The Geography of Murder Read online

  Geography of Murder

  by P. A. Brown

  got down to the business of policing no one ever shows you on TV, writing reports.

  "ME said the autopsy on Blunt should go down today. You going to attend?" She finished her muffin and brushed crumbs off her desk. She looked human again.

  I nodded. "I'm curious to know cause of death since we never recovered a weapon."

  "Maybe your friend had time to ditch it."

  "Maybe." I didn't like that idea. "But if he did, why the hell would he crawl back in beside the guy and go to sleep? Did he strike you as that crazy?"

  "Tweaking. He's a full-fledged 5150. Out of it. Who knows what goes through these freak's minds. Do you really want to know?"

  I shuddered. "No. Bad enough to deal with them physically, no way I want to engage them mentally."

  "Then let the sharks take care of him."

  I thought about the golden boy and what would face him if he was sentenced. What they'd do to him inside. What if he really hadn't done it? Nothing about him said 5150. I wondered why I refused to believe he was a crazy killer?

  Because I thought he was sexy and I'd like to find out what it felt like to have my dick down his throat or up his ass? Now who was being crazy?

  Around me phones rang and the noise level climbed.

  Somewhere a desk drawer slammed. My phone rang. I grabbed it. The business of the day went on.

  The morgue always smelled the same: chemicals and death. I sniffed when I came through to the autopsy suite and 44

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  didn't detect any real stinkers. No aged bodies came in overnight. I was greeted by Don Washerman, the ME. He nodded at me over the corpse of George Blunt and got back to work. He dictated the vitals while moving around to let the photographer capture things from every angle. When the photographer was done, Don began a physical exam.

  Normally they removed and bagged a corpse's clothes at this point, but good old George wore nothing but a leather harness, which Don took off and set aside for forensic examination.

  Then came my favorite part of an autopsy. Don pulled down his face shield, and wielding a scalpel, sliced George open. Something that should have been done years ago.

  When the mass of his inner organs were exposed to our prying eyes, Don sliced and diced, taking samples of everything, poking and prodding through the gaping cavity that had once been a man.

  When he powered on the bone saw and opened George's brain I turned away. The pungent stench of burning bone wasn't so easy to avoid. It was a point of honor for me not to use Vicks or orange oil to cut the morgue stink. Sometimes I wondered why I was so damn stubborn. Don examined the cranial vault and washed seeping blood away to get a better look.

  "Anything, doc?"

  "No trauma to the brain." He moved back down the body.

  "But there is trauma on his upper torso and scapula. And his spine was damaged from a particularly nasty blow to the back of his neck."

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  "That kill him?"

  "It helped. I do believe his spleen was ruptured. Possibly a kidney, too."

  That didn't sound pleasant. "How'd he die?"

  "Blunt force trauma leading to internal exsanguination."

  "Painful?"

  "Oh, my yes. Quite."

  "Good." I thought of the young girls he had abused and destroyed over the years.

  "Yes, well, don't let anyone else hear you say that. It true you have a suspect?"

  "Locked up in county. Anything you can tell me to help pin it on him?"

  "One of the weapons used was fists. You need to look for a man who has very badly damaged hands."

  I thought of Zachary and his near perfect skin, including his unblemished hands. My heart lightened. I shunted the feeling safely away where I could examine it later. "You said

  'one of the weapons'—there was more than one used?"

  Don nodded, never once stopping what he was doing. I saw him use a long syringe and draw red tinged yellow fluid from George's damaged liver. "Something blunt. A baseball bat or club."

  I thought of last night and before I could censor the words asked, "What about a sap. One of those old heavy ones they've banned almost everywhere?"

  "You mean like a police truncheon? Could be, could be. It would be nice to recover the weapon. Then I could match it.

  But nothing was recovered from the boat?"

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  "We're sending divers in today, but don't hold your breath."

  "I rarely do. You'll let me know?"

  "As soon as," I assured him. Don and I had a good working relationship. We respected each other and never let it get personal.

  "Can you give me a time of death?" I asked. That was always critical to establishing who had the means to commit the crime. But TOD was always tricky, and I'd never met a coroner who would give anything more than a broad guess.

  Don didn't disappoint. "Ambient temperature was probably about the same over the twenty-four hour period. Factoring that and his body temp and rigor at the scene, I'd say dead maybe eight hours. Not less than five."

  I did the math. "So sometime between midnight and two a.m.?"

  "That would be my estimate, yes."

  So what was golden boy doing in those hours? I'd have to start checking around. I slapped the gurney where the late and not so great George Blunt lay in his sordid glory.

  "Thanks, doc. I'll catch you later. You'll get me a tox report when it comes in?"

  He nodded but didn't look up from his minute examination of the dead flesh in front of him.

  I left him to his corpses.

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  Jason

  Jail was worse than I remembered. I'd forgotten the never-ending noise and oh God the smell. Decades of sweat and piss and vomit coated the back of my throat.

