by E. E. Giorgi
I snorted. “And how does she suppose his gun ended up at the crime scene?”
“She claims somebody led him to it.”
“How come she’s smitten with all these celebs?”
“Exactly what I asked her. She gave me this.” Diane handed me a colorful pamphlet with the word CHROMO printed on the first page, then unlocked her car and sat behind the wheel. I slouched on the passenger’s seat and flipped through the booklet while my nostrils, with a mind of their own, widened and tested the air for possible unfriendly odors.
Gone. The wind carried it away. Or maybe you were wrong, Ulysses.
Impossible.
“Genetic screening?” I asked, reading off the pamphlet. “What for?”
The engine of Diane’s old VW coughed, whined, and finally barked to life. She screeched out of the parking lot and whipped into the street, letting the first gear roar in anguish before switching to the second and third. Get an automatic for God’s sake, my inner voice screamed. But I learned a long time ago not to ever comment on a woman’s driving. It always backfires.
“It’s very popular among the rich and famous, apparently,” Diane replied, ignoring the afflictions of her engine. “Together with a healthy diet, mindful use of caffeine and alcohol, abstinence from nicotine, and supplemental folic acid, when a couple considers having a child nowadays they’re recommended genetic screening. Elizabeth Medford even promised me a special price should I think about it some day.”
I smiled. “Did you tell her you’re neither rich nor famous?”
Diane frowned. “How rude of you, Track! What do you know? I could still join the crowds of high society. I could always marry a rich litigation lawyer or a fancy plastic surgeon.”
She smiled, but somehow I was no longer amused.
* * *
It was a lady’s shoulder bag with a leather strap, zipped across the top. And it was sitting on a chair next to my desk. I inhaled. Still away. The long hand on the wall clock hit the number twelve and the short one aligned with the number four. A couple of murder books snapped closed with a loud click. Chairs were dragged on the floor and jackets were slipped back on.
“You workin’ late, Track?” a detective asked, his lips hugging the butt of an unlit cigarette.
“Gotta hit the trail when it’s hot,” I replied.
“Nail the dumb director,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “And make us proud.”
I stared at the empty desks. A phone rang but I didn’t get up to answer. Up on the ceiling, the fan swooshed. My eyes strayed back to the purse. If Diane truly was my key to Huxley’s assassin, nothing was going to stop me from finding out. I inhaled again. How long can a lady be gone powdering her nose? Her scent was nowhere close. The smell of bleach and floor detergent coming from the hallway told me the restrooms on our floor had been closed for evening cleaning, which bought me another couple of minutes. I snatched the purse, unzipped it, and went straight for the wallet. Credit cards, no cash, a UCLA alumni card, and finally the one item I sought: the driver’s license. I barely had the time to peek at the address, when her scent gently wafted into range. By the time her heels clacked back into the squad room, the shoulder purse lay untouched on the chair, and my hands where in the evidence box on my desk. It contained all the papers and documents we had seized from Huxley’s office.
“Where do you want me to sit?” Diane asked, the furrow between her eyebrows addressing the degenerate state of my working place. Damn, she smelled good.
I heaved the ream of papers out of the box and scattered them across Satish’s clean desk. “Right here,” I said, pulling out the chair for her.
She didn’t move. The furrow didn’t move either.
“What?”
“You want me to read all of those? It’s more than fifty papers, and I don’t even know I have enough background—”
“You a scientist, ain’t you?”
Her nostrils widened for a second. She walked around Satish’s desk and dropped on the chair. “I’m a forensic scientist,” she corrected.
“And DNA specialist. This stuff’s about DNA and cancer. Start with the ones authored by Huxley, Cox, or both. That should get us somewhere. Wave if the name Proteus comes up.” I got up from my desk and walked to one of the terminals across the room.
“What are you doing?”
“Educating myself on a couple of things.” I had a few trails to sniff out.
