by Julie Vail
“Just some fucked up guy,” I answered. The phone rang again.
“It’s him again. He’s found Waldo,” sniped Kramer. Being the father of three, Waldo was someone Kramer was always in search of, I was guessing.
“Homicide, Detective Testarossa.”
“Detective, Julie Sebastian.”
“Hey. How’s it going?” Julie Sebastian, I mouthed to Alex.
“Be nice,” he mouthed back. What is it with everyone? Gonzo settled at his desk and Kramer went off to find his partner.
“Well, I have some information on your arm—the one that was on the beach . . .”
“Yeah . . . Sebastian, uh, I don’t get many severed arms, huh? I know what you mean.”
“Oh . . . alright, well, I got useful prints off the hand, no hit on AFIS.”
“Okay,” I wrote AFIS with a circle and a diagonal slash running through it. The Automated Fingerprint Identification System told us if our victim had ever been fingerprinted.
“The appendage appears to be male,” she continued, “aged fifteen to twenty-five years old . . .”
“Oh, shit,” I muttered, thinking of the call I just got through with.
“. . . and the arm wasn’t severed or cut cleanly.” She paused. “Detective?”
“Sorry, Sebastian. A lot going on here today. You said yesterday that the arm wasn’t cut. What do you think happened?”
“Well, it appears that our victim suffered from Avascular Necrosis.”
“Hang on a sec, I want Alex to hear this.” I put Julie on the speaker phone and asked her to repeat herself. When she did, Alex’s eyes lit up.
“And it was at the shoulder joint . . . ,” she continued.
“Whoa, Julie, hang on a second . . . a . . . what?”
“Sorry, John. Avascular Necrosis is when the blood supply to the bone is cut off. Weakens the bone, and because decomposition was advanced, the muscles around the shoulder deteriorated as well causing the arm to fall off. Now the CI can look for additional factors such as trauma . . .” My head was starting to hurt. I wondered if she was like this in bed. “. . . my preliminary findings don’t indicate, so the CI . . . is it Dr. Tabor?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he’ll be able to tell you more.”
“So this is like a disease the vic had?”
“Not a disease. Avascular Necrosis can be caused by a number of things: an old fracture, damage to the blood vessels, overuse of steroids . . .”
“So, was our vic an athlete?”
“I’d say by the musculature in the arm he was in good shape. That’s just my opinion, which I’m never allowed to give.”
“Feel free,” I said before I bid her a good day and hung up. I called Peter Tabor next.
“Doctor Tabor,” I said when he came on the line. “Julie Sebastian called you that just now.”
“She has respect. How’d the arm thing go? You on to anything yet?”
I told him what Julie Sebastian came up with.
“Avascular Necrosis, huh?”
“Yeah. It couldn’t have just . . . fallen off while the guy was surfing, or something, could it?” I shuddered at that visual.
“No. It’s not like leprosy where skin and limbs just start falling off. But it weakens the shit out of the bones so, post mortem, limbs can fall off faster than from, say, a normal, healthy skeletal structure. Maybe it had some help—a dislocation. When you find the rest of him, I’ll be able to tell you more.”
“Yeah, I’m working on that. My next question . . .”
“Shoot.”
“This arm washed up just north of the marina, maybe a hundred yards from the jetty towards Washington Boulevard. Where should we start looking? Ballona Creek or the ocean?” Ballona Creek is an eight-mile waterway that flows from Culver City west into Santa Monica Bay. The narrow waterway parallels the marina channel for a ways before it runs into the ocean. It holds less than a foot of water in parts except during heavy rains.
“That’s a good question, pal. You want to figure out how Ballona flows during the storm season and then you need to figure out ocean currents for this time of year—late summer—during and after an unseasonably severe storm, taking the jetty and break wall into account because those two things disrupt current flow.”
“Yeah, good. Thanks for all that. How did you know this?”
“I surf.”
“Surprise. Okay, so . . .?”
