No Human Involved - Barbara Seranella Read online

  Fuck 'em twice, she thought, I don't care. She wished she could just turn it all off. just a taste, the message echoed. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. No, not now. Did that mean later? She forced herself to stay within the speed limit. She knew about the landfill because she'd been there with Wizard to dump scrap. They had gone at night. She had asked him what was on the other side of the mountain.

  "The San Fernando Valley," he had told her. It sounded romantic.

  "Is the country that way?"

  "The country's farther out, Little Bit."

  He had laughed at her. Maybe he thought she'd never get to the country, but she would. She'd have a horse, and some chickens even. She crested the hill and came to a light where the Mulholland overpass spanned the freeway. Eight lanes of citizens flowed both ways. Crazy Mike, the president of the Satan's Pride, had also taken her here. He had spat on the shiny cars driving home, driving to work. They were fools, he said. Following all their citizen rules, allowing themselves to be herded through life. They didn't know how to live like scooter trash did. Of course, he was talking about the brothers, not the women. Ninety-nine percent of the population were citizens, Crazy Mike said, only one percent were outlaws. The lucky one percent that lived by no rules. His words had been a lie. There were many laws in the world of bikers, the breaking of which was sometimes punishable by death. Crazy Mike had bragged wildly that night about the glory of the club. Then they had crossed the overpass and returned to Venice, where he had raped her before he gave his brothers their turns. She shoved aside the memory There was nothing she could do about that now.

  The light changed and she pushed on. Sepulveda went under a tunnel, dark and cool. A car heading south honked its horn. She blotted at the sweat on her forehead. "All right, all right," she chanted, "so far, so good." She took her foot off the gas pedal and coasted down the grade to conserve fuel.

  On her right, she watched the valley prepare for night. Lights blinked on in the homes and businesses. The magnitude of the city below awed her. A rainbow of colors, like Christmas lights, that went on for miles. It looked like a place that a person could get lost in.

  She felt the shift in the tempo of the motor before the idiot lights lit up the dash. First the red light that said "Oil" flashed on and then the one that said "Gen." The steering got stiff and she didn't have to try the brakes to know that the power assist would be gone. The engine had stalled, and it shouldn't have. The hum from the motor had been consistent the entire drive up the grade. The drone of it had harmonized through her brain, directly through her clenched teeth, all the way to her skull. If it had missed a beat, she would have known it, been forewarned. Now it had died suddenly and completely The silence was horrifying. Especially now. Running for her life for the first time she ever allowed herself to care enough to try. George would say that only fools care.

  She let the car coast while it still had the downhill momentum and forced herself to coldly consider her options. The gas gauge still registered an eighth of a tank. She turned off the key, but left the headlights on, and looked for a place to go to ground as the big car plummeted down Sepulveda.

  The canyon road twisted in ways she was helpless to anticipate. The city lights mocked her now on the right beyond sheer cliffs. She was going too fast to take the turns and stay in her lane. The tires screamed as she corrected and fought the stiff steering to stay on the paved surface. She didn't want to draw unnecessary attention to herself, so she risked a tap on the brakes. They were stiff and unyielding. She put both feet on the brakes and leaned into the seat. The wheel twisted in her hands and for twenty yards, two wheels rode in the dirt shoulder. Finally she started to slow, sacrificing precious momentum for safety. There was still no shelter in sight, just chain-link fences that came all the way out to the road. A sharp curve loomed ahead.

  "Help me," she demanded, to whom she didn't know.

  The Pontiac rounded the curve. A dirt turnout sheltered by a hedge of overgrown oleanders and bottlebrushes appeared on the right. She rolled beneath the shaggy branches. She kept going till the car was swallowed by the foliage, then she put both feet on the brake and pushed with all the thrust her hundred pounds could deliver. The car finally stopped at the base of a brick retaining wall. The five-mile-per-hour impact was enough to shatter a headlight and flatten the grille. Somewhere a dog barked, but no lights came on in the big houses around her. She put the car in park and cranked the motor. It turned over too fast, like the compression was low. Shit, she thought, the timing gear must have stripped.