Dan Horowitz’s words rung in my ears: Everybody knows Elizabeth Medford, Detective, he’d said. Her husband loves it. What the heck did he mean? It wasn’t just what he’d said, it was the way he’d said it. Sneering. Maybe I was reading too much into it. It reminded me of something, though. I browsed the LAPD archives for about twenty minutes until I found what I was looking for. Amedeus Ilke, age 38, convicted on May 17, 2006 with three counts of trespassing and four of stalking, currently serving a three-year sentence in the California Medical Facility state prison. Officer assigned to the case: Oscar Guerra. Psychiatric evaluation: Adam Washburn, M.D.
I looked over my shoulder toward the back row of desks. Guerra’s was as clean and empty as the streets of downtown on a sultry Fourth of July. I made a mental note to leave him a message and moved on to the next item on my agenda. I had a phone number, quickly memorized while peeking at Diane’s cell phone, a first name—Jim—and now the database informed me, a last name: Kowalski. James Kowalski. Was it his smell I picked on Diane that morning? And if so, what linked him to Jennifer Huxley? I ran him for guns but nothing came up. I ran his rap sheet. Nada, not even a speeding ticket. I tapped on the keyboard. Diane shifted in her chair and the wall clock ticked. She flopped a paper back in the box and picked up a new one. With every movement, she radiated new particles in the air, like drops of black ink on a wet napkin. They drop, stain, spread.
I stared back at the screen. The hell with DMV, NCIC, NLETS, and all police databases. I went back to my old friend Google and typed “James Kowalski.” A countless list of Facebook and LinkedIn enthusiasts popped up begging me to befriend them. The hell with them too, I don’t cavort with people I can’t smell. On the Google bar I added the word “gunfire.” Nyet. Back, back, back, the clicks of the mouse spelling out my frustration. Kowalski and pistol. Send. Rotating glass hour. This time Google was taking its time thinking. And then the light. Not the one hundred watt kind, just feeble candlelight, but promising. I clicked.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (July 14, 2008)—Smith & Wesson Corporation announced today that Team Smith & Wesson earned two national titles and posted high scores in each of the eight divisions during the 2008 International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) National Championship held at the Palm Springs Shooting Range in Palm Springs, California.
I skimmed down the document.
… Concluding division wins by Team Smith & Wesson was team member James S. Kowalski. Competing with a model 6904 9mm, Kowalski fired best times in 15 of the total 17 stages to easily take the national title 13 seconds ahead of second place.
I blinked at the screen. He may not own a gun—officially, at least—but the guy knows how to handle the puppies. There was nothing else my friend Google could unearth about the man. I shrugged it off and looked up Medford. A few leads came up, and I chose the least obvious because somehow the direction was promising. One click at a time, I surfed my way in the twisted maze called Internet, made of hidden servers and bottomless databases, until I stumbled upon a name: Lizzy Trujillo. As I scrolled down the tabloids, I traveled back in time and plunged into the past, when Lizzy was a seventeen-year-old girl and ran away from home to come to live in the city. All she had was one change of clothes and fifty bucks in her pocket. Not hard to imagine what she did for a living those first few months. She had ambitions, though, and beauty on her side. Her parents filed a missing child report (still in the police records), and nothing happened for a few years over which I lost track of her. Until I found her again married to a young L.A. lawyer, financially well off, and supposedly hap
pily in love. Except something happened.
Imagine yourself a Bel Air mansion, one of those ten thousand square-foot castles with tennis court, ballroom, media room, and a couple of dozen bedrooms. By the swimming pool, leisurely voices lace with live jazz tunes. A loose needlework of wavering lights reflects off the turquoise surface of the water. Waiters in tuxedos scuttle around balancing silver trays with hors d’oeuvres and a forest of champagne flutes. Suffuse garden lights wind around flowerbeds and marble stairs. Couples in all fashions, colors, and shapes stare, judge, and let themselves be stared at and be judged. It’s the sort of event one has to absolutely attend if they’re very rich or intend to become so some day.
A pretty girl in her mid-twenties emerges from the crowd in a salmon pink gown. She shyly looks around, most faces extraneous to her, yet her eyes sparkle with anticipation. She’s looking for somebody, a lover, perhaps, or a patron, or maybe just a friend. Maybe she doesn’t know herself. Her beauty doesn’t go unnoticed. She attracts the attention of a man, who, at least ten years older than her, is quite skilled in the art of flirting. In no time he’s conquered the young woman’s heart. Like butterflies coming out of the magician’s hat, the girl watches her dreams flutter around her head, tickle her cheeks, and brighten up her future.
