by P. A. Brown
Side by side David and Sarah dug through the rubble, joined by Martinez. Within minutes they had cleared legs and hips and were working on the upper body. Even before he saw his face, David knew it was Chris.
His skin was waxy and pale, and he didn’t seem to be breathing.
“Chris?”
134 P.A. Brown
“Careful,” a newly arrived EMT cautioned. “We need to get him out of there with a minimum of movement.”
More EMTs arrived, and slowly but inexorably David and the others were pushed aside. He stood helplessly on the sidelines as the professionals removed the last of the debris from the unmoving Chris and eased him onto a stretcher board. They pressed an oxygen mask over his pale face.
“Let’s get him out of here,” an EMT shouted. “We’ve got a bus waiting.”
While David watched, Chris was rushed down what remained of Ste. Anne’s steps and shoved into a waiting ambulance. Sirens rising, the ambulance vanished between a pair of cherry red fi re trucks.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Wednesday, 1:45 pm, Northeast Community Police Station, San Fernando Road, Los Angeles
David emerged from McKee’s offi ce and the fi rst thing he saw was a grinning Martinez.
“You ready to roll, partner?”
David had let Martinez drag him home to change before they raced to USC County General where Chris had just gone into surgery.
At that point Martinez took a phone call. McKee insisted David present himself at the Northeast Station immediately.
After forty minutes with McKee, who made it clear the only reason David still had a job was due to his superior’s due diligence and support, David was offi cially reinstated. David had enough respect for McKee to keep his opinions to himself.
“The only place I’m rolling is back to USC.” David threw his partner a sour look. “You can brief me on the way.”
Martinez led the way to his car.
“We got the warrant for our victim’s place and we got those pictures you were looking for.”
“The son? Adam?”
“Yeah. We’ve got a couple of uniforms visiting all the units in Nancy Scott’s apartment with Adam’s photo. So far we’ve got some hits, people saw Adam coming and going, but nobody’s too clear about dates or times. People just admit they saw him every week or two.”
David slipped back into cop mode with ease. “We’ll need to revisit them. Maybe we can jog some memories. What about the tox reports? Any word?”
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“I was gonna call them today. They’re dragging their feet.
They always do when you don’t stay on top of ‘em.”
They agreed that while David was seeing about Chris, Martinez would call CFSI and see if he could drag a preliminary report out of them. Depending on how that went, they would plan the rest of their day. David called the hospital.
Chris was still in surgery.
David waited impatiently for someone to come on the phone.
Finally, a woman picked up the extension.
“Detective Laine?” she asked.
“Yes. Can you tell me what happened to Chris?”
“The patient suffered head trauma due to falling debris, some internal bleeding and bruising as well as two cracked ribs.”
“What’s his condition?”
“He’s still in surgery. Once he goes into ICU we’ll have to wait for him to regain consciousness so we can assess his mental acuity.”
“You suspect brain damage?”
“He was buried in that rubble for an unknown period of time.
We have to suspect there was oxygen deprivation. We just don’t know for how long, or what damage there might be. We won’t know until he wakes up.”
“What are the chances of a full recovery?” He knew his agitation was showing “Chris is my husband.”
“We’re hopeful,” she said. “But if you’re looking for a fi rsthand account of what happened, you might be disappointed.
Often victims of this sort of trauma suffer permanent short-term memory dysfunction. He might never remember what happened to him today.”
David scrubbed his hand through his unruly hair. “Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate your being straight.”
“If you need to talk to him, I suggest you come back tomorrow.
He might be aware enough to talk then.” Her tone grew shrewd.
L.A. BYTES 137
“But if you want my advice, I’d just let him be for a couple of days. He’s likely to be pretty confused when he fi rst wakes up.”
“Thank you,” David muttered and disconnected after giving her his pager and cell phone number.
The early November sun splashed across the hood of Martinez’s mud-brown Crown. “He’s still in surgery,” he said fl atly. David squinted through the window at the street ahead, past a chugging orange, red and white metro bus.
“Let’s go talk to some techs then.”
“They got a report for us?” David asked. Last he’d talked to anyone at the lab they had nothing for him.
Martinez buffed his knuckles across his chest. “I always deliver.”
“I am impressed.”
The technician, a tall, robust African-American man, led them into an outer room. He carried two blue folders. His name tag said R. Ronaldson. “You’re wanting to see this, then.” He fl ipped open the folder and drew out a thin sheaf of stapled paper, which he handed to David.
He glanced through the document. His attention was immediately riveted by one line.
“Hydrocyanic acid?” David said. “Don’t tell me, it was in the chocolates?”
“There was a high degree of lactic acidosis and evidence of pulmonary edema. Your victim ingested roughly three hundred grams of chocolates and at least one hundred and seventy-fi ve milligrams of potassium cyanide.”
“Who dosed her?” Martinez muttered.
“Sorry, I don’t do whodunit.” Ronaldson stuffed the report back into the folder. “I just read the output. I leave the easy stuff to you.”
