Show of Evil

One

Fog swirled around powerful spotlights in the darkest hours before dawn. Perched atop tall steel poles, they cast harsh beams out across a rancid, steaming wasteland, etching in shadow and light the buttes, knolls, and slopes of trash and refuse, of abandoned plastic bottles, Styro-foam dishes, cardboard fast-food wrappers, old newspapers, abandoned clothing, and maggot-ridden mounds of uneaten food. Like fetid foothills pointing towards the glittering skyscrapers miles away, the city's garbage formed a stunted mountain range of waste. Stinking vapours swirled up from the bacteria-generated heat of the vast landfill, while small, grey scavengers zigzagged frantically ahead of a growling bulldozer that pushed and shoved the heaps of filth into a manageably level plain.

The dozer operator, huddled deep inside layers of clothing, looked like an interplanetary alien: long Johns, a flannel shirt, a thick wool sweater, a bulky jacket that might have challenged the Arctic wastelands, a wool cap pulled down over his ears, fur-lined leather and canvas gloves, a surgical mask protecting his mouth from the freezing cold and his nose from the choking odours, skier's goggles covering his eyes. Gloria Estefan's Mi Tierra thundered through the earphones of the Walkman in his pocket, drowning out the grinding din of the big machine.

Another hour, Jesus Suarino, who was known as Gaucho on his block, was thinking. One more hour and I'm outa here.

He worked the controls. Twisting the dozer in place, he lowered the blade and attacked a fresh mound of waste. The dozer tracks ground under him, spewing refuse behind the tractor as they gripped the soggy base and lurched forward. Through his misted goggles, Suarino watched the blade slice into the top of the mound, showering it into a shallow chasm just beyond. Suarino backed the machine up, dropped the blade a little lower, took off another layer of rubble. As it chopped into the pile, Suarino saw something through his smeared goggles.

He snatched the throttle back, heard the lumbering giant of a machine choke back as it slowed down and its exhaust gasp in the cold wind that swept across the range of rubble. He squinted his eyes and leaned forward, then wiped one lens with the palm of his glove.

What he saw jarred him upright. A figure rose up out of the clutter as the blade cut under it. Suarino stared at a skeletal head with eyeless sockets and strings of blonde hair streaked with grease and dirt hanging from an almost skinless skull. The head of the corpse wobbled back and forth, then toppled forward until its jaw rested on an exposed rib cage.

'Yeeeeoowww! he shrieked, his scream of terror trapped by the mask. He tore the goggles off and leaned forward, looking out over the engine. The corpse fell sideways, exposing an arm that swung out and then fell across the torso, the fleshless fingers of the hand pointing at him.

Suarino cut off the engine and swung out of the driver's seat, dropping into the sludge and sinking almost to his knees. Ripping off the mask, he was still screaming as he struggled towards the office at the edge of the dump.

Martin Vail hated telephones. Telephones represented intrusions. Invasions of his privacy. Interruptions. But duty dictated that the city's chief prosecutor and assistant DA never be without one.

They were everywhere: three different lines in his apartment - one a hotline, the number known only to his top aide, Abel Stenner, and his executive secretary, Naomi Chance - all with portable handsets and answering machines attached; a cellular phone in his briefcase; two more lines in his car. The only place he could escape from the dreaded devices was in the shower. He particularly hated the phone in the dead of night, and although he had all the ringers set so they rang softly and with a pleasant melodic tone, they were persistent and ultimately would drag him from the deepest sleep.

When the hotline rang, it was never good news, and the hotline had been ringing for a full minute when Vail finally rolled over onto his back and groped in the dark until he located the right instrument.

'What time is it,' he growled into the mouthpiece.

'Almost five,' Stenner's calm voice answered.

'What's that mean?'

'I'm parked outside.'

'You're a sadist, Major Stenner. I'll bet you put toothpicks under the fingernails of small children and light them. I bet you laugh at them when they scream.'

'Better wear old clothes.'

'Where are we going?'

'Twenty minutes?'

'What's going on, Abel?'

'I'll ring you from the car.'

And he hung up.

Vail verbally assaulted the phone for half a minute, then turned on the night light so he would not fall back to sleep. He stretched, kicked off the covers, and lay flat on his back in the cold room, arms outstretched, until he was fully awake.

Four-twenty in the damn morning. He got up, threw on a robe, and went to the kitchen, then ground up some Jamaican blue, poured cold water into the coffee machine, and headed for the shower. Fifteen minutes later he was dressed in corduroy slacks, a wool sweater, and hiking boots. He doctored two large mugs of coffee, dumped several files from his desk into his briefcase, and when the phone rang he was ready to roll.

