MOSAICS: A Thriller Read online

  I craved air conditioning.

  “A doctor would’ve no problem with scalping,” I said, once we got to our car.

  Satish unlocked the car. “Which reminds me—”

  “More pistachios?”

  “No, no. The first American serial killer, H. H. Holmes. He skinned, scalped, deboned his victims and sold their organs.”

  He slid behind the wheel and I in the passenger seat. “Doctor H. H. Holmes. Brilliant association, Sat.”

  The back of my seat was hot and made my skin tingle. Satish jammed the key into the ignition, and I turned the AC knob all the way to the max. As we merged into traffic, we once again fell silent.

  “What are you thinking, Track?”

  “João Gilberto.”

  “I thought you were a Bill Evans kinda guy.”

  I stared out the window, ramps of freeway braiding and looping in front of us. “I am. Though I get distracted from time to time.”

  Satish whipped the car onto the Five and smiled. “I love Brazilian jazz. It’s sexy.”

  “Sexy is deceiving.”

  “No, Track. Deceiving is sexy.”

  I rapped my fingers against the window. “Darn it, Sat. Why do you always have to be right?”

  EIGHT

  ____________

  Thursday, July 2

  “Human hair, scalp. Human hair, facial. Human hair, arms.”

  Fiber analyst Gustavo Salazar slid his thick lenses off his fleshy face and wiped them on the sleeve of his coat. He sighed heavily, as if every action cost him a great deal of energy, took three more pictures out of the blue folder he’d been holding and set them on the workbench between us, below the three he’d just shown us.

  “Doberman hair, poodle hair, terrier hair—all breeds covered. Horse, cat, rat, house pets—tried those too.” He squinted at the pictures and shook his head. “Tried ’em all.”

  He crossed his arms and leaned against the cabinets behind him, waiting for us to draw our own conclusions. My eyes shifted from the picture in my hand to the ones on the counter in front of us.

  Satish scratched his brow. “And you’re positive we’re talking animal hair?”

  Salazar cleared his throat, opened his mouth, gave it a good thought, and then clicked his jaws together again. He retrieved an inhaler from his coat pocket, squeezed it in his mouth, swallowed hard, and flashed us a pitiful smile. “Seasonal allergies. All those summer pollens drive me nuts.”

  He coughed in his sleeve and punched a fist on his breastbone, his shiny tear ducts grossly enlarged by the thick lenses of his glasses. His breath reeked of medicine, washed down coffee, and the last cig drag he had outside, right before meeting with us.

  I nodded. Blame the trees.

  “Definitely animal fibers. Filaments of alpha-keratin, shaft only, both ends blunt, as if they’d been clipped. No root. The color’s black, consistent with Asian, if we’re going with human source, though the diameter’s too thin. A hair that thin I’ve only seen fair, like body hair from northern Europeans. This one’s too long to be that kind, though.”

  The acidic smells of lab dilutions and gels lingered in my nostrils. I rose from the stool I’d been perched on and looked out the window. The Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center, home of the LAPD crime labs for two years now, sat on the southeast end of the Cal State L.A. campus, nestled between the Ten and the Seven-Ten. From where I stood, I could see the busy ten lanes of one of the Interstates, snaking below the Eastern Avenue flyover. All lanes were clogged, and the haze over downtown was as thick and colorful as the tiers of a wedding cake.

  My brain felt as if it were wrapped in the same kind of haze.

  Salazar was telling us that the fibers Cohen had found in one of the cuts on Amy’s feet were of animal nature but no standard comparison yielded a match. In other words, we had no clue what species the fibers belonged to. Nothing else had turned up from Charlie Callahan’s files, either. On top of that, we were still in complete darkness as to what kind of ligature had been used to strangle either victim.

  The more I thought about it the more I was convinced Lyons was hiding something about the night Amy had been murdered. Vargas was no saint, but he had no reason to lie about the car he’d spotted at Amy’s house. Even if he was wrong about the exact night it had happened, the car had been there at an unconventional hour. Lyons had been there. I wanted to know why and I wanted the fiber to pin my suspect to Amy’s murder.

