A Deadly Legacy

by Julie Vail

  I went down to room six, but the little girl was gone as well. I went in search of Alex and gave him the news, but he already knew.

  “Relatives came and got her. The man looked like Che Guevara. Beret and all.”

  “Interesting.” We rode back to the station in silence. You see a lot in this job and most of it isn’t good. Occasionally you get to see things work out. As we fought traffic going back, neither of us could figure any way that this would work out for the best. Not for that kid. Not after today. Che Guevara or no.

  And about PFC Jeffrey Jason Alton? Ginger found out that PFC Jeffrey Jason Alton was indeed a marine, just back from Fallujah. According to records, his Humvee was sitting next to what turned out to be a suicide bomber. The blast rocked the Hummer, but he sustained no injuries—at least none that could be seen. But when he started to have uncontrollable headaches, then he beat a local man and held his daughter hostage for two days, he was sent home. No further treatment, other than a short hospital stay and high doses of anti-depressants, was needed. The bombing had caused an internal head injury—the equivalent of six simultaneous concussions. He ended the headaches the only way he could. With a bullet.

  I could relate.

  EIGHT

  The boy and his father walked hand in hand down the street. His father had tickets to the Yankee game. His father loved the Yankees. The boy received a new baseball glove for his ninth birthday and now he was going to catch a fly ball with it. If a Red Sox player hit the ball and he caught it, he would throw it back. But first they had to make a stop. They walked into a bar. No one was there. The father set the boy up on the bar stool then went behind the counter and filled a glass with ice. He got a bottle of Coke out of the refrigerator, poured it into the glass, and added two cherries.

  I’ll be right back, okay?

  The boy nodded. He imagined himself sitting at the bar with his buddies, having a beer, and talking about how the Yanks kicked the Sox’s ass today in the game, how f-in sweet that was! The boy got up off the bar stool and walked toward the back of the bar. He wanted to know what was keeping his father. He looked through the door and saw him talking to a man. The man handed the father an envelope. He opened the envelope and thumbed through a stack of bills. As the boy looked closer, he saw that the dollars had 100’s on them, and there were about ten in the father’s hands.

  More where that came from, said a voice—gruff, like something was stuck in his throat.

  He had heard too much. He returned to the bar, and looked to see that no one else heard. He didn’t want anyone else to know. This was their secret.

  “We need to meet Tabor at the morgue,” Alex informed me the next morning.

  “Why?”

  “Visual aids.” He shuddered.

  “For your benefit, I’m assuming?”

  “I’m sure. They found some ID on the body, and Tabor has a few things to show us.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, any time. Next week good for you?” He’d already had a cup of coffee so he was feeling pretty good about cracking wise.

  “You wanna quit giving me such a hard fuckin’ time. I just walked in the door.” I dug around in my desk until I exhumed a travel mug. I opened the lid and looked inside. It was dirty but not moldy, which was a good thing. I washed it out and filled it with what I hoped was fresh coffee.

  “Okay,” I said, turning to him. “I think I’m ready.”

  “I’ll alert the media,” he said before turning and leading the way out the door.

  “Jesus, you two are like an old married couple,” Gonz sniped.

  “He’s not good in the mornings,” I told him, pointing to Alex. “Where you off to?”

  “Remember a couple of years ago, that young girl was found at that construction site above the wetlands in Westchester? Raped and strangled?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We have another vic. Detective Shin and I are on our way to the scene now.”

  “Detective Shin. I’ll never get used to it.”

  “Me, either. Dale’ll probably want to brief you guys later. He might pull you in on this, too.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where you guys off to?”

  “The morgue. Look at a decomposed body.”

  “Shit, that’s gruesome.”

  This was the dialogue of cops.

  ††††

  “You haven’t been getting laid, have you?” I said, referring to his sour mood. We loaded ourselves into ‘plainwrap’ and headed east toward the 10 freeway.

  “No. It’s that obvious?” He looked miserable.

