A Perjury of Owls
Book Four of ‘Fantasy & Forensics’
Michael Angel
Copyright 2016
Michael Angel
Includes a sneak preview of
the fifth book in the
‘Fantasy & Forensics’ series,
Forgery of the Phoenix,
also by Michael Angel.
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COLOR AND B&W MAPS OF ANDELUVIA
A Perjury of Owls
Book Four of ‘Fantasy & Forensics’
By Michael Angel
Chapter One
I don’t trust joggers. They’re always the first ones to stumble across the dead bodies. And they always seem to have the same alibi: they were just ‘out for a run.’
That said, I’ve never managed to pin a murder on one.
Just give it time, I figured. My rotten luck is probably all that’s holding me back.
I pulled the OME van off the side of the road and stopped by a small park. Actually, calling this ratty patch of grass and trees a ‘park’ was like calling a badly pilled scrap of wool a cashmere sweater. This restful little bit of ‘green space’ came with sporadic-at-best gardening services and seventy decibels of traffic noise from the multilane freeway opposite a chain-link fence.
I shut off the engine, got out and went around to throw open the van’s rear doors. The call I’d gotten from the dispatch officer was clear: the LAPD was looking at a suspected homicide, so I needed to suit up. I pulled a ‘one size fits most’ white jumpsuit from a storage bin and then sat on the rear bumper to get my gear on.
Four uniformed officers were busy talking with each other about ten yards further into the knee-high grass. Off to the right, two more cops questioned the jogger who’d stumbled across the corpse. One of the questioners raised his hands to his mouth, blew on them, and then rubbed his palms together to keep them warm.
I zipped up the jacket and bent to slip on my Stompy Gothic Boots of Doom. I tried and failed to keep a smirk off my face. On autumn days like this one, the thermometer could dip below the ubiquitous balmy sixty degrees. Around me, the local Angelenos were already putting on windbreakers and complaining about how nippy it was outside. I’d grown up in rural Illinois and then went to school in Chicago. We didn’t break out the winter coats and thermal underwear until it dropped below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Southern California, for all its positives, could thin the blood and make one soft.
One quick tuck of the hairnet and one Angels baseball cap later, I hefted my crime scene gear case out of its compartment. My stompy boots let me crunch my way through the desiccated shrubbery without a problem. As I joined the police, I was surprised to find that only two of the four officers were actually in uniform.
The third officer’s face broke into a toothy smile that shone from a dark smudge of five-o-clock shadow. My on-again, off-again boyfriend, Homicide Detective Alanzo Esteban. At least, that’s the best term I had for him. It sounded ridiculously high school when I said it in my head, but I was stuck with it until I came up with something else. Or until our relationship got the breathing room it needed to take a turn for the better.
The final member of the group made me pause for a moment. She had wiry, coffee-colored hair that had been French-braided into submission and tied up in a bun at the back of her head. Her skin tone was a couple shades duskier than Esteban’s, and it complemented a pair of razor-sharp cheekbones. Light glinted from the badge at her belt, and a holstered gun made the side of her jacket bulge. The jacket was made of plain blue denim, which looked as no-nonsense as the expression she wore behind a pair of black wire-frame glasses.
“Okay, the OME’s here,” Esteban announced, gesturing to the two patrolmen. “We can take it from here. In the meantime, I want a sweep done from the south end, make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
A pair of nods, and the blue-uniformed cops went off to begin their task. I craned my neck to look over the line of yellow tape. To my amazement, it didn’t look as if a herd of elephants had gone tramping through the area.
“I’m impressed, Detective,” I said honestly. “This looks…just like a crime scene should.”
He shrugged. “My partner and I were feeling lazy today, so we decided not to move the body. Next time we can drape it over something, give it just the right dramatic touch.”
I did my best to keep my expression neutral. Partner?
“I keep forgetting that you two haven’t met,” Esteban realized, with a snap of his fingers. “Dayna, this is my partner, Detective Vega.”
Vega nodded brusquely at me.
“Good to finally meet you,” she said. Her voice carried the trace of an accent that sounded similar to Esteban’s, but a little more exotic to my ear. “Just call me Isabel. Or ‘Vega’, if you want. I’m still trying to get used to the whole ‘Detective’ thing.”
“Fine by me,” I agreed, nodding back.
“Vega’s been assigned to work with me. It’s the typical one-three deal,” Esteban informed me. “You mind showing her a couple things you taught me about preserving the crime scene?”
“Sure thing,” I said, after a split-second hesitation.
“Thanks,” Vega put in. “Esteban’s always telling me about how experienced you are.”
Well, that was good to know, I thought, filing away that information for later.
Aloud, I said, “The first rule is to avoid disturbing the most fragile types of evidence at a crime scene. Sometimes that can be the pattern of an impact mark, or a surface that could hold fingerprints. Here, out in the open, the most important thing to try and preserve are any tell-tale marks that might be left on the ground or in the grass.”
