by E. E. Giorgi
The tall FID dick stopped leaning backwards and the chair’s front leg came to the floor with a loud thud. “That’s how cowboys conduct investigations,” he said.
Gomez’s sense of humor was significantly impaired at two in the morning. Not that it was much better during the day.
I didn’t care either way. In a little over twenty-four hours I’d slammed my car into a tree and torched it, found one and a half cadavers—plus bits and pieces here and there—got slammed to the floor by a faithful replica of the Venus of Milo, been Tased three times, and got this close to be poked with a lethal injection.
My sense of humor was so primed I could feel myself dropping on the floor and rolling in laughter all over again any minute, just out of sheer joy for being alive.
Gomez pushed his chair backwards and got up. Four sets of eyes rose with him. He scratched his bald head, looked down on his desk, found nothing of interest, pulled the chair back behind his ass and sat down again. Four sets of eyes lowered.
The FID’s pencil resumed squeaking on paper.
Gomez grabbed a pen and rolled it between his fingers. “We’ve got two medical professionals down,” he said. “Together, they cooked up a serial killer M.O. and perpetrated heinous crimes.” He paused, swallowed, rolled the pen. “Medina was a sociopath. The body parts found in the freezer of his mother’s house fit the bill. Lyons, though—Lyons was a big shot. A recipient of the National Medal of Science. The press is going to howl at us. And all we have on him is—this.” He tapped the handheld recorder I’d worn inside my shirt.
I shifted forward in the chair and clutched my knees. “And the paper draft,” I said.
“What paper draft?”
“The paper that Medina wrote and Amy penciled all over because it was wrong.”
The paper missing from Amy Liu’s home office, the one I’d later found in Lyons’s office, and then again in Medina’s shrine. I couldn’t understand Amy’s corrections, but I knew exactly who could. Diane.
“Amy Liu was a young MD in Lyons’s group. She also happened to be his lover, but that’s a different story. People like Lyons use sex like us dicks use cigarettes. Anyway, Amy was collecting data for a vaccine trial, a vaccine that Lyons had patented based on ideas spurred from the sick, yet brilliant mind of Hector Medina. The two sold the patent to a company named Jank Biologicals. The vaccine yielded terrific results in monkeys, yet the FDA wouldn’t approve the vaccine until Lyons made the brave move of injecting himself and attracting a lot of attention. The vaccine was finally approved and Jank started producing it for the clinical trials. The patent money barely scraped the surface. Lyons and Medina were in for the big bucks—shares. Lyons had become a hero, his study was featured all over the media. Jank shares soared. Lyons was finally collecting.”
I looked around me. They were all listening, so I went on. “Phase I went smooth—all they had to show was the vaccine was safe, which they knew already. I think the problems started with phase II. The pilot study showed that the vaccine wasn’t working—that’s what Amy found out when she reviewed the data in Medina’s draft.”
The FID taking notes raised his pencil. “Was the vaccine harmful?”
I knew the answer because Diane had explained it to me. “No. They would’ve halted the study if that were the case. It wasn’t harmful, but it wasn’t working either. Amy tried to prove it, when she requested Callahan’s samples—she wanted to see what went wrong in his case. She confronted Lyons with the data in her hands. Lyons, though, had other plans. He’d started selling Jank’s stocks. He had already made millions, but he wasn’t quite happy yet. He’d bought a house in Malibu and a bunch of luxury cars—the expenses were adding up. He wanted more money, money that he knew he could squeeze out of the Jank’s stocks—which kept soaring—for a little bit longer, at least until the truth about the vaccine came out.”
“So Callahan’s death tipped Amy Liu?” Satish asked.
“No, Amy found out on her own. She needed samples from Callahan to prove it, and she used them to confront Medina and Lyons. Lyons of course had no doubt on what needed to be done: shut Amy’s mouth for good. Medina, though, had his own ambitious plans. The freak wanted to apply the same powerful idea behind the HIV vaccine to human genetics. He wanted to create a super-human by tiling together DNAs from different individuals. So, instead of wasting cadavers, why not enact a lunatic serial killer and get some experimental samples while they’re at it? Two pigeons with one stone. In fact, as we’ll find out a little later in the story, Medina’s had a little practice of his own already.”
