by Alton Gansky
How had Carmen Rainmondi reentered his life?
She hadn’t recognized him. No surprise there. It had been nearly thirty years since their eyes last met. There had been no conversation, no dialog, no encounter . . .
Just two people standing on different borders of the same nightmare.
He leaned forward and lay his head on his desk, trying to lock the door to the cellar of his mind, but some beasts cannot be caged.
The image slipped to the forefront of his brain: the smoke, the overturned car, the wide-eyed, brutal, furious-insane driver, and the helpless woman. He could still smell the acrid scent of spilled gasoline on asphalt, of oily smoke. He could still see the overturned car, its tires spinning. And he could still hear the man’s curses and the sounds—the aching, marrow-chilling, horrible sounds of him as he—
Alone in his office, Ellis plugged his ears with his fingers, a useless act against noises that came from within his own skull.
He saw it happen.
He saw what the killer did.
He watched a woman die and he did nothing.
Nothing.
A helpless woman’s blue eyes had looked to him for help and found only a quivering, spineless, seventeen-year-old kid.
And now, twenty-eight years after the fact, he saw those blue eyes again—the same, yet different—as the detective sat before him asking questions about another murder.
Ellis began to weep into the silent room.
4
You’re kidding.” Tock looked up from his desk. “Seems a little quick to me.”
Carmen set the handset in the phone’s cradle. “That was the man himself. He hasn’t finished the autopsy, but he said there’s something we should see.”
Tock sighed and looked at his watch. “It’s already after six and I promised to be home early.”
“That’s the surest way to guarantee you’ll be stuck on overtime. How much more do you have on the book?” Carmen eyed the file Tock was working on. “The book” was verbal shorthand for the homicide file. She and Tock would add information as they worked the case.
“Not much. Maybe another ten or fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll swing by the ME’s and fill you in tomorrow. Go home to your wife.”
Tock looked conflicted. “Is this where I offer a weak and contrived objection?”
“Yes, and this is where I insist I don’t mind, then leave you thinking what a wonderful partner I am.”
“My wife and kids thank you.”
An image of Tock’s family flashed in Carmen’s mind like a picture from an old slide projector: a blonde, thin woman in her mid-thirties, an equally blonde eight-year-old stepdaughter, and a dark-haired boy of four who already looked too much like his father. Carmen had been to their home on several occasions, usually at some party thrown by his gregarious wife. Tock had never told his wife about his and Carmen’s short affair, and Carmen never felt compelled to fill in the blanks.
“Tell your wife I said, ‘Hi.’ You can also tell her she’s too good for you.”
“Thanks, but she already knows that.”
Carmen forced a smile and left the office, fighting envy with every step.
She drove from downtown and up the I-15 to Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, exited to the west, and pushed through coagulating traffic until she arrived at the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s office on Farmam Street. When she exited the Ford sedan, she noticed a small, private airplane banking on approach to Montgomery Field Airport a short distance away. For a moment she watched and wondered what it might be like to be able to fly to other cities on a whim.
Then she shook the daydream off and soon exchanged the sweet, evening spring air for the recycled, tainted air of the ME’s offices.
After identifying herself and signing in, she pushed through the doors leading to the autopsy rooms in the back. Each visit she made to the building stirred up a stew of emotions. She always felt a small amount of apprehension, but she had grown used to the grisly sights found in the windowless rooms. Mostly, the ironic resemblance to a hospital teased her. Most people who enter a hospital leave in better shape than when they arrived. Not here. You came in dead and you left just as dead, and with a Y-shaped scar on your chest and detached rib cage.
No matter how clean the employees kept the facility, there remained a vague, haunting odor that reminded Carmen of cold, uncooked chicken.
She pushed through the doors that opened to the wide work area. The scene was familiar: a series of stainless steel tables lined one wall; at the head of each sat a sink. Horrible things drained into those basins every day. On each of the tables rested the unclothed form of what had once been a living person. The medical examiner’s office investigated any unusual death. That included suicides, accidental deaths, sudden deaths, communicable disease, and environmentally related deaths. In the end, however, dead remained dead.
Dr. Norman Shuffler stood next to another ME, scrutinizing each move. Judging by the age difference, the senior Shuffler was guiding the younger man in the fine art of cutting corpses. Her eyes traced the scene and noticed that the nude body of her victim reclined on the nearest table as if patiently waiting his turn. She looked back at Shuffler, who pointed to something inside a woman’s chest.
“Holding court again, Doc?”
Shuffler shifted his gaze. “Ah, there she is, heartthrob of the SDPD.”
“Yeah, right. Heartthrob. That’s me.”
The ME said something to his protégé, rounded the autopsy table, and approached the lifeless form of Doug Lindsey. Shuffler wore green surgical garb, tennis shoes, and horn-rimmed glasses that looked like a leftover from four decades before. A tuft of white hair crept from beneath the cloth head covering that draped his dome.