  I laughed and stared out the passenger side window. “What ever you did, it’s my understanding that groveling’s a good thing.”

  “Yeah? Where’d you hear that?”

  “You, probably. Hey, that murder case from a couple years ago is open again—the girl dumped at the construction site?”

  “Yeah? Boy that case died fast. Zero leads, as I recall.”

  “Well, it’s alive again, padna. And it’s all Gonz’s.”

  “Good. Better him than us.”

  We pulled into the parking lot of the coroner’s office, and the line for the gift shop was out the door. People were strange. There was so much mystery and allure around the celebrity deaths in L.A. over the years. Between John Belushi, Marilyn Monroe, and O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife, to name a few, people couldn’t seem to get enough. The L.A. County Coroner’s office was a top tourist attraction.

  We showed the receptionist our badges, and asked her to point us in the direction of Dr. Tabor. She jerked a thumb toward a long hallway behind her. The walls were a whitish green and the place smelled antiseptic, but not the least bit fresh. We found Pete in a break room having a cup of coffee with another medical examiner.

  “You guys know Doctor Willows? Janet Willows, Detectives Testarossa and Ortiz.” We both nodded toward the good doctor, a very pleasant looking woman who looked to be in her late thirties.

  “Would you guys like a cup of coffee or should we get right to it?” Janet Willows asked.

  “Oh, let’s get to it,” Alex deadpanned. “I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”

  We followed Janet Willows down a long sterile hallway. She stopped in front of a door, punched in some numbers, and pushed the door open. The smell of formaldehyde was strong. We entered the room and came to another door. Dr. Willows punched in another set of numbers, turned to us and said, “Ready?”

  “Absolutely,” said Alex. Tabor laughed.

  We entered a small room and she instructed us to put on what looked like HazMat suits. Once dressed, we entered yet another room. The smell immediately took the mystery out of what was lying on the steel table. The table was slanted so that all the fluids could flow into the drain. We stood around the table, and I looked at Alex.

  “You okay?” He nodded. “Take off it it’s too much, bro, huh?” This time the nod was more grateful. The room had special ventilation that pumped fresh air in and circulated the bad air out at some ridiculous rate per second, but it didn’t help much. It was what it was. I found the best thing to do was breathe through your mouth and keep telling yourself that what you’re seeing isn’t real.

  There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home . . .

  The body looked less bloated now than it did tucked up under that overpass. That was because it had been moved and all the noxious gas had been expelled already, leaving us with flabby, gelatinous tissue. What few organs remained sat in a glob inside a big steel bowl.

  “David Andrew Crane, age nineteen,” She began. “What clothing was still left on the body is in that bag there.” She pointed to a small bag lying on an adjacent table. “And the clothing you found in the water is there, bagged and tagged.” A clear plastic zipper bag sat next to the other one. “SID folks have already seen and processed.” I read from the report completed by the crime scene analyst.

  “Wallet with ID was found inside . . . a red nylon jacket . . .�
� I looked up at her. “That as one of the items we pulled out of the water.”

  “Yes, and you’re free to take it all with you.”

  I looked in the clear zipper bag first. “The t-shirt and the one shoe we found in the water is in here, too?” The report indicated that the shoe we pulled out of the water matched one found on the body, and the t-shirt found ‘appeared to match the decedent’s size’. This we knew. The report also stated that the wallet was found inside the red jacket, in a waterproof pouch. I opened the other bag and pulled out the t-shirt. Campbell College Crew. I looked through the wallet: A Michigan driver’s license, forty dollars, a Sprint calling card, a Starbucks gift card, and . . . a Campbell College student ID. I handed Alex the wallet.

  “Alright, let’s start from the top,” Dr. Willows said. Alex grinned without meaning it, and left the room. Using a pair of tweezers, Dr. Willows reached into a hole in the skull and extracted a bullet.

  “Well, well, well. Look at that,” I said. The sucking sound the extraction made was still in my mind as Tabor grabbed an evidence envelope. Dr. Willows carefully dipped the bullet into a pan of solution, then dropped it into the envelope Pete was holding. It looked to be small caliber.

