CHIMERAS (Track Presius) (19 page)

“You mean you didn’t fume it yet, did you?” There was silence on the other end of the line. “The note from the crime scene. Did you fume it, yes or no?”

“No, sir, but as I said—”

“Great. There’s something I need you to look at before you fume it. Do you understand? And then you fume it and play all your cool tricks with it. Understood?”

There was another pause. “Yes, sir. What is it you want me to look at? I’m listening.”

I told him. Lorenzo Agavi understood before I could even complete the sentence. I liked this guy. Burnt coffee happens. It’s a side effect of life. But this guy—this guy I liked.

*  *  *

Detective Oscar Guerra left a note on my desk. “Lunch Monday?” it read. Laconic, as always, even in the written word. I jotted him down on my calendar: “Oscar—lunch—talk about Ilke case.” I tapped the pen against the paper. Strange little animal, the Hollywood business. Movie director Jerry White, showman Dan Horowitz, and all the beautiful, the rich, and the forever young. What did people like Medford and Tarantino have to do cavorting with them? And then there was Medford’s wife.
Everybody knows Elizabeth, Detective
, Horowitz had said.

Nelson’s high-pitched giggles from the room next door distracted me. I got up and went looking for the detective-wannabe who was supposed to help me with the Tarantino investigation. She was sitting on Luke’s desk, happily chatting her way through tabloids, blockbusters, and TV shows.

“You’re kidding!” I heard her shrill. “Did you watch the sequel too? It was to die for!”

“Did you die for those papers I asked you to sort through, Nelson?”

She startled. Luke straightened up in his chair. “Hey Track,” he said.

Nelson sulked. “Nothing whatsoever came out of the Tarantinos’ phone logs—”

“I’m not talking about that.”

She rolled her eyes, hopped off Luke’s desk and mumbled a weary, “I’ll see you later, Luke.”

I followed her to one of the common rooms, where she pointed to an open cardboard box sitting on a large metal table. Next to the box was an unrolled map of L.A. county, with a few areas between North Hollywood and Westwood marked in bright yellow. “It took me the whole day to sort through all phone logs, financial records, bank statements and what have you.”

I reached for the coffee pot sitting on a file cabinet next to a snake of Styrofoam cups and helped myself to a lukewarm brew. I hate lukewarm American coffee. It’s even worse than American coffee. “And?” I prodded, inhaling the awakening wafts of caffeine.

“Nothing.”

A mouthful of coffee went the wrong way down my throat. “What d’you mean nothing? You spent the whole day and got nothing out of it? What d’you get paid for?”

Nelson’s pretty lips twitched into a pout. She came so close to my face I smelled Luke’s aftershave on her skin. “You know, Track,” she hissed, “I used to like you a lot better before you got your D-2 promotion. Still an asshole, but at least you were fun to hang out with on Friday nights.” A disgusted look clinging to her dark eyes, she snagged my tie and tugged it. “Look at you now. All dressed up and plastered behind the I-no-longer-have-time-for-you-people shitty attitude.”

A doorknob from across the hallway squeaked and a Rape Special lieutenant came out of one of the offices and walked straight to our room. Nelson let go of my tie and took a step back. “Sorry to disappoint you, Detective,” she said, her voice tuned back to mellow. “All payments Jennifer Huxley received were from her paychecks. You’re welcome to double-check yourself, if you want. In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and bring these back to the evidence room.” She hurdled the large cardboard box, walked out of the door, and disappeared in the meanders of our cubicle-filled floor. I coughed, readjusted the knot of my tie and nodded a brisk salute to the LT.

Lieutenant Aberdeen was hefty and bilious and wheezed like ten overworked bellows. He drank, smoked, and had drunk and smoked his entire life. You wouldn’t have given him a day longer to live and yet he was more resilient than a nest of cockroaches. “How’s coffee today?” he asked, going for the pot.

“Lukewarm,” I replied, staring at the map Nelson had left open on the desk. She had color-coded a few spots by date and source, and noted the key on a separate piece of paper. Behind me, I heard Aberdeen rip open two bags of sugar, empty them in his cup, and stir for a good thirty seconds.

“The Tarantino case, I suppose?” he asked, craning his head and staring at the map.

“Huxley, actually. I had Nelson uh— help out.”

