The trouble with hairy, p.5
The Trouble With Hairy, page 5
part #2 of West Hollywood Vampires Series
Troy climaxed with an appropriately theatrical display of moaning, groaning, and general thrashing about of limbs. Chris stood and delicately rearranged the remains of his own clothing, looking lovingly down at Troy’s nude, sweating body.
“Well, monkey,” he said, slapping Troy lightly on his naked rear. “Are we going to go look for a new home or not?”
By eleven the next morning, Becky could barely keep her eyes open after finishing the postmortem of the fire victim. Even the repeated sugar highs from mass consumption of the ever-present peppermint sticks had been unable to make a dent in her fatigue. She looked at the clock, amazed at the time, and started to put her instruments in the tray for Ty or Sara to wash later. She left the charred corpse on the autopsy table for Ty to deal with, barely stifled a yawn and popped memory card from the recorder. Trudging down the hall like a zombie, she tossed the square of plastic onto her assistant’s desk.
“All finished. Bag ’im and tell Sara to type this up.”
Without further instruction, she shambled down the hall to her office and collapsed on the threadbare couch that served as guest seating on the rare occasions when anyone who was still breathing cared to be a guest of the coroner.
At Clive’s request, the first thing she’d done after her preliminary examination was to take an imprint of the burn victim’s remaining dental work. One of the deputies waited with her until the medium had hardened and had run the casting across the street to the Sheriff’s station. Clive wanted it available for analysis by the time the FBI opened its offices at nine o’clock Eastern Standard Time. At eight thirty on the West Coast, just when Becky had been up to her elbows in charred flesh, Clive had called to report that the FBI had failed to make a match.
“How’s it going?” he’d asked. “Through yet?”
“Are you kidding?” Becky replied, exhaustion tinting her voice. “You’d think with so little left of him, I’d be done in ten minutes, but…” She tugged firmly on a particularly difficult splinter of bone and gave a snort of satisfaction as it popped free. “He’s so badly burned, I’m having trouble getting samples.” She scowled. “It’s not like WeHo has its own DNA lab or anything. It’s not like I’m out of breath asking for one. Everything’s gotta go to County.”
“Becky, please,” Clive began with long-suffering patience. “Budgets…”
“I know,” she interrupted, grumpily. “But I am not gonna shut up about it.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Clive replied. “No chance of getting prints?” he added doubtfully.
“Are you kidding?” said Becky, telephone cradled to her ear so as not to get the gunk that had once been Peter Kaiser’s corporeal being onto the receiver. “I can barely tell you what glove size he wore. Look Clive, this guy is better done than a steak at Trader Vic’s. The skin’s practically gone. The blood’s boiled mostly down to sludge. Half the goddamned bones shattered in the explosion. I’m even having a tough time trying to figure out exactly how tall he was.”
Clive sighed in defeat.
“Not to worry,” said Becky, encouragingly. “By some miracle of God, I finally got a decent blood sample, and get this, he was HIV.”
“So?”
“Use your head, Clive,” Becky said. “You wanna confirm an ID as the shop owner without waiting for County, right? This…”
She paused and used her elbow and the tip of one pinky to turn a page on the police report.
“This Kaiser guy?”
“I’m not tracking,” Clive replied.
“Well…” Becky came back to the table and pried open the corpse’s mouth, examining it critically. “The remaining teeth are in good shape, well cared for. Kaiser was probably pretty prominent in the gay community. Owned an antique store, pretty wealthy from the jewelry he was wearing — well, at least from the weight of the gold lumps that were left — and slightly past prime age from what I can tell. If he held true to form, he was probably real careful about the way he looked.”
“Gay dentists.” Realization colored the captain’s voice.
“Yep,” she replied. “Gay dentists. Have your boys make copies of the casting I sent over and run ‘em around town. If this baby is Kaiser, the quickest way we’ll confirm it is through dental records. You can probably get ‘em before close of business today.”
“And, if not?”
