Jonathan Kellerman - Heartbreak Hotel

“Thanks for backing me,” he said.

Fighting back tears, the girl who’d shot a woman ran to the van.

“There we go,” said a voice nearly as deep as Phil Duke’s. Marlin Moroni came forward, holstering his Glock. “I’m keeping watch, here. Milo says you should meet out back, he thinks he found something, didn’t say what.”

Reed said, “Maybe a big ruby.”

“A ruby? Like a gem?”

“Yup.”

“Really,” said Moroni. “Any chance of buried treasure, also? Commission for a dedicated public servant?”

“If only,” said Reed.

“It’s always if only,” said Moroni. “That’s called real life.”

Reed and I headed down the driveway. A few steps took us to a tiny backyard. Exterior lighting fixtures shaped like tulips on stalks were in place but not in use. The sole illumination was the narrow, bouncing beam of Milo’s flashlight.

He said, “Can’t figure out how to turn the fixtures on,” and ran the beam across a fusebox on the wall, then over to a meager square of lawn. As perfect as the grass in front and backed by precisely cut beds overflowing with flowers.

Behind all that, reached by a brief brick pathway, was a greenhouse that spanned the entire rear of the property. Impressive wood-and-glass structure, a good eight feet tall, with a pointed finial adorning a shingle roof. More ornate than the house, far too large for the space.

Dim light and not much sound made for sensory deprivation. But a third sense was on full alert.

The reason Milo had called us back was clear.

The smell you never forget.

Moe Reed’s hand shot to his nose. “Oh.”

Milo’s nose was unprotected as he washed the panes of the greenhouse with his torch, highlighting smudges of condensation on the inner surface of the glass, dirt speckles, the contours of vegetative things pressing against panes like curious children.

Further scanning revealed flowers grayed by night. A pulpy-looking blossom so intensely orange, the color forced its way through nocturnal retinal cells.

Meanwhile, the reek grew, invading my sinus passages, climbing into my head, overtaking my brain. Then my gut.

The vile stink, something beyond rotten. Cooking and boiling over.

I suppressed a gag.

Moe Reed, habitually stoic, looked as if he was ready to hurl.

Milo turned to us. “Far as I can see the damn thing’s shut tight and it’s still getting through.”

Reed stepped back, managed speech. “Pretty rank, L.T.”

“You’re a master of understatement, Moses. Okay, I’m seeing two choices. The easy way is call the crypt and leave all the fun to the C.I.’s. Or, on the off chance there’s someone in there who needs saving, we go take a look ourselves.”

“Ricki Sylvester,” said Reed. “Saving a lawyer.”

Milo laughed. “Don’t tell anyone, Moses.”

Reed dredged up a smile and stepped back farther.

Milo whipped out a handkerchief, folded it double into a wad that he pressed against his nose.

Cotton seemed flimsy protection; he usually carries mentholated ointment for coating his nasal passages.

All the planning, you can’t think of everything.

He said, “Let’s try not to breathe,” and walked toward the greenhouse.

I bunched my jacket and pressed my lapel to my nose, decided that was awkward and worthless and pinched my nostrils shut with my fingers.

When I stepped forward, Moe Reed said, “You really want to, Doc?”

But he didn’t stop me and a few seconds later, I heard the sound of his footsteps, trailing.

I was right behind Milo when he flung the greenhouse door open. Letting loose humid heat and putrescence that would’ve repelled Satan.

“Oh, God, the things I do for God and country,” he said as he stepped in.

The floor was brick, a central walkway between rows of wooden tables.

The reek seemed to have acquired solidity, jellying the air as it poisoned.

A whole lot of visual beauty made matters worse, though I couldn’t tell you why.

Pots on the tables, glossy and patterned intricately, housed palms, ferns, bromeliads, and other pineapple-like things. Plants with fleshy leaves, spoon-like leaves, spiky leaves, others filamentous and delicate as corn silk.

I spotted one of those red, heart-shaped things they sell in Hawaiian souvenir shops. The orange flowers I’d seen through the window belonged to a squat, spreading thing with hairy, leathery leaves.

A plant that resembled a bird’s head.

A vine that reached for the ceiling, sucker-like appendages gripping glass, an herbaceous octopus.

Something that resembled nothing I could classify.

Everything healthy, lush, thriving.

As we trudged slowly, a squirt of fragrance hit my nose. Sweet, exotic, tropical, facing up to the stink but dying quickly.

Another burst: gingery. That, too, lost out to the ambient toxicity.

Milo stopped, retched, coughed. Bent a bit, straightened, resumed the slog.

I found myself teetering. Reached out for the support of a wooden table, thought better of it and forced myself to keep going.

No one behind me. I half turned, saw Reed’s fleeing form. I sympathized but found perverse pleasure in that. Good to know something could get to him.

Milo took another couple of steps. His flashlight found something and he stopped, pointed, covered his entire face with the handkerchief then dropped it just enough to undrape his eyes.

At the far wall of the greenhouse, several large yellow bags were neatly stacked.

The potting mix Binchy had seen Phil Duke bring home from the garden supply house.

To the left of the bags was a massive heap of loose dirt. Five feet high, shaped like a first-grader’s clumsily drawn mountain.

Oddly messy for this precise herbarium.

The flashlight searched, floundered.

Found something.

Sprouting from the top of the pile. Melon-shaped.

Large melon.

We got closer. The stink beat us mercilessly.

Melon with eyeholes... wet, sloughing rind.

So much bloat and rot that a first glance told you nothing.

A second glance refined the perception.

What had once been a human head. The mouth degraded to a black O, the eyeholes tiny caverns leading to nothing.

Milo retched. “I’m losing it.” He ran past me and out.

What possessed me to stick around for a few more seconds, I’ll never know.

Something was wrong with this Gehenna. Then it came to me: the silence. No flies. No maggots destined to be flies.

All at once, the silence was gone, replaced by a clanging in my head, metallic, insistent.

I took one last look at the head and walked out. Slowly, deliberately.

In control. Nothing was going to rush me.

When I got out, Milo was at the top of the driveway, sucking air.

I did the same. Thinking about Gerard Waters’s body, kept in a warm, moist place before being dumped in the Palisades.

Milo recovered enough to talk, but his voice was weak. “C.I.’s and techs on their way. I warned them. Go hazmat.”

“Considerate,” I said.

“See something like this, you aim for any virtue you can snag.”

Phil Duke got stashed temporarily in the West L.A. holding jail, Tyrell Lincoln completing the paperwork and going home with Milo’s blessing. Marlin Moroni stood guard at the house, saying, “I don’t mind, got the next four days off, gonna drive to Laguna Seca for two-wheel day, run my Indian around the track.”

Moe Reed drove the brown van back to the station, both rookies the passengers. Ashley Burgoyne would be answering questions, soon. We all would.

The crime scene army would take a while to arrive, busy with three other murders, one in Lancaster, two in South Central.