Exploded View

by Sam McPheeters

  The car ascended and further slowed, accommodating the road’s switchback twists. Besides a few streetlights illuminating small patches of shoulder—stage sets—this was a shadowy patch of rural seclusion, elevated and forever separate from its governing metropolis. Over one set of high, well-trimmed hedges, she could make out the turrets of a hulking nouveau riche Brazilian manor.

  “You ever come up here?” she asked in a slightly awed hush.

  “Once. Me and Janice did some sightseeing back when we were dating.”

  The car turned a bit too sharply, and a deep pit opened in her gut.

  “Ugh.”

  “Huh?”

  “Queasy,” she said, registering an undeniable surge of saliva.

  “Mind over meat, Pastuszka.”

  A car passed in the opposing lane, the headlights of each dimming in respect for their human cargo. “Yeah. Janice got a little green too.”

  Car sickness bags were standard issue in all police vehicles, but they were usually considered last resorts. And they certainly weren’t intended for actual car sickness. She’d only needed them a few times that didn’t involve drinking, usually in the moments when swooping or soaring in the Basement messed up her inner ear. In general, cops relied on Dramamine or wristbands to ward off carsickness. She had neither.

  “Um. Where’re the barf bags?”

  “Seriously?” A wave of alarm crossed Zack’s face. “Do not puke.”

  The car took another tight corner.

  “Yeah.” She doubled over. “Yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah.”

  “Oh shit. Oh shit. No no no …” Zack intoned as he fumbled through the paraphernalia in the jump seat pouch.

  “Okay. Here’s one,” he said. “Just wait, until we get …”

  She grabbed the bag and neatly snapped its waxy sides open, involuntarily leaking tears as the remains of her dinner came lurching up. When she’d finished, she heard an odd echo of her own retching, catching Zack hunched over his own bag. This made her gag for another instant, although nothing else came up.

  “Shit.” He wiped his eyes.

  She made a deep moaning sound, wiping her mouth on her sleeve before catching herself in disgust.

  They sat in silence for a moment, one hot little baggie between each set of shoes. The car had stopped, perhaps disgusted at their frailty.

  “I think we’re here,” she said, noticing that the windows had fogged up.

  Terri leaned forward and rubbed one elbow on the windshield, switching arms when she remembered the mouth swipe.

  “Give me a minute,” he said.

  She gave a feeble chuckle. “Where do we put these?”

  “Unh.” He ran a thumb along the seal of the baggie. “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah …” All she could see through the patch of unfogged window was a wall of shrubbery. Tossing trash in the bushes would’ve been a serious thing, if anybody caught them.

  “Just, uh.” She felt in the small snap pocket of her jacket sleeve, relieved when she produced a small tin of breath mints. “Just, ah … let’s just leave them, and we’ll see if Overholser has a trash bag or something.”

  They stepped out through the jump door, seeing that the car had parked on the thin dirt shoulder flush with an immaculate wall of hedge, trimmed to an inhuman perfection. Light showed from a gap in the landscaping ten feet away. Zack led the way, Terri clacking three mints around in her mouth.

  The recess opened onto a gated driveway. A discretely lit call box, inset in the shrubbery, offered a single button. Above this, an illuminated sign read THE WIG WAM. Zack pressed the button and a display pad blinked to life, requesting a phone number in a serene green typeface.

  “That’s ballsy,” she said.

  He punched his number into the keypad, his PanOpts chimed, and then he said, simply, “LAPD,” crisply enunciating each letter.

  The wind picked up, tousling the tips of bamboo that peeked out from the other side of the steel gate. Each leaf was a healthy green: all the bamboo planted next to her apartment building had burned, brown tips. The gate clicked and opened inward with the soundless ease of a bank vault door.

  They crossed an enormous driveway on white pebbles that crunched softly underfoot. Far overhead, recessed lights dangled between towering limbs of oaks. Moonlight squiggled off a half-dozen glossy sports cars parked to their left. Zack pointed off into the shadows to the right of the house, saying, “Thar she blows.” She squinted, just making out the Mercedes in a dark bower that held another half-dozen cars.

