The Body in Griffith Park

by Jennifer Kincheloe

  “It was the coffee, wasn’t it?” said Anna. “It kept you awake. I made you drink it.”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It’s Georges Devereaux that’s keeping me awake, Anna. I should have stayed with you last night just to make sure you were safe.”

  Anna tossed her head. “Nonsense. Georges is no threat. You should have stayed with me for medical reasons.”

  “What?”

  “Suppressed desire will make me hysterical. I read it in a book. You should care more about my health.”

  “You fell asleep standing up while I was kissing you.” He whispered, “I’ll stay with you tonight.”

  She tried to look stern, but her lips rebelled. She smiled. It was impossible for Anna to stay mad at Joe Singer because she knew that, beneath his clothes, he was naked.

  Joe said, “Today is John Doe’s inquest. The new coroner has selected the jury, and I’ve got to testify.”

  Anna fell quiet. She had not been asked to testify. Of course, officially, she was never at Griffith Park and had never examined the crime scene. “Have a nice time,” she said, taking the high road.

  “Sherlock, it’s going to smell to high heaven. It’s at Cunningham and O’Conner’s Funeral Home, it starts at eight and will probably last past lunch. It’s going to be miserable. The place is a dump.”

  “He died kneeling. Remember the knee.”

  “I will.” He socked her gently on the shoulder.

  Anna watched him scuttle down the stairs. When he hit the bottom step, he turned around and mouthed, “I love you.” It turned Anna’s legs into jelly. Then, Joe’s lover face melted away and, once more, he looked practical and determined, like a heroic cop that carried drunken old ladies up the staircase. Anna realized why. Matron Clemens was looming behind her. She was holding her purse.

  “Good morning, Assistant Matron Blanc, Detective Singer.”

  “Ma’am,” said Joe, and vanished around the corner.

  Anna donned a mask of saintly, sober benevolence. “Good morning Matron Clemens. Is all well?”

  “It appears so. I have a meeting with the chief to discuss adding a third police matron position. I believe we’ll be bringing it before the commission for a vote.”

  “That would be wonderful!” Indeed, it would be. Anna hadn’t had a day off in three weeks, and she’d spent more than one night in the station. Matron Clemens practically lived there. Anna asked, “When will you be back?”

  “Not until late. You’ll have to hold the fort. The president of the Friday Morning Club and I are speaking to the Chamber of Commerce about the importance of paying shop girls a livable wage. Nothing would reduce the number of women in our jails more than decent paychecks.”

  Anna had to agree. Theft, fraud, and prostitution would be greatly reduced, though they would still have to contend with the drunk ones and the crazy ones.

  “Take care of our new patient, Mrs. Michaelchek. The doctor is with her now. She’s suffering for her sins, Lord have mercy.” In a silent farewell, Matron Clemens waved her hand like a crisp handkerchief and disappeared into the jail.

  Anna’s mind flitted from Matron Clemens, to the old woman, and back to Joe. He had slipped away during Anna’s conversation with her superintendent, and Anna never got to mouth, “I love you too.” Never mind, she would tell him at the inquest. Because she was going to the inquest. No one had explicitly said she couldn’t go and inquests were open to the public. Matron Clemens would be gone. All Anna had to do was make up some reason for her own absence, like a certain truant pickpocket.

  And find someone else to hold the fort.

  Anna went to check on the woman with delirium tremens in the receiving hospital. The surgeon fussed at the cabinet. The old lady jerked and trembled, handcuffed to the bed. Her sheets were damp with sweat and she smelled sour, like wine turned to vinegar.

  Anna had never seen alcohol claim anyone like this. “There, there,” said Anna, and gingerly patted the lady on her greasy head. It teamed with lice. Anna immediately went to the sink to wash her hand.

  The surgeon took a vial from the cupboard and prepared a clean needle. “Digitalis. I’ll need you to control her for me.”

  Anna hadn’t joined the LAPD to become a nurse. Still, she held the patient’s shoulders down, pressing into them with her own body weight while the doctor gave the lady an injection. The woman’s tremors abated and gradually she stilled. The surgeon prepared some concoction and flushed it between her wrinkled lips. “Now I’m just giving her a purgative,” he said.

