The Last Dance of Low Seward

2-2

“Will he try to burn us like the rest?” the other asked, more out of curiosity than fear.

“I know I’m going to regret asking this,” Nick said over his shoulder to Willie, “But what exactly is happening right now?”

“As you can tell, the Tagalog Twins over here are a bit out of it. Attempting to interview them has been... I’ll just say it... f*****g hilarious. I’m pissed I can’t post it to YouTube. Some of the s**t that came out of these chick’s mouths, Hunter S. Thompson on an ether binge couldn’t come up with.”

Nick knew his new partner was a competent cop; brilliant at controlling a crime scene, and not flippant when it came to investigations. Her behavior was so out of character, he was certain there had to be a catch.

“Can I ask a follow-up?”

“They’re superglued to the floor,” Willie said, opening one of the dresser drawers.

“No s**t,” Nick said, peering down to where they were sitting.

Sure enough, the skin of both the girls’ buttocks and legs were affixed to the scratched hardwood floor.

Just as he was internally scolding himself for lingering too close to the wonderful canvases of light brown skin, one of the girls started rubbing his freshly cropped head.

“Mr. Cream Cake Maker... where do you find such wonderful pieces of death flakes?”

He stood up, trying to play it cool.

“Don’t pretend like you weren’t admiring the view, Mr. Cream Cake Maker,” Willie said.

Flustered, Nick tried to play it off, “I get why we aren’t turpentining the floor, but you couldn’t be bothered to give them windbreakers or blankets or something?”

“They freak out when we try to cover them up. Scream their goddamn heads off. And we can’t sedate them until we’ve figured out what the hell else they’ve got pumping through their veins. So, for now, just treat them like evidence. They’re not bothering anybody as long as we let them play cards.”

“One more thing—”

“The Fool appears to be the best card in the deck. Swords and Wands beat Coins and Cups,” she said, “Kinda like War.”

Satisfied, he shrugged and went around to the other side of the bed.

“It’ll definitely be in my top five weirdest things at a crime scene,” he said.

“Though not on mine,” she said.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“One of the first calls I caught as a rookie before going back to school, saw a baby and a dog stapled butthole to butthole,” Willie said, “And they kept yanking at the staples. Both of them.”

He cringed as he pictured it, “I can’t unthink that.”

“Whatever their abuser was trying to accomplish... it didn’t work. s**t was coming out of the crevasses like marshmallow coming out of a s’more someone pushed down too hard. There’s not enough scotch in the world to forget that one.”

“Please stop talking about all the things you are talking about please,” Nick spit out fast, swallowing to keep down the nugget creeping up his throat. He did a full body shudder and peered out through the only open window. The slick street was becoming visible in the low light bursting through the gray film covering the sky.

“I can’t believe we found this dude on a rainy day. How f*****g cliché.”

“I don’t think we’d have fewer murders if people were only killed on the sunny days,” she said.

Below them, an entertainment news van streaked around the corner of 7th Street and a handful of camera-wielding parasites got out, pressing against the police barrier.

“How the f**k do the photographers always get here before forensics?” Nick asked no one in particular.

He turned back to the bed, exhaling hard as he looked at the disturbing corpse before him.

“What did you do to deserve this, Mr. Seward?”

Lowell Seward had recently become a box office cash cow. After clinging too long to the action stars of old, casting directors realized audiences were no longer buying sixty-five-year-old men fighting terrorists. They’d been trying for years to find someone to replace them, scouring the casts of the latest YA book adaptations and the Disney Channel, but the audiences never took to anyone for more than a film or two.

Enter Low Seward.

Soon everybody wanted to “Get Low” and his quote shot through the roof. Not bad for a kid from St. Louis whose only previous job had been as Researcher #2 in a commercial for cheese crackers.

Nick looked at the stained wall over the mattress. Why would someone with a multi-million-dollar mansion in Hancock Park be bedding down in a Skid Row walk-up in the middle of the week? The answer probably had something to do with how much of his head was plastered into the cracking paint. There was so little left of Lowell Seward’s face when the first responders arrived, it was a wonder the deceased hadn’t been passed off as someone else. One of the first officers on scene had noticed the tattoo of a whale on the dead man’s hand.

It was his signature, much like the sombrero woman on the chest of Danny Trejo. Seward had yet to star in a movie where he let the tattoo be covered up. It became an interesting challenge for screenwriters, finding a way to justify why each one of Seward’s characters had that particular trait. There were whole blogs dedicated to The Whale; something his character got while they were in juvvie, a remembrance of the character’s dead mother, or an addition to a plethora of other tattoos labored over by a makeup artist. Lowell Seward never revealed what the tattoo meant.