  “COD is gunshot to the head. That’s our official ruling.”

  “Alright. We have a time of death yet?”

  “Based on rate of decomp, insect activity, and the weather, we’re looking at two to three weeks.”

  “Alright, so . . . beginning of August?”

  “Roughly.”

  I nodded. The doctor turned her attention to the body.

  “The bullet severed the temporal artery.”

  “Antemortum?” Tabor asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So, there should have been quite a bit of blood at the scene, right?” I said to him.

  “There should be, yes,” he answered.

  “There’s more,” said the doctor.

  “I love when a woman says that,” I joked.

  “You can’t see it clearly, but the skull here is fractured.”

  “I see it now. This whole area was covered in maggots at the scene. You sure that wasn’t from the gunshot?” I asked.

  “See the width of the break in the skull? A bullet enters, at close range by the size of the hole, and fractures the skull inward as it makes its journey further into the head. This,” she said, pointing to the area with her scalpel, “is a large fracture, indented for about eight centimeters. Looks like blunt-force trauma to me.” She looked up at us.

  “It looked like half the head was missing when we found him,” I said.

  “Well, John, you know,” Tabor began. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but the brain liquefies, and with the trauma to the head that was sustained, it did appear that half of it was missing. But as you can see, most of it is intact.”

  I thought for a moment. “The gunshot to the head could have happened after the body was dumped.”

  “Blood was found at the site, but not much. Rain could have done away with most of it,” Tabor answered. “I think it was a dump job, but I don’t think the body ever hit the water. Looks like it was stuffed up under the overpass, or maybe it got caught on something and never made it down to the creek. Hard to tell now.”

  “Uh uh,” I said shaking my head.

  Tabor continued on. “I think that as decomp progressed parts started coming off with gravity’s help—and the avascular necrosis at the shoulder joint, as we talked about before. Of course, the moisture in the air helped, too, to speed decomp along. Blunt-force trauma to the head notwithstanding, parts fall down the embankment and into the creek where the swift water from the rains sends it into the ocean, where it was found by lucky, queasy detectives.”

  “There also appeared to be some additional trauma to the shoulder area,” the doctor added. “Hard to tell with the progression of decomp, but there appears to be tearing here, in the tendon, see?”

  I did. “Could that have helped in the arm coming off?”

  “Yes.”

  The smell, the sight of what was left of the body, were beginning to get to me. “Anything else?” I said. “I need to leave now.”

  “No, I think we’ve covered all the important things.”

  “Doctor, it’s been real,” I said over my shoulder as we exited.

  I got myself out of the suit and washed my hands and all other exposed parts of my body, but the smell lingered. I finally gave up and went in search of Alex. I found him sitting in the hall with a glass of water and a sympathetic clerk sitting with him.

  “You okay?” I asked, sitting next to him.

  “How did you do that? Stay in the room like that?”

  “Found a bullet in the skull.”

  “Yeah, but you stink.”

  I realized I’d walked out of there without the bag containing everything I needed to crack this case wide open—or one would hope. And as I rose to go back inside, I saw Tabor approach with the bag in his hand.

  “You had more to say, detective?” he said, handing me the bag.

  “Yeah. I don’t buy the dump-job angle.”

  “Why?”

  “The body had to get there somehow, right? Someone blows through the guy’s temporal artery, blood is everywhere, so instead of dumping the body in, say, the Ballona Wetlands, you instead drive to Lincoln and Culver, or you canoe down the creek, drag him up the embankment—or roll him down the embankment, then stuff him up under an overpass? Wetlands are right there. Acres of dark wetlands to dump a bloody body in, but under an overpass in Ballona Creek is where they choose to dump? Sorry, Pete. I don’t buy it. I think he was killed there.”

  Alex grinned. “Makes a lot of sense, there, Pete.”

