Black Orchid

by Vaughn C. Hardacker

  McMahon’s contact on the LAPD met them in the parking lot. He introduced her to Traynor as Angela Engle. It was obvious to Traynor that there was history between McMahon and Engle. He wondered if they’d been in a relationship—they made a good-looking pair. Traynor caught himself studying the two of them. She was tall—five eight or nine—but shorter than McMahon, who Traynor estimated to be just over six feet. Her light brown hair had a slight reddish tint and was cut short. Like McMahon, she obviously spent a great deal of time outdoors, and her face and forearms were tanned. The edges of their eyes showed small crow’s feet from staring into the sun too long and like his brown eyes, her blue ones were piercing. It was easy to visualize them boring through a suspect until they got the confession they sought.

  She was in uniform, brogans, and a short-sleeve shirt on which she wore sergeant’s stripes. If anyone could look good in a police uniform, Angela Engle looked good. More importantly, Traynor decided, she had to be good at her job. Even in the enlightened second millennium, police departments were still testosterone-driven paramilitary organizations; women didn’t make sergeant unless they were better than average—a lot better. Law enforcement at the street level was still a man’s domain. There was a hardness about her that would make anyone think twice before taking her on, and for some reason, whenever she looked at McMahon it was especially evident. The way she looked at McMahon bordered on hostile, and Traynor got the impression that she could hold her own against any man.

  McMahon approached her with a nervous smile. She looked at him for a split second and then turned away as if he were a piece of trash blowing past. She seemed to relax and get whatever angered her under control. She was the epitome of professional. “I’ll warn you guys up front,” Engle said. “What you’re about to see is not nice.”

  Traynor’s sensors went off. How bad was this corpse that even she was forewarning two experienced police officers? He began to steel himself for the worst-case scenario.

  Over the years, he’d been in a lot of morgues, and he’d figured that they all must have been designed by the same architect. This one, like all the others in his experience, was a functional place—a meat locker for the unfortunate—with cold tile floors and a wall covered with refrigerated drawers. The morgue air had a dry, artificial quality to it—similar to the inside of an airplane.

  The attendant was a big guy, taller than Traynor’s six one and a good fifteen inches thicker through his midsection—and it wasn’t a healthy fifteen inches. After Engle introduced them, she stood off to the side as he led Traynor and McMahon deeper into the morgue. The attendant pulled out one of the drawers and paused before pulling the sterile sheet back. “This one ain’t pretty,” he said as he slid the sheet down the body.

  It took all Traynor’s strength not to turn away. The corpse was that of a young Caucasian woman, but that was about all that was discernable. Whoever had done this was one sick bastard. They’d cut the corners of her mouth back to the hinges of her jaw—leaving her to go through eternity with a perpetual grin. Her face was battered so badly he doubted that her mother would recognize her. He became enraged. “What sadistic …”

  Before Traynor could complete the sentence, the attendant chimed in. “This ain’t the worst part. They cut her in half, sliced off her breasts, and removed all of her organs. You want to see?”

  “That’s not necessary,” he said as he turned to McMahon. “Is it?”

  “Normally, I’d agree. However, she’s been battered so badly I can’t be sure if it’s her or not. I need to look closer.”

  “Closer! Christ, man, haven’t you seen enough?”

  McMahon said to the attendant, “I need to see the inside of her left thigh.”

  “What?”

  McMahon stood tense with clenched fists. “Just show me her fucking thigh.”

  The attendant slid the blanket down past her trunk. Her body must have shifted when the drawer had been opened; the upper and lower halves did not line up exactly. Her stomach and abdomen, lacking internal organs to support them, had sunken inward and some type of white cloth had been shoved into the cavity—a corner of it was visible along the jagged line where she’d been severed in half.

  “You’d need a chainsaw to do something like that,” Traynor said.

  The attendant glanced up at his fury. “The ME thinks whoever did this used a bone saw to sever the body …”

  “A bone saw? You saying a doctor did this?”