“Well,” Becky said snippily, “then I guess you’ll just have to work your little tail off to figure out who it was, won’t you?”
The line was silent for a minute. Becky started to feel slightly guilty about having lost patience. Before she could apologize, Clive had broken the silence.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” he kindly advised her. “I’ll check it out.” So saying, he’d rung off.
Now two and a half hours later, back in her office, Becky felt her eyelids slowly closing, and without further ado, she drifted off into a pleasant dreamland populated by fashionably thin young women and their handsome husbands, all sipping lustily at tall frosty chocolate milk shakes and nibbling at luscious slices of banana crème pie — and all without ever gaining so much as a single ounce.
“Becky?” The voice was soft but insistent. “Becky?” it repeated.
“Huh?” Becky’s eyes flickered open and slowly focused. “Oh, it’s you.”
Her assistant, Ty Takahara, stood before her, a typed report in one hand and a small white paper bag in the other.
“Here’s the report,” he said and dropped it onto the sofa next to Becky’s prone form. “I had Sara get a copy over to Clive about an hour ago.” He smiled sympathetically. “I thought we’d let you sleep.”
“Thanks.” Becky hoisted herself to a sitting position and began to quickly skim the small sheaf of paperwork. Her nose wrinkled; there was an alluring scent coming from somewhere. She closed her eyes for a moment, zeroing in on the intriguing smell.
“Do I smell Mrs. Field’s cookies?” she asked dreamily. “White chocolate macadamia?”
Ty had the decency to blush. “They’re for me,” he said. His Asian features were crossed with an unspoken apology. “But,” he said, and visibly brightened, “I brought you lunch. Dietetic.”
He handed her the white paper sack. Becky took it from him glumly.
“Oh, joy.” She’d felt more enthusiasm at the prospect of a high colonic. Tentatively peering into the bag in an effort to decipher its undoubtedly appetizing contents, she asked, “What time is it?”
“After one.” Ty moved toward the door. Becky’s eyes enviously followed his lithe athletic figure; no matter what he ate, he never seemed to gain a pound. His torso had the classic V-shape, while Becky despaired of hers ever looking like anything other than a W.
“Oh!” He stopped in the doorway. “Clive wants to see you in half an hour.”
“Great,” she said, dryly. “Just enough time for…lunch.”
Ty left and Becky unwrapped one of the sandwiches with a sigh of resignation. Closing her eyes to avoid the sight of wheat bread that looked like it might be almost as appetizing as cardboard, she took a tentative bite. Slowly at first, her taste buds began to tingle. By the second bite, her tongue was aroused at the burst of sweetness. She took a huge third bite, and placing the rest of the sandwich on the edge of her desk, bolted for the hallway.
“Ty!” she yelled, happily.
Ty was waiting for her outside the door. “Yes?” he inquired with a grin.
“My God! That’s fabulous! What is it?”
Ty’s chest expanded with pride. “Honey roasted turkey on whole wheat with alfalfa sprouts and…are you ready for this? Cranberry sauce! I got you two,” he confessed. “Better yet…” he paused, savoring the drama of his announcement, “low fat.”
To his surprise, Becky grabbed him in a huge bear hug, kissed him sloppily on the cheek and raced back to her office to devour the rest of her lunch. Ty smiled, and amused, wiped away smears of cranberry sauce from his face as he walked back to his desk.
“It was the owner of the shop,” Clive commented. “We were right. He used a dentist down on San Vicente. My people got him to check his records pronto. We had a potential name already, of course, so it didn’t take long.”
Becky was seated in her usual chair in front of his desk, trying not to nod off. She’d run over to a convenience market on Robertson and bought a few cans of dietetic fruit salad. Now she was steadfastly shoveling orange and pineapple slices into her mouth straight from the can and hoping she’d get enough of a jolt from the fructose to pep her up enough so that she could think clearly.
“You said something last night about an investigation. He had a record?” she inquired while silently longing for a verbotten Boston Creme donut, which she was sure would snap her to attention a hell of a lot faster than the damned artificially sweetened, low calorie fruit syrup.