  There was nothing left to do. She curled into a ball and waited for morning. She slept once, briefly and dreamt that she was shooting dope and Flower George was laughing at her.

  3

  THAT NIGHT, A WEARY MACE ST JOHN CLIMBED aboard the platform of the Bella Donna and locked the wrought-iron gate after him. He rummaged around in his refrigerator. On the bottom shelf, he found eggs and mayonnaise, but soon discovered that he was out of bread. He grabbed a bottle of olives and the plastic bag behind them. Opening the overhead cabinet, he selected a box of Ritz crackers and decided they would suffice. He should have gotten something to eat while he was out; it was too much hassle to cook for just himself. With his free hand, he filled a highball glass with ice and returned to the lounge section that served as his den/living room/office. He'd faithfully restored the Santa Fe-designed, Pullman-built officer's coach till she was as close to her original 1927 condition as he could manage, right down to the brass spittoons. He had bought the car in '72 at auction. The Bella Donna had sat for three years gathering dust while Amtrak decided her fate. When he first saw her, she had been stripped bare of most of her original appointments and was being sold for scrap. He and his dad couldn't believe their luck. Miraculously, not one stained-glass window was broken and the original chandelier still hung in the porters kitchen.

  He folded back the bar top and Fixed himself a martini. Originally the bar had been made of walnut, no doubt polished diligently each day by white-gloved porters to a mirror finish. He hadn't been able to afford the expensive hardwood and had had to make do with Philippine mahogany which he dressed up with gilded cherubs. He'd blown his budget on the rug in the lounge, but once he'd seen the pattern in a copy of Architectural Digest, he'd known he would never be satisfied with anything less. The salesman at the carpet store had had to send away to New Orleans. The design was popular there, the salesman explained, commonly used in restorations of the old Southern antebellum mansions. The short-napped runner with its pink and white peonies and yellowed gardenias turned out to be worth every hassle. The rich red background proved a perfect match for the velvet-flocked wallpaper of the dining section. He loved the shades of green in the leaves of the flowers, a subtle range of hues from aquamarine, jade, and cucumber to good old olive drab. Every color contrasted nicely with the soothing peach of the walls.

  While he fixed his drink, the plastic bag that he had retrieved from his refrigerator perspired on the bar top. He shook off the moisture and studied the bag's contents. The bag held a clump of tomato seeds, unexplained evidence recovered from a severed arm, and they were trying to tell him something, he could feel it. Maybe he should plant them. He laughed at himself noiselessly smiling and shaking his head. Did he think they would grow like Jack's beanstalk into a vine that led to the killer?

  He busied himself with the preparation of his martini. The antique gilt-framed mirrors over the bar with the splintered silver showing through played tricks on his tired eyes. Shapes formed that made him think of the jungle. He blinked to clear the image, but all he could see was a canopy of tropical leaves blocking out the sun. So easy to lose your way in the jungle, to loose all sense of direction. He had gone days on patrol sometimes with no clear sighting of the sun, just a fade-in and fade-out of light, and tigers, fucking tigers.

  He sipped his gin and thought about the girl in the bar. The hooker was right about one thing: The city was poison. If you weren't careful, it sucked the red
right out of your blood. No sense in dwelling on it; he was tied to the city as long as his dad was still around.

  Digger. Shit. He better call him.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the number to his dad's house, but there was no answer. Digger had probably unplugged the phone again. Mace wished he wouldn't do that. What if there were an emergency?

  He listened to the dissatisfying sound of the phone ringing and thought about his dad not hearing him on the other end. In a way he envied his dad the luxury of disconnecting. Mace needed to be always available for those 3:00 A.M. calls to crime scenes—hard on a marriage, those late-night calls.

