirm, one way or another.”

  “If you didn’t have such a high solve rate, I’d think you were a doddering old fool.”

  David raised one eyebrow at him, hoping there was a but.

  Jairo didn’t disappoint.

  28 P.A. Brown

  “Anyone with your rate of solved homicides must know something.”

  “Glad you think so.”

  They set up the spotlights in a loose ring around the grave; David made sure some of the light spilled over the outer perimeter, where the dog was diligently snuffling along the ground. After several hours of searching and digging, they’d freed the blanket-wrapped corpse from the ground, and found no traces of more bodies.

  This body was almost entirely skeletonized. A few moldering strands of cloth, and a clump of blond hair, were collected from outside the thick synthetic blanket, that might have been a comforter, and labeled.

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the hair will have roots,” David said. “We can pull DNA out of those. If not, we can always get mDNA, that traces back through the maternal line. Lopez can take over this tomorrow. She might decide to bring in a forensic anthropologist.”<
br />
  “You mean like Bones?”

  “Yeah, like Bones, only for real. Not Hollywood.”

  “Nothing wrong with Hollywood.”

  David grimaced. “Don’t tell me you really are a player?”

  “I’ve had a few parts,” Jairo seemed proud. “Maybe you saw me.”

  “I doubt it. I don’t watch much TV outside of sports.”

  “My agent says I could be the next Michael Hall.” Off David’s confused look he grinned. “Dexter.”

  Now that David had heard about. “Ah, a show that celebrates serial killers. Good role model.”

  “Hey, it’s not real.”

  Having dealt with his share of serial murderers, David disagreed. But he kept his opinion to himself. “Come on, we can get all this stuff logged into evidence. Then maybe we can even get home before the bars close.”

  “That an invitation?”

  L.A. BONEYARD 29

  “What? No, I didn’t mean that—”

  “No es problema. I just wanted to pick your brain some more.”

  The cadaver dog didn’t have any luck after another hour.

  The handler praised the animal and gave him a treat before he loaded the dog back in his van. SID wrapped up too. The floods were dismantled and stowed away. Jairo put his own flashlight back in the trunk. He met David around the driver’s side.

  David eyed the gleaming white car. “Nice set of wheels. You do your own work?”

  “Every piece of it. She’s all mine.”

  “I’ll have mine with me tomorrow. We can trade war stories.”

  “Sure, no such thing as too much car talk.”

  He clearly didn’t know Chris. His lover had little use for any kind of vehicle, unless it cost a mint and was a hot property, even if he’d had to settle for a Ford Escape when he’d launched his own business four years ago. He still dreamed of lush wheels and trendy little emblems. He loved the end result of David’s work on the Chevy ‘56 two-tone sport coupe that had consumed over six years, but always got glassy-eyed when David actually talked about the work he had done on it.

  They were alone at the crime scene. David waited for Jairo to sign the log book, then he did the same, and officially released the site.