Terminal (A Lomax & Biggs Mystery Book 5) (6 page)

“I’m going to miss being your chauffeur every morning,” I said, opening the back door for Sophie and making sure she was buckled up. “After five months, we’re like a finely tuned, well-oiled machine.”

“We’re more like the Rockettes,” Sophie said, rewriting me as usual.

“What does a kid from LA know about a bunch of dancers in New York?”

“Tons,” she giggled. “I Googled them.”

“You know, if I were your father instead of just your congenial host and proprietor of the Hotel Lomax, I wouldn’t let you be Googling your way around the Internet,” I said. “Not everything on the information highway is PG, kiddo.”

“I know, but my mother thinks there’s a lot I can learn from the kid-friendly websites. Plus, she trusts me to be careful on highways—the 405, the 101, the Internet.” She giggled again.
Sophie is her own best audience, but I was quickly becoming a close second.

“What ever possessed you to Google the Rockettes anyway?” I asked.

“It was an accident. You know how Google always tries to figure out what you’re looking for before you even finish putting in the whole word. I was typing
rocketry
but Google guessed the
Rockettes
, so I checked them out.”

“And?”

“Those ladies are like a finely tuned, well-oiled machine.”

Big giggles. From both of us.

“What are you and Terry doing today?” she asked as I took the ramp onto the 10.

“Oh, the usual. Round up some bad guys, lock them up, throw away the key.”

“Oh, give me a break, man,” she said. “What are you
really
doing?”

As much as I didn’t want my conversation with an eight-year-old to come back around to death again, I’ve always been straight with her, so I told her the truth. “We’re starting out at the morgue.”

“Cool. One of these days, can I go to the morgue with you?”

I took a look at her in the rearview mirror to see if she was still joking around. She wasn’t.

“You know,” she said hopefully. “Like Take Your Daughter To Work Day.”

“Oh, in that case,” I said, “absolutely.”

That threw her. “Really? When can we go?”

“As soon as I find a kid-friendly morgue that your mom will approve of. Otherwise, you can wait till you’re in medical school.”

“I don’t want to be a doctor. I want to be a detective like you.”

“Okay, then wait till you’re in detective school.”

“Not fair,” she said, sticking her tongue out and contorting her face into an exaggerated scowl—a clear message that she thought
my decision to spare her a naked cadaver being sliced open from stem to stern was the ultimate in bad surrogate parenting.

“I’m sorry to dash your dreams, kiddo,” I said, “but can we change the subject to something more pleasant? Something without dead people.”

“Okay, how about you take me to a shooting range?”

My cell rang.

“Put it on speaker,” the wise-ass kid said.

“In your dreams,” I told her.

I’d learned the hard way that hitting the Bluetooth button on the steering column and broadcasting my calls—especially the ones from my foul-mouthed, scatological boss Brendan Kilcullen—was a sure-fire way to expand Sophie’s vocabulary.

I plugged in my ear buds and took the call.

“Mike, it’s Doug Heller. I got your blood test back.”

“And?”

“And your white blood count went from 18,000 to 22,000.”

“I’m in the car with Sophie,” I said.

“So you can’t ask me any probing questions,” he said.

“Correct.”

“Good, because I wouldn’t have any intelligent answers. All I can tell you is that the upper limit of normal is 10,000, and your numbers are heading in the wrong direction. I want you to see a friend of mine, Herand Abordo. He’s a hematologist.”

“Fine,” I said.

“
Fine
? How about, ‘What’s Dr. Abordo’s phone number, Doug, because this sounds like something I shouldn’t put off?’”

I laughed. “I’m kind of busy right now.”

“That’s what I figured, so I made an appointment for you. This afternoon at five. I’ll text you his address. Have a nice day.”

He hung up.

“Sure thing, Dad,” I said into the dead phone. “I’ll tell her.”

“Was that Big Jim?” Sophie asked as soon as I pulled out my ear buds.

“Oh… were you listening to my phone call?”

“That’s what detectives do,” she said.

“Well, Detective Tan, Big Jim just called to say he’s excited about the party. He wants to know who you’re inviting.”

She handed me a piece of paper. “I made a list last night.”

I glanced at it. “No kids from your class?”

“No. It’s a family thing, not a school thing.”