“I’d start in Ballona,” he finally said. “The animal innards you found on the beach? Very typical for those things to wash up from Ballona as opposed to the ocean. Animals wander down there, get stuck, die . . . you get the picture. I’d start there.”
“Thanks, Petey.”
“Sure thing.”
It pleased me no end to relay all this to my partner and I especially loved how he blanched when I told him we’d be looking in Ballona Creek for more body parts.
“Take Gonzo. He loves this shit.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it pleases me to take you.”
“Great. Looking forward to it.” He shuffled off mumbling something about getting a new partner. Before we left, I went out to see Ginger.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey, suga’. To what do I owe . . . headache again?”
“No. I’m fine,” I smiled. I had this problem, a problem that only my partner and Ginger knew about. Alex ignored it—at my insistence—and Ginger mothered me and gave me drugs.
“What branch of the service was Clive in before he joined the force?”
“Army. Why do you ask?”
“I dunno . . . a long shot maybe. You think you can find this guy—find out whatever you can on him? I think he’s a marine.” I slipped a piece of paper in front of her.
“PFC Jeffrey Jason Alton. I’ll sure try. Who’s he?”
“Guy that called in the ‘tip’.”
“The one this morning? Mmmm mmmm.” She stared at the paper. Then she looked up at me. “He’s in some trouble, isn’t he? He sounded a bit off the chain.”
I shrugged. “Might be military trouble. Who knows? Anyway . . . whatever . . . when you have time . . .” I walked toward the front door. Alex was parked at the curb, waiting.
“Oh, I wish my Clive had known you,” she said quietly.
“What’s that?” I turned to her.
“He could count on maybe two hands the special people he came into contact with. I guarantee you’d have been on that short list, John Testarossa. You would have surely been on that short list.”
“Shhh, sweetheart, huh?” I winked at her, then turned to go. “I’ll see ya later.”
“Be safe, darlin’,” she said. “You be safe.”
FOUR
He sat on the toilet seat in the bathroom. His mother stood before him. The boy looked down at his hands, ashamed now, because the solution he came up with did not meet with her approval. Solutions don’t come easy to a boy of seven.
Vinnie! Vincent! Come deal with him. The boy heard his father’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. His large frame filled the doorway.
I don’t know what the hell to do with him his mother mumbled. Tears fell down his face as his father came in and closed the door. It was Saturday, the first day off his father had in a long time.
He turned the water on in the bathtub and waited. He lifted his son’s chin, forcing his eyes to meet his.
Running from the problem isn’t gonna solve it, Johnny. He lifted the boy off the commode and pulled his red t-shirt over his head then pushed him to his knees over the tub. The father took a cup, filled it with water, and poured it over the boy’s head. Black shoe polish ran into the bathtub and down the drain. After several applications of the water, the father picked up the bottle of baby shampoo with the amber liquid inside, poured some onto the boy’s head, and massaged it into a lather. The hair slowly returned to its natural color—like a new penny. He dried the boy’s hair with a towel and slipped his shirt o
ver his head. He ran a comb, the same black comb the boy practiced shaving with every morning, through his hair. When he finished he smiled at the boy with all the love a father could possibly possess in his soul. They came downstairs, and his father announced they were going out.
He sat on his knees and looked out the window as his father navigated the Buick through traffic. When he finally stopped he took the boy’s hand and led him to a bench overlooking the water. See that island over there? Your grandfather came to that island on a big boat a long time ago. He was a little older than you, and he came all by himself. He has made a good life here and he was a good father to me and my sisters growing up. He crouched down and looked the boy in the eye. Never, never be ashamed of who you are, Johnny. He smiled. These kids? They’ll come around. His eyes welled with tears. You’re a special boy. They’ll see that soon enough. He rested his large hand on the boy’s head.
Testarossa. Be proud Johnny.