  I said, “So this hair is too thin to be black, too long to be fair, and too freaking weird to be anything we know.”

  Salazar stared at me through his thick lenses. He raised a pinky to his lips and stuck the fingernail between his front teeth. “Pretty much,” he said, moving his lips around the pinky.

  Satish crossed his arms and wobbled his head. “Look. The hair was found on a victim. No other hair like it was found on that body. You’ll agree it’s gotta come from somewhere, right?”

  Salazar plucked his pinky out of his mouth and wiped it against the front of his lab coat. “We’re going blind with no root.”

  I rolled a stool over and sat down. “Fine,” I said. “Tell us what you found and we’ll figure out the rest.”

  He wheezed again, adjusted the lenses on his nose, and began his lecture. “I looked at the medulla, scales, and pigment granules. Let’s start with the medulla. It makes up less than a third of the diameter of the hair, which is typically an indication that we’re dealing with human hair. Except—”

  “Except?”

  “What we see in this sample is a continuous medulla, which almost never happens in human hair.”

  “Almost doesn’t mean never.”

  “Fine. But there’s more. I created a cast of nail polish around it and then examined it under the microscope to see the pattern of scales. Overlapping coronal scales. Not found in human hair.”

  Satish drummed his fingers on the countertop and stared at the pictures. “Some kind of fancy garment? Have you excluded silk? Wool?”

  “Not even alpaca wool matches these characteristics.”

  “Farm animals?” I insisted.

  “Done those too.”

  “What about exotic pets? Tiger cats, bobcats, opossum, squirrels—”

  Salazar’s black brows steepled above the thick frame of his glasses. “Whoa,” he said, raising his hands up in the air. “We don’t have reference samples for that many animals. If you think it could come from any of those we can send a field officer to fetch samples, but it takes time and money, and you know how it goes with money…”

  My head spun. I felt a tingling pain at the small of my back. “Yes. We know how it goes with money.”

  Only two years old, the forensic labs were equipped with state-of-the-art technology and expensive machineries. Despite all this, our job requests continued to be backed-up, DNA results took ages to come in, and only a few months earlier Latent Prints had fired a bunch of people over yet another misidentification that had ended up in court.

  Satish wrapped a hand around my shoulder. “Thanks for your time, Sal.”

  Salazar collected all the photos neatly lined on the workbench and shoved them back inside the folder. “Anytime.”

  The pain at the small of my back got sharper. I slammed a hand on the workbench and walked out of the room.

  “It’s not Sal’s fault he couldn’t find any match, Track,” Satish said as we walked down the stairs and out of the building. “I thought he’d done a pretty good job with those comparisons. I mean, if nothing matches—”

  “He pronounced the word ‘inconclusive’ with the sympathy of a squirrel chewing the wiring of a pickup truck.”

  Satish chuckled.

  A few black and white Crown Vics were stationed in the parking lot. On the other side of the building, the Ten roared with its steady flow of vehicles, dictating the pace of a hot summer day. A siren blasted from somewhere in the distance, maybe the high-speed chase the earlier helicopter had picked up. From the university cafe
teria on the east side of the parking lot came a whiff of French fries and fast food. On any other day, the scent would’ve made me ravenous. Today it made me nauseous.

  Satish smelled it too. “How about lunch? There’s a great prime rib place near the golf course…”

  I didn’t reply. My eyes fell on the billboard advertising the L.A. zoo and got stuck there.

  Satish jingled his car keys and cocked his head. “Pork is tastier than zebra, Track.”

  I slowly peeled my eyes off the billboard. “Yeah, but zebras are in Africa. When was the last time Lyons was there?”

  Satish’s facial expression dwindled between worried and amused. He decided for worried. “Two years ago. Not enough to justify collecting fibers from the whole entire zoo and running an indefinite number of tests. It would be smarter to look for fibers on the African souvenirs he keeps in his office.”

  “We need a subpoena for that, and we can’t get a subpoena unless we put him at the crime scene.”