Clive pulled a clipboard from his desk and handed it to her. “Here. Read this.”
She read to herself for a minute. “Antique fraud?” she asked. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing.”
“There is. Billions of dollars worth a year internationally, in fact. A jilted girlfriend filed the complaint. She’s got no case herself, of course, but she was eager to help us out. Gave us a short list of customers, too. Apparently,” Clive hid a smile, “she came over to his apartment one day and caught him red-handed with another guy wearing her clothes.”
“I get it,” said Becky. “Straight. But he liked a little tushy on the side.”
“Partly. Seems he was setting her up to be his new partner in crime. She’s an appraiser. I have a feeling she was on the verge of becoming more involved than she let on. But, she hadn’t actually done anything illegal yet, so…” He shrugged.
“And you were worried about murder,” she teased.
“I still am,” Clive replied. “Your results aren’t what you’d call conclusive.”
Becky sighed. “You expect miracles, maybe? I told you, there wasn’t much left. But it looks accidental. Fred Delaney called earlier.”
Clive groaned in sympathy.
“Yeah, I know he’s an arrogant, obnoxious pain in the ass, but he knows his fires. He tells me he’s pretty sure it started in the electrical system.” She paused for a moment, considering, “I guess the explosion killed him. I found traces of chemicals all over the place.” Becky’s tone was only slightly doubtful, but Clive picked up on it immediately.
“You guess? What’s wrong?”
“I dunno.” She finished the first can and tossed it in the general direction of the waste paper basket. It missed and clanked down on the floor, low calorie syrup slowly leaking out. Clive reached down, picked up the errant can and deposited it firmly in the wastebasket. Clive was sometimes amazed at the dichotomy between Becky’s own pristine and orderly morgue and the utter destruction she wrought every time she walked into his office with food, which was almost always. He withdrew his handkerchief and wiped away a smidgen of sticky fruit syrup that was clinging to his fingers.
“You want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
Becky sighed. “I wish I could. Something about that body bothered me, but quite frankly Clive, I’m exhausted.” She looked at him slyly. “You couldn’t maybe manage to wait twenty-four hours before notifying the next of kin, could you? I’d like to go over it again tomorrow.” She yawned broadly. “When I’m wide awake.”
Clive glanced at his investigation report and smiled. “The closest relative is an aunt in Colorado. I guess we could wait a day or so before we called. Consider it done.” He looked at her sternly, “Now, will you please go home and get some sleep?”
“Thanks.” She gathered her papers together and rose from the chair. She looked at the second, unopened can of dietetic fruit salad with distaste. “You mind keeping this for me?”
Clive nodded, and as Becky left, he placed the can in his small office fridge with an affectionate smile.
Jeremy Lucas smacked his lips with gusto as he spooned another heap of New York Cheesecake frozen yogurt into his mouth. He’d left the law office at six and gone straight to the Boys’ Town Gym. After working out like a madwoman for three hours, he’d decided to drop into Humphrey Yogurt and treat himself to something moderately sinful on the way home.
Jeremy was the type of person, not altogether as uncommon in West Hollywood as it might seem, who actually enjoyed being married. In fact, three years ago, he’d gotten married — for the first of four times. His first husband had been an alcoholic. Jeremy had dutifully tried for six months to get him to enroll in a Twelve Step Program. His final success had been spoiled when Husband Number One had returned from a meeting, announced he’d met someone new and informed Jeremy that he and his new friend could shortly be found living, “one day at a time,” together in their new home.
Husband Number Two had lasted a scant four months. He lost his secretarial job at Cedar’s Sinai within a week of moving in with Jeremy and had not paid rent for three months thereafter. Jeremy finally divorced him after catching him red-handed about to pocket several expensive gold chains he’d taken from Jeremy’s jewelry box to pawn.
