Gray Matter (4 page)

W
HEN SCHULTZ LEFT PJ’S
office, he stopped at the water fountain across the hall alongside the door of the men’s room. He looked around and noticed that the hall was acceptably uncrowded. He took a small pill box from his pocket, shook out four Ibuprofen tablets, and tossed them back with a swallow of water. Then he went back to his desk, operating on automatic. He was angry, but it would have to keep for a few minutes. He needed to make a phone call to request a car assignment.

“Vehicles.”

“Doris, that you?”

“Doris retired about three months ago. This is Casey,” a polite voice responded. “What can I do for you?”

“Doris retired? Christ, she wasn’t that old. Did she get sick or something?”

“As far as I know, she simply left after thirty-five years of service. Doris insisted on no fuss, so there wasn’t even a party. She and her husband are traveling around out west in a motor home.”

“Christ.”

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah, sure, I need a vehicle. Name’s Leo Schultz, detective in Homicide. Authorized by Lieutenant Howard Wall.”

“Unmarked? Any particular requirements?”

Schultz knew what she was asking. Some assignments required a flashy car, but Homicide generally got the compacts with vinyl seats. Schultz hated vinyl seats. He got a heat rash in his crotch and on the back of his thighs whenever he sat on them, particularly if the car didn’t have air conditioning. Abruptly he realized that Casey’s voice sounded very pleasant, even when conducting Department business. He formed an image in his mind. Casey was about twenty-five years old, long blonde hair in one of those heavy braids down her back, sleek legs, compliant breasts that would comfortably fill his large hands…Schultz hadn’t slept with his wife in a long time, three or four years at least. Their relationship just didn’t include sex anymore. You wouldn’t have sex with a roommate, particularly an unpleasant one, and that’s how Julia seemed to think of him. Schultz, like other cops, knew more than he ever wanted to about the hazards of sex with a stranger. He preferred fantasy, and Casey was shaping up nicely.

“Detective? Any requirements?” He heard her tapping a computer keyboard, and the spell was broken. Temporarily at least—there was always tonight, after Julia had gone to bed.

“Nothing ritzy. Air conditioned, cloth seats, no loud colors. Automatic transmission.”

“I’ll see what I can do. When do you need the car?”

“Now. I’ll be going down to the garage in about ten minutes.”

“I see. Well, I’ll do my best.” Schultz heard more clicking. “There, I’ve got one for you. Ask for license number MBF 181.”

“Thanks. Say, you new to the Department?”

“Why yes, I’ve only been here a few weeks. Just got my master’s degree in Sociology, but I couldn’t get a job in my field, at least not yet.” Her voice dropped to a breathy level. “Don’t tell my boss, but I’ve got a line on a job in Aspen. Can you believe it? It would be a dream come true. I could ski all winter and hike all summer. When I wasn’t working, of course.” Casey laughed, a soft tinkling sound that made her seem like a teenager.

Schultz smiled and tossed another log on the fantasy fire. Then he got out of the conversation before she could ask him if he was new to the Department too.

After the pleasant diversion of his phone call, he stopped by Sergeant Twiller’s desk to let him know he had accepted the new assignment and would be working on CHIP. As he expected, Twiller already knew about it. Schultz headed to Wall’s office, his anger returning. He tapped on the door and stepped in without waiting for an answer. It was his old, confident style, fueled by an issue he needed to take up with the lieutenant.

“I’ve got to get something straight with you. I…” It dawned on Schultz that Wall was on the phone. The man gestured for him to sit down, and took a couple of minutes to wrap up his conversation, dropping the receiver emphatically into its cradle.

“You get a line on that hot item in Vehicles?” Wall said. It wasn’t the opening Schultz was expecting, and for a moment the fantasy that was cooking away on the back burner swept over him. How did this man know?

Wall snickered. “I can tell by the look on your face that you’ve talked to Racy Casey. Been over to Vehicles yet? You’ve got to take a number out in the hall, the traffic’s so bad over there.”

“Christ, Howard, do you ever get any business done in this office? Any police business, that is? Besides, I’m a happily married man.”

