The Crucifix Killer(37)

Chris took a last drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt in the air and watched it produce a dim, yellow arc. He got up from the small bench he’d been sitting on, folded his empty plastic sandwich bag and started walking back towards the Coroner’s building. A cold hand grabbed his left shoulder.

‘Hi there, Chris!’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Chris jumped and turned to face the figure standing behind him, his heart halfway up his throat. ‘Are you crazy? You scared the fuck out of me.’

Mark Culhane gave Chris a rehearsed yellow smile.

‘If I had a gun, you could be dead right now. How do you get off on sneaking up on people like that?’ Chris asked placing a hand over his chest, his heart pounding against it.

‘I’m a detective, I love sneaking up on people,’ Culhane said with a new smile. ‘Besides, why the fuck would you carry a gun? Everyone you deal with is already dead.’

‘Everybody packs these days, this is LA remember? Anyway, I haven’t seen you for a while, what the hell do you want?’

Chris was in his early thirties, a few pounds overweight with straight dark-brown hair that he kept quite short. He had strange cat-like brown eyes, a reddish complexion and a prominent nose.

‘Oh, Chris, that’s no way to greet an old friend.’

Chris didn’t answer back. He simply raised his eyebrows waiting for Culhane to state his business.

‘I need to check whatever new entries you’ve had in the past few days,’ Culhane finally said.

‘By entries, you mean bodies?’

‘What else would I mean, smart ass?’

‘Why don’t you just put in a request, you’re a cop, aren’t you?’

‘This is a friend, not necessarily official business.’

‘A friend?’ Chris’s voice took a dubious tone.

‘Are you training to be a cop? What’s with all the goddamn questions? Just show me the bodies, will you?’

‘And if I told you I couldn’t do that because it’s against regulations?’

Culhane placed his right arm around Chris’s neck and pulled him closer. ‘Well, that would certainly piss me off, and I don’t think you’d wanna do that, do you?’

Silence.

Culhane tightened his grip.

‘OK . . . OK, I was going back in anyway,’ Chris said, lifting both hands.

‘Adda boy,’ Culhane said, letting go of the headlock.

They both walked back to the Coroner’s building in silence. One of the advantages of visiting Chris at this hour was that Culhane wouldn’t have to go in through the front door; the building would be a lot quieter, no badges needed to be shown, no papers to sign – less suspicion.

They reached the staff entrance door on the south side of the building and Chris punched a six-digit code into the electronic keypad. The thick metal door buzzed open.

‘Wait here, I’ll be right back,’ he said and quickly disappeared into the building leaving Culhane standing outside with a curious look on his face. Less than a minute later Chris re-emerged carrying a standard coroner’s white overall. ‘Put this on, it should fit. It’s the largest one I could find.’

‘Are you trying to be funny?’

The last thing Chris wanted was for anyone to find out he’d allowed a stranger into the building without signing in at the front desk, even if that stranger was a cop. He guided Culhane through the deserted lower-floor corridor, through a pair of heavy swing doors and up the staircase to the first floor. Culhane had walked these corridors more times than he cared to remember. It still made his stomach turn inside out. Culhane would never have admitted it, but he was glad he wasn’t alone. They reached the last room at the end of the hall.

After every autopsy, the bodies were brought to the cold-storage room, or as everyone in the Coroner’s office called it ‘the big chill.’ The room had enough freezer space on its west wall to store over fifty bodies. Culhane and the other detectives from the Narcotics division had their own name for that room – ‘the honeycomb of death.’

Chris locked the door behind him so they wouldn’t be interrupted and walked over to the computer desk at the far end of the room.

‘OK, let’s try an initial search . . . male or female?’ he asked wasting no time. The faster he got rid of Culhane the better.

‘Female.’

‘Is she white, black . . .?’

‘Caucasian, blond, blue eyes, slim and very attractive.’

Chris gave Culhane a coy smile. ‘OK, from what date would you like me to search from?’

‘Let’s try from last Friday.’

Chris instinctively looked at his watch. ‘That’d be . . . June 1st right?’