City of Saviors, page 4
“In the bathroom off the den,” Colin said, “one of Zucca’s crew found stacks of Life magazines that almost reached the ceiling.” He paused, then asked, “Who’s gonna clean all this up?”
“You are.” I started to paw inside the next crate. Receipts, catalogs, old bills, and . . . sheaths of legal-size papers neatly clipped together. “Order in the bedlam,” I said, pulling out the bound documents. “Light in the darkness. Let’s see . . .”
I, EUGENE JOSEPH WASHINGTON, of 8711
Victoria Avenue, Los Angeles, California, declare that this is my last Will and Testament.
“Yahtzee,” I whispered.
Colin peeked over my shoulder. “You see Miss Bernice’s name anywhere?”
I scanned the typed document. No living children . . . no wife . . . I give my entire interest in the real property to Oswald Little . . . personal automobile . . . collection of gold bullion coins to my friend Bernice T. Parrish. “There she is. And she gets the soup pennies.”
Colin took pictures of the crates and the will. “You find ’em yet?”
“Nope. You?”
“Nope.”
I continued to search the rest of the Del Monte crates and found bank statements and contracts, an expired U.S. passport, and a birth certificate—Eugene Joseph Washington born August 31, 1941 in Little Rock, Arkansas.
But: no gold coins.
“She still out there?” Colin asked.
I snooped past the blue tarp.
Bernice now huddled with a tall, bald black man wearing wraparound shades and a Pistons jersey.
“You may be right about motive,” Colin said.
Anger flickered inside me—and I didn’t push it away. I needed anger like Titan missiles needed rocket fuel. “Let’s go back in the house and keep looking.”
In the hallway closet, we found three more Smith and Wesson pistols, four shotguns, and two high-powered rifles. In a bedroom closet, we found twenty-seven English-language King James Bibles, one Korean language, one French, three Spanish.
“Why so many guns?” Colin wondered.
“Same reason for the thirty-two Bibles,” I said. “He was a hoarder, dude.”
We had avoided the kitchen but couldn’t any longer. I failed to distinguish one thing from the other. My brain tripped over the trash and piles and cats and cans of spoiled food. There were spray bottles of 409 and Tilex on the window sills.
In the kitchen, wearing respirators was as useful as reading a Bible at a strip club. The smells blitzed the filters in our masks, rendering them useless. Only death trumped the sulfur of rotten eggs, the corpsy stink of rotten meat, and the clumpy sourness of spoiled milk.
With knees as saggy as the boxes all around me, I stumbled into the dining room. Even though Brooks wouldn’t perform surgery here, the dining room table was still the cleanest spot in the house. Beside the yellow tents—now at ‘66’—sat a pile of envelopes, a key ring, a Bible with a Sunday service program for Blessed Mission Ministries, and a battered brown wallet. Inside the wallet was a driver’s license, a certified mail receipt, one bank card, and seventeen hundred dollars in cash.
“Bernice said he was about to come into some money,” I said. “Wonder if this is it.”
The church bulletin contained a Sick and Shut-In announcement and listed ailing members of the congregation. Sidney Alexander, Paula Todd, Karina Mandrell . . . Thirty more names, but none of them were Eugene Washington.
Back in the den, the air now buzzed thick with thousands of flies. Myerson, the forensic entomologist, swished around his butterfly net to capture a few. But which flies had come as a result of Eugene Washington’s death? Really: roaches and beetles, disturbed from their nooks and hamlets by human feet, skittered over every place skitterable.
A criminalist snapped pictures of Eugene Washington seated in his stained armchair. Zucca had already tagged and bagged the dish, the gun, the remote control, and the beer bottle.
My throat locked and nausea flitted around my belly like the room’s flies. You can leave right now, Lou, before it’s too—
“Anything else before the coroner takes him?” Zucca asked.
I focused on objects that weren’t moving—not much available. “That.” I stepped over the pile of ancient TV Guides, empty beer bottles, and jugs of pee to stand before the giant television console covered in a foot of dust and cat hair. “I want this.” I pointed at the framed picture of Eugene Washington with his arm around another old black man. They stood on a red fishing boat and held four large fish. Big smiles to go along with their big catch.
