L.A. Heat

by P. A. Brown

  As senior detective, David had taken on the unpleasant task of informing Jason Blake’s family of his death. The brother, Richard, had been too distraught to offer anything useful. But more than one witness had their memories improved by a second interview.

  “You don’t think Jay mentioned this Chris guy, do you? Would he tell his own brother about his latest puto?”

  David frowned. “We won’t know until we ask.”

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  CHAPTER 6

  Sunday, 12:40 am, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles AFTER DROPPING CHRIS off at his house and declining his offer of coffee—

  “Really, hon, it’s after midnight!”—Des pressed two small white pills into Chris’s palm.

  “It’s nothing, just Percs. It’ll help you sleep,” Des said before climbing back into his silver Mercedes and leaving Chris alone.

  Chris retreated to his media room, where he curled up on the love seat with a glass of wine and watched an hour of inane talk shows before drifting off to sleep. The wine on top of the Percodan might have been a mistake.

  His dreams were turbulent and disjointed. He was cruising Boystown. The rainbow-hued streets were wall-to-wall men, each more gorgeous than the last. Except for one familiar face. The acne scars made David Laine’s skin look pitted and diseased in the gaudy lights of West Hollywood. The cheap cut of his clothes looked even more frumpish as he kept appearing and disappearing in the wandering crowd.

  Abruptly the crowds vanished. The dark streets were empty. Chris looked around for his SUV, but every time he found it, his keys wouldn’t work, or they slipped from his fingers and disappeared into the shadows pooled around his bare feet.

  Someone else was there.

  “David?”

  Only he knew it wasn’t David.

  He spotted the SUV, parked by itself down an empty street, covered in graffiti.

  Hurrying toward it was like plowing through deep water. When he reached it he pounded on the golden door panel, smearing red paint all over his hands until it looked like they had been dipped in blood.

  The door popped open. “About time,” he muttered and jumped inside. The door slammed shut with a solid thunk.

  Someone ran down the street toward him. In the kaleidoscopic streetlights he recognized David. Chris jammed the key into the ignition and the Lexus rumbled to life.

  David shouted something, shaking his shaggy head and waving for Chris to pull over.

  Instead Chris goosed the gas pedal and shot out into the midnight black street. Odd, his headlights didn’t come on.

  “Chris.”

  The fingers that closed over the bare skin of his shoulder were boneyard cold. In contrast the breath on his cheek was a furnace. He turned and found himself staring into a smiley-face mask. The lipless chasm of its mouth was open in a humorless grin. The oily barrel of the gun pressed against his left eye. Chris heard an odd buzz as the trigger was depressed.

  He woke with a scream buried in his throat. The buzz came again.

  He jerked upright; the issue of Linux he’d been leafing through was slithering off his lap. Belatedly he realized the sound was his doorbell.

  Head woozy, heart trip-hammering in his chest, he nearly tumbled to the floor, only catching himself at the last minute with a painful bump to his shin on the granite coffee table.

  He staggered to the front door, leaning forward to peer through the mullioned window.

  At first he confused the figure standing under his porch light with the faceless killer in his dream. Then the figure turned into the light.

  He flung the door open. “Trevor?”

  “I was cruising the area and saw your lights on.” Trevor glanced back over his shoulder. “Did I wake you?”

  “No—yes.” Chris rubbed his sore ankle on the back on his leg and tried not to let his eyes dart around while he scanned the shadows beyond his door. “Sort of, I guess. I think I was dreaming.”

  “Nothing fun, from the looks of it.”

  “No,” Chris said, remembering the sound the gun had made as the masked man pulled the trigger. “Not fun.”

  “Want some company? I picked up a bottle of Silver Oak Cabernet the other day. You can tell me if it’s any good.”

  “Silver Oak?” Chris glanced at the plastic bag in Trevor’s hand. “What year? Ninety-eight?”

  “Is there any other?”

