Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

I spent the afternoon at my office, waiting for Krantz to call about the autopsy, then went home and waited some more. He still hadn't called by the time I went to bed, and I was getting irritated about it. At nine-forty the next morning, I still hadn't heard anything, so I called Parker Center and asked for Krantz.

Stan Watts said, “He's not available.”

“What does that mean, Watts? He said he would call.”

“You want to know every time we wipe our asses?”

“I want to know about the autopsy. It's going on three days since she was murdered, and I'm supposed to be there. Did you get it moved up or not?” Giving back some of the irritation.

“Hang on.”

He put me on hold. LAPD had installed one of those music-while-you-wait systems. It played the theme from Dragnet .

I was on hold for almost ten minutes before Watts came back. “They're making the cut this afternoon. Come on over, and I'll have someone bring you down.”

“Good thing I asked about it.”

At ten forty-five, I once more parked in the sun at Parker Center, presented myself to the lobby guard, and claimed a visitor's pass. This time when the guard phoned RHD, they let me ride up on my own. Maybe they were starting to trust me.

Stan Watts was waiting when the doors opened.

“You my guide today, Stan?”

Watts made a snort. “Sure. You're all I got to do with my time.”

The RHD squad room was quieter than yesterday. The only face I recognized was Dolan's. She was talking on the phone at her desk with her arms crossed, and she was staring at me, almost as if she had been waiting for me to come through the doors.

I stopped, and Watts stopped with me. “Dolan again?”

“Dolan.”

“I don't think she likes me.”

“She doesn't like anyone. Don't take it personally.”

Watts brought me over. “I'll leave you two lovebirds alone.”

Dolan cupped her receiver. “C'mon, Stan. How about I follow up on these calls I got? Can't someone else take him?”

Watts was already walking away. “Krantz says you.”

Her mouth pruned and she cupped the receiver. “Fuckin' Pants.”

Watts laughed, but he didn't turn around.

I said, “Hi, Dolan. Long time no see.”

She pointed at the little secretarial chair, but I didn't sit.

Dolan thanked whoever she was talking to for their cooperation, asked them to call her if they remembered anything else, then hung up. She hung up hard.

I said, “Looks like today's going to be another good day, doesn't it?”

“Speak for yourself.”

The drive from Parker Center to the L.A. County coroner's office takes about fifteen minutes, but the way Dolan launched out of the parking garage I thought we might make it in five, even in the busted-out detective ride she drew out of the motor pool. Dolan turned off the unit's mobile two-way with an angry snap as soon as she was behind the wheel, and tuned to an alternative rock station that was blaring out L7's “Shove.” L7 is an L.A. chick band known for their aggressive, in-your-face lyrics.

I said, “Kind of hard to talk with the radio that loud, don't you think?”

We careened out of the parking lot, leaving a smoking rubber trail. Guess she didn't agree.

L7's singer screamed that some guy just pinched her ass. The words were angry; the music was even angrier. So was Samantha Dolan. Everything in her manner said so, and said she wanted me to know it.

I cinched the seat belt, settled back, and closed my eyes. “Too on the nose, Dolan. The music should be counter to your character, and then the statement would be more dramatic. Try Shawn Colvin.”

Dolan jerked the sedan around a produce delivery truck and blasted through an intersection that had already gone red. Horns blew. She flipped them off.

I made a big deal out of yawning. Just another day at the demolition derby.

We roared past a crowd of short, stocky people trying to cross the street to catch a bus. We missed them by at least two inches. Room to spare.

“Dolan, throttle back before you kill someone.”

She pressed the pedal harder and we rocketed up the freeway on-ramp.

I reached over, turned off the ignition, and the car went silent.

Dolan screamed, “Are you out of your mind?!”

She hit the brakes, wrestling the dead power steering as she horsed the car to the side of the ramp. She got the car stopped and stared at me, breathing hard.

“I'm sorry you've got to eat shit from a hack brownnoser like Krantz, but it's not my fault.”

The horns started to go behind us. Something that might've been hurt flickered in Dolan's eyes, and she took a breath.

“I guess maybe you should be the lead on this case. I guess it's hard accepting the fact that you aren't.”

“You don't know me well enough to say something like that.”

“I know Krantz is scared of you, Dolan. He's scared of anyone who threatens him, so you get stuck doing the work that no one else wants to do. Like babysitting me, and running off copies, and having to sit in the backseat. I know you don't like it, and you shouldn't have to, because you're better than that.” I shrugged. “Also, you're the woman.”

She stared at me, but now she wasn't glaring. She had lovely hands with long slender fingers, and no wedding band. She wore a Piaget watch, and the nails were so well done that I doubted she'd done them herself. I guess the television series had been good for her even if it sucked.

Dolan wet her lips, and shook her head. Like she was wondering how I could possibly know these things.

I spread my hands. “The finest in professional detection, Dolan. I see all, I hear all.”

She gazed out the window, then nodded.

“You want to get along, we can get along.”

Grudging. Not confirming anything I'd said. Not even putting it on Krantz. She was some tough cookie, all right.

Dolan started the car, and ten minutes later we pulled down into the long curving drive that led to the rear parking lot of the L.A. County medical examiner's office behind County-USC Medical Center.

Dolan said, “You been here before?”

“Twice.”

“I've been here two hundred times. Don't try to be tough. If you think you're going to barf, walk out and get some air.”

“Sure.”

The rear entrance opened to a yellow tile hall where the smell hit us like a sharp spike. It wasn't terrible, like bad chicken, but you knew you were smelling something here that you wouldn't smell any other place. A combination of disinfectant and meat. You knew, on some primitive level deep in the cells, that this meat was close to your own, and that you were smelling your own death.

Dolan badged an older man behind a counter, who gave us two little paper masks. Dolan said, “We've gotta wear these. Hepatitis.”

Great.

After we put on the masks, Dolan led me along the hall through a set of double doors into a long tile cavern with eight steel tables. Each table was surrounded by lights and work trays and instruments, not unlike those you see in a dentist's office. Green-clad medical examiners were working on bodies at each table. Knowing that they were working on human beings made me try to pretend that they weren't. Denial is important.

Krantz and Williams were clustered at the last table with the Buzz Cut and his two buddies. The five of them were talking with an older, overweight woman wearing lab greenies, surgical gloves, and a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap. She would be the medical examiner.

Karen Garcia was on the table, and even from across the big room I could see that the autopsy was complete. The medical examiner said something to two lab techs, one of whom was washing off Karen Garcia's body with a small hose. Blood and body fluids streamed along a trough in the table and swirled down a pipe. Her body had been opened, and a blue cloth fixed to cover the top of her head. The autopsy had happened without me.