"You ate him alive, Merci."
"Sure did, didn't I?"
• • •
They took the boardwalk north toward the pier, staying to the pedestrian side while skaters and bikers whizzed by them. Merci looked out to the water and watched the waves crashing in. She thought of Hess actually out riding those monsters at the Wedge. She'd gone down there with Mike once to see the bodysurfers and couldn't believe that they'd take such chances. For what? She'd dreamed about big waves in a black ocean since she was small. She'd never questioned where the dream came from because its message was so clear: stay out of the water and save yourself. Easy enough. You didn't have to be Old Testament to interpret that one.
The pier was hopping on this summer Sunday—lovers and skateboarders, white punks and gangster-style Mexicans, college kids and bikers, bums and cops and glum Asian fishermen with their lines in the water and an occasional mackerel flap-flapping on the wet cement.
Merci walked just a half step behind Hess and watched him more than occasionally. She was waiting for something from him but she didn't know what. She thought it might come from his face rather than his mouth, plus, she just liked the way his head looked, battered but still noble, like a horse that had done great things. She wondered if that was where they got the term war'horse. She had this oddball desire to see what his hair felt like—that straight-up, almost jarhead, white wave in the front cut that made him look like a general from some war that was filmed in black and white.
He may think I've got the manners of a zoo monkey, she thought: but I know enough to keep my hands to myself. But if I could distract him for a second ...
They had a drink at the Beach Ball and another at Scotty's and another at the Rex. These were her idea. It seemed to Merci that you got closer to people when you were high on alcohol, so long as they were high, too. Like taking a little trip together. She had never considered herself a drinker, but here she was two nights of the weekend, knocking back some pretty stiff stuff. You couldn't even tell with Hess. He was the same whether he had none or three. It surprised her he could drink his way through chemotherapy and radiation. Maybe it helped. For herself, the drinks made her feel hazy and warm and a little passive, which was good because she usually felt sharp and cool and prepared to kick serious butt. It was nice to get a glow you knew would be gone in a few hours, in the company of somebody you like. Temporary insanity.
But outside the Rex there was a scuffle on the sidewalk and Hess pulled Merci back from it just as two NBPD bike blues jumped in and broke it up.
Her anger just cut right up through the alcohol, sharper than it was when she was sober, and she felt her spirits rise then rankle in unfamiliar ways. Maybe that's why they called it spirits. Scotch was kind of spooky stuff.
She looked back and saw the bike cops handcuffing a skinny wino to a parking meter. His opponent, a muscle type with a goatee, had a stream of blood running down his forehead.
"I feel like I have to do something in a situation like that."
"Let it go. You're a homicide investigator, not a beat cop."
"I hate to see that kind of crap going down. Two meatballs, two perfectly good heads. Makes me want to bang them together."
"It's over. Relax."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go down to the water."
She trudged across the sand. The Scotch and the receding adrenaline left her legs heavy and her mind light. When they got to the berm near the waterline they stopped. Merci watched the faintly luminescent suds swoosh up toward them then fade back down. Small birds darted across the shiny slope before the brine soaked in.
"You're a good partner, Hess."
"You are, too."
"We're a decent team, aren't we?"
"We're doing okay, so far."
"I know Brighton wants me to fail. I know the lawsuit makes him look bad. I know you're supposed to watch me for him. Probably keep a record of it."
"I'm supposed to watch out for you. Like you are for me."
"That's the first bullshit I've heard from you, Tim. I know the score and it's more than you say it is. You can tell him what you want. I'm going to keep doing my job the way I think it needs to be done. Doesn't mean I won't mess up sometimes. What I'm not going to do is back off because of you, or Brighton, or anybody else. I'm going to find the Purse Snatcher and blow the brains out of his sick head and sleep good that night. All the rest of you can sweep up behind me, pick up the pieces, do what you have to do.