  The attendant shook his head. “The ME’s almost certain this killer has more knowledge of human anatomy than some neighborhood butcher. The cuts are too precise—if I had to guess, I’d say they were more surgical.” As the attendant continued to move the sheet down to the victim’s thigh, Traynor looked at Engle. Like McMahon she was heavily in cop mode.

  McMahon stepped forward. He made a quick inspection, snatched the sheet out of the attendant’s hand, and drew it back over the victim’s body. His face was ashen, and for the briefest of moments, his guard fell and he looked distressed. “It’s her.” He stormed past Engle and out the door.

  Traynor paused for a second, watched him leave, and then curiosity got the best of him. He grabbed the sheet, studied her thigh for a few seconds, and then lowered it again. There was a tattoo of black orchids circling her upper thigh. He looked toward the door and saw Engle’s face. Her tan complexion was tinted red, and he was certain it was not from embarrassment. Her eyes were narrow and her mouth a tight, straight line. While he’d been surprised by McMahon’s knowledge of a tattoo in such an intimate location, she was pissed. Traynor hoped, for his sake, she didn’t get McMahon alone until she had cooled down. Several times in his life, he’d seen people with a desire to inflict physical pain on someone, and when Engle glared at McMahon, she had that look.

  Some minutes later, Engle, McMahon, and Traynor were back in the parking lot. Without saying a word, she stomped over to her police cruiser and leaned against the front fender, arms crossed as she glared at McMahon.

  “Well,” McMahon said to Traynor, “I guess you’ll be on the next plane back.”

  “I think I’ll stick around for a couple of days,” Traynor said.

  “You did what you were hired to do and found Mindy.”

  “Deborah paid for a few more days of my time …” Traynor paused, wanting to avoid saying the wrong thing.

  He needn’t have worried; McMahon seemed to be tuned into the same station. “Any sonuvabitch who’d do that to another human being needs to be brought down.”

  “So,” Traynor said, “where do we start?”

  “The boyfriend?”

  “Okay.” Traynor stood in place and stared at him.

  “What?”

  “The tattoo.”

  “What about it?”

  “How’d you know where to look?”

  McMahon walked away, without looking back.

  “McMahon!” Traynor followed after him. “Goddamn it, Jack, what are you keeping from me?”

  Suddenly, McMahon spun on Traynor, leaning forward and hunching his shoulders. The effect was so aggressive that Traynor braced for an attack. Suddenly McMahon relaxed. “We were lovers for a while.”

  “And?”

  “That’s it. She ended it and I moved on.”

  “Okay. Are you going back to Portsmouth?”

  He looked at Traynor as if he were from another dimension. “No fucking way. At least not until we bring down the sadistic bastard who did that.”

  “Ever feel like killing some motherfucker?” Traynor asked.

  “Before now? No, never.”

  “Me neither.” He looked at the morgue entrance. “At least not since that one time when I was a cop—then I saw that …”

  McMahon’s jaw torqued tight and his eyes narrowed, like gun slits on a tank. Traynor had seen that look before. It was the look an enraged man gets when he’s about to kill something—anything. He glared at the mountains to the north and said nothing.

  Traynor nodded
toward Engle and said, “I think you got other problems, Jack.”

  He followed Traynor’s gaze. “Shit.”

  “Why is she so pissed?”

  “We were married. Divorced before I went back east.” He didn’t wait for a reply, which was good because Traynor didn’t have one. He was too busy wondering how many more goddamned surprises were in store for him.

  Traynor held back and watched Engle glare at McMahon as he walked toward her. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her chest. She shifted slightly and stared off at the mountains in the distance. Traynor heard her say, “I see you still let the small head rule the large one.” Without looking at McMahon, she said, “Why is it that you insist on acting like a life support system for your penis?”

  “Jesus Christ, Angela …”

  “She was a kid, Jack. What did you do? Regale her with stories of your daring adventures on the LAPD?”

