Bones Page 3

  Like Dad.

  Summers—late June—he’d make me tag along on squirrel and small-bird hunts. Stalking flimsy little animals with absurd firepower because all he wanted to do was obliterate. Using me to search the bloody dust, bring back a bone fragment or a claw or a beak, because I was more obedient than a dog.

  Scared of his mood swings in a way no dog could ever be.

  My other assignments were keeping my mouth shut and toting his camouflage-pattern gear bag. Inside, along with his cleaning kit and boxes of ammo and the odd dog-eared Playboy, were the silver-plated whiskey flask, the plaid thermos of coffee, the sweating cans of Blue Ribbon.

  The reek of alcohol on his breath growing stronger as the day wore on.

  “Ready, Dead-eye?” said Milo. “Shut the right, open the left, and lean—more—even more, make yourself part of the gun. There you go. Hold that. And don’t aim, just point.” Eyeing the bunker. “Pull!”

  Half an hour later: “You hit more than I did, pal. I’ve created a monster.”

  At ten thirty we were loading the trunk of my Seville when Milo’s cell phone beeped the first six notes of “My Way.”

  He listened while following the ascent of a red-tailed hawk. His big, pale face tightened. “When . . . okay . . . an hour.” Click. “Time to head back to anti-civilization. Drive, por favor.”

  As we got on the 118 East, he said, “Body dumped in the Bird Marsh in Playa, some volunteer found it last night, Pacific Division’s on it.”

  “But,” I said.

  “Pacific’s shorthanded cause of ‘gang suppression issues.’ The only free guy is a rookie His Holiness wants ‘augmented.’ ”

  “Problem child?”

  “Who knows? Anyway, that’s the official story.”

  “Yet, you wonder.”

  He pushed a lick of black hair off a pocked brow, stretched his legs, ran his hand over his face, like washing without water.

  “The marsh is political, right? And the chief’s a politician.”

  As I drove back toward the city, he phoned for details, got a sketch.

  Recent kill, white female, twenties, evidence of ligature strangulation.

  Removal of the entire right hand by way of a surgically clean cut.

  “One of those,” he said. “Time to keep both your eyes open, Doctor.”

  The Bird Marsh is a two-acre triangle of uneasy compromise half a mile east of the ocean, where Culver and Jefferson and Lincoln boulevards intersect. Three sides of the triangle face multilane thoroughfares, condominium-crammed bluffs loom over the southern edge, the LAX flight plan brings in mechanical thunder.

  The bulk of the wetlands occupies a bowl-like depression, well below the view of passing motorists, and as I parked across the street, all I could see was summer-brown grass and the crowns of distant willows and cottonwoods. In L.A. anything that can’t be appreciated from a speeding car doesn’t count, and federal protection for the flora and fauna sandwiched between all that progress has remained elusive.

  Five years ago a film studio run by a klatch of self-proclaimed progressive billionaires had tried to buy the land for an “environmentally friendly” movie lot, funded by taxpayer money. Shielded from public exposure, the plan progressed smoothly, the usual soul kiss between big money and small minds. Then a talk-radio dyspeptic found out and latched on to the “conspiracy” like a rabid wolverine, leaving spokes-people tripping over each other in the rush to deny.

  The save-the-marsh volunteer group that formed soon after disavowed the shock jock’s tactics and accepted two Priuses donated by the billionaires. So far, no sign of earthmovers.

  I turned off the engine and Milo and I took a few minutes to soak in the long view. Cute little wood-burned signs fashioned to resemble summer camp projects were too distant to read. I’d visited last year with Robin, knew the signs granted street parking—a generosity now rendered irrelevant by yellow tape and orange cones.

  A larger white sign directed pedestrians to remain on the footpath and leave the animals alone. Robin and I had figured on a hike but the path covered less than a fifth of the marsh’s perimeter. That day, I’d spotted a scrawny, bearded man wearing a Save the Marsh badge and asked about the lack of access.

  “Because humans are the enemy.”

  Milo said, “Onward,” and we crossed the street. A uniform stationed in front of the tape swelled his chest like a mating pigeon and blocked us with a palm. When Milo’s gold shield flashed, the cop said “Sirs” and stepped aside, looking cheated.

  Two vehicles were parked in a gap between the cones—white coroner’s van, unmarked gray Ford Explorer.

  I said, “The body was removed last night, but the crypt crew’s back.”

  “Fancy that.”

  A hundred feet north, two other uniforms walked out of some foliage and climbed up to the sidewalk. Then a broad-shouldered, stocky man in blue blazer and khakis appeared, brushing off his lapels.

  Blazer seemed to be studying us, but Milo ignored him and peered up at the mountain of condos. “Gotta be a hundred units, minimum, Alex. All those people with a clear view and someone chooses this place to body-dump?”

  “All those people with a clear view of nothing,” I said.

  “Why nothing?”

  “No streetlights around the marsh. After sunset, the place is ink.”

  “You’ve been here at night?”

