The three male detectives looked at her.
'I've done some rock climbing in Chatsworth and I work terrain like this all the time when I'm backpacking.' She pointed out her route. 'I can work my way down the slide over there, then traverse back and come up under the body. No sweat.'
Dan Tomsic said, 'That goddamned soil is like sand. It won't hold your weight.'
'It's no sweat, Dan. Really.'
Rossi looked like the athletic type, and Gibbs knew that she had run in the last two L.A. marathons. Tomsic sucked down three packs a day and Bishop had the muscle tone of Jell-O. Rossi was also fifteen years younger than the rest of them, and she wanted to go. Gibbs gave his permission, told her to take the camera, and Angela Rossi went back to the car to trade her Max Avante pumps for a busted-out pair of New Balance running shoes. She reappeared a minute later, and Gibbs, Tomsic, and the others watched as she worked her way down to the body. Tomsic frowned as he watched, but Gibbs nodded in approval – Rossi seemed graceful and confident in her movements. Tomsic was praying that she wouldn't lose her balance and break her damned neck – one slip and she'd flop ass over teapot another sixty or eighty yards down the slope.
Down below, Rossi never once entertained the notion that she might fall. She was feeling absolutely confident and more than a little jazzed that it was she who had taken the lead in recovering the body. If you took the lead you got the promotions, and Rossi made no secret that she wanted to become LAPD's first female chief of detectives. It was a goal she had aggressively pursued since her days at the academy and, though there had been what she called her Big Setback, she still hoped that she could get her career back on track and pull it off.
When Rossi reached the body, she could smell it. The sun was rising and the dark plastic was heating quickly and holding the heat. As water evaporated from the body it collected on the plastic's inner surface, and, Rossi knew, it would be humid and damp inside the bag. The victim's abdomen would swell and the gases of decay would vent. Decomposition had begun.
Linc called down to her, 'Try not to move the body. Just take the snaps and peel back the bags.'
Rossi used the Polaroid to fix the body's position for the record, then pulled on rubber surgical gloves and touched the wrist, checking for a pulse. She knew that there would be none, but she had to check anyway. The skin was pliant but the muscles beneath were stiff. Rigor.
Rossi couldn't see much, as yet, but the body appeared intact and double-bagged in two dark brown plastic garbage bags. The bags were secured around the body with silver duct tape, but the job appeared to have been done hastily. The bags had parted and the hand had plopped out. Angela Rossi peeled the bags apart to expose the shoulder and head of a blonde Caucasian woman who appeared to be in her early thirties. The woman was clothed in what looked like a pale blue Banana Republic T-shirt that was splattered with blood. The woman's left eye was open but her right eye was closed, and the tip of her tongue protruded between small, perfect teeth. The hair on the back and right side of her head was ropey and matted with blood. Much of the blood was dried, but there was a shiny, wet quality to much of it, also. The skull at that portion of the hair appeared depressed and dark, and brain matter and ridges of white skull were obvious. The woman's nose was straight and her features rectangular and contoured. In life, she would've been pretty. Angela Rossi had an immediate sense that the woman looked familiar.
Tomsic yelled down, 'Don't pitch a goddamned tent down there. What's the deal?'
Rossi hated it when he spoke to her that way, but she clenched her jaw and took it. She'd been taking it more and smarting off less since the Big Setback. Anything to resurrect the career. She called back without looking at them. 'Caucasian female. Early thirties. Blunt force trauma to the back of the head.' She pushed the garbage bag back farther, exposing the victim's head and shoulders. She saw no additional injuries and wanted to peel back the bags even farther, but was concerned that the body would dislodge and tumble down the slope, possibly taking her with it. She took more pictures, then said, 'The blood around the wound appears to be tacky, and it's wet in some spots. She hasn't been here long.'
Bishop said, 'Lividity?'
'A little, but it could be bruising.'
Above her, Linc Gibbs was growing impatient with all the conversation. He didn't like Rossi perched on such a steep slope, and he wanted to call in the criminalist. He said, 'What about a weapon?' Murderers almost always dumped the murder weapon with the body.
He watched Rossi lean across the body and feel around the bags. She moved out of sight twice, and each time he tasted acid because he thought she'd fallen. Another Tagamed day. He remembers that he was just getting ready to ask her what in hell was taking so long when she said, 'Don't see anything, but it could be under the body or in the bag.'
Gibbs nodded. 'Leave it for the criminalist. Take some more pix and get back up here.'
Rossi took the remainder of the roll, then worked her way back up the slope. When she reached the top, the others crowded around to see the pictures. All of the male detectives pulled out reading glasses except for Gibbs, who wore bifocals.
One of the uniformed cops said, 'Hey. She looks like somebody.'
Rossi said, 'I thought so, too.'
She didn't look like anyone to Gibbs. 'You guys recognize her?'
Bishop was turning the pictures round and round, as if seeing the victim from every possible view was important. All the turning was making Tomsic nauseated. Bishop said, 'Her name is Susan Martin.'
The Westec cop said, 'Holy Christ, you're right. Teddy Martin's wife.'
All four detectives looked at him.
The Westec cop said, 'They live right over here in Benedict Canyon. It's on my route.' Benedict Canyon was less than one mile from the overlook.
Gibbs said, 'I'll be damned.'
The four detectives later testified that they thought pretty much the same thing at the same time. Teddy Martin meant money and, more important than money, political power, and that meant the case would require special handling. Dan Tomsic remembers thinking that he wished he had called in sick that day so some other asshole would've answered the call. Special cases always meant special trouble, and investigating officers almost always caught the short end of the deal. Teddy Martin was a rich boy who'd made himself even richer,- a successful restaurateur and businessman who used his wealth to cultivate friends and social position and notoriety. He was always having dinner with city councilmen and movie stars, and he was always in the newspaper for giving millions of dollars to all the right causes. Tomsic knew the name because Teddy Martin had opened a new theme restaurant with a couple of movie star partners that his wife had been nagging him to take her to. He'd been foot-dragging because he knew it'd cost sixty bucks for a couple of pieces of fish just so the wife could eyeball some second-rate movie props and maybe some closet-fag actor. Tomsic hated guys like Teddy Martin, but he kept it to himself. Guys like Teddy Martin were headline grabbers and almost always phonies, but a phony with the right connections could end your career.
Pete Bishop said, 'It's gonna be a headliner. We'd better call the boss.'