Perchance to Dream

    "So why'd you invite me along? You miss me?"

    "I heard you were looking for Carmen Sternwood," Ohls said.

    The weight at the bottom of my stomach got heavier.

    "Un huh."

    "There was a purse with the body. All the ID was out of it, but whoever did it missed a book of matches. Inside the matches was a phone number."

    "Carmen's?" I said.

    Ohls nodded.

    "One of the harness boys called and checked as soon as they found it."

    "I thought they were supposed to leave that to the detectives," I said.

    Ohls grinned. "Guy's planning to be chief," he said.

***

    Near the top of Beverly Glen, before you make the curve to Mulholland Drive, there were four black and white L. A. police cars, and two L. A. sheriff's cars. Behind them was an ambulance with its back doors open, and an L. A. County fire rescue truck with its light still rotating. Ohls pulled in behind the ambulance and flashed his badge to the sweating uniform cop directing traffic. Then he and I scrambled on down the embankment, through the scrub pine and interlacing thorny vines that grew among them. There was the hot smell of vegetation and old pine needles and the harsher smell of fallen eucalyptus leaves. The slope flattened into a gully and in the gully were half a dozen assorted county employees including a man from the coroner's office with a white coat on over his tie and vest. He was a fat guy with a neck that spilled out over his collar and his face was bright red as he straightened from squatting next to a tarpaulin-covered form.

    He knew Ohls.

    "This is a real mess, Lieutenant," he said. He shook his head in disgust and slowly peeled back the tarp by one corner. "Guy didn't even have sharp tools," he said.

    Under the tarp was the bottom half of a woman's torso, with one leg attached.

    Ohls had no reaction.

    The medical examiner draped the tarpaulin back over the corpse.

    "There's couple other parts," he said, "over here." He nodded his head toward another tarp. "We let everything lie where we found it."

    "Wonderful," Ohls said.

    "Want to take a look?"

    "Not right now," Ohls said. "You know anything?"

    "Woman's dead," the medical examiner said.

    "Always brightens up a case," Ohls said, "to have a funny ME."

    The medical examiner chuckled so that the fat on his neck wobbled a little over his collar.

    "Don't know a hell of a lot more than that, yet."

    "Cause of death?" Ohls said. "Aside from getting cut up like a fryer?"

    "No way to know until we find all the pieces," the medical examiner said. "Don't know if she was alive when she was cut up."

    Ohls shook his head harshly as if there was a bee in his ear.

    "ID?" he said.

    "Caucasian, female, judging from what we've got, not an old woman. Twenties or thirties, maybe a well-preserved forty at the oldest. Skin tone is still pretty good, what there is of it."

    "Any idea yet when?"

    The medical examiner shook his head.

    "Last couple days at the outside, assuming she was dumped here shortly after she was killed, and wasn't refrigerated someplace. That's as close as I can get." He glanced down at the tarpaulin heap in front of him. "We've got a stomach, at least, so we can make some guesses depending on when she ate, and what she ate, but we're not going to get much closer. Blood's all drained out of her. That screws us up."

    "What a shame," Ohls said. "Any thoughts, Marlowe? Could be the Sternwood girl."

    "Guess on the skin coloration?" I said.

    The medical examiner reached down. "I'd say dark. Here, take a look."

    "No, thanks," I said. "That was my guess. Was she slim?"

    The medical examiner shrugged, still bending over with a hand on the edge of the tarpaulin. He peeled it back again. I looked away. From the corner of my eye I could see him bend over and pinch some flesh on the one leg. I looked away harder.

    "No," he said. "I'd say she was fleshy-not fat, mind you, but sort of, you know, buxom. Mae West, say."

    "That would make her not one of the Sternwood girls," I said.

    "Body hair's black," the medical examiner said.

    "Carmen was blonde," I said.

    Ohls nodded.

    "Who found her?" he said to one of the sheriff's deputies.

    "Couple high school kids had three quarts of beer," the deputy said, "slid down here in the woods to drink it and stumbled right on her. Probably take care of their underaged drinking for a while."

    "Every cloud," Ohls said. "Lemme talk to them, and the officer that found the matchbook."