CHIMERAS (Track Presius) (10 page)

Troy frowned. “You know, come to think of it… There was a name, but it was only a name, mind you, which came up in a few conversations a few years ago. I think it was the summer of 2004… But it sounded like a platonic thing…”

“Whatever it was. Do you remember the name?”

“Hannah. If there was a last name, he never mentioned it.”

Satish and I exchanged a glance full of unspoken meaning. Could’ve been a coincidence, but Hannah was indeed former Mrs. White’s first name.    

CHAPTER 12

____________

Tuesday, October 14

Rhesus’s car gives a jolt.
Another fucking hole
, he thinks, the ruts in the road making the wheels skid. The sky is black, dawn procrastinating its appearance. Hidden in the brush, swallows break into a contentious litany of tweets and chirps. Rhesus sinks back in the driver’s seat, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gearshift. The air is humid, he notices, as it careens through the open windows. It doesn’t conceal the odor permeating his clothes.

The ro
ad comes to an end. Wispy tamarisk shrubs scribble fringes of black in the feeble light. Rhesus parks and gets out of the car. He feels a thrill of anticipation as he walks to the back and pops the trunk. The stench is so strong it makes him falter. His eyes burn, his throat itches with the urge to vomit. It’s only a moment, though.

Control.

Rhesus thrives on control.

Under the lights of the trunk, his prey lies defeated in front of him. Imperfect, he realizes, staring at the ill aimed shot in the shoulder. Nothing like his second job. He outdid himself there—he got it all, the excitement of the kill, the blast of the shot, the inebriating scent of blood and gunpowder. And then the anger at
her
for prompting him to leave quickly, no time to stay, admire his masterpiece, and collect his prize.

His nostrils are now immune to the reek of death, his eyes adjusted to the sight. Under the light, a golden cross glimmers on a chain around her neck. Rhesus stretches his hand but then changes his mind.

No. Too flashy. Something else. Something less conspicuous
.

A quick movement through the prey’s hair makes him wince. A moth flutters on her forehead, crosses her eyelids, then creeps down to her ear. That’s when he sees it.
Perfect
, he thinks. He bends over the body and snaps off one earring.

A theater of shadows, the sky slowly lights up. The swallows’ garrulous chirps ebb off. Rhesus wipes his sweaty face with the sleeve of his shirt.

Damned fucking job, she made me do
.
It’s okay. It’s over. It’s my prize
.

Rhesus walks down the road, his boots crunching the gravel. The reds die into yellows and whites, and a grainy veil of haze sets over the valley.

You did good
, Rhesus thinks.
You did damn good
.

CHAPTER 13

____________

Tuesday, October 14

The Santa Ana winds that had swept through Southern California for the week had finally subsided. Temperatures dropped, and the moisture seeping inland from the ocean cloaked Los Angeles in a blanket of fog. We were eastbound on the Ten, the overcast sky mottled with skinny palm treetops. Telephone and electrical wires hung in the haze like lone spider threads. This part of the freeway was just cement, billboards, and wired fences—a few eucalyptuses thrown in the mix to distract the eye from the gray.

Behind the wheel, heedless to traffic, weather, and any other earthly concern, Satish whistled to the tune of
What a Wonderful World
. I rapped my knuckles against the car window and grunted. Satish ignored me.

“Sat,” I muttered. Again, he ignored me. “Hell, Sat, will you cut it out?” I bristled.

He hung his face in a callow grimace, shook his head sideways, and quit whistling. A few seconds later he was drumming the tune on the steering wheel. What put him in such a good mood escaped me.

We’d spent the first half of the morning at the coroner’s office, where a medical assistant had pulled the Tarantinos’ dead bodies out of the refrigerated vault so their daughter could see them one last time. The morgue’s chills were still biting into my bones, and Satish’s good mood irritated me.

Wonderful world my ass
.

