by E. E. Giorgi
A modern freezer, a relic in reverse, a glimpse of modernity in a world stuck in the past.
Satish’s voice came from the other side of the garage door. He was talking to the medical examiner. An engine ran in the background. The beep of a truck backing up hammered in the distance. And yet in this garage fallen in disuse everything seemed eerily still and quiet, as if watching the world from a remote spot.
Dust motes fluttered in a golden sheet of light. Mold ringed the walls and tinged the air with a sweet stench of mushroom. Camphor, old wood, mildew, and something vaguely human, vaguely animal, vaguely dead.
The freezer gave out a loud sigh and started to whir. I squeezed between the skeleton of an upholstered recliner and a battered dining table covered in cellophane, and shuffled cautiously to the freezer. It stood next to a rusty oil barrel.
I opened the freezer, the hair at the back of my neck standing up as if I was opening a coffin. Breaths of gelid air blew in my face.
I inhaled.
I had opened a coffin.
Yellow and white tissue cassettes were piled on the top shelf, as orderly as the closets and pantry I’d seen inside the house. Ziploc bags layered the next shelf—white, black and yellow. Each bag contained hair—a nice, thick clump clinging to dried shaved skin. I took in a sharp breath, squatted, and braced myself for the bottom shelf.
Bones, each set sealed in a transparent bag, fairly fresh, dried tissue clinging here and there. An ulna, maybe, one could’ve been a metatarsus, another a shoulder blade. I knew neither Amy nor Laura had been deboned, so this had to be Katya and maybe the twelve-year-old girl. There had to be more of them somewhere else.
I stood up, closed the freezer, and looked in the next obvious place. Obvious to my nose. The lid of the oil drum didn’t yield. It still smelled of oil, rust, metal, chipped paint, methanol, cadaverine. I looked around, walked through the turbulence of dust motes, back to the metal racks. Hammers, an old drill, empty glass jars, dried up paint cans, brushes, a toolbox. I opened it, retrieved a flat screwdriver, went back to the oil barrel, stuck the screwdriver between the lid and the top edge of the barrel. It yielded this time. I pulled the lid up slowly. Respectfully.
Katya’s skull stared at me with a disdained and empty look. It sat on a substrate of sand mixed with laundry detergent and soda. A few strands of white hair precariously hung at the top of the forehead. Black skin, like charred wax, clung to the skull’s jawbones and left out the teeth to flash me an eerie grin.
The grin said, You idiot, it took you this long to find me.
Satish banged a hand on the garage door. “Track. You there?”
I lowered the lid. “Yup. Got company, too. Tell the M.E. to get ready for another one.”
“Jeez—another stiff?”
“Or two.”
I heard him blow air between his teeth. “Sheesh.”
A radio blabbered.
“Sat?”
“Yeah. I’m sending the guys inside. And uh—Viktor just called.”
* * *
The sharp light of a July mid-afternoon hit me like a sudden graveyard call. I slid on my sunglasses, hooked hands around my belt and stared at my partner.
“I’m going,” I said.
Pearls of sweat beaded Satish’s salt-and-pepper temples. He dipped a hand in his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and patted his brow. “Track. We’ve got at least two cadavers in this house. We’ve got Katie at Parker Center trying to track down everything we can possibly track down on this Medina guy. He hasn’t reported to work this morning—no surprise there—and they’re interviewing every coworker they can find, including Lyons. We’ve got two patrol cars down in Hollywood looking at the area indicated by Viktor, but—”
“Sat, the guy’s there and Viktor’s got his location. Do you need anything else?”
“We don’t know it’s the same guy, and Hollywood’s not exactly the best place to spot a fugitive. It requires a lot of man power that—”
“I know it’s the same guy! The guy I chased down Valley, the guy who made me slam my Charger and who killed the two ladies in this house and the two more. He’s fucking dangerous and we can’t take chances.”