  After Spider left me in the guards' not so delicate hands I was provided with an orange jumpsuit and cavity searched, which is a lot more humiliating than it sounds. Maybe I'm used to having things up my ass, but only when I choose, not because some goon with a sidearm tells me to bend over. Then the humiliation had continued with the endless, mindless questions I was asked. Was I epileptic? Did I have any medical conditions? STDs? Was I on any prescribed medications? They even asked if I was an informant for the state; was I afraid for my safety in jail? I gave a short bark of laughter at that, knowing a yes wasn't going to get me a break. It was all for show.

  They put me in with a twitchy tweaker who looked and smelled like he was coming down off a week-long binge. I huddled in the piss-scented corner of my cell avoiding eye contact, staring straight ahead and not speaking. I was about the only quiet one. The cold cement walls echoed and re-echoed with shouts and moans and cries until my head was pounding and I felt like adding my stomach contents to the miasma already present. I was told I'd be held over for first appearance tomorrow at the courthouse. Then I guess I'd find out what they were planning for me. I jumped at every loud 48

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  noise until I was a bundle of raw jangling nerves. About midnight the tweaker started muttering and within an hour was screaming and clawing at his jumpsuit. The bugs were eating him alive.

  The night crawled by. There wasn't a moment of silence the entire night. Guards came by a couple of time but all they did was yell at the tweaker to shut up. He didn't. New arrivals came and went, drunks, head cases joining the raving tweaker until everybody was seeing bugs. Three guys came in who looked like they'd gone ten rounds with Lesnar or Hulk Hogan. Made me want to ask what the other guy looked like.

  After they'd been there half an hour they descended on the tweaker and made him shut up.

  Desp
air clawed at me. There was nobody I could call to offer me a sympathetic ear, or even chastise me for getting into such deep shit. In the past I've had guys who wanted to take me in, care for me, even be my Master, but they never gave me what I needed. I wanted to be fucked, but I didn't like being fucked over. Maybe I had some idealized lover, but nobody I met at the clubs came close. No one in my family had talked to me since I left for leather heaven in San Francisco. My sister once told me I shamed them, that mom and dad couldn't hold their heads up in church anymore. I bet they got a lot of mileage out of their sinful son. I thought of the hours I had spent in my room, butt and back aching from one transgression or another. My parents carried their children's life choices like a martyr carried a cross.

  I didn't miss them, but when you're sitting in a cell waiting to go on trial for homicide it gets lonely. I mean, who do you 49

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  befriend? The other homicidal maniacs who share your fate?

  Didn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies. I may like to play with the rough boys, but I draw a line. A sharpened toothbrush in my gut does not qualify as fun.

  I had asked Endbury why he had really taken my case and he had shrugged. "I take a certain number of pro-bono cases a year. Yours was intriguing and I think I've got a good shot at winning."

  Nice to know I could still entertain.

  Shortly after daybreak I managed to slide into a nightmare-laced sleep only to be rudely dragged out of my slumber. The tweaker was gone, a dark stain on the cell floor the only witness to his having been there. After an inedible breakfast burrito, those of us going to court were pulled out. I was shackled arms and legs, with the chains padlocked to my waist. We shuffled and clanked into the prison bus, which we rode to the courthouse. We were left standing in our transport jewelry while the uniformed court officers bustled around. I caught a glimpse of Endbury in his Brooks Brothers suit. He winked at me. Then my gut froze when I saw Spider enter the courtroom. He glanced at me, looked away, then took a seat in the back of the courtroom. What the hell was he doing here? I'd been told there was no testimony today, we would just hear the charges against us and get a court date. Was Spider here to gloat? Remind me that he was a free man and I wasn't? What kind of cop made a case so personal? What kind of bulldog was this butt fuck?

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  Asshole. I glared at him but it's hard to be threatening in bright orange coveralls with iron manacles around your wrists and ankles. I gave it my best shot.

  He looked at me again then looked away and ignored me for the rest of the proceedings.

  We all had our turn stepping forward. Some had a short conference with their attorney, some did not. Either way, eventually everyone heard the charges. I shuffled forward, head down so I wouldn't have to meet anyone's eyes and stopped beside Endbury.

  "You okay, Jason?"

  I wanted to say 'What do you think?' but it wouldn't do to alienate the one guy trying to help me, whatever his reasons.

  I nodded, not sure I could trust my voice. I didn't want it to crack in front of him.

  "Good. Now the judge will read the charges against you.

  You listen. Don't speak. Don't argue. The prosecutor will argue remand, I'll push for bail. No promises. But whatever you do, don't argue. This isn't the time. You'll be arraigned and next time you'll enter a plea. We'll be bound over for trial."

  "How long will that take?" Like I suspected, my voice broke.

  He pretended he didn't hear. "I can't say. I'll try for bail, but even if you get it, it will be high. Is there anyone you can approach?"

  "No," I said so abruptly he lapsed into silence. I shook my head savagely when he gave me a questioning look. "Just forget it."

