Then he understood.
When Scott Maple had knocked him off balance, the player must have slipped out of his pocket. In the clatter of breaking glass he’d never heard it drop.
He had left it in the lab. The player itself was of no importance, a mass-produced item that could never be traced to him. But the tape inside…it was just possible that they could find him though the tape…
No way. He was just getting paranoid.
Anyway, the incident at the chemistry lab would not be connected with the serial killings. And the tape player and the cassette inside would never be recovered in any identifiable form.
He had made a small slip, uncharacteristic of him, but everything was fine.
He was in no danger. Of course he wasn’t.
Of course.
18
The fire was out by the time Dodge reached the Life Sciences Center at the northeast corner of the university campus. An engine from Fire Station 37 idled on the curving street under an elm tree’s branches. Parked around the engine were three LAPD squad cars, light bars cycling blue and red in the pinkish light of dawn.
Dodge parked his unmarked Caprice behind the nearest patrol unit and strolled toward the knot of firefighters gathered with the cops near the front door of Life Sciences. The firefighters looked tired, and the cops looked bored. That was nothing new. Cops at a crime scene always looked bored.
If this was a crime scene. There was, as yet, no evidence that a crime had been committed. With any luck, it would stay that way. Dodge didn’t need another fucking homicide on his plate.
Spears of light from the sun breaking the horizon jabbed his eyes as he crossed the greensward, his shoes collecting dew. On the fringe of the crowd, he ran into a fireman he recognized as the chief of station 37. He was wearing his heavy canvas turnout coat, the high collar snapped shut. Only the tips of his ears were visible, and they were blistered from the heat.
There was the usual exchange of bullshit hellos and how-you-doin’s, and then Dodge asked him what had gone down here.
"Fucking mess," the captain said. "Oh-four-fifty, we respond to an alarm. I lead in the company-two vehicles, wagon and pumper. The blaze is a worker, basement level of the building fully involved, no way we can get inside. It’s strictly surround and drown. We pump in maybe ten thousand gallons. Use foam too, when the wind dies down. Finally some of us suit up in our BAs"-breathing apparatus-"and get in. Hosemen lay down lines, rest of us search for casualties. Visibility zero. Gotta feel our way through. I pretty much stumble over the victim. Deceased."
"You apply CPR?"
"Wouldn’t have helped. This guy was a goner. Anyway, by then I’m drawing a vacuum on my facepiece, so I get the hell out of there."
"Where’s the DB now?" Dead body.
"Still inside. Figured there was no point in moving it, disrupting the scene any more than necessary."
"You thinking arson? Is that why you wanted to keep the scene intact?"
"Don’t know what to think. We got an arson unit coming over, but they’re hung up on other cases right now."
"Busy night for the firebugs."
"They’re all busy nights."
"Okay, I got the picture. Take care of yourself." Dodge started to walk away.
"Hey, Jim, one more thing. There’s some pooled water from our hoses down there, though luckily there are floor drains in the lab, and once we unclogged ’em, the water mostly ran off. Still, you’ll want waterproof boots. Got any with you?"
"Yeah, right along with my fly-fishing gear and my pup tent. Who do I look like, Eddie fucking Bauer?"
"You can borrow a pair out of the wagon."
Dodge thanked him again, then waded into the crowd and buttonholed the nearest uniform. "Who’s the first officer?"
"Painter." The cop pointed toward a woman in blue.
Dodge didn’t know her. Since he knew all the veteran West LA cops, this one was probably a recent transfer from another division. He looked her over. Wide hips, skin so shiny black it was almost purple. Reminded him more of a goddamn welfare whore than an officer of the law.
He took Painter aside, introduced himself, and got out his notepad as she ran down the details. She reiterated much of what Dodge already knew before getting to the vic.
"Male or female?" Dodge asked.
"Male. That’s about all we can tell so far."
"No idea who he was? Student, teacher, janitor, night watchman…?"
"His clothes were vaporized and so was any DL or other ID he was carrying. Can’t tell what the hell he looked like. They may have to go by dental records."
"That bad, huh?"
"That bad." She added, "Some kids said it might be a student named, uh, Scott Maple."
"What makes them say so?"
"He’s a grad student, apparently worked down there at all hours on some big project with a deadline."
"Oh? What’s in the basement anyway?"
"Chemistry lab."
"I see." Like any cop, Dodge paid attention when the subject of labs came up. A lot of crime revolved around labs.
"You thinking crank?" Officer Painter asked.
"Could be. Or some designer drug."
"Pretty unusual to cook up something like that in a university chem lab, don’t you think?"
Dodge shook his head. "When I went to college, we got some big-name rock groups to play on campus. Nobody could figure out how we induced them to show up. I mean, this was a little shit college in the middle of nowhere."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." He was warming up to Painter a little bit. He liked people who showed an interest in his stories. "So I looked into it. Turned out some enterprising grad students in the chemistry department were paying the bands in LSD."
Painter seemed unconvinced. "Think that kind of thing still goes on? I mean, it was a long time ago."
His momentary enthusiasm for Painter’s companionship vanished. "Right, it was the fucking dinosaur age." He didn’t like the insinuation that he was old, especially coming from some fat bitch who’d probably been giving blow jobs to the high school football squad a couple of years ago. "So what the fuck else have you got?" he asked stiffly.
Painter seemed unaware of his disappointment in her, or maybe she just didn’t give a shit. "We’re trying to track down this Maple. His dorm mates haven’t seen him."
"He got a girlfriend? Boyfriend? Anything?"
"Girlfriend. We’re looking for her. Not sure if she’s on campus this weekend. School’s out for the holiday, you know."
"Oh, is this a holiday weekend? I had my head so far up my ass, I didn’t notice."
She ticked a cool glare at him. "Just pointing it out. ME’s not here yet; neither is SID. Not that there’ll be much for SID to look at down there."
SID was the Scientific Investigation Division, the forensics experts. Dodge had to admit that Painter was right. No trace evidence would survive the fire-which might be why the blaze had been set in the first place.
"Any reason we should be thinking arson?" he asked.
"Lot of flammable chemicals spilled everywhere. Beakers and stuff, you know. Place went up like a torch. Could’ve been intentional, I don’t know."
"You have no opinion?"
"It’s not my job to have an opinion."
She sounded tired. Probably she thought she was tired. She was wrong. Let her spend the next fifteen years wearing a badge, taking shit from every asshole on the street, making no money, pissing her life away. Then she would know how it felt to be tired.
He thanked her for the recap, then got two pairs of the waterproof boots and hung around, waiting for his partner to show. By now the sun was jostling the treetops at the far end of the quadrangle. There was a line of rust-colored smog on the horizon, as usual, but the sky overhead was turning blue. Of course its clarity was an illusion. The goddamn smog was everywhere, but up close, you couldn’t see it. Dodge thought there might be some sort of metaphor buried in that observation, but he didn’t bother to dig it out.