E Is for Evidence

10

By 1:00 the next afternoon, I had tracked Lyda Case by telephone to a cocktail lounge at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, where she was simultaneously tending bar and hanging up in my ear with a force that made me think I'd have to have my hearing rechecked. Last May I'd been compelled to shoot someone from the depths of a garbage bin and my ears have been hissing ever since. Lyda didn't help this… especially as she said a quite rude word to me before she smacked the phone down. I was deeply annoyed. It had taken me a bit of doing to locate her and she'd already hung up on me once that day.

I'd started at 10:00 A.M. with a call to the Culinary Alliance and Bartenders Local 498, which refused to tell me anything. I've noticed lately that organizations are get-ting surly about this sort of thing. It used to be you could ring them right up, tell a plausible tale, and get the infor-mation you wanted within a minute or two. Now you can't get names, addresses, or telephone numbers. You can't get service records, bank balances, or verification of employ-ment. Half the time, you can't even get confirmation of the facts you already have. Don't even bother with the public schools, the Welfare Department, or the local jail. They won't tell you nothin'.

"That's privileged," they say. "Sorry, but that's an in-vasion of our client's privacy."

I hate that officious tone they take, all those clerks and receptionists. They love not telling you what you want to know. And they're smart. They don't fall for the same old song and dance that worked a couple of years ago. It's too aggravating for words.

I reverted to routine. When all else fails, try the county clerk's office, the public library, or the DMV. They'll help. Sometimes there's a small fee involved, but who cares?

I whipped over to the library and checked back through old telephone directories year by year until I found Hugh and Lyda Case listed. I made a note of the address and then switched to the crisscross and found out who their neighbors had been two years back. I called one after another, generally bullshitting my way down the block. Finally, someone allowed as how Hugh had died and they thought his widow moved to Dallas.

It worried me briefly that Lyda Case might be un-listed, but I dialed Information in Dallas and picked up a home phone number right away. Hot damn, this was fun. I tried the number and someone answered on the third ring.

"Hello."

"May I speak to Lyda Case?"

"This is she."

"Really?" I asked, amazed at my own cleverness.

"Who is this?" Her voice was flat.

I hadn't expected to get through to her and I hadn't yet made up a suitable fib, so I was forced to tell the truth. Big mistake. "My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a private detective in Santa Teresa, California…"

Bang. I lost some hearing in the mid-range. I called back, but she refused to answer the phone.

At this point, I needed to know where she was em-ployed and I couldn't afford to call every bar in the Dallas / Fort Worth area, if indeed that's the sort of work she still did. I tried Information again and picked up the telephone number of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local 353 in Dallas. I had my index finger poised to dial when I realized I would need a ruse.

I sat and thought for a moment. It would help to have Lyda Case's Social Security number, which might lend a little air of credibility to my bogus pursuit. Never try to get one of these from the Social Security Office. They're right up there with banks in their devotion to thwarting you at every turn. I was going to have to get the information through access to public records of some sort.

I grabbed my handbag, a jacket, and my car keys and headed over to the courthouse. The Registrar of Voters is located in the basement, down a flight of wide red-tile steps with a handrail made out of antique rope as big around as a boa constrictor.

I followed the signs down a short corridor to the right, pushing into the office through a glass door. Two clerks were working behind the counter, but no one paid any attention to me. There was a computer terminal on the counter and I typed in Lyda Case's name. I closed my eyes briefly, offering up a small prayer to whichever of the gods is in charge of bureaucracies. If Lyda had registered to vote any time in the last six years, the revised form wouldn't show her Social Security number. That question had been deleted in 1976.

The name flashed up, line after line of green print streaking out. Lyda Case had first registered to vote Octo-ber 14, 1974. The number of the original affidavit was listed on the bottom line. I made a note of the number and gave it to the clerk who had approached when she saw I needed help.

She disappeared into a back corridor where the old files are kept. She returned a few minutes later with the affidavit in hand. Lyda Case's Social Security number was neatly filled in. As a bonus, I also picked up her date of birth. I started laughing at the sight of it. The clerk smiled and I knew from the look we exchanged that she felt as I did about some things. I love information. Sometimes I feel like an archaeologist, digging for facts, uncovering data with my wits and a pen. I made notes, humming to myself. Now I could go to work.

I went home again and picked up the phone, redialing the Bartenders Local in Santa Teresa.

"Local Four-Ninety-eight," the woman said. "Oh, hi," said I. "Who am I speaking to, please?" "I'm the administrative assistant," she said primly. "Perhaps you'll identify yourself."

"Oh, sorry. Of course. This is Vicky with the Chamber of Commerce. I'm addressing invitations for the annual

Board of Supervisors dinner and I need your name, if you'd be so kind."

There was a dainty silence. "Rowena Feldstaff," she said, spelling it out for me carefully.

"Thank you."

I dialed Texas again. The phone on the other end rang four times while two women in teeny, tiny voices laughed about conditions in the Inky Void. Someone picked up.

"Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local Three-Five-Three. This is Mary Jane. Can I he'p you?" She had a soft voice and a mild Texas accent. She sounded like she was about twenty.

