Body on the Backlot

by Eva Monteleagre

  “That smile on your face tells me you have something for us,” said Gus.

  “Yeah, we got a look see.” The guy was a full foot and a half taller than Gus.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Check it out for yourself.”

  I sat down in an old-fashioned wooden desk chair and waited for the screening. Gus stood behind me. Jonathan bent into a right angle and played with the knobs for a while. Finally, a picture came through crystal clear.

  At first we were merely looking at an unobstructed view of the coroner’s doorway. The driver of the coroner’s truck from the Autumn Riley crime scene arrived. The back doors flew up and out came the gurney with the body wrapped in a white sheet. Business as usual. It looked probable that the body could be Autumn Riley’s. The gurney was parked inside the driver’s entrance just like Ray had said. The driver walked away. There was no action for a moment. Then the gurney came alive. Whoever was under the sheet was struggling like a butterfly fighting its way out of the cocoon. First one arm, then the other and then finally, Autumn Riley, still in her green cocktail dress, her red hair wild, squiggled out of the tightly wrapped sheet. She slipped off the gurney, slumped for a moment against it, then, with a dazed look, shuffled out of frame. I bolted straight up out of my chair.

  “Ohmigod,” said Gus.

  “She’s not dead,” I said.

  “Nope, she’s not,” said Jonathan.

  “You think Dani has seen her, talked to her?” I asked Gus.

  “Could be,” Gus said and hit rewind to see it again. We sat there silently and watched once more as Autumn Riley was reborn and stumbled off screen. “We have to notify the parents,” Gus said.

  “That should be good. Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Riley, didn’t mean to upset you, know you filed complaints, had newspaper articles written and paid for a big fancy memorial, but your daughter is not dead. She’s wandering around in Los Angeles somewhere in a wrinkled green cocktail dress.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  WE FAST-TRACKED BACK TO the office. I had called the motel where The Barb was staying but he had skipped out on his bill. Gus had clout from his previous history working Hollywood division, so he’d made the call to have them pick Dani up and bring her in. When they went by Dani’s place, she had already fled, taking her radio and all her clothes and make up, leaving nothing behind but empty fast-food containers.

  “Everybody’s in the wind,” said Gus.

  We conferred with Satch and did the paperwork to put an all-points bulletin out on Dani for Los Angeles county. I called surveillance for the second time that day and talked to Sauri. He said there had been no sign of anyone at Autumn’s bungalow. And the dog was apparently a stray. I looked in on Satch. He was on the phone and from the look on his face I could tell he was speaking to the parents.

  I called Dr. Sheffield, the scientist I found on the Internet, to confirm our appointment, hoping that he might be able to shed some light on what kind of drug would make a paramedic believe Autumn Riley was dead when she wasn’t. Gus made calls to a couple of his drug snitches.

  I sat down at my desk and stared up at the boar’s head on the wall, the Special Section mascot. Just then my phone rang. I grabbed it so hard I hit myself in the head with the receiver.

  “Joan? Is this Joan Lambert?” a voice asked.

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “This is Kunda, I need to talk to you.”

  “Talk right now, ‘cause I’m kind of busy.” Kunda, the Malibu Psychic. This oughta be good.

  “I saw Autumn.”

  “What?”

  “I saw her. I know it was her. She was standing in front of Wacko on Melrose. But she’s disappeared now. Can’t find her.”

  “When?”

  “About an hour ago. I lost her in the crowd somehow.”

  “Was she with anyone?”

  “I didn’t see anybody, but maybe. I don’t know for sure.”

  “Okay, Kunda. Thanks.”

  I hung up. It was two o’clock.

  “Gus, I just got a call from Kunda, says she saw Autumn outside some store. Wacko, on Melrose.”

  “No shit?”

  “Plus, I’ve got a meeting with a Dr. Sheffield,” I said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “He’s an expert on botanical cures.”

  “Botanical cures? What’s that got to do with…”

  “I found him under voodoo drugs on the computer.”