“It’s like chasing a ghost!” Satish raised his voice. In six years we’d been partners, he’d never once raised his voice. He was my senior, so I shut up. “Do you have any idea how many people there are in downtown Hollywood this time of the year?,” he pressed on. “Let the blue suits canvass the area. If we go too, by the time we get there Viktor might have lost the signal and all we got is a cloud of dust. We’ve got two cadavers here. Let’s finish up at least one job properly.”
One of the uniformed officers appeared at the door, a red face on a boxer’s body. He shot a nervous glance at the two of us, cleared his throat, and then mumbled, “The M.E. says he’s ready to bag the lady.”
“Coming.” Satish patted his brows again, shoved the handkerchief in his pocket, and shuffled back to the door.
“I know the guy’s face,” I said. Satish froze, one foot on the doorstep, the other hanging behind. “You saw him too, way back, when we interviewed Lyons. He was standing by the door. Tall, lanky stutterer? Do you remember him, now? Viktor said he’ll keep him talking. He’s using a disposable cell, and as long as the cell is on, he’s traceable. Viktor’s got signal from two towers. Our guy hasn’t been moving for the past twenty minutes. I can see him, just like the other night, sipping his coffee and browsing the Internet. He thinks he’s safe, the son of a bitch. I can spot him out of a million faces. I’ve got his face, his clothes, his damn smell. The blue suits ain’t got any of that.”
We looked at each other. Two cops, two partners, two dicks butting heads.
I turned around and walked to the car. I opened the door, slid behind the wheel, and jammed the key into the engine.
I let the engine roar, my last word on the matter. As I shifted the stick onto driving, the passenger’s door opened.
“Viktor’s got the location right around the Hollywood Vine station,” Satish said. “Plenty of people, peak of the day, four cruisers patrolling. A needle in a haystack. But the signal’s loud and clear.”
He sent me a sideways glance. I grinned, put out the sirens and screeched into the street.
THIRTY-ONE
____________
Decked in sunglasses, mikes, radio earplugs and black formal suits, Sat and I strode along the Hollywood sidewalk looking like the Men in Black. I told Satish that if some dorky tourist was going to stop us for pictures I’d pull out the Glock. He laughed and replied they’d think we were shooting a movie.
Above us, one of the Air Division choppers was on a perimeter, ready for a possible chase. We had the cruisers on the street, Viktor on the radio, guns in holsters, and roughly thirty thousand people roaming the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I’d dragged Satish on a one-in-a-million mission. I was still sore from the car accident. My brains simmered in the heat. Awakened, the Pain stirred around my loins.
We walked briskly, westbound on Hollywood Boulevard, from Vine toward the Kodak Theater. Past the shady smoke shops with loud rock music spilling out, past the drag queen store displays with whacky wigs and strip club costumes. Viktor’s voice crackled in my ear bud. “Got a somewhat longer message, this time. He’s definitely in the Hollywood and Highland area.”
“Getting there. What did he say?”
“I asked him about XYPlot and DNA. That got him going. He thinks he’s safe, the bastard, but the tower signal is pretty strong.”
“Can you get an exact location?”
“As long as he keeps the wi-fi connection open I get regular updates on his location from the cell tower. The minute he turns it off we lose him.”
“Shit, we’re so close. Keep ’im talkin’.”
“Sure thing.”
The chopper’s blades swooshed above us. The buildings got gaudier and taller, the billboards larger. They portrayed perfect smiles and fake lives. Right as we reached the escalator
s to the Hollywood Metro Station, Viktor croaked on the radio again. “I’ve got him within twenty feet from your location.”
I felt the excitement of the chase. Twenty feet. I spun around and inhaled. A cacophonic blend of smells hit my nose.
“Help!”
The crowd parted. A few rubberneckers stood ogling without uttering a word. One of the many fake Michael Jacksons froze in his walking robot pose.
“Help!”
Olive skin in a yellow summer dress, black hair tied up in a thick ponytail, well-shaped ankles balancing over high wedges, and dark eyebrows shot up in a high frown. Red lipstick matched the painted fingernails clutching anxiously to a pink teddy bear. The pink teddy bear didn’t match.
