“There is an apartment house, albeit crushed and burned. Walls talk, Peter, even burned ones.”
“Sure, I have long conversations with walls all the time, especially when I’m talking to idiots.”
“You mock, but it’s true.”
“I’m not mocking.” Decker turned off the sarcasm. Rina didn’t offer advice that often, so it paid to listen when she did. “What do you mean?”
Rina said, “Just because concrete, ash, and wood are inanimate objects doesn’t mean that they have nothing to say. In Judaism, we have a definite concept of walls being harbingers of messages.”
Decker smiled. “The writing on the wall.”
“That was literal. The Mene from the book of Daniel. In that case, the message was cryptic and volumes have been written on what it meant. But the messages are not always so mystical. Look at the laws of Tzarat…leprosy…not the bacterial kind of leprosy that we see today. Instead, it’s a spiritual leprosy. One contracts Tzarat when one does lashon harah-gossips against his fellowman. It is manifested by sores all over the body.”
“Like when Miriam spoke against Moshe in the Bible.”
“She wasn’t talking badly about her baby brother. She just thought he should spend more time at home with his wife. But G-d took umbrage. In that case, she was immediately stricken by Tzarat, because Miriam was a prophetess and a holy woman should not be gossiping about her brother even if it was with good intentions. There’s usually a warning system with Tzarat. First the walls of the home contract the disease as a visible sign to its inhabitants to change their ways. If these writings on the walls are ignored, the disease progresses until Tzarat is contracted corporeally by the occupants.”
“Okay,” Decker said. “Next time I find a Jane Doe, I’ll look for sores on the walls of her living room.”
Rina kissed her husband’s hand. “You scoff, Lieutenant, but that’s exactly what you do as a detective. You scour a crime scene to help you solve a murder.”
“Good point, Rina, except in this case, the crime scene was destroyed.”
“Nothing is ever fully destroyed,” Rina pointed out. “Look at Jerusalem, Peter. Anytime someone excavates in the ground-like for an archaeological dig or even just to build a new foundation for a building-something is always left behind. It could be anything from modern-day trash to old coins and relics and water jugs. About ten years ago, someone discovered an ancient tomb from the Second Temple era right in the middle of the suburban area of Rahavia. Just because something was destroyed on top doesn’t mean that the underneath has no story to tell.”
“I’m not saying that everything was destroyed. Obviously recovery has unearthed hundreds of body parts and personal effects. All I’m claiming is that the original crime scene was blasted into oblivion and the ground is basically an ashtray.”
“Sometimes ash is a great preserver,” Rina insisted. “If you take one of those tunnel tours underneath the Western Wall, you can actually see where the Romans dismantled original stones from the Second Temple. They knocked down almost the entire structure and burned what they didn’t smash into smithereens. And they’re still finding a lot of stuff had been preserved.”
“Jerusalem’s a lot older than Canoga Park.”
“But L.A. has its own relics. Look at the La Brea Tar Pits…and all the stuff we’ve unearthed from the Chumash Indians.”
“So if I find a saber-toothed tiger, I’ll concede defeat,” Decker answered.
“Now you’re being sarcastic again.”
Decker smiled. “Look, sweetheart, I understand what you’re saying. And I know Jerusalem is filled with history despite all the destruction. But the Second Temple area was a lot bigger than the apartment house on Seacrest. So it stands to reason that more of it would have survived.”
“Okay, that’s true,” Rina admitted. “But it doesn’t have to be a massive structure to tell a story. Look at the Burnt House in Jerusalem. In the early seventies, archaeologists unearthed a Roman house from the Second Temple that had been burned down. Much of was preserved by ash. Not just the structure, Peter, but also they dug up a lot of ancient artifacts. And that house wasn’t nearly as big as the apartment building on Seacrest. So what do you have to say to that?”
Decker smoothed his mustache. “Point well taken.”
And it was true. At a crime scene, he often wound up looking through piles of detritus to locate that one crucial nugget of evidence. Because of his conversation with Rina, he realized that he had neglected a very important aspect of the investigation. No one had actually gone down to the original crime scene-the place where recovery had found the Jane Doe-and checked it out for forensic material in person.
“Now what are you thinking about?” Rina asked him.
“I’m thinking that you are a very bright lady. It’s time I visited a crime scene.”
19
S OMETIMES L.A. SUNRISES were preceded by spectacular, awe-inspiring displays of color-brilliant oranges, royal purples, and shocking pinks. On other occasions, they consisted of an insipid, dishwater-gray light breaking through an overcast sky. Such was the case this morning. June gloom had covered the basin with a layer of lint, and it was chilly and damp: what the locals would describe as just plain yucky.
It didn’t help that Decker was staring into a desolate area-a seven-foot Cyclone fence encircling a pit as if it were a zoo cage under restoration. Inside, several excavators and steel bins of biohazardous material stood inert and ominous. Yellow caution tape flapped in a wind pungent with the odor of charred blackness. He raised the zipper on his bomber jacket and sipped hot coffee from his thermos. Then he checked his watch. It was a little before seven. The crew wasn’t scheduled to be out until ten, and the one person he did manage to reach-an NTSB field officer named Catalina Melendez-was a mother of two school-age children and couldn’t make it down before eight.
That was okay. It gave Decker ample time to look around and absorb what he had neglected. He capped the thermos and laid it on the sidewalk. He grasped the cold metal of the makeshift fencing and peered inside the perimeter.
What had it been like…to have been trapped in that inferno?
Staring into bleakness, he suddenly sensed motion from the corner of his eye. “Hey,” he yelled out. “Hey! Police!”
A shadowed figure pivoted and took off, scaling over the fence and dropping to the ground on the opposite side from where Decker was standing, vanishing within moments. There was no way that Decker could catch up and he let it ride. The person could have been someone homeless camping out, or more likely, it was a vulture, scavenging for coins. Disaster sites were often pilfered for valuables.
Decker scribbled down a few cursory notes, then took out a camera and began snapping pictures. By the time he had taken most of his detailed photographs, it was almost eight. Catalina Melendez showed up twenty minutes later. She was small, with mocha-colored skin, and solidly built. Wisps of curly black hair were blowing about her face and in her mouth. She pulled them from her lips with fingers topped with clipped nails. She wore black slacks, boots, and a black bomber jacket with a yellow NTSB emblazoned on back.
“Sorry I’m late.” She pulled out a set of keys and began sorting through them. “My six-year-old had an accident involving a carton of orange juice. How long have you been waiting?”
“Not so long,” Decker lied. “I really appreciate you coming down this early…it’s Officer Melendez, right?”
“Yeah, but call me Cat.” Again, she pulled strands of hair from her mouth. “It looks like we’ve got a little wind and that’s not helpful. It blows the residue around. I hope you have a mask. You don’t want to be breathing in this muck.”
Decker pulled a face mask from his jacket and put it on.