  Two colossal wooden cigar store American Indians flanked the front door. This door did not swing open. Zack reached out and slammed the brass knocker once, hard, saying, “‘Wig Wam.’ Jesus.”

  “How come your house doesn’t have a name?”

  “It does,” he said. “We just …” The door clicked, paused, and then swung inward, revealing Richard Overholser. He seemed smaller and sadder than when frozen in his speeding Mercedes.

  “Mr. Overholser, I’m Detective Zendejas, of LAPD Homicide. This is my partner, Detective Pastuszka.”

  The little man’s hands drooped at his side. “How can I help you?”

  “We have reason to believe that your vehicle may have recorded a crime on Monday morning.”

  It took Terri a moment to process the interior visible from the open doorway. From a foyer of dark stained wood and Mexican terracotta, a sweeping staircase curled up and out of their line of sight. Another two colossal dime store Indians flanked the railings, and she could see another two more wooden Indian chiefs standing guard in the thin wedge of majestic living room beyond Mr. Overholser’s shoulder. She could just make out the rounded hump of a grand piano, an overall impression of opulence so forceful that it hurt to see, vexing her that they could share the world, much less the city, with a residence like this.

  “Which car would that be?” the older man asked quietly, looking more like a butler than someone who would reside in such splendor.

  “The Mercedes,” Zack said, pointing back out into the leafy murk of the car park. Perhaps because there was no way to tell how many Mercedes might be parked on the premises, he added, “The H1H. We’d like to have a look at the car’s side macros.”

  The man frowned slightly. “Oh. That’s my son’s car.”

  “Really,” Zack said, rocking on his heels. “Your son’s car.”

  “Yes. This is probably something you should speak with him about.”

  “Excuse me?”

  From somewhere past the sweep of the staircase, a deep, man’s voice bellowed. “What the hell is going on down there?”

  Mr. Overholser turned dutifully. “It’s two police officers.”

  “Detectives,” Zack said.

  The voice bellowed. “Perhaps you might explain to them that nine o’clock at night is an intrusive time for investigations?”

  “They want information. From one of the cars.”

  “Jesus Christ on the fucking cross!” Loud stomps followed, and Terri saw the younger Olverholser tromp down the stairs, her brain doing a skip as it tried and failed to reconcile the authoritative voice coming from the huge, squashed face. She turned and saw Zack staring with an open mouth.

  “Are you kidding me with this Gestapo crap? Do you know what time it is?” the colossal man asked, as if they hadn’t heard him bellowing. He was dressed in a tuxedo shirt and cummerbund, and the two ribbons of a bow tie dangled around his neck. His fat, squat limbs swung at either side and then opened wide, as close to a physical challenge as anything she’d seen go down in front of the skyscrapers. “Well? Here I am.”

  When Zack didn’t say anything, she glanced at his slack-jawed stare and said, “Mr. Overholser, we were just telling your father here that we have reason to believe your car recorded a crime scene in downtown Los Angeles. A murder.”

  “So. What.”

  “So, we’d like to look at the recording macros. Now we can …”

  “Lady, I’m an entertainment lawyer. Cr
osley, Johnson, and Overholser? You ever heard of Danny Dex and the Donkey Dong Crew? I put that together. I make both your salaries combined every three days.”

  “Sir …”

  “No. You’ve said your bit, now you’re going to hear me out.” He extended one huge, flat hand into the air between them. “You two bust in here in total violation of the fourth amendment, you badger my father, and about what? My car? It’s unacceptable. I don’t accept it.”

  “Well,” Zack said with a surprising softness, “you don’t have to accept any—”

  “And let me guess,” the younger Overholser barreled on. “This alleged murder. Does it even involve a citizen?”

  “That’s actually not the issue you need to be …”

  “Yes! Or! No! Is the deceased even part of our legal system? Or is this someone who broke federal and state law to get here, and God knows how many other laws once inside this country?”

  Zack glanced away. Terri said, “This is an open investigation involving a refugee murder, sir, and any …”

  “Then the answer is no.”

  “No?” Zack said.

  “No. I work my ass off, my property tax pays your pension, so no. I don’t comply. Get off my premises.”

