Cry Havoc
Baxter Clare
1
If the devil rode a Harley it would sound like the Santa Ana winds bellowing through the Cahuenga Pass at seventy miles an hour. The dead air gusted into the City of Angels, bent on trailing havoc in its wake. Jails filled, hospitals ran out of beds, doors slammed and dishes were hurled. The desiccating heat was relentless.
Lieutenant L.A. Franco glanced at her Timex. Eight fifteen and it had to be at least ninety already. She watched her rookie detective prowl the scene. The kid's first homicide, and wouldn't it have to be a dead man sitting naked in an '88 Caddy with a headless chicken in his lap.
Dark faces peered from porches and doorways, but the body wasn't drawing the usual onlookers. The lieutenant passed that off to the heat. The last two days had set record highs for October. Still, it was odd that there wasn't a drunk or some cluckhead hanging around the scene hoping to peddle useless information for a pint or a hit off a crack pipe.
Cheryl Lewis paused next to her boss and Frank said, 'Congratulations. Looks like your first case is a dump.'
Lewis accepted the decision stoically. Frank admired her placid exterior, but the sweat soaking Lewis's blouse wasn't just from the sun. Frank knew the rookie was burning with self-consciousness and second-guessing her every move. Was she missing a waving red flag that everyone else saw? Was she stepping all over critical evidence? Was she making notes that would turn out to be useless? She'd only have one chance to get everything right. Once the body was moved all she'd have to work with were notes, photographs, and whatever was collected as evidence.
Frank watched Lewis eyeball every item on the street, trying to turn each scrap of garbage and litter into valuable evidence. Lewis was walking a thin line between savvy and naivete. A black woman who had come up through the ranks, Lewis was well aware that her first mistake would bring howls of derision. Lewis's partner, Noah Jantzen, was already calling their victim Colonel Sanders. If Lewis did something stupid enough (or brilliant enough) she'd get a nickname too.
Lewis knelt and inspected a ground out cigarette butt near the car. Noah knelt too.
'Unfiltered Lucky Strike,' Lewis noted. 'Looks fresh.'
'Sure does,' Noah agreed.
'Should we have SID bag it?'
'Nah,' her partner said. 'You can collect little stuff like that yourself. Just mark the date and location on the label.'
Lewis frowned, glancing at Frank. She knew that the Scientific Investigation Division collected all the evidence at a crime scene.
Frank nodded and Lewis shrugged. Noah handed her a baggie. Lewis scrupulously collected the crushed cigarette. When she finished, Noah indicated an older cop smoking at the periphery of the scene.
'You see Haystack over there?'
Lewis nodded.
'Okay,' he told her. 'Give him the bag. Tell him to pick up his own goddamn butts next time.'
Her partner laughed as Lewis flushed. Pointing to a house across the street, Noah said to Frank, 'The lady in there said she won't come out until he's gone. She said if we keep messin' with the Colonel here, we're gonna get hexed. Her old man was mumblin' somethin' about not truckin' with no hoodoo niggers.'
From across the car, Lewis shot her partner 'the look.'
'What?' he defended. 'That's what he said.'
'What else?' Frank continued.
'Nobody remembers seeing the car come up this morning and no one remembers it being here last night.'
'How late we talking?'
'Midnight. One.'
When the Figueroa detectives had arrived on scene Lewis had reached up under the car to see if the engine block was hot. It wasn't. Duncan's eyes were dull and the blood had crusted around his neck. The dump must have been in the wee hours of the morning.
Noah said to Lewis, 'You notice something odd about the blood here?'
'There wasn't a lot.'
'Right. So where is it?'
'Wherever he got cut.'
'Yeah, but you've seen people cut before. A slit jugular's going to gush all over. The Colonel here should be covered in blood. Why isn't he?'
'Whoever cut him cleaned him up?'
Noah pulled at his tie and plucked his collar from his neck. He'd already peeled off his jacket and rolled his sleeves up.
'Come on, Lewis, look at this guy. He looks like he spilled tomato soup down his chin, not like he just lost a couple quarts of blood.'
He was right. Duncan's hairless chest was daubed with blood, so was his neck, but the rest of his body was unusually clean.
'Where is it all?'
Lewis pouted.
'Maybe he got bled into something so he wouldn't be all bloody and make a mess when they went to dump him,' she guessed.
'They?'
Frank constantly rode her crew about supposition and she was pleased to hear Noah do the same.
'He, them, I don't know. All I do know is it'd be awful hard for one man to hold him down and then cut him so clean like. I watched my granddaddy kill a hog one time and he had to have my daddy and two of his brothers help him. They cut its neck over a bucket and got most of the blood but it was still all over. And Duncan here's a helluva lot bigger than that pig.'
'Okay,' Noah conceded. 'Let's say that for the time being. I agree with you. Too neat for one person to have done this.'
'Unless he was dead already. Maybe that's why he didn't bleed out.'
Noah frowned, shooing a fly away.
'Nah. Even if his heart wasn't pumping he'd have made a lot more mess than this. And look at the way he's clotted. We can assume he was probably cut around the time he died. Coroner might give us a different cause of death, but until then let's say someone bled him like your granddaddy's pig. Hey. Maybe we should call him Arnold. You know, like the pig on Green Acres?'
Lewis scowled, moving off to think on her own.
'Sheeth tho thenthitive,' Noah lisped.
'You think he was bled somewhere?' Frank asked.
'What do you think?' Noah countered.
'I agree whoever did him did a pretty good job cleaning up after himself. Or themselves. But why?'
'Exactly,' Noah said. 'Where's the blood? It's like they drained this guy, not just cut him. And what's with the fuckin' chicken? Is that some sorta warning or something? 'Tonight Luca Brazzi sleeps with the chickens?' Jesus,' he spat, 'only in South Central.'
'His aunt does fortune-telling or something like that. Maybe somebody's dissin' her.'
In addition to founding a crack empire and running a number of legit side businesses, Mother Love Jones also tended the faithful at Saint Barbara's Church of the something-or-other. Its tenets were vague in Frank's mind,