“Anything off the candy wrapper?” David asked. Which was going to be harder, tracing the candy or the poison? Were they 138 P.A. Brown
still looking at the son? Poisoning was personal. Hard to see it being done by a stranger. Not impossible, but... would Nancy Scott have eaten a box of chocolates handed her by a stranger?
“Residue? Fingerprints?”
“High quality cocoa, cocoa butter, hazelnut... If it helps, they were high quality chocolates. Probably European. Sorry, no prints.”
“Can you give me a brand?” David asked.
“If you bring me a sample I might be able to match it, but so far I don’t think anyone’s started a database of chocolates.”
“Can you tell us anything else?”
Under David and Martinez’s watchful gaze he pulled out another report. “Some hair and fi bers were recovered from a carpet.” He glanced at the papers he pulled out of the folder.
“The bedroom carpet. Not too surprising, most home vacuums suck at getting that kind of stuff.” He snorted at his own joke.
“One thing you have to keep in mind is that hair’s pretty inert. It tends not to break down in a stable environment. So I can’t tell you how long they’ve been there.”
“But can you type them?” David asked. He’d worry about proving how the hair got there after he knew who it belonged to.
“Six distinct DNAs. One belongs to your victim. A second, male, is a close relative, so I’m guessing your victim’s son. The rest are unknowns.”
Meaning they weren’t in any database. Neighbors maybe, Alice for sure. No way to test all the possible visitors.
“And then there was the cat hair. Now that was interesting.”
“Cat hair?” David glanced at Martinez. “You remember anything about her owning a cat?”
Martinez shook his head. “Where was this hair?”
“That’s the interesting part,” he said. “It was recovered from the
victim’s clothing.”
L.A. BYTES 139
“Why is that interesting?” David asked.
“Because that’s the only place it was found. If your victim had owned a cat, or even if one had been in her place for a short while, I would expect to fi nd cat hair in the carpet and bedding or chairs.”
“So how’d the hair get on her?” David asked. “The killer?”
“Maybe. Could be someone she visited,” Martinez said. “But if your killer owns one it’s good circumstantial. What color was the thing?”
“Tortoiseshell,” Ronaldson said. “So you’re looking for a female.” At their quizzical look he added, “Sexual dimorphism is a trait linked to the specifi c sex of an animal. For the most part only female cats can be tortoiseshell.”
David nodded. “Still, it only helps us catch a killer if we can fi nd him and his cat.”
They left the tech to his equipment and his evidence and made their way outside. A faint, lingering blush of pink stained the western sky.
Before Martinez unlocked the car, they shared a look over the roof.
“We gotta fi nd the son,” Martinez said.
“He gave us a contact, didn’t he?” David had been out of touch for a while, but he was sure he remembered getting an address and phone number from Adam.
“Yeah. Number was disconnected in September. I sent a couple of uniforms out to the address. Nada.”
“He skipped?”
Martinez shrugged and scratched a mole on his neck.
“Landlord says he gave his sixty days’ notice all regular like. No forwarding, but still, nothing hinky about it as far as the landlord could remember, though he did leave before his sixty days was up. But he was all paid up, so the landlord didn’t seem to care. If our guy’s running, he sure planned it all out in advance.”
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“Where’d his mail get diverted to?”
“Didn’t. My guess is he already had a mail drop. We’ll run DWP and phone searches, see if he transferred anything with him.”
David grunted. He looked over his folded hands at the red brick and glass Hertzberg-Davis building. The brand new forensic center was a far cry from the outdated facilities they’d used prior to its opening. His thoughts raced. Maybe Adam had planned the poisoning. Except, if he had, why did he come back to his mother’s apartment that day? If he was cagey enough to plan this homicide he must have known he’d be the prime suspect. Why not just vanish? He could have been on the other coast before anyone started looking for him.
“If he’s still here he must have an agenda,” David said, fi nishing the thought aloud. He thought of Nancy Scott as they had fi rst seen her, lying in her bed, looking like she had just fallen asleep. He swung around to stare hard at Martinez. “I want to go talk to Lopez.”
They drove east to Mission Road, struggling through late afternoon traffi c, where they found Lopez in her offi ce. She was peering over her glasses at a monitor, working on something and tapping away at her keyboard with two fi ngers. She looked up when he entered.
“Cyanide,” he said, leaning over her desk, palms fl at on the scarred metal. “The dosage our victim got, how fast would it hit her?”
“Ingested?”
“Probably in chocolates.”
“Ten-fi fteen minutes.”
“Not instantaneous?”
“No. She’d start to get very ill within those fi fteen minutes.
She’d feel dizzy, nauseous, maybe even restless.”
“Anything else?”
L.A. BYTES 141
“Rapid onset would cause convulsions and heart failure.”
Lopez propped her elbows on the desk and laced her fi ngers together. “The principal toxicity results from the shutting down of cellular respiration. The cells can’t get the oxygen they need, so they fail. Tissues with the highest oxygen requirements like the brain and the heart are the most affected by acute cyanide poisoning.”
“So she wouldn’t just lie down and die?”
“It might be quick, but it’s not that gentle,” Lopez said. “It’s not what I’d call a nice way to die.”