  Traynor went over, breaking up their domestic dispute by leaning against the car. “You want I should let you two alone to kill one another?”

  Engle unfolded her arms and rocked away from the cruiser. “If I’m going to kill anyone, it will be somebody worth killing.” Her demeanor suddenly changed, returning to stoic professionalism. The metamorphosis was more dramatic than switching on a light in a dark room. Her complexion returned to its normal ruddy tan, and her shoulders and arms relaxed. “You want to see where we found her?”

  “The crime scene?” Traynor inquired.

  “The dump scene. We’re certain she was killed somewhere else. There wasn’t a drop of blood where she was found.”

  “You have any idea where she was murdered?” McMahon asked.

  “The closest we can narrow it down is to someplace west of the Rocky Mountains,” Engle said. She walked around her car, stood by the door, and looked at them across the roof. “Follow me in your vehicle. By the time we get there, my shift will be over. The scene is closer to my precinct, and I’m not about to drive back here to drop you guys off.”

  Traynor exhaled with relief. The last thing he wanted was to be in close quarters with her and McMahon—especially with Engle wearing a nine millimeter pistol.

  In the car, McMahon seemed distracted; his knuckles were white where they curled around the steering wheel. After several minutes passed, it was evident that he was not about to break the silence. So Traynor did. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  McMahon looked at him. “If I said no would it stop you?”

  “No …”

  “So ask,” he said like a man resigned to facing execution.

  “If you and Engle are divorced, why’s she so pissed about you and Mindy?”

  He stared at the road and Traynor was about to accept the fact that he was not going to answer the question when McMahon said, “She still loves me.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I still love her too.”

  “So why the divorce?”

  He inhaled deeply and then exhaled. “There were a couple of reasons. First, she caught me …”

  “Screwing around?”

  “More than once.”

  “Okay, I can understand her reaction.”

  “We could have survived that,” McMahon replied. “But, the second reason is the real killer.”

  “What can be more damning that adultery?”

  “We were a toxic couple—we love each other as much as any man and woman can, but for some reason we mix like gasoline vapor and a lit match.”

  That brought a picture to Traynor’s mind—that of his own brother, John, and his wife, Jo-Ann. They were as toxic a relationship as he could think of.

  The Black Dahlia case was never solved and is still considered open.

  —Author’s note

  8

  They followed Engle to the 101, got off in Woodland Hills, and turned onto Topanga Canyon Boulevard. They passed by a couple of upscale malls and then things changed: expensive retail outlets gave way to three or four miles of mom and pop shops and restaurants. They were about a mile north of the Los Angeles city limits when she turned onto the Reagan Freeway, stopped halfway up the grade that climbed through Santa Susana Pass, and turned on the light-bar on top of her police car. She got out and waited on the shoulder behind her cruiser until they joined her.

  “About one hundred yards up there,” she said. Without another word she began climbing through the brush and rocks.

  McMahon and Traynor followed her, weaving their way up the sandy slope through scrub brush and small boulders. It was difficult for Traynor to make his way up, and he marveled at how easily Engle scaled the steep slope. She was obviously experienced at climbing Los Angeles’s myriad hills. She stopped about a quarter of the way up the incline and waited for them to catch up.

  Reaching her, Traynor took a second to look at the view. A layer of smog and smoke sprawled across the San Fernando Valley, creating a mesmerizing, albeit ghostly, panorama. He thought that it looked like an artist’s rendering. He let his gaze drift south along Topanga Canyon Boulevard and watched the cars snaking their way through the tangle of traffic. To his left, he saw a secondary road twisting away from the freeway. “Where’s that go?” he asked.

  “That’s the Santa Susana Pass Road. Before the freeway was built, that was the only way into Simi Valley from Topanga Canyon,” Engle said. She pointed to a solitary building. “Fifty years ago this area was nothing but boulders and brush. That’s all that’s left of the old Spahn Movie Ranch.”

  It meant nothing to Traynor, but he turned to see what she was pointing out anyway.

