Sugar and Spite (10 page)

“And he didn’t see what sort of motor vehicle the killer drove?” John asked.

“He said he didn’t hear a car pulling out. The guy ran off down the trailer-park road and disappeared into a wooded area near the main road.”

“Any hope of footprints?” Tammy suggested.

“Nope. The road through the park is gravel. The main one that connects with it is asphalt. Dirk suspects he was parked there on the main road. And before you ask, it’s gravel alongside that road, too, so no chance of tire tracks.”

“Are they having him look through mug books?” Ryan asked.

“Not to my knowledge,” Savannah replied. “But they certainly should let him. I’ll ask the next time I talk to Dirk or Jake McMurtry. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“I’ll question the residents at the park this afternoon, if you like, “ Ryan offered, “and ask if any of them saw anything.”

“The old coot in the trailer right next to Dirk’s saw and heard quite a bit, and he’s blabbering to the cops about it, too,” Savannah added. She noticed that her hand, which was holding her mug, was shaking. She realized she hadn’t eaten a decent meal for more than twenty-four hours. But with her best friend sitting in a jail cell keeping company with an assortment of grizzly characters who hated cops, she couldn’t see herself taking time for a ham and cheese sandwich, a hot fudge sundae, and a snooze.

“That’s good,” she told Ryan. “You take the trailer park, question the occupants and poke around for anything physical the forensic team might have overlooked.”

She stood to replenish John’s empty teacup, but he saw how she was trembling and took the pot from her hands. “Let me handle that business for you, love,” he said. “I’ll also find out the principal players in Dirk’s most recent cases and run checks on them. Just, perchance, he was the intended victim and not that poor Polly.”

“Good idea, thanks.” She turned to Tammy, who for all of her complaining about “dumb ol’ Dirk,” was eager to jump into the deep end. “And you,” Savannah told her, “can start on Polly herself. Go on-line and see what you can find out about her… anything and everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything. There’s no such thing as a privacy issue here. The woman’s dead, and if she were alive, I’m sure she would tell us anything we needed to know to catch her killer. Go for it.”

Tammy nodded and scribbled on her pad. “You’ve got it.”

“And I,” Savannah said, “am headed over to Dr. Liu’s autopsy suite at the hospital. I understand she’s due to begin Polly’s examination in half an hour. I’d like to be there when she finishes and find out what she knows.”

They stood to leave, and Ryan asked the inevitable, inescapable question… the one that had to be asked by someone… at least once.

“Just for the record,” he said, giving Savannah an intense, calculating look, “do we absolutely know for sure that Dirk didn’t kill her himself?”

Savannah thought for what seemed like forever before answering as truthfully and diplomatically as possible. “Dirk Coulter is no more capable of committing murder than any of us.”

Ryan just grunted and gave John and Tammy a sad, knowing look. He said, “Mmm… That’s what I was afraid of.”

* * *

“Don’t kill him,” Savannah cautioned herself as she approached the desk where all of the visitors to the county coroner’s offices were expected to check in. “If you murder Kenny Bates, you’ll wind up in jail yourself and you’ll be no good at all to Dirk. Wait until after you get Dirk off, and then you can do it. A machete would be nice. Maybe a wood-chipper.”

Morbid imagery flooded her imagination as she stepped up to the desk and the leering idiot who sat behind it. She and Officer Kenneth Bates had a love/hate relationship. He loved—or at least, madly lusted after—her, and she despised him. Her lowly opinion of this blatant lecher was shared by all females on the force. If Kenny had held any real power in the department, his constant come-ons and lewd comments might have been considered sexual harassment. But, since he wasn’t anyone’s boss and wielded no authority over anyone or anything… other than the check-in sheet… his annoying behavior was merely a case of odious manners.

“Hey, Savannah… my favorite Valentine!” he exclaimed as she strolled up to the desk. “You haven’t been around for so long, I was afraid you didn’t love me anymore.”

“And what were you going to do if you’d found out it was true?”

He shrugged. “Ah… I don’t know. Probably hang myself. I mean, life wouldn’t be worth the hassle. The only thing that keeps me going is the dream that you and me are gonna be doing the Grizzly Bear Hump on my bear rug some Saturday night.”

