Body Farm Z Read online

  BODY FARM Z

  by

  Deborah Sheldon

  www.severedpress.com

  copyright 2019 by Deborah Sheldon

  For Allen and Harry

  1

  The drive from the Melbourne City Police Complex to the body farm in Wooriyanda was about four hours northeast along the Hume Highway. Four bloody hours trapped in a car with Lawrence Garcia. And then, once their business was done, the long trip back again. Shit. They had been travelling all morning, and Garcia was still yapping and messing with his mobile phone. A grown man acting like a kid. And when he wasn’t on his phone, he was checking his hair; a combed-back pompadour filled with so much styling product that it could withstand a hurricane, no doubt. Men shouldn’t use hair-styling products. Not real men, at any rate. Detective Senior Sergeant Rick Evans tightened his grip on the steering wheel and recommenced mindful breathing to keep his temper in check.

  In through the nose. Hold. Out through the mouth.

  At first light this morning, as Rick had been buttoning his shirt, his wife had said, “Remember, don’t let Garcia get to you. Think of your blood pressure. Just concentrate on the scenery. It’ll be a lovely drive into the countryside with lots of trees, lots of birds. Darling, you have to learn how to ignore him.”

  Ignore him? When at every possible second, Garcia was flapping his gums?

  “Hey, get this,” Garcia was saying, eyes glued to his phone. “Wooriyanda has a population of just one hundred and ten, and its post office closed in 1962.”

  “Yeah? Well, so what?”

  “So, it’s not officially a town. Only places with a post office are considered towns.”

  Rick grimaced. “Fascinating. What a font of knowledge you are.”

  “Or is it places with a pub? Hang on, I’ll check.”

  “No, don’t bother. Who cares? We’re not even stopping at Wooriyanda. The body farm’s off the road and into the bush a fair way.” Rick hunched his shoulders and shifted in his seat, agitated. “Whether or not the place is a town or a township is a moot point that doesn’t concern our investigation or this experiment. All right?”

  Garcia went back to messing with his phone. Without glancing over, Rick already knew that Garcia would be googling post offices and pubs and towns. It did his head in. Why the Detective Inspector had plucked this arrogant, smarmy dolt from Missing Persons to replace old Phil, Rick could not fathom. But some of the other blokes on the squad seemed to like Garcia. He’s funny to have around, said Jake whenever Rick complained. Good for a laugh, Robert would add. But working in Homicide was no laughing matter. And besides, how much work did Garcia actually get done? Oh, he was talented at looking busy, that’s for sure. Talented at fooling people who weren’t paying enough attention.

  “Hey, guess what?” Garcia said. “Turns out I was wrong on both counts. The definition of a town actually depends on its population, not the—”

  “And another thing,” Rick interrupted. “This is important. Listen up. When we get there and I introduce you to everybody, don’t call the place a ‘body farm’.”

  “Why not? You do.”

  “Yeah, but not to the people who work there. It’s disrespectful.”

  Garcia swiped at his phone. “Then what am I meant to call it?” Reading from the screen, he added, “The Victorian Taphonomic Experimental Research Institute?” He snorted out a laugh. “I mean, come on. What a mouthful. Nobody can remember that.”

  “Use the acronym.”

  “VITERI. Huh. Sounds like a brand of vitamin water.”

  Rick squeezed the steering wheel. “Okay, call it ‘the facility’. Can you do that?”

  “Sure, why not.” Garcia laughed again. “Or a brand of olive oil.”

  “What?”

  “VITERI. Sounds like a brand of olive oil.” Garcia slapped his thigh. “Oh shit, you know what? It’s actually a Spanish surname.”

  “I don’t much care, mate.”

  “Oh, I remember now. When I was a kid, my old man had a friend called Viteri but he was from the Basque region. Didn’t consider himself a Spaniard. Some coincidence. Weird, huh?”

  Maybe Garcia was winding him up on purpose. Rick’s three daughters did it all the time; he ought to be an expert at deflecting shit-stirring by now. Fine, he would take his wife’s advice and concentrate on the scenery. Not much to see. The odd house. Smatterings of eucalyptus trees. Flat, empty paddocks of dry, yellowed grass and hard-packed dirt. It was October—supposedly the middle of Spring—but the frequent rain showers had been a no-show this year. Rick leaned over the steering wheel to glance up at the sky. Bright blue with nary a cloud. So much for the supercell storm that was coming later today. A “rain bomb”, the weather bureau was calling it.