  “A . . . a purgative?” Anna’s eyes widened slightly and then bulged. “No, Doctor!”

  But it was too late. The patient had swallowed.

  The doctor gave Anna a puzzled look. She sighed heavily, emptying her body of breath. It was inevitable. The lady chained to the bed was going to poop.

  “There is nothing more to be done for her. She’ll either get better or she won’t.”

  There was nothing more for him to do. Anna would be changing the sheets.

  The doctor left the bottles and vial on a tray for Anna to clean up. “Check on her every half hour or so. I’ll be downstairs if she takes a turn.”

  Anna sagged. “Yes doctor.” By that Anna meant, “I should be testifying at the inquest, because detective work is my true vocation, this isn’t fair at all, and I’m feeling rather desperate right now for obvious reasons, some of which are unmentionable.” How she wished someone else could watch, change, and bathe Mrs. Michaelchek. And deal with the lice.

  Matilda came to mind.

  “Trustee” was the name given to well-behaved prisoners or lodgers at Central Station who were tapped for special tasks like cooking and nursing. Leaving Matilda in charge wouldn’t be unprecedented. The jailers did it all the time.

  Anna had twenty minutes tops before Mrs. Michaelchek’s purgative began to work.

  When the doctor was safely down the stairs, she hurried into the cow ring to look for Matilda. The girl sat on her cot sewing tiny stitches into the hem of a pillowcase. “Hello Matilda.” Anna smiled encouragingly and lifted the thing for close inspection. All four sides were sewn closed. Even Anna knew that was wrong. Anna nodded as she enunciated, “Very good.”

  The jailer had taken most of the herd to the dining room down below for porridge. Directly after breakfast, all the cows—prisoners or no—would be tasked with work around the jail. Some of the ladies would help with the men’s dishes; others would scrub floors and empty chamber pots. The rest were scheduled to boil the linens and towels from the women’s department in large vats in the basement. Anna wasn’t strictly needed for that. The jailer handled that. The jailer could spare Matilda.

  Anna gave Matilda a box of Anna’s own personal Cracker Jacks, tar soap, a bucket, and a washrag. She led her to the bedside of Mrs. Michaelchek, who now lay unconscious. “I have a crime to solve, and this nice lady needs to be watched,” said Anna. “She shouldn’t be much trouble.” She lifted the woman’s limp arm a few inches and let it drop to the mattress. “Be kind and gentle. If she starts to thrash, tell the surgeon to give her another shot. Oh, and, shave her head please. There’s a razor in the cabinet. Do you know how to use a razor?”

  Anna didn’t.

  Matilda smiled as if watching Mrs. Michaelchek was a gift. “Yes, Assistant Matron Blanc. Thank you.”

  “If anyone asks for me, I’m hunting the little truant criminal, Eliel Villalobos.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Michaelchek’s bowels rumbled, and Anna quickly fled the room.

  CHAPTER 12

  Cunningham and O’Conner’s Funeral Home stood on Fifth Street, just across from a flower shop. It was a grand old pile of bricks set back from the street with a carriage house out back. A horse wandered the drive eating daisies and trailing a snapped harness. An old hearse, black paint peeling, stood in the drive mourning the loss of its horse.

  Anna wore a velvet, floor-length cape to hide her uniform, and a veil attache
d to her hat to hide her lovely face. She stopped at the florist to buy a nosegay of narcissus in case the inquest smelled as bad as Joe Singer had said it would. She bought a second one for Joe, in case he hadn’t planned. This made her hands excessively full, juggling a purse, a notebook, two nosegays, and the guilt of leaving Matilda to clean up the inevitable.

  The new coroner had already arrived. His wagon had one wheel on the sidewalk, which she thought boded ill. Anna hoped he wasn’t a drunk. The old coroner had gone to prison for covering up a string of murders, which Anna had uncovered, and for stealing medical books that belonged to the city—books that now rested on Anna’s shelf.

  Joe Singer smoked a cigarette outside the grand entrance. Anna approached him with spring in her step.

  He cooed, “Hello sweetheart.”

  Anna stopped dead, and her heart dropped into her feet. Joe Singer was cooing at another woman like a common masher. She made an indignant noise and stuttered in a foreign accent she’d conjured on the spot. “You . . . you have nerve!”

