Faye Kellerman - The Burnt House

“You’re sure it’s female?” Marge asked.

“The pelvic bones, by the angle and appearance, are almost certainly female,” the doctor answered. “But even if it was a small male or an adolescent boy, we’d still have a problem. Still unaccounted for from the crash are two male bodies: an old man in his seventies and another man in his forties. We do not have the pelvis of an old man or a man in his forties. It is most certainly a woman, and I would say probably a young woman. But an old young woman, meaning I think the body predated the crash. Once the mandible did not match up with Roseanne Dresden’s radiograph, we began to study the bones more carefully. On the top of the skull there is a well-formed depression.”

“Blunt-force trauma,” Decker said. “Homicide.”

“Probably that would be my ruling if the body was in better shape. Right now I’m going with inconclusive because of all the extenuating circumstances.”

“How long has the body been lying there?” Oliver was up to number five in the fritter department. Last one, he swore to himself.

“If it would have been discovered before the fire, I would have had a much better idea. Now it is almost impossible for me to say.”

Decker twirled the ends of his mustache. He did that in order to prevent his hands from taking more dessert. “Can you at least tell us a race?”

“Possibly Caucasian, possibly Hispanic.”

Oliver said, “Well, in L.A., that’ll narrow it down to a few gazillion people.”

“Was she inside the wreckage of the building or was she found in the ground under the building?” Decker inquired.

“You’ll have to ask recovery, but I think there is still quite a bit of foundation left from the building. I can’t imagine why anyone would dig under the foundation and discover a body.”

“If she was found in the wreckage and not under the foundation, her death can’t be any older than the building,” Decker surmised. “So let’s find out when the building went up. Then we’ll go through the missing persons from that time forward. I’d like to send the skull out to a forensic reconstructionist and put a face on the bones.”

“The bones are too delicate. They would break under the impression material needed to make a cast of the skull. Then you would lose any forensic evidence that the original skull might produce.”

“This is a nightmare,” Marge said. “We finally find a missing body, but it isn’t Roseanne. Instead of one possible homicide, we now have two.”

Inwardly, Decker groaned. He hated cold homicides and this one was in deep freeze. But his main concern was dealing with Farley Lodestone. “Is there anything you can do to help us pinpoint a time of murder?”

“From the skeleton, no. But I think we have tremendous good luck in one regard.”

“The clothing!” Marge said.

“Yes, the clothing.” Darwin ate the last fritter and called for the check. “A chunk remained remarkably intact. No label but it seems that Jane Doe was wearing a shirt with lettering on the back. It was preserved because she was buried faceup and the shirt material was synthetic and not as prone to decay. I have it enclosed in a protective plastic bag. We can go back to my office and examine it under a microscope.”

Marta, the tattooed teenager, handed the bill to Darwin, but her eyes were on Decker. “Dessert okay?”

“Delicious.”

“Next time you come here, Germando can fix you up real good. No problem if you’re a vegetarian. We can do somethin’ for you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Yeah, we get all kinds of requests nowadays. No this, no that, no this, no that…man, even the cholos are picky. Everyone’s tryin’ to cut down on the fat.”

THE L.A. COUNTY Coroner’s Office was on North Mission Road in the once-notorious Ramparts district, northeast of downtown L.A. The police substation was now squeaky-clean, but though the mark of Cain was fading, it wasn’t entirely gone.

The morgue was two buildings separated by a walkway, offices to the right, the Crypt on the left. A perennial swarm of black flies welcomed the visitor at the front doors. After the detectives signed in and donned protective garb, including shoe covers and face masks, Darwin took them down to the Crypt, the smell in the elevator growing stronger with every inch of descent. No matter how many times Decker had dropped by, it was the stink that always got to him.

The corridor was quiet, the doors of the foyer leading to the glassed-in autopsy rooms and the refrigeration area used for the storage of the bodies. Because of the tremendous glut of corpses, there were cadavers on gurneys in the hallways, most wrapped in plastic sheeting, but others were more visible, skin gray and growing mold.

The pathologist’s office was off the main hallway, set up like a galley-style kitchen with cabinets above and below, and stainless-steel countertops that spilled over with instruments of the trade-microscopes of various intensities along with scales, calipers, scalpels, tweezers, and camera equipment. There were seven jars containing body parts that floated in unnamed scientific liquids, mostly digits being rehydrated for fingerprinting. Darwin’s desk was tucked into a corner and was piled high with papers. The office provided adequate space for one person, but was crowded for four adults.

The activity centered around a microscope, the doctor and the detectives taking turns as they tried to make out details on a sullied piece of cloth. The swatch was roughly a six-inch square, most of it mud-colored. With the aid of the lens, Decker could see individual threads that still carried some of the original pink dye. Darwin reduced the magnification in order to make out the lettering, the clearest section directly in the middle of the fabric. The paint was rapidly flaking off.

Decker peered into the eyepieces. “Takes a little getting used to.”

“Yes, it does,” Darwin agreed. “But you can make out words.”

“I can make out letters.”

“What letters?” Marge took out her notepad.

“V-e-s…” A pause. “It looks like v-e-s-t-o-n.”

Marge wrote it down. “What else?”

“Underneath the v-e-s-t-o-n is d-i-a-n. Underneath that is a-p-o-l and underneath that is…” He let out a short breath. “I think it’s p-e-k…” He peered at the area with intensity. “Everything else is smudgy.”

Darwin said, “Look before the p in the p-e-k. I think there is an o.”

“Yeah…yes, I see it. So it’s o-p-e-k.”

“Opek?” Oliver said. “The oil cartel?”

“That’s o-p-e-c,” Decker told him.

Darwin said, “Look in the upper-left corner. You can also see lettering.”

Decker shifted the protected fabric and found the section that the pathologist was referring to. “Yes, I see it. A-j-o-r.”

“Exactly.”

“Anything else I should be looking for?”

“That’s all I could tell you at this magnification,” Darwin told him. “Perhaps we can scan it into the computer and it can bring up more information.”

“Good idea.” Decker pulled away from the instrument and rolled his shoulders. “Anyone else want to take a look?”

“I’ll take a crack at it,” Oliver said. The group waited in silence as Oliver looked over the fabric. “Yeah…that’s all I can make out as well.” He lifted his eyes from the lens. “Not exactly much to go on. The letters are obviously part of bigger words.”

Marge said, “We have to take the cloth in context.”

“What context?” Oliver asked.

“Well, for starters, what was the shirt used for?” Marge examined the fabric. “Because of the printing on it, I’d say that the garment was originally a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, or a jacket.”