“I put up the tape and did a round of photos before you got here,” Esteban added. “I’ll send the pictures over to the OME when we get back. Not much to go on, the grounds hard and bone dry. We might get some shoe prints out of it. I got one easy match to the jogger’s running shoe, but that guy checks out clear. He was just out for his morning run when he spotted the body.”
“Yeah,” I grumbled. “That’s what all joggers say. Likely story.”
“What was that?”
“Never mind. What about blood spatter?”
“None that I saw.”
“All right,” I breathed, “let’s go in. Vega, follow in my tracks, or Esteban’s. Try to disturb as little as possible. And no touching or moving anything without my say-so.”
“Goes without saying,” she agreed.
I lifted a length of the crime-scene tape and ducked under. Esteban came next, followed closely by his partner. I found myself getting a little testy as I wondered when Esteban was finding all this time to tell Vega about me, and then mentally chastised myself. Not only did that line of thought have a whiff of jealousy running through it; I was able to answer the question pretty easily on my own.
The LAPD did their best to avoid ‘green on green’ situations, where a rookie was paired with another inexperienced officer. That was just asking for trouble. The ‘one-three’ arrangement Esteban mentioned was where t
he brass paired up a newly promoted ‘Detective I’ like Isabel Vega with a relatively senior ‘Detective III’. Given that Esteban had been doing a lot of stakeouts lately, it would be natural for him to chitchat with his assigned partner.
The body lay face-down, arms down at its sides, in a tall patch of desiccated weeds. I craned my neck and saw a second path made up of crushed grass and weeds leading to the corpse. Before I could ask about this, Esteban filled me in.
“That’s the original path made by whichever bunch of pendejos decided to drag our friend out here and dump him early this morning.” He pointed to where the path petered out as it led back to the sidewalk. “It’s what caught our jogger’s attention.”
Vega squinted for a moment before adding, “Based on the width of the path, I’m guessing two people carried the body between them as they lugged it over to where they dumped it.”
I nodded agreement. By then I’d taken a couple more steps forward and knelt down within arm’s reach of the corpse. This work wasn’t for everyone, but I could switch on my reptile brain and let the information flow into my consciousness quickly and with clinical accuracy. The evidence of death, even recent death, rarely fazed me. But the act of murder sure as hell did. The horrible death of Captain Vazura still flashed through my dreams at odd times, making me toss and turn. I’d had my first true batch of nightmares in the past week. I would wake up, gasping, the iron taste of Hollyhock’s blood in my mouth.
I put those thoughts out of mind.
The corpse belonged to a reasonably fit male in his mid-to-late twenties. Later on, I would note that he wore a set of baggy trousers and loose-fitting athletic shoes. Right now, I was too distracted by a startling trio of details.
First, the bottom three inches of the deceased’s shoulder-length black hair was tipped or frosted in neon blue. Second, he had been laid out naked from the waist up. And finally, someone had cut a message into his broad, reddish-white back with a box-cutter or razor blade.
SALIR DE LOS TRECE.
Chapter Two
My knowledge of Spanish just wasn’t up to the task.
“So what I’m seeing…” I ventured. “This is something involving the number thirteen?”
“Close.” This from Vega. “It means, ‘Get out of the thirteen’. Well, this neighborhood is kinda-sorta close to Thirteenth Avenue. That’s gang territory, at least when you get up by Cypress and Glassell Park.”
“Maybe,” Esteban cautioned. “But we’re talking about a forty-minute round trip in a low-rider. That’s really stretching it if someone is sending a ‘stay out of our territory’ message.”
While the two detectives talked, I busied myself with studying details about the body. Taking note of the placement of the body’s arms I muttered, “They’re down at the side.”
“What’s that, Dayna?”
“Just thinking aloud. The body’s arms are down at the side, not akimbo. That tells me this corpse wasn’t just thrown here. It’s been carefully placed.”
Esteban came over to stand at my side. “Well, that might support the ‘send a message’ theory. Wish we could tell who sent it.”
“Maybe we can,” I said grimly. I sat my case down and cracked it open. Handing him my trusty old Pentax, I asked him to take some photos of the body where it lay then I pulled out two pairs of plastic gloves. Slipping on one pair I handed the second to Vega.
She swallowed hard as she took them. “What…what do you want me to do?”
“First, put them on,” I instructed. “Then, I need you to kneel down next to me, over here by the body’s thigh. We’re going to flip him over.”
“Are you sure–”
“Pretty sure. The words on this guy’s back were designed to get attention, like a flashy stamp on an envelope. I’m betting that the rest of the message is on his other side.”
Vega fumbled with the gloves as she put them on. “No, I meant – are you sure you want me to touch him? You said not to, earlier.”
“I said no touching anything without my say-so. Now I’m saying so.”
A sigh. “You’re the boss.”
She stepped into position and knelt down, hands at the ready. Again, my mind went off onto another tangent. Vega had slender, fit arms and an admirably flat tummy. Her jacket and slacks were plain, but they complimented her figure. By comparison, my getup made me look like I was wearing a discount sleeping bag. Esteban couldn’t help but notice the difference.
