Taking Liberty (29 page)

___________________________

Rage is a dangerous thing. It leads normally placid people into committing the vilest of crimes.

Springfield had had a lasting impression on me.

I performed deep-breathing exercises as I marched along Mission Road, visualizing fields of flowers and hopping bunnies – all through a clearing red mist.

Breathe. Control. Release.

I watched Bishop’s modified Suburban make a right at the next signals and disappear down the road.

Breathe. Control. Release.

Other than pure mischief, I had no idea why Bishop would stir the pot and try to blacken Rae’s image. Admittedly, I only knew what Rae had told me about the intervening years between us.

What didn’t I know?

Bishop’s accusations had hammered nails of doubt in my head, I realized. Two blows in quick succession, leaving me dazed and seething.

I crossed the entranceway to an abandoned building, only distantly aware of my surroundings.

This was a well-worn area of town. Yellowy weeds pushing through cracks in the sidewalk. Vacant plots, overgrown and decayed. Sagging chain-links and boarding blighted by graffiti. I stormed past one auto glass repair shop after another. I was all fired up. Ready to punch someone or something.

My cell phone jangled.

I dug it out and barked a
what do you want?
into the microphone.

“There’s dried soot all over my bike,” came a man’s voice. “Thanks a bunch, buddy. It’s a mess. All the intakes are all clogged up.”

“Tim?”

“Jeez Louise, Gabe. You promised you’d look after her. I’m megally disappointed.”

“Tim, I’m sorry. I’ll make amends. Get it professionally cleaned. I promise. And there’s no such word as megally.”

“That’s not the point, Gabe, either way, and you know it.”

“You’re right.” Up ahead, I spotted a pair of youths cross to my side of the street. Baggy jeans and baseball caps. Body language shouting
we’s gonna roll you over real good, grandpa
. “This isn’t a good time, Tim. What do you want?”

“I just saw the breakfast news and nearly choked on my Cheerios. Your partner’s been killed. Jeez Louise. Why didn’t you wake me?”

“More pressing matters.”

The two youths were conspiring between themselves. Eyeing me up and down. Flexing fingers as they came my way. I knew what they were thinking: some middle-aged guy in a sports jacket, jeans and sneakers, a mile outside his comfort zone. Easy pickings.

“Aside from freaking out over my bike, I just wanted to pass on my condolences,” Tim was saying. “Plus, I’ve been thinking more about our human torch.”

“Tim . . .”

“Hear me out. Least you can do.”

I had my gaze locked on the approaching double act. The shorter of the two had slid his right hand inside the front of his jacket. The other had slipped what looked like a steel knuckleduster over his fist. Both were wearing menacing faces.

“So, I called this guy I know who works security at Madame Tussauds. He used to work the door at the nightclub on Santa Monica Boulevard, way back in the early days. You remember the discothèque, don’t you, Gabe? The one where you very nearly got your ass –”

“Tim, just get to the point.”

The youths were checking out the street, confirming there was no one to witness what was coming up.

 “We know the guy in the Santa suit acknowledged someone across the street. Probably this Gary Cornsilk character. So I figured something might show up on the Madame Tussauds security cameras. Maybe even a vehicle they were using. For a limited time only, the tapes are available for us to view. Tell me where you are and I’ll come pick you up.”

My pair of impending assailants were almost upon me. Ten yards, tops. I could see their chests rising and falling as adrenalized blood was pumped into muscles. Jaws clenched. Eyes unblinking.

“I’ll call you back,” I said, and hung up.

The shorter of the two started to pull his hand from beneath his jacket. I was quicker, practiced. I had the Glock out and aimed before he could do the same with his 9 mm.

“Take it easy, boys,” I said. “Mine’s bigger, with a hair trigger. So keep walking; I haven’t got time for any of your shit right now.”

I kept the gun on the shorter guy as they inched past me on the sidewalk. Backs to a chain-link. I could see they weren’t happy about having their master plan crushed. No easy money today, fellas. Foolishly, the kid with the 9 mm still looked like he fancied his chances.

“Try it and your momma will be visiting you in Evergreen Memorial, every other Sunday,” I said, just to make sure he understood my exact frame of mind.

I didn’t put the Glock away until they were out of sight.