  Digger—it was just the two of them now. The old man had gotten his nickname in the Army, during the "good war." Something about the speed in which he dug trenches while his brigade was stationed at Anzio; where, to hear him tell it, his unit had personally won the war. He had made war sound so romantic. Like there was no greater honor than to be carried home on your shield after giving your life for your country Pumped with patriotic dreams of glory Mace enlisted right out of high school. Two tours in the jungle had cured him of those ideals and when the time had come, he hadn't reenlisted.

  He listened as the phone rang for the twentieth time and wondered where the years had gone. The two of them used to plan for the day when they would have the Bella Donna ready for the BIG TRIP. Buy a one-way ticket from Amtrak to tour the country hitched behind a big engine, stopping where they pleased, doing all those things fathers I and sons do.

  Mace shook his head, as if to clear it of the day's failures and life's many disappointments. He hung up the phone and sat down at the wicker table that served as his desk, dropping the bag of unexplained tomato seeds next to a manila folder. Stenciled on the folder's cover was a six-digit number; beneath the impersonal case number he hoped sometime soon to fill in the victim's name. That might be all he could do for the dead girl; she deserved at least that much.

  The press had started calling the murderer "the Ballona Creek Butcher" and had plastered the slim but sordid details of the case on the front page. The severed limb that had first been discovered by the twenty-year-old captain of the UCLA womens crew team had just the right measure of horror and proximity to pique the city's attention. The case quickly turned high-profile and the mayor called in downtown's major crime unit, the Robbery Homicide Division, to assist. Heading the elite unit was Mace's ex-partner, Ernie Potts. In a way it had been like old times, the two of them together again. Ernie had an uncanny ability for sniffing out felonies. He claimed it was just a matter of getting into the criminals head.

  Mace had been the first detective to interview the crew captain. The young woman told him that she was preparing to launch her scull into Ballona Creek for morning practice when she spotted something bumping against the rocks at the base of the concrete ramp. It was the red of the nail polish that first caught her eye, she said. After she got over her initial horror, she called the police department. He remembered thinking that this was going to be a stone whodunit. He had felt a surge of excitement. This was what it was all about. A case that challenged all his ability a guaranteed moneymaker sure to rack up lots of overtime. His second reaction—maybe it was the heart-shaped mood ring on the index finger—was resigned disgust. After the initial brouhaha died down, the crime scene technicians had found little else to go on and many questions remained unanswered. The file had grown no bigger since January 31 and fresher crimes clamored to be solved.

  The Ballona Creek case haunted Mace. Visions of that lonely arm bobbing in the water filled his thoughts in unguarded idle moments. Maybe the deceased had a family somewhere, looking for her. Then again, maybe he was a fool, spinning his wheels on a hopeless homicide. The smart thing to do would be to just let it go, he had enough cases already But he never let go—hadn't that been one of Nan's many complaints?

  Mace looked out the window at the neighboring warehouses. All was quiet. The gathering darkness gentled the appearance of the surrounding lots. The cars that rotted among the weeds and broken beer bottles now appeared to be parked rather than abandoned. Even the grating he had installed over his windows to prevent the neighborhood kids from throwing rocks through the leaded glass dissolved into benign screens. The vandalism was nothing personal, he understood, just a need the kids had to mark that they had been there. Something to point to and say "I broke that."

  The track that the Bella Donna stood on was at the end of the old Southern Pacific line and ran parallel to Olympic Boulevard. The owners of the property had erected a large warehouse that they divided into cubicles and leased for self-storage. They were delighted to have a police officer guarding their investment at night and struck a deal of mutual accommodation: Mace parked his coach car free on the siding of track in their lot and they rested easier.

  As Mace watched, the light on Olympic changed and two low riders peeled off in an impromptu drag race. The cars' tires screamed as they found traction on the asphalt and the scent of burning rubber drifted over the Bella Donna and her lone occupant. Mace turned back to the file. Officially the case was no longer his concern. They had patted him on his head and told him to step aside and let the big boys handle this one. He was free to go back to his misdemeanor murders and drug overdoses. The mayor claimed that the purpose of RHD's intervention was to reduce the caseload of overworked divisional detectives. Mace's hand tightened on his drink as he thought of the mayor's words. One big happy family right?