“Yeah, and I’m running for president next year. Anything that happens in this Department is police business, and she’s the biggest thing that’s happened in this Department in ages. Biggest being the operative word there.”

The two men sat in companionable silence for a moment.

“I hate to prick your balloon,” Schultz said, accenting
prick,
“but could we get serious here?” Somehow his anger had drifted away.

“Yeah, yeah, I know what you want to talk about. You don’t like working for a woman.”

Schultz sat back in his chair.
Was that it? Was that the whole problem?

“Bullshit. I’m as modern as the next guy,” Schultz said.
Depending, of course, on who the next guy is.
“I just naturally assumed I was going to be in charge, that’s all.”

Howard did the thing with his fingers again, elbows on the desk, fingers making the steeple. “Schultz, let’s not try to fool anybody. You’re as modern as a Neanderthal. PJ Gray—Doctor Gray—is the head of CHIP. You’ve known that since the first time I mentioned it to you. That’s what she was hired for, and that’s the way the captain wants it. That’s the way I want it. If you want off the merry-go-round, now’s the time to speak up.”

Thoughts raced through Schultz’s head. He briefly considered how nice it was to get out from under Sergeant Twiller’s thumb. He had never gotten along with the man. He wondered how wide a berth he could give both the doc and the computer without Wall coming down on him, and decided he would play it by ear.

“I guess I’m still your man.”

“There’s no guessing involved here,” Wall said.

“All right, damn it. Just tell me I don’t have to use that fucking computer myself.”

“That’s it?” Schultz said. “That’s MBF 181?”

“Yup.” The garage attendant wasn’t very talkative. He was accustomed to disbelief.

Schultz gazed at his assigned vehicle. It was a Pacer, a blast from the past, and it was red. Well, sort of red. It had faded to an indescribable shade of orange. He opened the driver’s door and checked the dash.

“Shit, no air!” At least it had cloth seats. He slid in and noticed that it was a stick shift.

One out of four requests isn’t bad. Nice to know things haven’t changed while I’ve been warming a chair.

“I suppose this is the only one available,” Schultz said. He tried his winning smile on the attendant, the one he had practiced in the mirror and determined to be his least frightening. His telephone charm hadn’t worked on Casey, but Schultz was, despite the weight of experience to the contrary, an optimist when it came to his ability to be winsome.

“Yup.”

He made a show of fastening his seat belt and then turned over the ignition. He rolled down the driver’s window, which stuck halfway down. The attendant hovered at the window.

“What?” Schultz said irritably.

“I gotta warn ya—keep a good hand on the wheel. She’s been rolled and knocked out of whack. She tends to drift a little, even on the straightaways. You know, kind of walk sideways like a crab.”

“A crab. Yeah, well, ain’t that fitting. Thanks for the warning.” As he pulled away, he unfastened his seat belt. He never wore one, even though that was probably against Department regulations.

PJ was waiting on the steps when Schultz pulled up. There was something a little disconcerting about her, like a bowl of Jell-O that’s been dropped. You can scoop it all back into the bowl, but it will never look the same. Schultz, who thought he was good at reading people, saw vulnerability in her face that was quickly masked when she realized he was looking at her.

So the bitch isn’t cast iron all the way through,
he thought.
Just three-quarters.

On the drive, Schultz got the feeling the car was going to walk up on the sidewalk while he was steering straight ahead. He tried to relax about it; it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. He asked PJ why the crime scene sketch made by Clint wasn’t good enough for her purposes. It seemed that she wanted details that weren’t included, such as the style and colors of the furnishings, wallpaper, paintings, and even the accessories on the coffee table. When Clint drew up a scene, he measured accurately but recorded things generically, like “sofa” or “stove.” PJ said that the more realistic she could make her simulations, the more useful they would be. Schultz had an opinion about how useful anything done on the computer would be, but this seemed like an easy way to placate the woman.

