L.A. Bytes

by P. A. Brown

  “Oh, he won’t be doing any strenuous activity for a few days and he’ll be bruised and sore for a while longer, but provided he stays clear of falling debris, he’ll be just fi ne.”

  “When can I see him?”

  The doctor brushed a strand of salt and pepper hair off her face. “He’s being moved into a private room as we speak. You’ll have to wait a few more minutes.”

  David paced the waiting room waiting for someone to come and tell him what was going on. Martinez joined him. They didn’t speak; what was there to say?

  “He’s been moved. You can see him for ten minutes. I can’t allow more than that. He’s been heavily sedated.”

  David followed her behind a curtained alcove. Memories of another bed and another body fl ooded him. Chris lay under a thin blanket, his pale face slack and motionless. Except for the soft rise and fall of his chest he might have been dead. Like Jairo. The small room was made even smaller by the clutter of machinery. Monitors tracked Chris’s vitals. Somewhere down the hall, a woman moaned an unending litany of pain. Whispering voices. The miasma of sickness and disinfectant fi lled the air.

  David shoved the memories of his dead partner aside and held his breath as he approached the bed. “Ten minutes,” the doctor said. “No more.” Then she pulled the curtain shut and slipped from the room.

  David bent over the fi gure on the bed. He touched Chris’s arm, staring at the bruises that mottled his skin from elbow to collarbone. One eye was swollen, the skin already turning an ugly purplish color. Most of his head was encased in thick white bandages.

  L.A. BYTES 147

  His eyes were darting around behind closed eyelids; David wondered what he was dreaming about.

  “Chris,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

  At fi rst he assumed Chris hadn’t. He slid his fi ngers over the bandages, feeling the heat from Chris’s swollen skin.

  “Chris?”

  One eye fl uttered opened. Light glittered off his dilated pupils.

  “Hey, sleepyhead,” David whispered. “How do you feel?”

  Chris’s eyes slid shut again.

  David leaned forward. “Chris? Can you hear me?”

  The doctor popped her head around the curtain. She frowned when she saw David.

  “Sir, I’ll have to ask you to leave,” she said. “Come back when the patient’s a little more responsive.”

  David knew she was right, but he didn’t want to go. He brushed his fi nger over Chris’s swollen mouth.

  “I’ll be back,” he said. “Rest and get stronger. I have some business to take care of, but I will be back. I love you.”

  He found Martinez lounging in the waiting room, ogling a nurse who didn’t seem entirely loath to the attention. David grabbed his partner’s arm and hauled him away.

  “You want your wife to kill both of us?” David muttered as he dragged Martinez outside. “Come on, I want to fi nd out what’s going on with this bombing—”

  “We can’t,” Martinez said. “That was assigned to Bentzen and Krug. The lieutenant specifi cally said we weren’t to go near it.”

  “That’s bull—”

  “Orders, Davey. We got paperwork back at Northeast. McKee wants us on it tonight.”

  “What paperwork?”

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  “From the old lady’s apartment.” Martinez shrugged. “Hey, Bentzen’s a good man. If anyone can fi nd out what’s going on, he can.” When David opened his mouth to protest again, Martinez shook his dark head. “Lieutenant’s orders, man. I don’t think you wanna mess with him on this.”

  David knew he risked his badge if he did. McKee was a tolerant man, but even he had limits and he had just about reached them with David. The temptation was still there, but in the end he nodded. “Fine,” he snapped. “Let’s go back and look at this paperwork.”

  § § § §

  Back at Northeast they dug out the boxes of bills and other documents that had been collected at Nancy Scott’s. There were four boxes, all crammed with paper documenting the life of a dead woman.

  David pulled out several appointment slips for Scott’s doctor.

  “Anyone ever talk to the doc?” He read the name, “Doctor Vanya Parkov?”

  Martinez leaned back in his chair. “The guy was contacted.

  He wanted to play footsies, until we explained things to him, then he gave us a big fat goose egg. He saw the woman maybe two-three times a year. Says she wasn’t one to look after herself, he was always on her to improve her diet, stop the junk food, the usual. He never saw her son.”

  “She never mentioned her family?” David was skeptical. “Or he didn’t know she had any?”

  “Apparently he was aware she had a kid, Scott put him down as an emergency contact, but never gave up any other details.”

  “What about her husband?”

  “Nothing,” Martinez said. “The old man was out of the picture by the time Parkov started playing doctor with her.”

  “Out of the picture? Didn’t Crandall say she was a widow?”

  “Parkov did say that when Scott fi rst came to him she told him her husband was ‘gone.’”

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  “Gone. Dead?”

  Martinez shrugged. “It gets better. A few months later she comes in for her bi-yearly visit and she’s all in black and it’s pretty obvious she’s in mourning. Doc doesn’t know for who and she was right cagey about it too. Like she didn’t want to say. So if he wasn’t dead the fi rst time, he died later?”

  “The doc asked after her son, I guess thinking maybe he had passed, but Scott assured him her son was just peachy. And she was pretty forthcoming about not having any brothers or sisters or any family for that matter.”

