City of Echoes (Detective Matt Jones Book 1)

by Robert Ellis

  That odd, penetrating look was back. Matt could see it in the doctor’s eyes. Something was going on. Something Matt didn’t understand. Something hidden from view. Baylor took a step closer, still training the gun on him.

  “Your arm’s bleeding,” he said. “You can’t afford to lose another drop. At least not for a day or two. Pull the dressing over the wound and it’ll stop.”

  A beat went by, and then another. Matt glanced down at the spot where he’d ripped out the catheter, then back at Baylor with the .45.

  “Why did you help me?” he said.

  “I’m a surgeon.”

  Matt shook his head. “That’s not it. You saved my life. Why?”

  “I did what any surgeon would do. I saw a wound and I mended it. Simple as that.”

  From the look on the doctor’s face, it was anything but simple. Matt watched him hurry back to the worktable, part open the bag, and check the girl’s body. Then he turned to Matt with the gun in his hand. He seemed jumpy, unusually nervous, his eyes flicking around the room.

  “We’re running out of time,” he said. “We’re running out of—”

  A shot rang out. A loud blast.

  Matt flinched as blood sprayed across his face, then recoiled and tried to focus. Baylor’s knees were buckling. The doctor had been shot and was going down hard. Matt saw the .45 skid across the floor and turned to the doorway. Grace and Orlando were rushing into the greenhouse with their pistols out. Matt noted the smoke venting from Grace’s gun and lunged for the .45 still sliding across the floor. But just as he reached for the handle, Orlando pushed him out of the way and got to it first.

  CHAPTER 49

  We’re running out of time. We’re running out of—

  Orlando smashed Matt in the face, then knocked him onto the floor and tucked the .45 behind his belt. When he started kicking Matt’s stomach and ribs, Grace pistol-whipped the big man and pushed him out of the way.

  “Knock it off, Joey,” he shouted. “There’s no time for your bullshit right now. Jesus Christ.”

  Something about Grace’s voice was way over the edge, and Orlando backed away and became quiet. All Matt could hear was the sound of that fan whirring in the background, the water still dripping in the sink, and Lieutenant Bob Grace, of the Los Angeles Police Department, struggling to catch his breath. Grace stepped around the table, turned over the body with his foot, and stared at the doctor’s face for what seemed like a long time. While he may have been bewildered by the true identity of the killer, he looked more distressed than that. More like a man who knew that he was cornered. Matt could see the anxiety showing in Grace’s eyes, the panic.

  Baylor had been shot in the back. A plume of blood from the exit wound was spreading across his upper chest. As Matt gazed at the wound, he couldn’t help thinking about what had just happened and why. Baylor kept saying that they were running out of time. Was he expecting Grace and Orlando to show up this soon? And if he was, then why did he take the time to remove the bullet from Matt’s chest? Why did he save his life? There was a moment when the doctor looked up at the glass ceiling, as if he’d just been struck by an idea. But now Matt wondered. Was it an idea, or had he heard something? Is that why he walked over to the French doors and looked outside? Did he know that someone was in the house? And what about those last few moments? Matt could remember the doctor checking the girl, then turning back with the gun. He seemed so agitated, so frightened. Did he know that he was about to be shot? Was there a place in the back of the doctor’s demented mind, a place in the darkness, where there still might have been a bit of light? A place where a single candle burned, a small corner where his conscience remained intact and he understood who and what he had become? Was it possible that Dr. Baylor wanted to stop the murders but couldn’t?

  Was it possible that the monster wanted to be killed?

  Matt let the questions subside and looked at Grace, wondering how much he and Orlando may have heard. The lieutenant was holding his head, like he had a migraine and was still trying to catch his breath. His suit, like his gray hair, was soaked through with sweat, his gaunt face dripping as if he’d just stepped inside from a hard rain. He holstered his pistol, then knelt down beside the corpse. Matt noticed that Grace had begun to tremble. He was looking the doctor’s body over. He was examining the corpse, measuring it in every detail, inspecting the exit wound. And then the tremors quaking through his body appeared to reach some sort of fever pitch—his eyelids fluttered—and he slapped the doctor across the face.

  “You piece of shit,” he said in a low, dark voice.