  “Hmmph.”

  “You know, like they use in Haiti, to make zombies.”

  Gus looked at me like maybe I had something.

  “You ready to go tell Satch that Autumn Riley has been seen on the street? That you’re meeting with Dr. Livingston to flush out a zombie lead?”

  “You’re not going to say it like that, that it’s a zombie lead, are you?” I asked.

  “It’s your lead, you explain it. It’s not like we’re making this shit up, you know. Don’t look so apologetic.”

  I glanced over again at the wild boar’s head mounted on the wall. There’s a hat hung above it in deference to the Hat Squad, a bunch of detectives from the forties.

  “You keep staring at the pig,” whispered Gus.

  “So?”

  Gus headed for the captain’s office. I followed. Satch was reading a report and shaking his head when we entered his office.

  “Cap’n, we got a sighting of Autumn Riley,” said Gus.

  “What?” He looked from Gus to me to see if there was an explanation.

  “She was seen on Melrose,” I said.

  “On her own two feet?”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered. “We put out an APB on her best friend, Dani, an Australian girl we just interviewed.”

  “The parents are going to call me back for an update. In my thirty years of service I have never had to do anything remotely like this. There’s nothing in policy to address it.”

  “We’ll get a team to canvas the area with her picture,” said Gus.

  “You damn right you will. I want a real lead, understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Gus and I both said in unison.

  “Okay, get out of here and get to work.”

  As we were heading out, Mark O’Malley asked me if I had come across anything on his missing girls.

  “No, I checked in on Mason Jones, a sex offender in that area. And we put some surveillance on him but it looks like nothing. In a minute I’m going to add Autumn Riley to your list of missing.”

  “Except in her case, we know she’s dead.”

  “Wrong,” I said.

  “What?”

  “She’s alive, woke up and walked out of the morgue.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “That’s the question. I gotta run, but let me get a look at your missing files and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll make you a copy,” he said.

  “That’ll be good. I’ll study them when I get a chance.”

  “Thanks,” said Mark. “You know one of the missing girls, Katrice, wrote a note in her diary. She said something about being dead and then waking up. I thought it was peculiar and made a note of it. What you just said about Autumn Riley reminded me.”

  “Do you think it happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Katrice, it seemed like she was fascinated by it, you know?”

  “Get me that copy of the files, and leave it on my desk. I’ll see if there’s any connection. I gotta go.”

  Mark nodded in a distracted way and I couldn’t help but think that maybe he oughta be taken off the case. Not that I would ever suggest such a thing. I know how it is. I was hoping that I’d be able to help him out. We do that for each other sometimes. Plus, Satch likes to mix up the partners every once in a while. But right then, I had my hands full. Gus and I sped down the freeway toward Melrose Avenue followed by two other sedans. The guys in Robbery and Homicide had joined us in an effort to fast-forward the canvas. Making a team of six experienced investigators, we ent
ered restaurants, clothes shops, candy stores, cigar shops, ice cream stores, sex shops, and even Wacko. In Wacko, there were lots of what my grandmother would refer to as whatnots of Elvis and Jesus. Whatnots. Funny word. I was hoping they had voodoo dolls, but no luck. After two hours, we had nothing. I was late for my meeting with Dr. Sheffield. I’d have to leave the rest of the team to carry on the canvas. Just as Gus and I were about to get in the car, a guy who was completely done out in leather, including a leather baseball cap on his head, came running up behind me.

  “Excuse me, excuse me.”

  I turned to face him. “Can I help you?”

  “You were in the store where I work. The leather store. You were asking questions.”

  “Yes.” I showed him the picture of Autumn. “Have you seen her?”

  “Is she missing?” he asked.

  “Yes, she’s missing, did you see her?”

  “I did. I saw her.”

  “Why didn’t you say that when we were in your store?”