  “Sir, we can obtain a warrant in a matter of minutes,” she said with what she hoped was a defusing calmness.

  “Try it!” he roared, those thick, stumpy arms swinging in rage. “I’ll tie you two up in so many IAG misconducts that you’ll be working street corners as crossing guards! Don’t think I don’t have your badge numbers.”

  The four of them stood there for a moment, and she thought she heard Zack swallow. Terri produced a business card from her jacket pocket, and leaned in to hand it to the elder Overholser, who accepted it with a nod. She and Zack made their way back across the expanse of white gravel, onto the tranquil street, back into the puke-smelling police car.

  They drove off at thirty miles per hour, saying nothing. Passing a scenic lookout, she directed the car to U-turn back, holding the top of her vomit baggie with two carefully pinched fingers as they banked. She stepped out onto the windy little overlook, still feeling unsteady and something else; headachy, fatigued, as if they’d caught a strange strain of altitude sickness from climbing too far above their social strata.

  Zack walked to the nearby railing and peered over the vast grid of Los Angeles. She pulled up her shades and rested them on her scalp, the image of the lit city seeming unreal when viewed with nothing but her eyes.

  “I don’t think it’s healthy to not frequently see this view first hand,” Zack said, tossing his barf bag over the railing. She extended one arm so that her shades weren’t in danger of falling as well, letting her own bag drop down into the leafy darkness. Crickets chirped out of season. She’d heard some gated communities imported them by the half ton just for the comforting rural background noise.

  “Have you ever seen that before?”

  He laughed. “Nope. You?”

  “No. I mean … what was that? Was that the operation?”

  “Yeah, I guess. But I’ve never heard of one without, you know. Someone doing the mind but keeping the body.”

  “I heard Voehner had it done. But, yeah. He looked like …”

  “Regular.”

  “Maybe it gives him a business advantage? Overholser, I mean. Looking like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Jesus, the shit you see in this job,” she said, instantly regretting having uttered the world’s biggest cliché aloud.

  “Ah, we’ve both seen worse.” He spread his arms wide. “Five billion people out there, Pastuszka. Lotta room for God to improv.”

  She dozed after the car dropped off Zack, waking in front of her apartment building. When she made it up the flights of stairs, she was fully awake again, standing in that silent, messy living room, whispering, “Damn.” The clock in her lower-right field of vision told her it was only 10:10, the night still young. This would be her first Friday without overtime. No more working at night.

  She placed her PanOpts back on the Chinese table with a soft knock and then paused with one finger still touching them, like a chess move she hadn’t committed to. No more paid work. She could work as much as she wanted. If that’s what brought her a scrap of pleasure, why not?

  And yet an hour later she found herself bored and frustrated and gummed up, another Friday night down the drain, wasting her time in the Basement by watching strangers attempting to enter one of those chain stores that sold slices of wedding cake, person after person pushing instead of pulling, despite the door’s signage. Technically, she was bound to honor the investigative boundaries of this tool, but she’d never gotten busted for farting around. Everybody did the same if an investigation went on long enough. Kenny Voehner had used the Basement to backstalk an ex, and it’d still taken IAG more than six months to catch on.

  She pulled off the shades and massaged the bridge of her nose, trying to rub out the soreness. The phone chimed on audio only, and when she pulled them back on, she was surprised to see a rare unlisted number, not knowing that was still possible these days.

  “Yep.”

  “Oh. Ms. Pastuszka. Is this you, or …”

  She knew the reedy little butler voice.

  “Mr. Overholser. Yeah, it’s me, I’m up. What’s on your mind?”

  “Listen. I just wanted to say …” his voice grew low, and she guessed he was trying to speak without getting overheard.

  “I just wanted to apologize for the way you and your partner were treated tonight. That’s all. I just wanted to apologize. It wasn’t right.”

  “We’ve been called worse. But thanks.”

  “It wasn’t right.”

  “Fair enough.”

  There was a silence, and she was about to thank him again and hang up when he continued. “I didn’t raise him like this. I wanted you to know that. He was a good boy. It was just after the operation …” His voice trailed into a whisper, and for a moment he seemed to be mumbling to himself.