“Good call. She’s indicated a desire to move up in her career.” He sent a supercilious glare my way, as if wondering if I had anything to say on the matter. I tried not to and forced my eyes back to the map. There was a green dot marked along San Vicente Boulevard, about four miles away from the Esperanza Medical Center. On Nelson’s key I read, “ATM withdrawal in the amount of $500, October 6, eight fifteen p.m.”
Curious
, I thought. I had spotted plenty of ATM machines at the Esperanza, and even if Huxley forgot to stop at any of those, why drive four miles away from North Hollywood, where she lived, when she could’ve found another one on her way home?

“Nelson’s okay,” I finally told Aberdeen as he sloppily drank his coffee. “She does as told. If only she’d go one step further and connect the dots in between, she’d be a hell of a copper.”

Aberdeen slurped down the remainder of his drink, tossed the cup in the trashcan, and then nodded. “I like people who do as they’re told,” he said. “They’re my kind of people.”

*  *  *

“They just hired a new guy at Latent Prints,” I told Satish as we crossed the parking lot and walked to the entrance of the Hertzberg-Davis Center.

“What happened to Scar Novak?”

“He quit.”

Novak, the previous specialist, wore gloves and facemask everywhere, not just at crime scenes. Besides the usual tools of the trade, his workstation sported a Brita pitcher, individually wrapped Styrofoam cups, a couple of bottles of Lysol, and an antibacterial gel dispenser. He cruised the hallways of Parkway—back when the SID was at the glass house—bundled up like a terrorist, gathering the concerned looks of unaware visitors. Rumors spread that the reason for constantly hiding his lower face was a deformed jaw, from which he was dubbed “Scar” Novak. Nobody knew his real first name.

“Maybe he found a job where he didn’t have to wear a facemask all day long.”

“Yeah. On a deserted island.” I held the door to the Fingerprint Analysis and Comparison lab. “Or maybe he conveniently left before the Maldonado tornado hit him too.”

Maria Maldonado was a hospital technician wrongfully accused of burglary based on fingerprint evidence signed off by three of our Latent Print technicians. The Unit was under fire and the media pounded with the lingering question of how many other wrongful accusations had yet to be brought to light. Even after the advent of automated databases such as IAFIS—the FBI fingerprint database system where all prints were routinely sent for possible matches—fingerprint evidence was still analyzed by a set of human eyes and a magnifying glass. 

I let the door close behind us and added, “I have great faith in the new hire.”

Bent over his workstation, one hand on the shaft where a Nikon camera was hinged and the other clutching a magnifying glass, Lorenzo Agavi’s most noticeable feature was his mop of black curls. He had small, green eyes, hidden behind oversized glass frames. His ears looked like they wanted to stick out of the sides of his head except there was too much hair to make it that far out. A white coat hung loose over his narrow shoulders, its billows leaving a trail of iodine fumes and ninhydrin.

“Welcome, Detectives,” he said over a lengthy handshake. “I’ve got some really cool stuff to show you.” We followed him to a different workstation where I spotted the first commandment note and the letter Diane had found in Tarantino’s paper bin, both sealed in transparent evidence bags. Next to them were the fingerprint cards.

“I just uploaded these guys to the system.” Lorenzo logged onto the terminal on his workstation, and the photos of two enlarged fingerprints popped up on the screen. In one, the ridges and loops were well delineated, whereas the second one was blurred on one side and overlapped with a smudged partial.

Agavi bathed me in a caffeine-laden smile. “First commandment note on the left—the only print I found on the piece of paper. The envelope instead had plenty of overlapping prints. The photo on the right is the best shot I got.” He pointed to the screen. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

“I’m mesmerized.”

Satish snorted. “What’s running through your overworked brains, Track?”

“For one thing, the two are a match.”

By my side, Agavi beamed. Buried in the overgrown Afro-mop, his face hung in reverence. I like young people: they’re so easy to impress. “You have a sharp eye, sir. My thesis advisor also has a sharp eye.”

“Sharp eyes still get in trouble in court,” Satish rebuked.

Agavi winked. “That’s why we have mathematical tools.”

“Wait,” I said. “The procedure—”

“Oh, I know.” He held up the magnifying glass next to his keyboard—one of those shaped like an upside down wine glass. “I already checked all loops and ridges by eye. But I’m sure you’ll appreciate the fact that the computer agrees with my conclusions. Same software that runs underneath IAFIS.”

I looked at Satish and beamed. “Told you I liked him.”

Lorenzo double clicked on the prints taken from the envelope. “I applied a fast Fourier transform software to separate the overlapping prints and clear out the background signal—plastic surgery for fingerprints.” At the click of his fingers, the images on the screen underwent the promised beautification.

“Beautiful. Go on.”

