Definitely a woman. That was easy enough to determine. The sun did terrible things to people who had the bad fortune to lie deceased in a desert, but it wasn't known to make cocks disappear. Breasts, on the other hand, flattened out into nothing. Except, she realized, this corpse still had a pretty good set. That was interesting. The body also seemed to glint in the sun, twinkling at her. That was interesting, too.
Serena got on her hands and knees, getting close to the body, staring at it from an inch or two away without touching it. She started at the girl's feet, moved up her legs, spent more time than she wanted to at her crotch, then her stomach, her breasts, and finally her face and lips, which looked ready to give her a macabre kiss.
Serena stood up, slid a digital tape recorder from her pocket, and dictated a few notes.
The wind tousled her hair, which was lush and black, shoulder length. She was as statuesque as a showgirl, which was what most strangers in Las Vegas mistook her for when they met her. She had taken to wearing her shield on the outside, which tended to cut down on the unwelcome advances from drunk convention rats. Serena was nearly six feet tall, lithe and well proportioned. She wore a sleeveless white tank top, tucked into snug, faded jeans. She was muscled and strong, from an intense workout routine. Her skin was tanned golden brown from days spent mostly in the sun.
Serena was in her midthirties. Her eyes, normally hidden behind the apricot lenses of her sunglasses, were emerald green. Her mouth was small, with pale lips and a soft curve forming her chin. She didn't look young, not girlish young, and she never had. She had looked the way she looked now, adult and beautiful, since she was a teenager. It was only recently that her age had begun to catch up to the image she had sported all her life. At idle moments, she wondered what she would look like as the years began to get ahead of her.
Probably the girl at her feet had wondered the same thing, but she wasn't going to find out. And it was just as well that this girl couldn't see herself now.
"Age," Serena said into her tape recorder. "Have to wait for the ME on that, but I'm thinking early twenties at most. Cause of death looks like blunt trauma to the head. There's matted blood in the hair toward the back of the skull, and without moving the body, it looks like the skull may be caved in back there. Hair originally black, dyed blonde."
Serena studied the desert floor where the body lay.
"She wasn't murdered here. Not enough blood on the ground. Whoever did it hauled the body and dumped her here. The body is nude, but no immediate sign of sexual assault, no bruising in the pelvic area, no broken fingernails, scratches, or other wounds. We'll run the rape kit. Time of death, no way to tell? I wonder if the ME will even be able to peg this one. At least a couple days, I guess. Rigor is long gone. We're just lucky the vultures didn't get her."
A thought occurred to her. She gingerly poked the dead girl's wrinkled breast with one finger. "Naturally," she said to herself, standing up again.
Serena continued taking notes. "Pierced ears, but no earrings in them. No watch. No rings. Fingernails and toenails are painted red. Evidence of heavy makeup on the face. Glitter on most of the skin."
She heard footsteps approaching and then a voice calling to her. "Hola."
"Watch where you walk, Cordy," Serena said without turning around. Not that it mattered. She had run searches in the desert before, and it rarely offered up any clues. Little wonder the gangsters of old Vegas liked to leave their targets to rot in the Mojave.
Cordy feigned offense. "And what am I? A rookie?"
Cordero Elias Angel was her partner of the last six months. Serena, who had earned a reputation with her lieutenant for being difficult to work with, went through partners quickly, but Cordy seemed to have staying power. He gave as good as he got, he did what he was told, and he hadn't once made a pass at her. Cordy preferred girls small, blonde, and young, and Serena was none of the three. He was also six inches shorter than Serena and six years younger. There was nothing romantic between them.
Looking like she did, Serena got plenty of offers, but when she lowered her guard and succumbed to a date, it usually ended early. Her blunt style scared them away. She hadn't had sex in years. She told herself she didn't miss it.
Cordy, in contrast, had an active social life. In the short time they had been together, she had seen him with six different women, ranging from twenty to twenty-three years old. None of them lasted beyond the first calisthenics in bed. For at least two of them, it really was their first time in bed, or so Cordy claimed. Serena found it disgusting and told him so. Cordy just grinned, and she dropped it, rather than digging up old ghosts.
He was an attractive, if compact, package. He always dressed impeccably. Today, he wore a floral Tommy Bahama shirt and black silk pants. Cordy had jet black hair, greased straight back over his head. His skin had a dark cast, the color of virgin olive oil. His teeth looked noticeably white against it, and he had predatory brown eyes.
Serena jerked a thumb at the trailer. "So what's his story?"
"Ah, he's a pathetic old man. Not so old, but going downhill fast, you know? Spends each night drowning in a gin bottle. You see all the broken glass out here? He just tosses them out back when he's done."
Serena took note of the broad swath of glass shards behind the trailer. "Make sure the forensics team studies the glass pieces carefully. If our delivery man cut himself hauling the body in, maybe we'll get some blood."
"Uh-huh," Cordy said.
"We'll probably find Jerky Bob decomposing in the trailer in a few months," Serena said. "Did he call it in?"
Cordy shook his head. "He found the body and freaked. Started running naked down the road. A motorist spotted him from the highway and reported it. When the unis got to him, he was babbling about a corpse that was alive."
"Does he know the girl?"
Cordy shook his head. " Nan, he says he's never seen her before. Just saw the body when he came outside to take a piss. Surprise."
"How about timing? He have any idea when our little package may have been dropped off? Did he hear or see anything?"
"Man, he didn't hear nothing. Nada. Guy's been blacked out at least two days, maybe three. So it could have been anytime."
Serena sighed. "Great."
"So we don't got a lot to go on here, is what I'm thinking."
"I assume you scoped out the trailer for blood," she said.
"Uh-huh. His feet were bleeding from his run, but not enough to account for bashing in someone's head. And believe me, the place has not been cleaned up. Unless she was asphyxiated by the smell, the deceased was not inside. You should check out the jerky, though. He gave me a piece. Cajun turkey, I think it was. Good stuff, if you can stand the smell."
"If you have to pull off the road and take a dump in the desert on the way back to the city, you'll wish you hadn't tried it"
"I'm Mexican. Stomach of iron. Chiles, mama." Cordy thumped his chest.
Serena shook her head. "Salmonella, sweetie. It's not just for gringos."
"You forget. I wanted to see if he was hiding anything in his refrigerator, and I had no warrant. So now, one piece of jerky later, I know there is nothing in those shoe boxes but dried meat"
"Now you impress me, sweetie. You really do."
Serena took another look at the body, wishing she could cover it up and give the girl a little dignity. Las Vegas had its share of bizarre crimes, and she was long past surprise at anything they found in the city. She had been involved in the strip search of a female suspect, only to discover, after baring her impressive breasts, that the girl was actually a she-male with oversized equipment She had investigated the murder of a midget who had been put on a homemade rack by two thrill-seeking teenagers and stretched to death. She had arrested a man for walking downtown, naked, with two goats in tow. Weird, sick, stupid, she had been there, done that. Once in a great long while, though, she came across a case where her instincts told her she had stumbled into something deep, interesting, and dark. Which was exactly what her sixth sense was telling her now.