Jayne and Steelie - 01 - Freezing (2 page)

Eric looked over at his partner. ‘Is she talking about the red ones we use at Quantico?'

‘Before your time, Ramos.' He looked at Jayne. ‘Can't you rein her in?'

‘No,' Jayne said, stepping into her own harness. ‘I can't.'

But by now Steelie had Eric's attention. ‘When Jayne and I were at Quantico, we watched a classmate of Scott's run a semi-covert op to steal his gun.'

His eyes widened as he looked at Scott. ‘From the back of your pants?'

‘She didn't succeed,' Scott downplayed. ‘And then I stole hers.'

‘Yeah!' Steelie rejoined. ‘And she yelled at him from the other side of the bar like it was NASA Control. “Houston? We got a problem.” So then he—'

‘Eric doesn't need the rest of that story,' Scott interrupted. ‘You ready, Jayne?'

They followed a CHP officer to the edge of the parking lot and clambered over a low concrete wall to descend into the ravine. They hiked along the bottom for a short distance. Past the Sunkist property line the ravine narrowed and became more overgrown; eucalyptus, vinca, shreds of plastic bags, all sprouting with equal vigor. It was darker and cooler because the sun hadn't filtered down yet. The group fell silent.

The officer slowed and called back to them, pointing to the left where the berm led up to the freeway. ‘The material's up there. We marked a wide perimeter with flags. The slope is steep and it is slippery.' He stepped to the side, using the trunk of a small tree as a handhold.

Jayne and Steelie hung back while the Critters moved in to do their work. Then Scott turned to the anthropologists and said, ‘OK, Thirty-two One, tell us what we got.'

The two women moved to the front of the group, the clicks of the power buttons on their flashlights echoed by clicks on others' as people followed their lead. Ten seconds passed as they looked up the berm from below. Brown leaves, wet leaves, wet tissue exhibiting pale, red blotches.

‘Well, it's human. I can tell you that from here,' declared Jayne.

‘In that case,' Scott said, ‘I authorize you to take a closer look.'

Weiss clipped their harnesses to a rappelling rope and checked all the connections. Once they were lined up with Jayne in front, he started winching and she and Steelie climbed the slope. As soon as they were parallel to the body parts, they leaned toward them at various angles.

Steelie called down to the others. ‘We're not going to touch anything because you guys will have to detail-photo this first, OK?'

‘Ten-four, ma'am,' came the reply.

‘OK,' Jayne murmured to Steelie. ‘I'm seeing two arms, present from the shoulder down, all fingers present. A chunk of thigh and knee . . . left. You seeing the same thing?'

‘Yeah, plus I've got another chunk of torso down here. Everything's wet.'

‘Is it just wet around the BP's? Or is that condensation?'

They both looked around. Everything else was dry and dusty, like Southern California should be in the summer.

‘What's the deal?' asked Jayne. ‘The parts aren't fresh but they don't look like they're decomping either.'

‘They're not,' Steelie replied. ‘Listen. Do you hear that?' She held her hand up and Jayne stopped moving, cocking her head to the side.

In between the rushes of sound that accompanied the passing traffic on the freeway above them, there was a distinct sound.
Sip, sip . . . sip . . . sip, sip
. Then, before their eyes, out of the tissue visible in the cross-section of the exposed left knee, came a droplet. It was a watery red shimmer, hanging, then dropping from the tissue on to the bed of leaves below.

‘Not decomping . . .' said Steelie. ‘Defrosting.'

They straightened up.

Jayne called out, ‘Houston.'

‘Yo,' came his voice from below.

‘We got a problem.' She wasn't smiling.

TWO

S
cott watched Steelie's Jeep leave the Sunkist parking lot as he wrapped up the call on his cell phone. He summoned his team from where they were talking to Highway Patrol.

‘OK, we've got the green light from Quantico to process this scene.' He held up his hand as two of the Critters began to move toward the open rear doors of their vehicle. ‘Hang on. After we get the material, it's going to the LA County coroner, not Virginia, so bag it for local transport, not shipment.'

