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Yeah, I Get That A Lot
For once, one of Ford's outlandish stories wasn't fiction, and Lorna was positive he was wishing it were.
"Fuckin' morons!" the loudmouth a few cars in front of her yelled. "Goddamn city can't do anything right!"
"Hey!" Ford yelled from in front of the van. "A guy died here. Show some respect."
"What's that got to do with me?" the driver yelled back.
"You got current tags on that piece of shit?" Ford yelled back. "Let me see your license and registration."
Lorna knew it would take a while for her to get up to the scene, and even longer to find a place to park. She considered calling Ford to let him know she was only forty feet away. However, she couldn't. Lorna looked at the cell phone in her hand and sighed. It was, as far as she could tell, yet another symbol of her passing from twenty-something slacker into full-fledged responsible adult. That it had been her idea that she and Ford get matching cell phones was a fact lost on her at the moment.
It'd been a long night, and she wasn't thinking clearly. The preliminary on the woman found in the bathtub had to be done quickly, for obvious reasons. The burnt guy was even worse; he'd been lit using an accelerant, probably gasoline. It was the worst burns Lorna had ever worked on, and that included at the funeral home. In one night, she learned more about the Maillard reaction as applied to humans than she ever thought she'd care to know. Fortunately for him, the guy had been dead when he was lit; the hyoid had been snapped from the sides, like a wishbone, implying that he'd been strangled.
After the internal exam, she left her assistant, David Brule, to handle the autopsy protocol. Paperwork wasn't her forte anyway. Lorna thought herself fortunate that the city had hired someone like David, who didn't mind working long hours by himself, doing paperwork while surrounded by dead people.
On her way out of the building to her car, Lorna called Ford to find out if he wanted to get breakfast, but he was busy. A loudmouth in a van, who several witnesses reported was yelling at other drivers, got himself shot. The unfortunate part was that he was shot dead, in the middle of morning traffic, at the corner of Lombard and Franklin, a block from Van Ness; the already fearsome San Francisco morning commute across the Golden Gate increased in difficulty thirty-fold. The aggression shown by the passing drivers made that evident.
"Hey!" Ford yelled, spotting Lorna's car as she inched her way up to the scene. He started waving her into the space behind the victim's van, but as she begin to pull in, a uniformed officer walked over and angrily waved her off.
"It's all right," Ford told him. "That's our M.E."
The officer nodded and looked away. Lorna gave Ford a look of disbelief as she inched into the spot.
"Why did you tell him that?" she asked, getting out of the car. She handed Ford the bag of donuts and the cup of coffee she'd picked up on the way over.
"Because it's true," Ford replied. "I didn't say you were here for the case, did I?"
"So what's the fun here?" Lorna asked, walking Ford around the front of the van. As they walked, he bumped his hip against hers. It was like a secret hug and, as corny as it was, it never failed to make her smile.
The van was stopped where it had been when the shooting occurred. The driver's left arm, neck, and head dangled out of the window, the head spilling its contents down the Bondo-painted door. Lorna looked in through the window at the windshield, which was spider-webbed around a small hole.
Mike Webber was standing at the passenger side door, fishing a small piece of yarn around a pistol in the driver's hand. The first time she saw Webber do it, she was surprised. Television had given her the image of the crime-scene investigator sliding a pencil into the barrel of the gun and lifting it up. The truth was that putting anything into the barrel could damage the striations, and make it impossible to match the gun's barrel to a bullet. Criminologists used yarn to tie murder weapons to pegboards for transportation.
"Hey Mike," Lorna smiled.
"Lorna, I didn't know you were called on this one," Mike said.
"I'm not. I just came by to bring Chris some breakfast."
"You're too good for him," Mike smiled.
"That's what my dad says too."
Lorna turned around to find Ford standing behind her, a strange grin on his face. She flashed him a toothy smile and walked past him to where Jake was interviewing an old woman. The woman was pointing animatedly, drawing the outline of a car in the air with one hand while gesturing to the street with the other. Jake was nodding, but he wasn't writing anything down. It was clear he was just humoring her. Ford rescued him by pretending to whisper something in his ear. Jake nodded and detached himself. She kept talking as he walked away.
"Well," Ford smiled. "What did she have to say?"
"She saw the shooter," Jake said.
"Really?" Ford said. "What good luck for us."
"Not really," Jake said. "She said the shooter was an Asian male in a black Firebird wearing a trench coat."
"You're kidding," Ford said, stopping short. His face went white.
"You're right," Jake replied, "but you should have seen the look on your face."
"That's not funny," Ford said, deadpan.
"Yes it was," Jake said. He turned around and started to walk back toward the van. Lorna shook her head. It wasn't the first time she didn't understand what Jake and Ford were talking about.
"So," Ford said to her. "What's the word on Mr. Matchlight?"
"I can't tell you that," Lorna said. "It's not your case."
"I know, but I'm supposed to get inside information. I'm sleeping with the M.E."
"Well," Lorna said, pretending to be upset at his comment. "If you really must know, his wallet was all but destroyed."
"You mean he wasn't robbed?" Ford asked. "Now I really have to find out who he was and who killed him."