  He slapped him again. “You piece of human shit.”

  Matt thought that Grace might be weeping but couldn’t really tell with all the sweat still dripping off his cheeks and forehead. It crossed his mind that Grace was on the verge of a meltdown. And even in death, Baylor wasn’t offering the lieutenant a helping hand. Although his eyes were closed, the expression on the doctor’s face was one of peace and serenity, and Matt imagined that for Grace it amplified his anger and fury beyond any possible calculation.

  Grace seized the doctor by his shirt collar and started shaking him. “You died too easy, Baylor. Too fast. Look at what you’ve made me do, Doctor. Look at what you’ve turned me into. A killer, a murderer, just like you. You’re the devil, Doctor. Lucifer and Satan—you’re an evil spirit. Do you hear me? Open your eyes and tell me that you can hear me, Baylor. Open them, you sick son of a bitch. Open them.”

  A long moment passed with Grace holding the doctor’s limp body close to his face. No one made a sound, and no one moved. And then, finally, the lieutenant lowered the corpse to the floor, grabbed the worktable, and pulled himself to his feet.

  It was almost as if he’d aged twenty years in the last five minutes. There was a certain madness about this man.

  It was out in the open, and Matt could see it taking over his entire being. His posture had changed. The way he was carrying himself. The glint in his eye that seemed so twisted now. As Grace moved slowly down the aisle toward the girl inside the plastic bag, his body rocked and swayed, as if he were a machine pieced together with old parts. He stopped and turned and looked through the opening at the naked girl. His head pivoted back and forth, then froze as he rubbed his hand over his whiskers.

  It was in that look, the way the lieutenant’s glazed eyes were fixed on the girl’s face, that Matt knew he wasn’t seeing her anymore. He wasn’t even in the same room.

  Look at what you’ve made me do, Doctor. Look at what you’ve turned me into. A killer, a murderer, just like you.

  A memory surfaced. Something Matt remembered Nietzsche had written more than a hundred years ago, in Beyond Good and Evil. He had read passages from the book in his sophomore English class with Mr. Peterson. When his aunt saw the book on the kitchen table, she mentioned something about it as a possible explanation for what his father had become, and why he’d abandoned his wife and son. Now, as Matt gave Grace a long, hard look, he could remember the passage as if he had just read it with his aunt two minutes ago. It was all about fighting monsters and making sure that during the struggle the fighter didn’t become a monster himself.

  If you gaze into the abyss for too long, the abyss is bound to gaze back into you.

  The thought lingered. Matt looked back at Grace and could see his vision turned inward as he stood over the girl, the sweat dripping from his chin onto her soft breasts. He could see the expression on Grace’s face and guessed that he was staring into the looking glass, sifting through his memories, feeling the wrath as the abyss had its way with him.

  He was putting it together, Matt thought. He was wrestling with all that had happened—the way things seemed and, in a split second, the way things really were. He was wrestling with the blowback—who he used to be and what he had become.

  “You finally got your man, Grace.”

  A beat went by. Then the lieutenant’s head swiveled to the left, until his zombie eyes came to rest on Matt. He s
poke in a low, dangerous voice—a monster seething; a monster who would do anything to claw his way out of the hole and into the light.

  “If you say one more word, Jones, I’m gonna put a bullet in your head.”

  “And how would that look? How are you gonna sell any of this without admitting that you planted the box cutter in Ron Harris’s garage? How are you gonna get past the fact that there was no way Harris killed Millie Brown?”

  Grace’s face swiveled back to the girl. Matt watched his eyes shut down. He looked like a dead man. A ghost with a spent soul—half here, half gone.

  “You killed your partner to keep that secret, Grace. You pushed Leo off that parking garage and murdered him. It’s just like you said to Baylor’s corpse. You’ve murdered a lot of people to keep that secret. My best friend. His partner, Frankie Lane. A lot of innocent people. And what about Jamie Taladyne, the man you and Joey murdered tonight? I’ve got bad news for you, Grace. I called it in, and his alibi checked out. He was telling you the truth. He didn’t murder Faith Novakoff. He was in Mint Canyon at the time. There was never a copycat. Taladyne’s in the clear.”

  “Yeah, he’s in the clear all right,” Orlando shouted. “Now shut the fuck up.”