  “It’s like this, she was this beautiful girl, and she came in when I opened the store. She was shivering, her teeth were chattering like mad. She was obviously in some kind of distress. I gave her a leather jacket from our inventory. Plus, I gave her some change from the register for a phone call. She didn’t have any money and I felt sorry for her and if my boss knew I did either of those things I’d be fired so fast!”

  “Okay. Did she say anything?”

  “Not a word. I didn’t know if she’d been raped and just let out of a car, or if she had been doing some bad drugs, or what. She was a mess. Pitiful.”

  “Did you see which way she went?”

  “No, she walked out the door just as my boss came in. I nearly pissed my pants. It was early, before the crowd, and I was sure he’d seen her and recognize the jacket, but he didn’t. Hardly noticed her, thank God.”

  •••

  GUS DROVE AND I quietly organized my thoughts as we sped through Pacific Palisades.

  It took a little getting used to, this concept that Autumn Riley was alive. I was ashamed of my strong sentiment when I recalled the crime scene and how I believed I had experienced her last breath, how I held her cold hand with such grief, how badly I wanted to save her. At the same time, a crazy surge of hope and the miracle of life mixed into my emotions. One moment she was dead and it seemed the whole world wanted to know why. The next, she was alive and walking around in a new leather jacket. A real-life resurrection. Still, she had to be horribly vulnerable in such a state and a new set of concerns besieged me. We drove past a well-to-do beach community on Sunset Boulevard, then up behind the old Getty Museum, until we came to the modest facilities of Dr. Sheffield’s laboratory. Nestled in the foothills, surrounded by mountains, it was an idyllic place to do research.

  A receptionist, an older woman who looked horribly bored, escorted us to Dr. Sheffield’s office. A tiny round man with bifocals and a hawk-like nose greeted us and invited us to sit on two French chairs in front of his desk. My mother had brought a whole house of French furniture with her from New Orleans when she and my father married. It had filled our large Ozark home and had been an item of gossip in those hills for years. I sat on Dr. Sheffield’s French furniture and decided that it was not as nice as my mum’s.

  I introduced Gus and I couldn’t help but notice a colorful abstract painting on one wall. I looked at it closely; the painting had been done on goatskin. A white streak went through the colors of red, orange, and electric blue. I thought perhaps the jagged streak was representative of lightning. I don’t really go for the abstract stuff but the colors were so vibrant that I was tempted to ask about it.

  “We’ve never had homicide detectives come to see us before,” said Dr. Sheffield.

  “Yes, thanks for taking the time,” I said. “I realize it is a bit unusual but I’m really hoping you can help us.”

  “How?”

  He looked over his bifocals at me and his birdlike eyes looked amused.

  “Can you name a drug that can induce a death-like state?”

  “Of course, there are many drugs,” he said warily. I said nothing, so he continued. “If you wish to paralyze, so that a conscious person will be trapped in a body that can’t move, you’d need Anectine. It’s short-acting, lasts only six to eight minutes, and is given by IV. It’s often used during surgery to relax, or paralyze skeletal muscles, thus preventing the movement of arms, legs, even breathing

  and swallowing.”

  “Are there any similar drugs that last longer?”

  “There are other drugs that are longer-acting: Tracum, lasts thirty minutes, Zemoron also lasts thirty minutes. Nuromax, lasts nearly ninety minutes. All of them are given by IV.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “May I inquire into the reason you want to know these things?”

  “We have an important case we’re trying to solve.”

  “Oh.”

  “We think the victim may have been drugged by someone unknowingly.”

  “I once knew a colleague who was doing some research in that area. He had some success with scopolamines using belladonna, a nightshade extract. Apparently, there had been some previous use of it as a truth serum. Persons under the influence of scopolamine can be ordered to release passwords, empty bank accounts, and engage in sexual acts without their consent or even full knowledge.”

  “Could that be what we’re dealing with here?”