  “Come on in.” Chris closed and locked the door behind him. When Trevor walked by he breathed in the scent of Yves Saint Laurent and soap. He inhaled and began to think this evening might not turn out so badly after all.

  Chris briefly told him about his SUV while he led him back into the media room, where a pair of talking heads filled the sixty-inch screen. Chris grimaced as he overheard the last of the newscast.

  “...another apparent victim of the so-called Carpet Killer, who has been terrorizing the gay community of Los Angeles and environs for weeks now.”

  The image on the screen shifted. It was night, but there was more than enough light to see the blue-garbed EMTs emerge from behind a crumbling building with a sheet-draped gurney. Other people clustered around, several of them cops. Chris leaned forward when he recognized Detective Laine standing apart from the uniformed cops, taking notes in his notebook.

  “A call from an unknown source tipped off police to the body.”

  Laine looked straight into the camera. He was too far away for Chris to read his expression.

  “No identity has been released at this time,” the announcer stated. “Up next: Terror in a peaceful community.”

  “Nasty stuff, isn’t it?” Trevor dropped into the depression where Chris had been sleeping earlier. He held up the bag. “Why don’t you round up some glasses and a corkscrew? I’ll find something more interesting to watch.”

  After pouring the Cabernet, Trevor flipped through Chris’s DVD collection, pulling out one of the movies Bobby had given Chris. Chris had almost forgotten them. Curious, he let Trevor put it on. The startling blue of a clichéd kidney-shaped pool appeared on the screen as the camera panned around.

  Chris wasn’t a big porno fan but he watched without protest as a trio of guys—two hot blonds and dark, sexy Bobby—moved away from the pool and climbed a set of marble steps to a pool house, where they got down to what was apparently the heart of the movie. The production quality was poor, but there was some amateurish spark between the three actors that made up for the bad lighting and rough sound.

  “So that’s where he learned that,” Chris murmured.

  “What?” Trevor’s pale blue eyes were already hooded in passion. “Something wrong?”

  “No, it’s just...I know that guy.”

  “Who?”

  “The dark-haired one.”

  “Yeah?” Trevor leaned forward. “Didn’t know you were a porn groupie. He an item?”

  “No.”

  “You mean not now?”

  “I mean not ever.”

  “Too bad.” Trevor sipped his wine and flicked his tongue out over his full lips. So, tell me all about your deliciously kinky sex life...”

  “Hey!”

  Trevor grinned and turned back to the video. Still woozy from the wine and drugs, Chris dozed off with his head on Trevor’s shoulder.

  He awoke to find himself alone in his bed. Naked. Blearily he saw the slip of paper taped to his dresser.

  “Too bad it didn’t work out. Guess next time we’ll stay away from the wine. Sorry about your truck.” It was signed with a loopy T and a cell-phone number.

  Chris wondered how far things had gone last night after he passed out. He didn’t feel sore; they hadn’t fucked. He glanced at his watch. It was barely six. Too early to call.

  Later. And he would stay away from the booze and the pills. He had the feeling Trevor would be fun in bed. If they ever managed to get there.

  In the bathroom he grabbed his shaving gear and turned the shower on. His bedside phone rang. He ran out of the bathroom and scooped it up
. Maybe Trevor was calling for a rematch. Only silence met his initial greeting.

  “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  Christ, he hated wrong numbers who wouldn’t admit their mistake. “Who is this—”

  The phone went dead.

  He clicked recall but all he got was unknown name, unknown number.

  “Asshole.”

  He dumped the phone back on his bedside table and went in to take his shower.

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  CHAPTER 7

  Sunday, 3:15 am, North Mission Road, East Los Angeles

  “PACK OF FUCKING jackals,” Martinez snapped.

  The uniformed officer who had been called in to help with crowd control threw him a wary look. “Sir?”

  “Just watch everybody, Schmidt,” David said to the confused man. Personally he could never figure out where the crowds came from, but no matter what time of day or what location, they always seemed to show up. And they always managed to get in the way if you let them. “Keep them all clear of the crime scene.”