  He lowered his voice, grinning. “I know it’s you, Sherlock. I recognized your shoes. Nice accent. What are you supposed to be? A Chinaman with his mouth full? No. Irish with a speech impediment?”

  “Why aren’t you inside yet?”

  “We’ve got five minutes and I’m claiming every single one of them. It stinks in there.”

  Anna handed him a nosegay.

  “Thanks.” He smiled his Anna’s lover smile, and her heart fluttered. “You may as well give me both of them. Wolf’s going to make you go home. And aren’t you supposed to be nursing Mrs. Michaelchek?”

  “Inquests are open to the public. And don’t worry. Matilda’s holding the fort.”

  “Matilda belongs in the bat house.”

  “She’ll do fine. The surgeon’s there. And it’s not my fault. We wouldn’t be faced with this dilemma if the LAPD didn’t have a double standard. I should be investigating this death with you. It’s what I was born to do. As it stands, I can’t even serve on the jury.”

  Joe said nothing. He threw his cigarette on the sidewalk and ground it out.

  Anna’s eyebrows kissed. “You agree, don’t you? Tell me you agree.”

  “I agree that you’re a killer detective. You’ve got the brains and the instincts, although your fake accents could use some work. I just don’t want you to get fired. I like to see you from time to time.”

  She smiled beneath her veil.

  He said, “Now let’s go in, but not together. And I’m sorry you have to sit with the public. I’ll go first so you can have an extra ten seconds to breathe.”

  The room sagged like an old man, forgotten by the people who used to patronize Cunningham and O’Conner’s years ago when it was a younger, finer place. The county no doubt chose it for economy. Faded drapes drooped against dirty windows. Chairs lined up in rows as if for a lecture. The all-male jury sat, leaving most seats empty. Anna perched behind the jury in the very last row. Her chair’s legs were of unequal lengths. It rocked on the dirty tile with each tiny shift of her weight simply to annoy her.

  The new coroner strode solemnly down the aisle and faced his audience. He wasn’t bad looking and not too old. Anna had yet to meet the man. Though he may have seen her picture in the papers, he couldn’t possibly recognize her shoes. His eyes lingered on Anna’s veil curiously but briefly, then he opened the proceedings. The jury took their oath, repeating his words in flat voices, vowing to inquire who the person was, and when, where, and by what means he came to his death, and into the circumstances attending his death; and to render a true verdict thereon, according to the evidence offered them, or arising from the inspection of the body, and so on.

  Anna yawned. They all adjourned to the viewing room.

  Besides Anna, only one citizen came to witness the stinky inquest of John Doe—a young man who smiled with inappropriate glee, showing off a bright gold tooth. He seemed to angle to make eye contact with the jurors, as if trying to draw them into his ghastly joke. Anna wondered how he’d learned about the event, as it wasn’t mentioned in the papers. Maybe he came to all the inquests at Cunningham and O’Conner’s. She made sure to sit as far away from him as possible.

  The body lay naked with just a cloth covering his mysterious man parts. His pale skin looked slightly chewed, the work of the ants. With the insects removed, Anna could now see that he was no older than her and good looking, but for his pallor and the hole in his forehead. He smelled to high heaven.

  The fifteen men comprising the jury filed past the coffin. Some studied the body intently. Others barely looked. Most plugged their noses or gagged into handkerchiefs. The creep lingered coffin-side and was hastened along with a discreet shove from the coroner. Anna filed past, breathing through her nosegay. She only gagged a little. Then the entire party—the coroner, the jury, Joe, the creep, and Anna—adjourned into another room to hear testimony. The stench followed them, having seeped into their hair and clothes.

  This coroner used big words to describe the state of the body—words Anna knew, for she had read Legal Medicine and a dozen other books she had lifted from the previous coroner and planned to sneak back into the station, one by one. The coroner went on, saying the victim had died from a gunshot wound to the head sometime Wednesday afternoon—likely self-inflicted.

  Anna frowned.

  He said that, judging from the musculature in John Doe’s arms, the man was left-handed. Ants had eaten away at his skin, and so on.

