Jayne and Steelie - 01 - Freezing (6 page)

Jayne looked out at the reservoir. Its surface was rippled in its best imitation of a lake. Night was falling and she could see through the fir trees to the hills on the other side where the lights of invisible houses sparkled orange-yellow and white.

Marie touched her hand, then began to fold and re-fold her napkin. ‘I worry about you,' she said softly.

‘I know.'

‘You don't talk to me about everything you saw when you were out with the UN and I know why: you've got Steelie. But even she thinks you need someone here at home, as it all falls into perspective. You both spent a decade helping to uncover war crimes, for heaven's sake, and
now
you've gone on to do something that drains you. Maybe in a different way, but it drains.'

Jayne shrugged, looking up at her mother. ‘It is draining sometimes. But it feeds me, too. I like what I do.' The candles on the table flickered in the breeze, threatening to go out but then flaring back up triumphantly.

‘Even if it breaks your heart almost every day?'

‘Other people's hearts are broken already, before they come to us. It's not
my
heart breaking. It's just an empathetic sort of . . . heart-stretching.'

Marie poured cream over the berries. ‘And from what you've said, Scott is almost the perfect person for you to spend time with. You seem to have interests and sensibilities in common. He might not have been on the same forensic missions as you but he understands what went on over there.'

‘You think I should be with someone who's got the same fodder for nightmares as I have, is that it?' Jayne was stacking slices of strawberry on her fork.

Marie paused. ‘Have the nightmares started again?'

‘Not really, they're just infrequent, that's all. Can I finish your berries?'

Marie pushed over her half-eaten bowl of fruit. ‘Why don't you come up to my place when things get bad?'

‘That's just running away.'

‘I thought you'd say that, which is why I brought you this.' Marie pulled a small plastic bag from under the table and handed it over. The bag was emblazoned with the name
Rite Aid
, the local pharmacy.

Jayne pulled out the package inside: night-lights, pack of two. She smiled. ‘Thanks.'

They sat in companionable silence until the wind picked up enough to blow out the candles. ‘You want coffee?'

‘No, darling, I've got to go. I'm judging the student exhibits at the Garden Expo in Pasadena tomorrow, so it's an early night for me.'

Jayne saw her mother down to the driveway where Marie's sleek, sky-blue Mercedes 450SL was parked behind her truck. As she walked back up the stairs to her door, she looked at the much-maligned cacti and laughed to herself. They did look like sentries; totally unapproachable and silent.

After Jayne cleared up, she locked the sliding door and went to bed, banishing all thoughts of real people as she pressed the
Play
button on the cassette deck resting on her bedside table.

She didn't hear the man on her front doorstep when he smashed one of the cactus pots. The measured reading of
Gaudy Night
had taken her into a rare dreamless sleep.

DAY TWO

Wednesday

SIX

E
ric's voice was quiet. ‘Here he comes.' He stepped away from the door of the Suburban to allow Scott to get out. They had been waiting for the owner of the body shop on Magnolia Boulevard, Al Corso, to finish locking his office so they could question him a second time. When Corso saw them advancing, he came to a standstill and threw out his hands, causing his nylon briefcase to wave around.

‘What? You not done with me yet?' His tone was aggressive and resigned all at once. ‘I answered all your questions, didn't I?'

‘Yeah,' said Eric, resting an arm on his shoulders and pulling him toward the Suburban. ‘We just didn't like your answers so much, Corso. Thought we'd give you another chance.'

They reached the vehicle and Scott opened the back door. Corso looked at each of them, then his shoulders slumped and he got in. Eric hopped in next to him while Scott got in the driver's seat and closed the door. The door locks thunked closed.

Eric used a friendly tone. ‘Mr Corso, are you familiar with the term “obstruction”?'

The body shop owner held up his hands. ‘Look, I told you what I know.'

‘No . . . you told us you had a van in here for bodywork but that you didn't get its license plate number.'

‘That was true!'

‘But you remembered that it was a California plate?'

‘Yeah?' Corso sounded tentative.