There was a tap. I turned, and the FID taking notes pointed his pencil at me. “Why fake data? That’s stupid if the vaccine turned out not to work.”
“The truth was going to come out eventually. Lyons would’ve had to admit that the vaccine wasn’t working. Things like that happen all the time: great results in monkeys that do not reproduce in humans. All Lyons wanted was more money from the Jank stocks. He wanted to push the trial longer so he could sell more stocks, at a higher price. He had Laura on his side—who’d borrowed money from her mother to buy shares—and he probably tried to convince Amy, too. Maybe he offered her money. Amy didn’t want to hear it, though. She wanted to halt the trial, start over with a new vaccine, one she’d designed herself.”
I paused, looked around. They were all quiet, staring at me. The pencil scribbled on the notepad. Gomez rolled the pen and bulged his eyes. The fan swooshed, the crack in the open window let the night breeze drift in, together with the distant snore of a half-asleep freeway. I resumed my account. “The night of Amy’s party Lyons leaves with all other guest. He then comes back. Amy’s waiting for him, waiting for her lover. Little she knows, she meets her assassin instead. Medina attacks her with the acid, Lyons finishes her by strangling with a French catheter—the perfect ligature, virtually leaves no telltale mark.”
“How do you know it was Lyons?” FID dick again. Had to keep up the pace for his notes.
“You heard it on tape. Medina had a skin condition called Morgellons’ disease. His hands and feet bled regularly. His lab notes were spotted with bloody fingerprints. His hands hurt, he wouldn’t have had the strength to strangle a woman. Lyons didn’t deny it when I confronted him.”
“He didn’t admit it, either.”
I held his gaze and decided to ignore the remark. “Medina flees, Lyons has a change of heart and calls nine-one-one. Maybe he panics. Maybe it’s part of the plan because he’s such a die-hard macho he thinks he can tease us and never be caught. I thought of asking him but as you know things got out of hand. His voice is on tape. That word he uses—abraded—is his signature.”
“Why kill the wife if she was in it too?” Gomez asked.
“Laura freaked out after Amy died. She was in for the money, not for murder. Amy had left a message on Lyons’s voice mail about Medina’s paper, a message that Laura picked up instead of its intended recipient. I found out one night when I examined Amy’s phone logs. Of course, at the time I didn’t know the kind of message Amy had left on Lyons’s machine. When Amy was killed, Laura must’ve guessed that both Medina and her husband were behind the murder. So now there was another woman who needed to be shut up. By now, the show had been well rehearsed. Lyons steps out of the house to take his daily swim, leaving the front door open. Medina has both a key and the passcode to the property gate—same key I used to get through Lyons’s property gate. I found it in a drawer at his mother’s house. Medina attacks her with the acid, Lyons strangles her, then Medina does his sampling thing—something I believe he enjoys very much.”
Satish rapped his knuckles on the armchair. “He kept all that stuff in his garage… why?”
“Because in his sick mind, Medina was a genius,” I said. “He wanted to create a genetic super-human by piecing together the genomes of all his victims. A mosaic of genomes, which is probably what gave him the idea of the mosaic tiles.”
And that’s why he came after me, I thou
ght, but didn’t say out loud. Me, the chimera, the one who impersonated his genetic dream.
The best of trophies.
“What about the babies?” Gomez asked. “They also had been attacked with acid. By whom?”
“Right. The babies.” I looked at the wall clock ticking above Gomez’s shiny head. It was two thirty a.m. I was tired, very tired. My muscles felt numb from the Taser. I slowly got up, walked to the water fountain by the American and Californian flags, filled a paper cup, then returned to my chair. “So, now we get to Medina’s pathetic story and why he enjoyed playing the part of the whacko serial killer.”
The FID leaning back against the wall let go of the chair again and again the front legs hit the floor with a thud. “He was a serial killer.”