  Joe, the sole witness, testified next. The afternoon he had found the body, he had been responding to reports of a bank robbers’ encampment in Griffith Park. Which was true, though he omitted the part where he unhooked Anna’s corset. He found the body face down, off the trail, near the side of a hill overlooking the city. He found the gun in the dead man’s left hand. Evidence suggests that the victim had been shot in a kneeling position and then had fallen sideways.

  Anna couldn’t contain herself. It was her clue and she had to comment. Her hand shot up. She said in her Chinese-Irish accent, “Backward execution style?”

  “You could say that,” said Joe. “His position was clear from the marks on his pants, and on the ground.”

  The coroner checked his pocket watch. “Self-execution, perhaps?” He smiled a little.

  Anna shot him a stony glare, though he could not see it beneath her veil. “Who commits suicide execution style? No one, surely.” She had traveled this path before, where the authorities failed to look closely, or even swept things under the rug.

  “That is what we’re here to determine, ma’am,” said the coroner. “Now please, no further comments from the public.” Which meant Anna, as the creep had no comments, but simply sat flashing his gold tooth.

  Joe passed photographs among the jurors. There were several images of the body at the crime scene and the disturbed soil, as well as shots of the man’s pants and the imprints of his knee in the dust. Anna had seen them.

  Anna stood. “I’m happy to demonstrate . . .”

  Joe dropped to his knee on the dirty floor and then fell sideways, saving her the trouble. Sure enough, when he rose he had debris stuck to his knee, because the floor had not been scrubbed, maybe ever.

  The testimony came to an end, and the jury voted, ruling it murder by gunshot.

  As soon as the verdict was delivered, Anna rushed outside to breathe the city air, which coated her mouth like sand, gritty from exhaust and dust. It was a huge improvement over the air in the mortuary.

  When Joe came out, she accosted him. “You’ve got your murder. That’s wonderful!”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” said Joe.

  “Who is the gentleman with the gold tooth?”

  “Oh, him? He comes to all the inquests.”

  Anna saw Wolf. He’d been lurking outside, listening to the proceedings through an open window without subjecting himself to the stench. Wolf sauntered over and took Anna by the elbow. “Assistant Matron Blanc, you’re not
supposed to be here.”

  “It was my clue. I figured it out, so I should get to say it.”

  “It was her clue,” said Joe.

  “Very good, honeybun. So, you admit you were at Griffith Park,” said Wolf.

  “Oh, let’s not pretend.” Anna ripped off her veil. “You knew I was there. But I was hunting for a truant, not anything so improper as . . . whatever it was you were implying,” she said. “I saw everything—the crime scene, the ants. And I want to help with this case. I cracked the case of the Boyle Heights Rape Fiend. I dispatched the New High Street Suicide Faker. I caught the Chinatown Trunk Murderer, though Joe did help a little. What do I have to do to prove myself? I can find the Griffith Park Executioner.” Anna liked the sound of the name, though she had made it up on the spot. She said it again. “The Griffith Park Executioner.”

  “I would love to have your assistance finding the Griffith Park Executioner, honeybun, but you’re up to your ears in matron’s work.”

  “I can easily keep on top of my matron duties. That’s very easy to do,” she lied. “The criminal ladies practically care for themselves.” In fact, if Anna spent much time on this case, they would have to.

  “Okay,” said Wolf. “If it’s all right with Matron Clemens, you can help.”

  Anna clapped her hands. “I’m so happy I could k . . .”

  Wolf looked hopeful. Joe’s eyes narrowed.

  “I could salute.” Anna saluted Wolf.

  He grinned.

  The street was choked with trollies, automobiles, daring pedestrians, and horse-drawn wagons, all moving at cross purposes. Electric lines crisscrossed above their heads. Anna and Joe boarded a Red Car to ride back to the station. She dug through her purse for trolley fare. Because he was a cop, Joe rode for free. Anna didn’t think of how unfair this was. She could only think of the dead man. “First off, we need to identify the victim. Then we can explore motives, which is half the battle of finding the killer, don’t you think? Can’t you pressure the coroner for his photographs? As soon as they’re developed, we can send his picture to the police in Oklahoma City. They can ask at the pharmacy. Someone will know him. Someone is likely missing him. His mother for one. He looked barely out of his teens. We should do it right away. It’s important to move quickly, don’t you think?”