"This is the deal with me and Phil Kemp. Phil Kemp has been talking dirt to me since I got off jail duty my first two years. I mean real lowdown body parts and what he'd like to do. He's rubbed his crotch on my ass and brushed my tits and said stuff you wouldn't believe. I guess I didn't react right when I was young. I didn't know what to do. I thought that's how it went, thought that meant being one of the boys. Then I started warning him off. He thought it was cute. Couple of weeks ago he was waiting in the parking structure, late, talking shit about Mike and what I really needed. He was leaning on my car. He took ahold of my arm, pretty hard, pretty rough. I got the nine between his eyes and I told him he could let go or get shot. He let go. Tried to laugh it off. So I hired a good lawyer. Because I'm sick of him getting away with it. I never wanted to play that game. It's boring and it's trite and it's demeaning. Kemp's a waste of a human being but he's tight with Brighton. That's why Brighton's so eager for me to screw up. That would make it look like I'm suing because I can't cut it." They walked south with the black water at their feet.
"What do you want, Merci? Out of this lawsuit? You want Kemp fired? Jail? A settlement? What?"
"I want Kemp to damned apologize to me and stop. It's that simple."
"That's all?"
She thought about this. She wondered how clean she could come with Hess. Maybe it was the scotch or maybe it was just her instincts, but she thought she could trust him with this.
"Truth, Hess? What I want most is to go back in time and not file the damned thing. I'm already sorry I did it."
She hoped he wouldn't say just drop it, and he didn't.
"But I'm not going to drop it, Hess. I'll chase Kemp all the way to court if I have to. He's gonna stop and he's gonna apologize or I'll ruin him. Guaranteed. And if fifteen other broads want to join in and wreck him with me, then they've got the right. They can do what they want. But I wish they'd quit treating me like some kind of leader. I got ten e-mails over the last three days, thanking me for stepping forward. For being courageous enough to stand up to the system. What they don't get is I love the system. I'm part of it. I'm going to run the whole thing someday. Put money on that. And it really infuriates me to have to file a suit to get this guy to stop asking me to suck his miserable dick. But what I want to say to everybody else is, stay off my side."
Merci heard a nightbird cry behind her, up close, like it was zooming past her ear. Then she could see it, just a blip of a shadow on the night, vanishing.
"You're doing the right thing," said Hess.
"That's right. I'm doing it. Tell Brighton if you want to, since he doesn't have the nuts to ask me himself."
"This thing caught him by surprise."
"That's right. I never ratted Kemp out. Not until I talked to him. Then warned him. Then stuck a gun in his face. He's getting what he deserves, Hess. I'm sorry if it upsets Brighton's happiness, but it's sure as hell upset mine."
They ended up back at Hess's apartment around eleven. Merci fell asleep on the couch and when she woke up at midnight Hess had made coffee.
He was lying back in a cheap recliner by the window with a glass of something on the sill, moonlight on his face, snoring. Merci stood over him and felt a strong urge to touch his hair while he wouldn't know it.
She reached out, but stopped.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Department of Mortuary Science of the health sciences division of Cypress College waits behind a heavy blue door next to a snack area with a view of the campus.
It was
Monday morning. Hess went through and waited in the small lobby. The lobby was poorly lit and gave off a feeling of a decade long past—the 1950s, perhaps. On the walls were pictures of the school in the old days, when it was still located near downtown Los Angeles. Important mortuary science directors of the past, and some graduating classes, were also featured. A glass bookshelf held antiquated embalming texts, among them the seven-volume Humane Embalming.
The director came from the inner building and offered his hand. "Allen Bobb," he said. "Detective Hess?"
Bobb was middle aged with a wide, pleasant face. His hair was thinning and his smile both open and wily at the same time. In Bobb's cramped office Hess was offered a small chair on rollers that both men chuckled at.
Hess thought of all the chemicals they filled you with when you died and all the chemicals raging through his own blood right then and wished he was twenty-two again, bombing through giant waves at the Wedge, functionally immortal.
"I'll cut to the chase," said Hess.
"Shoot."
