Always Kiss the Corpse (30 page)

“And he told you to stop investigating?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to?”

“No. And I'll be damned if I let myself be bullied.”

≈  ≈  ≈

Sitting at a rear table at Archie's behind a chilly pint of beer, Burt Vanderhoek watched Spike Ferrero head toward him. Quarter past ten, Spike was fifteen minutes late. The muted light brought out the dull yellow in Spike's hair and beard, making it shine. Buckskin, Brady called the color; he saw what she meant. Brady was smart, and with it. Too damn sexy for her own good. Lucky Brady swung her own way or one day long back Burt might've started something he maybe couldn't have finished. Least not so far as Liz was concerned. He'd been with Liz twenty-three years and she was good to and for him.

Spike sat across from Burt. “Evening.”

“Yep,” said Burt. “How you doing, Doc?”

“Just fine.”

A waitress arrived, smiled at the coroner, “The usual?”

“Yep.”

She nodded and left.

Spike Ferrero scowled. “Okay, what's so important it's got you barking louder'n your bitches when you starve 'em?”

“That damn corpse.”

“The one that won't go away?”

“You got any more down there?”

“Nope. Just one that maybe is maybe ain't somebody's son.”

Burt squinted lightly to see if Spike was pulling his leg. Spike, who came from L.A., liked to talk local construction slang here, Burt was never sure if maybe Spike was laughing at him and his buddies. “Every corpse is somebody's son.”

No, right now Spike looked serious. “That Greek corpse.”

“What about it?”

The sheriff sighed. “Lemme be upfront. How much of an autopsy did you do?”

The coroner stared at the sheriff. “You too?”

“Me too what?”

“Who started this? Those detectives?”

“What you talking about?”

“Those detectives, the ones the corpse's maybe-mother hired, they wanted to know how thorough my autopsy was. Hell, I didn't have to cut the guy up to see what killed him.”

Burt Vanderhoek nodded. “Right.” Not for the first time, though, did he wonder if Dr. Gregory “Spike” Ferrero had come from Los Angeles to Bellingham for some reason other than the fishing and hunting. “But, see, I'm a little worried about that corpse right now. 'Cause I want it to go away too, right? But I asked one of the boys down in Seattle to have a good look at the car we found at the cemetery, and—”

“The cemetery?” Ferrero smiled at the waitress as she set down his double bourbon.

“Where that kid found the body.” Burt leaned forward, to speak more quietly. “So the Seattle print guy came up and dusted the car, and you want to know something weird? Lots of Vasiliadis prints, couple of others, no idea who. But on the steering wheel, no prints at all.”

“So maybe he wore driving gloves.”

“Yeah. Or somebody wiped the wheel clean.”

“Mmm.” Ferrero nodded lightly. “Maybe.”

Burt leaned further forward. “You notice anything weird about the corpse?”

“Those needle marks?”

“His balls.”

“Their size?” The coroner shrugged. “I've seen 'em big.”

“That big?”

The coroner shrugged again.

“Look, Spike.” Burt poured beer down his throat. “I think you ought to take another look.”

Ferrero thought about that. “No prints, huh?”

“Nope.”

Third shrug. “Sure, I can do that.”

“Thanks.”

≈  ≈  ≈

Noel lay on the opened sofa bed, unable to sleep. He felt very tired. This was a quiet place, high above the street, no windows open. No ferry back and forth, unlike his place above the Gabriola Island berth, Nanaimo side. His face ached dully, despite Scotch and painkillers.

Good thing Kyra had been out. She probably would have fought back and made things worse. He rubbed his hand over the sofa's nubbly material behind his pillows, and remembered Chelsea's enthusiasm for fabric. From upholsterer of furniture to outfitter of the transgendered. The pleasure she took in that jacket, she was almost in lust with it. She was a real shiny lady.

But how does it happen? How did she reach that point? Those who get transgendered, penis metamorphosed into vagina, how do they feel? He lay his arms on his thighs, touched his crotch. He thought of sex, with Brendan, with those few others before Brendan. What was a vagina, anyway? Foreign territory. Damn it, sometimes you weren't meant to explore the Arctic, Patagonia, Nunavut. Sometimes you were meant to stay home with what you knew.