  “There’s a guitar shop in Playa Del Rey that runs concerts from time to time. A few months ago, I came to hear flamenco. I’m talking nine, nine thirty, the place was deserted.”

  “Ink,” he said. “Almost like a genuine bucolic nature preserve.”

  I told him about my daytime visit, the limited access.

  “While you were here, you didn’t happen to see a slavering bad guy skulking around, wearing a large-print name tag and offering a DNA sample?”

  “Sorry, never met O.J.”

  He laughed, checked out the bluff again. Turned and scanned the expanse of the marsh. The cops were still there but the man in the blazer was gone. “Birds and froggies and whatever, sleeping through the whole damn thing.”

  We slipped under the tape, walked toward a white flag waving from a high metal stake. The stake was planted five or so feet off the path, set in dirt solid enough to hold it still. But a few yards in, the soil melted to algae-glazed muck.

  The path continued for a few yards, then took a sharp turn. Voices behind the bend led us to three figures in white plastic coveralls squatting in shallow water, partially hidden by saw grass, tule, and bulrushes.

  Submersion in water could slow decomposition, but moisture combined with air exposure could speed it up. As would heat, and this year June was starting to feel like July. I wondered what state the body was in.

  Not ready to think about who the body had once been.

  The stocky man materialized around a second curve, walked toward us while removing a pair of mirrored shades. Young, ruddy, dirty-blond crew cut.

  “Lieutenant? Moe Reed, Pacific.”

  “Detective Reed.”

  “Moe’s fine.”

  “This is Dr. Alex Delaware, our psychological consultant.”

  “Psychological,” said Reed. “Because of the hand?”

  “Because you never know,” said Milo.

  Reed gave me a long look before nodding. His unshielded eyes were clear, round, baby blue. The blazer was square-cut, made him look boxier than he was. Pleats and cuffs on the khakis, bright white wash ’n’ wear shirt, green-and-blue rep tie, crepe-soled brown oxfords.

  Dressed like a middle-aged preppie, but late twenties, tops, with the short-limbed, barrel-chested build of a wrestler. The barley-colored buzz cut topped a round, smooth face the sun would ravage. He smelled like a day at the beach; fresh application of sunscreen. He’d missed a spot on his left cheek, and the flesh was heading toward medium-rare.

  A car door slamming caught our attention. Two attendants got out of the coroner’s van. One lit a cigarette an
d the other watched his partner smoke. Milo eyed the white-clad women in the water.

  Detective Moe Reed said, “Forensic anthropologists, Lieutenant.”

  “The body was buried?”

  “No, sir, left out on the bank, no attempt to conceal. Had I.D. left on it, too. Selena Bass, address in Venice. I went over there at seven a.m., it’s a converted garage, no one was home. Anyway, in terms of the anthropologists, visibility was poor so I thought it would be a good idea to bring in a K-9 unit, make sure we hadn’t missed the hand. We hadn’t but the dog got all excited.”

  Reed rubbed his left nostril. “Turns out, there were complications.”

  The Belgian Malinois named Edith (“a search dog, not a cadaver dog, Lieutenant, but apparently it doesn’t always matter”) had arrived with her handler at one thirty a.m., sniffed around the dump site, then proceeded to race into the marsh. Stopping at a spot thirty feet south of the body, she dove into the outer lip of a pocket of brackish silt no more than six feet from the bank.

  Freezing in place. Barking.

  When the handler didn’t get there fast enough, howling.

  Ordered back on land, the dog just sat there. The handler asked for hip waders. Those took another half hour to arrive and the dog stayed in place for ten minutes, suddenly bolted.

  Setting in another spot, farther up the marsh, panting.

  “Like she was proud of herself,” said Moe Reed. “Guess she should be.”

  By five a.m., three additional bodies had been confirmed.

  Moe Reed said, “The others seem to be mostly bones, Lieutenant. Could be one of those Indian burial rights situations.”

  One of the crypt drivers had come over. He said, “Sure don’t smell like ancient history.”

  “Maybe it’s natural gas.”

  The driver grinned. “Or the chili someone had for dinner. Or frijoles growing in the marsh.”

  Moe Reed said, “I’ll let you know when you can go,” and led us toward the trio of anthropologists. Groin-high in brown-green soup, the women conferred earnestly around another staked white pennant that drooped in the warm, static air. If they saw us, they gave no notice. We kept going. Around the next bend were the other two flags. Like a weird golf course.

  We retraced. Two of the scientists were young, one black, one white. Both had crammed ample coiffures into disposable caps. An older woman with short-chopped gray hair noticed Reed and waved.

  “Hey, Dr. Hargrove. Any news?”

  “Normally, we’d be setting up the angles for trenching, but this is protected land and we’re not sure what the parameters are.”

  “I can try to find out.”

  “We’ve already got a call in to the volunteer office, someone should be here soon. More important, the earth gets so soft in spots—inconsistently so—that we’re afraid we’ll do more damage than good in terms of finding everything there is to find.” She smiled. “At least it’s not quicksand, I’m pretty sure.”

