Acid Bath Read online

  They acted like she was the enemy, La Migra, although they ought to be able to tell the difference between a plainclothes cop and the Border Patrol. Maybe it was her accent — northern New Mexico as opposed to border Spanish. Or her skin — she had the white skin of her mother, Harmony Waite Portillo, flower child of the Sangre de Cristos. The white skin made Elena an outsider in the barrio, even though she also had her father’s Indian cheekbones and black hair.

  She smiled to herself in the darkness of the unmarked car, thinking of the tale so often told in their family. Thirty years ago Ruben Portillo, then a deputy sheriff in northern New Mexico, had found true love while raiding a hippie commune, true love with long hair, a poorly tuned guitar, and a half-finished degree from Berkeley. A year later their fair-skinned, dark-haired daughter Elena was born. Her ex-husband Frank used to say Elena’s hair absorbed light. The black hole of hair, he called it. Up yours, Frank, she thought.

  It took Leo about fifteen minutes to drive from the barrio to the parking lot of the faculty apartments on the Herbert Hobart University campus. Fifteen minutes, and you wouldn’t know you were in the same world, she thought. She’d visited the building more than once since meeting Sarah Tolland six weeks ago, but late enough in the evening to miss its finer points — the curved walls, the porthole windows. It looked like an ocean liner being launched off the mountain. She mentally apologized to the guard at the gate for questioning his description.

  As she skirted the statue of the ubiquitous naked Charleston dancer, Elena glanced at the lobby decor — art deco, according to Sarah. Leo was quite taken with the statue and had to be urged to the elevator. Elena wondered what kind of university put up naked Charleston dancers everywhere.

  Well, obviously a university that had very flaky administrators. For instance, Sarah had told her that the president was an ex-TV evangelist who wanted to break into prayer at every opportunity. The faculty, on the other hand, refused to be prayed over. They said H.H.U. was a nonsectarian institution and threatened to bring suit in defense of their constitutional rights. According to Sarah, who had been on the faculty negotiating committee, the administration and faculty had compromised. The president got to pray, but only every two weeks and then only if drinks were being served. Thus a new university tradition was born: the Wednesday afternoon prayer meeting and cocktail party. Elena loved it. Nothing that bizarre ever happened in the police department. One of the joys of having dinner with Sarah was hearing her stories about the university.

  The elevator they’d been waiting for arrived. Elena followed Leo in and punched Four. Even the elevator was bizarre — five-sided, red carpet on every surface including the ceiling, mirrors on each wall etched with long-limbed women. A little more breast and bottom on the women, and you’d have a perfect whorehouse elevator. If whorehouses had elevators. She’d have to ask Frank next time she saw him, if he ever came out from under cover again. Having worked both Vice and Narcotics, he’d know about whorehouses.

  Before the elevator door opened on Four, she could hear the screaming. It led her straight to 407, where a curly haired girl in jeans and a mesh T-shirt sat on a sofa, fists covering her eyes, screaming steadily. Three members of the university police force surrounded her, obviously appalled that she was making a scene in the faculty apartment building. The one with his tie askew, probably called away from his dinner, introduced himself to Elena as Chief Clabb. He all but embraced her, evidently thinking that she’d perform some miracle, get the hysterical girl to shut up.

  “Where’s the body?” Leo asked.

  “In there,” said an officer who looked familiar to Elena. He waved toward the bedroom, and the university cops returned to remonstrating with the screamer. Elena followed Leo and glanced around the bedroom, found no evidence of a body, crossed the black arrow that pointed to the bed, and halted at the open bathroom door, peering over her partner’s shoulder.

  As a Crimes Against Persons officer she’d seen bodies before. Strictly speaking, this wasn’t a body. And it made her flinch. Submerged in a modern-looking bathtub, which was full to within an inch of the lip with a moderately cloudy liquid, lay a skeleton. The round tub was six feet across and three feet deep with a comfortable curved edge — big enough to hold your ideal American family — mother, father, two point something kids — if there were any families like that anymore. This tub held bones — lying flat on the tub floor, hands crossed piously on the rib cage, empty eye sockets staring up through the cloudy liquid at Elena and Leo.

  “Is it a fake?” asked Elena hopefully.

  “Looks like the real thing to me,” said Leo. He peered down at the bones and said, “Take a note, Miss Jarvis. One skeleton wearing a ring on the right ring finger. No other identifying — “

  “Oh, take a note yourself,” said Elena, grinning. “Let’s see — Detective Elena Jarvis wishes to make a charge of sexual harassment against Detective Leo Weizell for treating her like his secretary.”

  “Jeez, you broads are so touchy,” said Leo.

  “Broads. That’s another one. Didn’t they warn you against sexist words in that sensitivity class?”

  “Mostly I learned a bunch of new ones,” said Leo. “I’m a real quick study, don’t you think?”