“Bass fishing with a best friend?” Colin asked.
“He looks happy here. Normal, even.” I couldn’t stop staring at the picture. My eyes saw something that my brain hadn’t identified yet.
“Maybe this fishing buddy can tell us about Miss Bernice,” Colin said. “I haven’t seen one picture of her anywhere.”
“Bros before hos,” I quipped, my attention still focused on the photograph.
Especially gold-digging dwarf hos in search of soup pennies.
5
SPEAKING OF GOLD-DIGGING DWARVES . . .
Bernice Parrish called my cell phone twice. Both times, I let the calls roll to voice mail.
Message 1: It’s hot out here. Y’all almost done?
Message 2: How long I got to stay? I need me some lunch cuz my blood sugar’s gettin’ low.
Then, there was a last message. It’s me. Just calling to say “hi,” so . . . Hi. Sam Seward’s voice made my breath catch and butterflies flutter around my belly.
I saw straight any time the tall, green-eyed assistant district attorney shared my space. Alas, we only shared space now to prepare for Max Crase’s murder trial—a trial Sam was prying himself from because of our friendship. We had already muddied the waters with a kiss here, a hug there. More friend than lover. Explainable offenses. But an obvious affair with sexting, weekend getaways, and matching tattoos? Crase’s defense attorney could certainly argue that the case had been compromised, that the prosecuting attorney had a conflict of interest.
Max Crase: screwing up my life since 1985.
At half past one o’clock, it was time to wrap up. The crowd had lost some mass—it was damned hot at ninety-eight degrees, and one could watch that blue tarp for only so long. The hose draggers had finished clearing a path for the gurney that would ferry Eugene Washington to the coroner’s van parked in the driveway. No camera crews recorded shots of me standing near that white-and-blue wagon. No camera crews took B reel of cats sitting on a Chrysler Le Baron already covered in rust and bird poop or the United Nations army of naked Barbies caught between the tangle of phone cords and twine. If it were October, and if there’d been a Freddy Krueger mask atop the stack of boxes, 8711 Victoria would have been the perfect haunted house.
Spencer Brooks, M.D., deputy medical examiner, wouldn’t meet my gaze as I described the scene. His brown eyes skipped from the porch’s wooden slats and the Barbie army to Colin or the magnolia tree. “Did the cats get to him yet?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “but they would’ve eventually. There weren’t any bowls of food or fresh water around.”
“Insects?”
“Other than the native population? Don’t know. When we got here a little before nine, there were blowflies, but no maggots.”
Eyes closed, Brooks leaned against the banister with his cinnamon-colored arms crossed. “And now?”
“Now,” Colin said, “everybody’s having babies.”
“Zucca took the temp inside the house,” I said. “Eighty-eight degrees.”
“Mr. Washington have any family around today?” Brooks asked, squinting at my shoulder.
“No,” I said, “but his girlfriend is at the tape. Says he turned seventy-three yesterday. They’d even talked about a trip to Fiji. She’s also looking for the gold he left her.”
Brooks cocked an eyebrow. “Real gold or . . . ?”
“Real. He mentions it in his will.”
Now, both of his eyebrows lifted. “She shoot him?”
“Don’t think so,” I said.
Colin added, “We’re thinking poison.”
“Oh,” I said, “let’s remember to find those insurance papers to see if—”
“If Bernice Parrish is a beneficiary?” Colin jotted in his pad. “Maybe there’s a policy in one of those crates you found.”
Brooks stalked over to the staging tent to change into a Tyvek suit. It didn’t take long for him to reemerge fully suited and march into the house without saying another word to us.
“He’s in a mood,” Colin said.
I shrugged, then dropped into a chair that faced the overgrown backyard. Beads of perspiration dripped into my eye. As I unzipped the Tyvek suit, cool air chilled my wet silk blouse. I reached into the cooler and grabbed a bottled water. Guzzled half. Too much. I clamped my hand across my mouth as water spurted between my fingers. Dizzy now, I leaned over and spat into the dirt, staying in that position with my eyes closed.