  The young women laughed. Small, metal tools gleamed in their hands.

  Moe Reed said, “What’s the plan, then, Dr. Hargrove?”

  “We’re going to need time to poke around. The best technique may be to eventually slide something under whatever’s in here, raise it up very gradually, and hope nothing falls off. One thing I can tell you, we’re not talking paleontology. There’s soft tissue present under the mandible of this one, and possibly behind the knees. The skin we’ve been able to observe appears dark, but that could be decomp.”

  “Fresh?” said Reed.

  “Not nearly as fresh as the one left out in the open, but I can’t give you a fix. Water can rot or preserve, depending on so many factors. We’re getting moderate pH for samples in the immediate area, despite all the detritus, but there could still be some kind of buffering effect due to specific vegetation that mediates the effects of acid rain, plant decay, all that good stuff. I really can’t tell you more until I get everything out of here.”

  “Soft tissue,” said Reed. “That’s pretty recent, right?”

  “Probably but not necessarily,” said Hargrove. “A few years ago they pulled a Civil War vet out of a mass grave in Pennsylvania, poor fellow just happened to end up in a low-oxygen, low-humidity pocket near a series of subterranean caves and still had skin and muscle adhering to his cheeks. Most of it was mummified, but some wasn’t. His beard looked freshly trimmed.”

  “Unbelievable,” said Reed, catching the eye of the young black anthropologist and turning away. “No way you can guesstimate for me, Doctor? Off the record?”

  “Off the record, I’ll go out on a limb and say probably not decades. There is one thing: The right hand’s gone from all of them. But we haven’t started examining closely, there could be other parts missing.”

  “Animal scatter?” said Reed.

  “Don’t imagine coyotes or raccoons diving into this, but you never know. Some of the bigger birds—herons, egrets, even a pelican or a gull—might’ve picked out a tidbit or two. Or a human predator—someone taking a trophy. We’ll backtrack weather reports, try to find out if wind on water could’ve been a factor in terms of drift and alteration of surface temperature.”

  “Complicated,” said Milo.

  Hargrove grinned. “It’s what we live for, but I’m sorry for you guys.”

  The young black anthropologist, pretty, with a heart-shaped face and a bow mouth, said something to Hargrove.

  Hargrove said, “Thank you, Liz.” To us: “Dr. Wilkinson wants you to know that all three bodies seem to be facing east. Was that true of the one left out in the open?”

  Reed thought. “As a matter of fact, it was. Interesting . . .”

  Dr. Wilkinson spoke up. “On the other hand, we’re talking about an n of—a small sample from which to draw a significant conclusion.”

  Reed said, “Four out of four sounds significant to me, Doc.”

  Wilkinson shrugged. The other young anthropologist, freckled and rosy-cheeked, said, “East. As in facing the dawn? Some sort of ritual?”

  “Facing Mecca,” said Hargrove. She grimaced. “We won’t even go there.”

  Reed had kept his eyes on Dr. Liz Wilkinson. “Thanks for being so observant.”

  Wilkinson tugged at her hair cap. “Just thought you should know.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Reed, Milo, and I returned to the entrance of the marsh. The coroner’s van was gone. Two uniforms remained on guard, looking bored. One said, “The ghouls went to catch a bite.”

  Reed said, “Any ideas, Lieutenant?”

  “Sounds like you’ve got everything covered.”

  The young detective fiddled with his sunglasses. “Tell you one thing, I’m happy for the help.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It’s shaping up like a team case, right?”

  Milo didn’t answer, and Reed’s sunburned spot turned crimson. “To be honest, I’m not exactly Sherlock, Lieutenant.”

  “How long on the job?”

  “Joined the department after college, made detective two years ago, started at Central GTA. I just got transferred to Homicide last February.”

  “Congratulations.”

  Reed frowned. “Picked up two cases since then. Besides this one, I mean. One closed in a week but anyone could’ve done it, total no-brainer. The second one’s an icy-cold missing person I’m not sure will ever be solved.”

  “Pacific sends MP cases to Homicide?”

  “Not generally,” said Reed. “Rich connections, the kind you definitely want to make happy, but . . .”

  “Cases have their own rhythm,” said Milo. “Takes time to get your footing.”

  I’d seen him lose sleep, gain weight, and experience soaring blood pressure over unsolveds.

  Reed studied the soft brown dirt of the marsh. A brown pelican soared, aimed its massive beak downward, changed its mind and flew back toward the Pacific.

  Milo said, “Let’s talk about Selena Bass.”

  Reed pulled out his pad.
“Female Caucasian, twenty-six years old, five five, one ten, brown and brown. One registered vehicle, a 2003 Nissan Sentra, it was at her apartment, didn’t look disturbed, so we’re not talking a jacking. No signs of obvious forced entry. Maybe she went off with someone she knew and things got nasty.”

  “Where in Venice?”

  Reed read off an address on Indiana, south of Rose, west of Lincoln.

  Milo said, “Gang stuff going on there, right?”