  “It’s difficult to manufacture. The problem was that it often caused retrograde amnesia and walking trances. The new research revealed that in certain doses it did create the effect of suspending the life force. There were some problems, however, with circulatory collapse—blood pressure dropped and respiration became inadequate. I believe some subjects died and those that lived were horribly traumatized. Needless to say, this doctor’s research was dispensed with.”

  “Dr. Blanchard. He was doing research in Haiti.”

  “Why yes, him. You seem quite knowledgeable.”

  “I understand that Dr. Blanchard was killed in a fire set by Haitians. Was he doing something, uh, dishonorable perhaps? Maybe using Haitians in his experiments?”

  “That is the story. One never really knows the truth in these things. It may have merely been an accident or a misunderstanding.”

  “Is there any possibility that this drug is available for a person who might want to use it for recreation?”

  “No, I think not. Perhaps the CIA has a supply. I did hear something about a drug potentiated by the raw plant extract of the borrachio, referred to as the drunken tree. It causes a fugue state, a disassociated feeling, loss of ego, the sense of self is gone.”

  “But would that drug cause a person to be mistaken for dead?” asked Gus.

  “Not in its pure state, but drugs can be altered, things added and such, and the results can be, well, deadly. The therapeutic efficacy, or not so therapeutic in some cases, depends on several factors including purity, potency, and correct dosage. As you might guess, standardized procedures are frequently lacking on the street.”

  “Did Dr. Blanchard ever pass on any of his findings to you?” asked Gus.

  “Not to me in particular. His studies were published.” He smiled at Gus.

  “But you know so much about it,” Gus insisted.

  “Any doctor or student has access to those writings through the local university research library. His work was somewhat ‘tabloid’ and played on the knowledge or theory, depending on how you look at it, that zombies were the first slaves. There was a lot of talk in the medical research community, most of it speculative. The intriguing feature being that the individual lacked free will and, in theory, a soul. It was a source of great debate. He was working on creating a synthetic drug. I believe a trial potion was formulated but never published.”

  “A trial potion? Of what?” I asked.

  “The original formula was a combination of poison accumulated from toad skin, poisonous plants, and puffer fish
administered through the skin. The concoction brought a person to a near-death state and then later, less formidable doses kept them manageable but functioning. Oh, and there was even some mention of dolls. But that was just rumors and gossip, really. After the incident, its scientific popularity faded.”

  “Except for on the Internet,” I said.

  Dr. Sheffield frowned and gave me a disapproving look.

  “I hope you don’t believe everything you read on the Internet,” he said.

  “And what exactly are you working on?” asked Gus.

  “I’m working on alkaloids, two of them. One found in a Cameroonian rainforest vine and another from an Australian chestnut tree. Both have shown beneficial activities against the AIDS virus. It’s long laborious work and I should be getting back. I do sympathize with your problem. If you like, I can make some calls and see what we can do to provide the coroner’s toxicology department with some samples of the newer, lesser known drugs, so they you can include them in your official tests. It could be of help in your case about this woman.”

  A screeching siren filled my ears. It took me a moment to realize it was my new cell phone—Satch.

  “Hold on, Satch, just a second. Thanks, Dr. Sheffield, that would be great,” I said and shook his hand. “And thank you so much for your time.”

  Gus finished up the goodbye and I pressed the cell phone to my ear to continue the call from Satch. There was an edge to his voice and I knew that something was wrong. I took a few steps away from Gus and the doc.

  “Joan, I need you and Gus to meet me at a crime scene here in North Hollywood. Your girl, Dani, is dead.”

  “Dani? Autumn’s friend? How could she possibly get dead that fast?”

  “Looks like some sick fuck got to her. Sex crimes is here.”

  “What’s the address?” Satch gave me the directions. “We’re on our way.”

  I gave the directions to Gus and tried to focus in on the interview with Dr. Sheffield before I lost anything. As we pulled away from the institute, I reviewed every word that Dr. Sheffield said. We drove down from the Santa Monica mountains and back into Pacific Palisades before it hit me.