City of Echoes (Detective Matt Jones Book 1)

by Robert Ellis

  From the north, Matt thought, because the killer was smart enough to know that there weren’t any cameras north of Hollywood Boulevard until you reached Franklin Avenue. By the time he made it to Franklin, he would have been behind the wheel, his car indistinguishable from any other car immersed in a sea of traffic.

  “What do you think?” Matt said. “How much time?”

  “Let’s see what happens over the next couple days.”

  Matt had been thinking that it would be a matter of hours, not days. Still, he thanked Rollins and hoped for the best. As he hung up the phone, he turned and found Cabrera staring at him. He must have been listening.

  “We’ve got a shot?” Cabrera asked with raised eyebrows.

  Matt nodded. “Maybe.”

  “Well, you’re having better luck than I am. I just got off the phone with Orth at the crime lab. Everything’s backed up. They’re not even gonna get started on the SUV until late tomorrow.”

  “I thought we were at the top of the list.”

  Cabrera shrugged. “Orth says that is the top of the list. If we were on the bottom, it could take six months.”

  “What about the slug?”

  “Same thing. Late tomorrow.”

  “Because we’re at the top of the list.”

  “Right,” Cabrera said. “We’re first in line.”

  Matt glanced at Cabrera’s laptop and could see that he was working on the chronological record and had begun to put together a murder book. A blue binder with Hughes’s name on it was leaning against a stack of files.

  Matt listened to the din of muffled voices for a moment, then turned back to Cabrera. “Does Leo Rodriguez still work here?”

  “Grace’s old partner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve never met him. I think he retired after Grace’s promotion. If he didn’t, then he’s probably downtown at Robbery-Homicide. It would’ve happened before I got here. Why?”

  “Grace was talking about the two of them seeing Millie Brown’s body staked to the ground.”

  Cabrera waited a moment, mulling something over, then looked back. “For the record, Jones, I’m sorry I lost it out there with Lane.”

  Matt didn’t say anything.

  Cabrera loosened his collar. “I talked it over with Grace. He said the same thing happened to him and Rodriguez.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “What you were just talking about. Millie Brown. The way they found her. He said it really shook them up. Frankie has to deal with Novakoff’s murder, and now his partner’s dead, too. No wonder he’s not thinking right.”

  Matt didn’t like the tone of Cabrera’s voice. It sounded like he was trying to placate him. It sounded like bullshit. He shot his new partner a touch-and-go look. He could feel the anger stirring in his gut but kept his mouth shut. When Cabrera turned back to his computer, Matt got up and walked out of the room.

  CHAPTER 15

  No wonder he wasn’t thinking right . . .

  Matt pulled out of the lot in his Honda, drove up Wilcox, and made a right on Franklin. After a few minutes he picked up Los Feliz, heading east toward the Golden State Freeway. Fifteen minutes later he was in Glendale, making the climb into the hills. When he saw Hughes’s house just ahead, he pulled up to the walkway and parked.

  He wasn’t sure if he was here because he felt like he needed to check in on Laura or because he needed a break from Cabrera. Either way, the short drive seemed like a good idea.

  He walked up to the house and rang the doorbell. Feeling a chill in the air—the steady breeze—he zipped up his sweatshirt and waited. When Laura didn’t come to the door, he checked the window before starting around the house. He saw Laura’s car in front of the garage. Hughes’s silver Escalade had been returned from the dealership and was parked off to the side. Matt stared at it for a while, felt his chest tighten, then stepped into the side yard.

  He could hear Laura’s voice as he eased around the corner and looked down the hill at the pool. She was with the woman who lived next door. The woman Matt had met when she came over last night. They had pushed two chaise lounges together. They were drinking coffee, sharing a blanket in the cool air, and talking in soft voices.

  He couldn’t tell what they were saying. All he knew was that Laura needed it right now, and he didn’t want to interrupt or intrude. After several moments he backed out and returned to his car.