“Big Jim has four acres, and so far it feels like a pretty small party. Why don’t you invite some more people?”

“How many?” she said.

“As many as you want.”

“Okay,” she said, a gap-toothed imp grin spreading across her face. “How about the Rockettes?”

God, I loved this girl. I was going to miss her something fierce.

CHAPTER 12

THE LA COUNTY
Morgue is the last place on earth I’d take Sophie to. It’s definitely not kid-friendly and not particularly adult-friendly either. For starters, it’s nothing like the morgues you see on TV. Those are so spacious and pristine, it’s like the set designers are trying to make you feel like you could have your family picnic right there on the stainless steel autopsy table.

But that’s make believe, and in real life, real death isn’t pretty. The LA Morgue looks more like a Civil War battlefield after the carnage. There are bodies everywhere. Not tucked out of sight in gleaming steel drawers, but on gurneys scattered helter-skelter in the dank hallways—some of the corpses draped with sheets, some not-so-draped, all waiting to be processed, claimed, or stored indefinitely like so many old suitcases that have piled up in the Lost and Found department of a train station.

And trust me, nothing smells like luggage.

I pulled into the parking lot, took my last few breaths of fresh air, entered through the loading dock, and stopped at the admissions desk.

“Good morning, Mike,” the tech behind the counter said. “Terry is in Autopsy Three with Doc Hand.”

That made me smile. When you’ve watched as many autopsies as I have, it’s only natural to have a favorite pathologist. For me and Terry, it was Eli Hand.

When I first met Eli, he introduced himself as a recovering rabbi. As a young man he went to rabbinical school, found a congregation, and after two years, realized he could no longer stand listening to other people’s problems.

“I was like a shepherd who wakes up one morning and thinks, ‘This job would be so much better if it weren’t for all these needy sheep,’” he told me. “One a day, two a day—that I might have tolerated. But it was a steady stream of complainers. Like I was their shrink. At one point I told the president of the synagogue we should change our name to Temple Beth Oy, Do I Have A Problem.”

So after two years of trying, Eli said farewell to his flock, went to medical school, and picked the one specialty that was a perfect match for his intellect and his temperament. Now in his seventies, he is the most respected pathologist on the morgue staff. “And,” he adds proudly, “not one of my patients has ever complained.”

I weaved my way past the recently departed and entered Autopsy Three. Eli, Terry, and the two homicide-suicide victims from yesterday were waiting for me.

“How’s it going?” Terry said.

“Not so good. Sophie’s grandmother died.”

Eli looked up from the remains of Cal Bernstein. “So does that mean her mother is coming back from China?”

“Thursday,” I said.

He said something softly in Hebrew.

“What are you mumbling?”

“
Baruch dayan emet
. Blessed Is the True Judge. If you’ve got the life event, I’ve got the blessing. It comes in handy in my line of work.”

“Thanks. I’ll tell Carly you said a prayer for her mother.”

He shrugged his shoulders and gave me a hangdog look. “Mike, she was an old lady, and we all knew she was dying, so the prayer was only maybe ten percent for her. The other ninety
percent was for you and Diana, because I know how you’re going to feel about giving up Sophie.”

“You’re bumming me out, Doc. Let’s talk about something more upbeat, like those two bodies you’ve been hunched over.”

Eli stepped back from the table. “It didn’t take much hunching. Dr. Kraus was shot three times, any one of which would have done the trick. Mr. Bernstein, as you saw for yourself, blew his brains out. The parts of his body that were still intact are riddled with cancer. He only had weeks to live himself. My part was easy. You boys have the tough job of figuring out a motive—that’s what I’d like to know.”

“You and the mayor of Los Angeles,” Terry said. “Apparently Dr. Kraus is the miracle worker responsible for his three grandchildren.”

“Just what every criminal investigator needs,” Eli said. “A politician looking over your shoulder.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Terry said.

“You’re a mensch, Biggs,” Eli said. “The department could use a few more like you and Mike.”

“Would you mind repeating that? I’ve never heard it before, and I doubt if I’ll ever hear it again.”

“I mean it. I hate working with cops who either don’t give a crap, or they sweep the loose ends under the rug so they can close a case.”

“Are you talking about any cops in particular?” I said.

“You mean like those two assholes over in West LA, Detectives Rubsam and Apovian?” Eli said.