The day was bright. The storm had passed making its way south toward Baja. Flooding had already been reported in Rosarita Beach just over the US/Mexico border. The mystery arm rolled up on shore two days ago and Alex and I were now going to attempt to find its owner.
“What are the chances we’re gonna find anything here, Johnny? I mean, seriously.” Finding a body—dead or alive, it didn’t much matter—to match an arm we happened to find? Should be easy enough, right?
“Not a chance in hell,” I said. “But we try.”
I had invited Pete Tabor to join us but he told us he was too busy with other things and promised to arrange for a water recovery expert from the SID to help. The man was there when we arrived.
He was a young guy, late twenties I guessed, and he looked like a model from a surfer magazine. He had the bushy blond hairdo going and he called me ‘dude’. We shook hands and he introduced himself as Doug Ross. Alex harrumphed a greeting as well.
It was a warm day and I took my jacket off as soon as we got on the boat. The lifeguard looked me over as he pulled out onto open water. The gun. It’s unnerving.
We got out past the breakwater and I asked him to go around the jetty near the rocks where all the seagulls shit, to see if maybe something got caught up on the rocks.
He slowed the boat and we checked around the rocks carefully. I sent him into the water and he retrieved several items: A plastic zip bag with a half a sandwich still inside, a red nylon jacket—adult small, three shoes—none of them matching, and all of them children’s, a pair of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles underpants, size 4, a Campbell College Crew t-shirt, a sneaker, size 71/2, a life jacket, two plastic grocery bags, two 2-liter soda bottles—one that looked like it was filled with piss, and a pair of rubber flip-flops from the dollar store. We would hang on to all of it and see if we couldn’t match it up to a victim.
We headed out around the other side of the break wall and continued into Ballona Creek. The narrow channel paralleled the entryway to Marina del Rey, the largest small-craft harbor in the world. We moved slowly down the waterway until we reached the UCLA Aquatic Center. Alex and I got out and walked the bike path that ran for approximately eight miles along Ballona Creek. The water was still higher than normal. As we walked further east down the creek graffiti started appearing on the walls along the bike path as well as down toward the concrete lined creek. Killa from 3rd St. Boyz was calling out Maggio from CXC. Members of V13 Locos had also made themselves known. I recognized one or two names from homicides I’d worked in the past. Broken bottles littered the bike path. A rusted bike missing the seat, handlebars and the rubber on the tires, lay in the middle of wildflowers in bright pinks and yellows that covered a portion of the concrete slope that descended into the creek.
It was when we came to where Lincoln Blvd. and Culver Boulevard. intersected that we smelled it. Looking up, it didn’t take us but a second to spot what we were looking for. The smell caught us off guard at first. The creek, on a good day, smelled of sour milk and decay. But this smell was beyond sour milk. It was a rank hot-sour-milk-for-days-mixed-with-a-pound-of-shit-followed-by-some-puke-thrown-in-for-good-measure. It was the unmistakable smell of decomp, the eau d’ cologne of police work.
“Here we go,” I said. At first it looked like a large, black trash bag wedged up under the bridge. The concrete bank leading up to the small space was steep, but climbable. Alex and I stared at it for a minute, then he said, “So, did he get up under there from down here or the street?”
“There’s a gap in the fence up there. Let’s take a look.” We began the climb and realized it was steeper than we thought. The gap in the fence was big enough for a person to fit through.
“Been here a while based on the smell,” Alex unnecessarily pointed out.
The body, what was left of it, had been wedged up tight between the overpass and the cement embankment leading down to the bike path. People riding by would have smelled it but would have probably kept riding, not wishing to know what it was. It wouldn’t occur to anyone to look up and if they did, the angle of the slope, the way the sun just missed illuminating the area would have made it hard, if not impossible, to see anything other than a black blob. People generally don’t stop for blobs.
