Acid Bath Read online

  Elena waved to the kid and started down the aisle toward her cubicle on Homicide Row in the back, just where she’d wanted to be.

  Between the academy and C.A.P., Elena had done two years on patrol, as all officers did, the first year on the Westside, tracking runaway teenagers and soothing their distraught parents, arresting under-eighteens for public possession of alcohol, chasing suspicious persons around neighborhoods, being the first on the scene for burglaries, breaking up bar and family fights, patrolling the projects and picking up tips from the guards there, lots of aggravated assaults but not too many homicides. Twice she’d caught homicide calls and made some friends in C.A.P. by being diligent in securing crime scenes and keeping witnesses around and busybodies away.

  The second year, they’d moved her to Central, where her Spanish and her ability to think on her feet stood her in good stead in an area that was always jumping. A slow night in Central was the exception rather than the rule. Six months there and they moved her to the East Valley, which was bigger and just as violent. She’d won some commendations in East Valley. The Gang Task Force had asked for her when she passed her detective exam at the top of the list, but so had Lieutenant Beltran of C.A.P.

  He admitted up front they needed a woman because it looked bad that they didn’t have one, but that was O.K. It got her in, even if it meant four months in the front with the Sex Crimes and Robbery squad. How she’d hated that! Not the robberies. The sex crimes. The traumatized rape victims, all those kids she had to sit with on the blue polka-dot sofa, getting them to tell her the awful things that had been done to them by parents, stepparents, brothers, and sisters; you name it, somebody did it to a kid.

  After four months and quick solutions to a couple of rape-murders, she’d asked for transfer to Sergeant Manny Escobedo’s Homicide and Aggravated Assault squad, and Beltran hadn’t blocked it, probably because they had another woman, not as high on the list as Elena, but still very good. She’d had commendations even as a patrol officer on child abuse and rape cases. Nadine Collins. Elena had been glad to see another woman make C.A.P. even if she didn’t interact much with Nadine.

  Sergeant Manny Escobedo, whose small windowed office she was passing, swung his chair around, knocked on the window, and yelled, “Hey, Jarvis.”

  She stuck her head in. “You’re my man on the twelve-to-eight shift,” he chided her. Each of the three squads contributed one detective to late and weekend shifts. “I hope you haven’t forgotten that.”

  “I’ll be there,” said Elena. “I just didn’t want to let the acid bath case get cold. Given the news coverage it’s generating, we’re gonna start getting heat from Lieutenant Beltran, maybe even Captain Stollinger.” Beltran was the head of Crimes Against Persons, Stollinger of Criminal Investigations.

  “You’re right about that, and Leo won’t be in till noon. Community Services O.K.’d him to talk to a bunch of kids in some damn kindergarten.”

  “Uh-huh. He’s this morning’s Show and Tell for one of Concepcion’s fourteen nieces and nephews.”

  “Shit,” said Escobedo. “What a great way to fight crime. They see a police detective, they’ll all want to carry guns.” Elena turned to go, and Escobedo called to her again, saying, “Jarvis, your stomach go all to hell after you got divorced?”

  She turned back. “Why, has yours, Sergeant?” The sergeant was more recently divorced than she.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Well, mine didn’t,” said Elena, “but then I was eating the same food I ate while Frank and I were still sharing a house. What are you eating?”

  “Whatever I can pick up,” Escobedo admitted.

  “And then you got two kids visiting you once a week, right?”

  “Yeah. I never have ’em but I get a call in the middle of the visit and have to take ’em back home to Marcella, which, of course, pisses her off, and she has to go over for about the millionth time all the reasons she divorced me. Or maybe she’s not there, and I’m even unluckier because her mother’s there. That old woman always did hate me.”

  “Try Maalox,” said Elena. “That or the gym. They tell me all those exercise machines really reduce stress.”

  “Just what I need,” Manny Escobedo muttered. “A whole bunch of pulled muscles to go with my stomach trouble.”

  Elena nodded. “Try Maalox,” she advised again and went on down the aisle, past the two small interview rooms, past the C.A.P. computer, which would do anything including put out a wanted poster, but not a thing to speed up the processing of physical evidence, almost all of which had to be sent to the Department of Public Safety Labs.

  In her own cubicle she settled into her rolling chair with its gray tweed upholstery. Partitions were covered with the same fabric. Someone must have got a good price on gray tweed. Still, Elena had read enough police procedurals to know that Los Santos C.A.P. looked pretty good. Almost restful. Detectives didn’t have their own offices, but most of the time they weren’t here; they were out in the field. When they were in, it was fairly quiet. Computer terminals, which they all had, weren’t noisy, and if you didn’t have a door, you did have the partitions around you. Of course, when other detectives were in, they were usually smoking, and she could have done without that, but you couldn’t have everything. From the descriptions she’d read of facilities in other cities, it was better here.

