Vega nodded brusquely at me.
“Good to finally meet you,” she said. Her voice carried the trace of an accent that sounded similar to Esteban’s, but a little more exotic to my ear. “Just call me Isabel or Vega, I’m still getting used to the whole ‘Detective’ thing.”
“Fine by me,” I agreed, nodding back.
“Vega’s been assigned to work with me, typical one-three deal,” Esteban informed me. “You mind showing her a couple things you taught me about preserving the crime scene?”
“Sure thing,” I said, after a split-second hesitation.
“Thanks,” Vega put in. “Esteban’s always telling me about how experienced you are.”
Well, that was good to know, I thought, filing away that information for later.
Aloud, I said, “The first rule is to avoid disturbing the most fragile types of evidence at a crime scene. Sometimes that can be the pattern of an impact mark, or a surface that could hold fingerprints. Here, out in the open, the most important thing to try and preserve are any tell-tale marks that might be left on the ground or in the grass.”
“I put up the tape and did a round of photos before you got here,” Esteban added. “I’ll send the pictures over to the OME when we get back. Not much to go on, the ground’s hard and bone dry. We might get some shoe prints out of it. I got one easy match to the jogger’s running shoe, but that guy checks out clear. He was just out for his morning run when he spotted the body.”
“Yeah,” I grumbled. “That’s what all joggers say. Likely story.”
“What was that?”
“Never mind. What about blood spatters?”
“None that I saw.”
“All right,” I breathed, “let’s go in. Vega, follow in my tracks, or Esteban’s. Try to disturb as little as possible. And no touching or moving anything without my say-so.”
“Goes without saying,” she agreed.
I lifted a length of the crime-scene tape and ducked under it. Esteban came next, followed closely by his partner. I found myself getting a little testy as I wondered when Esteban was finding all this time to tell Vega about me, and then mentally chastised myself. Not only did that line of thought have a whiff of jealousy running through it, I was able to answer the question pretty easily on my own.
The LAPD did their best to avoid ‘green on green’ situations, where a rookie was paired with another inexperienced officer. That was just asking for trouble. The ‘one-three’ arrangement Esteban mentioned was where the brass paired up a newly promoted ‘Detective I’ like Isabel Vega with a relatively senior ‘Detective III’. Given that Esteban had been doing a lot of stakeouts lately, it would be natural for him to chitchat with his assigned partner.
The body lay face-down, arms down at its sides, in a tall patch of desiccated weeds. I craned my neck and saw a second path made up of crushed grass and weeds leading to the corpse. Before I could ask about this, Esteban filled me in.
“That’s the original path made by whichever bunch of pendejos decided to drag our friend out here and dump him early this morning.” He pointed to where the path petered out as it led back to the sidewalk. “It’s what caught our jogger’s attention.”
Vega squinted for a moment and added, “Based on the width of the path, I’m guessing two people carried the body between them as they lugged it over to where they dumped it.”
I nodded agreement. By then I’d taken a couple more steps forward and knelt down within arm’s reach of the corpse. This work wasn’t for everyone, but I was able to switch on my reptile brain and let the information flow into my consciousness quickly and with clinical accuracy. The evidence of death, even recent death, had rarely fazed me.
But the act of murder sure as hell did. The horrible death of Captain Vazura still flashed through my dreams at odd times, making me toss and turn. And I’d had my first true batch of nightmares in the past week. I would wake up, gasping, the iron taste of Hollyhock’s blood in my mouth.
I put those thoughts out of mind.
The corpse belonged to a reasonably fit male in his mid-to-late twenties. Later on, I would note that he wore a set of baggy trousers and loose-fitting athletic shoes. Right now, I was too distracted by a startling trio of details.
First, the bottom three inches of the deceased’s shoulder-length black hair was tipped or frosted in neon blue. Second, he had been left naked from the waist up. And finally, someone had cut a message into his broad, reddish-white back with a box-cutter or razor blade.
SALIR DE LOS TRECE.