Unfortunately, the girl hasn’t come to the party alone. Another man claims her as his wife, and the altercation begins. The two shout at one another and soon become physical. The party is ruined, and the rumors spill out in a few tabloids the next day, which is how, about a decade later, I find out about the incident. Together with a familiar name: Richard F. Medford.
* * *
It was four thirty. Diane had waded through one quarter of Huxley’s papers. I picked up one of the laptops, brought it to my desk, and opened it. Incident Report, I wrote. My unsuccessful search in Huxley’s apartment. I sighed. Okay, seriously now. I hit the delete key like a kid would hit the shoot button at an arcade game, and started over with the easy stuff: date, place, circumstances (Investigation of disappearance of subject named Jennifer Huxley), reporting officer (Det. Ulysses M. Presius), witnesses (this one was sticky, None), and offenders (Unknown). I then came to the narrative and got stuck. What the hell was I doing there? In most cases, the officer is responding to a radio broadcast. Me, I was responding to an olfactory trace, which told me the killer had gone back to the victim’s residence. I sighed in frustration, wrote the words “gut feeling,” stared at blinking cursor, erased them and started over. I tried the word “intuition” instead, but didn’t find it appealing either. I grunted, looked away from the screen, and let my eyes wander, searching for an anchor to linger on. I found myself staring at Diane. Her perfectly arched brows, slightly frowning over the paper she was reading. The tip of the pen touching her lips. The damned report in front of me, still blank and waiting to be written.
“Hi, Satish,” I said, without turning, a fraction of a second before he entered the squad room. Diane’s head shot up. I heard him walk towards us and still didn’t turn. “Are you wearing your brown polka dot tie, Sat? You know I hate your brown polka dot tie.”
Satish chuckled and slid off his jacket. “Hello, Ms. Kyle,” he said, dragging over a chair. “Your presence in the squad room makes a noticeable improvement to the place.”
Diane smiled. “Hello, Satish. How are you?” She then knitted her brows together and sent me a sideways scowl. “Now that’s the way to treat a lady. Why don’t you take notes, Track?”
I cowardly kept my eyes on the laptop. Satish sat next to me with a broad smile painted on his face and his hands laced over his stomach. His cheeks were cleanly shaven, his wavy hair sleek and swept back. He was wearing a charcoal pinstripe suit, a lime green shirt underneath, and of course the brown polka dot tie. Which I already knew because when he does, he also wears a more expensive brand of cologne.
“What got you all groomed up?”
“Just rehearsing for our meeting with Hannah Kelson tomorrow,” he replied with feigned indifference. One of the over two thousand stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Hannah Kelson, Jerry White’s ex-wife, had always been one of Satish’s favorite actresses. And now, at forty-six, when most of her colleagues got lifted, pumped, and tucked so they could stay in the business, Hannah had retired from the big screen and was writing a book about her child’s lost fight against leukemia.
“And, I needed to get the squalid smell of morgue off my skin,” Satish added, flopping a manila folder on the desk.
I placed the laptop back on my desk and picked up the document. “Huxley’s autopsy report,” I noted, opening the folder. Something I’d been waiting for.
Diane closed the paper she’d been reading and craned her head. “What does it say?”
Satish summarized it for us. The official cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. The slugs—consistent with a nine millimeter semi-jacketed hollow point—had perforated both the right and left cardiac ventricles. The body presented bruises on the arms and legs, and skin lacerations from the ropes at her wrists and ankles. The victim had been restrained first and then sedated with a substance called benzodiazepine. Traces of the drug had been found in the flesh-eating bugs collected from the corpse.
“It’s a psychoactive drug,” Diane noted, recognizing the name. “It’s not OTC, though. You need a prescription.”
“Any luck on a TOD?” I asked.
“No earlier than Thursday and no later than Sunday. Cohen couldn’t do any better than that,” Satish said.
