“Best part of the job, huh? We talking regular nice or
“Real nice.”
Palmberg cursed cheerfully.
Milo took in the crime scene again. “You been down there yet?”
“Twice. The second time my pants got ripped up, I had to change suits. You might think twice.”
Milo said, “You keep spare duds on hand?”
“All the years of body fluids?” said Palmberg. “You don’t?”
Palmberg waited on the road, talking into his cell phone, as Milo and I climbed down, walking sideways but still slipping several times.
The flat area turned out to be a shallow crater, larger than I’d estimated, closer to twenty feet wide. The sky above huge, deep blue silked by cirrus. The earth was hard-pack, gray where it wasn’t brown, and carpeted with wild sage, mustard, wilting poppies, the odd struggling pine seedling.
Gorgeous spot, wide open and sunny. All that sweet air couldn’t conquer the decomp reek. We reached the body just as the coroner’s crew finished bagging.
Three techs, a woman and two men. They’d rolled down a snap-open gurney, looked unhappy about the prospect of getting it back up.
One of the men said, “Hey, Lieutenant.”
“Walt. Could I have a look at him before you take him?”
Walt unzipped the bag to waist level. An abstractly humanoid mass, part leather, part oozing headcheese, caught light from the glorious sky. The eyes were gone, canapes for resourceful birds. Some kind of carnivore had feasted on the neck, extruding blood vessels and muscle fibers and tendons. The white shirt was shredded, the black tie turned to bloody ribbon. Splintered ribs protruded from a massive exit wound. The rotted sponge of lung and the degraded rubber of heart littered the ravaged chest. Dead maggots dusted everything like a hideous toss of wedding rice.
Milo turned to me. “Any way that’s remotely recognizable?”
I said, “The hair’s the same. So are the clothes and the general size.”
Walt said, “You bring witnesses to scenes now, Lieutenant?”
“This witness is authorized.” He introduced me as a police consultant but didn’t explain my link to Muhrmann. All three techs were puzzled but no one said anything.
The woman said, “If he’s on record, we can verify the I.D. Printable left thumb and ring finger, the rest is gnawed to the bone.”
Walt said, “Anything else you need, Lieutenant?”
Milo said, “No, thanks. Zip him up.”
Walt did so without looking at the body.
The second man, younger, darker, said, “Now the fun part, shlepping him up there. We shouldn’t have to do it but the drivers are stuck in traffic and Detective Palmberg wants transport A-sap.”
Walt said, “This was TV, they’d send us a copter, do that flashy basket thing. A copter found him in the first place.”
“TV,” said the woman, “I’d get a makeup artist and fake boobs out to here and talk like an idiot.” She batted her lashes. “Cee Ess Eye at your disposable, let’s do an ultrasonic magnetic cross-section of the left lateral dorsal fibrio-filamental inclusion. Then we’ll know who his great-grandfather was, what he ate for Thanksgiving six years ago, and what his first cousin’s schnauzer thinks about kibble.”
Everyone smiled.
The younger man said, “You ask me, using the gurney’s a bigger pain. You guys take the body, I can do the gurney.”
The woman said, “Anything to avoid the corpus delecti, Pedro.”
Pedro said, “You want to do the gurney, Gloria, I’ll do the body.”
“Kids, kids,” said Walt. To Milo: “Can’t take them anywhere.”
Milo said, “If you can use two more sets of hands, we’re at your service.”
Pedro said, “That’s okay, we’re CSI studs, can handle it all by the first commercial.”
Walt said, “Speak for yourself, action hero. As is, my back’s gonna bitch for a week, they want to help, God bless ’em.”
Milo scanned the slope. “Anything else down here other than him that I should be concerned about?”
“A little blood,” said Walt, “but most of it’s on the road and the first ten feet of the drop. We tagged and bagged skin fragments but all you’re going to get is more of this guy, there was no struggle.”
Milo checked the area anyway, nostrils flaring, then compressing. “How about two of you do the gurney, the rest of us will form the funeral procession.”
“It’s a plan,” said Walt.
We began the climb.
Pedro said, “The Lord is my shepherd. Too bad
didn’t hear from Milo the following day and my call to Gretchen asking how Chad was doing went unanswered.
Robin and I went out to dinner at an Italian place she’d heard about. Little Santa Monica Boulevard on the western edge of the Beverly Hills business district. Family-run, the wife cooking, the husband hosting, two teenage girls serving. Homemade everything, good wine.
Garlic breath for both of us, which is as good a definition of diplomacy as any.
When we got home and took Blanche out of her crate, she licked my hand with special enthusiasm. Did the same for Robin and belched. Now we had a consensus.
The doorbell rang.
Blanche raced to the front of the house and sat there, tail-stub wagging.
Robin said, “Someone she’s eager to see.”
A voice on the other side bellowed, “Must be my looks.”
She let Milo in. “Hope I’m not interrupting, kids.”
A cheek peck caused him to grimace. “Spaghetti con olio y mucho garlicko.”
“Master detective. I’ll go use mouthwash.”
“I was just thinking we could all go out. Alas.”
“We’re happy to feed you.”
He threw up his hands. “The sacrifices I make for friendship.”
As we walked to the kitchen, Robin said, “How’s Rick?”
“Meaning how come I’m dining solo?”
“No, darling. Meaning how’s Rick.”
“Busy,” he said. “On call and probably honing his scalpel as we speak. I’m busy, too, only difference is he’s going to actually accomplish something.” He stopped. “But don’t let me destroy your happy, wholesome domestic ambience. In fact, I should probably take leave before my mope-virus infects anyone.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Robin. “What can I get you? Hopefully something with garlic so we can all be social.”
Three hastily snarfed mixed-meat sandwiches and an equal number of cold Grolsches later, he let out his belt a couple of notches and beamed up at her. “You’re a ministering angel—who needs Prozac?”
“Bad day, Big Guy?”
“Nothing day.”
I said, “No go on Dr. Isabel?”
“If she was any sweeter, I’d need insulin. She sat down with me for over half an hour, took a careful medical history, looked at my hide and pretended it wasn’t so bad, then spelled out the pros and cons of dermal abrasion and a whole bunch of alternative treatments. By the end I was feeling so guilty about scamming her, I nearly signed up.”
