Show of Evil

'You're on my side now,' Stenner had explained with a shrug. 'Besides, Eckling is incompetent.'

Ten years. In those years, Stenner had actually begun to loosen up. He had been known to smile on occasion and there was a myth around the DA's office, unconfirmed, that he had once cracked a joke - although it was impossible to find anyone who actually had heard it.

Vail was half asleep, his coffee mug clutched between both hands to keep it from spilling, when Stenner turned off the highway and headed down the back tar road leading to the sprawling county landfill. His head wobbled back and forth. Then he was aware of a kaleidoscope of lights dancing on his eyelids.

He opened them, sat up in his seat, and saw, against a small mountain of refuse, flashing yellow, red, and blue reflections against the dark, steamy night. A moment later Stenner rounded the mound and the entire scene was suddenly spread out before them. There were a dozen cars of various descriptions - ambulances, police cars, the forensics van - all parked hard against the edge of the landfill. Beyond them, like men on the moon, yellow-garbed cops and firemen struggled over the steamy landscape, piercing the looming piles of garbage with long poles. The acrid smell of the burning garbage, rotten food, and wet paper permeated the air. For a moment it reminded Vail of the last time he had gone home, to a place ironically called Rainbow Flats, which had been savaged by polluters who repaid the community for enduring them by poisoning the land, water, and air. First one came, then another, attracted to the place like hyenas to carrion, until it was a vast island of death surrounded by forests they had yet to destroy. He had gone home to bury his grandmother thirteen years earlier and never returned. A momentary flash of the Rainbow Flats Industrial Park supplanted the scene before him. It streaked through his mind and was gone. It had always angered him that they had had the gall to call it a park.

Three tall poles with yellow flags snapping in the harsh wind seemed to establish the parameters of the search. They were bunched in a cluster, a circle perhaps fifty yards in circumference. The sickening sour-sweet odour of death intruded on the wind and occasionally overpowered the smell of decay. Four men came over a ridge of the dump hefting a green body bag among them.

'That's three,' Stenner said.

'Bodies?'

'Where the flags are.' He nodded.

'Jesus!'

'First one was over there, in that cluster. A woman. They tumbled on the second one when I called you.'

A freezing blast of cold air swept the car as Stenner got out. Vail turned up his collar and stepped out into the predawn. He jammed his hands deep in his coat pockets and hunched his shoulders against the wind. He could feel his lips chapping as his warm breath turned to steam and blew back into his face.

Two cops, an old-timer and a rookie, were standing guard beside the yellow crime-scene ribbons as Vail and Stenner stepped over them. The wind whipped Stenner's tie out and it flapped around his face for a moment before he tucked it back under his jacket as they walked towards the landfill.

'Jesus, don't he have a coat? Gotta be ten degrees out,' said the rookie.

'He don't need a coat,' the older cop said. 'He ain't got any blood. That's Stenner. Know what they used to call him when he was with the PD? The Icicle.'

Twenty feet away Stenner stopped and turned slowly as the cop said it and stared at him for a full ten seconds, then turned back to the crime scene.

'See what I mean,' the older cop whispered. 'Nobody ever called him that to his face.'

'Must have ears in the back of his head.'

'It's eyes.'

'Huh?'

'It's eyes. He's got eyes in the back of his head.'

'He didn't see you, he heard you,' the young cop said.

'Huh?'

'You said -'

'Jesus, Sanders, forget it. Just forget it. Coldest night of the year, I'm in the city dump, and I draw a fuckin' moron for a partner.'

'There's Shock,' Stenner said to Vail.

He nodded towards a tall, beefy uniformed cop bundled in his blue wool coat, standing at the edge of the fill. Capt. Shock Johnson was ebony black and bald, with enormous, scarred hands that were cupped in front of his mouth and shoulders like a Green Bay lineman. When he saw Vail and Stenner, he shook his head and chuckled.

'I don't believe it,' he said. 'You guys don't even have to be here.'

'What the hell's going on?' Vail asked.

'The dozer operator turned over the first one, so I decided we ought to punch around a little and, bingo, now we got three.'

'What killed them?'

'Better ask Okimoto that, he's the expert. They're a mess. Been in there awhile. Maggots have had Thanksgiving dinner on all of 'em.'

Vail groaned at the image. 'So we don't know anything yet, that it?' he asked.

'Know we got three stiffos been cooking down in that gunk for God knows how long.'

'May be hard to determine when these happened,' Stenner offered. 'Location will be very important.'

Johnson nodded. 'We're taking stills and video, doing measurements. If the weather's okay later I've ordered a chopper flyover. We'll get some pictures from up top.'

'Good.'

Johnson had once been Stenner's sergeant and had made lieutenant when he quit. He was now captain of the night watch, a man beholden to Stenner for years of education and for fostering in him a strong sense of intuition. He was Stenner's pipeline to a very unfriendly police department.

'Eckling here yet?' Vail asked.

'Oh yeah. He's down there in the thick of it, looking important for Channel 7. They were the first ones to get a whiff of it.'

'Nicely put,' said Vail.

'Any ideas?' Stenner asked.

'Not really. My guess is, these three here were dumped about the same time, but we can't be sure. You couldn't hardly find the same spot twice, the tractors keep moving this shit around so much.' He looked off at the ragged landscape. 'Excuse me, I gotta check that bag just came up. Besides, Eckling sees you.' He chuckled again. 'And I've had enough fun for one night.' He left.

'I'll wait in the car,' Stenner said. He had not spoken a word to his former boss since the day he quit.

The chief of police huffed up the small hill with a camera crew and a reporter trailing out behind him. He was waving his arms as he spoke and his words came out in little bursts of steam.

'I see the DA's man is here,' he sneered. 'Everybody loves a circus.'

Eckling always referred to Vail as 'the DA's man,' putting an edge to the words so that it sounded like an insult.

The three-man crew, having got everything they could out of Eckling, turned their camera on Vail. 'Any comment, Mr Vail?' asked the reporter, a small, slender man in his twenties named Billy Pearce, who peered out from the depths of a hooded parka.

'I'm just an interested spectator,' he answered.

'Care to speculate on what happened here?'

'I don't care to speculate at all, Billy. Thanks.'

Vail turned away from them and walked towards Eckling as the crew, grateful for his brevity, fled towards their van. Eckling was a tall man with the beginnings of a beer belly and eyes that glared from behind tinted spectacles.

'What's the matter, Martin, couldn't wait?' he snapped.

'You know why I'm here, Eric, we've had that discussion too many times.'

'Can't even wait until the bodies're cold,' he growled.

'That shouldn't take long in this weather.'

'Just want to get your face on the six o'clock news,' he said nastily.

'Isn't that what got you out here?' Vail said cheerily.

'Look, you can't butt in for seven days. How about leaving me and mine alone and letting us do our job?'

'I wish you could, Chief,' Vail said pleasantly.