  “After that, he changed. That’s all. They told me he’d be a new person, and they were right. I lost my boy. And now I have this, I live with this man. What you saw tonight.”

  “He seems successful,” she said to say something.

  “It wasn’t worth it.”

  “Okay. Well … again, thanks. And if you somehow think you can change your son’s mind about that footage, we’d be grateful.”

  “Oh, there’s no changing his mind. Not Ritchie. He’s a bull. He was stubborn even before. But now, no. There’s no way.”

  “Understood. Thanks for calling.” She’d heard stories of strangers treating investigators as therapists, but it had never happened to her in nine years as a detective. Or was something else going on here? She could still hear the man breathing on the other end.

  “Mr. Overholser, is there anything else you’d like to say to me?”

  “Well, I’m in the Mercedes. How do I send your recording?”

  Ten minutes later, she had the attachment open. He’d sent the last month of footage, and after she’d trimmed it down and corrected for hyperfocal fisheye and boosted brightness, she found herself pleasantly surprised by the richness of the car’s video. She could never remember which frame rates were which, but whatever speed this was, it was total overkill. Maybe that was the point with luxury vehicles.

  The footage was flat, 2D, eye-level for a toddler. She synced the Mercedes’s portside recording with her Basement map and rolled it at 5:28 on Monday morning, the car just past West Seventh, traveling southwest down Figueroa at seventy-eight miles per hour. The setup reminded her of a question from a high school math test. How many seconds before the anonymous assailant blasts the hard-working nobody? Past Eleventh Street, she slowed action to one-twentieth time, teasing out the hidden, heavy metal ballet of bumpers and hubcaps that lurks behind all vehicular motion.

  Spotting the first of the casino buses from across five lanes of car traf
fic, she chopped the speed in half again and called up Zack’s sightlines. There were six of these, each a neon green bar strung across the road like a finish line, a half-dozen filaments connecting one particular between-car blind with the view of this passing Mercedes. This in turn called up each of his witness tags, and the far sidewalk now blossomed with a dozen caption boxes floating over the heads of passers-by.

  She rolled through the first sightline and paused motion, turning and zooming into an empty space between tightly packed vehicles. Thirty-six cars lay between the corpse and the casino buses. The Mercedes sped from the north, and the shooter crawled up from the south. She had no idea how fast the assailant had moved, if he’d paused under a particular car, if he’d sensed her own watchful eye seeking him out, four days in the future. The odds had to be astronomical that she’d catch her mystery man crawling between two particular vehicles at the precise moment her particular car passed.

  She waited out the next sightline, the car flowing through the dreamy choreography of slow-mo. At Zack’s second marker, she paused and zoomed in to another patch of air. Motion resumed, and something tiny caught under a wheel two lanes away. As she watched, it exited from under the unhurried pressure of rubber squeezed against asphalt, launching itself into the air and spinning with a weightless ferocity. She paused and zoomed in, seeing that it was a paper clip, one tiny, private detail of the world that only she would ever witness.

  At this speed, motion hypnotized. Had Pearly ever come down into the Basement and slowed down the world? He must have gotten bored. Among other serious conditions, he’d suffered from crippling sciatica, all that relentless enthusiasm probably a means of concealing pain. Or maybe he’d set his VT to filter out the hurt, to substitute smirks for winces. If he hadn’t been able to maneuver through the physical world, he still had his own private world right here, 24/7. She couldn’t see herself ever growing bored with all this at her disposal.

  She yawned again, wondering if Pearly actually had died. Had she heard that or assumed it? The third sightline approached with a fluid grace. At this speed the green rod seemed mechanical, a component executing a task with unhurried precision. Maybe this is what death is, she thought. Maybe you get to explore forever and ever, world without end, slowing down time until you can watch each individual photon tumble through space like a dust mote. The sightline arrived and she halted motion and turned to zoom. Maybe you get to replay all the lost moments of your life, searching out every clue and solving every mystery. She pulled into the third space between cars, thinking, what outstanding mysteries would a man like Pearly Rodriguez leave behind?