  He shivered and climbed in behind the wheel. He fought off a yawn as he headed back toward the freeway. The coffeehouse on Pacific Avenue looked too busy to deal with. When he spotted the Jack in the Box, he pulled into the drive-thru lane and ordered a large coffee with two sugars. The paper cup was hot to the touch and warmed his hands. Removing the top, he took a first sip and felt his stomach begin to glow.

  The caffeine seemed to revive him, and he started driving. He felt the sudden need to keep moving and wondered if he was running away from something. Seeing Hughes’s SUV parked in the drive must have been the trigger. He had thoughts in his head. A steady stream rolling just beneath the surface. His past, his present, his future.

  No wonder he wasn’t thinking right . . .

  He had no idea where he was going. Still, he could see himself. He could see himself from behind, almost as if he were driving the car in his rearview mirror. A metallic silver Nissan. Almost as if he were the man driving the Nissan.

  He could see himself.

  He was parking his car and getting out with his cup of coffee. He was pushing another piece of nicotine gum against his cheek and wishing for a Marlboro again. He was walking into the park. He was hiking down the long row of oak trees in the muted light just before sunset.

  And then he stopped.

  There were two girls, eighteen or nineteen years old, straightening up the memorial for Faith Novakoff. They had brought fresh flowers and a pack of fresh batteries for the faux candles.

  Matt knelt down in the grass and took a sip of coffee as he gazed at them.

  He felt so uneasy about so much. The fact that his father had walked out and abandoned him and his mother when he was only a boy. The fact that his mother had died a year later of breast cancer. Because his father still didn’t want him, Matt went to live with his aunt, whom he didn’t know very well but grew to love.

  So uneasy about so much.

  Lane’s wild story. Cabrera working on the chronological record and, right or wrong, going with the flow like the man worked for a fucking bank.

  Matt ran his fingers through the grass and tried to focus.

  Why did he have this bad feeling in his gut? This horrific sense that he was staring at the void and about to be tossed in?

  He heard something and his mind snapped back. The two girls were screaming. He looked for the source, then back at the girls, and realized that they were staring at him. When he stood up, their bodies shuddered in terror and they fled across the lawn. He watched and listened. They were too far away to say anything. The shrieking seemed to lessen some as they reached the street, but it didn’t stop.

  No wonder he wasn’t thinking right . . .

  CHAPTER 16

  Matt climbed out of the car, then heard someone call out his name and checked the lot. It was Cabrera, hustling over to their unmarked Crown Vic. Grace was right behind him, scrambling out of the station with Orlando and Plank and a handful of cops in uniforms.

  Grace pulled the cops aside. “We go with our lights on. You lead the way. You guys take the rear, and we’ll ride in the middle. Four cars. We stop for nothing. We’re in a hurry, but we’re not racing. And stay together.”

  Grace hopped into the backseat, riding with Orlando and Plank. Matt slid into the passenger seat as Cabrera started the car and found his place in the middle of the caravan.

  “What is it?” Matt said.

  Cabrera’s eyes were big and wide and shiny. “A guy working on the tower at the top of Mount Lee heard a girl scream. He called nine-one-one. First responders just called back with con
firmation. They found her body on a trail just below the Hollywood sign.”

  “Why all this?”

  Cabrera shook his head back and forth, gave him a look, almost as if he couldn’t speak.

  “What’s going on, Cabrera?”

  “She’s like the others,” he said finally.

  Matt took it in hard and grimaced. It felt like all the air in his lungs had made a rush for the exit in a single instant. He settled back into the passenger seat, considering what had just happened.

  Another murder like the others.

  The drive up Beachwood Canyon to the Hollywood sign was more difficult than expected. More of a winding, mazelike journey past homes strewn through the steep hills and wrapped around every curve. It was a dark night. The air still had a bite to it, and the wind had picked up, as if January had arrived three months early. When they gained elevation, Matt could see the carpet of lights from homes on the Westside vanishing as the marine layer swept through the basin like an ocean wave over sand.