  Matt turned, expecting to block a kick. Instead, Orlando had his cell phone out and was making a call. After a few seconds he shut down the phone and flashed a worried look at Grace.

  “He’s not picking up,” he said. “A night like this, and he’s not picking up. What the fuck’s his problem?”

  Grace didn’t respond, still way too deep inside himself to care about a phone call. It suddenly occurred to Matt that Orlando had been trying to reach Plank. That they hadn’t been to Laura’s house, and Orlando didn’t know that his partner was dead. It made sense if they were coming from Matt’s house on the Westside. Laura’s place was east of Toluca Lake, while Baylor’s would have been on the way.

  They had no idea that Plank’s story was over, his bullet-riddled body either still on the lawn or pulled into the brush by the coyotes.

  Matt glanced at the .45 Orlando had stuffed behind his belt and the 9 mm Glock he was holding in his right hand. Then he turned back to Grace, whose pistol was holstered on the other side of his body. He wondered if he could make a move without being shot. He wondered if he could get to Orlando and strip the pistol out of his hand. By any measure, Orlando was a big man. All the same, Matt had a certain level of strength back and could feel the tide of adrenaline still rising.

  He looked at the tools hanging from the rack over the counter. The shears were too far away. On the counter below, several sizes of plastic cable ties were stored in glass jars, along with a spool of heavy twine. When he checked beneath the worktable, he spotted what he needed on the shelf just six feet away. Beside the rows of empty clay pots, beside the bags of fertilizer and potting soil, the doctor kept his shovel.

  He looked up at Grace, the lieutenant’s blank eyes still fixed on the girl. Then he began inching across the floor. Slowly. Imperceptibly.

  “Just in case you’re interested, Grace. That’s Anna Marie Genet. She’s not dead, and she’s not dying. Baylor drugged her.”

  Grace clenched his teeth. When he spoke, his voice was just above a whisper and still dangerous.

  “Joey?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to tie his wrists to the leg of that table.”

  Orlando walked over to the counter and picked out the jar with the longest cable ties.

  “Don’t use the ties,” Grace said. “They’ll leave a residue. Use the twine.”

  Joey reached for the twine, then spotted the gardening shears and grabbed them, too. Matt looked at the shovel, just five feet away but now completely out of reach. Grace had drawn his pistol and was pointing it at him as he moved down the aisle and stopped at his feet. Then Orlando knelt down, grabbed Matt’s wrists with his mitt-sized hands, and started lashing them to the leg of the worktable.

  Matt pushed him away, but all Orlando did was laugh at him, pull his hands back into position, and continue wrapping his wrists in twine. Matt turned to Grace.

  “What are you trying to pull, Grace? Cabrera’s on his way. McKensie’s with him.”

  Grace knelt down and went through Matt’s pockets. Tossing his keys and wallet aside, he scooped up his cigarettes and lighter. What struck Matt most was the change in Grace’s composure. He still had that wooden look and feel of a zombie. The glint in his eye was still dark and twisted. But the tremors were gone, and he had stopped sweating. When he lit the cigarette, his hand was rock steady. So was the hand holding the pistol.

  “Did you hear me, Grace?” Matt repeated. “Cabrera and McKensie are on their way.”

  “Stop fighting it, Jones. There’s no way out of this for you. Hughes’s wife? I assume that’s who we found tied up in the sunroom—she’s not gonna make it either. If Cabrera and McKensie wanna die, that’s okay with me, too. Dying’s easier when you’re not alone.”

  Orlando tightened the knot, pinching Matt’s arm.

  “What about ligature marks, Grace?”

  The lieutenant took a hit on the smoke and exhaled. “There aren’t gonna be any ligature marks. I’m burning the place down tonight.”

  Orlando traded looks with Grace, then tied his last knot and cut the twine with the shears. After tossing the shears on the counter, he gave Matt another brutal kick in the ribs.

  “See you on the other side, Jones. Nice working with you.”

  Matt tried to pull himself together. Grace had just given Orlando another knowing look and nod, sending Joey out of the greenhouse and upstairs. From the smirk on Grace’s face, Matt guessed that it had something to do with the gas jets he’d seen feeding the fireplace in the den and probably a stove in the kitchen. He thought about Grace’s plan and followed it through. His way out that would never work.

