by Tyler Dilts
OTHER TITLES IN THE LONG BEACH HOMICIDE SERIES:
A King of Infinite Space
The Pain Scale
A Cold and Broken Hallelujah
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 by Tyler Dilts
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477827673
ISBN-10: 1477827676
Cover design by David Drummond
For Jeff and Kim
CONTENTS
START READING
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Napalm smells best in the evening
It’s not worth believing what you heard
CHAPTER ONE
TELL ME
Thirty-one hours before my car exploded, I was at Julia’s condo on the Promenade downtown. I still hadn’t gotten used to spending so much time in a place that once would have made me uncomfortable in its luxury, but Julia made it feel like home.
It was a Thursday night and we were getting an early start on a weekend-long Downton Abbey binge. She’d been wanting to watch it for a while but hadn’t ever managed to make the time. I’d never seen it because it was Downton Abbey.
We were three and a half episodes in when my phone rang. I was next up in the homicide rotation, so that meant I was on call. There was an apparent suicide in Belmont Heights.
I told Julia that I had to go to work. I’d been a homicide detective for nearly a decade, and she’d been a social worker for several years before she became a photographer, so she had some understanding of my job. But she still wasn’t quite used to death being so ever-present in my life, and I could see the sadness in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I got up. “Why don’t you go ahead and keep watching.”
“You don’t like it?” she asked, surprised.
“No, I do.” It pained me to admit it, but I did.
“Then I’ll wait for you.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said, glad she’d offered. I would have made the request myself, but I wasn’t sure if we’d reached the point in our relationship when it was appropriate to ask her not to watch something without me.
The last time I’d been called out while staying at Julia’s, I’d needed to go home to get a fresh suit. When I told her about it later, she suggested I leave a spare in her closet. So the charcoal Men’s Wearhouse special that was number five in my work rotation was waiting for me. After a quick shower, I brushed my teeth and dressed.
She handed me a travel mug filled with fresh coffee when I went back into the living room.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll probably be all night.”
“I know, Danny.”
“I should still be able to make tomorrow night, though.” Julia had a few photographs in a show at a small gallery in the East Village. We’d planned on dinner after the Friday-evening opening.
She kissed me good-bye and I looked into her green eyes, crinkling at the corners with her smile, and I touched the single dimple in her left cheek. For the first time in years, I would rather not have gone to work.
When I started my Camry and drove out of the parking garage, something didn’t sound right. The engine was running rough and the car seemed sluggish. I drove for a block and decided I could probably make it to the crime scene. It was only two and a half miles. I felt a twinge of the chronic pain in my wrist creeping up my arm.
When I got there, my partner, Jennifer Tanaka, was already waiting.
“That was quick,” she said. “I thought you were going to be at Julia’s tonight.”
“Just came from there,” I said.
She looked at what I was wearing. “Fresh suit.”
“So?”
“You have that in your car?”
“No.”
She raised her eyebrows and smiled.
A little before nine, someone had reported a gunshot. Because it was a slow night, a patrol unit arrived less than ten minutes later. The responding officers investigated and found the body.
The crime scene was in an eight-unit apartment building near the corner of Belmont Avenue and Second Street. It was one of the old, well-maintained, pre-WWII buildings that were in high demand on Long Beach’s booming rental market.
“The call came from a woman upstairs in the back,” the uniform told me on the sidewalk. “She said she only called because the noise sounded like it came from the apartment below her, number six.”
I looked at the building. There were four units in front—two on the first floor, two on the second. Probably two bedrooms each. “Four apartments in front, four in back?”
“Two in back, two over the garage.” He looked curious. “How’d you know how many?”
I pointed at the mailboxes. They were numbered one through eight. Number six had a small label beneath it that read “MANAGER.” He nodded.
“You talk to any of the other neighbors?”
He gestured toward the lower-left door. “The couple in this one asked what was going on.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Just that we had a crime scene and were investigating.”
“Good,” I said.
He walked me along the south side of the building to a small porch, three steps up. There were two doors—the one on the right led up a staircase to the top floor, the other directly into apartment number six.
“You go inside?” I asked.
“Yeah. We came downstairs, knocked. There was no answer, but the door was unlocked. I opened it, saw him there, went straight to him to see if he needed an ambulance, checked the bedroom and bathroom to make sure no one else was here, then came right back out and called it in.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I went up to number six and looked inside. The victim’s body lay slumped on a couch that divided the large living room in two. In front, a flat-screen TV, an upholstered chair with a matching ottoman, and a coffee table. A big bookcase and a desk tucked into the corner. On the far wall were two doorways, one leading into the kitchen and the other into the hallway to the bedroom and bathroom. From the porch I took several photos on my phone before heading back to the front of the building to find the crime-scene technician.