  “So it had to be the husband.” David studied the paper stuffed box in front of him. So many secrets. What was it about people they had to keep so many things hidden? “First they divorce or separate, then he dies? If it was acrimonious it could explain the reticence. When was this anyway?”

  Martinez pulled out his own notes and fl ipped through them.

  “Couple of years ago as near as the doctor can remember. He did say she seemed to come even less after that, canceled several appointments in fact. I get the impression he’d about written her off.”

  “Could she have been depressed over the husband’s death?

  Are we looking in the wrong place here? Could she have self-administered the poison?”

  “Where would a recluse like her get cyanide? I mean, it’s not exactly rare, but it’s also not sitting on your local pharmacy shelf.”

  Martinez slipped his notes back into his shirt pocket. “Seems to me she could have got what she needed from her own doctor. A nice prescription for Prozac or Zoloft and she’s swinging. Hell, she was diabetic. She just needed to double up on her dosage and it’s hello paradise. Besides, isn’t she safely in the bosom of the Church? They don’t look lightly on suicide.”

  Martinez was right, of course. Not that it stopped other Catholics from killing themselves, but according to the neighbor, Alice, Scott was unusually devoted. So scratch suicide unless a compelling reason to change his mind came in.

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  “Let’s fi nd the son again,” Martinez said. “He can tell us what happened to dear old dad, and how shook up Mom was over it.”

  They dug back into the boxes. There had to be something on the son in this collection. He was apparently all the family Nancy Scott had possessed.

  After nearly an hour of stifl ing yawns and trying to ignore his muscle aches, David broke down and dry swallowed a couple of Advil, chasing them with station house coffee.

  “Lookee here.” Martinez held up an opened envelope and a single sheet of paper with a letterhead. “Looks like our boy was accepted to Caltech last year. Think he’s still there?”

  “Only one way to fi nd out. But it’s too late today. Administration offi ces won’t be open this time of night.”

  Martinez glanced at
his watch. “Speaking of time, if I don’t hightail it home soon you’ll be investigating my homicide. With my luck my wife’d claim justifi able and get some judge I’ve been up in front of who would agree with her.”

  David grinned. It was true Martinez tended to alienate the higher ups in the legal profession. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, and he especially hated liberal judges.

  “Then I guess you better get home before she calls out the dogs,” David said. He pulled the second box on his desk closer.

  “I’ll just keep looking for a bit, then I may drop back in to the hospital.”

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. And for God’s sake, try to get some rest, man.”

  David nodded at his retreating partner’s back. “Right after this whole mess gets settled,” he said. “When this whole mess is put to bed and I know Chris is safe, then I’ll rest.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Thursday, 6:50 am, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles The phone broke through David’s restless sleep. Thinking it was Chris, he rolled over and snapped it up.

  “Detective Laine? This is Gunderson from the Times—”

  “No comment.”

  “What can you tell me about the explosion at Ste. Anne’s? Is it true your ah, spouse was injured in the blast—”

  “No comment.” David snapped and slammed the phone down. Almost immediately it rang again.

  “What part of no comment don’t you understand?”

  “Is this a bad time, Detective? This is Detective Bentzen.”

  “Bentzen. What can I do for you?”

  “Your name came up in my investigation,” Bentzen said.

  He cleared his throat. “I’d like to get together to ask you a few questions.”

  David had expected this, since he’d been onsite during the crime. He sighed. “Sure. Do you want to meet at Northeast?”

  “I have an interview room set up downtown. An hour?”

  He grabbed a shower and shave. He arrived at the new LAPD

  administrative headquarters. The L-shaped, newly fi nished construction on Spring Street was impressive as hell. Flanked on three sides by City Hall, Caltrans and the venerable Times building, its ten story glass and steel refl ecting back the center of downtown L.A. It was surrounded by green space and sculptures that had already triggered controversy. He signed in at the front desk. Bentzen, a muscular silver-blond haired man, came out to meet him and led him to a well-lit interview room on the fourth fl oor.

  152 P.A. Brown

  David glanced around the room. It was a far cry from what he had grown used to in the old outdated Parker Center. Everything still smelled new.

  “We’re recording this, that okay with you?”

  David shrugged. “Sure.”

  Bentzen covered the basics quickly: date, time and both their names. Then, “Can you describe what happened yesterday morning at Ste. Anne’s Medical Center?”

  David thought back. Had it really only been twenty-four hours ago? So little time for so much to change.

  “I woke up around seven. Some nurse I’d never seen before came in around seven-thirty, took my blood pressure and temperature.” He shrugged. “The usual. She left and they brought my breakfast.”

  “You eat then?”

  “I drank the coffee.” He made a face. “Chris was supposed to come by with breakfast for us.”

  “Chris?”

  “Christopher Bellamere,” David said, knowing Bentzen knew damn well who Chris was. The whole department knew. “My husband.”

  “Did he come by?”

  “He never made it.” David rubbed his face. “He called to tell me he was on his way. My impression was he had just picked up our food—”

  “Did he say where he was during this call?”

  “No, he just said he’d be there in a couple of minutes. The day before he said he would get breakfast from the taqueria across the street.”

  “So in fact you don’t know where he was.”