He snatched up the phone and said. 'This better be good,' and hung up. Throwing on a thick sheepskin car coat, he headed for the lobby ten floors below.

Major Abel Stenner sat ramrod straight behind the wheel. He was impeccably dressed in a grey pin-striped suit. When Stenner had accepted the job of Vail's chief investigator, Vail had promoted him to major, a rank rarely used except in the state police. It was a diabolical act on Vail's part - Stenner now outranked everyone in the city police but the chief. Vail handed him a mug of coffee.

'Thanks,' Stenner said.

'I thought you said to wear old clothes. You look like you're on your way to deliver a eulogy.'

'I was already dressed,' he answered as he pulled away from the kerb.

Stenner, a precise and deliberate man whose stoic expression and hard brown eyes shielded even a hint of emotion, was not only the best cop the city had ever produced, he was the most penurious with words, a man who rarely smiled and who spoke in short, direct, unflourished sentences.

'Where the hell are we going?'

'You'll see.'

Vail crunched down in the seat and sipped his coffee.

'Don't you ever sleep, Abel?'

'You ask me that once a week.'

'You never answer.'

'Why start?'

More silence. That they had become close friends was a miracle. Ten years ago, when Vail had been the top defence attorney in the state and had worked against the state instead of for it, they had been deadly adversaries. Stenner was the one cop who always had it right, who knew what it took to make a good case, who wouldn't bite at the trick question and could see through the setup, and who had been broken on the stand only once - by Vail during the Aaron Stampler trial. When Vail took the job of chief prosecutor, one of his first official duties was to steal Stenner away from Police Chief Eric Eckling. He had fully expected Stenner to turn him down, their animosity had been that profound, and he had been shocked when Stenner accepted the job.

'You're on my side now,' Stenner had explained with a shrug. 'Besides, Eckling is incompetent.'

Ten years. In those years, Stenner had actually begun to loosen up. He had been known to smile on occasion and there was a myth around the DA's office, unconfirmed, that he had once cracked a joke - although it was impossible to find anyone who actually had heard it.

Vail was half asleep, his coffee mug clutched between both hands to keep it from spilling, when Stenner turned off the highway and headed down the back tar road leading to the sprawling county landfill. His head wobbled back and forth. Then he was aware of a kaleidoscope of lights dancing on his eyelids.

He opened them, sat up in his seat, and saw, against a small mountain of refuse, flashing yellow, red, and blue reflections against the dark, steamy night. A moment later Stenner rounded the mound and the entire scene was suddenly spread out before them. There were a dozen cars of various descriptions - ambulances, police cars, the forensics van - all parked hard against the edge of the landfill. Beyond them, like men on the moon, yellow-garbed cops and firemen struggled over the steamy landscape, piercing the looming piles of garbage with long poles. The acrid smell of the burning garbage, rotten food, and wet paper permeated the air. For a moment it reminded Vail of the last time he had gone home, to a place ironically called Rainbow Flats, which had been savaged by polluters who repaid the community for enduring them by poisoning the land, water, and air. First one came, then another, attracted to the place like hyenas to carrion, until it was a vast island of death surrounded by forests they had yet to destroy. He had gone home to bury his grandmother thirteen years earlier and never returned. A momentary flash of the Rainbow Flats Industrial Park supplanted the scene before him. It streaked through his mind and was gone. It had always angered him that they had had the gall to call it a park.

Three tall poles with yellow flags snapping in the harsh wind seemed to establish the parameters of the search. They were bunched in a cluster, a circle perhaps fifty yards in circumference. The sickening sour-sweet odour of death intruded on the wind and occasionally overpowered the smell of decay. Four men came over a ridge of the dump hefting a green body bag among them.

'That's three,' Stenner said.

'Bodies?'

'Where the flags are.' He nodded.

'Jesus!'

'First one was over there, in that cluster. A woman. They tumbled on the second one when I called you.'

A freezing blast of cold air swept the car as Stenner got out. Vail turned up his collar and stepped out into the predawn. He jammed his hands deep in his coat pockets and hunched his shoulders against the wind. He could feel his lips chapping as his warm breath turned to steam and blew back into his face.

Two cops, an old-timer and a rookie, were standing guard beside the yellow crime-scene ribbons as Vail and Stenner stepped over them. The wind whipped Stenner's tie out and it flapped around his face for a moment before he tucked it back under his jacket as they walked towards the landfill.

