The Blue Hour (29 page)

But outside the Rex there
was a scuffle on the sidewalk and Hess pulled Merci back from it just as two
NBPD bike blues jumped in and broke it up.

Her anger just cut right
up through the alcohol, sharper than it was when she was sober, and she felt
her spirits rise then rankle in unfamiliar ways. Maybe that's why they
called
it spirits. Scotch was kind of spooky stuff.

She looked back and saw
the bike cops handcuffing a skinny wino to a parking meter. His opponent, a
muscle type with a goatee, had a stream of blood running down his forehead.

"I feel like I have
to do something in a situation like that."

"Let it go. You're a
homicide investigator, not a beat cop."

"I hate to see that
kind of crap going down. Two meatballs, two perfectly good heads. Makes me
want to bang them together."

"It's over.
Relax."

"Yeah, yeah,
yeah. Let's go down to the water."

She trudged across the
sand. The Scotch and the receding adrenaline left her legs heavy and her mind
light. When they got to the berm near the waterline they stopped. Merci watched
the faintly luminescent suds swoosh up toward them then fade back down. Small
birds darted across the shiny slope before the brine soaked in.

"You're a good
partner, Hess."

"You are,
too."

"We're a decent
team, aren't we?"

"We're doing
okay, so far."

"I know Brighton
wants me to fail. I know the lawsuit makes him look bad. I know you're supposed
to watch me for him. Probably keep a record of it."

"I'm supposed to
watch out for you. Like you are for me."

"That's the first
bullshit I've heard from you, Tim. I know the score and it's more than you say
it is. You can tell him what you want. I'm going to keep doing my job the way I
think it needs to be done. Doesn't mean I won't mess up sometimes. What I'm not
going to do is back off because of you, or Brighton, or anybody else. I'm going
to find the Purse Snatcher and blow the brains out of his sick head and sleep
good that night. All the rest of you can sweep up behind me, pick up the
pieces, do what you have to do.

"This is the
deal with me and Phil Kemp. Phil Kemp has been talking dirt to me since I got
off jail duty my first two years. I mean real lowdown body parts and what he'd
like to do. He's rubbed his crotch on my ass and brushed my tits and said stuff
you wouldn't believe. I guess I didn't react right when I was young. I didn't
know what to do. I thought that's how it went, thought that meant being one of
the boys. Then I started warning him off. He thought it was cute. Couple of
weeks ago he was waiting in the parking structure, late, talking shit about
Mike and what I really needed. He was leaning on my car. He took ahold of my
arm, pretty hard, pretty rough. I got the nine between his eyes and I told him
he could let go or get shot. He let go. Tried to laugh it off. So I hired a
good lawyer.
Because I'm sick of him getting away with it.
I never
wanted to play that game. It's boring and it's trite and it's demeaning. Kemp's
a waste of a human being but he's tight with Brighton. That's why Brighton's so
eager for me to screw up. That would make it look like I'm suing because I
can't cut it." They walked south with the black water at their feet.

"What do you want,
Merci? Out of this lawsuit? You want Kemp fired? Jail? A settlement?
What?"

"I want Kemp to
damned apologize to me and stop. It's that simple."

"That's
all?"

She thought about this.
She wondered how clean she could come with Hess. Maybe it was the scotch or
maybe it was just her instincts, but she thought she could trust him with this.

"Truth, Hess? What I
want most is to go back in time and
not file the damned thing.
I'm
already sorry I did it."

She hoped he wouldn't
say just drop it, and he didn't.

"But I'm not going to
drop it, Hess. I'll chase Kemp all the way to court if I have to. He's gonna
stop and he's gonna apologize or I'll ruin him. Guaranteed. And if fifteen
other broads want to join in and wreck him with me, then they've got the right.
They can do what they want. But I wish they'd quit treating me like some kind
of leader. I got ten e-mails over the last three days, thanking me for stepping
forward. For being courageous enough to stand up to the system. What they don't
get is I
love
the system. I'm part of it. I'm going to run the whole
thing someday. Put money on that. And it really infuriates me to have to file
a suit to get this guy to stop asking me to suck his miserable dick. But what I
want to say to everybody else is, stay off my side."

Merci heard a nightbird
cry behind her, up close, like it was zooming past her ear. Then she could see
it, just a blip of a shadow on the night, vanishing.

"You're doing
the right thing," said Hess.

"That's right. I'm
doing it. Tell Brighton if you want to, since he doesn't have the nuts to ask
me himself."

"This thing
caught him by surprise."

"That's right. I
never ratted Kemp out. Not until I talked to him. Then warned him. Then stuck a
gun in his face. He's getting what he deserves, Hess. I'm sorry if it upsets
Brighton's happiness, but it's sure as hell upset mine."

They ended up back at
Hess's apartment around eleven. Merci fell asleep on the couch and when she
woke up at midnight Hess had made coffee.

He was lying back in a
cheap recliner by the window with a glass of something on the sill, moonlight
on his face, snoring. Merci stood over him and felt a strong urge to touch his
hair while he wouldn't know it.

She reached out, but stopped.

The Department of Mortuary Science of the health
sciences division of Cypress College waits behind a heavy blue door next to a
snack area with a view of the campus.

It was Monday morning.
Hess went through and waited in the small lobby. The lobby was poorly lit and
gave off a feeling of a decade long past—the 1950s, perhaps. On the walls were
pictures of the school in the old days, when it was still located near downtown
Los Angeles. Important mortuary science directors of the past, and some
graduating classes, were also featured. A glass bookshelf held antiquated
embalming texts, among them the seven-volume
Humane Embalming.