  “Make yourself useful,” Rick said. “Look up the forecast.”

  “Okay, boss.” A few seconds passed. “Right, it says here, ‘The east coast of Australia will be hit with a torrential downpour stretching from Melbourne to Brisbane.’ Um, blah, blah, stuff about New South Wales… Oh, here we go: ‘Melbourne is set to receive almost a month’s worth of rain over the next thirty-six hours.’ Huh. I guess we’ll see. Meteorologists are so fucking useless. Hey, want to know tomorrow’s temperature?”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “Twenty degrees with an overnight low of nine.”

  Rick sighed. In through the nose. Hold. Out through the mouth. At least the traffic was light. He checked the dashboard display. They were making good time, and should reach the body farm before midday. Hopefully the office manager, Stella Vasilakis, will have provided some lunch for them. She had done so at Rick’s last visit back around Christmas. Gourmet pies and sausage rolls. At the thought, Rick’s stomach grumbled. His wife had given him nothing but a bowl of porridge and a banana for breakfast. Apparently, he was on another diet. Middle-age spread came with middle age, in his opinion, but the missus worried about his blood pressure.

  “The Victorian Taphonomic Experimental Research Institute,” Garcia mused, thumbing at his phone. “I wonder what ‘taphonomic’ means.”

  “Never mind what it means. It’s irrelevant.”

  “According to Wikipedia, taphonomy is the study of how organisms decay and become fossilised.”

  “Now listen,” Rick said, “when we get to the body farm—the facility—let me do the talking.”

  “Hey, whatever you reckon.”

  “I’ve worked with these people before and know how to treat them.”

  Garcia pulled a face. “Huh? I know how to treat people too.”

  “Bear with me, all right? It’s a new place, only about a year old. It hasn’t got that many bodies on it yet. Every homicide copper in the country is fighting to get an experiment done to help out with a cold case.”

  Garcia smoothed a palm up and over his pompadour. “Well, duh.”

  “We can’t afford to ruffle any feathers at the body farm. Because if we do, next time we want them to re-create a crime scene for us, we’ll find ourselves at the bottom of the pecking order. Got me?”

  “Yeah, sure, I got you.”

  Rick nodded. “As long as we’re clear.”

  Garcia fell silent and started looking at his phone again. Rick could tell the little bastard was pissed off and getting sulky. Ha, gotcha; the shoe’s on the other foot.

  “Are we clear?” Rick said.

  “Yep, no worries,” Garcia muttered. “You’re doing the talking. I don’t care. Whatever.”

  “Good.” Rick smiled and relaxed. “Just follow my lead. Everything will be hunky-dory.”

  Saying hunky-dory always made his daughters roll their eyes. Happily, it had the same effect on Garcia.

  ***

  When they reached the outskirts of Wooriyanda, Rick used the touch-screen on the GPS and brought up the coordinates to the body farm.

  “Latitude and longitude?” Garcia said. “So, no street address?”

  “Of course not. They don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry dropping in for a gawk.”

  “Fair enough.” Garcia fiddled with his phone. “Hey, what do you know, the body farm in Sydney’s Blue Mountains doesn’t have a street address either.”

  “Well, duh,” Rick said, grinning.

  Garcia tightened his mouth and looked out the side window. Rick chuckled. This long trip with Garcia was a blessing in disguise; it was giving Rick the chance to figure out how to handle and shut down the smarmy little shit. Garcia was about thirty years old but acted like he was fifteen. Okay, well and good. Rick had experience with teenagers in spades.

  He slowed the car and paid closer attention to the GPS.

  Paddocks and the occasional farmhouse lined the road, with a backdrop of blue-green and hilly eucalyptus forest on both sides.

  “In two hundred metres,” the GPS intoned in her clipped British accent, “turn left.”

  “Do me a favour,” Rick said. “Put your phone away if you can manage it, and keep your eyes peeled. We’re looking for not much more than a goat track.”