The speculation would be tenfold now that he was gone, though Nick didn’t expect Seward’s fan base to mourn him long after his death. It wasn’t the time of icons whose legend would live on through the ages. Stars who died young got their tribute during the Oscars and the SAG Awards, then disappeared into the ether, replaced by the next person in line for stardom.

Nick would’ve rather handed this one over to the detectives in the Central Division, but the body was identified early so no one else had been assigned the case. Robbery-Homicide Division was tasked with handling all cases of multiple murder, serial killers, and high profile victims. Movie star dead in a crack house fit the bill of high profile.

“Looks like they stuck his toe into the shotgun trigger housing to make it look like a suicide,” Nick said, crouching next to the bed. He looked for familiar grease on the barrel and didn’t see any. “It’s wiped, though we might find a partial print. No powder burns on his foot.”

“Yeah, I saw that too,” Willie said, “Think we can just call it a suicide and be done with it?”

“It’d help our clearance rate if we never put it on the board. But why fake a suicide, then leave two witnesses?” Nick said.

“Maybe our unsub figures those girls are too far gone to register reality.”

“Even if we’ve got somebody doing a hasty job, they aren’t going to take that chance. Even an i***t criminal knows that’s way too big of a loose end.”

Willie crouched under the bed and slipped the end of her pen into a spent shotgun casing.

“With the rest of the sloppy job here, there’s gotta be a print on that,” Nick said, producing a plastic evidence bag.

“Look at the ropes,” Nick said, “the ligature on his wrists is minimal. He was tied up voluntarily.”

“No doubt to enjoy a romp with the twins,” she said.

“But he was tied up and they were glued down. There had to be a third-party to mediate between them.”

“You have any dominatrixes on speed dial that would be into this sort of thing?” Willie asked.

“My usual girl is on vacation,” Nick smiled.

He looked down at the body, one tanned leg sticking out from under the bedding.

“Where are his pants?”

“Strange. When I got here I asked, ‘Where’s his p***s?’” Willie said.

Nick flipped back the sheet covering Lowell Seward’s crotch, revealing an empty hole spattered with dried blood and skin.

“What the f**k, Will?” Nick said, dropping the sheet back down, “That’s not something you just spring on someone.”

“Was trying to think of the best way to ease into it,” she said.

“You did a s**t job.”

“Was hoping it would put you over the edge for the puke pool.”

Once the initial shock of the horror show had passed, the wheels in Nick’s head started turning.

“So, why the hack and grab? Crazy fan with a souvenir?”

“I’m sure stranger things have been sold on eBay,” Willie said, “We haven’t even started to go through the clutter in this place. I’m sure we’ll find his pants in one pile or another. As well as the penis.”

Nick looked under the rotting pizza boxes, hoping he was the one to find the pants and not the severed p***s.

Willie put her notebook down on the dresser and started scouring the apartment for any sign of discarded men’s pants. For all of the crap strewn about, the place was devoid of clothing. She did come up with both of the girl’s dresses, short and shiny. The girls had either been out clubbing or were professionals. She had one or two of the same dresses in her own closet that could’ve gone either way. She set them aside to be tested for DNA and flipped over the living room rug, discovering several transparent worms hidden there.

“Anything?” Nick asked from the kitchen.

“Six... yeah, six used condoms,” Willie said, “And I’m leaving them for you to bag.”

“Be sure to put numbers down so I don’t step on ‘em,” Nick said, finding another condom hanging from the exhaust over the stove.

“If all these are his, he’s got a lot of stamina,” she said, finding a treasure trove of s*x toys in a chest in the closet, “Or he did before the grand severing.”

They found lots of ungodly things that would have to be entered into evidence, but no pants and no p***s.

Nick stepped back into the bedroom and went over to the twins. The smaller girl had just won whatever game they were playing and was swatting her bare breasts in celebration.

“Hey, Dum and Dee,” he said, crouching to meet their faces, “Pants?”

“Bluebirds gotta fly,” the tiny one hummed.

“Mr. Cream Cake Maker doesn’t make the cream in the open air,” the other said, biting her lower lip. Nick was pretty sure she would’ve lunged for him if she hadn’t been glued to the floor.

“And they just continue to be helpful,” Willie said, looking out the open window down to the throng of tabloid reporters growing on the sidewalk.

The glued down girl on the left lifted the milk crate. Tarot cards went everywhere, but she’d revealed some evidence. A d**k covered in dominoes.

“Welp, we can stop looking for the p***s,” he said, pushing the milk crate back on top of it. Now that he’d found it, it was forensics’ problem.

When he turned around, he saw Willie was examining the sash of the window.