The day had started with all major headlines dishing out on the LAPD for
unreasonably
booking Hollywood genius Jerry White. The atmosphere at Parker Center was jittery, and the LAPD brass edgy. Our captain had muttered a few sympathetic words in the squad room, before disappearing in the safe haven of his office. The commander in chief had nixed any comment to the press. The veterans in our squad—the few detectives who’d survived the wave of transfers and
encouraged
retirements following the O.J. case in 1995—expressed their ominous presages with the dark joke: “Get ready for another major housecleaning. You guys better polish those resumes.”

In spite all this, Satish hummed his favorite song and I seethed. We took the North Eastern exit ramp and landed in the Cal State L.A. campus.

Inaugurated in May 2007, the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center fostered the new headquarters of the Scientific Division. It was a boxy, red and gray building, with rows of blue windows and a crest of metal eaves that hung along the southern edge of the roof like a long, misplaced aileron. Everything inside was polished, sleek, and had the artificial and expensive smell of new. The building thrived with noises: heels clacking on shiny black tiles, fingers tapping on keyboards, laughter reverberating down the hallway. A pale disk of sunshine peeked through the haze and bathed the offices. It wasn’t Mount Olympus, yet here, three miles away from the morgue, it felt like we’d finally resurfaced from Hades.

“Where did you find the fingernail fragment again, Track?” Diane asked as our steps resonated through the corridors.

“It was stuck on the curtain by the French doors in the living room. Tell me our suspect had the bad habit of biting her nails.” Saliva on the nail fragment meant traces of DNA.

She laughed, her smile sweeping away the last crumbs of gloom. “No, it wasn’t the case.” She unlocked the doors to one of the conference rooms and ushered us inside. “Besides, it wasn’t anywhere close to the crime scene. Anybody could have left it.”

“Did you analyze the fragment just the same?” I remembered the face she’d made at the crime scene when I told her the fingernail stub belonged to a woman who’d been there the night of the shooting. I could still read disbelief in her eyes.

“I did,” she confirmed. “But first, let me tell you what we got from the other labs.”

Diane was wearing a lab coat today, which typically reeks of chemical reagents and chloride. Not on her, though. Anything smelled good on her, the air around her hoisting the tiny particles emanated by her skin, cradling them all the way to my nostrils. We sat around a large, oval table that still retained the traces of aftershave, coffee, and deodorant of its previous occupants. Diane arranged several photos on the center of the laminated surface, including three transparent evidence bags containing respectively the fingernail stub, the clump of blue fibers I’d found on front porch, and the bloody note with the first commandment. 

“We’ll have to wait for the fingerprint results. Latent Print is understaffed and backed-up.” She sat at the edge of the chair and bent closer to pick up a folder labeled “Trace Unit.” Her white neckline flashed before my eyes, and a whiff of her hair tickled my nostrils. Tinged with a hint of nervousness her scent was baffling and delicious at the same time.

I reluctantly leaned back to let her retrieve the folder.

“I had the guys at Trace look over the fibers you found on the porch outside, Track. You were right about the blood: it matched
Tamara Tarantino’s type. I sent it to serology for DNA to make sure.”

“Good call. What are the fibers made of?”

She opened the folder and showed me a printed report on the physical, optical, and chemical analyses run on the piece.

“High-density polyethylene film,” I read.

“The fibers are about one tenth of a human hair in diameter,” Diane explained. “They’re not woven but flash-spun together.” She tapped her pen. “It’s Tyvek.”

My hands flattened on the table. “Tyvek?”

Satish snorted. “Well, that explains the blood.”

Diane’s voice switched to defensive. “We’ve done everything by SOP, and our coveralls are tear-free.”

“All our Tyvek coveralls are white,” I said. “Those fibers had to come from shoe covers.”

“Shoe covers? Are you thinking our guys or the perp?” Satish frowned.

“Why not the perp? It would explain why the dust lifter didn’t pick up anything.”

“A perp so mindful as to slip on shoe covers before shooting? That would be a first.”