  “The chief is gonna be real happy you got so much out of that class,” said Elena, “since it was his brainstorm.”

  “You want me to let the water out now that you’ve seen the deceased?” asked one of the campus cops, sending a puzzled glance from one detective to the other.

  Elena turned and stared at him. Of course. He was the snickerer who had answered the call at Sarah Tolland’s place. Then she turned back and studied the tub. “You’d have to reach in to flip the drain lever.”

  “Right.”

  “With your hand,” said Leo.

  “Yeah.”

  “Which is covered with the same kind of skin that dissolved off him — or her,” Elena pointed out.

  “Jesus,” said Officer Pollock.

  “Besides which you’d be draining away whatever that stuff is — and it may have killed him.” Again she studied the crime scene. “Actually, I think someone crashed his skull before they dissolved him.”

  Leo stayed in the bathroom, taking his own notes. Elena returned to the living room, called for I.D. & R., then called the medical examiner, and finally waved off the university police. She always got stuck with the women in hysterics. “Your mascara’s running,” she said loudly into the ear of the screamer, taking a seat beside her on the sofa. Rooting through her handbag, Elena found a Kleenex under her police revolver. “Here, wipe your face off.” The girl had stopped screaming and reached for her fanny pack as soon as Elena mentioned her mascara.

  “I’m Detective Elena Jarvis.” Elena shifted the gun again and located a blue and white foil-lined package, which she handed to the girl.

  “Is that a condom?” the girl asked tearfully.

  “No, it’s not a condom.” Elena pointed to printing on the package, which said “MOIST TOWELETTEthe instant cleanser and refresher.” “For the mascara. You’re a mess.”

  The girl nodded and began to scrub black tear tracks from her cheeks.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lili. Lili Bonaventura.”

  Bonaventura? Wasn’t that the name of a Miami crime lord? Hot damn! A mob hit right here at off-the-wall Herbert Hobart University. Suppressing a grin, Elena said casually, “Pretty scary in there, huh?” The girl nodded and sniffed. “I don’t suppose you could give us any idea who the deceased is?”

  “It’s Gus,” she replied, dabbing at fresh tears with the Kleenex, then removing the new smudges with the towelette.

  Elena handed her the whole Kleenex pack, plus a second towelette. “Of course, there’s no way to be sure,” she mused.

  “Yes, there is. He’s wearing our championship ring. I’m the team captain.” The girl’s voice rose into a keening wail on the last revelation. “And he’s the coach.”

 
“What sport would that be?” asked Elena uneasily.

  “Volleyball,” said Lili.

  “And the name of the deceased?”

  “Coach Gus — McGlenlevie.”

  Oh shit, thought Elena. And Sarah had been doing so well, attending the support group, acting like a normal person. Well, actually Sarah had missed the last meeting, but still Elena had been almost sure that the Chairwoman of Electrical Engineering hadn’t really tried to blow her ex-husband up with an exploding snail. Now this. Dissolving him in his own bathtub. “How did you happen to discover the — ah — remains, Ms. Bonaventura?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you had to get into the apartment to find him. Did someone let you in?” The girl stared at her from under a mop of curly hair. “Maybe you had a key.”

  “There’s a key here on the table beside the door,” said one of the campus cops, starting to pick it up.

  “Don’t touch it,” Elena snapped. He jumped as if bitten. Great, thought Elena. No telling how much evidence these university cops had destroyed. If an LSPD patrolman had responded, that wouldn’t have been a problem. They knew enough to secure the scene.

  “You think I killed Gussie?” Lili Bonaventura’s full lower lip trembled.

  “I didn’t say that. Maybe the door was ajar. Maybe the key won’t have your prints on it.” Maybe the girl, not Sarah, had killed him.

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “Right.” I.D. & R. arrived, and Elena gestured toward the bedroom. “Look, but don’t touch,” she called after them.

  “Very funny,” Charlie Solis called back. Not two seconds later she heard him mutter, “Madre de Dios.”

  “You were telling me how you happened to be in Mr. McGlenlevie’s apartment, Ms. Bonaventura.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Having discovered the body does not automatically make you a suspect.”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  Elena sighed and thought, Smart girl. Did Lili Bonaventura sense how much Elena hoped that she was the murderer? She — or anyone but Sarah Tolland.

  Good lord! Elena had been having dinner with the woman once a week since the snail incident. Sarah was the smartest, most interesting friend Elena had ever made. Intelligent people didn’t commit murders! Well-controlled people didn’t, and Sarah was the epitome of self-control. Look at how calm she’d been during the snail investigation. Elena shivered. What if that had been an attempted murder? And she’d ignored it and let the murderer go. Not just let her go, made a friend of her.

  No. That wasn’t what had happened. Onofre Calderon, the medical examiner arrived, and Elena waved him through to the bathtub.