___________________________

I hadn’t visited the Coroner’s Department in Boyle Heights since The Undertaker Case. I showed my badge and made my way to Benedict’s office. It hadn’t changed one bit. It still had its distinct haunted house smell and body parts in bell jars on shelves, magnifying the macabre. All the freaky fun of the fairground without the fun or the fairground.

There was a woman seated behind his desk. Mid-thirties, long chestnut hair, one of those faces that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a soccer moms convention.

“Where’s Benedict?”

“Visiting family in Honolulu.” She got to her feet and held out a hand. “Agent Quinn? Deputy Medical Examiner Sarah Kuesel.”

“Pleased to meet you, Sarah. What gives?”

“First off, your house fire victim didn’t die in the house fire.”

I felt my forehead ripple.

“There’s no trace of smoke inhalation. No thermal damage in the upper respiratory system. In fact, no signs that the victim succumbed to hypoxia.” She saw the quizzical expression drawing down my face and added: “I think you better come take a look for yourself.”

I followed Kuesel down the hall in the direction of the autopsy rooms. I wasn’t in any particular rush to inspect Rae’s burnt remains; I was trying desperately hard not to let it be the last image I ever had of her. I wasn’t being given a choice.

Kuesel shouldered open a steel-paneled door and flicked on lights.

The child within me gasped.

Transplant an operating theater into a shower room and you’re somewhere close to the autopsy room in the bowels of the ME’s facility. Function over form. None of the pearly glows and trendy backlighting seen in the movies. Racks of stainless steel surgical instruments and rinse-down everything. The scalpel-sharp smell of antiseptic disinfectants.

Standing proud on a central leg in the middle of the tiled floor was a gunmetal plinth. A multi-bulb halogen lamp was poised over it, like a multi-eyed triffid, illuminating a charred human body.

But something was wrong.

Now that the corpse was removed from the wreckage of Rae’s bed, I could see it was the wrong shape entirely. Even allowing for the fact that the ME had laid the body out flat, it was impossible to ignore the distended midriff – a bulging, bloated waistline – XL in anyone’s wardrobe. Its limbs were much shorter than they ought to have been. Chunkier.

“This is why I asked you to come down here,” Kuesel said as confusion screwed up my face. “I’ve met Agent Burnett. I know she has balls, but this unlucky soul has testicles. Your house fire victim is male. This isn’t Agent Burnett.”

___________________________

If a hole had opened up beneath me then and there I would have fallen through it gladly. When it didn’t, I was left to gape like an idiot, unable to compute Kuesel’s disclosure.

“Rae’s alive?”

It sounded unthinkable. A contradiction. Hard to speak it, let alone believe it.

“Agent, I can’t guarantee that. But I can confirm she didn’t die in that house fire.”

Impossible hope blossomed in my chest.

Rae was alive?

Breath shortening, I moved closer to the plinth and ran my disbelieving gaze over the charcoaled corpse. In the sobering light I could see it wasn’t Rae. The whole arrangement was wrong. Too small, too fat and very much the wrong gender.

The blackened ruins of Rae’s bedroom, coupled with the fact I’d expected her to be burned alive in her bed, had fooled my eyes into seeing what my brain had anticipated.

“So who the hell is this?”

“Good question. I’m still waiting on a dental match. What I can say is this is definitely a fully-grown male. Five foot and slightly on the overweight side.”

I was catching flies. All morning I’d been buried alive, suffocating under the weight of Rae’s loss. Now Kuesel was digging me out and suddenly I was blinded by the light.

“Furthermore, he died from an artificially-induced cardiac event. I found an injection mark in the soft tissue behind the left ear. I ran checks and found lethal quantities of potassium chloride.”

All at once I was breathless. “Sarah, you’re good.”

“I know. Allowing for the unusual heating and cooling, the liver temperature points to a time of death around two this morning,.”

While I was banging on
Winston’s
door and getting nowhere, Cornsilk was killing this John Doe. But why?

“I didn’t find any identifying marks such a tattoos or implants, but I did find these three gold rings, all on the right hand.”

She handed me a plastic dish. There were a few flakes of crisped skin in the bottom, together with three man-sized gold bands.

“Each has a separate letter engraved in the gold,” she said. “Line them up and they spell the word DOG. Maybe your victim’s a gangbanger?”

I blinked twice, disbelieving my own eyes for the second time. I had a pain in my throat; something squeezing hormones from my thyroid gland.

“Sarah, I know who this is. And this homicide just got a whole lot more weird, real fast.”