"Basically, the head and the lower extremities," said the attendant. He was a short, solidly built Hispanic named Albert Martinez, with a crew cut and goatee and thick-lensed glasses that enlarged and brightened his eyes. The crucifix around his neck was gold and hand-tooled, vaguely Byzantine.
The coroner's office was two stories of square, smooth, cream stucco, meticulously maintained. Back in East L.A. Back at County Hospital. Claire's old office was a few blocks away. I hadn't realized it before, but she'd come full circle.
"The rest of him is pretty much goulash," said Martinez. "Personally, I think it's amazing we got what we did. The train must have hit him at what-forty, fifty miles per?"
The room was cool, immaculate, odorless. Empty steel tables equipped with drain basins, overhead microphones, a wall of steel lockers. A junior high student would recognize all of it; too many TV shows had dimmed the shock. But television rarely offered a glimpse at the contents of the lockers. Dead people on TV were intact, clean, bloodless props resting peacefully.
I hadn't been down here since internship, wasn't enjoying the experience.
"How'd you identify him?" said Milo.
"Welfare card in his pocket," said Martinez. "The lower extremities still had pieces of pants on and the pocket was in one piece. All he had on him was the card and a couple of bucks. The interesting thing is, you could still smell the booze on him. Even with all the other fluids. I mean, it was really strong. Only other time I smelled it that strong was this woman, died in childbirth, must have drunk two bottles of wine that night and she arrested on the delivery table. Her amniotic fluid was red-wine-red, you know? Almost purple. She must have been saturated with Thunderbird or whatever. The baby was dead, obviously. Probably lucky."
Martinez touched his crucifix.
"When's Beatty's autopsy scheduled?" said Milo.
"Hard to say. It's the usual backlog. Why?"
"It might be related to something. So you're saying Beatty must have been pretty juiced."
"To smell that strong? Sure. My guess would be way over the limit. He probably got blasted, wandered onto the tracks, lay down for a nap, and boom." Martinez smiled. "So, could I be a detective?"
"Why bother?" said Milo. "Your job's more fun."
Martinez chuckled. "Those tracks-they really should do something about them, no fence, no guardrail when they get close to the train yard. I grew up around there, used to play on the tracks, but they weren't running trains back then. You remember last month? The little kid who wandered on, walking home from school? Not far from where Beatty got hit. That kid, we didn't get anything recognizable on him. They should put a fence up, or something… So, anything else?"
"I'd like to look at Beatty."
"Really? How come?"
"I want to think of him as a person."
Martinez's thumb and forefinger closed around the bottom of the crucifix. "A person, huh? Well, maybe looking at him isn't the right way to do that, you know?"
Milo said, "Humor me."
Martinez walked over to a locker, slid the drawer out silently, drew back white sheeting.
The face was gray, surprisingly intact except for a thatch of lacerations on the left cheek. Ash gray, because in life Ellroy Beatty had been black. White lint of kinky beard stubble, maybe four, five days' worth. Untrimmed mass of gray hair. The eyes were open, dull, dry, the lips caked with pinkish crust. That vacant look common to all dead faces. No matter what your IQ in life, when the soul flies, you look stupid.
Below the neck was empty space. Clean decapitation except for a few fringes of trachea and jugular, meaty muscle fibers protruding. Two feet down the table was a white-wrapped package that Martinez needlessly explained was "the lower extremities."
Milo stared at the ashen chunk that had once borne the consciousness of Ellroy Beatty. Not blinking, not moving. I wondered how many times he'd been down here.
Just as Martinez said, "Okay?" the door opened and a man strode in. He wore scrubs, a hairnet, paper slippers, a loose mask around his neck. About Beatty's age, tall, stoop-shouldered with a deeply tanned face and a thick black beard.
He glanced at us, read the index card in his right hand, and headed for one of the steel lockers, two rows away.
Then he saw Ellroy Beatty's head and flushed with anger. "What the hell's going on here?"
Martinez said, "Some kind of problem, Dr. Friedman?"
"I'd sure as hell say so. Who cut up my D.B.?"
"Your D.B.?" said Martinez.
"That's what I said. Are you deaf, Albert?" Friedman turned to Milo. "And who the hell are you?"
"LAPD."
"I thought Willis Hooks was on this one."
"No," said Milo. "Hooks is Central. This is a Newton case, the detective's Robert Aguilar."
"What?" said Friedman, jabbing the card. "The paperwork says Central, Hooks. How long have you been doing this, Mr. Aguilar?"
Milo said, "I'm Sturgis, Doctor. West L.A."
Friedman blinked. "What the hell-" He stepped closer to Ellroy Beatty's head. "Let me tell you, Detective, someone's in deep dirt. I had this D.B. scheduled for a post and someone cut his goddamn head off! And what's he doing in that drawer when he's supposed to be over here?" Friedman waved the card.
"No one moved him, Dr. Friedman," said Martinez. "He got put here right away. And no one cut him, this is the-"
Bullshit, Albert! Bullshit on toast-bullets don't sever your damn head! Bullets don't-"
"This is D.B. Beatty," said Martinez. "The one who was hit by a-"
"I know who he is, Albert!" Another wave of the card. "Beatty, Leroy. Gunshot wound to the head, brought in last night-"
"Beatty, Ellroy," said Martinez.
"Leroy, Albert. Says so right here." The card was thrust at Martinez's face. "Case number 971132; Time of Delivery: three-sixteen A.M."
Martinez rolled up some of the sheeting covering Beatty's legs. Pulling out a toe tag, he read, "Ellroy Beatty, hit by a train. TOD three-forty-two A.M., case number 971135."
Friedman looked down at the head. Then the card. Then the numbers on the steel drawers. He yanked one open.
Inside was an intact body, naked, gray.
Exact same gray as Ellroy Beatty.
Same face.
All four of us stared.
I looked from corpse to corpse. Minor discrepancies materialized: Leroy Beatty had slightly less hair on top than Ellroy, but more on the bottom. A full white beard. No scratches on his face, but a keloid scar puckered the right jawline, probably an old knife wound.
The neat, blackened hole in his forehead looked too innocuous to have killed him. The impact had caused facial distortion-swelling around the nose, puffiness under the eyes. Bloodred eyeballs, as if he'd stared too long into the fires of hell.
Friedman's head was swiveling now, too.
"Twins," said Martinez. "Brother Ellroy, meet Brother Leroy."
Friedman turned on him. "Don't joke, Albert. What the hell's going on?"
"Good question," said Milo.
It took two hours to put it all together. Dr. Friedman left long before then, muttering about having to work with incompetents.