Sandro/Sandra was unknown territory. Noel noted that his legs were tightly crossed, his balls constricted. He loosened his legs and put his hands between them, took his testes in his hand and soothed them.

Sexual identity is in the brain: he'd read this and believed. So if you felt like you were one sex but had the other's equipment, you could change the equipment. But not your brain. Or?

It's not your problem, guy. Your problem is the side of your face and your shoulder. Your problem is, how did Sandro die, and why.

It took Noel a long while to fall asleep.

≈  ≈  ≈

A March sun poured down from a fragile blue sky and cast a little early morning warmth over Richard Trevelyan. The air smelled washed and sweet. He felt a pleasure, an ease—though he often found the light grayness of a Whidbey drizzle comfortable too.

He'd guessed he'd feel better on the boat, clearer in his thinking—though without thoughts as yet. The engine purred along so sweetly that when it missed a single tiny beat it tingled in Richard's ear. He headed south to Baby Island; less to see in the water down there, but the less included fewer other divers. He searched the water ahead. Out at ten o'clock he saw a sailboat tacking, but that was it—nearly alone on the water. He set
Panacea
on automatic pilot, got out of his clothes, didn't feel cold, and pulled the wetsuit on. It had aired overnight but still felt clammy.
Panacea
skimmed the surface. Far out from Penn Cove now, and past Snakelum Point, a nice spit of land except when Navy planes flew in low overhead. He didn't see any but for a moment caught a whiff of something like aviation fuel. Then the air was clean again.

Last night, after Terry went back to the lab, Richard had leafed through early project notes looking for forgotten insights, anything to rethink possible hypotheses for Sandro's swollen testes. All they'd done right for Marcie Johnson and Stephanie Gustafson had gone the other way with Sandro Vasiliadis. Why? He read through his gloss of Terry and Lorna's work on
Thor manning
, found in tropical sea grass meadows. These pretty little fish divided into two sub-units. Half of any given population would be true hermaphrodites, male to female. The other group were what Terry called primary males; they never changed sex. And these males had substantially enlarged genitalia; “titans” was Terry's word for them. All very interesting, except they'd gone no further with
Thor
.

Panacea
sped along. The engine again missed a beat, a second later another. It caught again and purred ahead. What was going on? The winter, the engine not running for so long, something dried up in there? After a $1780 tune-up? His memory scanned more notes from their research. Other fish had massively large testes; but, Richard knew, massive is a comparative notion. In certain kinds of Tilapia the testes would comprise only a tiny percentage of body mass—say 0.2–0.3 percent. In an everyday brown trout like those he'd seen taken from Cranberry Lake the testes made up 10 percent of body mass. But WISDOM had never worked with trout either.

The smell of fuel again. But he was way south of the airfield. From the boat's engine? He glanced ahead. Flat open water. Still on automatic, he came aft, unbolted the bulkhead latch cover and glanced in. Everything looked to be running smoothly. A tiny smell of gasoline, no big deal.

He reached under the section of wetsuit covering his hair to scratch an itch. He itched in his crotch as well. The thought from before came back, shouldn't have put on the wetsuit, it wasn't time, he wasn't ready—

Was it something like that? Maybe Sandro hadn't been ready for the injections. When surgery was still their primary procedure, they could tell immediately when a patient was set to go. But they'd never considered a readiness factor other than readiness for surgery. What if the body had differing kinds of readiness for receiving the hormones? What if something in Sandro had to commit itself to an equivalent of a black hamlet head-snap? But the other two males had turned into perfect females. Had WISDOM just been lucky? Or unlucky with Sandro? They'd run hundreds of tests with the mice and the rabbits.

In the clownfish the female partner had to die before the male took over the female role and that took four days. If Sandro had waited a period of time—four days, say—before starting the dose, would the hormones have run their natural course? Simply put, maybe Sandro wasn't physiologically ready? But that made no sense, with the others there'd been no question of readiness or a lack of it. Okay, maybe the others in fact were ready? Maybe, he thought, we're the ones who aren't ready.