  The caravan finally reached the communication tower and parking area within the fence at the top of Mount Lee. Matt pulled two flashlights out of the glove box and tossed one over to Cabrera as they got out. Grace led the way down the hill. He was moving fast, too fast for the steep terrain and unsure footing. As they passed the Hollywood sign, Matt gazed at the unlit letters in the darkness. They stood three stories high and were set a hundred yards across the mountaintop, and he found the close-up view surprising, even bewildering. He could remember reading somewhere that it was rigged with alarms and surveillance cameras linked to the LAPD. But when they reached the trail in the dry brush and he spotted a pair of first responders waving flashlights at them fifty yards down the way, he realized that the crime scene was too far away for the killer to have tripped an alarm or camera.

  Cabrera gave him a nudge as they approached. “There she is,” he whispered.

  Matt looked ahead and could see her form in the darkness. His stomach was churning and he wasn’t sure why. While serving overseas, he had seen more dead bodies than he could count. Many of the corpses had been found in similar terrain. Most of them had been armed men, but every once in a while he’d come upon a woman or a child who had been executed or wounded and left to die alone under a hot sun in the rocks and sand.

  But this time it was different.

  He could feel it. The work of a madman.

  Ignoring the others, he knelt down before the girl’s nude body and switched on his flashlight. Her wrists and ankles had been bound and staked to the ground, her face mutilated and placed on a sheet of mirrored glass—just like the others. But what struck Matt most about the way the body had been left were the variety of different scents in the air. Her blond hair was rich with the fragrance of shampoo. He could smell the soap on her clear skin. Freshly applied deodorant. When he examined her nails, both her toes and fingers appeared to have just been polished.

  A tremor quaked through his body from somewhere deep inside. It seemed so odd. So singular. So familiar.

  “What is it?” Grace said. “What do you see?”

  Matt stood up and turned, sensing that something was wrong by the sound of Grace’s voice. His supervisor appeared nervous and afraid and looked like he was struggling to keep cool and hide it.

  “The killer cleaned her up, Lieutenant.”

  “The copycat. How so, Jones?”

  “He gave her a bath, did her hair, and painted her nails before he staked her down in the dirt and cut up her face.”

  A moment passed. Long and dark and exceedingly still.

  Grace didn’t say anything, and Matt didn’t think he was looking at the girl’s body anymore. He was too caught up in whatever was on his mind. Matt backed out of the way, unlocked his phone, and found Howard Benson’s number in his contacts list. Benson worked in the Missing Persons Unit. Anyone involved in narcotics spent a lot of time working with Missing Persons, and he and Benson knew each other well. Benson picked up on the first ring.

  “Are you still in the office?” Matt said.

  “I’ve been trying to get out of here for the past two hours. How can I help?”

  Matt turned back to the body. “A young woman, eighteen to twenty, about five ten, blond hair, on the slender side but with a belly, maybe a student.”

  “That could be anybody, Matt. What color are her eyes?”

  Matt knelt down again and panned his flashlight across the victim’s face, straining to see through the blood. The mutilation was hideous, her skin puffy, her features so deformed that it looked like she was wearing a mask made of pulp. It was an image that he knew he’d walk with for the rest of his life.

  “I can’t see her eyes,” he said.

  “What about a tattoo? A small heart-shaped tattoo just below her left hip bone. There’s a birthmark beside it.”

  “You’ve got someone in mind?”

  “A girl went missing five days ago. Another student. She had blond hair and lived in a dorm in Westwood.”

  Matt pulled the phone away. Orlando and Plank were on the left side of the body, and he asked them about the tattoo and birthmark. Orlando slipped on a pair of gloves. The investigator from the coroner’s office wasn’t here yet, nor was anyone from SID, including the photographer. Touching or moving the body in any way would compromise the investigation and possibly take down a trial. But Orlando had other ideas. The soil beneath the corpse was loose and sandy. Matt watched as the detective scooped away the debris and Plank shined his flashlight on the girl’s hip.

