A Body To Die For (8 page)

Or at least walk, talk, and keep their eyes open for a few more hours.

“Amazing what six thousand calories can do to perk up a body’s system,” Savannah said as they walked through the city parking lot behind Penny’s to the Buick.

Pausing a moment beside the car as Dirk fiddled with his CDs in the trunk, she pointed her face to the sun, closed her eyes, and breathed in the delicious, distinctive smell of San Carmelita. Moments like these were why she could never move back to Georgia. Just the smell alone was enough to bond her to this place forever—an intoxicating mixture of ocean breeze, sage from the foothills, eucalyptus and citrus from the groves, mixed with the perfume of flowers that bloomed year-round in the gentle Southern California climate.

She could hear the cawing of the gulls, the rustle of fronds in the palm trees that lined Main Street, the sound of children playing in the nearby city park. Ah, life was good. At the very least, it was well worth living.

But then her purse began to play a frenetic tune that gave her a mental image of a tiny cartoon mouse in an enormous sombrero, being chased by a hungry cat.

It also reminded her of her overly energetic friend, Tammy, which is why she had chosen that tune for Tammy’s cell phone.

“Hello, Tamitha, my dear,” she said as she got into the car and put on her seatbelt. “What’s shakin’, sugar?”

Tammy was excited, nearly bursting out of her skin. But for Tammy, that was status quo. “You’re not going to believe this!” she said. “I mean, seriously, this is wild!”

Savannah looked over at Dirk, who was now sitting beside her in the driver’s seat. He popped out the Elvis CD and put in his latest choice. A moment later, Charlie Daniels was “sawing on a fiddle and playing it hot,” while serenading them about a boy named Johnny and his competition with the Devil.

He gave her a big smile, and she knew he was trying to score points with her. It was the “Georgia” reference in the song that was supposed to do the trick. And, since she was a fan of Charlie’s, it usually did.

Today, she knew it was a matter of guilt. He felt bad for keeping her up all night with no monetary compensation.

He was also worried that, down the road, he might have to compensate her with more than a breakfast at Penny’s.

Dirk was just covering his butt, which made Charlie’s fiddle playing a little less sweet.

“What’s wild?” she asked Tammy. “Did they get your favorite flavor of yogurt in at the health food store?”

“No, I’m still waiting for that,” was the matter-of-fact reply.

“Did you get a lead on that gal at the river?”

“No, I’m still working on that. But we got a call a few minutes ago, here at the office.”

Savannah smiled, loving Tammy and her ability to pretend that the cramped corner of Savannah’s living room constituted a real honest-to-goodness office. “Really? And who was it?”

“Ruby Jardin!”

“Ruby Jardin?” Savannah did a quick mental computer search with no results. “Who the heck is Ruby Jardin?” she asked, giving Dirk a questioning look.

He shrugged and shook his head.

Tammy waited a moment for theatrical effect, then said, “Bill Jardin’s
mother
!”

“Get outta here! Bill Jardin’s mother?” Savannah repeated for Dirk’s benefit. “Why would she be calling me?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it! You and Dirk and Clarissa and Bill have been all over the TV! They showed the footage of you guys taking his body out of the river. And then they reported that we arrested a pervert in one of her gyms, and they’ve been speculating that he could be connected somehow, because the guy we busted looks like maybe he’s part of the mob, and—”

“Whoa! Hold on a cotton-pickin’ minute. Where did they come up with that crap? He’s a stupid kid with lots of muscles and an Italian last name. That doesn’t make him mobbed up.”

“Who’s mobbed up?” Dirk wanted to know.

“Nobody. Tammy’s hallucinating.”

“I am not. That’s what they said on TV.”

“Which station?”

Tammy told her.

“Oh, please,” Savannah said with a snort. “Those people can’t get yesterday’s weather right. Anyway, what does that have to do with Bill Jardin’s mother calling me?”

“She was on TV. I saw her. She was saying that Clarissa either killed her son or had somebody do it, and that she’s going to hire a private detective to prove it. And then, it wasn’t ten minutes later that the office phone rang, and it was her! She wants to hire us to solve the case! She wants to give you money and everything.”

“She wants to pay me for what I’m already doing for free?” Savannah chuckled. “Sounds like a plan. When am I supposed to meet with her?”

“She was in St. Louis when she called. But she was getting on the first plane to Los Angeles. She said she wants to see you as soon as possible. She’ll call you the minute she gets in town.”

Savannah did a bit of time travel math and for half a second she thought,
She’ll probably call two seconds after I lay my head on a pillow to grab a few minutes’ sleep. Who needs the aggravation?

Then she remembered the stack of overdue bills in her desk and quickly discarded the thought.
She
needed the aggravation. A job was a job.

