A glossy black crow landed on the back of Walsh's head, claws brushing the scalp, then quickly flew away, trailing hair. Walsh's head bobbed in agreement.
Jimmy heard footsteps approaching.
Chapter 6
Jimmy was watching the crow fly away, trailing a strand of Walsh's hair in its claw, when he became aware of Rollo edging away and knew things were going to get ugly. He slowly turned around. Oh, shit. He forced a smile. "Good afternoon, detective."
Detective Helen Katz glowered at him, a big rawboned cop with short dirty-blond hair and a face like a plowhorse. She elbowed Jimmy aside and stood there with one foot on the stone border of the koi pond, wrinkling her flat nose at Walsh's bloated body. "Jesus, this bastard is way past his pull date."
Katz was one of those female cops who habitually wore crepe-sole brogans, shapeless suit pants, and a white shirt and tie, thinking that she had to dress like Sergeant Joe Friday to be respected. That's what she had told Jane Holt anyway, criticizing Holt's designer suits and pearls, her iridescent running shoes, as "too girly"-fine for the politically correct Laguna PD, but Anaheim was an inland PD whose officers had to face down warring gangbangers, not chase rowdy boogie boarders off the beach. In actuality, no one on the Anaheim PD would have dared treat Katz in less than a professional manner regardless of what she wore. A former army MP who regularly took top honors in the annual Southern California Peace Officers hand-to-hand combat competitions, Katz was a hard-ass who considered interpersonal skills a sign of weakness. She scared the shit out of everyone. Jimmy was always overly polite with her, complimenting her wardrobe, solicitous about her health. It drove her nuts.
"Is that a new perfume you're wearing?" said Jimmy.
"I'm in my period."
"Congratulations. You must be so proud."
Katz draped a meaty arm across his shoulders and dragged him closer, her body warm and heavy. "This floater a friend of yours?"
Jimmy could hear a camera whirling behind him, the uniforms taking Polaroids until the CSI wagon arrived. "His name is-"
"I know who he is." Katz grabbed Jimmy by the scruff of the neck, throwing him off balance, his shins butting painfully up against the rocks. One push, and he'd be headfirst into the filthy water. "What I'm interested in is what you're doing here fouling up my crime scene."
Jimmy relaxed, refusing to struggle, not wanting to give her an excuse. He pretended they were old friends out for a stroll in Venice, and that the flies floating around them were pigeons in St. Mark's Square. He could see Rollo huddling with one of the uniforms, glancing over at him. "I'm writing an article on Walsh-"
"Detective? Is there a problem?"
Katz spun around and stared at the young uniformed officer, a strapping Hispanic rookie wearing his Sam Browne belt too high. "A problem?" she demanded, her hand still on the back of Jimmy's neck. "You think I might have a problem that you could actually do something about, Commoro?"
"Yes… I mean-yes, sir. Yes, detective," Commoro corrected himself, his adolescent acne flaring against his dark brown skin.
"Can you swim, Commoro?" asked Katz.
"I still hold the record in the hundred-yard butterfly at Santa Ana Catholic-"
"Good." Katz tossed him a set of keys. "Go get my boots out of the trunk of my car."
Commoro looked at Walsh's putrid body, then at Katz, then back to the body. He was fingering the car keys like rosary beads.
"Move it!" Katz waited until the uniform hustled away, handcuff jingling against his belt, before letting Jimmy go, giving his neck one last painful squeeze for good measure. She blotted her sweaty forehead with her necktie. "Now, where were we?"
"I was mentally composing my police brutality complaint."
"That'll be the day," Katz snorted. "Nice photo of you and the naked bimbos in SLAP. I bet Jane Holt was thrilled. Why did you have your hands over your unit, though? You got something to be ashamed of?"
"I'm sure yours is bigger than mine, detective."
"Follow me," snapped Katz. The two of them started a slow circuit of the koi pond. Katz stopped after a few feet, chewing on a thumbnail as she studied the body from a new angle. "You said you came here to do an article on Walsh. This your first visit?"
"I was here once before, about three weeks ago."
"Walsh had a drug problem when he went into prison," Katz said idly. Something in the water had caught her attention. She seemed barely interested in talking with Jimmy. "Did-did he have one when he got out?"
"I don't know what that means."
Katz looked at him, her eyes the intense blue of an antique doll, painted on and hard all the way down. "So in your position as a professional journalist and helpful citizen, was Walsh still strung out when you last saw him?"
"He liked to mix painkillers and booze. A lot of people do."
Katz watched a blotchy gray koi nuzzle what was left of Walsh's right ear. Cartilage was the last to go. "I saw a broken bottle in the water back there. A sloppy man and a sloppy death."
"Maybe."
Katz stared at him, but he didn't back down. The collar of her white shirt was soaked with sweat, but she wouldn't loosen her tie if you threatened her with a cattle prod. "Maybe?"
Jimmy didn't offer a clarification. The trick with someone like Katz was to make her force the information from you that you wanted her to have-the only truth she believed was the one she extracted under duress. If Jimmy was willing to be strong-armed, he could give up a partial truth and hold back the most important parts.
Commoro clomped across the dry ground wearing thigh-high rubber boots and rubber gloves, cursing to himself, accompanied by a stoop-shouldered man with a backpack.
"I need to get my samples before you disturb the body, detective," called the stooped man, his voice reedy and eager. You'd think he was at a birthday party, ready to blow out the candles on the cake. He was a few years older than Commoro, a pencil-neck in hiking boots, khaki shorts, and a denim shirt with double-decker pockets, his hair a nest of unkempt curls.
"Just don't take all day, professor," said Katz. "Make sure you get photographs first."
The professor took a 35-millimeter camera from the backpack and started taking photos of the corpse from every angle, moving closer, leaping from rock to rock until he was right next to Walsh's body. He perched there and finished out the roll, ignoring the flies swarming around him. The camera returned to his pack and he pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, then bent down over the body, knobby knees wide, his face inches from the putrefying flesh. Sunlight flashed on the stainless-steel tweezers in his hand as he plucked something off and held it up for examination. It wriggled.
Jimmy looked at Katz.
"Professor Zarinski is a bug doc who wants to be a consultant," Katz explained. "He's a pain in the ass sometimes, but he doesn't charge the department anything, and besides he buys coffee." She nodded to where B.K. was talking to an older cop. "The doofus there says you took one look at the floater and made a beeline for the trailer." She punched him lightly in the kidneys, more of a love tap. "What were you looking for?"
"A phone. I wanted to call it in to the proper authorities."
Katz smiled. "The proper authorities-who's that, the Drudge Report?" She stared into the koi pond again, cocking her head to get a better look. "Hold that thought, Jimmy. Okay, Commoro, time to take a dip."
Commoro shifted from one foot to the other.