Just the wind. Just the—Nausea found me again, and I lunged out of my chair and over to the rusted, chain-link fence.
“She okay?” Pepe asked Colin.
“Yeah. All the shit around here.”
The bad air, with its fine particles and carcinogens, had thickened—we were all playing Russian roulette every time we took a breath.
I wobbled back to my chair and wiped my face with the collar of my blouse.
Colin crouched before me. His eyes were bloodshot from dust and exhaustion, and his face creased from wearing the tight respirator. He placed his hand on my shoulder. “If this is too much for you—the heat, the junk—and you need to get off the ride . . .”
My guts twisted around my lungs, but I still managed to fake a smile. “Thanks, Dad. I’m fine.” I rinsed my mouth with water, spat it into the dirt, then toddled to my feet. “Let’s go see which tool Brooks is sticking in one of poor Mr. Washington’s organs.”
A thermometer. His liver.
Brooks read the gauge. “Eighty degrees. So he’s been gone about twelve or so hours.”
Colin counted backward on his fingers. “One, two o’clock this morning, then.”
Brooks shone a light on Eugene Washington’s swollen face—the blue splotches had turned bluer and had spread to his ears. There was the dried froth on his lips but also down his chin and the front of his crusty wife beater. “Looks like he vomited,” Brooks said. “Food and . . .” He moved the flashlight’s beam down Washington’s pajama pants. A pool of vomit had dried on the dead man’s thighs.
“Poison?” I asked.
Brooks clicked off the flashlight. “Possibly, but which poison? Lividity’s usually reddish pink with arsenic. Or this could be an allergic reaction to food—the swollen face and tongue.” He slipped off the respirator, sniffed, then grimaced. “Yikes.”
I snickered. “The girlfriend said that she smelled cherries and Parmesan cheese when she got in this morning.”
“That’s just two in millions of smells.” Brooks replaced the mask over his face again. “Myerson take bugs?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll do standard tox screens for narcotics and carbon monoxide. But I’ll throw in screens for arsenic, cyanide, and a few other poisons. Guess I’ll take him now.”
“When should we come down for the autopsy?” Colin asked.
“I know you have a lot of bodies from the heat wave,” I said, “but if he’s been poisoned, this is obviously a priority.”
“Obviously,” Brooks said. “Tomorrow morning should be fine.”
I waved a hand at the body. “We’ll get out of the way and let you do your—”
Brooks had already pivoted away from me.
“Okay, then.” My face burned as I stomped back through the mess to the front door.
Fires surrounding the city had tinged the sky red and gray. Pieces of it swirled down upon us, and even the junk smelled as though it was burning.
In the tent, I shimmied out of the bunny suit and stumbled outside with my hands clenched and with my eyes open but not seeing junk that spread out to infinity. Everything and nothing glistened. Everything and nothing stood out to me. Had the murderer hid the poison in the tire well of the Le Baron or in the bowels of that dead Siamese cat?
“Who the hell knows, Lou,” I muttered.
Ninety-eight degrees may have been too hot for lookie-loos, but not too hot for Bernice Parrish. She now pointed at the house as she shouted at Officer Fitzgerald. Her bald Pistons-jersey-wearing friend had disappeared.
Colin now sat on a milk crate beneath the big magnolia tree. “You plannin’ to keep Miss Bernice here all day?” he asked. “I know she’s waiting for her soup pennies.”
I found another crate and sat. “Misery, company, hit dog, holler, et cetera.” I plucked my phone from my pocket and turned off DO NOT DISTURB. Notifications immediately scrolled down the screen.
Dominic can’t wait to see you! And don’t call him that to his face! Lena’s text included a picture of a man with a mischievous, “hide your panties” smile, skin the color of pralines, and a chin strong enough to anchor a small barge.
Dominic Campbell was single at thirty-three years old. A hose dragger (excuse me, firefighter), he had no felonies, no arrests, a house in View Park, and a late-model Suburban.
Voir dire to start three weeks from today. Sam about the Max Crase murder trial.
Please call my mother. Her house got broken into. Thx! Greg Norton, my ex-husband.