The director came from the
inner building and offered his hand. "Allen Bobb," he said. "Detective
Hess?"

Bobb was middle aged with
a wide, pleasant face. His hair was thinning and his smile both open and wily
at the same time. In Bobb's cramped office Hess was offered a small chair on
rollers that both men chuckled at.

Hess thought of all the chemicals
they filled you with when you died and all the chemicals raging through his own
blood right then and wished he was twenty-two again, bombing through giant
waves at the Wedge, functionally immortal.

"I'll cut to the
chase," said Hess.

"Shoot."

He explained the
circumstances: the missing women, the purses, the remains, the blood and trace
formalin discovered in the soil by the lab.

Bobb nodded along like
he'd heard it before. "He's not embalming them, then. Not in the standard
American way. Not if he's removing organs and intestines. We leave those in.
Are you familiar with the embalming process, Detective? Its goals and purpose,
its limitations?"

"No."

"Historically, the
purpose was to discourage the spread of disease. Biologically speaking, there's
nothing more dangerous than a dead human body. Secondly, there were the cosmetic
considerations—making the body presentable and natural for viewing before
burial. The modern method was born in the Civil War, when thousands of bodies
were shipped home for burial."

"How long are
they, uh, good for?"

"The bodies? Three to
five days is our goal. Longer, if there are family circumstances that will
delay interment."

"Can you go
weeks? Months?”

Bobb raised his eyebrows
and shrugged. "Weeks, maybe. Detective, if you underembalm, the corpse
decomposes too quickly. If you overembalm, it becomes discolored and hard
almost immediately."

Hess scribbled down the
questions in his own shorthand. His fingers seemed clunky again this morning,
with patches of cold numbness on the tips. He lifted his pen hand and rubbed it
with his thumb. The radio played an old Elvis song now, one that Hess
remembered listening to at the beach many years ago. He pulled a copy of
Merci's sketch from his pocket and handed it to the director. Bobb studied it
with apparent patience, then gave it back. "No. I don't think so,
Detective. I've got a good memory for faces. I mean, this one's pretty distinctive,
with the long hair and mustache."

"Former student,
maybe someone who dropped out?"

Bobb pursed his lips and
shook his head. "Sorry. Wish could
just say I know him."

"Your graduates?
You keep their records here?"

Bobb nodded. "And
yes, there's a student photograph with each file. I won't offer to let you see
them. But I won't disallow a request."

"I understand. If I
could see the last ten years of graduates, that would be good."

Bobb picked up his phone
and spoke to someone about graduate records for the last ten years.

"It will take about
fifteen minutes to have them ready, Detective. Would you like to see the
procedure? We've got three student embalmings going on right now."

"That might be
helpful."

On the door of the
embalming room was a framed copy of the California Health & Safety Code
forbidding anyone but family, police, doctors, nurses, mortuary personnel and
students from being in the room during an embalming.

Hess followed the Director
in. The lights were bright against the tile and the sweet smell of aldehyde
compounds was strong.

The tables were laid out
in the center of the room, with the corpses' heads toward the far wall. Hess
heard the metallic ping of instruments hitting pans, low voices and a heavy,
rhythmic
chunka-thunk, chunka-thunk.
Bobb guided Hess past the first
three tables.

"Here's one just
starting, Detective. The features have been set and the corpse has been
disinfected and bathed. The student, Bonnie, has chosen a fluid she believes is
right for the decedent—based on age, condition, cause of death, medications,
et cetera. In this case she's chosen a formalin solution called PSX. It's made
by Champion. It's one of my favorites. Did you know that good cosmetic results
come from
inside
the body and not
outside?"

"I did
not."

"Sometimes you
don't even need makeup."

Hess joined Bobb beside
the last table, where an old man lay stretched on the aluminum. He looked to be
about Hess's age, and he was surprised how bad this made him feel. He glanced
at the Case Report Record: Age—69, Cause of Death—cirrhosis of the liver. The
sonofabitch is two whole years older than me, he thought, and that's a lifetime
of a difference.

Hess had always assumed,
for no particular reasons, that he would live to be seventy-five. It was a good
number, a number with bulk and character, a number that always seemed far off
in the future. This assumption had sat well with him until the diagnosis. At
that moment he'd resolved to get those seventy-five years no matter what it
took. The last eight were his and he was going to live them to the fullest.
Sometimes he told himself it was a matter of principle. Other times, he
admitted he was just plain scared to death and didn't want to leave yet.

The smell of the aldehydes
started to sicken him. He hadn't gotten queasy at an autopsy for forty years.
He looked at the student across the corpse from him and saw that she was early
twenties, tall, wholesome and probably beautiful. A surgical mask covered her
nose and mouth. She looked at him and her eyes smiled, but there was concern in
her expression, too.

"Stand back just a
little for this, Detective. Okay, Bonnie, locate the main right carotid and
make your incision above the clavicle. Oh, this is Detective Hess. He's
interested in what we do."

"Hi," said
Bonnie.

"Morning,"
said Hess.

"Not going to
tip over, are you?"

"I'll stay
up."

Her eyes conveyed the
powerful smile of youth and she picked up a surgical scalpel to make her cut.
Hess watched her.

"Good, Bonnie. Not
too deep. Now use the aneurysm hook to lift out the artery. Good. Do your
ligatures now, and not so hard this time. You don't want to—"

"—I
know."

"Bonnie overdid her
ligatures last time, and the artery burst."

"I
am
capable of learning, Al."

"Make me look
good."

Her fingers were
nimble. "There."

"Very good. Go
ahead with the insertion tube now."