by Robert Ellis
He felt Cabrera move in beside him and thought he heard his partner sigh as he got his look and took the blow.
“I’m sorry,” Matt said in a low voice.
Cabrera glanced at him, then back at the dead body. “Sorry for what?”
“What I did back there. What I said.”
“Forget it,” Cabrera said.
Matt nodded, his eyes fixed on the corpse. “You think it’s a man or a woman?”
“I’ve got no idea. These shitheads don’t take time to aim anymore. They watch too much TV. They fly sideways. They pull the trigger and spray, then it’s done and run.”
Matt didn’t say anything, watching the photographer frame his camera from the passenger-side window. As the man burst through another series of rapid-fire shots, the corpse appeared to be vibrating in the light. Matt found the simulated animation of the body extraordinarily unnerving. For a half second he thought it might really be moving. That everything he was seeing had been staged for his benefit as some kind of sick initiation by the department.
Welcome to Hollywood Homicide. The dead body in the shot-up SUV was just about to sit up and say boo.
He wished for it, hoped for it, but knew that it was only a fantasy.
Cabrera gave him a nudge and pointed to the victim’s left arm. “Maybe it really was a holdup.”
Matt didn’t get it until he tilted his head to the right and spotted the gunshot wound on the inside of the victim’s left forearm. He understood that he was staring at an entrance wound, and that whoever this was had most likely been holding their arms up at the time of the shooting. But even more, it was a big wound. Way too big to have been made by a 9 mm pistol. He remembered those shell casings on the pavement. At a glance they had appeared longer than most. But just as he turned to look, he noticed a pair of cops standing off to the side and realized that they were waiting for him.
“You guys get here first?” he said.
They nodded at him and stepped out of the shadows, the older of the two introducing himself as Hank Andrews, with his partner, Travis Green.
Matt moved closer to shake hands. “You run the plates?”
Andrews nodded. “A GM dealership over at the auto mall on Brand. They’re closed. We’re trying to track down the manager, but he’s not answering his cell.”
“How’d you get his cell number?”
“Glendale PD gave us his home number. He’s got a live-in girlfriend. She doesn’t know where he is. She’s worried about him.”
“Did she give you a description?”
Andrews nodded again.
“Does it match?”
The cop fought off a grimace. “You looked inside that window just the same as we did, Detective. Who could tell?”
A cell phone began chirping from the SUV.
Matt rushed back to the driver’s-side window and gazed inside with Cabrera. The phone was set in the ashtray, blinking on and off and lighting up the dash. Matt turned to the photographer in the passenger-side window as he dug a pair of vinyl gloves out of his pocket and slipped them on.
“You got a shot of the phone?” he said.
The photographer pulled his eye away from the camera and nodded. “From every angle. Go ahead, pal. Take the call.”
The phone stopped chirping and went dark. Matt glanced back at Cabrera, then reached inside and carefully lifted it up and out of the SUV. He could feel the weight of everyone’s gaze on him as he flipped it over and slid the lock open with his thumb.
The phone lit up, indicating that the caller had left a message. A long moment passed as Matt gazed at the display and noticed that the usual banter that makes up a crime scene had been overwhelmed by a wave of absolute silence. His eyes made a second sweep across the display; then he clicked through to the next screen. The murder victim had just received a text message. It was short and to the point. All it said was: Dinner off. Call me.
CHAPTER 3
Matthew Trevor Jones. Matthew Trevor Jones. I’m jonesing for Jones. Ya hear that, Jones? Everybody here’s jonesing for Jones. Now cut the shit and wake the fuck up. We got your ass, ya know what I’m sayin’, Jones? We got your sorry ass outta that desert shithole and brought it the fuck back to—
The dream had a roll to it. Movement, but no definition. Matt wasn’t really sure what had happened.