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  He sighed and gripped my arm. "I'll do what I can."

  Didn't turn out to be very much. Forget bail. I think the judge was amused that Endbury would even ask. The sheriffs led me back to the waiting room where I would indeed wait—

  wait until there were enough out of court to fill the bus to take me back to county for God knew how long. Trial was set for ten weeks from today. Backlog, Endbury said. It would give him time to prepare my case. Lucky him.

  I never saw the hysterical tweaker again. I figured he was either in the infirmary or dead. I should have cared; I didn't.

  The noise level rose and fell, but was always there, reverberations in hell. More of the same came and went. No one came for me.

  Five miserable, sleep-deprived days later I had a visitor.

  I'd seen Endbury the day before to 'map out my strategy' so I wasn't expecting anyone. Who the hell would come see me?

  But by that point I'd have taken a visit from the Pope. Shows how pathetically desperate I was.

  It was Spider.

  I froze in the door to the meeting cubicle and stared at him. He was sitting down, looking around, tapping out a tattoo on the counter. He stared at a piece of graffiti some wit had carved into the wall beside him. ES. Gang tag. He frowned, looked away. Looked back. Chewed on a cuticle. I could tell by the vibrations of his body that he was tapping his foot on the floor.

  When he caught sight of me in the doorway, he froze, then pointed for me to sit. I hesitated then decided he couldn't do anything more to me, so I slid into the chair.

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  "What do you want?"

  "Thought I'd come by to see how you are." Like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  "Still in one piece," I said. "You sorry?"

  "No. I'm glad you're okay. Sorry you're in here."

  "Well, considering you put me here, that's a load of bull—"

  "About that," he started, then fell silent.

  I stared at him. His gray eyes behind his glasses gave nothing away, but I sensed tension in the way he held his shoulders and wondered why. What did he have to be tense about?

  "What?"

  "I may be able to help you there."

  "You're joking, right? What could you do to help me?"

  "Prove you didn't kill Blunt."

  I tried to come up with another smart-ass comment, since it seemed like the only thing I had left, but my mouth wouldn't work. It hung open as I stared at him. I rallied and shot back, "You playing with me, asshole? Get your kicks ripping wings off flies, too?"

  "I also drown kittens in gunny sacks. Will you shut up and listen?"

  I was too confused to argue. I opened my mouth to fire off another retort. Shut it. Opened it again. "What—"

  "Shut up and listen."

  I shut up.

  "George Blunt died of massive trauma and internal bleeding from being beaten to death. Someone took a hard, 53

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  blunt object and literally pounded the shit out of him. But before they got the stick, they used their hands."

  I tried to see the significance. Couldn't. Said so.

  He sighed, like what he said should have been obvious to a child. "Skinned knuckles. Fists aren't iron. Pound them into someone's face, and the face isn't the only thing banged up.

  They leave DNA behind, too."

  I looked down at my hands, finally getting it. "You'll testify my hands weren't banged up?"

  "Exactly. We've also had zero luck locating anyone named Roger from Bakersfield. No one with that name is listed on any California missing persons lists. No John Does even coming close to a youthful blond man. But it wasn't your DNA on Blunt. So you couldn't have done it."

  "Why are you doing this?"

  "Don't want to shock you, but my job is to find and catch the guilty guy. You're not him." He tilted his head, looking me up and down like a side of beef. I grew aroused. "This time."

  "Fuck you."

  "I'll let the DA know. Once he see
s there's no case he'll drop the charges. We go back to looking for the real killer.

  And maybe figure out who set you up."

  "Good luck with that," I didn't care if they ever found out who killed the guy, but I did want to know what asshole landed my ass in jail, if only for a short time. "Hey, I owe you. You'll have to let me buy you a drink after I get out."

  Something crossed his face, there and gone in an instance.

  His smile was blinding. "Sure. I'll hold you to that. Mexicali is my drink of choice."

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  "Not many places carry that."

  "The Vault does."

  I went still. My mouth was open again. "You belong to the Vault?"

  "Charter member. Okay, maybe not that long, but yeah, I've been going for a couple of years."

  I shook my head. "Just when you think you know someone..."

  "You don't know me at all. But I'm going to give you a chance to find out."

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  Spider

  Jason was released the next afternoon. He went to court in the morning and was discharged by the judge who thanked everyone for their efforts, didn't apologize, and moved on to the next case. Jason had to return to county to be processed out and collect his meager belongings. No one had brought him any change of clothes; he still wore the skin-tight parade pants. I found myself staring, only looking away when he cleared his throat.

  He wanted to take me out for drinks, but I was taking him to dinner. I knew he hadn't had a decent meal since he'd been incarcerated, so I planned something special. When I met him at the front doors of the county jail he scrambled into the cab beside me. I threw the truck into gear and peeled out of the parking lot.

  "Where to?" I asked.

  He stared down at himself and grimaced. "Home. I desperately need a shower and a change of clothes." He gave me the address.