As Granny often said, “Make hay while the sun shines.”

If the sun wanted to shine on her in the form of a woman named Ruby Jardin—especially if that woman was Clarissa’s bitter mother-in-law—Savannah was going to let the sun shine in and face it with a grin.

She thanked Tammy and said good-bye.

Rolling down the car window, she breathed in some more of that unique and wonderful California seaside air. Closing her eyes she said, “So, good buddy, I’ve got a gig. Somebody’s offered me money to prove that Clarissa Jardin is guilty of murder. Sweet, huh?”

Dirk laughed as Charlie played away and the Georgia boy, Johnny, won a golden fiddle off the Devil. “That’s a real bite in the ass for you,” he said.

“Oh, yeah. Awful. Plum awful. I can hardly stand it.”

“Where you wanna go first? The morgue or the lab?”

Savannah mulled it over for a few moments, then said, “If we go to the morgue without Dr. Liu calling us first to tell us she’s done, she’ll be madder than a wet hornet. And if we go to the lab and bug them while they’re processing the car, Eileen’s going to get pissed and throw us out.”

He nodded. “True. Very true. So…?”

“I guess it boils down to a question of who you’re the most afraid of—Dr. Liu or Eileen Bradley.”

“Eileen’s bigger,” he said.

“Dr. Liu has scalpels and stiletto heels.”

“And a nasty temper.”

Savannah shuddered. “And she can remove your liver with one clean swipe.”

He nodded somberly, pulled the car out of the lot and headed north. “O-o-kay…the crime lab it is.”

“I
ndustrial park, my ass,” Dirk said as they drove along row after row of windowless, cement-block buildings with large, sliding cargo doors. “Where’s the
park
supposed to be? I don’t see no swing sets, no baseball diamond, no slides for the kiddies. And not a blade of grass in sight.”

Usually, Savannah felt it was her God-ordained obligation to counter the negative statements that Dirk sent out into the universe with her own Pollyanna-style propaganda. But when it came to this area of town, she totally agreed with him.

“Yeah, it sucks,” she said. “I remember when this was strawberry fields and orange groves, as far as the eye could see. Now what passes for greenery is a dandelion growing out of a crack in the cement.”

“And no matter how many times I come down here to the lab, I always get lost in this maze.” He peered down the row to his right, then to his left, then drove to the next block and did the same.

“It’s the next set of buildings on the right,” she told him as she flipped down the visor mirror, ran a brush through her hair, and checked the bags under her eyes. They were now officially big enough that, if she were flying, the airlines would charge her extra to bring them aboard.

“How the hell do you know that?” he snapped. “They all look alike.”

“They’re numbered.” She stuck the brush back into her purse and applied some lip gloss.

“Where? I don’t see any friggen numbers.”

“Right there, on the upper right-hand corner of each building. You mean you never noticed that?”

He squinted, looking for the numerals and letters that were, admittedly, too small. When he saw them, he snorted and shook his head. “Damn,” he muttered under his breath.

She swallowed a giggle. It seemed the kind thing to do.

“The lab,” she said, “is 350B. See, A’s on your left, B’s on the right.”

“Okay, I see it. I see it already. Rub it in, will ya?”

He turned right and drove up to a building that had the Great Seal of the State of California emblazoned on its otherwise nondescript door. “That’s it,” she said, pointing far too emphatically. “It’s right there. See it? See it?”

“See this,” he said with a one-finger salute.

She grabbed his finger and bent it backward until he yelped.

“There,” she said, pointing to the only vacant parking space available. “Park there. Right there, Dirk. Just pull smack dab in there.”

“Woman, you’re askin’ for it. I’m gonna fly into a blind rage any minute now.”

“Yeah, yeah…whatever. It wouldn’t take long; you’re half blind already.”

“Am not.”

“You need glasses.”

“Do not.”

“At least some prescription shades so that you can drive properly in the daytime. Just think—no more mowing down little old ladies, no more running stop signs and red lights and then claiming that you were answering a Code Three. No more—”

“Me get friggen glasses? That’ll be the day…”

“…when the world becomes a safer place.”

They got out of the car and walked up to the door with the seal. Over the door was a security camera, pointed at them.

Dirk punched the door buzzer button, ran his fingers through his hair, breathed into the palm of his hand and sniffed it.

He had time to administer a squirt of breath freshener before a voice crackled on the speaker beside the door.

“I’ve got nothing for you yet, Coulter. Go away.”

Savannah recognized Eileen Bradley’s voice. Loud, curt, raspy, bossy—just the way Dirk liked his women.

“I’ve got Savannah with me,” he said, pulling her closer, into the center of the camera’s view range.