“Don’t know them,” Terry said. “What’d they do to piss off a rabbi?”

“I’ll tell you all about it over a cup of coffee,” Eli said. “You got ten minutes?”

Terry grinned. “Ten minutes? I know you, Eli. Are you sure that’s all we’re going to need?”

“For starters,” Eli said. “Unless you want to help out a friend
and get involved. Then it will take a little more time.”

“Help out a friend?” Terry said. “Oy, now Eli has a problem.”

Eli smiled, gave Terry the finger, and said something in Hebrew. I doubt if it was a blessing.

CHAPTER 13

WE FOLLOWED ELI
upstairs to the employee lounge, where the plastic plaque on the door read Life Goes On. It was a spacious room with a bank of vending machines, a tidy little kitchenette, and half a dozen crisp white Formica tables, each one surrounded by a quartet of bright orange chairs.

The morning sun streamed through a wall of oversized windows. It was a total departure from the bleak Dickensian world we’d just left behind two floors below.

We each popped a single-serve K-Cup into the Keurig coffee-maker and sat down at a table furthest from the door.

“I had a body in here three weeks ago,” Eli said, sprinkling a packet of Splenda into his Green Mountain Breakfast Blend, “male, Caucasian, forty–seven years old. His name was Wade Yancy. He had been at home, went out to walk his dog on a dark road, and got hit by a car.

“According to the accident report, the driver was sober. The victim, on the other hand, had tied one on. There was enough alcohol in his blood to convince me that Mr. Yancy was the primary cause of his own death. He landed on a neighbor’s lawn about sixty feet from the point of impact, so no surprise that the autopsy showed multiple broken bones along with catastrophic internal bleeding.”

“So far it sounds like another open-and-shut case,” Terry said.
“And yet…”

Eli nodded, sat back, and looked at us over his coffee cup. He had our undivided attention. “And yet, Mr. Yancy died from blunt force trauma to the head.”

“You said he sailed sixty feet. He must’ve conked his noggin when he landed.”

“He hit the
back
of his head—the occipital bone—but it wasn’t enough to cause death. However, he also had a grievous injury to the top of his head, which was not consistent with the rest of the accident. And since there was no indication that the top of his head ever came in contact with the ground, I concluded that he was struck with a blunt object which caved in part of his skull.”

“So maybe Mr. Yancy wasn’t the primary cause of his own death after all,” Terry said.

“Now you’re talking like a detective who wouldn’t rule it a fatal traffic accident and waive any further investigation.”

“Is this where Rubsam and Apovian come in?”

“They were assigned to do the follow-up. I called them, told them what I’d found, and sent them pictures of this mysterious head wound. I never heard back from them. A few days later, they filed a report saying no signs of foul play, and I had to release the body to Yancy’s family. It annoyed the crap out of me, so on Sunday I decided to do what I always do when I’m trying to solve a problem.”

“You went to temple and prayed,” I said.

“No. I went to Hillcrest and played golf. Me, my wife, and another couple. We were on the seventh hole when it came to me. An epiphany.”

“You finally realized that Jesus Christ is the Son of God,” Terry said.

Eli chuckled. “That’s an Epiphany with a capital
E
. Mine was a lowercase
e
.”

“More like a hunch,” Terry said.

“No. I’m not paid to have hunches. I had an educated medical
opinion on what really killed Wade Yancy, and it wasn’t a Prius.”

He paused to sip his coffee. Rabbi/Doctor Hand was a master of dramatic effect.

“So what do you think killed him?” I asked.

“Bam!” he said, banging the flat of his fist against the table. “Someone clobbered him on the head with a golf club. Judging by the shape of the indentation, my best guess is a nine-iron. So I called Rubsam and Apovian and told them to get a warrant to search the driver’s house and car for a set of clubs. If I’m right, I might be able to pick up some of Yancy’s DNA from the murder weapon.”

“You’re calling it murder?” I said.

“Could I testify in court that it was murder beyond a reasonable doubt? No. The man was hit by three thousand pounds of steel travelling at forty miles an hour. The fact that he didn’t die on impact was a miracle. His life force was gone. His organs were shutting down. But it looks to me like someone couldn’t wait a few more minutes and decided to hurry the process along.”