“My child!” She brought a hand to her forehead. “Somebody took my child! Please, help…”
Damn it!
Satish shot his badge in the air. “Who took your child, ma’am?”
“I don’t know—” She swallowed, turned around toward the escalators and waved a hand in a vague direction. “We just got out of the metro. We were holding hands and then she suddenly squirmed away. Oh God, it all happened so fast—” She started hyperventilating. Satish grabbed her arm and walked her to a bench. I tuned the radio to our frequencies and flagged down a cruiser.
“Did you see somebody take your child?” Satish asked.
The woman squeezed the teddy bear on her lap and rocked back and forth. “Her hand slipped out of mine. I turned but she wasn’t there anymore. I barely saw her walking away, there was a man next to her, I think—I think the man was dragging her away, I tried to run, but… but… too many people, I just lost her! Oh God.” She broke into tears.
I squatted down next to her. “What man? Do you remember him? Can you tell what he was wearing?”
She shook her head. “Not too tall. Blond, I think—”
The radio crackled in my ear. “I lost him!” Viktor’s voice broke off. “I fucking lost him. He turned off the cell, the bastard!”
Jesus.
I yanked the teddy bear off the woman’s hands and brought it to my nose.
“Sat,” I yelled, “Cover the metro!” And then I ran.
* * *
The Kodak Center is a labyrinth of smells, a haystack where the faint trace of a five-year-old is a very fine needle. I crouched and sniffed, searching for her scent. Kids brush their hands along walls, stair railings, posts. I smelled everything, the delicate scent of her palms still strong on the teddy bear I was holding.
The sun glared, the crowds packed the sidewalks. I swore, jostled the German tourists in Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops and the flocks of Japanese with twelve-inch-long camera lenses and flowery sun umbrellas. I found a trace on the railing of the Highland staircase and swam upstream against a tide of loud Italians drenched in expensive perfumes. I sauntered across the stands in the shopping plaza, looking for the trace. A young man with a putty crest offered me a cell phone. An artificial blonde in high heels and low skirt disapproved of my pink teddy bear.
The fountain jets swished up from the middle of the plaza and gargled. Kids in their bathing suits played tag with the water, shreds of laughter floating up like bubbles. Up on the walkways across the three-story archway, between the standing elephants of the Babylon set, tourists elbowed one another to take pictures of the Hollywood sign. I ran to the bottom of the stairs, sniffed, found no trace, came back, picked it up again in the alley down to the Grauman’s Chinese Theater. A tiny hand had brushed along the wall at about my waist’s height.
Down the stairs I went.
Tourists buzzed like bees in a beehive. Heads, baseball caps, feet in sandals, jeweled arms, naked shoulders, too much cleavage, too little clothes.
A child’s face emerged and smiled at me.
Wrong scent. Her mother gave me a scornful look and pushed the child away.
The trace, damn it.
I lost the trace.
I peeked down the street but there was nothing to see or smell except gas exhaust and the scent of the flowers and candles people had left at Michael Jackson’s star.
I stood in the middle of the plaza, hands hooked on my belt, sweat pooling around the small of my back and trickling down my forehead. Panting. The sun glistened in my face, teasing. The Pain sneaked up on me, one short flare, and then it was gone.
The airy voice of a flute soared from a corner, shyly at first, as if looking for its way through the crowds. It came with a faint, delicate scent.
A child’s scent.
I craned my neck.
Sitting on a bamboo stool, between the white lion statue and the orange pillar, was a small man with a long, white beard, and a hat made of balloons on his head. A plastic flower poked out of the breast pocket of his long, linen blazer.
The girl was sitting on the ground in front of him, mesmerized. She watched his fingers move up and down the flute keys, her lips slightly parted, her thin brows pinched with admiration, oblivious of her desperate mother, of the cops scattered around looking for her, of the world loudly spinning around her.