I looked around. It was a slow night, even for a Thursday, so we had at least three cars more than we needed. Because of the location of the victim’s apartment in the b
ack of the building, it was easy to contain. We just needed a few people at the front gate and one or two in the alley in back.
“How’s it look inside?” Jen asked.
“Seems pretty straightforward. Give me a couple of minutes with the body, then come in and take a look before the ME gets started.”
I went back inside. The first pass through had been to get an overview. This time I’d look closer and start picking apart the details.
First, the body. We had a preliminary ID. The apartment belonged to William Denkins. DMV records told us he was a fifty-two-year-old white male, five foot ten, one hundred ninety pounds. The victim seemed to fit the description. I squatted at the corner of the couch, careful not to touch the coffee table, and looked him in the face. He had graying brown hair, a little thin on the top. His upper body had fallen against the arm and backrest, and his head was resting on his shoulder, a lime-green pillow wedged between his elbow and the dark-beige fabric of the couch. There wasn’t much blood. One thin line ran down from his temple, collected in the corner of his closed left eye, then continued on to the edge of his mouth, stopping at his slightly parted lips. His left arm hung down to his side, a Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special still gripped loosely in his hand.
On the coffee table in front of him was a nearly empty bottle of Glenlivet scotch and a single glass. The only other things on the table were a phone and two remote controls.
I stood and went to the desk in the corner. He kept it neat and well organized. The screen on his notebook computer was dark, so I tapped the backslash key with my latex-covered index finger. It lit up and displayed his Gmail inbox. No unread e-mails.
A wallet and a set of keys sat in a shallow tray on the upper-right corner of the desk, and on the opposite side were two lined yellow notepads, a smaller one on top of a full-sized eight and a half by eleven. Without moving them, I could read the grocery list on the top pad and a good portion of what looked like a building-maintenance to-do list underneath.
I looked back over my shoulder at the body, then back down at the writing on the pads.
“Fuck,” I said out loud.
I went outside, found Jen, and brought her back.
“What am I looking for?” she asked.
“Check out the body, then look at the desk,” I said.
She studied him for a few moments, then went to the desk. She saw it even more quickly than I had. “That handwriting doesn’t look left handed.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said, bracing myself for a longer night than I had expected. “I think we might have a murder here.”
The sky was brightening with the first hints of the sunrise when I hit the drive-through at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Seventh Street and picked up a dozen assorted and two large coffees. Up until a few months ago, I’d spent most Friday mornings having breakfast with my friend Harlan, a retired LA County sheriff’s deputy. Like me, he was an early riser. Unlike me, he was an excellent banjo player. Several years earlier, my left hand had been nearly severed while apprehending a suspect. The incident left me with near-constant chronic pain that stretched from my hand all the way up to my shoulder and neck. When a physical therapist suggested I take up music to help alleviate the pain and recover the dexterity in my injured hand, Harlan had given me a gift, a Deering Saratoga Star. It was a much finer instrument than I needed or, in fact, deserved, and when my learning curve had proved to be a bit shallower than he and my therapist had hoped, Harlan had bullied me into lessons with him. We traded our Friday breakfasts for donuts and banjos.
My car was still across the street from the crime scene, where I’d left it, hoping I’d be able to get it to a mechanic later in the day. I parked the unmarked cruiser I’d checked out at five that morning in front of Harlan’s house, and he opened the door and started barking at me before I even made it to the porch.
“Where’s your banjo?”
“Caught a case last night. I can only stay a few minutes.”
He eyeballed me through the screen door while I balanced the donuts in one hand and coffee in the other. “You going to open up for me?”
“Depends. What kind of case was it?”
“The callout was for a probable suicide.”
He pushed the screen open and stood back to the side so I could squeeze past.
“Poor soul,” he said, his voice weighted with sadness. “He hear you practicing?”
I refused to give him the satisfaction of my laughing, even if I had to fight the urge.
We sat at the table and opened the box of donuts. Buttermilk for him, cruller for me.
“Probable, you said?”
“Yeah. GSW to the left temple, Chiefs Special in his left hand.”
“Ten percent of people are left handed. They never shoot themselves?”
“His handwriting didn’t look left handed.”
“In the suicide note?”