He explained the circumstances: the missing women, the purses, the remains, the blood and trace formalin discovered in the soil by the lab.
Bobb nodded along like he'd heard it before. "He's not embalming them, then. Not in the standard American way. Not if he's removing organs and intestines. We leave those in. Are you familiar with the embalming process, Detective? Its goals and purpose, its limitations?"
"No."
"Historically, the purpose was to discourage the spread of disease. Biologically speaking, there's nothing more dangerous than a dead human body. Secondly, there were the cosmetic considerations—making the body presentable and natural for viewing before burial. The modern method was born in the Civil War, when thousands of bodies were shipped home for burial."
"How long are they, uh, good for?"
"The bodies? Three to five days is our goal. Longer, if there are family circumstances that will delay interment."
"Can you go weeks? Months?”
Bobb raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "Weeks, maybe. Detective, if you underembalm, the corpse decomposes too quickly. If you overembalm, it becomes discolored and hard almost immediately."
Hess scribbled down the questions in his own shorthand. His fingers seemed clunky again this morning, with patches of cold numbness on the tips. He lifted his pen hand and rubbed it with his thumb. The radio played an old Elvis song now, one that Hess remembered listening to at the beach many years ago. He pulled a copy of Merci's sketch from his pocket and handed it to the director. Bobb studied it with apparent patience, then gave it back. "No. I don't think so, Detective. I've got a good memory for faces. I mean, this one's pretty distinctive, with the long hair and mustache."
"Former student, maybe someone who dropped out?"
Bobb pursed his lips and shook his head. "Sorry. Wish could just say I know him."
"Your graduates? You keep their records here?"
Bobb nodded. "And yes, there's a student photograph with each file. I won't offer to let you see them. But I won't disallow a request."
"I understand. If I could see the last ten years of graduates, that would be good."
Bobb picked up his phone and spoke to someone about graduate records for the last ten years.
"It will take about fifteen minutes to have them ready, Detective. Would you like to see the procedure? We've got three student embalmings going on right now."
"That might be helpful."
On the door of the embalming room was a framed copy of the California Health & Safety Code forbidding anyone but family, police, doctors, nurses, mortuary personnel and students from being in the room during an embalming.
Hess followed the Director in. The lights were bright against the tile and the sweet smell of aldehyde compounds was strong.
The tables were laid out in the center of the room, with the corpses' heads toward the far wall. Hess heard the metallic ping of instruments hitting pans, low voices and a heavy, rhythmic chunka-thunk, chunka-thunk. Bobb guided Hess past the first three tables.
"Here's one just starting, Detective. The features have been set and the corpse has been disinfected and bathed. The student, Bonnie, has chosen a fluid she believes is right for the decedent—based on age, condition, cause of death, medications, et cetera. In this case she's chosen a formalin solution called PSX. It's made by Champion. It's one of my favorites. Did you know that good cosmetic results come from inside the body and not outside?"
"I did not."
"Sometimes you don't even need makeup."
Hess joined Bobb beside the last table, where an old man lay stretched on the aluminum. He looked to be about Hess's age, and he was surprised how bad this made him feel. He glanced at the Case Report Record: Age—69, Cause of Death—cirrhosis of the liver. The sonofabitch is two whole years older than me, he thought, and that's a lifetime of a difference.
Hess had always assumed, for no particular reasons, that he would live to be seventy-five. It was a good number, a number with bulk and character, a number that always seemed far off in the future. This assumption had sat well with him until the diagnosis. At that moment he'd resolved to get those seventy-five years no matter what it took. The last eight were his and he was going to live them to the fullest. Sometimes he told himself it was a matter of principle. Other times, he admitted he was just plain scared to death and didn't want to leave yet.
The smell of the aldehydes started to sicken him. He hadn't gotten queasy at an autopsy for forty years. He looked at the student across the corpse from him and saw that she was early twenties, tall, wholesome and probably beautiful. A surgical mask covered her nose and mouth. She looked at him and her eyes smiled, but there was concern in her expression, too.