  “Look, guys, I just deal in evidence I can see. Speculation is your job. If he was killed there, John, then there will be blood.”

  My eyes narrowed, and I paused just long enough to get Tabor nervous. “We getting on that, then?”

  “Not my area.” With one last glare, Pete Tabor walked away.

  “What was that all about?” Alex asked as we made our way out to the parking lot.

  “Two guys tryin’ to piss on the same tree. It’s his area when he’s got a fuckin’ opinion to share.”

  “Bullshit. What’s goin’ on?”

  I stopped walking. “He’s swamped, Alex. They all are. But I’m not buying into an angle that makes it easier on them. That kid was in that creek for a reason. And whatever the reason, it got him shot. I want that entire area under the overpass checked for blood. And I want it today.”

  “We need him. We need SID, too.”

  I started walking again. “I don’t need any of ‘em unless they’re on my side. They’re of no use to me otherwise.”

  “You know, the experts love it when cops try to tell them their job. They don’t talk about it much in mixed company. But tonight, when they all meet for drinks down at the Toe Tag, you’ll be a big topic of discussion.” The Toe Tag was a bar owned by a former—and very famous—coroner. People who work at the coroner’s office and in the SID labs frequented the place.

  “It’s okay. Pete loves me.”

  “He tell you that—to your face?”

  “Doesn’t have to. I can see it in his eyes.”

  “Yeah, and I bet he also told you he wouldn’t come in your mouth.”

  “Nice.”

  Alex looked over the roof of the car at me. “We’re gonna solve this case, huh? With Tabor’s help, and SID’s help, and that doctor, Janet Willows’ help. We’re gonna solve it without alienating the entire forensic community. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “We’re not an army of two here. You got me, pendejo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll send him some goddamn flowers.” He punched the air with his finger.

  “After we solve this, I’ll take him out for a beer and tell him how much he helped. How’s that?”

  “Don’t push me today, shit head. I am not in the m
ood.”

  I laughed as I folded myself into the car. “It’ll be fine, buddy.”

  He got in on the driver’s side. “Good looking lady, that doctor.” Alex, moving from one subject to another, like he’s riding a banana peel.

  “Yeah. She was alright.”

  I looked over at my partner as he started the car and backed out of the lot. The pressure on him was great, being the only person in the universe I trusted.

  NINE

  The boy opened the front door and was greeted by the smells of his mother’s cooking. She was cooking. She hadn’t cooked since his father died. It was Sunday. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and his grandfather were coming soon.

  He walked into the kitchen, tore a piece of bread off the loaf, and opened the pot on the stove. He dipped the bread into the rich gravy and was just about to take a bite . . .

  Hey! He jumped and turned around. His mother smiled and gathered him into her arms.

  You gonna eat all my gravy before it’s ready? Hmmm? She kissed the top of his head. Go sit down. She cut three pieces of bread, dipped them in the rich, red marinara sauce, and she set the plate and a glass of milk in front of him. He looked up at her as he ate. She was a beautiful woman. Her eyes were the color of caramel still hot on the stove. Her smile was warm and generous, her skin like bronzed porcelain.

  How did you meet daddy? He was sorry immediately that he asked, but her sad eyes suddenly came alive. She sat, and rested her chin in her hand.

  The war had just ended. I was a young high school girl, and your Aunt Jean was my best friend. I was over at her house one day when this man walked in. He had his uniform on, with ribbons and pins and patches all over . . .

  Like the ones in my box?

  Those very ones, she smiled Anyway, I knew that she had a brother who had been overseas. I’d seen pictures, but that was all. He came into her bedroom, just barged in without knocking, and she got mad and threw a pillow at him . . .

  He laughed.

  Yeah, you’re laughing! He thought I threw it! Oh, the look he gave me could have turned honey into stone. He let me have it but good. And when he finally allowed Jean to get a word in, and he realized she was the one who threw it, he was so embarrassed that he asked me out on a date for that night. Well, I was mad now, you see, so I said no.