Eric looked like he wanted to ask a question but Agent Sparks got in first. ‘You want us to stick to the perimeter CHP established?'

Scott asked Weiss, ‘What'd you see when you put up the rappelling line?'

‘The body parts look like they were thrown down from above. Maybe they've rolled a bit but I didn't see signs that this was the dismemberment site.' Weiss gestured an invitation to the Critter to his left, who was holding a stack of plastic photo markers with surgical-gloved hands.

Lee nodded. ‘I haven't seen anything beyond the immediate area where they're dripping. And CHP kept their perimeter well wide of that. I wouldn't go wider.'

‘All right,' Scott said. ‘Let's use their perimeter line and note that. But Lee, I want you to photo-doc outside the perimeter as well.'

‘You got it.'

Scott headed back to the ravine. Eric walked briskly to catch up and fall into step beside him.

‘You told Quantico this might be related to the Georgia cases?'

‘Yes,' Scott replied.

‘So . . .'

‘So, they're not biting.'

‘Did you explain about the cuts?'

Scott nodded.

Eric continued. ‘I think you should climb up and take a look yourself.'

Scott climbed over the wall in a swift movement and carried on toward the ravine. ‘I was about to do just that.'

Jayne swore as she unlocked the door of the low-slung brick building while balancing two Styrofoam cups of coffee and the bag of donuts. She'd just registered how bright the sign above the door was:
Agency 32/1
, emphatically illuminated by both daylight and spotlight.

The Agency wasn't much to look at but it had a good view: the back-end of Dodger Stadium and surrounds – low hills of eucalyptus and oleander sectioned by midsummer's nut-brown scrubland. If you left the stadium and went to the Agency as the crow flies, you'd cross the 5 Freeway, the Los Angeles River, the rail yards, and San Fernando Road before landing in the front parking lot. Just five spaces, two marked
Reserved
and three marked
Visitor
. One reserved space was home to Steelie's Jeep, the other, Jayne's old cream-colored Ford truck.

‘I forgot to turn off the lights earlier,' Jayne called out to Steelie, who was approaching with their toolboxes.

‘The real question is –' Steelie exchanged the boxes for the donut bag and peered inside with a practiced eye – ‘did you remember to get me a lemon-filled?'

‘Is today Tuesday?'

They went into the building, Jayne crossing in front of the counter where their volunteer receptionist would sit when she arrived at 9 a.m. Carol was a retired grief counselor who claimed she would rather sit all day at the Agency than at home. She dealt with phone calls, incoming and outgoing mail, file creation, petty cash, tea, and the watering of the one plant: a big aloe named Fitzgerald.

Jayne passed through the double doors just beyond reception to go into her office, aware of Steelie trotting past her other door, which opened to the hall and led to kitchen, bathroom, and laboratory. She sat down at her desk and swiveled her chair to switch on the computer to the left, the lamp in the center, pull a legal pad and pen from the right, and, from all the way behind her, pull one file out at random from the cabinets that flanked the wall. Every morning, she looked at one file fresh, with no muddle from the day and no emotional muddle with the file.

The file: the missing person. Each 32/1 file described someone who had gone missing, but this wasn't a missing person report. It was a family history, a story told by those who knew the missing person and remembered falls from first bike rides or someone's favorite candy. Jayne and Steelie had translated those falls and candy into a database of healed fractures on bone and cavities in teeth, all in the hopes of identifying the 40,000 dead bodies that languished in coroners' offices throughout the country. But Jayne didn't start with data in the morning. This was about the stories, in case a fresh look made something jump out.

The file she pulled today had a sleeve inside the front cover. In the sleeve were photographs: a smiling twenty-two year old. Jayne automatically zeroed-in on the teeth: left central incisor – tooth #9 – was slightly twisted. It gave the woman an earnest look and would help identify her if she was lying in the morgue, dead. Unable to say her name, her bones and teeth would speak for her. Jayne flipped to the dental chart at the back of the file just to check that #9's mesial torsion was noted. It was.

She was several pages into the transcript of the interview she'd conducted with the missing woman's parents seven months earlier when she heard first the bells hanging from a string on the front door, then Carol's crisp, ‘Morning all,' which seemed to encompass not just Steelie and Jayne but the missing person files too.