“It doesn’t tell us whether or not she was dead by the time the Tarantinos got murdered. We’ve got to have her fingerprints compared to those found on the first commandment note. Did they collect her nail trimmings?”
“Yes—no traces of DNA, though.”
“I’m not thinking DNA.” I turned to Diane. “You should take a look at those trimmings and compare them to the fragment from the Tarantinos’ home.”
Satish clicked his tongue. “Cohen’s report states Huxley’s brain tissue was unremarkable. If traces of anticonvulsants had been found, it would be on the report.”
I leaned back in the chair and groaned. “What’s new then?” None of these findings answered any of my conundrums.
“Perlite,” Satish replied.
“Perlite? Is it something from your childhood the autopsy report reminds you of?”
He laughed. “No, perlite is what’s new in the autopsy report. Cohen found microscopic, subcutaneous glass shards on the inside of the victim’s hands. Further analyses unveiled traces of perlite on the crystals. It’s a volcanic mineral.”
“What’s it used for?”
“Mostly construction material, as an insulator. Interestingly enough, the rope used to bind her—”
“Hemp cord?”
Satish nodded. “Also of common use at construction sites.”
“It’s a natural fiber, very sturdy,” Diane interjected. She sighed, pulled away from the desk, and got to her feet. The small hand on the clock’s face had reached the number five. “I couldn’t find anything even vaguely close to the word Proteus, Track. Huxley’s manuscript is exactly what Cox had told you it was: a genetic study on leukemia cases, all under twelve years of age. When Huxley says ‘kids,’ she’s as generic as she could be. All subjects in the study are children.”
“So you basically found nothing?”
“Well, there’s one possibility—”
“Shoot.” I could tell Diane was being cautious not to jump to conclusions. On the other hand, I was desperate for anything, even far-fetched suppositions.
“These cases of leukemia are treated through bone marrow transplant. Before surgery patients undergo aggressive chemo and radiotherapy treatments in order to get rid of all cancerous cells in the blood. In her manuscript, Huxley describes a subgroup of children whose cancers were so resilient they did not respond to therapy.” Diane brought a hand to her mouth and nibbled her thumb. “They died before they could get the transplant.�
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“How many are we talking about?”
She leafed through the paper. “Twelve.”
“You think those could be the Proteus kids Huxley referred to in her letter?”
“I don’t know. As I said, the name Proteus is never mentioned in the paper. Mine’s a supposition, based on the fact that this subgroup of patients stands out.”
Diane’s hypothesis made perfect sense. But then the next question was: what linked those kids to Chromo? And more importantly: how were we to bypass all HIPAA and PPA bullshit in order to find out who these kids were?
“I’m off,” Diane said, retrieving her purse. “I’ll stop by Computer Forensics tomorrow to check on the status of Tarantino’s and Huxley’s hard drives. Good night, guys.”
My nose held onto Diane’s trail as it disappeared down the hallway and vanished into the elevator. So damn different from just a few hours earlier.
Satish grinned. “You seem distracted, Track.”
I grunted. “Distracted by what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Ladies’ charms, maybe?”
Scowling, I retrieved the computer and propped it back on my lap. “Look who’s talking, Sat. You and your ugly polka dot tie. Don’t tell me you’re going to wear it tomorrow to show off in front of Kelson.”
Satish slid the tie between his fingers. “What’s wrong with my polka dot tie?”
“Did you find out how Kelson and Conrad met?”
“I did a little research.”
“Allow me a wild guess, then. They met at Chromo.”
Satish’s eyes shifted from his tie to my face. “Good job, Track. I see your psychic abilities go beyond guessing a person’s attire.”
“I can do better than that. White and Kelson went to Chromo in the early ’nineties for genetic counseling. They wanted a child, and Chromo convinced them a good DNA check-up was in line with painting the nursery and buying diapers.”
Satish nodded silently, brows curled together in a deep thinking frown. “They wanted to do everything by the book,” he said. “White and Kelson. They went to see doctors, counselors, and geneticists. Everything had to be perfect for the baby they were going to have. What a peculiar concept.”