Dammit, what was wrong with me?
I let out a breath. Luckily, I didn’t choke on the following inhale. This guy hadn’t been out for long, and the day had been cool. He registered maybe a three on the Chrissie Scale of Stinkiness (patent pending). Vega was visibly trying to hold her breath, but at least she hadn’t shied away yet.
“Okay,” I said, sliding my hands under the body’s upper arm. “Count of three.”
“Ready.” She slid her hands under the body’s thigh.
“One-Two-Three,” I recited, and we gave a heave.
The corpse rolled over surprisingly easily. Vega reeled back, almost putting her gloved hand to her mouth in disgust.
“Hijo de puta,” she cursed, as the corpse’s face came into view.
Esteban placed his hand on Vega’s shoulder. To steady her, I guess.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” she coughed.
“It’s all right,” I remarked. “Not everyone is cut out for homicide work.”
Esteban raised an eyebrow at that, but kept quiet.
Vega shook her head. “Just…give me a second.”
To be fair, turning the corpse did ratchet the smell up the Chrissie Scale of Stinkiness from a maybe-three to a sure-as-hell-six. That happened sometimes when you changed the position of a body. The accumulated gases from decomposition escaped unexpectedly from a body orifice, providing an olfactory surprise.
The front side of the corpse was purplish from lividity. The man’s features were broad, heavy-boned, vaguely Hispanic or Native American. His eyes had gone white, sunken, and waxy. I ignored the crawling insects around the mouth as I took a probe and pushed down his lower jaw. As I suspected, part of the decidedly gag-worthy smell came from a thick residue of vomit along the tongue.
Vega steadfastly refused to look at the dead man’s face. Instead, she asked her partner to take some pictures of the tattoos on the corpse’s chest. Then she bent closer, frowning as she made out the word ‘Gangster’ done in a flowery-looking script at the base of the neck. Her frown deepened as she looked at a small five-pointed star on the left pectoral, a number ‘13’ being fired out a stylized cannon, and finally the silhouette of a hooded, praying woman.
“What do you think, Isabel?” Esteban inquired. “This is your area, not mine.”
“I think…” She leaned back on her heels. “This is totally chueco. None of it makes sense.”
Welcome to my world, I thought. “Maybe you can fill me in, then. These look like gang tattoos, so far as I can tell.”
“Yes and no. They are, but they’re all wrong.” She began pointing at the images as she rattled off her facts. “Nobody’s tattooed ‘Gangster’ on their skin since…well, at least in the past few years. Wastes too much ‘ink space’ for other markers, like prison time. These days they use the letter ‘G’, or the number ‘7’. The five-pointed star looks right, it’s the catch-all for Hispanic gangs in this state.”
“He does look like he might be the right ethnic group,” Esteban observed. “Hard to tell with that blood cast on his face. Might be Samoan, or Lebanese.”
“Either way, it doesn’t fit. That marker has to be visible right away, so it only goes on one place: the web between the thumb and index finger. The ‘13’ doesn’t fit either. It’s a marker for the members of Sangra Norte. That’s the gang closest to this neighborhood.”
“Would they be the ones up on 13th Avenue?” I asked.
“They’re the ones, yes.”
“Maybe that fits in wit
h the message carved on this guy’s back.”
She shook her head. “No. Think about it. Why would they send a message that says ‘stay out of our territory’ by killing one of their own?”
That stopped me. “I…you’re right, I think. Unless our friend here betrayed them somehow.”
“Then they’d have done a lot worse to him than toss his body into a park. You’d have found stab wounds and blood everywhere. I’m not seeing any marks on the body so far.” She sighed. “At least the Lady’s in the right place.”
“Let me guess,” I put in, touching a finger to the praying woman’s outline. “That would be the Mother Mary?”
“Yes, though we’d call her the Virgen de Guadalupe. It’s to ask forgiveness for any crimes committed.”
Now I sat back on my heels, impressed. “You do know your stuff, Isabel.”
Her face brightened for the first time. “Thanks. I know enough to tell you what we’re not seeing here. But as to the rest…”
My eyes went back to the Virgin Mary tattoo. I touched the skin at the edge of the design and a frown of my own blossomed on my brow.
“Well now,” I remarked, “it looks like we’ve got something else interesting going on here.”
Esteban leaned over, his shadow blocking the sun. “What do you have, Dayna?”
“Watch this.” I pressed my thumb into the edge of the tattoo and then released the pressure. The skin blanched a little, then returned to its reddish-purple state. “The ink used in a tattoo is actually injected into the dermis, or second layer of skin. We see it through the epidermis, or outer layer. Given the lividity on this side of the body, I’d expect to see some distortion in the color and shape of the tattoo when I press the skin.”
“But we’re not seeing any,” Vega said, completing my thought. “Now that you mention it, these designs are awfully crisp for the usual street-tat. So if the pigments aren’t under the skin…maybe they’re on the top?”
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