  “The Spahn Movie Ranch is where they made a lot of B westerns after World War II. The Lone Ranger TV show and a lot of movies were filmed here in Simi Valley.” She moved her arm to the right to show him a sprawling view of a bedroom community. His first impression was that it consisted of nothing but light brown houses with dark brown roofs.

  Traynor turned his attention back to the immediate area, studying the stunted brush, sand, and boulders that covered the valley below. “When I was a kid, I thought the entire west looked like this,” he said. “At least that’s the way it always looked in the movies and television.”

  “It isn’t all pretty,” Engle commented. “There’s a dark side to Santa Susana. People around here love to talk about the Reagan Presidential Library and the movies that were filmed here. But they don’t like to talk about the other stuff.”

  She had piqued his curiosity. “What other stuff?”

  “In 1969, the Manson Family lived on the movie ranch. During that time, they killed Sharon Tate and the LaBiancas.” She nodded toward the San Fernando Valley. “And down there is the porn capital of the world.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  Engle turned and got back to the business at hand. “Part of the corpse was found over here.”

  “A part of it?” Traynor asked.

  She motioned for him to follow and wove her way through some small bushes, then around a medium-sized boulder. “A couple of hikers found her torso here. The other half was about ten or fifteen yards over there.” She pointed up the slope. “The scene was clean. No blood and no trace evidence—not even a footprint. It was like she’d been dropped from the sky.”

  That got his attention. “Maybe they wiped their tracks.”

  “That’s doubtful. There’d still be traces of where they smeared everything with a bush or whatever.”

  Traynor noticed McMahon intently studying the area. “Be awfully hard to get up here and back without leaving some kind of sign,” he said.

  “Not if you have access to a chopper,” Engle answered.

  “Are you saying,” Traynor queried her, “they dropped her from a helicopter?”

  “They probably hovered a few feet off the ground—otherwise we’d have found impact marks.”

  “If that’s the case,” he commented, “why separate the parts?”

  “Maybe to throw us a curve. It’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense.”
She glanced at her watch. “You guys seen enough? I’d like to go home and take a long, hot shower.”

  “Need your back washed?” McMahon asked.

  Traynor couldn’t believe he’d said that. He gawked at McMahon for a few seconds before turning his attention to Engle. She snapped her head in McMahon’s direction and glared at him; it was evident that all he had to do was bat an eye the wrong way and she’d shoot him. She settled for saying, “If I do, you’ll be the last person I’ll call.” She pushed the bushes aside and stomped away.

  “You’re one silver-tongued devil,” Traynor said.

  “Yeah, but any fool can see she’s still crazy about me.”

  “Judging from her body language, she’s living proof why the primary suspects in most homicides are spouses and ex-spouses.”

  McMahon laughed. “You probably got that right. Let’s be cops and go talk to the roommate.”

  By the time McMahon and Traynor stumbled down the steep hill and reached their car, Engle had pulled onto the freeway and was headed over the rise. They stood on the shoulder until she disappeared.

  “What you think?” McMahon asked.

  “I think that someone with a lot of money perpetrated this … choppers don’t come cheap …”

  “I thought that too. But I’m not talking about that.”

  “Then what are you talking about?” Traynor asked.

  McMahon nodded in the direction Engle had driven.

  Traynor saw where McMahon was looking and said, “Oh, her. I think she’s a lot more woman than I could handle.”

  McMahon sounded wistful when he said, “She was for me too.”

  … often times what the suspect “does not” say is as important as what he “does” say.

  —FM 3-19, Law Enforcement Investigations

  9

  Simi Valley looked and felt like hundreds of other south California suburban towns. There was no business district to speak of—just one strip mall after another, interspersed with small businesses and then subdivision after subdivision. They followed Los Angeles Avenue, which was as close to a main street as there was in the city, going west. Palm and yucca trees lined the streets and brought back memories of Traynor’s days at Camp Pendleton.