'Jesus, don't he have a coat? Gotta be ten degrees out,' said the rookie.

'He don't need a coat,' the older cop said. 'He ain't got any blood. That's Stenner. Know what they used to call him when he was with the PD? The Icicle.'

Twenty feet away Stenner stopped and turned slowly as the cop said it and stared at him for a full ten seconds, then turned back to the crime scene.

'See what I mean,' the older cop whispered. 'Nobody ever called him that to his face.'

'Must have ears in the back of his head.'

'It's eyes.'

'Huh?'

'It's eyes. He's got eyes in the back of his head.'

'He didn't see you, he heard you,' the young cop said.

'Huh?'

'You said -'

'Jesus, Sanders, forget it. Just forget it. Coldest night of the year, I'm in the city dump, and I draw a fuckin' moron for a partner.'

'There's Shock,' Stenner said to Vail.

He nodded towards a tall, beefy uniformed cop bundled in his blue wool coat, standing at the edge of the fill. Capt. Shock Johnson was ebony black and bald, with enormous, scarred hands that were cupped in front of his mouth and shoulders like a Green Bay lineman. When he saw Vail and Stenner, he shook his head and chuckled.

'I don't believe it,' he said. 'You guys don't even have to be here.'

'What the hell's going on?' Vail asked.

'The dozer operator turned over the first one, so I decided we ought to punch around a little and, bingo, now we got three.'

'What killed them?'

'Better ask Okimoto that, he's the expert. They're a mess. Been in there awhile. Maggots have had Thanksgiving dinner on all of 'em.'

Vail groaned at the image. 'So we don't know anything yet, that it?' he asked.

'Know we got three stiffos been cooking down in that gunk for God knows how long.'

'May be hard to determine when these happened,' Stenner offered. 'Location will be very important.'

Johnson nodded. 'We're taking stills and video, doing measurements. If the weather's okay later I've ordered a chopper flyover. We'll get some pictures from up top.'

'Good.'

Johnson had once been Stenner's sergeant and had made lieutenant when he quit. He was now captain of the night watch, a man beholden to Stenner for years of education and for fostering in him a strong sense of intuition. He was Stenner's pipeline to a very unfriendly police department.

'Eckling here yet?' Vail asked.

'Oh yeah. He's down there in the thick of it, looking important for Channel 7. They were the first ones to get a whiff of it.'

'Nicely put,' said Vail.

'Any ideas?' Stenner asked.

'Not really. My guess is, these three here were dumped about the same time, but we can't be sure. You couldn't hardly find the same spot twice, the tractors keep moving this shit around so much.' He looked off at the ragged landscape. 'Excuse me, I gotta check that bag just came up. Besides, Eckling sees you.' He chuckled again. 'And I've had enough fun for one night.' He left.

'I'll wait in the car,' Stenner said. He had not spoken a word to his former boss since the day he quit.

The chief of police huffed up the small hill with a camera crew and a reporter trailing out behind him. He was waving his arms as he spoke and his words came out in little bursts of steam.

'I see the DA's man is here,' he sneered. 'Everybody loves a circus.'

Eckling always referred to Vail as 'the DA's man,' putting an edge to the words so that it sounded like an insult.

The three-man crew, having got everything they could out of Eckling, turned their camera on Vail. 'Any comment, Mr Vail?' asked the reporter, a small, slender man in his twenties named Billy Pearce, who peered out from the depths of a hooded parka.

'I'm just an interested spectator,' he answered.

'Care to speculate on what happened here?'

'I don't care to speculate at all, Billy. Thanks.'

Vail turned away from them and walked towards Eckling as the crew, grateful for his brevity, fled towards their van. Eckling was a tall man with the beginnings of a beer belly and eyes that glared from behind tinted spectacles.

'What's the matter, Martin, couldn't wait?' he snapped.

'You know why I'm here, Eric, we've had that discussion too many times.'

'Can't even wait until the bodies're cold,' he growled.

'That shouldn't take long in this weather.'

'Just want to get your face on the six o'clock news,' he said nastily.

'Isn't that what got you out here?' Vail said cheerily.

'Look, you can't butt in for seven days. How about leaving me and mine alone and letting us do our job?'

'I wish you could, Chief,' Vail said pleasantly.

'Go to hell,' Eckling said, and stomped away.

Vail returned to the car and shook off the cold as he got into the warm interior.

'Damn, it's bitter out there.'

'You and Eckling have your usual cordial exchange?'

'Yeah, things are improving. We didn't even bite each other.'