by Noreen Ayres
“If that’s a turtle, I’m a pterodactyl,” Joe said. He held our two evidence kits in each hand, raised his elbows and cried, “Squawk!”
I snapped his picture.
We were at the corner of Rockview and Rocky Knoll, looking at the massive stone named for a turtle. It sat on a hill in a tailored community called Turtle Rock, which sat on a hill itself five miles in circumference. Surrounding it were farmers’ fields and the expansive college campus of the University of Irvine, where Joe’s son David was a sophomore. Bright flowers, vivid grasses, and yellow scene tape reading POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS and POLIZIA NO CRUZAR gave the whole lump the look of a decorated cake.
The victim lay in shadow under the neck of the rock, on his side, eyes partly open. Blood had coursed across the nose and under the eye nearest the ground. A red kerchief spanned his forehead, blackened in the center from a round between the eyes. He had on a black jacket, a gray T-shirt with a design of a cannabis plant in the center, jeans with pale wear-marks at the knees, and white socks showing above black sneakers.
Linda Givens, a coroner’s investigator, glanced up from her notes and said, “Hi, guys.” In her forties, she was rumored to be an information hoarder, a non-team player.
Beyond her, on a curving path through the tended lawns of condos, a cop stood talking to a couple, the woman gesturing broadly as all three faced our way.
Joe sat on his heels near the body.
“Over there,” Linda said, nodding toward some cards on a flat paper sack. The reporting officer had laid out the ID found on the body, she said. I said I wished people would leave the scene the way they find it. “Yeah, well,” she said, shrugging. Investigator Bright had been there and left, she said, court date.
We stood before a small white sign stuck in the ground a few yards from the rock that said not to walk on the rocks because they were sacred to Indians. I asked Linda if she’d seen any spent shell casings, but got no answer. Maybe she didn’t hear me. She folded her notebook and walked around to the accessible part of the rock and started up it, defying the Indian admonition. No more from Linda.
I gloved up, then moved to the collection of ID cards. Held just right, the first few cards showed friction ridges, but they could be the officer’s fingerprints if he had been careless.
“Problem?” Joe said, coming toward me. Light see-sawed across his tie-clip shaped like a revolver.
“Look at this,” I said. “A stack of ID’s. Different names on the driver’s license, Alien card, and a Sam’s Club.” The photos showed a man with high cheekbones, flared nostrils, and meaty chin: the victim beneath the rock, but which of the names was his? “Doe Three,” I said, “until we know better.” Pointing to the signature at the bottom of a card, I said, “Hector Estancio Rivera Rios. My Nellie Gail victim was Hector Rios. The victim Sunday, off Alton, he was a Hector too. Hector Gonzales, Hector Flores.”
“Hannibal Hector?” Joe said.
I gave him a look. “Fun-nee,” I said. “This one, the driver’s license: the name’s Alfonso G. Abrigal. It could pass in a dark bar with a blind bartender maybe, but the glue even shows through the lamination. Stu’s gonna shit a brick.”
“That’s scary to contemplate,” Joe said.
“He’s probably got some high-priced profiler on the payroll already.” I slipped the ID cards in the paper sack and marked it.
Joe said, “Stu’s an old hand. He’s not going to jump to conclusions at this point.”
“Right. But Stu’s afraid of the sheriff, who’s afraid of the public. I just hate to catch flak when I don’t deserve it.”
“The public doesn’t give a damn about dead illegals,” Joe said. “It’s the live ones they worry about, stealing those sought-after dishwashing and gardening jobs right from under our noses.”
I said, “I read in the paper that by the year 2010 there will be forty million people of Hispanic origin in the United States.”
“Less three,” Joe said, then went to scout for evidence in the grass while I snapped off near shots of the victim. I did a close-up of a tattoo on the back of the victim’s wrist: a spider with a red hourglass on the abdomen.
When Joe came back, he brought Linda with him and said, “Let’s turn him.” They tipped the victim face-forward so his own stiffened weight formed a sort of bent triangle braced on the ground. The rear pocket showed a diagonal outline, short-pencil size—syringe size.
