Murder and Mayhem by Rhys Ford

portion of Los Angeles’s milky blue sky as the partners drove in.
    Dante thought the place stood out like an angry ruffled cardinal among the pale, sparrowlike city buildings surrounding it, a disgruntled preening autocrat forced to wallow with the area’s toiling peasants.
    They drove to the back, narrowly missing a meandering pack of visitors intent on shopping at the department’s gift store. A tour guide smiled tightly, then mouthed take me with you as Hank eased the sedan by. They kept driving, leaving the woman to herd her charges up the main building’s enormous steps.
    Inside the cold rooms, the playful macabre atmosphere changed, growing serious and heavy with the smell of the dead. Hank coughed as they walked toward the examination rooms, bringing out a tin of strong peppermints from his jacket pocket. Shaking a few out, he handed one to Dante and sighed happily when he popped a couple into his mouth, obviously relieved at the mint oil’s effects on his nose.
    Dante was smart enough to slide the mint into his mouth and suck on the pungent lozenge. No matter how cold the morgue kept its hall, the dead worked their way through the building, reminding everyone who worked there or visited of their existence. Under the bitter cold in the air lingered a flat, oily smell, an unpleasant aroma subtle in its presence yet acrid enough to trigger a primal fear of decay and rot in the most primitive corner of his brain.
    Rochelle O’Rourke was already hard at work on the women from the crime scene when the partners walked in. A British import, she hummed and half sang as she walked around the room, her startling purple hair pulled into a ponytail and tucked up into a cap to avoid contaminating her work. Her scrubs were visible through the thin layer of protective coveralls she wore, bleeding dancing lavender and red cats through the white fabric. Compared to the room’s sober grays and steels, she was an eye-stunning block of color nearly vibrating across their line of vision as she moved.
    “Hey, Rochelle, what do you have for us?” Hank edged into the coroner’s peripheral vision, startling her.
    “Camden. God, you’re an arse. Warn a girl.” She nearly edged Hank with her elbow, giving Dante a quick smile. “Why haven’t you killed him yet? I’d have done him in a long time ago if I had to share a car with this git.”
    “Because everyone would know I’d done it?” Dante quipped.
    “Shit, you’re not killing him here, are you? ’Cause if you are, I’m going to go on break, and you can do it without any witnesses. I’ll even turn off the cameras for you.” Rochelle stepped closer to the table she’d been working at before they’d come in. “Stay out there. Mind the line, now, and what the hell are you two doing here anyway? It’s too early for me to do anything on these two. I don’t even know which piece goes to what head yet.”
    “Just wanted your prelim,” Dante reassured her. “We weren’t even sure there were two.”
    “So far, based on the legs, arms, and heads I’ve got, I’m going with two. If something doesn’t match up once I’m done matching the bits, then I’ll revise.” Rochelle reached under a bled-gray limb and lifted it up carefully, turning it around to see if it matched one of the trunks she’d laid flat on a nearby work table. “Not as much mess as I’d expect. Too much damage to the skin and flesh but not a lot of blood.”
    “So killed elsewhere,” Dante commented softly as Hank began to take notes, “and then brought to the scene.”
    “Scare tactics?” Hank muttered under his breath. “The other one, Anderson, she was killed onsite?”
    “I think so, but I didn’t catch that one. Could have been just killed and dumped on the scene. Are these all connected, then?” Rochelle turned the leg, carefully manipulating it into place. The squeak of latex on skin was disturbing, and as Rochelle aligned the limb, she checked the torso. Frowning, she sighed.