He could see a blanket draped over his body and feel the rails of a rescue stretcher below his waist. An EMT was leaning against the open rear door of an ambulance but had turned away to wave at someone just as their eyes met. When Matt thought he heard the rotors from a chopper, he looked toward the sound, but all he saw was a bus lumbering through an intersection on a busy street.
A busy street in the US.
He filled his lungs with air and, as he exhaled, tried to break through the fog. He could see a parking attendant’s shack on the other side of the lot, a billboard, and the rear entrance to a restaurant called Musso & Frank, but nothing about the place registered. Squinting at the bright work lights mounted on stands to his right, he noticed that they were pointed at a black SUV. A handful of people were here—some wearing police uniforms, others dressed in street clothes—yet every one of them seemed infatuated by that SUV.
He turned back to the ambulance. A man with a badge clipped to his leather jacket had joined the EMT, and it looked like they were whispering.
Something about the cop’s face seemed familiar, but as he sized him up, he couldn’t find the memory. He was dressed casually and wore a heavy sweater beneath his jacket. Matt guessed that he stood just short of six feet tall and was about thirty years old. His black wiry hair was cropped so close to his skull that it looked more like a three-day beard against his dark complexion. When he finally stopped whispering to the EMT and turned to him, Matt noticed that his eyes were glazed. It seemed more than obvious that he was deeply troubled about something.
Matt heaved his body forward and struggled to sit up. Both men rushed over, but he pushed them away, rubbing his fingers back and forth over his eyes and forehead. He could hear the cop jabbering in his ear through the haze.
Matt, are you okay? You blacked out, man. Are you okay, Matt? Are you okay?
The wind picked up. A cup of piping hot coffee came out of nowhere. Matt took a short first sip, then another, until he looked up at the cop’s chiseled face and something changed. Maybe it was what he still saw in his eyes, the spark and worry reflecting back at him. Maybe it was something else. Either way, Matt could feel himself breaking the surface hard. He could feel the push of reality, no longer scrambled, in all its starkness.
Something horrible had happened tonight.
Something worse than that.
Matt searched for his voice, the words coming out low and rough. “Tell me what happened? How long have I been out?”
Cabrera leaned closer, resting his hand on his shoulder. “You blacked out, man. You were standing over there by the SUV. You were looking at something on the cell phone. Then all of a sudden you went down like you took one on the chin.”
“Where’s the phone?”
“It broke when it hit the ground. SID says they can recover whatever was on it, but they’ll have to do it in the lab.”
Dinner off. Call me.
Matt shook his head at the memory. “Is the body still here?”
Cabrera gave him a look and nodded. “They’re bagging it up right now.”
“Give me a hand. I need to see it.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, Denny. I’m sure.”
Matt reached out for Cabrera’s arm, holding on until he found his balance. After a few moments they made their way over to the SUV and watched as the investigator from the coroner’s office gave the nod. Then the corpse was hoisted out of the vehicle and into a blue body bag set atop another stretcher. Matt could hear shards of broken glass raining onto the pavement as the body was moved. He could smell the blood, the meat. When someone tried to zip up the bag, he grabbed their hand and pushed it
away.
He needed to take a look at the murder victim. A long last look, no matter how deep it cut.
Cabrera switched on his flashlight, shining it on the corpse. “It’s like this, Matt. We haven’t been able to reach the manager at that GM dealership in Glendale. But the victim’s a male and, according to Gainer here, about the right age. The driver’s-side window was down, like he was talking to somebody. His wallet’s missing, and we haven’t found a watch or any jewelry. Glendale PD has agreed to pick up his girlfriend and bring her down to the coroner’s office for a possible ID.”
Matt glanced at the investigator from the coroner’s office and nodded. He had met Ed Gainer a year ago when a drug deal ended in a shoot-out on Main Street in Venice. The shooting had occurred on a Sunday afternoon, when both the streets and beach were wall-to-wall people. Innocent people mixed with gang trash. Gainer’s calm demeanor had rubbed off on everyone as they searched for the wounded and covered ten people who were dead.