Chapter Two
My knowledge of Spanish just wasn’t up to the task.
“So what I’m seeing…” I ventured, “this is something…involving the number thirteen?”
“Close.” This from Vega. “It means, ‘Get out of the thirteen’. Well, this neighborhood is kinda-sorta close to 13th Avenue. That’s gang territory, at least when you get up by Cypress and Glassell Park.”
“Maybe,” Esteban cautioned, “but we’re talking about a forty-minute round trip in a low-rider. That’s really stretching it if someone is sending a ‘stay out of our territory’ message.”
While the two detectives talked, I busied myself with studying details about the body. I took note of the placement of the body’s arms as I muttered, “They’re down at the side.”
“What’s that, Dayna?”
“Just thinking aloud. The body’s arms are down at the side, not akimbo. That tells me this corpse wasn’t just thrown here. It’s been carefully placed.”
Esteban came over to stand at my side. “Well, that might support the ‘send a message’ theory. Wish we could tell who sent it.”
“Maybe we can,” I said grimly. I set down my case and cracked it open. I handed him my trusty old Pentax and asked him to take some photos of the body where it lay. Then I pulled out two pairs of plastic gloves. I slipped on one pair and handed the second to Vega.
She swallowed hard as she took them. “What…what do you want me to do?”
“First, put them on,” I instructed. “Then, I need you to kneel down next to me, over here by the body’s thigh. We’re going to flip him over.”
“Are you sure–”
“Pretty sure. The words on this guy’s back were designed to get attention, like a flashy stamp on an envelope. I’m betting that the rest of the message is on his other side.”
Vega fumbled with the gloves as she put them on. “No, I meant – are you sure you want me to touch him? You said not to, earlier.”
“I said no touching anything without my say-so. Now I’m saying so.”
A sigh. “You’re the boss.”
She stepped into position and knelt down, hands at the ready. Again, my mind went off onto another tangent. Vega had slender, fit arms and an admirably flat tummy. Her jacket and slacks were plain, but they complimented her figure. By comparison, my getup made me look like I was wearing a discount sleeping bag. Esteban couldn’t help but notice the difference.
Dammit, what was wrong with me?
I let out a breath. Luckily, I didn’t choke on the following inhale. This guy hadn’t been out for long, and the day had been cool. He registered maybe a three on the Chrissie Scale of Stinkiness. Vega was visibly trying to hold her breath, but at least she hadn’t shied away yet.
“Okay,” I said, sliding my hands under the body’s upper arm. “Count of three.”
“Ready.” She slid her hands under the body’s thigh.
“One-Two-Three,” I recited, and then we gave a heave.
The corpse rolled over surprisingly easily. Vega reeled back, almost putting her gloved hand to her mouth in disgust.
“Hijo de puta,” she cursed, as the corpse’s face came into view.
Esteban placed his hand on Vega’s shoulder. To steady her, I guess.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” she coughed.
“It’s all right,” I remarked. “Not everyone is cut out for Homicide work.”
&
nbsp; Esteban raised an eyebrow at that, but kept quiet.
Vega shook her head. “Just…give me a second.”
To be fair, turning the corpse did ratchet the smell up the Chrissie Scale of Stinkiness from a maybe-three to a sure-as-hell-six. That happened sometimes when you changed the position of a body. The accumulated gases from decomposition escaped unexpectedly from a body orifice, providing an olfactory surprise.
The front side of the corpse was purplish from lividity. The man’s features were broad, heavy-boned, vaguely Hispanic or Native American. His eyes had gone white, sunken, and waxy. I ignored the crawling insects around the mouth as I took a probe and pushed down his lower jaw. As I suspected, part of the decidedly gag-worthy smell came from a thick residue of vomit along the tongue.
Vega steadfastly refused to look at the dead man’s face. Instead, she asked her partner to take some pictures of the tattoos on the corpse’s chest. Then she bent closer, frowning as she made out the word ‘Gangster’ done in a flowery-looking script at the base of the neck. Her frown deepened as she looked at a small five-pointed star on the left pectoral, a number ‘13’ being fired out a stylized cannon, and finally the silhouette of a hooded, praying woman.
