Two seconds after Doctor Gary Bendigo pulled in to his parking space outside the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center and cut the engine, a bird shat on the windscreen. He looked at the thin white splatter, heard the unmistakable woodwind cooing of mourning doves in the trees above, and instead of recognising it as the omen it was, he bitterly counted back the hours since he’d washed the now-soiled vehicle.

It was nine. He sighed. Half the reason he’d washed the car in the first place was because, only a week earlier, he’d been blindsided in this very location. Arriving at his parking space outside the lab, McDonald’s cappuccino in the cup holder, tie undone, hanging around his neck, a young male reporter with waxed eyebrows and a painted-on suit had ambushed him about the backlog, cameraman hovering behind him.

Bendigo had watched footage of the stunt on Dateline. He’d noticed, alongside the nation, that the neighbour’s kid had traced WASH ME! in the dust on his back window.

None of it looked good.

Doctor Gary Bendigo: can’t find the time to tie his tie.

Or make his own coffee.

Or wash his car.

Or get through more than five hundred untested rape kits for the Los Angeles Police Department…

Continue reading the extract here…

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