Matt turned back to the corpse in the body bag, trying to see through the coating of blood and shattered glass. The lines of the victim’s face and nose. Zeroing in on the left hand, he began searching for a wedding band that Cabrera had already told him would not be there. The joint in the victim’s fourth finger appeared broken, as if the ring had been yanked off with force. He looked back at the gunshot wound on the inside of the victim’s left forearm, calculating the odds of pulling into a parking lot and meeting the three-piece bandit on the night the robber decided to become the world’s next killer.
“You find a weapon?” he said, still thinking it through.
Cabrera shook his head. “On the victim? No. Why?”
“What about the shell casings on the ground? They stood out. They seemed long.”
“Ten-millimeter Auto rounds. Fifteen of them.”
Another memory surfaced. Matt had been reading a brochure about a Glock 20 just a few days ago. The pistol fired 10 mm Auto cartridges and had a magazine capacity of fifteen rounds. The manufacturer had described the semiautomatic as the perfect weapon to deliver a safe and accurate finishing shot when hunting big game, the 10 mm Auto rounds providing maximum ballistic performance and maximum penetrative power. The ultimate force.
The kill after the stickup had been made with a Glock 20, a virtual cannon. One shot would have been enough. This asshole had used all fifteen.
Matt gripped the stretcher to steady himself as it sunk in, his voice barely audible. “You need to call Glendale PD, Denny. Tell them to turn around. They can take the live-in girlfriend home.”
Cabrera looked back in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“This isn’t her boyfriend.”
“How could you possibly tell?”
Matt turned to the victim’s face, still trying to see through the horror and form a clear picture, still trying to look back in time.
“Because I know him,” he said finally. “We were meeting here for dinner tonight.”
“You know who this is? The guy drives a black SUV?”
Matt shook his head. “He drives a silver Escalade. This must be a loaner.”
“A loaner? How can you be sure? Look at him, Matt. How could anyone be sure?”
Matt tightened his grip on the stretcher and met his partner’s eyes. “His phone, Denny. The knockout punch. The text on his phone came from me. He’s a cop. He’s a detective from North Hollywood. We were friends. His name’s Kevin Hughes. He wore a watch and a gold wedding band. He carried a wallet and a gun. And now the asshole who did this to him has everything, including his ID and an LAPD badge.”
Cabrera switched off the flashlight. A long moment passed, and no one moved. Somehow Matt had managed to say what he needed to say.
He took a last look at his friend, buried in the darkness of that body bag. Then he turned and walked away, hoping he wouldn’t trip or fall down as he heard someone zip up the bag. He could feel a certain weight on his back again. A prickling sensation between his shoulder blades. Either everyone was staring at him, or it was the mix of juice and terror and now despair, that odd combination that felt so hideous tonight. So rotten. He wiped his eyes and brushed his fingers over his cheeks—he didn’t want to lose it in front of everyone. As he tried to pull himself together, he saw a man leaning against the fence. It was Hughes’s partner, Frankie Lane, staring at him as if the world had just stopped spinning and tumbled through a black hole. Frankie was supposed to have joined them for a couple of beers, maybe stay for dinner if he could.
Their eyes met. Matt nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly, then watched Frankie wilt onto the fence.
Welcome to Hollywood Homicide.
CHAPTER 4
It wasn’t very big, but it was beautiful: a two-story Mediterranean off West Kenneth Road in Glendale. The grounds were heavily landscaped, the gardens, stepping down the hill to a small pool and spa in the backyard, more than just lush. Over the rear wall was a picture-perfect view of both Glendale and downtown Los Angeles, a view that had become lost in the trees and forgotten by the original owner, who sold the house cheap before his bank could steal it away and foreclose.
Matt couldn’t see any of this because it was 3:00 a.m. and he was still sitting in his car. He’d been parked across the street for the better part of an hour, sipping coffee and chewing nicotine gum while trying to decide how to go about the impossible task of walking up to that house and ringing the doorbell.