  The usual catch 22.

  Satish opened his car door. “C’mon, Track. You’re low in sugars. Let’s go eat. I’ll drive and drop you off to pick up your vehicle after lunch.”

  I wasn’t low in sugars. I was having an epiphany. “You go ahead.” I trotted back toward the entrance of the Forensic Center. “Get me a double burger with French fries and all the junk that comes with it. I’ll see you at Parker.”

  Satish shrugged, shook his head, and drove away. The man’s used to my quirks.

  * * *

  Forensic scientist Diane Kyle removed the lid of her lunch container, stuck it in the microwave, and pressed the start button. While waiting, she softly hummed an off-key version of Eleanor Rigby, her scent mingling with the fragrance of her lunch—chicken cacciatore, I guessed from the scent, which wavered out of the break room and down in the hallway, where it found my nose.

  I leaned against the open door. “Hey,” I said.

  She turned, surprised to see me. “Hey.”

  I tried to forget the pain at my back and grinned. “You said not to call. You didn’t say anything about showing up in person.”

  Her eyes softened, her lips cracked into a smile. “Sal told me he’d run some analyses for you and Satish.” The microwave beeped. She retrieved the pasta, covered the container, and then turned to stare at me, an ethereal look about her eyes and a divine scent exuding from the collar of her shirt. “So. You’re back to duty.”

  Damn, I missed her.

  I shoved both hands in my pockets and nodded. “Did Sal tell you what the analyses were about?”

  The ethereal look hardened. “Of course,” she muttered, walking past me and out of the door. “All you care about is work. Some things will never change.”

  Man.

  “D.—wait!”

  Her gait didn’t slow down a notch. I tailed her to her office. She stopped by the vending machine across the hall, one hand holding the container with her lunch, the other fumbling inside her coat pocket. I fished a dollar from my wallet, flattened it, and inserted it into the money slot.

  “Thank you,” she said, pressing the Diet Coke button. She grabbed the can, opened her office and walked inside.

  “Did you already have lunch?” she asked, grabbing a fork from one of the drawers.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Diane sat at her desk and popped open the lid of the food container. “Satish said you’d be back to work,” she said, mixing the noodles.

  I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The fragrance of tomato sauce and chicken would’ve normally enticed my taste buds, yet the dull ache at the small of my back deprived me of any appetite.

  I grabbed the chair by the door, sat next to Diane, and inhaled her instead of the pasta. Old Bill Evans tunes started playing in my head. I grabbed a pen from her desk and clicked the retractor.

  “How are you, D.?”

  Her eyes switched to bored. “You know how I am. Overworked. Disillusioned about life. About men,” she added. The sting in her voice didn’t go unnoticed.

  I put the pen down, leaned forward, and touched the pendant on her neck. It was black and bulky and I knew it opened up to a push-knife. “Since when you’re wearing this?” Her skin was warm and smelled like the poem you’ve always wanted to write and never got around to writing.

  “I’m taking a self-defense class,” she said. “Makes me feel safe.”

  I let go of it and leaned back in my chair. “D., nothing makes you feel safe like a loaded puppy bulging from your waistband. What happened to that Sig your dad gave you? I thought you had fun last time we took it to the range.”

  She scraped the last of her pasta with the tip of her fork. “It’s heavy. I get tired of carrying it everywhere.” She put on her business face and took a sip of Diet Coke. “What do you need, Track?”

  “What makes you think I need something?”

  “You came in to see Sal, not me.”

  I picked up the pen again and clicked the retractor. “I’ve got a puzzle for you. One not even Sal could figure out.”

  She snapped the lid back on the food container. “You got fibers from the crime scene?”

  “One. Very thin and very subtle. All Sal could tell us is that it’s a hair from an animal, but couldn’t match it with any species on file. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if it’s human or not.”

  The news didn’t trouble her. “Send it in for DNA.”

  “It’s got no root.”

  “Send it in for mtDNA.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “You’ve never heard of mitochondrial DNA?”