Jayne walked to her doorway to see the plump, white-haired woman putting her canvas bag on the front counter. ‘Thanks for coming in, Carol.'

‘It's been nine months. You can stop thanking me.' Carol waved her hand in dismissal.

Steelie had arrived to greet Carol and Jayne turned back to her office, thinking about the grant applications for the Agency's third year of funding, which included a modest salary for their receptionist. It was too late to adjust the requests for the second year and she hoped Carol would keep accepting lunch five days a week as some compensation. She picked up the transcript again.

Steelie came to stand in front of her desk. ‘Which one have you got today?'

‘The girl from Tarzana.' Jayne waited expectantly.

Steelie put a finger to her lips, then pointed at the file. ‘Bulbous frontal, twisted front tooth, missing from her job at . . .Victoria's Secret?'

‘Jesus. I don't know how you do it. We've got a hundred case files and you can always remember details like that.'

Steelie bowed as she walked backwards toward the hall.

Jayne called after her, ‘Was it X-rays in the package that came yesterday?'

Steelie nodded. ‘Just getting to them now.'

A few minutes later, Steelie's voice called out from the intercom on the desk telephone.

Jayne activated the microphone. ‘Steelie, you can only be in one of two other rooms in this tiny building. Why are you using the intercom?'

‘Why did we buy phones with intercoms if not to use them?'

As usual, she had a point. ‘OK, what is it?'

‘Can you come down to the lab? There's something here you should see.'

Jayne walked down the hall and turned into the last doorway on the right. Steelie was at the end of the room, at the base of a U formed by countertop on three sides. She was perched on a stool, looking at an X-ray clipped to the large wall-mounted light box, papers spread out on to the countertop below. Jayne came up to stand at the counter and looked at the film.

It was a radiograph of a man's head, taken from the left side. The bony parts were milky-white, as were the teeth, though the metallic fillings were bright white where the metal had blocked the light from passing through the X-ray film. Something else was stark white but in an unexpected place. Jayne leaned in, her eyes traveling above the eye sockets, perhaps between them; an inch or so back from the forehead. She turned to look at Steelie.

‘These
are
antemortem films, right?'

‘Yep.'

‘OK.' Jayne paused. ‘So he's got a bullet in his head.'

‘That's what I came up with.'

‘What case is this?'

‘Thomas Cullen.'

‘From Twenty-nine Palms?'

‘The same.'

‘Well, I remember interviewing his folks. They didn't mention that he had a bullet in his head.' She turned to Steelie. ‘Are you thinking war wound or something?'

‘Too young for Vietnam, AWOL for Afghanistan and Iraq.'

‘What about Desert Storm?'

Steelie swung back to the X-ray, pulling herself closer to the counter and pointing at the film with the eraser end of a pencil. ‘Actually, here's what I'm thinking: from the angle of the bullet I'd say he shot himself through the roof of the mouth but he didn't count on the ol' sphenoid being there, let alone being so convoluted, and the bullet lodges. Pain associated with shot is numbed by shock at still being alive. Never even tells his family he tried it.'

‘Is there a shot of the maxillae?'

‘Not in this batch. I reckon the doc took these to see where the bullet was and determine if they were going to dig it out.'

Jayne's eyes widened. ‘They
had
to leave it.'

‘Probably.'

‘And it would make him identifiable as hell.'

‘Yep.' Steelie was warming to the subject. ‘According to the file, Cullen's parents only referred to a dentist, not a doctor, when they put in the missing person report. It wasn't until they came to see us that they started to look for medical X-rays. Didn't even think they'd find any. So . . . since the dental hasn't made the match yet, I think we should put out an ACB.'

An ACB was an All Coroners Bulletin. 32/1 had developed it to notify coroners with unidentified bodies when there was new information about highly identifiable characteristics on missing persons; details that couldn't have been included in the original police report and therefore wouldn't be in the FBI's national database, NCIC. The ACB was in its pilot phase, with strict usage guidelines the Agency had established in concert with coroners nationwide.