And right there, under the scorching sun, watching this little girl completely transported by the music, I had an epiphany. One of those moments that only happens once in a lifetime, when suddenly you see it all with such sharp clarity it hurts. The catharsis of the truth, after which emptiness sneaks up on you like a mugger, like the silence that comes after the last note of Autumn Leaves.
That’s when it hit me. Hard.
What a fool I’d been. A fool who’d been fooled so well. The solution had been in front of me all along and I’d failed to see it.
The music stopped, the man smiled and offered the girl a balloon.
I smelled my partner behind me a moment before he spoke. “That the girl?”
I nodded.
“No kidnapper?”
“Don’t think so. She probably got lost and started wandering on her own.” I gave him the teddy bear. “I’d double check on the clown just in case.”
Satish walked to the girl and stooped down. She took the teddy bear nodding her head up and down, big tears rolling down her cheeks. Satish picked her up and she wrapped her arms around him. As they turned, the man with the balloon hat waved at her. She waved back. Brave little kid.
An officer stayed with the man to ask him some questions.
Satish walked past me.
“Sat,” I called.
He kept walking and didn’t reply.
“I know where to find him, Sat.”
He stopped, turned, and gave me a hard look. “I don’t care what you think you know, Track. We’re done chasing ghosts.”
THIRTY-TWO
____________
Moon rays blinked over the pool surface like pale smiles. All around, banana and eucalyptus trees whispered scents of cool summer nights. Water lapped with the monotony of silent prayers. The ocean echoed it with its distant roar.
An engine whirred noiselessly at the end of the road. Headlights bobbed up and down, vanished for a moment, then reappeared. A yellow light flashed, the gate opened. Tires tore up the driveway. The gate rattled and closed. The light at the gate stopped flashing.
The engine died and the headlights faded, their halo lingering in the night one moment longer.
A figure stepped out of the vehicle, locked it, walked over to the door. Decisive steps, a brisk, solid tap thrumming in the night. The tinkling of keys, the clicking of a lock. The moon pooled down the man’s head and shoulders in different shades of silver. The squeak of a door opening.
I stepped out of the shade. “Good to see you, Dr. Lyons.”
He jumped, the key bunch fell off his hands.
His face squirmed. “Detective…” I smelled panic. A whiff, then it was gone and the cool Doctor Lyons was back. He kept his eyes on me as he stooped down to retrieve the keys. When he leveled me again he looked over his shoulder.
I smiled. “It’s just me, Doc. Didn’t bring company.”
“How did you get pas
t the gate?” He didn’t sound angry. Just surprised.
I showed him the key. I wondered if he recognized it. “Unfortunately, you didn’t leave the door open for me, so I had to wait outside. I waited quite a while, in fact. Drink?”
He agreed because he didn’t have a choice.
The house was cooler than I remembered. It looked emptier, too, even though all it appeared to be missing was a wife. Her things were still there, where I’d seen them last time. A handful of women fiction books on otherwise empty shelves. A vase of wilted flowers. Sporadic knick-knacks of feminine taste. Her photographs.
Lyons flipped the light switches as he crossed the first living room, then the second, then the dining room with the see-through fireplace. Our images reflected off the glass panes, the pitch dark outside broken by an arch of garden lights and the lampposts looming behind the property wall. The face of the moon emerged from a thin shroud of clouds and glimmered over the fringes of the palm trees.
It was a peaceful sight.
Lyons swung his black briefcase on the kitchen countertop then stood there rolling up his sleeves while covertly examining me. “All I got is scotch,” he said, coldly.
“That’ll be fine.”
He studied my face—I held his gaze—then slowly walked to the wet bar. I watched him wash his hands, pull down the glasses, fill them with ice. The Venus replica watched him too, from her corner. She seemed to lean farther than last time, her stone eyes harder. Or maybe she was just trying to get away from the recessed light that beamed in her face. I gave her a sympathetic look. She didn’t reciprocate.