  “Except he was there, wasn’t he?” David thought of the still fi gure they had dug out of the rubble. Not moving, not breathing.

  “He was just coming in when the bomb... when it went off.”

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  Bentzen scratched notes in his pad. “Have you been to see Chris since the accident?”

  “Yes. Yesterday.”

  “He responsive?”

  David realized Bentzen must have gone by the hospital hoping to talk to Chris and been turned away. He nodded, knowing what was coming next.

  “He tell you anything?” Bentzen asked.

  “Sorry, no. He wasn’t up to talking.”

  “What restaurant do you think he went to?”

  “Across the street. Café Fresco.”

  “Ah yes, breakfast. We talked to them,” Bentzen said. “They didn’t see anything.”

  “They remembered Chris.” David tried a question of his own.

  “Have you determined the source of the bomb?”

  “They used an explosive called NMXFOAM, something relatively new. It looks and feels like shaving cream.” Bentzen rubbed his chin. “The foam is perfect for injecting into irregular-shaped cavities. Plug a detonator into it and you’re all set. No amount of jostling will set it off.”

  “What was it delivered in?”

  “Flowers.” Bentzen tapped his pen on the table. “It seems our bomber was trying to get to the third fl oor, but when we thought someone had staged an attack on you, we had an offi cer stationed there. We found remnants of the fl owers on the front lawn, we’re now assuming he placed the explosive device in a garbage can outside the front door. We found a woman in reception who remembered him coming off the elevator looking upset.”

  “So she saw him?”

  “White male, thirties, early forties. Heavy black beard. She’s coming in later today to work with a sketch artist.” Bentzen rubbed his chin. “She also noted he spoke with some kind of 154 P.A. Brown

  accent. She thinks it might have been French, but she wasn’t sure.

  She just knew it wasn’t Spanish.”

  David didn’t have anyone “French” on his radar. Another lost thread.

  “Does anyone remember who he said the fl owers were for?”

  “Nobody seems to remember.” Bentzen narrowed his dark eyes at him. David wasn’t sure what he saw there, but Bentzen went on to say softly, “You think it was for you? So you do believe the assault the night before is linked? How?”

  “The fi rst attack was on the third fl oor, too.”

  “First attack?”

  So he hadn’t heard of the hospital hack. David told him about the computer attack on the hospital. After a brief pause, he also forced himself to recount what had happened with the phony link and the kiddie porn on his PC. No way to tell if they were related, but David didn’t believe in coincidences. Neither, it seemed, did Bentzen.

  “And Chris wasn’t able to fi nd anything out about this Sandman?”

  “Nothing, except that the attack came from inside the hospital.” What was the word Chris used? “Spoofed—Sandman spoofed it so it looked like the attack came from somewhere else.

  Just like he spoofed Chris’s email address so I thought that email came from him.”

  “What about the guy who called Chris, pretending to be a cop?”

  “Chris only talked to him once. Apparently the number was blocked so he couldn’t trace it.” David scrubbed a hand through his hair. “This witness, she’s sure she didn’t recognize this man?

  Maybe an ex-patient? A disgruntled employee? The grievance seems to be around the hospital.”

  “Do you really think so? Perhaps the grievance is with you.”

  That’s ridiculous, David wanted to say. Who the hell would be after him? For what? Instead he asked, “Anyone else see him?”

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  “We’re still interviewing. We’ve got HR compiling a list of employees, past and present. We’ll be interviewing them all, too.”
r />   “Any source on the explosives?”

  “Still in the lab.” Bentzen tapped his Bic against his notebook.

  The end of the pen was gnawed. “But that stuff ’s rare. That ought to narrow our search down. If you have no objection, I’d like to talk to Chris as soon as possible.”

  “The doctors say he may never remember much about what happened that day,” he said cautiously, not liking the idea of cops hassling Chris, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  Bentzen nodded. “Yeah, they me told me that, too. But you never know, right?” He shoved the pen into his mouth, then pulled it out again. “After you talked to Chris yesterday morning, what happened?”

  “Martinez called.” He’d been giving David hell but David didn’t feel like sharing that. “We were on the phone when I heard the explosion.”

  “What happened after that? Were you still on the phone?”

  “What? No—the phone went dead.”

  Bentzen nodded. “All communications were cut,” he said. “At fi rst we assumed it was linked to the explosion, but it looks like it was a separate issue.”

  “A dual pronged attack?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “How were the phones hit?” David asked, though he had his suspicions.

  Bentzen looked pleased to deliver the bombshell. “A computer worm was planted in the hospital’s network. Apparently it launched an attack timed to coincide with the bomb. Probably why he dumped the thing when he couldn’t deliver it where he wanted to. I guess our bomber didn’t expect anyone to be talking to a cop. He was counting on a lot of confusion and delay.”

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  “Which means maybe he was there, watching.”

  “Lot of these guys like to see their handiwork in action.”

  “Have you canvassed everyone who was in the area at the time?”

  “The ones we can fi nd,” Bentzen said. “So far a few witnesses have come forward. If our bomber was there, someone must have seen him.”

  “I guess you get lucky sometimes.”

  Bentzen shoved the notebook and pen into his shirt pocket.