"You sure can, Mary Jane," I said. "This is Rowena Feldstaff in Santa Teresa, California. I'm the administra-tive assistant for Bartenders Local Four-Ninety-eight and I'm trying to do a status check on Lyda Case. That's C-A-S-E…"Then I rattled out her date of birth and her Social Security number, as though from records of my own.

"Can I have a number so I can call you back?" said the ever-cautious Mary Jane.

"Sure," I said and gave her my home phone.

Within minutes, my phone rang again. I answered as Bartenders Local 498, and Mary Jane very kindly gave me Lyda Case's current place of employment, along with the address and phone number. She was working at one of the cocktail lounges at the Dallas / Fort Worth airport.

I called the bar and one of the waitresses told me Lyda would be there at 3:00 Dallas time, which was 1:00 where I was.

At 1:00, I called back and lost another couple of deci-bels' worth of hearing. Whoo, that lady was quick. I'd have to walk around with a horn sticking out of my ear at this rate.

If I'd been working off an expense account, I'd have hied myself out to the Santa Teresa airport and jumped on a plane for Dallas. I can be pretty cavalier with someone else's money. My own, I think about first, as I'm very cheap.

I hopped in my car and drove over to the police sta-tion. Jonah Robb, my usual source of illicit information, was out of town. Sergeant Schiffman, sitting in for him, was not all that swift and didn't really like to bend the rules, so I bypassed him and went straight to Emerald, the black clerk in Records and Identification. Technically she's not supposed to give out the kind of information I needed, but she's usually willing to help if no one's around to catch her.

I leaned on the counter in the reception area, waiting while she finished typing a department memo. She took her time getting to me, probably sensing that I was up to no good. She's in her forties, with a medium complexion about the color of a cigar. Her hair is cut very short and it curls tensely around her head, a glistening, wet-looking black with gray frizz at the tips. She's probably fifty pounds overweight and it's all solidly packed into her waist, her belly, and her rump.

"Uh-uhn," she said to me as she approached. Her voice is higher than one would imagine for a woman her size, and it has a nasal cast to it, with just the faintest suggestion of a lisp. "What do you want? I'm almost afraid to ask."

She was wearing a regulation uniform, a navy-blue skirt and a white short-sleeved blouse that looked very stark and clean against the tobacco brown of her arms. The patch on her sleeve said Santa Teresa Police Department, but she's actually a civilian clerk.

"Hello, Emerald. How are you?"

"Busy. You better cut right down to what you want," she said.

"I need you to look something up for me."

"Again? I'm gonna get myself fired one of these days because of you. What is it?" Her tone was offset by a sly smile that touched off dimples in her cheeks.

"A suicide, two years back," I said. "The guy's name was Hugh Case."

She stared at me.

Uh-oh, I thought. "You know who I'm talking about?"

"Sure, I know. I'm surprised you don't."

"What's the deal? I assume it wasn't routine."

She laughed at that. "Oh, honey, no way. No way. Uh-un. Lieutenant Dolan still gets mad when he hears the name."

"How come?"

"How come? Because the evidence disappeared, that's how come. I know two people at St. Terry's got fired over that."

Santa Teresa Hospital, St. Terry's, is where the hospi-tal morgue is located.

"What evidence came up missing?" I asked.

"Blood, urine, tissue samples, the works. His weren't the only specimens disappeared. The courier picked 'em up that day and took 'em out to County and that's the last anybody ever saw of the whole business."

"Jesus. What about the body? Why couldn't they just redo the work?"

Emerald shook her head. "Mr. Case'd been cremated by the time they found out the specimens were missing. Mrs. Case had the ashes what-do-you-call-'em… scat-tered at sea."

"Oh, shit, you're kidding."

"No ma'am. Autopsy'd been done and Dr. Yee already released the body to the mortuary. Mrs. Case didn't want any kind of funeral, so she gave the order to have him cremated. He was gone. People had a fit. Dr. Yee turned St. Terry's upside down. Nothing ever did show. Lieutenant Dolan was beside himself. Now I hear they got this whole new policy. Security's real tight."

"But what was the assumption? Was it an actual theft?"

"Don't ask me. Like I said, lot of other stuff disap-peared at the same time so the hospital couldn't say what went on. It could have been a mistake. Somebody might have thrown all that stuff out by accident and then didn't want to admit it."

"Why was Dolan involved? I thought it was a suicide."

"You know nobody will make a determination on the manner and cause of death until the reports come back."

"Well, yeah," I said. "I just wondered if the lieutenant had any initial doubts."

"Lieutenant always has doubts. He'll have some more he catches you sniffin' around. Now I got work to do. And don't you tell nobody I told you this stuff."