“Careful,” I said.
Joe glanced at me, held my gaze, and said quietly, “I know.”
Bad things come in pockets. Those who cared to speculate on how Oakland Police Officer William John Brandon encountered the bug that canceled his life guessed it was a prick from a creep’s pocketed needle.
My Bill, at twenty-eight. I am older this minute by seven years than he ever got to be. We had only six months together as husband and wife. The virus had only just been labeled, a form of raging hepatitis that took him away in just forty-eight hours. To this day I sometimes find myself watching behaviors in people who seem to have been around too long and wonder what went wrong with the universe that this lousy deal was struck.
Because I was a patrol officer then, I learned the name of the creep who owned the dirty needle: Daimon Sherman, and he’d been popped before, for sale of a controlled substance. For two weeks after Bill’s death I went to Daimon’s neighborhood and sat outside his house. He lived with his family even though he was twenty-six years old. He had a little girl, twelve, already pregnant, only I didn’t know that then.
Every noon, every evening after work, I’d come by. Noon, I’d be in my patrol car, the one Bill and I used as partners. I’d sit under the shade of a tree, watching the side mirrors, watching ahead, waiting. When Daimon Sherman came out, I’d trail him, slow, in my unit. I’d coast alongside not saying a word. He’d say, “What? Why you doggin’ me, Officer?” He’d go in a store, out of the store. I’d be there. What was I going to do? I didn’t know. Scenes would play in my mind: there’d be some challenge from him. When the time came, however it came, I’d step over his fucking body where it lay.
I remembered times Bill had gone easy on people like Daimon, and times he didn’t yet was fair and honor-bound anyway. And I’d remember him at home, not a cop but a man and a boy and a lover and friend. When I saw Daimon Sherman, hatred hummed in my veins. I felt apart from myself, yet didn’t care.
One day at dusk Daimon ambled down the street, stopped, turned, and threw his arms forward at me in a firing stance, eyes glaring. Just as quickly, he straightened and walked away down the sidewalk. A few steps more and he did something close to a break-dance, only he couldn’t quite bring it off and he stumbled and lightly cracked his chin.
The next day I went again, but something in the ceremony was gone. Maybe it was seeing Daimon stumble. Two other times, a week apart, I went back to sit in front of the house. Then one day I gave up going to Daimon’s.
Three weeks later while with my new partner, I got winged by a woman with a derringer in the bedroom of her home. One doctor worried that a bone chip might have lodged near my spinal nerve and could work its way in and leave me paralyzed. The whole thing built: Bill’s death, the winging, Daimon’s surprise fake-draw in front of his own house, the general accumulation of sights, scenes, and stories—so that by the next month, I handed in my badge. My sergeant tried talking me out of it, but not very hard.
Judging the path of the bullet, Joe said we might find the slug somewhere off to the right of the turtle. After collecting blood samples from the ground beneath the rock and the rock itself, I walked the area. Among some ground cover was a foil coffee bag. I placed a marker, shot more frames, then called Joe over. With him came a deputy coroner named Jared. The packet was open, only folded over at the top. I uncreased it and took out one of several smaller packets. “Condoms,” I said. “What do you make of that?”
“If they’re not jumbo I can’t use ’em,” Jared said, then flushed bright red. He was soft-looking, with mousy hair and a mustache t
hat didn’t do anything for a face that would ever remain ordinary.
I laughed and got an evidence bag to put the sack in. Jared said we should come down to the bottom of the hill. There, he pointed to a black cigarette pack with a Harley-Davidson logo on it.
“I didn’t know H-D made cigarettes,” Joe said.
“I might get a pack for Biker-Taz,” I said.
“Give him one of those too,” he said, pointing to the bag of condoms.
That afternoon I faxed copies of all the ID cards from the victim over to Homicide, then processed the H-D cigarette box and the coffee bag that held thirteen virgin condoms in foil by putting them in an airtight container next to a gel pouch called Hard Evidence, a cyanoacrylate compound. The fumes turn prints into nice white, visible ridges photographed with ease.
