Chapter 6

The night sky was black. 'Not a sight many southern Californians get to see. Before moving to desert ten years ago, Brian had always thought the day sky was greenish-greyish blue and the night sky was pink. Here it was actually black, with dark blue circles around the countless stars. The desert floor was beige and the moon made outlined the distant hills in silvery tan.

Brian bounced along in the passenger seat of a police car. The powerful 8 cylinder Ford Crown Victoria functioned surprisingly well off road. The uniform driving it simultaneously talked on his cell phone, typed into the car's police laptop, checked his pager and ate a cheeseburger. Brian, still a bit groggy, had thought riding with the patrol officer would be safer than following in his own car. All things considered, and given that there was no other traffic, he was comfortable with his decision.

"Damn, I am hungry. " The officer once he got off the phone. He took another bite and then said through a mouth full of cheeseburger, "I had my lunch I got the call." He pointed to a crumpled wrapper in the passenger footwell. "Watch out for my other Big Mac you get there. 'First time I ever threw up on the job. Darn waste of money." He took a swig of diet Coke, expertly avoiding spilling anything as they went over another depression in the desert. Then he a box of onion rings out of the fast food bag. Keeping his eyes on the road, he nudged Brian with it, his way of offering some. Brian took an onion ring, then the uniform took the box back and started feeding himself with his left hand while holding the steering wheel with his right.

"It's not even like it's the middle of summer. That's when bodies really, really reek. It's barely spring, but I guess it got warm enough."

They both munched their onion rings in silence for a moment.

"It's the stomach acids that do the damage, you know."

Brian nodded absently. The cop was treating him like a ride-a-long instead of like a fellow cop. That tended to happen when you were young and weren't wearing a uniform. Plus, the cop was talking to cover his own nervousness about what he'd seen.

"See, when you're alive, you produce mucus in your stomach. It's like snot. It keeps acid from burning right through you." He dug around for the last of the onion rings. "But when you die, the snot stops and the acid eats through, and then the intestines get exposed, and it's just a mess."

"Yeah, I know." Brian said.

"It smelled awful."

"Yeah, I bet."

"And it would change too, like if the wind would pick up a little, the smell would change a little, just enough to keep it fresh, to keep your nose from getting used to it."

This was getting old. Brian stared out the side window and mumbled, "Haven't you ever smelled a dead body before?"

"Huh, yeah, I have. I dunno why this one bothered me so much. But it kinda hurt my nose. All that gross dead-body smell with a double-helping side-order of bleach."

Brian's stomach involuntary clenched as he turned and stared at the cop. "Bleach?" A dead body has a distinctive sweet-rotting smell of sulfer and methane and butyric acid. Bleach was not normally in that mix, but Brian had smell that mixture before. He immediately understood the cop's extreme disgust and at the same time his worry and curiousity was stimulated. He'd seen a case ten years ago where a body had been found, covered in bleach. Could this be the same killer?