  A noisy sniffle called her attention back to Lili. “You need another Kleenex?” Elena asked. Around them, surfaces were being dusted for prints; photographs were being taken, evidence bagged.

  Calderon stuck his head out of the bedroom and said, “I think he’s dead.”

  Six

  * * *

  Friday, May 15, 7:15 A.M.

  Elena sat in a Mexican ladder-back chair at her gaily painted table, sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. In one corner of her kitchen was a rounded adobe fireplace, which she never used, and certainly not in May with the morning temperature pushing seventy-five. Several of her rooms had those fireplaces, which gave a Hispanic ambiance to the house and provided a nesting place for birds in the chimneys. She could hear them twittering if she happened to be home when they were settling down for the night. Other nods to her mixed heritage included the drapes, upholstery, and bed covers made by her mother, a secret weaver in Chimayo, New Mexico.

  Since her mother was Anglo and not associated with any of the traditional weaving families, Aunt Josefina sold the material as if she’d produced it herself, which made the tourists happy because Aunt Josefina looked like a weaver — very Indian, more Indian than Elena’s father, Sheriff Portillo. Unused fireplaces and bright, clandestine, nonwashable fabrics. Mixed genes made her an anomaly in a world of central heating, microwave ovens, and machine-washable polyester. Elena grinned and poured herself another cup of coffee, reached out to pluck a piece of toast from the toaster, spread it with ambrosial apricot jam made by Leo’s stubbornly old-fashioned wife, Concepcion, and began to read the lead story.

  POET DIES IN ACID BATH

  Well maybe, thought Elena, but it hadn’t looked like acid to her. On the theory that it might be, the crime-scene team and the medical examiner had taken forever to fish the bones out with tongs. Elena had snagged a vial of the stuff herself.

  The remains of poet Angus McGlenlevie were discovered last night by Miss Lili Bonaventura, captain of the Herbert Hobart University intramural girls’ volleyball team, of which McGlenlevie was coach. The body lay in his bathtub, little left but the bones, thus generating the police conclusion that McGlenlevie had been immersed in an acid bath.

  That was Leo’s conclusion. Elena thought the liquid looked like diluted whitewash, but that wouldn’t make good copy. Who wanted to read a headline that said “Poet Dead in Whitewash”?

  McGlenlevie’s skull had been crushed by a powerful blow to the back upper left quadrant, raising the possibility that he may have been dead before being put into acid.

  She scanned the rest of the article, which identified McGlenlevie as the famous author of Erotica in Reeboks and other popular and critically acclaimed books of verse. Did books of verse actually achieve popularity? Maybe books of dirty limericks. Erotica in Reeboks sounded as if it belonged to the dirty-limerick genre.

  Abandoning her newspaper, she snapped on her nine-inch, black and white kitchen TV, which she’d bought cheap at a garage sale. The local news anchors were interviewing the Chairman of the Chemistry Department at Herbert Hobart University.

  “It couldn’t have been acid,” said Professor Abelard Moncrief. “Acid would have eaten up the tub. You’d have it all over the floor and burning its way into the apartment below. You could have dangerous fumes, and believe me, the neighbors would have noticed. If you flushed it down the drain, it would have eaten up the pipes. They didn’t do that, did they?” He sounded alarmed. “I could have told you what the compound was,” continued Professor Moncrief reprovingly, “but no one bothered to call me or bring me a sample.”

  Elena wished they had. In deference to the pipes and sewer system, the stuff was still sitting in the tub. She supposed no matter what it turned out to be, the newspapers would continue to call it an acid bath.

  Although it was Elena’s turn to take the late shift, from noon to eight, which wasn’t for four hours, the case goaded her like a burr inside a hiker’s boot. She wanted to move on it. Find proof that Sarah hadn’t killed McGlenlevie. Do it before the day’s case load swamped her. With the temperatures rising into the mid-nineties, the people of Los Santos, those without air conditioning, would be turning mean and killing each other. Crimes Against Persons would be run ragged — as usual.

  Seven

  * * *

  Friday, May 15, 8:35 A.M.

  “Hey, Carmen. Great hair,” Elena said to the police receptionist, who was a good deal more interested in hairstyles than she was in Crimes Against Persons.

  “You’re on twelve-to-eight,” said Carmen, jabbing a bobby pin into a complicated, odd-looking roll at the side of her head.

  “Right,” said Elena. “Being a dedicated officer is a real pain.”

  Carmen grinned. “If I could get the overtime you do, I’d be a real pain too,” she said, then turned her attention to a small boy nearby. “Hey, kid, did you just blow your nose into that potted plant? If you did, this lady, who’s a detective, is going to arrest you for aggravated assault on a plant.” The little boy dived for his mother, who was occupying one of the five chairs in the small reception area.