"Stand back just a little for this, Detective. Okay, Bonnie, locate the main right carotid and make your incision above the clavicle. Oh, this is Detective Hess. He's interested in what we do."
"Hi," said Bonnie.
"Morning," said Hess.
"Not going to tip over, are you?"
"I'll stay up."
Her eyes conveyed the powerful smile of youth and she picked up a surgical scalpel to make her cut. Hess watched her.
"Good, Bonnie. Not too deep. Now use the aneurysm hook to lift out the artery. Good. Do your ligatures now, and not so hard this time. You don't want to—"
"—I know."
"Bonnie overdid her ligatures last time, and the artery burst."
"I am capable of learning, Al."
"Make me look good."
Her fingers were nimble. "There."
"Very good. Go ahead with the insertion tube now."
"Roger."
Hess watched her slide the two smaller ends of a metal joint into the cut of the artery and connect the tube to a black hose coming from a machine. It was like setting up a drip irrigator for your tomatoes. Bonnie flipped a switch on the machine. A moment later it was chunka-thunking.
Hess noted that the machine was a Porti-Boy. It looked kind of like a giant blender. The clear canister on the top held the embalming fluid that Bonnie had chosen. There were controls and indicators for flow and pressure. Bonnie looked at the dials, then down at the body, setting one gloved hand on his thigh, the other on his shoulder.
"I'd like to start a little early on the massage, Al. I want this to be the best embalming in the history of Western civilization."
"Go ahead, then."
Hess watched as Bonnie squeezed something onto her left palm, added some water from the counter faucet, then rubbed her hands together and applied them to the dead man's right breast. Palms down and fingers together, she began kneading the tissue. She started in a tight circle and spread slowly outward, glancing up every few seconds to check the Porti-Boy.
"Detective, what Bonnie's doing now is helping the PSX work in. The pressure of the machine pushes the fluid through the entire arterial system—right down to the level of the capillaries. Then, of course, it backs into the veinous system and
eventually moves into the large veins. What we're looking for are distribution and diffusion. Massage helps the fluid proceed evenly and easily. It overcomes clots and obstructions. It's an overlooked aspect of good embalming. We know we're ready for the next step when the veins in the forehead start to swell, the eyelids engorge, and a natural color begins returning to the face. It's almost like they're coming alive again."
"Boy, I wish," said Bonnie. "I'd make a fortune."
Bobb took Hess into a small back room that was lined on three sides with shelves. The shelves held scores of bottles, all labeled. There were cases stacked against the other wall.
"These are the solutions," he said. "Most are formaldehyde based, but there are others. Glutaraldehyde is becoming popular these days. They're mixed with humectants in most cases, then diluted. There's an embalming fluid for almost every circumstance. For instance, this one."
Bobb handed Hess a dark plastic bottle of Specialist Embalming Fluid. The label said it was "specially formulated for 'floaters,' burned, decomposed, frozen or refrigerated bodies." He set the bottle back on the shelf and read more labels: Champion, Embalmers' Supply, Dodge, Naturo.
Back at Bonnie's station, she was massaging the old man's face, both hands up on his cheeks. It looked like she was imploring him. Hess could see the temporal veins starting to fill.
"The color is beginning to come to the face," said Bobb. "That means he's filled with so much blood and solution that he's basically full. So you're ready to start draining, Bon. Find that jugular and open her right up."
Bonnie gave him a remonstrative glance over her mask. She looked at Hess and winked. He watched her take up the scalpel again, open the neck, deftly pull out the jugular with the hook. With one hand she pulled and "v"-ed the vein toward the table drain. With the other she cut it in half with a pair of scissors. She controlled the flow with finger pressure.
"You'll see the pressure inside release almost immediately," said Bobb. "Right now, the solution is pushing the blood out. The draining process should take around ten minutes in normal temperatures. A good embalmer will continue the massage, in order to move the fluid further in."
THE BLUE HOUR Page 20