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Cormier said, “Officer, you can’t lend Gulos out, much as I’d like to make the money. They’re my private passion, I love them and I keep them around because they shore up my reputation as a mustelidologist. You lend Gulos out, they’ll attack anything human or animal within biting range. I had one stolen out of its pen five or six years ago, and my only consolation was that the stealer sure as hell got himself mangled.”
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Cormier took out his cigar butt and fingered it. “In the summer of ‘42 I worked nights at the Griffith Park Zoo, resident zoologist doing research on nocturnal mustelid habits. I had an earlier bunch of wolverines that were getting real fat. I knew somebody must have been feeding them, and I started finding extra mouse and hamster carcasses in the pens. Somebody was lifting the food latches and feeding my Gulos, and I figured it for a neighborhood kid who’d heard about my reputation and thought he’d see for himself. Truth be told, it didn’t bother me, and it kind of gave me a cozy feeling, here’s this fellow Gulo lover and all. Then, late in July, it stopped. I knew it stopped because there were no more extra carcasses in the cages and my Gulos went back to their normal weights. About a year and a half or so went by, and one night my Gulo Otto was stolen. I laughed like hell. I figured the feeder had to have a Gulo for himself and stole Otto. Otto was a pistol. If the stealer got away with keeping him, I’m sure Otto bit him real good. I called hospitals around here to see if they stitched a bite victim, but it was no go, no Otto.”
Bit him real good.
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He was almost expecting a neon sign facade, an animal mouth open wide, the address numbers done up as teeth. He was wrong: the lab was just a tan stucco building, a subtly lettered sign above the door its only advertisement.
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“Regarding?”
“Regarding animal teeth.”
The girl tapped an intercom switch and said, “Policeman to see you, Mr. Carmichael.” Da
A co
“Yes, mister?”
“It’s Deputy Upshaw.”
“And this regards, Deputy?”
“It regards wolverine teeth.”
No reaction except impatience—the man obviously anxious to get back to work. “Then I can’t help you. Joredco is the only lab in Los Angeles that fashions animal dentures, and we’ve never done them for a wolverine.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because taxidermists do not stuff wolverines—they are not an item that people want mounted in their home or lodge. I’ve worked here for thirteen years and I’ve never filled an order for wolverine teeth.”
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“Yes, but it would be bloody and very slapdash without the proper tools.”
“Good. Because I’m looking for a man who likes blood.”
Carmichael wiped his hands on his smock. “Deputy, what is this in regard to?”
“Quadruple homicide. How far back do your employment records go?”
The “quadruple homicide” got to Carmichael—he looked shaken under his brusqueness. “My God. Our records go back to ‘40, but Joredco employs mostly women. You don’t think—”
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“There haven’t been many. Frankly, women work for a lower wage. Our current staff has been here for years, and when we get rush orders, we hire bums out of day labor and kids from Lincoln and Belmont High School to do the scut work. During the war, we hired lots of temporaries that way.”
The Joredco co
“Yes.”
“May I see your records?”
Carmichael turned to the receptionist. “Sally, let Deputy whatever here see the files.”
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It took him an hour to go through the medical charts.
Since November ‘39, sixteen men had been hired on as dental techs. Three were Japanese, hired immediately after the Jap internment ended in ‘44; four were Caucasian and now in their thirties; three were white and now middle-aged; six were Mexican. All sixteen men had, at one time or another, given blood to the a
Da
The day was warming up; heat that felt all the worse for coming after heavy rain. Da