  Didn't it strike any of them as odd that with all of Parker Centers resources they still had no identity on the victim, crime scene or even cause of death? Granted, in the "Butcher" homicide, there,wasn't much to go on. Without a complete corpse, they technically didn't even know if a homicide had been committed. They were treating this one "as if." Mace opened the folder and quickly scanned its contents.

  On the morning of January 31, Mace had delivered the severed arm, wrapped in white butchers paper, to the coroner's forensic lab. There he handed it over to Carol Zapata, who was, in his humble opinion, the best crime scene technician available. She had injected saline into the puckered fingertips and when they plumped back up, she took a set of prints. He'd seen her work on worse decoms, bodies buried in shallow graves, overdose victims left to rot in filthy shooting galleries and stripped of all identification. On older corpses the skin sloughed off easily She would cut the fingers at the second knuckle, peel off the ridged flesh, and fit the hollow fingertips of dead skin over her own surgically gloved hands. Then she would proceed as if she were printing herself. This time that wasn't necessary.

  "You're pretty good at this," Mace had commented, always awed by her ingenuity.

  "This can't have been in the water long," she had replied, smiling and blushing slightly in acknowledgment of his compliment. "Or the marine life would have nibbled the fingers to the bone." She prepared for him several petri dishes labeled with the case number. "I found sand under the nails, and vegetation. Embedded too deeply to have gotten there casually"

  There had been a lot of sand in the muscle, as if it had been dredged through a dune or maybe buried and then the ground tamped down over it. He had studied the bits of plant in the plastic container, holding them up to the fluorescent lights and asking Carol, "Any idea what this is?"

  "Botany's not my thing," she had said and paused to look directly in his eyes, inviting him to

  ask.

  He hadn't.

  The Coast Guard had done an air and sea search but failed to recover any more pieces to the gruesome puzzle. Ballona Creek was connected by storm drains all the way to the San Gabriel Valley; point of origin would be difficult if not impossible to determine.

  A week later, on the seventh of February one week after the first arm was discovered, a second arm washed up under the pier at the base of Washington Boulevard. This time, crabs had gotten to it first and gnawed away the fingertips. One thing was certain, it was a right arm, just as the first arm had been. It, too, was assigned a case number and
handed over to RHD. Captain Divine told Mace in no uncertain terms that he would honor no overtime vouchers related to the Ballona case. The captain was under pressure from the city about the jump in the homicide statistics in their division. They had enough to do. Leave it alone, he said. Mace put his drink glass in the sink of his kitchnette, returned the bag of seeds to the refrigerator, and stumbled wearily to the front bedroom of the Bella Donna. He didn't even bother to take off his shoes. He just pulled the Murphy bed out from the wall and collapsed beneath the framed Remington prints of cowboys and Indians.

  4

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, MACE RETURNED TO the banks of Ballona Creek. Sunday was his day off, he could spend it how he pleased. He climbed over the fence and walked the length of the waterway When he heard a rustling in the bushes below, he realized that he wasn't alone. Twenty yards away the tops of a thick patch of bamboo parted and a woman emerged. He watched her thrash through the weeds, following a winding rivulet of two-inch-deep water that cut through the sand. She beat the bushes in front of her with a gnarled walking stick, all the while mumbling to herself. An ancient Irish setter with a bandanna knotted around his throat wheezed beside her. Neither of the pair was aware of his presence.

  He vaulted the chain-link fence and slid down the bank to where the woman and dog stood. As he got closer to the pair, he noted that the dog and the woman were well-matched. The woman was older than she appeared from a distance. Her thin face was weathered and wrinkled. Mace figured that she had to be in her seventies. Worn hiking boots peeked out beneath the folds of her long gypsy skirt. On her head she wore an ancient sunbonnet, wisps of graying red hair escaping out the sides.

  "What are you looking for?" Mace asked when he was in speaking distance.