“No note. But he had a bunch of stuff with his handwriting on it piled all over his desk.”
He finished his donut and took a long pull from his coffee cup. “Doesn’t sound very ‘probable’ to me.”
“I know. I’m on the way to make the notification to his daughter. I’ll find out for sure.”
I took my coffee and another cruller for the road. He walked out onto the porch with me. Any other time he would have given me shit or tried to get in a dig of some kind. Instead, he just patted me on the shoulder and gave me a nod. He was an old cop and he knew where I was going.
Jen and I were waiting in an unmarked cruiser outside Lucinda Denkins’s house at a quarter past seven. Jen had squeezed in a few hours of sleep while I was finishing up at the scene. Back at the station, I had spent twenty minutes on a cot and showered before putting on the fresh suit I keep in a locker for all-nighters.
The house looked like a small three-bedroom. Spanish style, with a nicely maintained drought-tolerant yard in front. An Altima parked in the driveway. We planned on giving her until eight, unless she came outside and looked like she was heading out for the day. It’s awful to ambush someone in their driveway first thing in the morning with devastating news, but it’s slightly less awful than having to break it to them at work.
My phone buzzed and I looked at the screen. “Hey, Lieutenant,” I said.
“You’re making the notification?” Ruiz asked.
“Yeah. Did you get my message?”
“You think maybe it’s not suicide?”
“Got a red flag I have to check out with the daughter.”
“Keep me posted,” he said.
I looked at my watch.
Jen said, “Time to knock?”
“Yeah.” I checked my hair in the mirror, got out, adjusted my tie, and buttoned my jacket. We walked up the drive and onto the porch, where we paused to listen for a moment. I heard what might have been a TV or a radio on the other side of the door. Things usually went better if the person being notified was already awake.
I rang the doorbell. A few seconds later a shadow moved behind the peephole. Then a woman opened the door. She was dressed in business clothes—slacks and a cream-colored blouse. Her blonde hair was pulled back, and she had a curious but pleasant expression on her round face.
Holding up my badge and ID, I said, “Lucinda Denkins?”
“Lucy,” she said.
“I’m Detective Danny Beckett of the Long Beach Police Department, and this is my partner, Jennifer Tanaka. Is there someplace we could talk?”
“Yes, of course.” She took a step back and pulled the door open wide for us. “Please come in.”
The door opened into the living room. The furnishings were nice but not too expensive. It looked like mostly secondhand and vintage stuff, the kinds of things someone with good taste but not a lot of money would choose. Jen and I sat on a brown sofa that reminded me of the one in my childhood family room, and she took a seat in a chair that didn’t quite match.
By the time we were all settled, her expression of curiosity had been replaced by one
of worry.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“Your father is William Denkins?”
She nodded. “Is he all right? Has something happened?”
“I’m very sorry to tell you this,” I said. “He died last night.”
An almost inaudible sound came from her throat. If she hadn’t been trying so hard to contain it, it might have become a gasp. She brought her hand up to her mouth and held it there for several seconds. Then she said, “How? What happened?”
“At this point, we’re not sure. It may have been a suicide.”
“No, it couldn’t—he wouldn’t do that.” There was hope in her voice. If we were wrong about how the victim died, we might be wrong about his identity, too.
“Had he been depressed?” Jen asked. “Was anything troubling him?”
“No, nothing.” She paused. “Are you sure it was him?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid so.”
She sank back into her chair. “There must be some mistake. He wouldn’t kill himself. He just wouldn’t.” Her tears were beginning to flow.
Jen offered her a tissue. I hadn’t even seen her reach into her jacket for one of the pocket-sized packets we always have with us when making a notification.
I heard some shuffling noises from the back of the house. “Is anyone here with you?”
“Yes, my husband.” As if on cue, a door opened in the hallway and a tall, lanky man in gym shorts and a T-shirt came into the room. He had dark, shaggy hair and a soul patch under his bottom lip.
“What’s going on, babe?” he asked Lucy.
She stood and hurried over to him. “My dad’s dead.”
He pulled her into his arms. “Oh my god,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
We let him comfort her. As she buried her face in the crook of his neck, her back and shoulders rose and fell with her sobs.
After a few moments, he looked at us with accusation in his eyes.
“They say he killed himself,” Lucy said.
“What?” he said. “That can’t be.”
The two of them were still standing behind the chair Lucy had been sitting in. We stayed seated. With only the couch and the chair available, the two of them would have to separate, and I was trying to decide who I’d rather have on the couch next to Jen.