Leaning across the desk toward her, he glanced right and left, then lowered his voice. “You know, I was thinking about you the other day when I was in that adult store on Main Street, The Naughty Lady’s Nook, picturing you in some of that red leather bondage stuff that they’ve got in the window for Valentine’s Day.”

“Close your mouth, Bates,” she told him as she reached for the sheet, which was attached to a clipboard. “Your ignorance is showing.”

For half a second, he glanced, concerned, down at his fly; then he laughed. “Yeah, and I bought some of that strawberry-flavored lotion goop. I’ll smear it on some secret part of my body and you have to find it with your tongue. How does that sound?”

“I’d rather kiss a freshly bathed rat’s ass.”

He brightened. She couldn’t imagine why. “Well, sure,” he said, “I mean, I’d be glad to take a shower first.”

Savannah looked Officer Bates up and down, taking in the greasy, slicked-back hair, the lopsided tie, the police uniform that bulged in all the wrong places, having been designed for a body that was far more trim and fit than his.

“Bates,” she said with a long-suffering sigh, “there aren’t enough showers in the world, and especially in drought-stricken Southern California to transform your body into a delectable morsel. Then, there’s that other little problem: I loathe you and always have.”

“Naw, you’re crazy about me. Don’t you ever watch
Oprah
or
Jerry Springer
? What you’re feeling is sexual tension.”

He reached out to take the clipboard, after she had signed it, and grabbed her hand along with the board. A second later, he had dropped the ledger and was howling in pain as she twisted his little finger almost completely backwards.

“Now
that
,” she said, “is sexual tension. That’s the pain that’s shooting up your arm right now.”

With satisfaction she watched his pale, pasty face turn a sickly shade of light green. Finally, just as he looked like he was going to pass out, she released him. “Don’t ever grab me again,” she told him. “Not any single part of me, ever. Do you understand, Bates?”

He merely nodded as he grasped his hurt finger and rocked back and forth in his chair.

She smiled at him as she replaced his pen on the desk. “I’m so glad we came to an understanding. I’d hate for you to live under the delusion that I’m ever going to have physical contact with you… other than the kind that causes you great pain.”

He perked up.

“And not kinky contact or feels-good pain either,” she added. “So don’t even go there with your perverted fantasies.”

“But you want me.”

“I hate you.”

“You’re just fighting the urge.”

“The urge to wring your neck until your head pops off, like a rooster’s who’s been invited to Sunday dinner. That’s the only urge I’m fighting. And if that camera”—she pointed to the security lens mounted in the corner—”wasn’t there, I wouldn’t fight it at all.”

He flexed his hurt finger. It looked a bit crooked to Savannah, but she chalked it up to wishful thinking.

“See ya later,” he called after her as she walked down the hall toward the autopsy suites. “I’ll be waiting.”

Savannah decided to bring one of Dr. Liu’s scalpels back with her and remove some body part from Officer Bates, security camera or no.

* * *

From the first time Savannah had met Dr. Jennifer Liu, she couldn’t get over the fact that Dr. Liu looked like anything other than what she was, a medical examiner. Slender and graceful with long, shimmering black hair and golden skin, she was the picture of Asian femininity… with the morbid mind-set of Vincent Price and a wicked laugh to match.

In the law-enforcement world, mostly populated with males, Savannah and Jennifer Liu had bonded, primarily over chocolate bars and barbecued potato chips during coinciding periods of PMS. Even after Savannah was ousted from the force, Jennifer helped her by sharing what she learned during her examinations whenever she could.

It was against the rules for Savannah to be present during an autopsy if homicide was suspected, but, like her Southern soul sister, Dr. Liu wasn’t above bending those rules a tad.

So, when Savannah swung one of the stainless-steel doors open and stuck her head inside the autopsy suite, Dr. Liu’s pretty face lit up.

“Hey, it’s my chocolate connection,” she said. “Did you bring me a cherry nut fudge fix?”

“Sorry, didn’t know it was that time of the month,” Savannah said as she walked inside and winced to see Polly’s naked body on the table, chest opened with a huge Y incision, from her shoulders to the center of her chest and on down to the pubic bone.

“What are you talking about?” Jennifer said, holding up bloody gloved hands. “When it comes to cherry nut fudge, it’s
always
that time of month.”