  Elena began her investigation on the telephone. The night before, after leaving Gus McGlenlevie’s apartment, she and Leo made two stops, the first at Sarah’s apartment downstairs; she wasn’t home. Why not? Elena had wondered uneasily. The support group didn’t meet until next Thursday, and finals week should have eliminated night classes and academic meetings. Sarah didn’t date. So why wasn’t she home?

  Bimmie Kowolski, the aerobics fiancée, was. They located her address in Gus’s address book and visited her to ask when she had last seen him. “When I told him that he either set the date for the wedding or the engagement was off,” said Bimmie, her face hot with resentment. “He’s never even given me a ring, and I don’t need that kind of treatment from my boyfriend. I’m asked for dates all the time.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” said Leo, who had been examining her as if she were an important piece of evidence. “When was that, Miss Kowolski?”

  “When was I asked for a date? Well, this cute masseur — “

  “When did you last see your fiancé?”

  “The night he gave his final in English four-ten — that’s the dirty poetry class,” she replied sullenly, and told them that she remembered very well because it was the night she caught Gus feeling up one of the poetesses. “He claimed he couldn’t help himself; he was turned on by the sonnet she wrote for the final. I tore it up,” said Bimmie with satisfaction, “but Gus said it didn’t matter because he was going to give her an A anyway.

  “So that’s when I said the thing about setting the date. Gus ignored me — like he always does. He just sat there making out the final grade sheet.” Pouting, Bimmie had brooded over Gus’s intransigence while Elena and Leo waited — none too patiently.

  “He didn’t average the grades,” Bimmie then added. “Does that seem right to you? My teachers always averaged grades. Gus just goes, ‘An A for you, sweetheart, and a B for you.’ He gave A’s to the girls and B’s to the boys. I told him, ‘That doesn’t seem right to me, Gus,’ and he goes, ‘What do you know about it, Bimmie? You’re not exactly a brain surgeon.’ And that’s the last I saw of him. I walked out, and he hasn’t called me. So why do you want to know?” she had asked Elena. “You finally decided to do something about the snail?”

  A disquieting question, thought Elena.

  “Well, it’s too late,” said Bimmie. “I sent the jogging suit to the cleaners. All the spots are — “

  “He’s dead, Miss Kowolski,” said Leo. They left Bimmie in tears, remorseful that she had spoken ill of her beloved Gussie when he was dead, convinced that the dangerous exploding snail had got him in the end — although they�
��d assured her that such was not the case.

  They couldn’t ask where she had been when he died because they didn’t know when it happened, nor were they likely to. All the guidelines a coroner uses to fix the time of death had disappeared with Gus’s flesh, which might explain why the murderer had dissolved him. Bimmie had a motive, Elena supposed, although her gut reaction was that Bimmie hadn’t done it. She’d have been afraid of burning acid holes in her designer jogging suit. Then Elena remembered Sarah, and told herself not to be so quick to eliminate perfectly viable suspects like Bimmie.

  With Bimmie’s information in mind, Elena made her first call of the morning to the English Department at the university and was told by the departmental secretary, who had read the morning paper, that the final for the late Professor McGlenlevie’s The Conception and Writing of Erotic Poetry had been held on Tuesday, May 5, at 7 P.M.,which was against the rules. “Holding a final in the evening isn’t allowed, but no one ever yet convinced him to follow any rules,” said the secretary in a petulant voice.

  It was obvious to Elena that Mr. Lance Potemkin, secretary to the English Department, disliked or disapproved of the late Gus.

  “At least, I suppose he gave a final,” said Mr. Potemkin. “I guess I should check to see if he turned in any grades.”

  “Where would you check that?” asked Elena and, being given the information, called the registrar’s office and found another, later day on which Gus McGlenlevie had been alive, Wednesday, May 6, when he turned in grades at the registrar’s office late in the morning. “He looked like he was going on safari,” said the registrar’s clerk. “And he patted my behind when I got up to give his grade sheet to the girl at the computer.” Elena was entering information into her own computer as she got it, phone held between shoulder and ear as she typed. She’d always meant to get herself one of those doohickeys that held the phone to your ear, but she always forgot. Result — a stiff neck from telephone interviews.

  Neither piece of information from the registrar’s clerk surprised Elena. As she told Leo, when he arrived at 10:30 and accused her of bucking for promotion by coming in so early, Gus McGlenlevie was a known lecher and given to idiosyncratic clothing, the Poets-Do-It-In-Iambic-Pentameter sweat shirt being a case in point. “And how come you’re not at Show and Tell?” she added. “You afraid I’d solve the case before you could get here?”

  “Oh hell, they only wanted to see my gun — bloodthirsty little boogers. I don’t know why anyone has kids these days. Television turns them into juvenile delinquents before they’re three.”

  “Uh-huh.” Elena didn’t comment further. She knew how much Leo and Concepcion wanted a child of their own.