“Our victim was arranged all neat and peaceful in her bed, like she’d just dozed off watching TV. From what you’ve just told me that’s about as likely as Martinez suddenly developing a taste for Gucci.”
She blinked. “That’s not an image for the faint of heart.”
“No, I guess it isn’t. Thanks, Lopez.”
“Anytime.”
David rejoined Martinez in the car. Martinez cranked the engine on and rolled down the window.
“Where to?” he asked.
David opened his mouth to say the victim’s place when his cell went off. He yanked it off his belt and stared at the text message on the tiny screen. His mouth went dry.
“The hospital,” he croaked. “It’s the hospital.”
Martinez threw the car into gear and they squealed out of the lot in a cloud of burning rubber.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Wednesday, 5:30 pm, USC County General, State Street, Los Angeles Thick, gummy residue matted Chris’s eyelashes and raised tears as he forced them apart. He blinked. All he could see were blurs of dull white and gray. A distant beeping throbbed in his skull.
He turned his head and a crushing pain traced a path of fi re from his skull to his hip. He groaned.
A warm hand touched his forehead. “Try not to move, Christopher,” a calming female voice said. “You’ve had a bit of an accident. You’re at County General.”
“W-what happened?” Chris asked. At least that’s what he intended to say. His lips were numb and the words came out as a broken series of grunts.
“Don’t,” the voice insisted. “Don’t speak. Don’t move. You’re going to be okay.”
Chris didn’t believe her. As consciousness returned he grew aware of pain that seemed to emanate from every part of his body. “What happened?” This time the words were stronger.
“You had an accident.”
“Accident?” Had he been in another car wreck? He couldn’t even remember being in the car this time. He struggled through a growing headache to remember anything.
At fi rst when the bizarre images began fl ashing through his mind he wondered if he was hallucinating. Dark leather. Brilliant lights and loud music. What the hell kind of memory was that?
David!
He bolted upright, pushing aside the hand that tried to hold him down. His vision blurred and his head spun. The room 144 P.A. Brown
whirled around him. When his stomach turned over he stared up at the thin redhead hovering over him.
“Oh God,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “I’m going to—”
She held his head as he emptied his stomach into a bedpan.
“Now,” she said briskly as she helped him lie back down.
“Didn’t I tell you to stop fussing and relax? Nothing is more important right now than getting your rest.”
“Where’s David?”
“David?” The nurse used a warm damp face cloth to wipe his mouth, throat and eyes. He winced at the sharp pain in his jaw.
“Who’s David?”
“He’s my husband. Is he okay? Was he in the accident too?
Where is he?”
“I assure you there was no David—”
“You have to tell me.” Chris grabbed the hand holding the cooling cloth. “Is he all right?”
“David is fi ne. Now you really must rest, Christopher. The doctor will be in to see you shortly, then all this will be straightened out.”
The numbness that started in his lips crept down his body.
Pain and the memory of pain faded; replaced by a growing lassitude. Something wasn’t right. There was something about the
“accident” this woman wasn’t telling him. A new pain abruptly terminated his worry. It sliced down his left arm; he cried out.
This time when he tried to speak his muscles failed him completely. He watched hel
plessly as the nurse reached for the call button beside the bed. Her cool fi ngers gripped his wrist; she smoothed the skin of his brow with the other hand. Then consciousness fl ed altogether and Chris fell back down into darkness.
L.A. BYTES 145
Wednesday, 6:40 pm, USC County General, State Street, Los Angeles David bolted out of the car before Martinez pulled to a stop in front of the main doors. He raced down the corridors toward ICU, ignoring the startled looks, vaguely aware of the hard tension that fi lled him with suppressed rage.
He should never have left Chris. He should never have let them force him back on active duty while the man he loved lay in a hospital bed, injured, possibly dying.
Chris couldn’t die. It was simply unthinkable.
He pushed through the door to the ICU. He knew from experience he wouldn’t get past the next set until someone let him in. He thrust his badge into the face of the startled nurse at the desk.
“Detective Laine. I need to speak with Christopher Bellamere’s doctor.”
The nurse nodded and pulled up something on the computer.
She frowned. Her eyes darted back to David. She picked up a phone and spoke low-voiced into it.
“Someone will be right down to see you.”
David nodded, but instead of taking one of the stiff, plastic chairs he stood by the desk, though he knew he was unnerving the young nurse.
They were both relieved when a green-garbed surgeon shoved open the inner door. She hastily pulled down her mask.
“David?”
“Detective Laine—” David pulled away from the nurse’s station. “How is Chris? I got a message—”
“Chris is strong, he’s young and in excellent physical shape.
We expect a full recovery.”
David felt something leave him then. His rage collapsed like a pile of wet ashes. “Are you sure he’s okay? Will there be any permanent damage?”
146 P.A. Brown
“I don’t expect anything to impede him making a full recovery.”
“He’s going to be okay?” He wanted to believe her but he’d lived too long in a world of death. He knew how fragile life was.
It hit the strong ones as easily as the weak.