The body was black, green in places. It was at an odd angle, back wedged tight, head bent and pointing downhill. The left side of the body touched the ceiling of the overpass while the right side angled downward. The eyes were gone and the lips had receded in a classic ‘death-scream’ pose, typical for this stage of decomposition. Part of the head appeared to be missing but I was not going to get close enough just yet to render an opinion. I’d leave that up to the coroner. The left arm, secured between the body and the ceiling, was attached. It was bent at the elbow and the skin on the hand was beginning to slough off. It dangled inside out at the fingertips like a glove forgotten in mid-removal. The right arm was missing. We knew where that was already. The body was bloated, the stomach area was distended, and when the time came to move the body it would groan and fart and ooze something awful. I planned to be long gone before that happened. The smell was putrid and I knew that it would linger in my nostrils and throat for most of the rest of the day.
“If there was blood, can it be detected now, with all the fluids . . .?”
“Plus all the rain,” added Alex, “Although he was fairly protected under here. If there’s blood, Johnny, they’ll find it.” He came closer, looked quickly, and then backed away. He bent over, placed his hands on his knees, took a deep breath, then stood and turned back toward the body again
“See the teeth marks on the shoulder bone where the arm used to be?”
“Yeah,” I answered, getting closer for a moment.
“Vermin. Rats, possums, raccoons, birds. They’ve all taken their turn.”
“So the arm had some help falling off.”
“Yeah. They’re not entirely to blame, though. And see those white things? Maggots. Several generations. Predatory beetles and other insects have also laid eggs inside the body and the body’s own bacteria are eating it alive.”
“Great. Thanks, pal. Remind me again why you crossed over to the lighter side of police work?”
“Pussy factor.” He bent over again.
“Right.”
I stayed another moment taking in all I could before the smell started to make me retch. In making a case, I learned at the academy, a good detective saw what was there. But experience taught me that a great detective saw what wasn’t. I closed my eyes and visualized the scene in my head. Then I opened them and took a breath, held it, then let it out slowly. I started at the head and worked my way down.
The body appeared to be male. The head was covered in maggots. I noticed that they seemed to concentrate in one particular area above the right ear. The upper torso was bare. Sweat pants, which appeared to be gray at one time, gathered around bloated, black legs. The left leg was bent and partially tucked underneath the corpse. A sneaker hung loose on the foot. The right foot, covered in a sock that was once white,
but was now black with decomp fluids, hung limp and pointed downward into the creek. If I was a betting man, I’d say the match to that sneaker was currently inside our boat. And I was going to take another stab and say that, based on the Campbell College logo on the sweat pants, it was a pretty good guess that the t-shirt we found in the water also belonged to the corpse.
“Al.”
“Yeah.” He came up next to me. I pointed to the head.
“When they congregate like that it’s usually inside a wound.”
“Yeah, I thought the same.”
There are four manners of death the legal system uses when determining why someone has passed on. The first is accident. Based on this body’s location and positioning, I could easily rule that out if it had been my job—which it wasn’t. The second—natural causes—would also be ruled out based on location and positioning. The third, suicide, was a possibility. It appeared to me that the area over the right ear where the maggots were hob-knobbing, was, or could be, a bullet wound. But the right side of the head was nearest the ground so the poisoning made the idea of suicide unlikely—again, not my call. More importantly, where was the gun? It is generally believed in some—not all, but some—cases, when someone shoots himself, the gun remains in the hand, in a death grip. The wound was on the right indicating a right handed person would be positioning the gun against his temple. The right hand attached to the arm that rolled up on the beach four days ago, sadly, did not hold a gun.
The fourth manner of death is homicide. At the end of the day, the medical examiner would determine time and cause of death (what stopped working first), and it would be up to Alex and me to figure out why it stopped working, and who, if anyone, caused it to stop.
We worked our way back down the embankment and called in more forensic support. Pete Tabor was also called. Our job was done and I couldn’t have been more grateful. I don’t need to tell you how my partner felt.
We waited for about half an hour for the rest of the SID team to arrive then Alex and I headed back to the lifeguard headquarters.