“I used three different algorithms to compare the topography in the two sets of prints. The first one uses harmonic functions to renormalize the distortion caused by the different touches.” Agavi was so enthralled he spoke of the software like a kid ranting over his brand new Nintendo. “The next two algorithms compare the minutiae across the two images and find all possible matches. I ran both to minimize FAR and FRR. Type I and type II errors,” he added as a magnanimous explanation. An eye-opener, this guy.

“Conclusion?” I impatiently chimed.

“Sixteen matching points.” Little white boxes numbered one through sixteen made their appearance on the screen, each pointing to the location of the match on the two images.

“So you were right,” Satish admitted. “The person who left the note at the Tarantino crime scene had mailed the letter with Gaya White’s funeral note inside.”

“That person was Jennifer Huxley,” I said.

“Well, that seems obvious, at this point. Can we prove it, though?”

“Of course we can.” Agavi beamed. “After your call this morning, I pulled up her prints from the autopsy and ran the same algorithm. It’s a match.”

“How about the other task I asked you?”

Agavi got up from the computer station, walked to his desk and came back with a detailed printout.

“What’s that?” Satish asked.

“A gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis,” Agavi elucidated. “Ran on a sliver of paper from the first commandment note.”

I skimmed through the technicalities of the report he handed me and jumped down to the very bottom. “Traces of sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide—”

“Those are from the chemical pulping. All paper has that kind of stuff,” Agavi interrupted. “Go to the next line.”

I read on. “Hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, methane, cadaverine, ammonia. And perlite.”

Agavi nodded. “And those have nothing to do with chemical pulping of paper.”

“I know,” I said. “They have to do with cadavers.” No wonder the first commandment note smelled foul to my nose.

CHAPTER 22

____________

Friday, October 17

“So Huxley was dead when she left her fingerprints on the first commandment note.”

We were back in the car, northbound on the One-Oh-One.

“Correct. Which means, somebody else drove her car to Benedict Canyon last Saturday night and killed the Tarantinos.”

“And wanted us to think Huxley did it.”

“Once you have a stiff you might as well use it.”

Satish cocked his head to the side. “I don’t know, Track. I’m old fashioned. If I had a stiff, I’d dump it into a river with a stone tied to its foot. Far west style.”

“There are no rivers in this part of the state,” I reminded him. “We dried them up so we could have green lawns and ten-thousand-gallon swimming pools.”

Satish shook his head. “To think I have neither. I feel so incomplete.”

The day was hazy and traffic steady, all vehicles flowing at exactly five miles over the speed limit, save a few thugs who used aggressive driving as an indicator of high-testosterone levels. We got off the freeway on Santa Monica and entered the tree-lined streets of a Hollywood residential neighborhood. Hemmed in by green strips of lawn, the sidewalks displayed blissful people jogging, walking their groomed dogs, or riding their bikes. Tall palm trees and hedges trimmed to perfection disguised white houses with red shingle roofs.

No wonder Southern Californians are so happy. Where else would you wanna live?

“Still no news on the DNA from Huxley’s car,” I said. I’d inquired about it on our way out of the Forensic Center, when I sneaked into the Serology lab to dump the beer can I had acquired the night before. The beer can made me feel deceitful and baffled at the same time, as if I’d just found Pandora’s box and left it in the lab for somebody else to open.

Diane didn’t smell weird this morning at Chromo. Or did she
?

Satish shrugged. “You know how slow these things are.” He made a right on a private driveway, a narrow street shaded by large oaks. It wound uphill and ended into a wide parking lot overlooking Laurel Canyon Park. Haze shrouded the valley with overlapping layers of azure and periwinkle. Satish carelessly parked his modest Ford between a Jaguar and a Mercedes SLK, unimpressed by either beauty at our sides. Across from the parking lot, banana trees and birds-of-paradise flowers followed the perimeter of a wide one-story building, its tall windows draped by green awnings. The canopy above the entrance read, “Hollywood Golden Racket Tennis Club.”

I climbed out of the car and slid on my sunglasses, dazed by the glare of the shiny red Jaguar.

Satish said, “The lab technician’s death brought Chromo back in the headlines. Our Chief is going to have to sit down with Gomez and Mirkovic and have a long chat. I’m sure things will
speed up with all the pressure mounting.”

I sighed. “So now what?”

Satish smiled, dropped his chin, and slid his brown polka dot tie through his fingers. “Now we go meet Hannah.”

*  *  *

“Do you have a membership, gentlemen?”