"We might know who he was," Lorna said. "He had a Medicalert bracelet on him."
"And?" Ford probed. "What was his name?"
"Ken Rucker," Lorna said. "We haven't gotten an ID from a family member yet."
"Ken Rucker?" Ford asked. "Damn."
"You know him?"
"Yeah, that's Candy Ken's real name," Ford said. "He's an informant, or was an informant, of mine. I told you about him, the guy with the platform shoes and pimp suit who thinks he's Dolomite. And there's about 800 people who would like to off him."
"Makes it tough on Lambert," Lorna replied.
"No, I bet he doesn't question a single one of them," Ford shook his head. "So a Medicalert bracelet huh?"
"Epilepsy," Lorna said.
"Oh, that's a good thing for a drug dealer to have," Ford laughed. "Probably why he was living in a cheap motel room. I bet every time he had a seizure his buddies robbed him."
"You're back early," David said, as Lorna walked in. "Fastest testimony in history."
"I didn't testify today," Lorna replied. "They put me off."
The case of Romeo Armstrong had been a thorn in her ass for the last three weeks. Armstrong, a Forty-Niner's fullback with a well-publicized alcohol problem and a history of using his fists as foreplay, was found dead in his apartment. What wasn't immediately released to the public was the fact that Armstrong's estranged wife was also found in apartment, as was his current girlfriend. Armstrong and his wife both had undergone facial reconstructive surgery courtesy of the Browning 10-gauge lying in the middle of the floor, equidistant from both of them.
The girlfriend was found in the bedroom lying next to one of Armstrong's high school football trophies and a several pieces of her skull.
The case was handled by Jefferson Lambert. Lambert immediately painted a picture of Armstrong as a cold-blooded killer, who first murdered his girlfriend, then killed his wife when she showed up and found him. Armstrong's neighbors testified that he and the girlfriend had been arguing for an hour, then suddenly got quiet; then the wife showed up and those two argued, until the gunshots. Clearly, Lambert reported, Armstrong got out of control.
The major flaw in this theory, in the minds of the criminologists who worked the crime scene, was why a football player with a bright future would commit suicide, whether he had killed them or not. There was no trace of the girlfriend's blood on his body, although he had just taken a shower. Fingerprints from Armstrong and his wife were both found all over the shotgun. Armstrong and his wife had both touched the trophy.
But, even if the criminologists on the case presented evidence of the wife as the killer, the PA sided with Lambert, as did the judge, and the case was quickly ruled a double-homicide suicide, with Armstrong as the aggressor. But that opened the door to a whole army of lawyers with lawsuits from every neighbor and family member of all three. Lorna had been subpoenaed in the first case, the one that would lay the foundation for all the others. This one was the girlfriend's family versus Armstrong's estate, thirteen million for wrongful death. Lorna was quite aware that, as the M.E. on the case, the only reason she was being called to testify was so that the girlfriend's family's lawyer could paint her out to be an irresponsible and careless examiner who botched evidence. Her role was defender of the physical-evidences program.
It was a role she was both dreading and anticipating. It was her first court appearance as a forensics expert, and she was terrified but filled with a sense of civic duty.
"Well," David said, breaking her from her reverie. "It looks like you came back just in time."
Lorna looked up to see the stretcher being brought down the hallway. She stopped the two men who were wheeling it down.
"Wait," she said. "Whose case is this?"
"It's mine," a voice behind her. Lorna turned around to find a petite fashion plate in a power suit. The girl was perky and blonde, definitely SoCal; she was cute, with the kind of baby-face that drove guys nuts. However, Lorna was taller than her. To assert this fact, Lorna pulled her shoulders back and rose to her full height.
"And you are?" Lorna asked.
"Holly," came the reply. "Holly Bayre."
"Holly Bayre?" Lorna said. "I bet you..."
"Yeah," Holly replied. "I get that a lot."
"I'm sorry," Lorna said, offering her hand. "I don't believe we've met."
"I just got brought up," Holly said, almost dreading the obvious retort.
"Ah," Lorna said, being obvious, "a rookie. Who's your partner?"
"I don't have one yet," Holly said.
"You don't have a partner?"
"No," Holly said. "There was nobody to pair me with. They're looking."
"So this is your first time in the Body Shop?" Lorna asked, with a mischievous grin. "Don't worry, I can finish the protocol and send it to you. Some of the detectives don't like to be here."
"Oh," Holly said. "I don't mind. I was a veterinary assistant in high school, so I don't mind blood."
"Why does that not surprise me?" Lorna asked. "At least use the Vic's, I don't want to have to get the mop."
"Does that happen a lot?" Holly asked, laughing.
"All the time," Lorna smiled. Oh God, she thought, I can't hate her, she's too cute, like a little kewpie doll. "A lot of guys come in here and toss their cookies. I don't mind the ones that learn their lesson and never come back, it's the guys who have something to prove that bug me."
"What about women?" Holly asked. "Do they throw up?"
"Only the ones who've never had kids," Lorna chuckled, holding the door open for Holly. "If you can go through that, then there's no way you'll be bothered by an autopsy."
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