"Get in there," ordered Katz. "There's something just under the surface, right near the head. I can see it catching the sunlight. See that gray rock? That one. Hurry up, the fishies won't bite you-they already hit the smorgasbord." She laughed. It was a nice laugh too, a sweet laugh, a private joke on a summer day.
Commoro gingerly entered the pond, dark blue circles spreading under the armpits of his uniform. The bottom of the pool varied in depth, the scummy water rising to his knees as he made his way to where Katz pointed. He tried not to make waves, but he sent ripples across the pool with every step, banging Walsh's body against the rock the professor knelt on. Commoro stuck his hand in the water, his head turned away.
"What were you looking for in the trailer, Jimmy?" asked Katz, still watching the water.
"The things that a reporter learns from a source. That's privileged information, but at the same time," Jimmy hurried, sounding nervous, "I feel an obligation to help your investigation. We're on the same side."
Katz laughed.
Commoro fumbled around the gray rock, the water filling his rubber glove. He shuddered, trying not to breathe, as the body bobbed against him.
"A word of advice," the professor murmured to Commoro as he picked through Walsh's scalp with the tweezers, his voice barely louder than the flies that buzzed around them. "Take deep breaths. It will make it easier. It's called sensory overload. Once the nasal receptors fully fire, well, it's really quite tolerable."
"Take off your glove, Commoro," ordered Katz. "Okay, Jimmy, show and tell."
"Okay." Jimmy was going to tell her the truth, as much as he needed to anyway. "In exchange, I'd like a heads-up on the autopsy report before you release it. There's going to be reporters all over this story."
"Sure, Jimmy, share and share alike, you and me, we'll have a regular circle jerk. Hey, Commoro!" Katz's voice echoed off the surrounding hills. "You puke on my floater, you're going to be directing traffic at Disneyland until your nuts drop!"
Commoro was shaking as he pulled off one of his rubber gloves. He took a shallow breath, held it, and plunged his bare hand into the murky water, setting Walsh's body rolling as he reached around. He suddenly held up Walsh's sunglasses. One of the lenses was cracked.
"Bag 'em," said Katz.
Commoro's look of triumph turned to shock as what was left of Walsh's face came briefly into view.
"They go for the eyes first, the soft parts," Katz said conversationally, batting away flies. "They swim right inside the mouth going after the tongue."
"What kind of fish are these, detective?" said Commoro, hand on his pistol. "Piranha?"
"Koi, officer," soothed the professor. "Quite harmless, I assure you."
"There's not a fish alive that won't eat dead meat," Katz said to Jimmy. "These assholes who keep tropical fish-goldfish are just Dobermans with fins, if you ask me."
"Detective?" Sergeant Rollings lumbered over to them, a fleshy old-timer sweating in the sun, counting the coffee breaks until retirement. "I finished the preliminary with the two civies and checked on the meat wagon-they should be here in five or ten minutes." He hitched his pants, his blue uniform so wrinkled it looked deliberate. "Hey, Jimmy, loved the picture of you with the twins. How do I get your job?"
"How are you doing, Ted?"
"My hemorrhoids are acting up, and this heat ain't helping." Rollings watched the rookie standing in the koi pond. "Hey, Commoro, you need a license to fish!"
"Start a walkaround on the ridgeline, sergeant," said Katz. "Keep your eyes out for anything that might indicate someone had been up there watching the trailer."
Rollings looked up at the steep slope. "How about if I do a look-see inside the trailer instead? My bunions are killing me."
"Gum wrappers, cigarette butts, anything that you can find," said Katz, as though she hadn't heard him.
Rollings hitched at his pants again, sighed, and shuffled away.
"Can I come out now, detective?" Commoro sounded like he was twelve.
"A doper tries walking on water, slips, cracks his head on a rock, and drowns. That's my first impression," said Katz. "But you don't think it was an accident. What do you know that I don't?" She shifted her stance, closer now. "You don't want to make me wait, Jimmy. You really don't."
"Walsh was working on a new screenplay," said Jimmy. "We were going to have a little party today, then I was going to interview him and-"
"That's what you were doing in the trailer?" said Katz. "Getting the screenplay?"
"It wasn't there."
"Maybe you didn't look hard enough."
"He was supposed to show it to us today. That's why we were having the party."
"What was this screenplay about? Some kind of crime story?" Katz stroked her thick jaw. "Walsh writing about somebody he met in the joint? That could be dangerous. Nobody likes a snitch." She smiled again at him. "So what was it about?"
"I don't know. Walsh said he didn't give previews."
Katz stared at him with those hard blue eyes of hers, and Jimmy wondered if anyone had ever been able to look past them and see inside of her. "Commoro! Go toss that bag of briquettes onto the barbecue and fire them up." Her eyes never left Jimmy.
"Detective…?" Commoro was more confused than ever now.
"Go on, Ernesto," Katz said to the uniform, gently now. She waited until Commoro splashed away, then grinned at Jimmy. "Wouldn't want those steaks to go to waste."
"I just wanted you to know about the missing screenplay," said Jimmy. "The ME does good work, but sometimes the caseload piles up and she gets behind, or she hands an easy one off to Boone, and we both know what he's like. I want to make sure that Walsh gets four-star treatment, that's all."
"Save your cheerleading for Detective Holt," said Katz, hands on her hips. "I don't see anything here that looks like murder, but I treat any suspicious death as a potential homicide. Now you show up with this missing-screenplay story, the mysterious screenplay that you don't know anything about." She closed in on him, so near that Jimmy could smell stale coffee on her breath, "I surely hope you're not trying to stir things up so you can get a story out of it. If I decide that's what you doing…"
"Walsh just said that it was a million-dollar idea. That's all I know."
"Okay." Katz held his gaze. "I'll go over Walsh's trailer myself. This screenplay-does it look like a book or a magazine or what?"
"It looks like a stack of paper. Maybe a hundred pages. He might have put it in a binder, or a manila folder-I don't know."
"Just a stack of paper?" Katz shook her head, disgusted. "I guess a million dollars doesn't buy much in Hollywood."
Chapter 7
"I have no intention of running phone numbers for you," said Jane Holt, keeping a steady pace in spite of the twinge in her left ham-string, the one that was always tight.
Jimmy didn't answer.
"I'm not going to do it," Holt repeated. Seagulls screamed overhead as she ran along the waterline. Her dark hair was pulled back, elegant somehow, even in nylon shorts and a Catalina marathon T-shirt, but her legs were too muscular for the debutante she had once been. The T-shirt was untucked, covering the.380 auto clipped to the waistband along her back, and the handgun would have been out of place at a deb ball too. "You know I can't."
"I wouldn't ask except I'm having trouble pulling-"
"Is that why you came this morning?" Holt stopped now, confronting him.
"I'm having a hard time pulling up Walsh's cell phone calls," said Jimmy, not answering the question. "He didn't have credit, so he had to use prepaid cards, and they're hard to trace. Rollo says you have to go through central billing, and-"
"Private citizens aren't supposed to trace calls. Even police have to get a court order."