A few seconds later, the heavy metal door swung open and a woman in her sixties with long, wavy, silver hair stepped out to greet them. She was wearing jeans and a pristine white lab coat.

Or more specifically, to greet Savannah.

She gave Savannah a warm hug and Dirk a grunt. Then she told him, “We’ve only had the car less than an hour. Caitlin and Ramon are dusting it. You can go watch in the bay if you don’t get underfoot.”

“Me? Underfoot?” He shook his head and looked deeply wounded. “Why, Eileen, when have I ever—?”

“Oh, right.” Eileen turned to Savannah. “Your pal here would never
dream
of interfering with the lab’s work, hanging over our shoulders, trying to tell us what to do, getting in our way, and slowing us down by
pushing, pushing, pushing
us to get every bit of evidence processed two days before we even
receive
it!”

Eileen was getting wound up, her face going from red to purple and her eyes bugging out. Savannah was starting to get scared. So, she decided to talk her down a bit.

“Who? Dirk?” she said with a nervous chuckle. “Naw, Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter would never do a thing like that.” She grabbed him by the elbow and propelled him away from the door, toward the back of the building and the oversized cargo doors of the Vehicle Examination Bay.

Over his shoulder, Dirk called out, “Uh, Eileen…could you phone them there in the VEB and let them know it’s okay to let me in? Last time, they wouldn’t and—”

“Gee, I wonder why?” Eileen said as she disappeared inside, slamming the door behind her.

“Well, that went pretty good…considering,” Dirk said, happy, contented.

“Yeah, better than usual. No bloodshed. Eileen’s a good egg.”

He grinned. “She’s kinda hot, actually. I mean, she’s gotta be twenty years older than us, and has all that gray hair, and she doesn’t wear any makeup or anything…”

“But she’s hot?”

“Very. It’s an attitude thing.” He gave her a flirty, sideways glance. “I like sassy, in-your-face women. You know, a guy wonders how they’d be if you ever got ’em in—”

“Enough.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Enough.’ You know, Dirk…it’s better for our working relationship if ever’ blamed thought you have doesn’t just come flyin’, uncut and uncensored, outta your mouth.”

He nodded knowingly, suddenly enlightened and filled with sage wisdom. “Gotcha.”

They walked on a few more steps. “So,” he said, “just to clarify—if I was fantasizing about you and me in the sack, you wouldn’t want to know what we were doin’ or how we were—”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

The garage door was sliding upward before they even reached it. Apparently, Eileen had phoned ahead and warned them, because, even though the opened door might have suggested they were welcome, the scowl on CSU tech Ramon Garcia’s face was anything but inviting.

As they approached him, he waved a long bristled brush in Dirk’s face. “We’re kind of busy here,” he said. “This car is covered in prints, and Caitlin and I are going to be lifting them all day.”

“Lots of prints? That’s great!” Dirk said as he walked by him and entered the garage. “Thank goodness it wasn’t wiped down. We get a break for a change.”

“
You
get a break,” said a pretty young woman with long, curly red hair, who was squatting beside the car’s passenger door. She, too, was holding a brush with long, soft bristles, which she was using to swirl dark, fine dust onto the door handle. “
We
don’t get a break. We’ve got prints from one end of this car to the other.”

“And I’m sure you’ll do your usual, amazing job,” Dirk said with just enough sarcasm to garner evil looks from both techs.

The Jaguar was parked in the center of the enormous room, which could hold as many as four vehicles at once…or a semi-trailer, if it entered by the enormous side door.

The bay had the appearance of a normal automobile repair garage, only spotless, and with far more clinical looking equipment. Tool chests, pneumatic machines, several compressors, a shop vacuum, squeegees, mops and brooms lined the walls, along with a sink and chemical fume hood. And along the walls, immaculate benches with microscopes, beakers, and even a Bunsen burner, reminded Savannah of her high school chemistry class.

Situated over a portable vehicle lift, Jardin’s car was the only one in the bay—a fact that did not go unnoticed by Dirk.

“I don’t know what you’re bellyaching about,” he said. “At least you’ve only got one to work on today. Could be worse. Remember when we had that seven-car pileup last summer with three fatalities and two DUI’s?”

Neither Ramon nor Caitlin seemed inclined to stroll down memory lane with him. They just ignored him and kept on dusting.

Savannah pointed to the car and asked, “May I look inside?”

“As long as you don’t touch,” Ramon told her.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She decided to press her luck a little further. “And would you mind if I use that scope over there and some goggles?” she asked, pointing to a foot square, silver box on a nearby bench. It had numerous knobs and a black tube protruding from the front. On the end of the tube was a small flashlight.

Caitlin nodded, then added, “We just got that. It’s top of the line and cost a fortune, so be careful with it.”