Damn those detectives! And damn Sandro, leaving that hipoperc lying around. Or maybe Sandro hadn't been taking his hipoperc? They'd all made it so fucking clear: Sandro, after the hipophrine and percuprone injections, you have to follow up daily with the hipoperc, you absolutely have to. Now if Richard had spoken to the detectives about that— Which was ridiculous. You don't broadcast your research till it's finished, published, patented—

Damn damn damn! He'd just proven it to himself. His partners were right! What sense going to the police now? None! Finally, the project was grander than any of them.

He smiled to
Panacea
, to the rolling sea, to the bluing sky. Worthwhile coming out by himself. Ocean and air clear the brain. He would tell them Monday. The silly idea of talking with the police had disappeared.

He sped past Race Lagoon. Nearly halfway to Baby Island. Another missed beat from the engine. He'd definitely take it back in to Stan this afternoon. He'd just passed Glenwood Beach; good. He returned to the wheel and angled forty degrees to port, crossing Holmes Harbor inlet, making direct for Rocky Point. Baby Island lay just off the coast there—

A ping from the engine, then another. But it purred on, speed steady. Check it again? If he stopped and turned it off and it wouldn't start? He'd have to anyway when he dove, plenty of time then to see if it restarted. Anyway, he could limp back to Coupeville on the outboard.

Suddenly from under the bulkhead, a crackle, a wheeze, a squeal—A flash of flame. He rushed to the wheel, snapped into neutral and turned off the engine. More flame! He grabbed the fire extinguisher, plastered the bulkhead with foam, but the flames kept coming. He had to tear it open, blast it directly! He reached for the latch, couldn't grasp it, already too hot. Then a roar, the bulkhead popped open and eight-foot flames burst through. He turned the little extinguisher on the flames and a phrase came to him, pissing against the wind. This was mad— A blast from the flames and the sides of the bulkhead were tinder, the deck was aflame! To the stern, one foot over the rail— The final move was made for him. The engine blew, its impact flinging him into the sea.

≈  ≈  ≈

Over breakfast—despite his mashed cheek and stiff shoulder, Noel was up first and had cut cantaloupe, made toast, and scrambled eggs in honor of Sunday—he said, “Remember when I looked up WISDOM? The psychiatrist, Haines, the one who seems to have been sexually venturesome with one of his patients?”

“What about him?” Kyra's fork paused momentarily.

“If he could do that, which indicates he's operating outside the accepted moral box, what else might he do?”

Kyra wrinkled her forehead. “Say more.”

“I don't know what. But I flagged it.”

“I did a bit of thinking outside our box too—god, I hate that phrase. In the clear light of morning, do you want to drop the case?”

Noel smiled. It hurt to smile. “No.”

Kyra nodded, and forked up some egg. “What if Sandro was exploring being a woman and let himself get picked up in a bar, say, and the guy was pissed off he had male equipment? Like Cora, except she's a she.”

Noel considered. “Not likely. Our Sandro seems to have been a careful guy. And more inclined to hang out with women.” He finished his eggs and spread jam on his toast. “Okay, where are we? Not likely an accident, not likely suicide. More and more we have to consider Sandro's death a murder. The most plausible explanation, right?” He looked at her.

Kyra cut the last of her egg and piled it on her toast. “If it's murder,” she murmured, “my prime suspect is Andrei. And his thug, the guy trying to obliterate every detail about Sandro.”

“Makes sense.”

“They have motive and, I imagine, opportunity. We better find out where they both were the night he died.”

Noel looked at her across the table, stolidly munching away. “And dinner with Jerome? With all that other stuff last night, you never said.”

“Fine. Though I should have been here with you.”

“He might've had a gun.” He smiled, through pain. “Good restaurant?”

“Nice. No dog.” She wrinkled her face. “His car sure smelled. He votes Democrat.”

American politics weren't Noel's department. Better they vote than not, he supposed.

“His wife voted Republican so they had equal opportunity lawn signs. And he likes jazz better than classical.”

“You think this relationship is going anywhere?” Noel grabbed the coffee pot and refilled.

Kyra shrugged. “I'm seeing him this afternoon, he wants an opinion on paint colors.”