Matt had never made a next-of-kin notification before, yet he had a feeling that this one wouldn’t require many words. He was wearing the news on his face. On his person. One look and Hughes’s wife, Laura, would know.
During the course of the night, any doubt as to the identity of the murder victim had been lifted. By 10:00 p.m. the manager from the GM dealership had been located at a bar in Eagle Rock. By 10:30 they had the name of the customer who had been given the black SUV as a loaner while his Escalade was being serviced. An hour later a tech from SID called from the lab to say he had brought the cell phone back to life.
Matt glanced at his watch. Seconds had ticked by, not minutes, and it was still 3:00 a.m.
He took another sip of coffee and looked back at the house. Except for a small table lamp burning in the foyer by the front door, every window in the place was dark, peaceful, and at rest.
Hughes had been more than a friend to him. More, even, than a mentor. After their tour of duty in Afghanistan, it had been Hughes who convinced Matt to write off his troubles by leaving the East Coast and moving to Los Angeles. It had been Hughes who took him under his wing and brought him into the department. Matt’s aunt had died six months before he enlisted. He could remember Hughes telling him that there was no longer a good reason to live in New Jersey. It was time to begin what he called the forgetting process. LA was a city of distraction that ran 24/7. Any bad dreams he might still be carrying from his childhood, any losses, any monkeys still clinging to his back would be wiped out by the bright sunlight and what they’d just been through overseas.
Matt got out of the car, his jaw muscles twitching. He took a step toward the house and then another, struggling to dampen his mind. He could hear a small pack of coyotes yipping and howling further up the hill as he reached the walkway. The kitelike sound of the wind blowing through the palm trees in the dark sky above. As he climbed the front steps, he took a quick glimpse through the window and saw a note on the table by the lamp. The note had been left for Hughes by his wife, and seeing it felt like a flock of blackbirds had just flown through his soul.
He turned away, staring at the illuminated doorbell for a long time. Then he finally pressed the button and listened to the chimes invading the serenity of the house. A lamp on the second floor switched on, its light spilling onto the front lawn. Looking through the window again, he waited to see Laura walk down the staircase. When several minutes passed and nothing happened, he rang the bell again and moved closer to the window so that she would be able to see his face from the landing.
More time passed, nervous beats in the center of his chest followed by quick breaths. The hallway on the second floor remained dark. Matt thought it over. It was the dead of night. She wasn’t going to answer the door.
He pulled out his phone, found Hughes’s home number, and hit Call. Laura picked up on the first ring and sounded frightened.
“There’s someone at the front door,” she said. “There’s someone trying to get into the house.”
Matt paused a moment. What came next was inevitable.
“It’s not a burglar,” he said. “It’s me, Laura. I just rang your doorbell.”
“What are you doing here? Where’s Kevin? Why isn’t he answering his cell phone?”
Inevitable.
“Come downstairs and open the door, Laura. We need to talk.”
Inevitable.
He could hear the change. The sudden short gasp. The quick flash of dread.
“Oh, God. Oh my God.”
He slipped the phone into his pocket and took a step back. He tried to keep cool, but he could hear her shrieking through the door as she raced downstairs and fumbled with the locks. When the door finally opened, their eyes met, but only briefly before she pulled him inside and buried her head in his chest. Her cries came from a place where nothing was left. Deep and dark and all the way through. She kept repeating words that were difficult to understand. Eventually, Matt realized that she was begging him to say that Kevin wasn’t really dead. That the man she loved could be brought back.
He led her into the kitchen. After hitting the light switch with his elbow, he guided her over to the breakfast table and eased her into a chair. When she looked up at him, she seemed so helpless, so wounded, that he couldn’t hold the gaze.
“What happened, Matt? Tell me. You were meeting for dinner. Your new job. It was supposed to be a celebration.”