  Sighing, Garcia slipped his phone into his jacket pocket and made a big show of sitting forward in his seat. Just like Rick’s youngest at the dinner table whenever they told her to stop slouching. Rick chuckled again. Some four hours of one-on-one time with Garcia had tipped the scales to Rick’s favour. He couldn’t wait to tell the missus tonight.

  “Turn left now,” the GPS said.

  Rick braked and steered the unmarked BMW off the road and onto the gravel. The track was only wide enough for one car. Gum trees pressed in close.
Another six kilometres and a few more turns, and they would reach the body farm. The dashboard clock read 11.48 a.m. Right on time. Rick’s stomach grumbled. Please, let Stella Vasilakis have bought those Tandoori chicken pies again. If he remembered correctly, Stella lived in Mount Beauty, a town some forty minutes further out from the body farm, and by God they must have a killer bakery there. He would be sure to snaffle the Tandoori pies first and leave Garcia with the spinach and feta.

  “You got the file?” he said.

  “Right here,” Garcia replied, and picked up the bound manila folder from the footwell.

  “Check over it.”

  “I already have.”

  “Then do it again,” Rick said.

  Garcia huffed, opened to the front page and bent his head. How the bastard didn’t get car-sick while reading, Rick had no idea. His oldest daughter, even now, had to sit where she had an unobstructed view of the windscreen. Otherwise, she would spew. Had done so since the first day they had put her in a booster seat. She was eighteen now, in her final year of high school, on her L-plates and shooting for her license by the new year. Driving didn’t upset her stomach, thank God. His baby somehow eighteen… Time flies, Rick thought. And the older you get, the faster it goes.

  The GPS broke into his thoughts. “In fifty metres, turn right… Now turn left… Now turn right… You have reached your destination. Your destination is on the left.”

  “Whoa,” Garcia said. “It’s a prison.”

  The VITERI compound had a high cyclone fence topped with razor wire, and double gates with a no-man’s land of some three metres between them. CCTV cameras loomed from both gates. A placard stated RESTRICTED AREA AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY with no other sign-posting. The buildings were obscured by trees. To Rick, it looked like the property of a doomsday prepper.

  He braked. “Are you ready?”

  Garcia seemed almost cowed. “Yeah, sure. Let’s do this.”

  Rick coasted the BMW towards the gate, braked again at the intercom post, and cracked his window. The intercom fizzed into life.

  “A very good morning to you, Detective Senior Sergeant Evans,” said a female voice. “Oh, sorry, I mean good afternoon. Wait, is it morning or afternoon?”

  Yep, sounded like Stella. He glanced at the dashboard display. “It’s one minute to twelve.”

  Her smoker’s laugh wheezed through the speaker. “Oh, morning or afternoon, you know what I mean. Hello! Just hang on, I’m buzzing you in.”

  The first gate rolled back on hidden mechanisms. Rick nosed the car into the no-man’s land and stopped. The gate closed behind them.

  “Are you right?” Stella’s voice sounded from a second speaker.

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  “Whoa, this is exactly like a prison,” Garcia whispered, as if scared of being overheard.

  “They have to keep out the riff-raff somehow,” Rick said, and shut his window.

  The second gate rolled back. Rick eased the car along the track towards the parking area some ten metres distant. Behind them, the second gate screeched as it closed. Garcia swivelled his head this way and that. Rick smiled. Greenhorn.

  The carport was large enough to hold a dozen cars. Most of the spots were taken with a wide cross-section of vehicles. Two parking bays had VISITOR stencilled on the concrete floor. Rick steered the BMW under the carport roof and into one of the visitor bays.

  He killed the engine. “Don’t forget,” he said, wagging a finger. “Let me do the talking.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Garcia went to get out of the car.

  “Wait,” Rick said. “Don’t forget the file.”

  “What?”

  “The file on the Wilson murder. Don’t forget to bring it. And the beach towel.”

  Garcia reached into the footwell for the manila folder as Rick got out of the car and buttoned up his suit jacket. Dear God. The stink of the place was so thick—as thick as woodsmoke—that it literally reached into your mouth and scrabbled at your throat. Your first reflex was to hold your breath. Your second was to cough. Third to spew. But Rick had known what to expect. Garcia got out of the car, white-faced, nose crinkling.