Eric punched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Don't get nervous, Corso! I'm just reminding everyone of what you said when we interviewed you.'

The man tried to laugh but he looked nervous.

‘So it was a California plate but you didn't get the number,' Eric rejoined.

‘Uh-huh.'

‘And you said that you couldn't remember if it was a vanity plate or a regular one.'

‘So?'

‘I wondered if you knowing that we're looking for this van because it's at the center of a Federal murder investigation might help jog your memory?' Eric smiled at him.

Corso's voice came out at a slightly higher octave. ‘Murder?'

Scott leaned around from the front seat. ‘And not just murder. We have evidence to suggest that the guy driving the van cut people up into pieces.'

‘I-I-I didn't know about any murder! The guy didn't look like a murderer.'

Eric was calm. ‘The guy who brought the van in.'

‘Yeah. I told you, he was just a nobody, maybe forty years old, nothing weird about him.'

‘And he paid cash.'

‘Everyone pays cash!'

‘Let's talk about the other cash.'

‘What other cash?!'

‘Come on, Corso. We know he paid you hush money. And don't pretend you haven't been in this business long enough to note the plates even before you start working on the cars. Come on. How else do you think we found you? LAPD gave us your number 'cause you've handled stolen cars.'

‘But this one
wasn't
stolen.'

‘How do you know?'

Corso looked crestfallen; he'd walked straight into the trap Eric had laid. He sighed. ‘OK, fine, look. Look. I've got a contact at the DMV. He checks plates for me because of all the problems I had with the cops. I've been trying to go straight, OK? I only just got the place out of Chapter Eleven.' He appealed to Eric.

‘I don't want to hear your bankruptcy sob story, Corso. Tell us about the plate on the van or we'll be telling LAPD that you're hacking into Department of Motor Vehicles files.'

‘OK, OK! The plate was like I said, California. It was clean.' He unzipped his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper. He ran a finger down the page, then read out a license plate number.

Eric nodded at Scott, who was writing it down. ‘So if it was clean, why the hush money?'

Corso shrugged. ‘I don't know. The guy just pulled out the cash – three hundred dollars – and I knew exactly what it was for. I didn't want to take it but he said, “Remember, I know where you live.”' Corso looked indignant. ‘I took the money, OK? I've got kids to feed, a mortgage.'

‘Get out, Corso.' Eric's words were punctuated by the sound of the door locks lifting.

‘Wait! What about the LAPD? What's going to happen?'

‘Just get out.'

Corso looked at Scott for a reprieve but he was focused on his cell phone. The body shop owner got out of the car, shoulders still slumped, clutching the unzipped briefcase to his chest.

Scott spoke as he dialed. ‘I'm calling the plate in.'

Eric moved up to the passenger seat and read the notes Scott was making on a pad.

As soon as Scott ended his call, Eric asked, ‘The van's registered to a woman?'

‘Well, the plate that Corso gave us is registered to this woman. But he didn't check that the van actually went with the plate. Lance just ran the woman's name through NCIC. No convictions, no arrests. Allegedly living at an address in Woodland Hills since nineteen ninety.'

‘You thinking the perp comes out here from Georgia and borrows her plate to cover his tracks after he gets hit on the freeway?'

Scott looked grim as he turned the ignition key. ‘All I know is, this is the only van we've found that matches the drunk's vague description
and
needed repair to its back doors since Monday.'

The FBI office on Wilshire was in a multi-story building constructed in the 1970s when concrete blocks and tinted, deeply inset windows were in vogue. Only the barricades at the front curb hinted that a warren of government offices lay behind the unremarkable exterior. Inside, Elevator Number 2 was moving silently upwards, carrying Steelie, Jayne, and Special Agent Weiss.

Weiss had cleared the anthropologists through Security after they arrived from the visitor parking lot but as the elevator reached and passed the fourth floor, where Scott and Eric's office was located, Jayne and Steelie exchanged a look.

Steelie cleared her throat, watching the floor numbers go higher. ‘Uh, where are we going, Weiss?'

‘I'm afraid that's classified, ma'am.' He smiled at her as the elevator doors opened. It was the tenth floor.

