“Look like a gunshot to you?”
Lichter hurried to a desk in the comer, shuffled through piles of paper, picked up some stapled sheets, and flipped through. “Same thing here… single wound to the occipital cranium, no bullet recovered yet.”
Gloving up, he returned to the gurney, rolled the head carefully, bent, and squinted. “Ah-see.”
A distinct ruby hole dotted the back of the skull. Black crust fuzzed the edges and black dots peppered the slender neck.
“Stippling,” said Lichter. “I’m just a body mover, but that means an up-close wound, right?” He released the head carefully. Another sad look. “Maybe she got shot first and then they used a knife on her. More like a hatchet or a machete-a thick blade, right? But I better not say more. Only the coroners have opinions.”
“Who’s the coroner tonight?”
“Dr. Patel. He had to run out, should be back soon with some genuine wisdom.”
He began to cover the face, but Milo took hold of the sheet. “Shooting, then slashing. Right on the side of the freeway.”
“Don’t quote me on anything,” said Lichter. “I’m not allowed to speculate.”
“Sounds like a good guess. Now all we have to do is find out who she is.”
“Oh, we know that,” said Lichter. “They pulled prints on her right away. Easy, the fingers were fine. Detective Whit-worth said she came right up on PRTNTRAK-hold on.”
He ran back to the desk, retrieved more papers. “She had a record… drugs, I think…. Yup, here we go. Hedy Lynn Haupt, female Caucasian, twenty-six… arrested two years ago for P.C. 11351.5-that’s possession of cocaine for use or sale, right? I know it by heart, because we get lots of that in here. Got an address on her, too.”
Milo covered the distance between them in three strides and took the papers from him.
“Hedy Haupt,” I said, leaning down for a look at the face.
Putting my face inches from the ruined flesh. Smelling the copper-sugar of the blood, the sulfur of released gases… something light, floral-perfume.
The skin that unique green-gray where it wasn’t blood-rusty.
Most of the head had been turned into something unthinkable, the mouth kissed by a smear of blood, the upper lip split diagonally. Yet the overall structure remained somewhat recognizable. Familiar… freckles across the nose and forehead. The ear that hadn’t been hacked to confetti, an ashen seashell.
I peeled back the sheet. Plaid blouse. Blue jeans. Even in death the body retained a
trim, tight shape. Something protruded from the breast pocket of the blouse. Half a loop of white elastic. Ponytail band.
“I think I know who this is,” I said.
Milo wheeled on me.
I said, “Hedy Haupt, Heidi Ott. The age fits, the hair’s the right color, the body’s the right length-look at the right jaw, that same strong line. I’m sure of it. This is her.”
Milo’s face was next to mine, exuding sweat and cigar residue.
“Oh, man,” he said. “Another cast member?”
“Remember what big Chet kept shouting at us?” I said. “Both in group, and as we walked across the yard? ‘Cherchez la femme.’ Search for the woman. Maybe he was trying to tell us something. Maybe maniacs are worth listening to.”
36
MILO WANTED TO examine the body closely and to go over the paperwork in detail.
Figuring I could do without either, I left, bought scalding, poisonous coffee from a machine, and drank it out in the waiting area facing the autopsy room. The coffee didn’t do much for my stomach, but the chill that had taken hold of my legs started to dissipate.
I sat there, thinking about Heidi, executed and mutilated on the 1-5.
Everyone associated with Peake and Crimmins was being discarded like garbage. It stank of a special malevolence.
Monsters.
No; Peake’s moniker notwithstanding, these were people, it always came down to people.
I pictured the two of them, bound together by something I was really no closer to understanding, stalking, severing, hacking, shooting.
Crimmins’s production, the worst kind of documentary. For the sake of what? How many other victims lay buried around the city?
Crisp, rapid footsteps made me look up. A perfectly groomed Indian in his forties passed me wordlessly and entered the autopsy room. Dr. Patel, I assumed. I found a pay phone, called Robin, got the answering machine. She was asleep. Good. I told the machine I’d be back in a few hours, not to worry. I finished the coffee. Cooler, but it still tasted like toasted cardboard sauteed in chicory gravy.