  “Aw, fucking hell,” he said. “What’s that stench?”

  Rick opened his arms and gestured around him. “Death.”

  “Fuck.” Garcia held the beach towel up to his nose and mouth. “Fucking fuck.”

  Poor kid. Rick almost felt sorry for him. The two cases Garcia had helped investigate in his few weeks on the squad had involved (a) bones, decades old, lying in a shallow dirt grave and (b) a corpse about three hours deceased, with signs of marbled lividity but no decay. Too old and too fresh; neither crime scene had smelled. However, rotting skin, organs and tissue presented another ball game altogether. Even if sniffed only once, death had a particular odour that you would never forget for as long as you lived: a hellish and powerful combination of pond scum, sulphurous farts, shit, and rancid meat. The kind of combination that can instantly evert your stomach contents. But after some fourteen years in Homicide, Rick could hold it down. In fact, he was considered a “cadaver dog” in the squad: if there was a putrefying corpse or body part anywhere in the vicinity, Rick Evans would smell it first.

  “Garcia,” he said. “You’re not going to spew, are you?”

  “Nah. I’m fine.”

  Rick approached, touching Garcia lightly on the elbow. This was only the second time he’d made physical contact: the first being a handshake when Garcia had strutted into Homicide Squad. But now Rick felt benevolent, almost fatherly. It had something to do with Garcia’s ashen face, the way he was trying to mask his nausea. Oh no, maybe I’m the arsehole here, Rick thought in alarm, and it’s not Garcia after all.

  “You right, mate?” he said gently.

  “Fuck, just leave it,” Garcia said, wrenching his arm away. “Where do we go?”

  Rick pointed at a flat-roofed building some twenty metres distant. Garcia slung the beach towel over his shoulder, clutched the case file to his chest, and strode towards the building without looking back. Rick felt a pang of regret.

  Shit. He’d done it again.

  When would he ever learn to give a little ground?

  At home, his wife enjoyed smooth and friendly relations with their girls. Oh, but not Rick. No, almost every night at dinner he would somehow get caught up in a stupid, pointless, unwinnable argument without even trying—socialism doesn’t work, vegetarianism is an eating disorder, all rap music including mumble, trap and grime is woeful—and his daughters would leave the kitchen table in a snit, leaving the missus to glare daggers at him.

  “You coming or not?” Garcia called.

  Rick locked the car and jogged after Garcia, his soft belly jouncing.

  Waiting for them on the veranda was Stella, the old gal looking exactly as he remembered her: as if she had dressed in the dark. Purple jacket, orange striped t-shirt, green trousers, wedge heels, blue-framed spectacles, dyed ginger hair scraped into a top-knot with a chequered scrunchie. He smiled with genuine warmth. Bouncing a little on her toes, she waved both hands at him, bangles and charm bracelets rattling on her wrists. She must be pushing sixty, but had somehow retained the ditzy gusto of youth.

  “Hello, hello!” she said. “Detective Senior Sergeant Evans, it’s lovely to see you again.”

  “Same here, and please call me Rick.”

  “Okay, Rick.” She turned to look up at Garcia. “And who’s this fine young man you’ve brought with you today?”

  Rick clapped Garcia’s shoulder, and said, “Detective Senior Constable Lawrence Garcia. He’s new to the squad, and I’ve got him on my crew. Garcia, this is Stella, office manager.”

  “Ooh, he’s a nice young man, isn’t he?” she said to Rick.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Garcia said. “Could we go inside now?”

  Stella play-slapped her forehead. “How stupid I am. For goodness sakes, yes, it’s a bit whiffy out here, isn’t it? I hardly notice it myself anymore. Come this way.”

  They followed her into the building with the placard MAIN OFFICE: PLEASE REPORT TO RECEPTION. Once the door closed, the air conditioning kept out the smell. Rick recalled the simple layout—most of the offices, kitchen and toilets at one end, morgue at the other—and Stella was leading them right to the kitchen. Lunch! God, he was ravenous. A man of his stockiness couldn’t be expected to subsist on a breakfast of porridge and banana.