  “Then I offered to show them a really good soft-shoe routine, and they asked about my handcuffs.”

  Elena laughed. “No one appreciates the fact that you’re the Fred Astaire of the LSPD.”

  “You laugh,” he retorted. “Just wait till the talent show. I ought to make sergeant just on the basis of the routine I’m working up.” He did a few steps, then asked, “So how come you happen to know McGlenlevie was a lecher? You date the guy or what?”

  Elena told him about the snail case.

  “If his wife killed him,” said Leo, “you’re going to be in deep shit, babe, for not arresting her the first time around.”

  Elena knew that; the prospect gave her cold chills, and not just because of the teasing she’d take in the station house. Her sergeant might ignore it — he considered Elena and Leo his best homicide team — but Beltran wouldn’t. She wasn’t sure what interpretation he’d put on her failure to arrest Sarah, but it wouldn’t do Elena’s career an ounce of good if Sarah had actually killed her ex-husband.

  Her second series of calls did nothing to solve her problems. First, she rang Sarah’s apartment and got the answering machine, as she had when she tried the night before. Then she called the Electrical Engineering Department and was told by the secretary, Mrs. Virginia Pargetter, that Dr. Tolland was out of town. She would not tell Elena where, and agreed to do so only after she’d telephoned Police Headquarters to be sure that Elena was, in fact, a police officer pursuing a legitimate investigation.

  The secretary evidently hadn’t read of Gus’s death, or if she had, she wasn’t letting on. Elena’s last call was to the Chicago hotel where Sarah Tolland was said to be attending a national conference for electrical engineers. Had Sarah mentioned a conference at any of those dinners they’d shared? Elena didn’t remember any such information. Maybe her friend had meant to mention it and hadn’t been able to because — The front desk at the hotel took her off hold and informed Elena that Dr. Tolland had checked out early that morning. Was Sarah coming home? Elena fervently hoped so.

  She then called the close-mouthed Mrs. Pargetter back and elicited the information that, no, Dr. Tolland was not coming home; she was going on vacation. Although the secretary initially assured Elena that Dr. Tolland had left a vacation address — ”Dr. Tolland always leaves word where she can be reached,” said Virginia — no such information was in the computer when she tried to retrieve it. Elena could tell that the woman was very upset to discover the void in her computer files. Had Sarah deleted her destination, killed her ex-husband, and then disappeared? Elena asked herself.

  Unfortunately, with that crazy report about an exploding snail on the blotter and her inexplicable disappearance, Sarah was looking more and more like the prime suspect. Even the fact that she hadn’t told Elena she was leaving seemed suspicious. Gloomily Elena reminded herself that Sarah had seemed to be a nice person. At the woman’s support group, at the dinners they’d shared, she hadn’t given the impression of being angry about the divorce, more like amused.

  Elena was the angry one, and she hadn’t killed Frank, so why assume cool, calm Sarah had killed Gus? But Sarah was gone. According to the secretary, she’d left Los Santos on Friday, May 8, early in the morning, 5:30, although according to the desk clerk at the hotel, the conference sessions hadn’t started until Monday. Had Sarah killed McGlenlevie sometime between Wednesday, which was, so far, the last time he had been seen alive, and Friday when Sarah herself left? Otherwise, why leave Los Santos early? Otherwise, why leave that message on Elena’s answering machine that she was too jammed up with last-minute chores to attend the support group or go out to dinner? Last minute before what? Killing her ex-husband? Skipping town?

  And then she’d left the conference early. Meetings were scheduled for today, but Sarah had skipped them, checked out, and disappeared — on the morning when news of Gus’s murder appeared in the papers. Had someone called her, sending her into panicked flight? It didn’t look good to Elena. It looked even worse to Leo when she told him.

  “Sounds like she’s our murderer,” he said. “Could she have killed him? I mean physically. Is she strong enough, tall enough?”

  “Maybe,” Elena hedged, feeling too depressed to offer an opinion. “We don’t have the coroner’s report — angle and force of the blow, that sort of thing.”

  “Coroner’s report won’t be in till Monday, so we better hit the streets. You want to interview the residents of the apartment building? See if anyone saw or heard anything. Did you notice that all the suspects are female? Just goes to show that women are making their mark. Women detectives, women murderers.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You don’t think there are any men who hated him? Like the men connected to the women. The secretary at the English Department is a man; he sure seems to dislike Gus. Funny name,” she mused. “I wonder if he’s related to my neighbors.”

  “McGlenlevie?”

  “No, Potemkin.” I’m whistling in the dark, thought Elena, hoping for any murderer except Sarah. “Let’s try interviewing colleagues, his and hers. No one’s going to be home at the apartment house on Friday morning.”

  “O.K., and if all else fails, there’s always that drive-by shooting. We haven’t cleared that yet.”

  “That and forty other cases.”

 
“Manny shifted some of our load to other guys. The brass wants this one solved.”