“He had a good teacher—his mother. Lyanne Norris was a single mom when she had Medina. She gave him his dad’s last name, but the dad never came back to meet his son. Several other men came back instead, at various times, and enjoyed Lyanne’s company under the sheets. Maybe there were some regulars who lasted long term, I’ve no idea. Lyanne got pregnant regularly, killed the babies, and dumped sulfuric acid on their faces. Medina must’ve assisted to some of the killings. I don’t know what that can do to a child’s brain—watching your mother kill your own siblings. He visited the dumpsite regularly. There were animal bones scattered around. I’m guessing he killed them, pets and wildlife, before he graduated to humans. Maybe that’s how he got the idea of killing his first victim, Gloria Weiss, a twelve-year-old run away gone missing two years ago.”
“Two years later, he struck again: this time he chose an elderly woman, Katya Krikorian. Katya’s son hired me to find her when she went missing last May. She was a friend of Lyanne’s, her only friend, in fact, according to Lyanne’s nurse.” I turned over to Satish. “The neighbor yesterday told us the nurse had quit, remember that?”
He nodded, wearily. “I spoke to her over the phone. Apparently Lyanne was no palsy-walsy. The nurse couldn’t take it no more and quit last week. She’d left a note for Medina but never heard back from him.”
I resumed my story. “When I interviewed the nurse the first time, I asked her if she had any idea why Katya would leave her car one mile away from Lyanne’s house. The nurse didn’t know but told me that she’d overheard the two talk about hiking places in the area. Katya liked to hike and Lyanne, for some awkward reason, had suggested the trail to the water cistern. The nurse also mentioned that Katya had on numerous occasions complained about the state Lyanne was in and recommended calling social services—at the time I hadn’t made much of the comment, but it’s easy to see now how that would’ve pissed Medina. He must’ve been happy with a nurse who minded her own business and only had limited time in the house.”
Gomez rippled his wide forehead. “Why would Lyanne recommend hiking up to the cistern? Regrets?”
“Her days were numbered and Katya was her only friend. Maybe it was her attempt to a confession. She probably had no idea her son was a regular visitor at the cistern. Medina, on the other hand, was worried Katya would’ve called social services. Maybe she even threatened to do so that at some point.”
I took a breather and drained the water in my cup. Nobody talked. A chair squeaked, a loud thud followed. The tall FID dick was back on four legs, staring at me.
“You satisfied?” I said.
He twitched his jaw. “For now,” he replied.
His partner tapped his notebook. “We’ll write a report on the incident and call you when it’s ready for you to review. We need to include the autopsy reports, the gun residue analysis, and all the likes. You know the drill.”
Hell I do.
They got to their feet and scrambled to the door. Electric Blue Shirt saluted me before heading out. “Til the next one, cowboy,” he said with the usual smirk.
“Asshole,” I mumbled, and met Gomez’s flaring glare, eyes bulging underneath two rolls of scrunched forehead and brows. He was still rolling the pen between his fingers. Had it been an axe maybe he’d already thrown it at me.
“I’m not satisfied, Track.”
“I figured.”
Gomez steered his bulging orbs to Satish. “How did you know where to find him?”
Satish straightened up. “Forensic scientist Diane Kyle called me.”
“I’d left the paper with her,” I said.
Sat nodded. “That’s what she said. She also said that together you figured out about the faked data. And that you left in a hurry and she could no longer get ahold of you. She worried you’d do something stupid.”
Gomez’s frown relaxed for a fraction of a second. “What do you know? He did do something stupid.”
We fell silent, the word “stupid” bobbing in the air between us like a buoyant. The pen rolled, the fan swooshed, the freeway droned. And then, all of a sudden, Gomez shot to his feet, walked to the door and opened it. “Out,” he said. “I need to get some sleep. Report to me in the morning.”
We shuffled out of his office and across the deserted squad room. It looked even more squalid in the middle of the night, with the scratched Formica desktops and the polyester ceiling panels. In the elevator lobby Satish jingled his car keys and rocked on his heels.
“Something’s missing from your account,” he said.
I frowned.
“Who killed Charlie Callahan and Courtney Henkins?”
The elevator doors rattled and opened. I stared into the small space that smelled of lubricant oil, old metal and dirty secrets. I shook my head and stepped inside. “I’m afraid we’ll never find out, Sat. Or maybe we will. In twenty years, when the next Stephanie Lazarus will be unveiled without too many heads having to roll off.”