Savannah walked closer to the table and saw that the doctor had already removed, weighed, and dissected most of Polly’s vital organs. The torso was nearly empty. A row of small glass jars sat nearby, holding slices of each organ, preserved for posterity.

“I’ll bring you twice as much next time,” Savannah told her. “I’ve got a lot on my mind with Dirk being locked up and all.”

“I was really sorry to hear about that. Do you think he killed her?”

“No.” Savannah stared at Jennifer across Polly’s mutilated body. “But you’re the expert. What do you think?”

Jennifer pointed to a tiny lead slug that was lying on a small, steel tray at the body’s feet. “That was the bullet that killed her. Ripped into the left ventricle of the heart. Whoever fired the shot was good. Or she was very unlucky.”

“Maybe both.”

Savannah walked down to the tray and peered at the bullet. “It looks like a.38.”

Jennifer nodded, “To me, too. What does Dirk carry?”

“A Smith & Wesson snub-nosed… .38.”

The knowing look on the doctor’s face made Savannah’s skin go to gooseflesh. If the people who knew him suspected him, what hope would he have with a jury?

“He told us she was probably shot with his weapon,” Savannah said in a far more defensive tone than she had intended to use. “He took it away from the killer, then dropped it.”

“Sounds like that gun got passed around like a hot potato,” Jennifer said as she lifted the slippery coils of small intestines from the abdominal cavity and examined them carefully.

“What do you mean?” Savannah said, instantly alert.

“Her right wrist was broken. Looks like it was twisted, hard. I’d say someone was wrenching something out of her hand.”

“Like the gun?”

“Maybe. Probably.”

“Any way to know how long between that and the time she died?”

“Only a moment or two. It didn’t have time to swell before she was killed.”

Savannah mulled that one over for a while, then asked, “Any other defensive wounds?”

“Two of the artificial nails on her right hand are broken.”

“Then the attacker should have had some scratch marks. At least one,” she added hopefully. “And Dirk didn’t have any.”

“That you saw.”

“He didn’t have
any
. I saw him naked.”

Jennifer shot her a quizzical look.

“He was nude when I got to his trailer,” she explained, “fresh out of the shower. If he’d had scratches, I would have seen them.”

Jennifer’s face softened in a sympathetic smile. “I know how much Dirk means to you, Savannah… you two being partners for so long and close friends.”

Savannah could hear the “but” coming.

She didn’t have long to wait. “But,” Jennifer continued, “we don’t know that she broke them scratching someone. I checked under her nails and found no skin, hair, or blood. I even looked at the broken ones that we found on the floor near the body. Nothing.”

Savannah felt her heart sink a couple of notches. “Oh,” she said, disheartened.

Jennifer gave her a sympathetic smile. “Savannah, I don’t want to tell you anything you don’t want to hear, but…”

“But what? Spit it out.”

“But I don’t know how objective you’re being about this shooting.”

“I know how it looks,” Savannah said.

“It looks like he did it.”

“But this is Dirk we’re talking about… and the coldblooded murder of an unarmed person.”

“Even good people make bad choices sometimes in very emotional situations.”

“No. That isn’t what happened.” Savannah shook her head and set her jaw tightly. “What else do you have?”

Jennifer gave her an “okay, whatever you say” look and continued with the examination. She pushed a foot pedal on the floor with the toe of her sneaker, activating the tape recorder on the wall nearby. Savannah knew to be quiet; she wasn’t supposed to be present… let alone on the record.

“Evidence of a recent breast augmentation,” the doctor said, “judging from the stages of healing, approximately eight to ten weeks ago. Also, newly applied bondings to the four upper front teeth.”

So, Savannah thought, Polly had gone in for a little bodywork and a wheel rotation. Must have been worried about her mounting mileage.

“Intestines seem to be fine,” Dr. Liu continued. “No disease of any kind indicated in the abdomen… except the liver cirrhosis, as previously noted, which was probably due to excessive alcohol consumption.”

She pushed the pedal again, turning the recorder off.

“Polly was an alcoholic?” Savannah asked.

“It appears so. I’ll know more when I open the skull and check the brain. Sometimes it’s visibly smaller than it should be because of alcohol abuse.”