At the end of the day I drove over to the morgue, got buzzed in, and walked down the hall toward the autopsy suite. Cliff Yaroshak, chief coroner, was standing behind his desk reading a note as he slipped one arm into his gray suit jacket, preparing to leave. Lean and intense, he was my idea more of an FBI agent than a coroner. I asked where I could find the schedule for the three Does. He checked a log on his desk. “Tomorrow, eight a.m., for Sunday’s and yesterday’s.”
“And today’s?”
“Check with me later.”
“This is the third Doe in three days.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said. “We also have an officer-involved case and eight new ones. I’ve been back East, just got in this afternoon, barely had time to get briefed. What information is developed so far?” He moved toward the doorway, waiting for me to go through first. In the lobby, he waved goodbye to the remaining office clerk.
“ID is going slow,” I said when we got outside. “We have multiple names on each Doe and we’re backed up to get prints from AFIS because the system’s been down.”
He pinched his lower lip. “This is not good.” The sun behind him backlit a single long gray cloud, but his brow eased when he looked at the sky which was now turning pink from the receding sun and said, “I’m going flying right now. That’s my relaxation.” He made a move to go, then turned his head as though he’d heard a whistle. “You’ll check with me soon as you run those prints, won’t you? No pressure, now.”
“Pressure? What pressure? Just pile another stone on my chest,” I said, and threw my arms out in a cruciform.
On the way home I listened to an audio tape of a Western novel I bought at a used-book store, but five minutes of “I reckon” and I popped it out and put music on. I tried to think about what I wanted for dinner, couldn’t decide. Wondered if my neighbor, Mrs. Langston, needed her dog walked. Wondered if my guinea pig was huddled in the dim light with his hard eyes gleaming. Reckoned he was.
SEVEN
The next morning I was moody for reasons I couldn’t pinpoint when Joe slapped a manila envelope down on my desk and said, “Turtle Rock prints. Linda sent them over.”
I picked up the envelope and said, “To you?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
His jacket was off, revealing a shirt still stiff from the cleaners.
I said, “The first two autopsies are scheduled for this afternoon. I’m meeting with Homicide before lunch.”
“Good,” Joe said. “Ferris has been all over the place this morning,” he said. “He’s behind closed doors with Watkins. I think it’s on the Doe cases.” Ferris was our lab director, Watkins the assistant sheriff.
Tipping my head toward the manila envelope, I said, “These people, they’re like ghosts on the landscape. We care about how many cases we clear, how good we look to the higher-ups, how good the higher-ups look to the public, but that’s about it.”
Joe stood and tapped my desk with two fingers as he turned to go. “Give me a buzz if you get bogged down.”
I gathered up my folders for the three cases. Inside were cards bearing lifts from the ID cards and photos of the fumed prints from Turtle Rock that a guy in Photo working swing developed for me already. I took them to the copier to enlarge five times, then put the copies under a light-box to trace the prints using a felt-tip pen because the ridges are often broken or faint. That done, I would return to the copier to reduce the copies back down, making for a strong, clear image with all the ridges, loops, and whorls now of similar weight and ready to scan into AFIS, which connects to the state’s database containing prints for anyone who was ever booked for criminal activity, ever applied to be a teacher, wanted to join the military, or stood in line for a driver’s license.
While I worked, I thought again of Little Crane. Maybe it was disrespectful to think of Little Crane by anything but her given name. But the frailty there, the memory of her being abandoned in a pitiless world, stirred me and frightened me and maybe touched a memory of someone I had known or been.
On my last run to the copier Stu came around the corner. We danced a little, then took our stances opposite each other against the walls. He said I was to meet with Homicide on the Doe cases. I said I already knew. “A citizens’ group from Cypress is raising heat,” he said. His hands served as cushions behind him as he bounced rhythmically off the wall. His forehead and nose gleamed from oil. “I got nothing against minorities, you know, but sometimes they leap to conclusions.”
“They might have a history to justify that,” I said.
“Yeah, well, we all have histories.”