I drove over to the Pathology Department at St. Terry's, where I had a quick chat with one of the lab techs I'd dealt with before. She confirmed what Emerald had told me, adding a few details about the mechanics of the epi-sode. From what she said, a courier from the coroner's office did a daily run in a blood-transport vehicle, making a sweep of labs and law-enforcement agencies. Specimens to be picked up were sealed, labeled and placed in insulated cold packs, like picnic supplies. The "hamper" itself was stored in the lab refrigerator until the driver showed up. The lab tech would fetch the hamper. The courier would sign for the evidence and away he'd go. The Hugh Case "material," as she so fastidiously referred to it, was never seen again once it left the hospital lab. Whether it disap-peared en route or after it was delivered to the coroner's lab, no one ever knew. The clerk at St. Terry's swore she gave it to the driver and she had a signed receipt to show for it. She assumed the hamper reached its destination as it had every day for years. The courier remembered putting it in the vehicle and assumed it was among the items deliv-ered at the end of his run. It was only after some days had passed and Dr. Yee began to press for lab results on the toxicological tests that the disappearance came to light. By then, of course, as Emerald had indicated, Hugh Case's remains had been reduced to ashes and flung to the far winds.

I used one of the pay phones in the hospital lobby to call my travel agent and inquire about the next flight to Dallas. There was one seat left on the 3:00 shuttle from Santa Teresa to Los Angeles, arriving at LAX at 3:35. With a two-hour layover, I could pick up a United flight that would get me into Dallas that night at 10:35, CST. If Lyda clocked into the bar at 3:00 and worked an eight-hour shift, she should be getting off at 11:00. A delay at any point in the journey would get me there too late to connect with her. I couldn't get a flight back to Santa Teresa until morn-ing anyway, because the airport here shuts down at 11 P.M. I was going to end up spending a night in Dallas in any event. The air fare itself was nearly two hundred bucks, and the notion of paying for a hotel room on top of that made me nearly giddy with anxiety. Of course, I could always sleep listing sideways in one of those molded-plastic airport chairs, but I didn't relish the idea. Also, I wasn't quite sure how I could contrive to eat on the ten bucks in cash I had on me. I probably couldn't even afford to re-trieve my VW from the long-term parking lot when I got home again.

My travel agent, Lupe, was breathing patiently into my ear while I did these lightning-quick calculations.

"I don't want to bug you, Millhone, but you got about six minutes to make up your mind about this."

I glanced at my watch. It was 2:17. I said, "Oh hell, let's go for it."

"Done," she said.

She booked the seats. I charged the tickets to my United credit card which I had just gotten paid off. Curses, I thought, but it had to be done. Lupe said the tickets would be waiting for me at the ticket counter. I hung up, left the hospital, and headed out to the airport.

My handsome travel wardrobe that day consisted of my boots, my ratty jeans, and a cotton turtleneck, navy blue with the sleeves only slightly stretched out of shape. I had an old windbreaker in the back seat of my car. Hap-pily, I hadn't used it recently to clean off my windshield. I also keep a small overnight case in the back seat, with a toothbrush and clean underwear.

I boarded the plane with twelve minutes to spare and tucked my overnight case under the seat in front of me. The aircraft was small and all fifteen seats were occupied. A hanging curtain separated the passengers from the cock-pit. Since I was only two seats back, I could see the whole instrument panel, which didn't look any more complicated than the dashboard of a new Peugeot. When the flight attendant saw me rubbernecking, she pulled the curtain across the opening, as if the pilot and copilot were doing something up there we were better off not knowing about.

The engines sounded like lawn mowers and reminded me vaguely of the Saturday mornings of my youth when I would wake late to hear my aunt out cutting the grass. Over the din, the intercom system was worthless. I couldn't hear a word the pilot said, but I suspected he was reciting that alarming explanation of what to do in the "unlikely" event of a water landing. Most planes crash and burn on land. This was just something new to worry about. I didn't think my seat cushion was going to double as a flotation device of any kind. It was barely adequate to keep my rear end protected from the steel-reinforced frame-work of the seat itself. While the pilot droned on, I looked at the plastic card with its colorful cartoon depicting the aircraft. Someone had placed two X's on the diagram. One said, "You are here." A second X out on the wing tip said, "Toilet is here."

The flight only took thirty-five minutes so the flight attendant, who wore what looked like a Girl Scout uni-form, didn't have time to serve us complimentary drinks. Instead, she whipped down the aisle, passing a little basket of Chiclets chewing gum in tiny boxes. I spent the flight time trying to get my ears to unpop, looking, I'm sure, like I was suffering from some kind of mechanical jaw disease.

My United flight left right on time. I sat in the no-smoking section being serenaded by a duet of crying ba-bies. Lunch consisted of a fist of chicken breast on a pile of rice, covered with what looked like rubber cement. Des-sert was a square of cake with a frosting that smelled like Coppertone. I ate every bite and tucked the cellophane-wrapped crackers in my purse. Who knew when I'd get to eat again.

Once we landed in Dallas, I grabbed up my belong-ings and eased my way toward the front of the plane as we waited for the jetway to thump against the door. The stew-ardess released us like a pack of noisy school kids and I dogtrotted toward the gate. By the time I actually hit the terminal, it was 10:55. The cocktail lounge I was looking for was in another satellite, typically about as far away as you could get, I started running, grateful, as usual, that I keep myself fit. I reached the bar at 11:02. Lyda Case had left. I'd missed her by five minutes and she wasn't sched-uled to work again until the weekend. I won't repeat what I said.