* * *
The first sunrays were blinking through the treetops when I finally drove home. Chevy Chase was quiet, save the hissing of the garden sprinklers and the screeching of the jays. The morning air was still cool. I got out of my truck and inhaled the scent of oak bark, eucalyptus, and sage. I was exhausted, drained, and happy to be alive. I almost fucked up my job but that seemed no longer relevant.
Will was happy to see me alive, too. The King went all the way of hopping down his windowsill to come meet me at the door. Life was back to normal.
I sang in the shower and hummed as I shaved. I dropped on the bed naked and fell asleep instantly.
A noise awakened me—the stupid sparrow that’d been trying to get through my window since the start of the summer. He’d littered the windowsill with his droppings and dented the screen. One of these days I was going to shoot him, but regretted having to pay for a new windowpane. I groaned, rolled over and something poked me in the stomach. I sprang my eyes open. It was noon, and I’d slept six hours straight over my own pile of dirty clothes. I sat up and picked up my pants. The holsters were empty, of course—the FIDs had sequestered both my guns pending the OIS investigation. I turned the pockets inside out. A long, white and cold, marble shard fell on the bed. I smiled. Had to bring a piece of Venus home—my latest trophy. I lifted it and caressed it. I tried to remember which part it belonged to but couldn’t quite place it.
An image flashed before me. A lizard’s red eye, ogling from a man’s shoulder.
Vargas.
I’d completely forgotten about Ricky Vargas.
I jumped out of bed, pulled on a pair of briefs and picked up the phone. I was about to hang up when I finally heard a click. I heard nothing else so I shouted into the mouthpiece, “Hello? Detective Presius here.”
“I hear you, Detective,” Vicente Vargas replied. “But you’re too late to save my Ricky.”
* * *
Friday, July 24
The sound of bells tolling is like a sad memory you can’t manage to forget.
People spilled out of the white church in black dresses and suits. They filed down the stairs, the men looking grave, and the women crying. The air was hot and humid for California weather, the faces red and sweaty. They were all heavily scented, a blen
d of aftershaves and fragrances as loud and gaudy as a flock of parrots.
Maria Espinoza Vargas leaned on the arm of a young girl and almost collapsed. Two men held her from behind. The crowd got thicker around her. Maria shook her head and waved them away. She had strong bones in her face, and deep eyes that had seen everything and weren’t as terrified of death as they were of human beings. Her heavily made up face had creased and smeared and melted in black tears.
The pallbearers emerged from the depths of the church and brought the coffin outside.
Maria shrieked, “Mi hijo!”
The coffin bobbed down the stairs. Parked in front of the church, the hearse’s engine whirred. The bell tolled, and the white wreaths withered under the sun. A layer of haze lingered in the air like an incoming migraine.
The pallbearers pushed the coffin inside the hearse, placed a wreath of white carnations at its foot, and closed the vehicle’s door. A man waved and the hearse started moving. Behind it, Maria walked and shrieked. Two men walked beside her, holding her arms.
The rest of the crowd followed.
Vicente Vargas limped his way down the stairs, one eye looking at me, and the other following the hearse. He stood with the helpless dignity of a disarmed man in front of the enemy. I wasn’t the enemy, but I was too late to prove it.
“That’s my sister-in-law, Ricky’s mom,” he said. “She’s a widow. My brother died when the kids were five and three.”
“A shooting?”
He nodded, his head heavy on wide shoulders. His lazy eye looked lazier than I remembered. I wasn’t sure which eye to stare at, so I watched the procession instead.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I would’ve said more, but I didn’t know what.
He looked down at his hands, wide and cracked and still caked with cement and hard labor. The cuffs of his blazer were worn out and a button was missing from the front. It smelled of weddings, baptisms, quinceaneras and funerals—too many funerals.
“No paran,” Vicente said quietly. “No van a parar hasta que se maten todos. Dicen que fue un nene de trece años.” He shook his head heavily again. “Trece años,” he repeated, shuffling away.