The squeaky wheels of the gurney made me look up. Both Colin and I stood as the coroner’s team pushed Eugene Washington, covered now by a LACCO blue blanket, out of the house and down the walkway. Brooks, following behind his team, tossed me a glare.
Fire burst in my gut. My feet were moving to confront him before my brain realized that I’d already acted. “What did I do to you?” I demanded. “Why are you pissed off at me?”
“I’m not pissed off,” he snapped, frowning at me. His nostrils flared. His shoulders were hunched. In America, that meant pissed off. He shook his head as he watched his crew slide the body and gurney into the back of the van.
“You don’t return my calls,” I said. “You can’t even look at me—”
“You’re such a . . .” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled.
“What?” I screeched. “I’m such a what?”
He squinted at me. “Was that the only solution? Of all the solutions in the world?”
I blinked at him. “What are you talking about? I saw the gun on the ground, the blue splotches on his face, then listened to his girlfriend talk about—”
“I’m not talking about this case. All of life ain’t about work, Elouise.”
“I’m . . . lost.”
Brooks chuckled without humor. “Yeah. You are.” For the second time in too many months, he looked directly at me. His eyes softened the way they did every time he met the dead. “I’ll get to Mr. Washington tomorrow morning.”
Ninety-eight degrees out here. Cold gripped me, though, as I watched the van inch north and away from me.
6
GREG HAD BEEN MANY THINGS THROUGHOUT OUR TWELVE YEARS TOGETHER—friend, lover, protector, liar, adulterer—but he’d been a fastidious homeowner. Our small lawn had never browned. Circulars and phone books never sat in our driveway for more than six hours. No paint flaked from the eaves. Ours had been a shining Shangri-La.
Too bad he treated our marriage like Eugene Washington treated his house.
After the swirling orange lights of the coroner’s van had disappeared around the corner, I spotted my Porsche still parked at the barrier tape. It would be quiet in there, and there was a big tub of Advil in the glove compartment. I thought of munching a big shaved ice while chasing it with a frosted glass of fruit punch. I thought of smearing Icy Hot all over my body, then disappearing beneath a down comforter with a remote control in my hand and The Poseidon Adventure on the television screen. Then, I thought of my reality.
The last thing I wanted to do was look up at that death star in the sky and point to a home security camera that didn’t work because home security cameras never worked.
Before that day in Bonner Park with Zach Fletcher, the man who had killed teenage girls from my old neighborhood, the old Lou would’ve walked in two-hundred-degree weather, stood on the sun’s surface. Before Zach Fletcher had also tried to kill me in that park high above Los Angeles, the old Lou would have given that death star in the sky the finger, then used her other finger to point at a home security camera that didn’t work. And she’d be cool with that nonworking camera. Cuz those were the breaks. Now, though? Nuh uh.
Colin squeezed my shoulder. “You okay? Need a minute?”
“Nope. I’m good.” I longed to climb into the Porsche so badly that beads of sweat pebbled on top of other beads of sweat that had already bubbled across my face and neck. “Really. I’m cool.”
He leaned closer to me. “Take a moment, all right? Don’t worry, I got it. Zucca’s inside collecting and—”
“Why are you trying to push me off my case?” I blurted.
Colin’s eyes widened, and he stuttered, “I . . . I . . . It’s not, I’m not . . . pushing you out. It’s just . . . Sorry.”
Muscles tense, I said, “Let’s see if Mr. Washington had any late-night visitors.”
Colin hesitated, and his lips thinned before he said, “So, camera checks?”
“But first, we’ll stop and chat with our bestie Bernice again and her friend.”
The big man in the wraparound shades and Pistons jersey now towered over Bernice Parrish. His name was Joe. He didn’t say if it was short for Joseph or John, and he sure as hell didn’t give me his last name.
“Then, you need to move over there.” Colin pointed toward the end of the block.
Joe sucked his teeth, then spat, “Joseph Rice. Satisfied?”
“Thrilled,” I cracked. “Why are you here today?”
“Bernie called and asked me to come.” He sounded scratchy and slurpy, like he held runny grits and gravel in his mouth.