  “Of course I’ve heard of mitochondrial DNA. It’s the mt-stuff you just named I’ve never heard of.”

  A smirk escaped her lips. “That’s what it stands for—mitochondrial DNA. Cells in hair shafts don’t have chromosomes because they don’t have a nucleus. But they have mitochondria, small organelles that contain mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA. Thirty-seven genes that can’t tell you exactly who your suspect is, but they can at least tell you what species the hair comes from. If it is a hair.”

  I scratched my head. “But you can’t even run it on CODIS.”

  CODIS, or Combined DNA Index System, was the DNA database maintained by the FBI. Any DNA record found on crime scenes had to be logged into CODIS. However, mitochondrial DNA was routinely collected—when available—for missing persons.

  “That’s because it’s not unique to one individual,” Diane explained. “It’s inherited from the mother’s side only, and it may be identical from mother to children to siblings.”

  I clicked the pen and pondered. “But you said you can use it to figure out whether it’s human or not.”

  “Correct.”

  “And if it’s not human, whether it’s monkey, zebra, elephant—what have you.”

  She made a face. “Why would you find a zebra hair on a crime scene?”

  “Could be lion, giraffe, antelope…”

  “Those are big animals, Track. They wouldn’t have thin shafts.”

  “Some small African animal, then? How about insects?”

  “Insect hair aren’t really hair and they wouldn’t look animal. Why are you so fixated with Africa?”

  I grinned, she jacked up her brow. “You’ve got your suspect in mind, already.”

  “I have a witness on a suspect’s car. I just need a little more. My guy travels often to Africa.”

  She cocked her head and gave me a skeptical look. “And he’d leave an African fiber at a crime scene?”

  I liked that smile. I wanted to kiss that smile. Just one more time, like a box of chocolates you save for a gloomy day, only to go back and find there’s only one left. Dark chocolate, the bitter kind that sticks to your mouth and makes the flavor last longer, with a drop of alcohol in the middle, enough to make you want more, yet hardly enough to give you a high… And man, I wanted to get high…

  Diane swiveled her chair to the file cabinet by the window. “I’ll get the order sheet.�
� Flipping through folders, she casually added, “I interviewed for a job in Boston.”

  “Boston? You’re joking, right?”

  The earlier smile evaporated from her lips. “I’m dead serious,” she replied, handing me the form for the DNA analyses.

  I winced. “Boston is—east. And north. Northeast.”

  “Oh, don’t be so freaking Californian, Track. I don’t mind winters. And I don’t mind snow, either.”

  “Hell, Diane, I love winters. I get in my truck, drive up to the Sierras, get plenty of winter, and when I’m tired of it, I leave. Don’t need no Boston for that.”

  She fiddled with the push-knife hanging from her neck. “The job is with the Harvard School of Health. I’d be doing genomics for epidemiological studies. No more picking through crime scenes.”

  She gave me the dead serious look. I didn’t have much to add to the fact that Boston is north and east and if that wasn’t a convincing argument, then what else would’ve been? So I got up, took the form to drop off the fiber at the Serology lab, told her one more time I wanted her to take care of it personally, she promised she would, and dragged myself out of the door.

  I was about to close the door behind me when I yanked it open again and blurted out, “Saturday afternoon. I’ll pick you up at two.”

  And then I stood there like an idiot, waiting for her to send me to hell.

  Instead, she blinked a couple of times and said, “This Saturday? It’s the Fourth. I’m going to a barbeque for dinner.”

  I swallowed the pang of jealously I felt and rebuked, “We’re not going to dinner. We’re going to the shooting range.”

  NINE

  ____________

  From CalState, I didn’t go back to Parker Center. Satish called me to remind me about the lunch he’d bought me, now waiting on my desk, together with a stack of bank statements and phone logs from Amy Liu’s murder book. I told him to put the lunch in the fridge and took the Ten westbound instead, all the way down to South Central. Joe Mustache, the owner of the hot-sheet motel in South Central, wasn’t too happy to see me back on his premises.