  “You know what, Grace?” he said. “You can blame Baylor for everything you’ve done, but it’s a farce. You made the decisions. You crossed the line on your own. I think that you like killing, and that’s why you can’t stop. Look at you. It’s not what you’ve become. It’s who you are. It’s who Baylor was. Kindred spirits, rotten to the core.”

  Grace looked in his direction, but Matt couldn’t tell if he was seeing him. “It’s the only way,” he whispered. “The only way, Jones.”

  “What about Baylor? Even if he burns, they’ll figure out that he was shot in the autopsy. SID will find the bullet. They’ll match it to your gun.”

  “Depends on how hot the fire burns. Don’t worry about it, Jones. I’ll file a report. You keep forgetting that you murdered Taladyne tonight, and that it’s your word against mine. You executed the guy for killing Hughes and Lane. You were wounded in a firefight with your supervising officer and two LAPD detectives. You were on the run. Me and Joey found you here, and I took a shot but hit Baylor by accident. It’s a shame, a real blow to the department and the investigation. Dr. Baylor was a good man, a man with a heart of gold, and an expert witness. I’ll always remember him that way. I’ll always think of him as someone I considered to be a true friend.”

  Matt shook his head, then rolled onto his side to get a better look at Grace. “If Baylor was everything you’re gonna say he was, why did he help me?”

  That sneer was back, Grace’s voice barely audible. “Because you had a gun, Jones. You forced him.”

  “And what about Laura?”

  “She was in it because she thought you got the guy who killed her husband. You were wounded. She drove you over here and held the gun on Baylor while he operated on you. He wanted to live. He had no choice.”

  Matt chewed it over. Grace thought that he had figured a way to talk himself out of the maze. A way to survive an official review in spite of the flaws.

  “It won’t work,” Matt said.

  “But it has to.”

  “Don’t you understand, Grace? Are you that far gone? Taladyne has been cleared. It’s not a secret between you and me.
Everybody knows. The Sheriff’s Department cleared him over an hour ago. There’s no one left to blame except Baylor. There’s no reason to keep killing, Grace. You’ll never get away with it. No one will believe you. It’ll never work.”

  “But it has to work,” he whispered. “And you have to die to make it work.”

  Grace noticed Baylor’s closet in the hall, stepped on his cigarette, and walked out of the greenhouse. As he rifled through the shelves, Matt pulled his wrists against the leg of the table and tried sawing through the twine.

  “It’s not over, Grace. Have you even thought about the girl in the body bag? She’s still alive.”

  The lieutenant ripped open a carton that looked like it contained a dozen bottles of isopropyl alcohol. “Yes, she is, Jones. She’s still alive. I’ll have to come up with a way to change that.” He pulled out a bottle and vanished down the hall. “She can’t be found here, she can’t be allowed to talk—or, like you said, everyone will know. It’s no worry, really. No worry at all. I’ve always loved nighttime drives through the desert. Everything cools down and you’re far enough away from the city that the sky turns into a sea of stars.”

  Grace was talking more to himself now, chattering away in circles. He came back into view, tossing the empty bottle onto the floor and grabbing two more. Matt could smell the alcohol in the air and guessed that he was dousing the carpet on the stairs.

  He thought about Laura. If Grace and Orlando had seen her, then the sunroom really was at the base of the stairs. He kept trying to saw through the twine, but the edge of the leg was too smooth and dull. He looked around, the dread closing in on him. The shovel was out of reach. His eyes flicked into the hall as Grace dropped the empty bottles and grabbed two more, the smell of isopropyl alcohol heavier now. Matt gave the twine another try, then lowered his gaze and noticed that the screws securing the table to the tiled floor appeared rusty. After checking the hallway, he took a deep breath, reared back on his knees, and plowed his shoulder into the leg. It didn’t budge. The stainless steel table was locked down and too heavy. He tried again, this time thinking about Laura burning in the fire. Nothing happened, nothing moved—nothing would ever move. He could see Grace coming back for the rest of the alcohol. He could hear Orlando starting down the stairs. Sweat was dripping into his eyes, and he couldn’t see through the burn.