Burton’s apartment wasn’t far from Headquarters. It took less than ten minutes to get there. He had lived on the second floor over a coffee shop. There was an alley right next to the building that led to a couple of parking spaces in the rear, and stairs up to a private entrance. At the base of the stairs, Schultz let PJ go first with a wave of his hand. He wasn’t being chivalrous. He didn’t want PJ to notice the way he climbed the stairs. He had arthritis, something that he was trying to conceal. If the lieutenant knew something like that was slowing him down, he probably wouldn’t have offered Schultz the field assignment. If he wanted to get away from that desk, he couldn’t let anyone know about it. Some days were a lot worse than others, and, much to Schultz’s disgust, this was one of the bad days. The Ibuprofen he had taken earlier hadn’t done much good. His left knee didn’t have the normal range of motion, so he couldn’t bend it enough to alternate feet while climbing the stairs. He had to bend his right knee, put his right foot up onto the next stair, and then, clinging to the railing, pull his stiff left leg up. That meant he had to go up one step at a time with a little pause on each step, like a toddler just learning to negotiate stairs. He hurried as well as he could manage to keep close behind PJ so that she wouldn’t turn around at the top and have to wait for him.

The alley and stairs were clean, and there was even a planter full of flowers right outside the apartment door. The flowers were beginning to wilt. Schultz’s wife Julia had always been interested in container gardening, and so Schultz knew that containers like that needed to be watered practically every day during hot weather. There wasn’t enough soil to hold a lot of water. The sight of the wilted flowers made him sad, as if it represented his own relationship with Julia. There just wasn’t enough soil left in the marriage to hold water.

Schultz exchanged small talk with the officer at the door while he and PJ pulled on the gloves which Schultz had brought along in his pocket. The gloves were as much for their own protection as to safeguard evidence. Whenever blood was present, investigators wore gloves to protect themselves from blood-borne diseases like AIDS. The scene was still sealed and guarded, undoubtedly irritating the owner, who would want to get in there and clean up. Something about a bloody murder scene made people want to clean it up as soon as possible, to deny that anything happened. Schultz wondered what it would be like if human bodies were left where they fell, like the bodies of animals killed in the road.

We’d be stepping over them on the sidewalks, and most houses would have a room that nobody else could use for a while. A good long while.

“Remember, Doc,” he said to PJ as he lifted the crime scene tape for her to duck under and swung open the door, “don’t touch anything. The ETU, Evidence Technician Unit, has already worked the place, but you never know what will turn out to be important. Also, there will probably be a smell, but it should be mild.”

“You don’t have to treat me like a simpleton. I can handle this.”

Schultz got the distinct impression that she was reassuring herself, not him. She stepped into the room just ahead of him. He waited for the predictable response, and he got it. She stepped back quickly, bumping into him, and ducked back under the tape into the relatively fresh air of the alley.

“Come on back in when you’re ready. No hurry.” He stepped further in and flicked on the lights. He took a deep breath and blew it out his lips noisily. By his standards, this was a clean site. The smells of death and blood and fear were in the room, and he knew all of them and all the combinations of them, but there was no overriding smell of decomposition. The body had been discovered only twelve hours after death when the cleaning woman let herself in with her key Thursday morning. The air conditioning had been turned all the way down on the dial to fifty-five degrees, presumably by the killer. The unit had been laboring against the unseasonably hot May weather, and had kept the place at about sixty-two. So it was practically like the body had been in a cooler. The air conditioner had been turned off by the evidence techs, though, so that they could check the filter on the blower for hairs and fibers that weren’t indigenous to Burton’s apartment. The stale uncirculated air was heavy with the scent of blood beginning to rot rather than simply dry. But that was nothing compared to some of the scenes Schultz had handled. There had been a couple even he couldn’t stomach: floaters, whose fat had turned to soap and whose stench could stab his gut and empty his stomach even years afterward.

The living room itself was a pleasant surprise. It was high-ceilinged, modern, full of recessed lights and spare furniture, and full of interesting angles. Even Schultz, who was devoid of a decorating sense, was aware that considerable thought had gone into creating a highly personalized space. A gleaming grand piano was prominent, as were art objects displayed tastefully on pedestals and bookcases. On a marble top table which was angled to fit a corner stood a beautiful glass vase holding a dozen red rosebuds. Some of the buds had opened while others tightly concealed their inner mysteries. Schultz made a note to check for flower deliveries in the past couple of days. The flowers were fresh enough that the delivery could have been the same day as the murder.