  “It’s there,” Orlando said. “A heart-shaped tattoo just below her left hip. And there’s a small birthmark right beside it.”

  Matt brought the phone back to his ear. Benson must have heard Orlando’s confirmation.

  “I’d call her a Jane Doe for now, Matt. But her name’s probably Brooke Anderson. I’ll give her parents a heads-up and make sure her dental records are at the coroner’s office in time for the autopsy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How do you like working homicide?”

  Matt winced. “It’s got its moments,” he said.

  He switched off his phone and returned it to his pocket. Grace still appeared extraordinarily concerned. He had his phone out and was taking pictures of the victim with the built-in camera. It was a violation on pretty much every level. Matt watched Cabrera pick up on it and give him a look. Orlando and Plank seemed to notice as well but were visibly overwhelmed by the victim’s plight and still dealing with it. When Matt heard the chatter from a handful of SID techs and saw their flashlights moving down the slope, he turned back to Grace and watched him slip the phone into his pocket.

  Why?

  He let the question pass. Then he parked a fresh piece of nicotine gum against his cheek and forced himself to take another look at the girl’s face. After a few minutes he moved deeper down the trail for some fresh air and turned back to watch from a distance.

  What was he seeing?

  What the killer wanted him to see.

  Why the display? Why the complexity? Why was he torturing his victims with such a hideous death?

  But even more, why did it seem so familiar?

  Matt sensed something in the center of his back and turned to face the mountain. The darkness. He wondered if someone was out there. It felt like there was. He panned his flashlight off the trail and through the brush. In Afghanistan this same feeling was usually followed by a shot from a sniper.

  He switched off his flashlight and moved another fifty yards down the trail, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. The dead of night. He quieted his body and listened. He didn’t see anyone, but the sensation was stronger now. He could almost feel it in his bones. The killer was watching them. He was hiding in the darkness. He felt close.

  CHAPTER 17

  It was late. Almost midnight.

  Matt grabbed the murder books Lane had given him and walked out of the station to his car. Cabrera had already left.

  It had taken
five hours to process the crime scene, much of the time spent working beneath a tarp, with news choppers hovering above. Still, the media got their money shot when the girl’s body was bagged, strapped to a stretcher, and hauled up the mountain to an emergency vehicle waiting behind the fence. It was more than a money shot. It took five men almost fifteen minutes to reach the top. Two patrol units had stayed behind and would remain at the crime scene overnight. In the morning, Orlando and Plank would return with an SID photographer and a handful of criminalists for a more thorough look in daylight.

  Matt tossed the murder books onto the passenger seat and climbed in. As he jammed his key into the ignition, the rear door to the station burst open and he spotted Grace hustling down the walkway. He was talking to someone on the phone. The conversation appeared heated, and he seemed way too distracted to notice Matt. Too animated. Too everything to be righteous.

  Grace fumbled with his keys but got himself together and pulled out of the lot with his tires screeching. Matt waited a beat, then made the turn onto Wilcox and started following.

  Grace was heading north toward the Valley, the rich fog of the marine layer fading away with each block until it finally vanished. And he was moving fast, running red lights all the way up Cahuenga Boulevard and down the hill on Barham toward the Warner Bros. lot. Matt gave himself a safe cushion, keeping his eye on the car from fifty yards back. There was enough traffic to remain concealed, but not enough to lose sight of the car. The conditions were perfect. When Grace made a left onto Lakeside Drive, Matt closed the distance by half and followed him into the neighborhood. It looked like Grace was working his way around the gates and private roads of a nearby golf club. When he made a hard right onto Toluca Lake Avenue, Matt pulled to a stop and killed the headlights.

  He could see Grace making a U-turn and parking in front of a house five or six doors down on the left. The house was recessed from the street. He could see his supervisor hurrying toward the building and slipping out of view.