“What do you think, Isabel?” Esteban inquired. “This is your area, not mine.”
“I think…” She leaned back on her heels. “This is totally chueco. None of it makes sense.”
Welcome to my world, I thought. “Maybe you can fill me in, then. These look like gang tattoos, so far as I can tell.”
“Yes and no. They are, but they’re all wrong.” She began pointing at the images as she rattled off her facts. “Nobody’s tattooed ‘Gangster’ on their skin since…well, at least in the past few years. Wastes too much ‘ink space’ for other markers, like prison time. These days they use the letter ‘G’, or the number ‘7’. The five-pointed star looks right, it’s the catch-all for Hispanic gangs in this state.”
“He does look like he might be the right ethnic group,” Esteban observed. “Hard to tell with that blood cast on his face. Might be Samoan, or Lebanese.”
“Either way, it doesn’t fit. That marker has to be visible right away, so it only goes on one place: the web between the thumb and index finger. The ‘13’ doesn’t fit either. It’s a marker for the members of Sangra Norte. That’s the gang closest to this neighborhood.”
“Would they be the ones up on 13th Avenue?” I asked.
“They’re the ones, yes.”
“Maybe that fits in with the message carved on this guy’s back.”
She shook her head. “No. Think about it. Why would they send a message that says ‘stay out of our territory’ by killing one of their own?”
That stopped me. “I…you’re right, I think. Unless our friend here betrayed them somehow.”
“Then they’d have done a lot worse to him than toss his body into a park. You’d have found stab wounds and blood everywhere. I’m not seeing any marks on the body so far.” She sighed. “At least the Lady’s in the right place.”
“Let me guess,” I put in, as I touched a finger to the praying woman’s outline. “That would be the Mother Mary?”
“Yes, though we’d call her the Virgen de Guadalupe. It’s to ask forgiveness for any crimes committed.”
Now I sat back on my heels, impressed. “You do know your stuff, Isabel.”
Her face brightened for the first time. “Thanks. I know enough to tell you what we’re not seeing here. But as to the rest…”
My eyes went back to the Virgin Mary tattoo. I touched the skin at the edge of the design and a frown of my own blossomed on my brow.
“Well now,” I remarked, “it looks like we’ve got something else interesting going on here.”
Esteban leaned over, his shadow blocking the sun. “What do you have, Dayna?”
“Watch this.” I pressed my thumb into the edge of the tattoo and then released the pressure. The skin blanched a little and then returned to its reddish-purple state. “The ink used in a tattoo is actually injected into the dermis, or second layer of skin. We see it through the epidermis, or outer layer. Given the lividity on this side of the body, I’d expect to see some distortion in the color and shape of the tattoo when I press the skin.”
“But we’re not seeing any,” Vega said, completing my thought. “Now that you mention it, these designs are awfully crisp for the usual street-tat. So if the pigments aren’t under the skin…maybe they’re on the top?”
We said it at the same time: “Henna.”
“Right,” Esteban agreed. “Say it’s henna paste. This really is chueco, then. Why would anyone put temporary tattoos on a body designed to send a gang-related message?”
“Maybe it’s not the message we think,” I murmured. Vega looked at me, ready to ask what I meant, but Esteban knew how my mind worked. He caught Vega’s glance and held up a hand, telling her to wait. To let me sort out a hunch.
I moved back up to the body’s head and grabbed a hunk of the shoulder-length hair. It was oil-slick black, except for the bizarre three inches at the end. I’d caught the faintest whiff of something sweet, buried under the layers of odor that surrounded the corpse. The only out-of-place thing I saw that matched the out-of-place scent were these neon-blue highlights.
I lowered my nose to take a cautious sniff of those dyed hair strands. I closed my eyes to try and make sense of it. I got a soapy, almost coconut smell that I dismissed as conditioner base. The sweet undertone wafted back again, and I locked onto it.