He ushered them into a foyer with four doors marked ‘Restricted Access'. A wall-mounted keypad flanked each one. Weiss punched a code on the one directly ahead. A buzzer sounded and he opened the door for them. ‘Welcome to Critter Central.'

Jayne went first into the large, windowless room whose rows of fluorescent tube lights gave it the feel of a clinical space. The foreground was a workspace; metal desks, filing cabinets, and bookshelves filled with forensic science reference texts. The back of the room was set up as a wet lab with fume hoods and countertop.

Steelie sounded impressed: ‘So
this
is where you guys hang out?'

Weiss nodded. ‘Tony Lee, who did the photography out by the freeway, is just through that door, in the cool room.'

‘What goes on here, exactly?' asked Jayne.

‘We do collection of trace evidence, some analysis.'

Agent Lee emerged from the door at the end of the room. He was wearing blue scrubs and had two reddish stripes across his cheeks where the elastic straps on a filter mask must have pulled tight. There was another stripe across his forehead and his dark hair looked flattened. He raised a hand in greeting.

‘Hey, Thirty-two One. Been expecting you.'

Weiss said, ‘I'll leave you to it, then,' and departed.

Steelie and Jayne followed Lee into an anteroom that was divided by a bench and had lockers on one side. At one end, there was a sink with a mirror above it next to a door marked ‘Restroom'. Adjacent to that were two swinging doors, each with a porthole.

Tony explained, ‘We'll do the examination in the cool room itself because we're trying to keep the material as cold as possible on account of the coroner needing it next. Here's the protective gear. I'd suit up over your own clothes – you'll need them for warmth. The shoe covers are here.' He gestured to a container by the entrance to the cool room.

‘And the glasses are inside this box.' He put his hand on a wall-mounted cabinet holding Plexiglas safety glasses on a series of hooks, all illuminated by a soft ultraviolet glow.

‘I'm here to run the fluoroscope for you, capture whatever images you want, take photos, and move the material if necessary.'

‘Basically cater to our every need,' joked Steelie.

‘Exactly.'

Jayne was glad Steelie had made the joke. She was beginning to feel tense about seeing the body parts out of the natural environment by the freeway where the leaves and detritus had masked the brutality of the cuts. The clinical setting would make the body parts look more like a dismembered body – one body in particular, one
person
in particular: Benni –
no, don't think of him, don't even conjure up his name
. Jayne felt Steelie nudge her and she took the mask Steelie was holding out, shaking her head in response to the question in her friend's eyes.

She pulled up her hood and followed the others into the cool room, another windowless space whose chill was a shock. Most of the overhead lights were switched off but a panel illuminated the center of the room above the fluoroscope. The fluoroscope's neck was cantilevered parallel to the floor, making the portable X-ray machine resemble an out-of-commission oil derrick. The body parts were in black body bags, each bag on its own gurney, and lined up next to the fluoroscope.

‘Sorry for the “CSI” effect with the lights,' Tony said, only slightly muffled through his mask, ‘just trying to keep radiant heat to a minimum but let me know if you need more light.'

He pulled the nearest gurney towards the fluoroscope and unzipped the body bag. It held the severed leg.

The pale flesh was damp and had defrosted. Blood pooled darkly in the recesses of the body bag. Jayne was relieved that her first instinct was to move closer to get a better look. She and Steelie positioned themselves on either side of the gurney, while Tony stayed by the fluoroscope.

‘The cut goes through the femoral shaft,' commented Steelie. ‘Looks like midway up the thigh.'

‘And the other cut's just under the patella,' Jayne murmured.

‘Trying to avoid sawing through bone again?'

‘Maybe. Can't tell which cut he tried first.'

‘How much of the patella have we got?'

‘I don't think he even nicked it. Take a look.' Jayne moved to the right to examine the proximal cut, while Steelie bent down to look at the patella, its tip just visible amongst the ligaments and fat of the knee.

‘We don't have much to go on for sex,' said Steelie.

‘Not when we can't expose the femur to do a mid-shaft circumference.'