  “Sneaky bastard is what your average reporter is,” Martinez added, as though someone might have missed his point. “Don’t ever trust ’em, Schmidt. Them or lawyers.

  If any of those assholes so much as pokes a nose-hair over that line, bust them.”

  Schmidt smiled weakly. “Yes, sir.”

  “What do they teach ’em these days?” Martinez muttered after Schmidt left.

  David crouched to examine an impression in the stained and cracked pavement in the alley behind North Mission Road, where the latest body had been found. “Same thing they taught us. Why?”

  “So how come we’re so much smarter than them?”

  He couldn’t help it. He laughed.

  “What? You’re saying we’re not smarter?”

  “Come on, Einstein.” David clapped Martinez on the back. “Let’s have another go at your wit. See if we can wrap this up before morning. I really don’t want to see what this place looks like in broad daylight.” Two men loaded the body into the coroner’s wagon.

  The flashing lights of the emergency vehicles strobed over the alley.

  After making sure the vehicle got through the growing mob, David slipped back between the two buildings. He watched where he put his feet. Gelatinous puddles littered the alley; the odor of urine underlay the stench of rotting garbage. SID had already been over the whole length, photographing and sampling everything. Photos were taken of the crumbling walls and cardboard boxes and even a discarded bicycle found behind one pile of garbage.

  He followed Martinez back to the dumpster where the body had been found. A luckless scavenger had made the discovery while looking for tin cans to exchange for a bottle of Thunderbird. The shivering man now huddled under a broken lean-to that some inventive soul had erected using discarded tin and rotting pallets.

  Martinez had sent one of the uniforms to get coffee for their witness. Now he hovered around while the man greedily sucked back coffee and mumbled answers to Martinez’s questions. The witness, in a cast-off overcoat two sizes too big, and Martinez, in a green jacket over a paisley shirt and dark brown pants, made quite a pair. Fashion was not Martinez’s strong suit.

  “Any luck?” David asked.

  Martinez shook his head. “Guy’s having trouble giving me his name, at least one he can remember more than five minutes. He does claim he found the body before it got completely dark. I checked with LAX, sunset was at 19:25 tonight. Full dark would have come twenty, thirty minutes later.”

  The call hadn’t come into the switchboard until nearly nine o’clock. Long after sunset.

  “Is he saying he hung around for nearly an hour after he found the thing?”

  “He won’t say. I think he took advantage of the light that was left to collect more cans.”

  “He hung around a body that Lopez thinks has been dead at least three weeks looking for scrap?”

  “Hey, SID got the cans away from him. A couple even contained fluid from the body.

  At least one housed some wandering maggots.”

  David grimaced. “How’d he call it in?”

  “Pay phone at the end of the alley. Good Samaritan, huh?”

  “Any chance your guy knew the victim?”

  “He didn’t seem to think so. But then I’m not sure at what level he’s actually thinking.

  Lopez seems to figure this victim’s another young guy. Can’t see them running in the same circles, can you?”

  “So, this is just another dumping ground.”

  “Techs are still running luminol tests, but so far there’s precious little blood.” The luminol spray reacted chemically to blood and this released light.

  “One thing I’ll give him, our doer’s tidy.”

  “He’s not geographically impaired, either,” Martinez said. “He likes to move around.”

  “A mobile serial killer. Not exactly unique.”

  David had seen the body after Lopez was done with it. Maggot activity had been so far advanced there was no telling what condition that body had been in when dumped.

  Still, he had to ask, “Raped?”

  “You think Lopez would say? You know she keeps things close to her chest. I figure we’re lucky to get her to speculate on his age.”

  “Your guy see anyone else hanging around?”

  “I was working on that when the coffee got here. I’m kinda hoping the stuff will wake up a few brain cells. Who knows, if he hangs around here all the time, maybe he did see our doer. Wouldn’t that be a nice break.”

