MOSAICS: A Thriller Page 3

  He found what he was looking for. Probably took it with him.

  I inhaled and gave one last look around. Everything else seemed untouched. “What did Gomez have to say?”

  Satish wobbled his head. “Autopsy’s scheduled for Thursday morning. Just got an invitation. Wanna join the party?”

  He smiled. Waited.

  Amy Liu smiled too, from a silver frame on her desk, a man’s hand draped over her shoulder, and a strand of black hair blowing across her face.

  “Fine,” I said, walking past him out of the room. “I’ll keep you company on Thursday, but—”

  “Uh-uh, Track.” He switched the lights off and followed me back to the foyer. “First things first. Tomorrow you pee in a cup and get your LAPD badge back.”

  “I pee in a what?”

  We locked the house and made sure the yellow crime scene tape was back in place. Outside, the air was tainted with a hint of humidity and the scent of jacaranda blooms. A handful of pale stars dotted the sky, the glow of downtown beneath them like a disoriented dawn. A broken streetlight strobed from farther down the street. The Latino music persisted.

  Yo sufrí mucho por ti, mi corazon…

  Satish unlocked the car and slid in behind the wheel. “Union mandated drug test. Your leave of absence was longer than ninety days. Welcome back to regulations, Detective Presius.”

  I made a face.

  “Look at it this way. Whoever handles those cups has it way worse than you.” He started the engine and backed out of the driveway. “Shit happens, Track. Never forget that.”

  “Hard to forget on days like this.”

  I rolled down the window and let cool air blow in my face. The freeway droned in the distance, as another night descended upon Los Angeles. Another murder, another killer on the loose.

  It was June 2009, the beginning of summer.

  Killing season had just started.

  TWO

  ____________

  I left my Charger in the driveway, clambered out, and smelled freshly baked lahmajoun—Armenian pizza. It came from a white plastic bag hanging by the door. Besides the Armenian pizza, wrapped in paper, the bag contained a yellow envelope.

  Will jumped on me as I unlocked the door, yapping and licking. I set the lahmajoun on the kitchen counter and tore open the yellow envelope. Inside was the picture of a sixty-something lady, proudly smiling in front of a water fountain. The back read, “Please find her. SKL,” in slanted handwriting.

  I told him a scarf, damn it. A hat, a shoe, a sweater—something I can fucking smell.

  Katya Maria Krikorian, age sixty-two, had vanished on May 24. She got into her car in the early afternoon to visit a friend in El Sereno, spent about an hour with her, then left and never made it back home. Her brother had hired me to find her but he kept missing the point that I in order to find people I need to know what they smell like.

  I tossed the picture on the dining table, together with the rest of the photographs, and served the boys—Will and The King—dinner. I didn’t feel like eating, so I grabbed a Corona and a lime from the fridge and walked to the living room. Ass in recliner, feet on coffee table, laptop on lap. Will’s adoring eyes on me, The King settled on his windowsill, despising us both. I took a long swig of Corona and typed, “mosaic tiles.”

  Google’s my best friend.

  My browser told me that mosaics had been around for a long time. The Greeks and the Romans used them to decorate their homes until they became the primary Christian art form. Interestingly, whereas the Greeks and the Romans used mostly stone tiles for their mosaics, it was the Byzantines who introduced glass tiles for the first time.

  Glass tiles—the kind our killer seemed to like. I downed the rest of my beer. Four tiles, four different colors. Christianity had a fixation with the numbers three and seven. What was the meaning of four? Four cardinal directions, four limbs, four elements, four states of matter.

  The Byzantine Strangler.

  My eyes fell on the painting propped against the wall, between the bookcases. A red woman lay naked in the grass, her bosom dappled with black stars, a cougar emerging from the shade behind her. Artist, friend, occasional girlfriend, Hortensia had given the painting to me four months earlier and I still hadn’t gotten around to hanging it. I flipped the cell open and punched in her number.

  “Still not available, Track.”

  “Hort. It’s been six months already. You don’t need to remind me every time I call.”

  She puzzled over that. “You mean you’re not calling to have sex? That’s not flattering.”

  I resisted the urge to hang up. “I need an art lesson. On mosaics.”

  There were noises in the background—glass jars clinking, water running. “I don’t do mosaics. I paint.”

  I missed the time when we had sex instead of talking. “Well, that covers it. Do you know people who do mosaics in L.A.? Would you know where they get the tiles?”

  “In the recycling. Broken bottles, colored glasses, crocks, what have you. Even pebbles. Artists are creative people. Hey, I have a friend who does pistachio shells on wire mesh. That’s pretty cool.”

  I thanked her and hung up, making a mental note to call her again should I find pistachio shells at the next crime scene. I got out of the recliner, trudged back to the kitchen, and tossed the Corona bottle. My answering machine was still blinking. I hit the play button.

  “Yeah. This is Joe from Jiffy Lu—”

  Skip.

  “Mr. Presius, your results are in. Dr. Watanabe wanted me to schedule—”

  Skip.

  “Hey.”

  I froze. My finger retreated from the skip button this time.

  “Thought you’d be home,” Diane’s voice crooned through the phone. “Guess not.”

  The answering machine’s beep at the end of the message rang like a long amen.

  I shuffled to the fridge, grabbed another Corona and slumped back in the recliner, my fingers itching to dial Diane’s number.

  She said not to call. Not to call, Ulysses, can you follow one simple direction?

  Yeah, but then she called me.

  She left a message.

  I punched in her number on the cell phone. It rang once. Twice. Then her voice, snappish, nothing like the message she’d just left. “I still need time, Track.”

  “You left me a message.”

  “I didn’t—Sheesh, Track, how often do you listen to your messages?”

  I swallowed, squeezed the beer bottle in my hand. “Once or twice—a month… maybe…”

  A sigh, a hand going through her hair and materializing in a rustle of static through the phone. Where was she? Pacing in her living room, or maybe lying on the bed, coiling strands of hair around her index finger…

  “Do you ever make mistakes, Track?”

  “Lots of them. You were never one.”

  She considered. “It’s not you, Track. It’s me. I’m going through things. I need—I need to find myself again.”

  She’d been saying that for the past three months. How she wasn’t sure about stuff anymore. How she hated her job, hated Los Angeles, hated everything about her life.

  I told her to give it some time. Being held at gunpoint twice in one week is not something that goes down as smoothly as bourbon.

  Her reply had always been the same: “You don’t get it, Track.”

  I didn’t get it.

  “You need to give some love to that pretty Sig your dad got you. The range stays open till late on Wednesdays. I could pick you up at—”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  She wished me goodnight and hung up.

  I brought the Corona to my lips, took a sip, and swished the chilled beer in my mouth.

  Women are like whiskey, I thought. If you have too much you get drunk. If you have too little all you’re left with is a bunch of regrets.

  THREE

  ____________

  Monday, June 21

  The air was heavy with t
he smell of rain—an unexpected change from the usual bouquet of smog and wildfires. Crows sat quietly on high branches and waited. The treetops swayed and the boughs groaned. The first drop hit me in the face as I unlocked the Charger. By the time I got on the freeway, the storm was pounding.

  There’s something ominous about rain in Southern California. Black, fat clouds fill the sky and mock the all-year-round flip-flop crowds. They hover over posh hairdos, convertibles, and the sports car fanatics who wash and wax their vehicles every other day. News reporters with a sadistic eye for meteorological catastrophes gain more airtime than infomercials.

  Chaos spreads. Highways jam. Traffic lights flash. Honking horns trail off.

  After all, we are Southern Californians. We’re prepared for earthquakes, fires, and flash floods. We’re not prepared for rain.

  Red brake lights blurred across my windshield, the wipers squeaking with the rhythm of a nighttime lullaby. Mozart would’ve written a symphony out of that. The pavement turned into slosh. A trailer truck passed me on the left and gave me a free shower.

  A siren wailed. Traffic stopped. Red and blue bar-lights flickered ahead in the weaving stream of taillights, courtesy of the usual idiot who forgot that brake distances increase on slick roads. Like toads and slugs, they’re a subspecies of drivers that comes out with every storm.

  I slowed down and smiled.

  I’d peed in the fucking cup, tomorrow I was getting my LAPD badge back, and Dave Brubeck was playing on my car stereo.

  As far as I was concerned, the world could stop for a few drops of rain.

  * * *

  By the time I got to South Oak Knoll, in Pasadena, the rain had tapered off. Faces braved the sidewalks of Lake and Colorado again. The clouds had dissipated, and a bright sun poked through a canopy of dripping oaks. I entered a long driveway that parted the front lawn of a two-story colonial house, inclusive of all accessories: white portico, white pillars, white stucco all around, and gray shingle roof just so it wouldn’t look like a bridal cake. I parked my Charger under the carport, next to a well-preserved W140. Mercedes cars are like divas from the Fifties—they never fade.

  The sodden lawn shimmered in the sun. Different scents of dampness mingled in the air: grass, bark, soil, cobblestone.

  A little anxiety.

  Oh, come on, Ulysses.

  This was where all the fine lines blurred together: killer, cop, predator. Patient. Privileged patient, who got to see his doctor in the comfort of his home office, chatting over genetics and DNA as if they were some abstract philosophical concept.

  As if it weren’t my life.

  I rapped on the door.

  What if the Byzantine Strangler can’t help himself?

  Hell, I could. I made a choice.

  But you still kill, Ulysses, don’t you?

  Dr. Watanabe’s office would’ve been a decent size if only he hadn’t crowded it with a mismatched assortment of furniture. His wife poured us sake in small cups while I sniffed books. One by one, I slid them out, flipped through the pages and inhaled. Some smelled too old, some smelled too new, and some smelled just perfect.

  Watanabe’s wife dismissed herself with a bow. Being at least two decades younger than her I should’ve bowed lower, but I’d come to the conclusion a while ago that Japanese customs had not been invented for people over six feet tall. So I smiled and waved my hand.

  Watanabe handed me a cup. “Have a seat.”

  I didn’t. I stood by the window and sipped the sake. It was strong and pungent and I figured it was going to help.

  Watanabe was a small man with puffy eyes, saggy jowls, and the shiny black hair of a child despite his sixty-something years. His skin had the creamy color of a glass of Baileys and the vaguely foreign scent of a wine whose origin you can’t quite pin down. He drank his sake in small sips, smiling through his eyes. When he was done, he got out of his chair and reached for the Newton’s pendulum sitting on top of a file cabinet. He propped the pendulum on the desk and then flicked the first ball to set it in motion. The balls start clicking. Watanabe sat with his hands laced across his stomach and a wide, lipless grin sprawled across his face. The metal balls clicked against each other, the first and last ones rocking back and forth at alternate times.

  “What do you know about pendulums, Ulysses?”

  I licked the last drop of sake and wished Japanese cups came in larger sizes. “Is this going to be a physics lecture?”

  He scratched a thin brow. “It would’ve worked better with a traditional pendulum, but this is the closest thing I could find in the house. You see, I just happened to remember that these cute gadgets have two points of equilibrium, not one.” He touched the balls and stopped them. “One’s stable, and the other’s not.” He held the first ball out and rotated it around the fulcrum until it reached its highest point, vertically above the others. “According to Newton’s law, if you give it exactly the right amount of energy, the ball will swing all the way up and stop at its highest point. However, it will fall again at the minimum perturbation.” He let go, the ball swung back down and hit the other ones. The ticktack of five balls hitting one another resumed.

  I set my cup on one end of the desk, dropped into one of the armchairs, and smiled a what-the-heck smile. Granted, I’d had Dave Brubeck keeping me company all the way to Pasadena, but I hadn’t braved a flooded freeway to watch some balls rock back and forth.

  “Fascinating,” I lied, scratching my chin.

  A satisfied chortle escaped his throat. He picked up the pendulum and delivered it back to the file cabinet. “I believe the same holds in genetics.” He sat back at his desk, donned a pair of reading glasses, and slid a hand inside a yellow Manila folder. “Most variations can only push us this far from our stable equilibrium point. We swing and come back.”

  “Or we die,” I interjected.

  He pressed his lips together, considering. “Hmm. Yes, some phenotypic changes can be lethal.” He pulled a long printout from the folder and carefully flattened his hands over it. “But once in a million, maybe a billion times, something extraordinary happens.” He was peering at me over the rim of his lenses. “The ball will hit that one point up there and, almost miraculously, will stop there. Waiting.”

  Ha. I cocked my head and gave him a half smile. The other half I kept for myself. “Waiting to crash?”

  Watanabe heaved the slightest of sighs. “Not necessarily.” He grabbed a pen and pointed it at me. “You are extraordinary, Ulysses.”

  “I don’t take credit for that.”

  My wit washed off Watanabe’s face like waves on wet sand. “You survived a deadly brain tumor when you were only six years of age. The virus that killed the tumor turned on chimeric genes that now coexist within your DNA in chouwa—harmony. Together, they form the balance that allows you to exist.”

  “And you’re now telling me this balance is unstable.”

  He passed me the lab printout from the yellow folder, his small eyes scrutinizing me as I stared at the list of acronyms and numbers.

  “I don’t know what these mean, Doc.”

  “Your antinuclear antibody levels are off the chart.”

  “What the hell are those? Weapons of mass destruction?”

  He gave out a shrill little laugh that died as quickly as my sense of humor. “No. They are antibodies that bind specifically to components inside the cell nucleus. We all have them in low concentrations, but when they get past a certain threshold they start to draw concern. That’s why I want you to stop by the lab one of these mornings and do another draw. I just submitted a standing order in your name.” The pen wagged at me. “Have you been feeling well, Ulysses?”

  I frowned. “Of course!”

  I was fit, reasonably young, and moderately addicted to caffeine and ethanol, but hell, who isn’t?

  I stretched my lips in a lopsided smile. “I’m great, Doc. Really,” I insisted.

  Watanabe wasn’t impressed. “No joint pain? Fatigue? Rashes?”
>
  I leaned an elbow on the armrest and scratched my jaw. “Doc. You didn’t call me to your home just to tell me about some screwed up blood count.”

  A blade of sun poked through the curtains and glinted on his jet-ink hair. He leaned forward on his elbows, hands steepled together. “The way your chimeric genes coexist with the rest of your DNA is remarkable. We need to keep an eye on it, understand the mechanism. Make sure the balance that allows you to exist—”

  “Doesn’t break.” I finished the sentence for him.

  He stared at me for the longest time.

  And then he nodded.

  FOUR

  ____________

  Thursday, June 25

  “Oh, come on, Track. It’s like smelling raw chicken.”

  “I don’t smell raw chicken. I grill it.”

  Satish looked comical all garbed in an oversized surgical gown, paper cap, and facemask. He shook a couple of booties out of a dispenser and leaned against the wall to slip them over his shoes. “Don’t want no souvenirs on my shoes this time.”

  I tied the laces of the gown behind my back. “Don’t tell me you get in there—“ I pumped my thumb at the autopsy room behind us “—and all you smell is chicken.”

  He shook his head sideways. “I’m odor blind.”

  “Odor blind?”

  He stepped in front of the mirror and adjusted the paper cap on his head as if it were some sort of military beret. “You go to India once, inhale, and when you come back you’re odor blind. The streets in Kolkata smell of gasoline, fish fry, betel leaves, sweat, monkeys, mangoes and chutney.” He patted me in the back and shouldered through the doors to the autopsy room. “Not for the faint of heart—I mean nose. You wouldn’t survive a day.”

  I took a deep breath, pulled up the facemask, and followed.