Jeremy had hoped Hubbie Three would remain the love of his life forever. For eight months, they had cohabited in wedded bliss. In time, however, Number Three had grown careless. Jeremy discovered the used condom in the bathroom after returning from work one evening and doubted that Three had been encased in rubber while masturbating. A heart wrenching scene followed, and the next morning the treacherous ingrate had been sent packing.
Resolving to remain single for life, Jeremy’s determination had lasted a mere two weeks before wedding bells were once again tolling in his head. Matrimonial ecstasy had followed. Mr. Lucas Number Four was ideal in every way. Tall, dark-haired and handsome, he had a steady source of income and his own car, spent every evening at home with Jeremy and was a man you could bring home to Mother. That is, if Mother happened to have a soundproofed guest bedroom! The sex, Jeremy recalled with a pang of regret, had been truly spectacular. For six months, Jeremy had existed in a world of sensual ecstasy, reaching previously undreamed of orgasmic heights.
It was only when he accidentally turned down the wrong aisle at Video West while searching for a Susan Heyward movie that Jeremy discovered how Number Four had become so skillful in the boudoir. There, gracing the cover of Slick and Sleazy Senso-Sluts, Part Four, his finger provocatively inserted into his own rectum, was Jeremy’s loving hubby. Both the income and the expertise finally explained, Jeremy tossed him out that very evening.
Now two weeks later, licking the spoon thoughtfully, his mind drifted on toward his plans for the coming evening. His outfit was of primary concern; the exact image he portrayed was all important. The ripped black jeans were provocative, but Jeremy felt they somehow suggested “slut” rather than “recently available.” A suit, of course, was much too conservative; Jeremy wished to exude “comfortable companion” not “hopeless anal retentive.” Perhaps he should content himself with the always fashionable skirt and sweater look: tight, slightly faded blue jeans and a subdued silk shirt. Yes, that might be just the look he was searching for to attract a suitable mate — this time for life!
Jeremy Lucas was so engrossed in fantasizing about his prospective meeting with Prince Charming that he failed to notice the slight rustle in the bushes next to the sidewalk as he turned up Sweetzer Avenue toward his apartment. His mind filled with images of an attractive brunette stranger sweeping him literally off his feet at Studio One and carrying him home to lavish exorbitant sexual attention on him, he paused for a moment to dig the last vestiges of cheesecake-flavored yogurt out of the cup with his spoon.
The pause saved his life. At least temporarily.
A large shape bounded out of the bushes to land with a snarl about four feet in front of him, right where he would have been walking had he not been determined to savor that final morsel of yogurt. Jeremy started in fright, emitting a muffled gasp. His eyes widened in confusion and horror as a very large and very unfriendly looking animal turned to fix him with a baleful gaze.
“Uh, nice doggy,” he said weakly. The spoon dropped to the ground.
“Good dog,” he said nervously as the beast took a step closer. His eyes darted frantically around, but unfortunately for Jeremy Lucas, there was no one else on the street. It was not quite eleven, and most of the largely gay male neighbors were safely at home, showering, ironing, primping and pomading for a night on the town.
Realizing the animal was not responding to his attempts to make friends, Jeremy tried a different tactic. “Sit boy!” he said in what he hoped was a firm, commanding tone; he’d read in a book somewhere that animals responded to authority. The animal halted briefly, and Jeremy took the opportunity to back up several feet until he was standing in the middle of Sweetzer Avenue.
He glanced northward with concern. His apartment building was on the corner of Fountain and Sweetzer, less than a hundred and fifty feet away. It was tantalizingly close. Perhaps, if he made a run for it, he could reach it in time. Maybe the cars passing along Fountain Avenue would frighten the dog into leaving him alone.
The creature must have had different tastes in reading material as it had evidently not read the same book as Jeremy. It ignored his firm command and moved forward once again. Jeremy took a deep breath and decided to try and reach the safety of his building. With a mighty yell — he’d also read somewhere that animals were intimidated by loud noises — he hurled the empty yogurt cup at the dog and bolted toward Fountain Avenue.