“Should we close that? The rain’s coming in,” Nick said.

“It was open when we got here. Thought it might be an escape route for our killer, but...” Willie stopped mid-sentence and stuck her head out of the window, the drizzle forming a beaded layer on her tightly pulled back hair.

She stepped out onto the fire escape and beckoned to him, “Archer.”

He followed her out onto the wet black metal and they looked over the edge of the balcony. Hanging precariously, a few floors down, was a pair of waterlogged blue jeans, about Seward’s size.

“Pretend like we’re just casually looking around,” Willie said, “One of those vultures catches wind we’re going after those pants, they’ll form a human ladder to grab ‘em and we’ll never see ‘em again.”

“Good point,” Nick whispered, peering around the exposed brick wall like someone scanning a vista with no particular focal point. When he made his way down the stairs, it was in a casual gait, but that didn’t stop the herd of reporters below from noticing the badge on his belt.

“Detective,” a small blonde woman in a trench coat yelled up to him, “Can you comment on whether this is an investigation of the death of Lowell Seward?”

He recognized her from one of the many red carpet shows during awards season. Carly Wentworth. A teleprompter-reading pretty face. She also had a gossip blog not-so-cleverly named, For What It’s Worth. Not the type he expected to be doing investigative journalism at 6 a.m., but she was the first one on scene.

“No,” he said, reaching the balcony where the pants flopped in the wind. He put his hand over them, as though he hadn’t noticed they were there and called back down to her, “But I really like that coat. What is that? Burberry?”

“Sources tell us Seward committed suicide in that apartment,” Wentworth replied, ignoring his glib answer.

“And what source would that be? I’d love to talk to them about interfering with an open investigation. Maybe give them an executive tour of the police station.”

“C’mon, Detective, you gotta gimme something,” she said, smiling up at him through the rain. She was pretty and she knew it, but Nick had passed the stage in his life where he was easily influenced by a pretty face.

“No, I don’t,” he said.

The cameras flashed below him. He pulled out his cell phone and pointed it down at them.

“Smile,” he said, clicking a picture of the pants into evidence before turning around and taking them with him. Questions yelled from below bled into each other as he ducked back into the apartment. No one seemed to notice he’d taken the pants, but it would be the focus of media scrutiny as soon as they got back into their vans and reviewed the tape.

Nick shook off the damp and started poking through the pockets of the jeans.

“Cell phone?” Nick asked.

“Already bagged. Last call was to Shane Davidson, his agent, a few hours ago. Don’t know what sort of business they were discussing at 3 a.m., but it must have been important. They talked for about twenty minutes.”

“Sounds like that’s the first man we visit once the sun comes up. Did we log the wallet and keys yet?” Nick asked.

“Nope,” Willie said. She turned to the closest uniform. “Make sure to check out any homeless in the area when you’re canvassing. If they fell out of the jeans somebody could’ve picked them up off the street and kept walking. And start doing a scan for his vehicle. If it’s not parked nearby somebody could’ve picked up the keys and gone for a chop ride. Put it out on the wire.”

The uniform got on the radio and headed down the stairs, certainly glad to have a task to get him out of the stink of the apartment.

Nick felt a small bump in the useless watch pocket and dug two fingers in. Between his index and middle finger, he held a small baggie filled with a bright purple powder. It looked like somebody had emptied out a couple of grape-flavored Pixie Stix.

“Jackpot,” Nick said, shaking the bag.

“If that turns out to be novelty sand, I’ll be pissed,” Willie said.

“You and me both.”

The cell phone in his coat pocket buzzed. He answered it, handing the baggie over to Willie to log into evidence.

“Archer.”

“There’s a confidential informant in Central Division got picked up last night on a homicide. Won’t stop dropping your name,” Lieutenant Jenkins said. It sounded like he was polishing off his typical breakfast of half a dozen donuts and two breakfast sandwiches.

“I don’t have a registered CI,” Nick said, searching the catalog in his mind.

“Looked him up. Hasn’t collected a check in years, but he’s yours. The name Ray Cobb ring a bell?”

Nick hadn’t heard that name in a long time. After the Keller & Hoff investigation, Nick had dropped Ray off on the curb on Beverly Boulevard and he hadn’t seen or heard from him again. That was a little over two years ago.

“What’d they pick him up for?” Nick asked.

“Caught with a body in Chinatown. I’m not gonna give you the whole play by play on the phone. You wanna claim him or do we put him through processing?”

Nick looked at the apartment. The photographer was finishing up with his pictures and the forensic team was starting to pry the twins from the floor. One of them used a pair of tongs to bag the severed p***s and Nick gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

“Gimme a couple hours.”