“No, just a shiny tin from the LAPD. You like it?” I replied, flashing the badge right before his nose.

“Oh, absolutely, sir.”

“It was a rhetorical question.”

Satish elbowed me and took over, not trusting my diplomatic gift. “We’re here to meet Ms. Hannah Kelson,” he said. The information didn’t stir a single muscle on the lad’s face. Black suit, spearmint-smelling breath, sleek swept-back hair, and distinguished affectation, the man bobbed his head. “She’s outside in the lounge. I will take you gentlemen right over.”

It either takes money or an LAPD tin to be called
gentleman
.

The place—one of L.A.’s most exclusive tennis clubs—exuded luxury from every corner. Waxed wood panels covered the walls of the hall of fame, from where the club’s most famous visitors beamed down on us, framed in forever-young smiles. Hushed laughs and ice clinking in fancy glasses welcomed us in the lounge, together with expensive perfumes and high society perspiration—which smells just like any other kind of perspiration, it’s only disguised better. A bald barman brandished a cocktail shaker, while a husky client barfed a list of tennis competitions he’d won in his leaner years. A mellow jazz tune played in the background. The lights were dim and washed over the display of rum and liquor bottles.

We followed our escort through glass sliding doors. Garden screens covered in creeping bougainvillea embraced the outside patio. Tall hedges hid the view of the tennis courts, their presence given away by the occasional shout, a burst of laughter, the thumps of the rackets hitting the ball. Our chaperone pointed to one of the tables outside, shaded by a blue umbrella.

Disguised by a white sunhat and large sunglasses, Hannah Kelson—Jerry White’s ex wife—sat frozen in an ethereal pose, as if she deemed anything around her frivolous and inconsequential. Elbow propped on the table, chin softly rested on the heel of her hand, she sucked on a Virginia Slim nestled between her index and middle fingers. She took a nervous puff, then turned away and blew it all out in one long billow.

I don’t generally like women who smoke, yet for a moment I found myself dangling from her red lips like that white cigarette, kissed by a puckered ring of lipstick.

She startled when she saw us approach her table. Even with our pancake holsters hidden away in our waistbands, as we sauntered around the bistro tables in our dark suits and polished dress shoes, we were as distinctive as an Elton John posing in a crowd of Japanese tourists.

Kelson abruptly crushed the Virginia Slim on a blue ashtray. “I’m sorry,” she muttered as Satish introduced us. “I quit years ago, after we decided to have a child. When I lost her, though—” Her creamy complexion blushed and her voice trailed off mid-sentence. “How do you do?” she said, letting us shake her limp hand. My eyes wandered over the artificially red lips, the straight nose with small and round nostrils, and the butterfly glasses I had already seen the day before, half hidden behind a pillar.

“Did you know the Tarantinos well?” I asked, pulling a chair over. “You were at their funeral yesterday, Ms. Kelson.”

Her smooth forehead creased. She brought a white hand to her face and took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were sharp blue, intense yet clouded. They grazed my face like blind fingers searching for a familiar feature to grasp. She took her time taking in the details of my appearance, her gaze fumbling with the lapels of my jacket, creeping into the hem of my shirt. And I breathed in her scent, extremely pleasant, I confess, despite the slight aftertaste of nicotine. It was delicate, not exuberant, and yet persistent.

I knew from the reports I’d read that Kelson was now in her late forties, yet the woman in front of me looked no older than thirty-two.

“Jerry and I met Dr. Tarantino in 1996,” she said. “We stayed in touch, exchanged holiday cards over Christmas.” Her accent was American, yet her British origins surfaced in little details: her quiet voice, polite yet chilly, always retreating to an invisible barrier saying, “Private. Do not enter.”

“Especially after Gaya’s birth?” Satish asked.

I hadn’t expected the smile that followed. She brushed a finger along the condensation on her glass, her eyes dreamingly looking away, chasing memories. “Especially after Gaya’s birth. We wanted to do everything right, Detective. I grew up taking care of my younger sister affected by Down syndrome. Jerry’s aunt has cystic fibrosis, a recessive genetic disease, and then the new case came out—you remember the parents who sued for malpractice claiming a flu shot had caused their child to develop autism?”

“Gregory and Melissa Garrison,” Satish confirmed.

“That’s right. Greg is Jerry’s brother. Jerry took his mother’s maiden name when he started directing. We really wanted a child, but between my age and the risk of both autism and cystic fibrosis in Jerry’s family, we were scared.”

We wanted to do everything right
. What is the meaning of “right” when it comes to human life?