Shuffler ranked high on the scale of Carmen’s favorite people. He had a quick wit and ready smile. His blue eyes reflected a keen intelligence. Not the kind to rush to judgment, he had provided valuable information on many of Carmen’s cases. She considered herself lucky when she drew him as the ME.
“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Detective. Many men find you attractive.” He stepped to the side of Doug Lindsey’s body and gazed at it.
“Now you sound like my father. Whatcha got?” She moved closer to the metal table. Doug Lindsey seemed anything but serene. His pale skin looked more like rubber than human flesh. Eyes that would never blink again stared at the ceiling. The series of red puncture marks dotted his torso.
“I thought you’d want to see this before I opened him up. Everything is still preliminary, but you will find this interesting.” He reached for a switch and a powerful overhead light came on, bathing the body in white illumination. “Of course, you’ve already noticed the puncture marks. They run from belt line to shoulders and, as you can see, cover his chest and face.”
“Do you think that those wounds are the COD?”
He shook his head. “I have an early guess about the cause of death, but first I want you to notice the pattern.”
Carmen leaned over the body, her face just a foot or two away. “They’re uniform.”
“Excellent.” He pushed on one of the small holes near the deceased’s navel. “You’ll notice that the punctures are evenly spaced—about six millimeters between each two punctures—a quarter of an inch. The distance between the rows is about the same. Each wound is nine millimeters deep—call it three-eights of an inch.”
“There must be a hundred or more holes in this guy’s skin. That would take a long time to do.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Detective. It could be done in moments.”
Carmen narrowed her eyes. “How can you know that?”
“Because I love pizza.”
Carmen’s mind seized. “What?”
“Surely you’ve seen someone ma
ke a pizza. It’s quite the art. I worked my way through college slinging dough and dipping out pizza sauce.”
“That’s a part of your history I would never guess. I thought you came from the privileged class.”
“I do, but my father believed his darling son should learn what it means to work for a buck. I had to pay for the first two years at the university. If I did well, he’d pay the last two years, as well as foot the bill for med school.”
“Doesn’t seem to have hurt you.”
“I loved the old man for it. Built character. Well, I didn’t love him the first two years of university, but I see the wisdom now. Anyway, part of the preparation for a great pizza is docking the dough.”
“I don’t follow.”
“A dough docker is a tool that puts small holes in the bread. The dough is rolled out and spun to the right size; then the cook takes a tool that is nothing more than a nylon roller with small spikes and runs it over the dough. Then come the toppings.”
“Someone ran a pizza-making tool over this guy? Why?”
“Ah, that I don’t know. I just read bodies. It’s your job to find bad guys and make sense of the clues.” He pointed at a string of holes. “Notice that there’s a small gap between this set of holes and the adjoining set. The roller you’re looking for is about twelve-and-a-half centimeters wide.”
“Twelve-and-a-half centimeters—”
“Five inches.”
“Got it.” Carmen studied the body. “Tell me something, Doc. Would the victim have to be still for the rows to be this even? I mean, three-eights of an inch isn’t deep, but it had to hurt.”
“‘Hurt’ doesn’t cover it. It’d be excruciating.”
“And you think you know how he died?”
“Look here.” Shuffler moved to the dead man’s head. “See his eyes?”
“Petechial hemorrhage.” She shifted her gaze to the man’s neck. “I don’t see any bruises or marks to indicate strangulation.”
“Petechial hemorrhage doesn’t always indicate strangulation. When it appears in the eyes, it only indicates vascular congestion in the head that results in ruptured capillaries.” He straightened. “Now here’s where you rise up and call me a genius.” He removed a magnifier with a light from a drawer and held it close to the victim’s mouth. “Take a look.”
Carmen took the device and again bent over the corpse. “Red bumps. Like a rash.”
“Now here.” He drew a finger along the jaw line.
“More of the same.”
“Right. There are spots on his arms as well.”
Carmen handed the magnifier back to Shuffler. “And just what am I to make of all of this? He had a rash when he died?”
“I know this rash.” Shuffler returned the tool to the drawer. “I get it all the time.”
“Do I want to hear this?”
“If you want to solve the case you do. I’m waiting on the blood work for verification, but I’d bet your next paycheck that our departed friend here has an allergy to latex.”
“Latex? Like the gloves we wear?” Carmen knew of several officers who developed an annoying rash each time they donned latex gloves. She also knew of one crime-scene tech who had to quit because of the allergy. He was even allergic to the newer, non-latex material.
“Five- to ten-percent of health care workers have some degree of latex allergy. I’m one of them. I wear one-hundred-percent nitrile, powder-free gloves. If I don’t, I’m up all night applying lotions and scratching like a flea-infested dog. I’m not fun to live with when I get that way.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Shuffler grinned. “No need for you to. Latex comes from rubber trees in Africa and Southeast Asia. Some of us develop the allergy over time. Some patients who have exposure to latex because of repeated surgeries can develop the allergy.”
“As uncomfortable as that sounds, I don’t see how a skin allergy plays into this.”