“Coveralls and shoe covers are not the only things made out of Tyvek,” Diane objected. “It’s used to make house wrap, car covers, medical packaging, and protective clothing for surgeons, mechanics, and painters.”

Satish folded his arms across his chest and tapped an index against his elbow. “Did the Tarantinos have any work done on their house lately?”

“We’ll have to look into that,” I agreed. “Same question for their vehicles. I spotted a couple in the garage and one in the driveway.”

“How many hours’ worth of recording do we have from the camera at the gate?”

“It goes a few days back. I already requested Electronics to provide freeze-frames of all cars coming and going.”

Diane waited quietly as Satish and I considered several
hypotheses and jotted down notes—additional people to interview and possible strategies to use—before moving on to the blood spatter analyses. From the traces found on the scene, she nailed the shooter’s position at a thirty-degree angle from the bathroom door.

“And yet the guy didn’t leave any prints on the door frame?” I asked.

“This guy ain’t no stupid,” Satish muttered. “He gloved up and left no trace.”

“Except for the note,” Diane reminded us.

“Which was left by his lady accomplice,” I declared. Yes, I do enjoy a bit of theater whenever I get the chance. At my audience’s bewildered glare I added, “Together with the fingernail fragment down in the living room.”

Diane tilted her head. “How can you be so sure it belonged to a woman, Track?”

Smells and their elusiveness. Can you put a signature on a scent? Can you stamp it with a date and time? And yet I knew without doubt. It wasn’t just a fingernail stub—it was a fragrance left on the curtains and materialized into an image in my head: a woman, callously looking out the glass doors, waiting. Was she Atropos, ready to cut the thread of life? Or was she Clotho instead, holding the spindle and pulling the thread farther?

I grinned, unfazed by
Diane’s skepticism. “I be right about the lady, ain’t I?”

Satish shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Help us God if he’s not.”

I felt Diane’s tension ease. A smile escaped her lips. “He probably is, Satish,” she replied, reaching for a new photo to show us.

“Probably?” I protested.

Perhaps amused by the playful tone our conversation had taken, Diane’s shoulders relaxed, and the tension I’d sensed earlier evaporated like a sprinkle in high deserts.

“I found traces of cyanoacrilate and acrylic resins on the fragment,” she said, flipping a couple of photos in front of us. “I
placed it between two glass slides and stuck it under a microscope. And this is what I saw.”

She tapped the picture, a black and white enlargement of what looked like a stack of misshapen phyllo dough layers.

“When do we get to the part where you say I was right?”

Diane flashed me a broad, conspiratorial smile. “After you hear how clever
I
was.”

I hate to get sentimental, but that sly smile of hers left a dent in my cool.

“Ah, you’ve got competition, Track. Please enlighten us,” Satish said.

“Cyanoacrilate is a fast-acting glue,” Diane explained. “At first I thought of an electrician, as it can be used to assemble small electronics. It can also be employed in hospitals to substitute sutures. The presence of acrylic baffled me, though. Until I thought of the perfect combination of both: nail glue and artificial nails, which are made of acrylic.”

“Ha. A woman, then. However, Tamara Tarantino or the cleaning lady could’ve left the fragment,” Satish interjected, playing devil’s advocate.

“No,” Diane replied. “Neither woman suffered from biotin deficiency.”

“What the hell is that?”

“A vitamin. Biotin deficiency causes nails to grow in a pointy fashion and to be brittle and thin. As a consequence, they break off very easily. It’s exactly what I saw when I put this nail fragment under the microscope.”

I drummed my fingers on the table. “Malnutrition?”

Diane shook her head, the swaying tips of her hair sending delicious wafts to my nostrils. “I doubt it. Biotin is commonly found in most foods. You would have to be on a pathological diet not to be getting enough from food, in which case it would be a whole range of vitamins and nutrients one would be missing.”

“Any other hypothesis, then?”

It was Diane’s turn to throw in her very own
coup de théâtre
. “Only one,” she said, her eyes sparkling with intrigue. “Anticonvulsants. Our lady is epileptic.”