Hannah let out a sigh. “So we did the genetic testing, and from the results we were told that both Jerry and I carried the gene for cystic fibrosis. It’s a recessive gene, so neither of us is affected, but if we had a child,
there was a one-in-four chance that she was going to have it. It’s a horrible disease, affects the lungs, skin, everything.”

“And Chromo helped?” I asked. “How?”

“Genetic counseling. Our Gaya was conceived
in vitro
.”

An overdressed waiter with an attitude materialized by our side ready to fulfill our requests even if we didn’t have any. I ordered a double shot espresso and wondered if it came with a price tag that could be reasonably filed under “incidentals” in our expense report.

Gaya Nicole was an exceptionally brilliant child. Kelson laid it out plainly, without a note of pride. To her, it was a fact. “Two grades ahead of her age, she played the violin and excelled in any activity she undertook. Even after the leukemia was diagnosed, she still proved herself extraordinary. I can’t tell you how many times Jerry and I felt overwhelmed by the doctors’ visits, the chemo and radiation therapies, the nausea, the sense of death creeping into our lives.” Kelson sighed and averted her eyes. Her fingers went looking for something, a cigarette, most likely, then changed their mind and rested again on the glass in front of her.

“Throughout her ordeal, Gaya was the bravest of us three. Completely bald, she felt like a tiny sparrow in my arms. And yet, she’d hug me tight and say,
It’ll be ok, Mum. Even if I have to go to heaven, it’ll be ok
.” A tear rolled down her face. “My baby is in heaven, now,” she whispered, dabbing her cheek with the tip of her finger.

Satish and I exchanged uncomfortable glances. Two killer cops, both armed, heavily trained, and look at us. Melting down like marshmallows on a stick. Satish murmured a barely audible “I’m sorry, Ms. Kelson,” while drumming his fingers on the table. I tipped my head looking for my million-dollar espresso.

“Did your relationship with Mr. White worsen during those months?” Satish asked. 

Kelson shook her head, gently, and just as gently her perfume escaped and found its way to my nostrils. “No. It brought us back together.
Definitely
brought us together. Not as husband and wife. As parents of a dying child.”

The overdressed waiter came back with our orders, walking as if he had a broomstick stuck down his throat. By the time it touched the table my espresso was cold. I downed it in one gulp, then loosened the knot of my tie and took the chance to change the topic of the conversation. “How did your friendship with Professor Conrad start, Ms. Kelson?”

Her index finger froze along the rim of the glass. “Michael?” she said. “Michael was a child.” She smiled, her eyes sad in a different way this time. “He’d take me out to dinner, tell me how beautiful I was, and then monopolize the conversation with his ideas.”

“Ideas you agreed with?” Satish asked.

Kelson’s voice changed. “Did I agree with Michael’s claims on selective breeding? No, Detective. I didn’t. Do I blame him for making such claims? Same answer: no. Doctors and professors used to be revered. Nowadays, they’re nerds. TV, tabloids, reality shows, all imposing new role models: college drop-outs, wannabes, self-declared geniuses, and other failures seeking cheap and short-lasting fame. Next generation’s heroes. When you look around, Detective, and you see this kind of rubbish, how can you not agree with Conrad?”

I shifted in my chair. A tennis ball smacked in the distance. A blonde and tanned couple emerged from the tennis courts as if they’d just stepped out of a sport gear catalog.

Kelson shook her head. “Poor Michael. So smart, and yet so dumb.”

Satish and I winced at the remark. “Dumb, Ms. Kelson?”

She turned to me, a proud glare glimmering in her blue eyes. “Short-sighted,” she corrected. And then bit her lower lip until it became white. She was done with us. I read it in the impatience with which her pink fingernails tapped against the glass. I wasn’t, though. I had one more question.

“Have you ever heard of the name Proteus, Ms. Kelson? Anything that comes to mind, from conversations with Conrad, or back when you consulted Chromo the first time, or maybe at the Esperanza—”

“Proteus, you said?”

I nodded.

“I’m sorry, it doesn’t ring a bell,” her lips said. Not her eyes though.
I’m lying, Detective
, her eyes told me. Or did I just imagine it?

I leaned forward. “Hannah. Your ex-husband is a successful man with a brilliant career. Why would he ruin it all and kill a family friend on the whim of a moment?” Again, those blue irises
sparkling in an eerie way, talking to me.
Don’t go there
. Alarmed, as if afraid to slip away.

I have to. It’s my job
.

“He didn’t do it,” she said firmly.

“You really believe that?”