I gave him a quick run-down on how much of the evidence I’d processed. Then he said, “Do your business over there and get this wrapped up, okay? If you need to put a bomb under Homicide, then do that. The tail can wag the dog if it needs to. You need my help, let me know. We have other homicides over the weekend to deal with, in addition to other felony stuff. You cool on this?”
“I was thinking Trudy might—”
“Fine. I want to be sure she keeps busy. She’s been taking a lot of time off lately. Maybe she doesn’t have enough to do.”
“It’s none of my business, Stu, I realize, but she wouldn’t be on a list or anything?”
“List?”
“For layoff.”
“She’s got seniority over you.”
“Oh, is that the way it is?” I was smiling but also fishing.
He returned a half smile. “Do a good job on these Does.”
“Or else,” I said. His look said it could be a possibility.
And thank you very much, Stu, I thought, how’s retirement sound to you?
When I made it to the copier Trudy was there, lifting the lid and putting a book on the plate. She had just punched the Start button. With the cover plate not all the way down, the escaping light washed over her. “Trudy,” I said, “how goes it? Hoo, you’re looking spiffy, now.” She was dressed in black and cream and had a silver pin of a woman holding a parasol in her lapel.
“Why, thank you, Madame,” she said, removing the book and the sheets in the catch-bin. “It’s all yours.”
I read the title on the book, and commented. “Pathways to Ecstasy. I think there might be rules about porno on the job.”
“It’s on controlling your destiny,” she said. “I can lick this,” she whispered, “I can.” Then she fled down the corridor to the office with the letters on the glass spelling HOMICIDES R US.
Boyd Russell was in the middle of a spiel when I walked into the conference room at sheriff’s headquarters. He was decked out in his usual brown suit, beige shirt, and yellow tie.
Will Bright was dressed in blue, even down to a needle-thin blue stripe in his shirt. His trim black beard and curly hair framed a watchful face. When I walked in he’d kept his gaze on me without qualm.
He lifted his briefcase from the floor and took out a folder. “I don’t know how you want to handle this,” he said to Boyd, “but this is what I’ve got.” He slid a computer printout over to Boyd and kept one for himself. I got none. Investigators are the top of the working-cop’s echelon; minions like me don’t count. I said, “You have an extra copy?” Wi
ll flipped the folder open with one finger and handed me a sheet, no apology. His glance told me a little test had just been executed.
The chart listed the three Does and characteristics of the scenes. I liked the layout but saw nothing new, and said so.
“Twelve thousand of the little buggers every day,” Boyd said while reviewing the page. “Crossings are down from last year, but this is what we’ll be seeing till somebody gets smart and plants spiked trenches and a few fragmentation mines. Twelve thousand on public dole, sooner or later. Your tax dollars and mine.”
Will’s gray eyes slid in their sockets like bubbles in a level to gaze at me then settle on Boyd. “More Russian immigrants collect welfare than Mexicans.”
I said, “Trying to get by in a tough world.”
“Yeah, well, let ’em get by in your back yard,” Boyd said, and slipped off his jacket. “You want to talk to some of those people live around San Diego sometime? Wetbacks creeping through their yards at night. Shitting on lawns, stealing whatever’s not nailed down. A whole farm family was killed a couple years back east of San Diego.”
I told him I didn’t think that case was proven to be from migrants. But it did seem the program called “Operation Gatekeeper” the INS put in place, to be enforced by Border Patrol, only strung migrants out more along the 1,800-mile border between Mexico and the United States, driving them to more perilous routes. They died in deserts and the unpredictable currents of the Rio Grande. Sometimes they fell into the hands of human coyotes more wanting of conscience than their animal counterparts. And sometimes they fell victim to American citizens tanked on twelve-packs and carrying .45’s who picked them off like target practice.
“Go where you ain’t supposed to, take the consequences,” Boyd said. “I bet you vote Democrat, too.”
Will said, “Can we get back to the business at hand, please? This first one in Irvine…”
“He worked at a place called Tri-Cycle, recycles copier cartridges. But that doesn’t mean Doe no mo’,” Boyd said.