“I’ve got my kid gloves right here,” Savannah said, helping herself to some surgical gloves from a box beside the scope. “Putting them on right now.”

Dirk had joined her, and without asking permission, nabbed two pairs of goggles with orange lenses, and handed one pair to Savannah.

Once they were properly spectacled and gloved, Savannah picked up the scope, and they walked over to the car.

Caitlin had moved to the driver’s side, and Ramon was occupied around the rear bumper, so Savannah walked to the passenger’s side. She flipped on the scope and dialed the knobs, adjusting the beam to its highest intensity. The car interior was instantly bathed in a bright, cool, white light.

Standing beside her, Dirk bent over the car door and watched carefully as she trailed the beam back and forth over the dash, seats, floorboard, and console.

“Don’t you just love an interior where everything you see is either wood or leather?” she asked wistfully.

He grunted. “Naw. I have a personal rule: Never pay more for a car than your house is worth.”

“Yes, this car definitely cost more than $10.99, which makes it over your budget and a major violation of your ethics.”

“Hey, despite what you may have heard, I uphold certain standards.”

“Not a lot of blood, considering,” Savannah said as she forced herself to focus on the gory business at hand, “and almost all of it is here, on the passenger’s side.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that.” Dirk leaned as far into the car as he could without rubbing against the exterior. “If he was driving, you’d think it would be over there in the driver’s area, or at least, more toward the center.”

“And the spatter pattern is sort of low, too,” she said, “not normal head level. There’s a lot of it here on the front part of the door. It almost looks like he was sitting in the passenger’s seat and was shot from the left.”

“But his wound was back to front.”

“Maybe he was sitting over here, passenger’s side—had his head low, almost dash level, for some reason—and was facing away from his attacker.”

“That would be pretty damned awkward.”

“True. I was thinking that. He’d have to be slouched way down in his seat for his head to be that low. Maybe he was trying to hide or duck the shot.”

Dirk shook his head. “No, Jardin was six feet tall and long-legged. There wouldn’t even be room for him to slouch down that far.”

“That’s right.

“Which brings up another question. Where’s the bullet? He had an exit wound. If he had his head down low and turned like you say, and he got it from the back, the bullet should have gone through and into the door.”

“Yeah, but you know bullets,” she said. “They go through a human body and all sorts of weird things happen.”

“Is that true?” asked Caitlin, who had been eavesdropping on their conversation.

“Absolutely true,” Savannah assured her. “You can’t count on an absolutely straight line trajectory when it comes to bullet paths through a body. They ricochet off ribs, twist around inside muscle tissue, bounce off organs, all sorts of weird things.”

“Are you finished dusting this door?” Dirk said, grumpier than usual. Savannah was sure his back was hurting from leaning in, as hers was. Not to mention that he was impatient to look deeper inside the car.

“I guess you can open it, since you’re wearing gloves, and as long as you’re careful not to mess anything up,” Caitlin replied with a tone that was a bit too bossy and haughty for a tech who had only been on the job a couple of years. Dirk had been on the force almost as long as she’d been alive.

“Gee, thanks,” Dirk said dryly, giving her a look that made her wince.

He opened the door and a second later, something clattered onto the cement floor.

“There you go.” Savannah reached down and picked up the small nugget of metal. “Your bullet.”

He took the slug from her and turned it over and over in his palm. “Looks like a 9mm.”

“And it’s in good shape. You’ll be able to get a good comparison from ballistics, if you get your hands on the weapon.”

“Big ‘if.’”

Savannah smiled. Dirk was quite the optimist. If he ever won the lottery he’d gripe all the way to the bank about the taxes he’d have to pay on it.

Caitlin and Ramon hurried over to them. Ramon had a small, brown paper sack in his hand.

“Here you go,” he said as he handed Dirk the evidence bag.

“No, here
you
go,” Dirk replied once he had placed the bullet inside and sealed it. “You guys can take credit for finding it.”

“Wow! Thank you!” Ramon beamed with happiness and gratitude.

“Yeah, that’s really nice of you,” Caitlin gushed.

Savannah resisted the urge to tell him that Dirk wasn’t being kind; he was avoiding paperwork. Even filling out a label on an evidence bag was enough drudgery to ruin his day.

But Dirk was already on to bigger and better things. Having taken the scope away from Savannah, he was already studying the floorboard and lower parts of the seats.

“It’s pretty clean down here,” he said. “Apparently this guy was a fricken fanatic about keeping his car spotless.”

Savannah thought of the refuse heap in the back floorboard of the Buick and couldn’t resist. “Heck yeah,” she said, “he probably vacuumed it out once a year whether it needed it or not.”