“Hang with me just another moment, Detective. Not all allergies are created equal. What I have is simple irritant-contact dermatitis. Annoying but not serious. On the dangerous end of the scale is latex hypersensitivity. Some people have such a serious response they go into anaphylactic shock.”
“You mean like people who are allergic to bee stings.”
“Exactly, except the causative agent is latex or some other rubber-based product. I’m betting he used to carry an Epipen of some sort.”
“So he could give himself a dose of epinephrine if he needed to.”
“Yes. And he needed to in the worst way.”
“But someone kept him from reaching it.”
The ME nodded. “That’s how it looks now. I’ll know more when the blood work is back and after I open him up. For now, it looks like someone held the young man down and held a latex glove over his mouth. Most gloves come with latex powder in them. Your victim inhaled some and suffocated shortly after—suffocated by his own body.
“A death that results from a felony is still murder. The death might not have been premeditated, but running a roller with pins in it over the body shows intent—sick intent.”
Carmen stared at the body. “You’ll get no argument from me.”
5
May 4, 1985
The Saturday night seemed darker than usual, heavier with salty ocean air. The street lights along Grand Avenue in Pacific Beach pooled golden light on the asphalt and sidewalks of the beach community. Small shops and houses lined the streets. At an hour past midnight, most lights in buildings were off, but a few glowed in the bars and bungalow homes. Pacific Beach was an eclectic community, filled with young people who couldn’t tolerate living more than a few miles from the ocean, and old surfers who had moved into town never to leave.
Ellis Poe saw the view on a regular basis. Several times a week—more often than he liked—he drove from the McDonald’s on Garnett Street, to Grand to Balboa, to his home in East Clairemont—and usually did so in the wee hours of the day. Ellis had worked at the burger joint for the last two years, becoming a favored closer. When not exhausted, he was thankful for the late shift. First, it gave him time to do homework before making the fifteen-minute drive to the fast-food restaurant. Much of his shift was taken up with cleaning the grill, mopping the floor, sterilizing the milk-shake machine, and twenty other daily details required to close the place for the night. During those hours, Ellis could focus on his work without having to deal with patrons. Ellis liked people; he just didn’t much like being around them.
There were exceptions of course. He wasn’t a misanthrope. He just liked people he knew, and those in small numbers.
As Grand gave way to Balboa, Ellis let his mind run to the days ahead. A few more weeks of study and then final exams. Soon he’d leave behind the tedious high-school experience and move to the more challenging and, hopefully, mature college life. He wouldn’t be going far. San Diego State University would be his collegiate home. He saw no need to leave his hometown. History majors were not judged by their choice of colleges, unlike science and engineering majors.
Ellis kept a light foot on the accelerator. He was in no hurry to get home. His parents would be long asleep. Dad went to bed at ten. Never later. Never sooner. Besides, the drive home was therapeutic. He could forget the pressure-filled work of cranking out burgers and fries and let his mind paint images of his future. His 1967 VW Beetle served as a decompression chamber. To his father, it was a collector’s item, but then his father was a mechanic and any old thing with an engine was something to be adored.
Another thought rattled around in his mind as he drove onto Clairemont Mesa Boulevard: Jesus. Three days ago, that would have been an odd thought. Not that he was irreligious. He and his parents were regulars at a local Methodist church. Well, Easter and Christmas. They went to church when there was a need: funeral, we
dding, baptism of a friend’s child. He couldn’t think of a time when one of his parents said on a Saturday night, “Let’s go to church in the morning.” There was always something else to do, or Dad was too tired from busting his knuckles on car engines.
Then, last week, something happened. Something unexpected. An ongoing conversation with an acquaintance at school turned into something more than jawing about history. He had had little time to think his decision through, something he hoped to do tomorrow. He had been invited to church and was certain he would go—
The headlights in his rearview mirror caught his attention, first because of how bright they were—some moron was driving with his high beams on—then by the speed at which they approached. The first fact annoyed him, but not unduly. At this time of night, local watering holes were disgorging their tipsy customers to swerve their way home. The second fact, however, alarmed him. It was one thing to be drunk and driving, but drunk and speeding was just an accident looking for the right spot to forever change lives.
The car swerved to the left, nearly impacting the concrete barrier that separated the two westbound lanes from Ellis’s eastbound ones. Then it veered into the right lane—Ellis’s lane.
Ellis pressed the accelerator of the VW Bug and the vehicle’s four pistons increased their work. It wasn’t enough. He was driving an old car up a persistent grade. The car had never been fast, and it wouldn’t become so just because some joker felt he was immune to the quart of liquor he had consumed.
Ellis’s heart pounded harder than the pistons he was begging to muscle the car up the hill faster.
The bright headlights grew in the rearview mirror.
“Come on, car.”
The headlights moved back and forth in the lane, closing the distance. Each second brought it closer. Ellis cranked the wheel to the left, moving to the other lane, but the human-guided missile behind him did the same.