"Transfer evidence?" Milo said. "You think it'll get that good?"
"Sure, yeah," Schwinn said, impatiently. "Right now transfer evidence is for the most part useless bullshit, but wait and see."
They had been driving around Central on their first day as partners. Aimlessly, Milo thought. He kept waiting for Schwinn to point out known felons, hot spots, whatever, but the guy seemed unaware of his surroundings, all he wanted to do was talk. Later, Milo would learn that Schwinn had plenty to offer. Solid detective logic and basic advice. ("Carry your own camera, gloves, and fingerprint powder. Take care of your own self, don't depend on anyone.") But right now, this first day, riding around- everything- seemed pointless.
"Transfer," said Schwinn. "All we can transfer now is ABO blood type. What a crock. Big deal, a million scrotes are type O, most of the rest are A, so what does that do? That and hair, sometimes they take hair, put it in little plastic envelopes, but what the fuck can they do with it, you always get some Hebe lawyer proving hair don't mean shit. No, I'm talking serious science, something nuclear, like the way they date fossils. Carbon dating. One day, we'll be anthropologists. Too bad you don't have a master's degree in anthropology… can you type okay?"
A few miles later. Milo was taking in the neighborhood on his own, studying faces, places, when Schwinn proclaimed: "English won't do you a damn bit of good, boy-o, cause our customers don't talkie mucho English. Not the Mexes, not the niggers, either- not unless you want to call that jive they give you English."
Milo kept his mouth shut.
"Screw English," said Schwinn. "Fuck English in the ass with a hydrochloric acid dildo. The wave of the future is science."
They hadn't been told much about the Beaudry call. Female Caucasian db, discovered by a trash-picker sifting through the brush that crested the freeway on-ramp.
Rain had fallen the previous night and the dirt upon which the corpse had been placed was poor-drainage clay that retained an inch of grimy water in the ruts.
Despite a nice soft muddy area, no tire tracks, no footprints. The ragpicker was an old black guy named Elmer Jacquette, tall, emaciated, stooped, with Parkinsonian tremors in his hands that fit with his agitation as he retold the story to anyone who'd listen.
"And there it was, right out there, Lord Jesus…"
No one was listening anymore. Uniforms and crime-scene personnel and the coroner's man were busy doing their jobs. Lots of other people stood around, making small talk. Flashing vehicles blocked Beaudry all the way back to Temple as a bored-looking patrolman detoured would-be freeway speeders.
Not too many cars out: 9 P.M. Well past rush hour. Rigor had come and gone, as had the beginnings of putrefaction. The coroner was guestimating a half day to a day since death, but no way to know how long the body had been lying there or what temperature it had been stored at. The logical guess was that the killer had driven up last night, after dark, placed the corpse, zipped right onto the 101, and sped off happy.
No passing motorist had seen it, because when you were in a hurry, why would you study the dirt above the on-ramp? You never get to know a city unless you walk. Which is why so few people know L.A., thought Milo. After living here for two years, he still felt like a stranger.
Elmer Jacquette walked all the time, because he had no car. Covered the area from his East Hollywood flop to the western borders of downtown, poking around for cans, bottles, discards he tried to peddle to thrift shops in return for soup kitchen vouchers. One time, he'd found a working watch- gold, he thought, turned out to be plated but he got ten bucks for it, anyway, at a pawnshop on South Vermont.
He'd seen the body right away- how could you not from up close, all pale in the moonlight, the sour smell, the way the poor girl's legs had been bent and spread- and his gorge had risen immediately and soon his franks-and-beans dinner was coming back the wrong way.
Jacquette had the good sense to run a good fifteen feet from the body before vomiting. When the uniforms arrived, he pointed out the emetic mound, apologizing. Not wanting to annoy anyone. He was sixty-eight years old, hadn't served state time since fifteen years ago, wasn't going to annoy the police, no way.
Yessir, nossir.
They'd kept him around, waiting for the detectives to arrive. Now, the men in suits were finally here and Jacquette stood over by one of the police cars as someone pointed him out and they approached him, stepping into the glare of those harsh lights the cops had put all over the place.
Two suits. A skinny white-haired redneck type in an old-fashioned gray sharkskin suit and a dark-haired, pasty-faced heavyset kid whose green jacket and brown pants and ugly red-brown tie made Elmer wonder if nowadays cops were shopping at thrift shops.
They stopped at the body first. The old one took one look, wrinkled his nose, got an annoyed look on his face. Like he'd been interrupted in the middle of doing something important.
The fat kid was something else. Barely glanced at the body before whipping his head away. Bad skin, that one, and he'd gone white as a sheet, started rubbing his face with one hand, over and over.
Tightening up that big heavy body of his like he was ready to lose his lunch.
Elmer wondered how long the kid had been on the job, if he'd actually blow chunks. If the kid did heave, would he be smart enough to avoid the body, like Elmer had?
'Cause this kid didn't look like no veteran.
CHAPTER 6
This was worse than Asia.
No matter how brutal it got, war was impersonal, human chess pieces moving around the board, you fired at shadows, strafed huts you pretended were empty, lived every day hoping you wouldn't be the pawn that flipped. Reduce someone to The Enemy, and you could blow off his legs or slice open his belly or napalm his kids without knowing his name. As bad as war got, there was always the chance for making nice sometime in the future- look at Germany and the rest of Europe. To his father, an Omaha Beach alumnus, buddying up to the krauts was an abomination. Dad curled his lip every time he saw a "hippie-faggot in one of those Hitler beetle-cars." But Milo knew enough history to understand that peace was as inevitable as war and that as unlikely as it seemed, one day Americans might be vacationing in Hanoi.
War wounds had a chance of healing because they weren't personal. Not that the memory of guts slipping through his hands would fade, but maybe, somewhere off in the future…
But this. This was nothing but personal. Reduction of human form to meat and juice and refuse. Creating the antiperson.
He took a deep breath and buttoned his jacket and managed another look at the corpse. How old could she be, seventeen, eighteen? The hands, about the only parts of her not bloody, were smooth, pale, free of blemish. Long, tapering fingers, pink-polished nails. From what he could tell- and it was hard to tell anything because of the damage- she'd had delicate features, might've been pretty.
No blood on the hands. No defense wounds…
The girl was frozen in time, a heap of ruin. Aborted- like a shiny little wristwatch, stomped on, the crystal shattered.
Manipulated after death, too. The killer spreading her legs, tenting them, pointing the feet at a slight outward angle.
Leaving her out in the open, horrible statuary.
Overkill, the assistant coroner had pronounced, as if you needed a medical degree for that.