It was syrupy, but not grassy or woody, like sugarcane from a tropical field. This was straight-up refined sugar. My mind jumped from cookie batter mix, to caramel, then to movie candy. Halloween candy, the cheap kind. From cool fall to warm summer days, of little children playing out at the kiddie pool, coming in hot and sweaty and wanting a glass of something that tasted red and sweet and came out of a fat glass pitcher…
My mind did one of its little clicks.
“Well, I’ll be,” I said, with a shake of my head. “I should have known.”
Chapter Three
The origin of the syrupy-sweet scent finally coalesced in my mind.
“That’s flavored drink mix,” I said. “You know, the powdered stuff moms used to mix up and serve the kids. It all tasted the same, only the colors were different.”
Esteban snorted. “Are you kidding?”
“Nope. And I think I know what we’re seeing here.” I let the hank of blue hair fall from my fingers as I continued. “You can dye your hair bright colors by using drink mix powder and conditioner instead of water. It’s cheap, and it’s gotten awfully popular lately with one particular group: the rave party crowd.”
“So you think our guy wasn’t a gang member…but he liked late-night drug parties?”
“I’d stake a couple of paychecks on it,” I agreed, as I stood up. “Not all raves cater to the hard-drug crowd, but I’ve seen more than one body like this. I’m guessing that you have a new underground rave-drug club in town, and they’re really scared right now.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of the traces of vomit, along with that ‘message’ we found. This poor guy either outright overdosed, or choked to death. Say that the organizers of the party find him, can’t revive him. What would you do, if you’re panicked and need to dispose of a body like this?”
Vega got up in turn. Her lips pressed into a tight grin. “If I knew someone who could do henna tats, I’d have them come up with some gangster-related designs. And then leave the corpse in a way that makes it look like it’s a gang-related murder, not an O.D. at a rave party. Keeps the heat off them, puts it somewhere else.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I agreed, as I began to pull off my gloves. “This is a crime…but it’s one crime that’s disguised to look like another, completely different one.”
Vega gave me a new look, one that seemed surprised and impressed at the same time. “Looks like Esteban wasn’t just ma
king noise.”
“I don’t make noise,” Esteban pointed out. “Not when it comes to Dayna’s talents. I’ll ask our friends in the Narcotics unit what they’ve been seeing out in this area.”
“And I’ll go put in a call to the OME. I need someone to bag-and-tag this body for your investigation.”
“You plan to take some samples before then?”
“Not this time,” I said. “I’ll have them do it at the lab.”
Esteban glanced at me, puzzled. “Is that the new S.O.P. now?”
“Just today.” I stashed the gloves in a separate biohazard waste bag, and then offered it to Vega. “Isabel, I have to speak with Esteban for a moment. I’ll send him back to you in a bit.”
“No problem,” she said, as she peeled off her gloves and poked them into the bag. “It’s not exactly like our raver here is going anywhere.”
I took back the Pentax from Esteban. Then I stashed it and the used bag in my crime scene gear case, locked it up, and lugged it back to the OME van. Esteban followed me as we crunched back through the brittle underbrush.
The van’s rear doors opened with a creak. I put away the case and sat on the bumper to start unlacing my stompy boots. Esteban took a seat next to me before he spoke.
“So what’s on your mind? Except for one thing – that being anything related to Andeluvia – you can say it in front of Isabel.”
“Just that one thing?” I asked, “What exactly have you been sharing with your ‘partner’?”
“Oh, tips and techniques, that sort of thing.” I made as if to elbow him, and he laughed. “Kidding, kidding. Come on, I’m not going to share that with a ‘partner’, no matter their gender.” He stopped and looked at me. “You weren’t serious, were you?”
“No, not really. Okay, maybe a little,” I admitted, as I put away my boots and unzipped the shapeless protective suit. “She’s a good-looking woman.”
“You’re a good-looking woman.”
“You’re a flatterer.” I still liked hearing that, though. “I suppose that a small part of me wishes that you’d said something about getting a partner like her.”
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