  Their witness watched them approach, clutching his empty Styrofoam cup in one dirt-encrusted hand. David flashed his tin. “Detective Laine. We’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s okay, Mr.—?”

  “Dante!” The man shouted. “Circles of hell!”

  “Your name, sir?” David asked.

  “The elves did it.”

  “The who did it?”

  “The elves. The elves!”

  The babbling man sprayed spittle, which David wiped off his cheek. “Yes, sir.”

  “The elf was golden.”

  “Can you describe this... elf?” He glanced at Martinez, who shrugged.

  The elf man drew himself upright, wrapped in the dignity of delusion. “The elves are golden, but cold.”

  “Okay, we’ve got one golden elf,” David said. “Was he alone?”

  Martinez cut in. “Did you see this elf, or anyone, put something in that dumpster?”

  “A golden chariot,” he shouted.

  “Great, did Charlton Heston bring a body to the dumpster?” David muttered. “What did this guy look like, anyway?”

  “I’m dry.” The elf man licked his lips, tugging at the filth-encrusted beard covering his face. “Got a buck you can spare?”

  “Tell me about the elf.”

  “Will I get a buck then?”

  “I’ll buy you a whole three-course meal. Who was the elf, sir?”

  “A golden elf.”

  “Do you mean he had blond hair?”

  “Spun gold, like the sun, he was.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” David sighed. He knew this guy would be useless as a witness in court, even if they found his blond elf. David didn’t care. If this was a description of the killer, then at least it gave them a place to start. He’d worry about viable witnesses later.

  “Can you tell us what the elf was wearing?”

  “Wearing?” he said, blinking at both David and Martinez. “Wearing?”

  “Yes,” David mustered all the patience he could. “What kind of clothes did he have on?”

  “Isn’t that odd?” The elf man screwed up his booze-bloated face. “He was wearing jeans. Now why on earth would an elf wear jeans?”

  Later, after he had been dispatched with Schmidt to get a sandwich and another coffee, they retreated to their car in the next alley.

  “We’ve got a possible blond killer who wears blue jeans,” Martinez said.

  Dav
id took a slug of lukewarm water from a bottle he had stashed there earlier. “And drives a golden chariot. Don’t forget the chariot.”

  “Yellow car? Truck?” Martinez snorted. “Not too many of them around.”

  “Let’s put out a bolo”—cop jargon for be on the lookout—“on all local elves in or out of chariots. That ought to get us some action.”

  “Think he really saw something?”

  “Who knows?” David crushed the empty water bottle. A Be on the Lookout wouldn’t be out of place if they had something more definite to look for. For now the elf man’s words were useless. Out of habit he dumped the bottle in the backseat so as not to contaminate the crime scene.

  “Our boy’s too damned slick,” Martinez said. “He’s not leaving anything behind he doesn’t mean to leave.”

  Wearily David climbed out of the unmarked car. “No ID this time. So why didn’t he want us to know this victim’s name?”

  “Maybe no one cares about this one. Hustler?” Martinez followed him back through the alley toward the crime scene. The media had dispersed once the body was removed.

  “It’s a notoriously easy target group.”

  Give any horny young guy a few drinks and his judgment went to hell. Which was why David made sure all his drinking took place in cop bars. He was never tempted to overindulge and get stupid when he was with other cops. Once they got on the brag and started boasting about all the pussy they got, he was usually in a mood to leave anyway.

  So far he’d kept his private life separate from his professional life by time and distance. No one cared that he took his yearly holidays to Palm Springs—he always went out for the Palm Springs Classic Car Show and everyone knew of his passion for old cars.

  If he booked a room at the Hacienda it wasn’t like he had to tell anyone he was cruising for some hot and heavy sex. It was the single brush with another life that he allowed himself in his normally low-key existence.

  One even his partner, Martinez, didn’t know about.

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  CHAPTER 8

  Monday, 8:00 am, DataTEK Headquarters, Studio City, San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles