by E. E. Giorgi
“Careful not to slip,” he calls, reaching for his glass of wine.
* * *
Sunday, October 12
The first rays of dawn stain the sky over the Tate University campus. The air is nippy and the lawns humid, fragrant with the dew accumulated in the wee hours of the day.
The cobblestone walkways are deserted, except for the occasional student who has spent the night at the library preparing for a test, or the graduate assistant who instead devotes his nocturnal hours to a never-ending lab experiment. The door to the Kellogg Laboratory opens, and the wheels of a bicycle whirl out on the portico. In front of the library, the fountain rushes to life after a few minutes of inactivity. The jets of water reach their peak and then slowly die out again.
“Excuse me, sir,” the cyclist says to the man lying at the foot of a bench. How come security hasn’t spotted this one? he wonders. He must have rolled off the bench after falling asleep. The man doesn’t move, and the cyclist has no choice but get off his bike and walk around him. As he turns to take one more look, something catches his attention. The cyclist props his bike against a pillar, turns around, and crouches over what he now realizes is not a sleeping man. It’s a body drenched in blood.
CHAPTER 8
____________
Sunday, October 12
The low morning sun brushed the foothills with gold. Blown by the breeze, a handful of sand swirled up in the air. The steel swingers gave the faintest nod. I scanned the one-hundred-yard line and fixed my eyes on the second to last plate. The light wind at muzzle was going to add to the fun.
I positioned the frame on the V-through of my handgun rest, held the revolver—a five-inch S&W M327—on target, and squeezed the trigger, flying three rounds down the range. Earplugs and headset muffled the roar of gunfire. The blast sent a shock wave up to my arm and shoulder. Dust came down from the rafters. My target swung and clanged.
Wait. I couldn’t hear it clang.
Clang. Clang.
I pulled off the earmuffs and plugs and turned. Officer Kimberly Nelson stood behind my bench, clanging a key ring against the metal pillar. Pretty, in her mid-thirties, and smiling. I may have dated her once. Or twice.
“Did you forget to set the buzzer on your cell phone, Track?”
I adjusted the shooting glasses on my nose. “I didn’t pull cover this weekend.”
Her smile didn’t fade a notch. “That’s what you think. Gomez told me to show you this.” She handed me what looked like a photocopied picture of the back of a car. I took it from her and brought it to my nose. It smelled of the cheap quality ink used in fax machines. Gone through a few hands before Nelson—Gomez, a couple of others I didn’t recognize. The car was a Ford Focus, an older model, and the plate number was clearly readable despite the low quality of the image. And awfully familiar. I read the date and time at the top of the page: it had been faxed from the West L.A. station forty minutes earlier.
“What does Gomez want me to do with this?” I asked.
Nelson cocked her head and motioned me to go talk inside.
The range master shouted the “all clear.” I holstered the revolver, picked up my range bag, and followed her. I’d left my duty weapon—a Glock 17—at home, but I wasn’t wearing a tie either, so the hell with regulations.
Officer Kimberly Nelson smelled of cheap perfume and bubble gum. “We shouldn’t go this long without seeing each other, Track,” she purred once in the lounge. She had one of those rich and juicy voices you could put on playback and sleep right through it. By contrast, her talk was as sharp as a paper cut and as stinging as a double shot of whiskey.
“You could’ve called me last night, and we would’ve made it a date,” I replied. “Where was the pic taken?”
“At a crime scene, picked up by a surveillance video. The responding team ran the plate number through the NCIC and found the record to be active.”
The NCIC, or National Crime Information Center, is the FBI database for stolen property, criminal records and missing persons—the first place where a law enforcement officer checks a plate number, a weapon, or a suspect.
“A crime scene?” I prodded, as we exited through the front office.
“Double murder, husband and wife, whacked in the head in their home in Beverly Hills. The guy was a big fish at this genetic company—” She turned the fax over and read through her handwritten notes. “Chromo Inc., it’s down in Century City. Anyways, Gomez said you’ve been investigating the vehicle’s owner.”
I stood outside the range office, gunfire blasting in the background, and froze. Huxley’s note. GN WHITE, AGE 8, CHROMO.
Huxley vanishes, and one week later her car turns up at a murder scene, the victim linked to the name Chromo.
My missing persons just got upgraded to double murder.
“Was the case transferred over to us?”
Nelson nodded a little too enthusiastically. “Yup. Ready to go check it out?”
“With you?”
Pretty or not, the rookie’s best police work so far had been writing speeding tickets.
Her lower lip curled into a pout. Without a word, she turned away and started down toward the parking lot. I shouldered my bag and followed.
“Gomez wanted me to remind you your partner’s on light duty and RHD is down on manpower,” Nelson sang. The sky was clear and the light bright. I kept my glasses on.
“Nice of him to remember.”
A black and white cruiser was parked on the west end of the lot, but Nelson spun to the left, walked straight to my Dodge, and clutched the door handle to the passenger’s seat. It didn’t yield. “Track,” she said, glaring.
Car keys jingling in my hand, I said, “Spit the bubble gum out before you step into my vehicle.”
She stared at me half smiling. “Why?”
“It stinks.”
Her lower lip curled again. She spat the bright yellow blob into her fingers, crouched down, and stuck it in a groove in the front tire.
Sleek little thing.
“Track, have you ever wondered why you’re still single?” she said as we wound down Tujunga Canyon Road.
“Who says I am?”
Nelson let out a snort, which sounded more like a mew in her voice. “Look at you. You’re handsome, even charming on a good day, and yet you keep being such an asshole with women.”
I grinned. “I’m for equality, Nelson. I’m an asshole to everybody.”
“You know, I could give you a few tips.”
I shot her a sideways glance. There she was, slouched in my vehicle with her perfectly ironed uniform buttoned all the way up to the neck, soaked in some artificial fragrance she got half price at Macy’s during one of their end-of-the-season clearance events.
“Tips? In exchange for what?”
“You know I’m pricey, huh?” she replied, her voice as gold as honey. She leaned closer, brushed a finger along my shoulder while purring a little sexy roar, then slumped back on her seat and laughed. Cute, had it not been for the stinky bubble gum breath.
“Ah, you’re funny, Track. No, all I need is a word with Gomez so I can stay at the Homicide table after the freeze. Right now I’m on a six-month loan,” she added, switching off the mellow in her voice.
“So I’m funny, huh? Because suddenly your heartfelt compliments—handsome and charming—assume a completely new meaning.”
“Oh, come on, Track.”
“Fine. You gotta work for it, though. Asshole Track wants to know about the crime scene.”
Nelson unrolled the sheet of specs she had brought along. “Double homicide. Vics are husband and wife, whacked in the head in their home at 12300 Cielo Drive, Beverly Hills, some time after ten p.m. last night—the pics you saw was taken at ten seventeen p.m.”
“The Benedict Canyon neighborhood,” I considered. Etched at the foot of the Santa Monica Mountains, between Coldwater and Franklyn Canyons, Benedict Canyon is one of the high-end neighborhoods of Beverly Hills. Surrounded by sy
camores, majestic oaks, and palm trees, single-family homes rise above the pollution of downtown and enjoy crisp mountain views and clear skies. An expensive privilege in Los Angeles County.
“Who found them?”
“A neighbor called nine-one-one at five twenty-three this morning. He was awakened by loud growling and found the vics’ yellow Labrador roaming and yapping in his backyard. Can you imagine? The poor thing.”
“Yeah, that early in the morning I’d be pissed too.”
Nelson’s forehead rippled. “Jeez, Track. I meant the Labrador. He must’ve been so scared!” Female cops. You can have ten victims in a room, yet if there’s a dog, they’ll run for the pet first. “The neighbor phoned the vics. Nobody picked up, so he walked the pup home. He got suspicious when nobody answered the gate either—that’s when he dialed nine-one-one. The responding officers found husband and wife dead in the master bathroom: Robert Tarantino, age fifty-five, chemical engineer and executive vice president at Chromo Inc., and Tamara Tarantino, age forty-eight, housewife.”
“How many shots? Does it say in the log?”
“One each, both to the head.”
“And the neighbor was awakened by the dog’s growling but not by two shots in the middle of the night?”
Nelson shrugged. “People mind their own business. The dog had trespassed his property.”
“Hmm. We’ll have to talk to this guy. This Chromo Inc., what does it do?”
“Let’s see, what did they give me here… ‘The company specializes in genetic sequencing, gene expression, and gene therapy’—whatever that means, I’m reading from the log.” She let the papers flop on her lap and stared at the road. “The lieutenant said you’ve been investigating the owner of the car turned up on the cc camera. Do you think your missing lady did it?”
A workaholic woman who every evening lets a geek walk her to her car so she can pretend she’s going home when in fact she’s sneaking back to work? One day she vanishes and her car turns up at a double murder scene. “Nelson, this woman is as dead as the two bodies they just found.” And with that, I plunged the vehicle into the Two-Ten and effortlessly swerved into the carpool lane, feeling the ecstasy of a Sunday-morning-deserted freeway.
* * *
Tall hedges splashed with magenta bougainvillea blossoms circled the property, their height a claim of privacy and a statement of wealth. In L.A., poverty is for everybody to see, yet affluence is hidden away and left to the imagination. By the wrought iron gate, a uniformed officer from the West L.A. station checked our badges and radioed the responding team about our arrival.
“Who’s in charge in there?” I asked, as he returned the tins.
“Detectives Spencer and Donoghue,” he replied, lifting the yellow tape. “Go ahead, Detective. They’re waiting for you.”
I bet they are, I thought, recognizing the names.
Red and white oleanders bordered the driveway. It wound uphill through the lush green of a manicured lawn, until, surrounded by cypresses, a Tuscan style villa in light pink stucco loomed into view against a stark blue sky. Speckled with sage bushes and chaparral evergreen shrubs, the rust-colored hills of the California scrubland painted the background. Both the ambulance and the SID—the Scientific Investigation Division—field unit van were already on the premises, carelessly parked at the top of the driveway. I pulled in next to two patrol cruisers, got out of the car, and stared at the façade of the house. A long pergola propped over Corinthian pillars encircled the ground level and extended into a portico above the main entrance. Twin lions flanked the stairs to the door, both frozen into a stern glare—some pseudo-artist’s idea of house guardians.
Interesting mix of architectural elements.
I walked around my Dodge, opened the trunk, and took in the familiarity of my own chaos: cardboard boxes filled with tools, flashlights, spare batteries, a blanket, paper towels, evidence bags, a box of extra magazines. And a bag of beef jerky, because you never know.
“Aspiring Detective Nelson.” I tossed her a bundle of latex gloves and protective booties. “Let’s start from the basics.”
Badges clipped on, we walked past the usual streams of yellow tape and made our way to the entrance. A gaunt figure was pacing up and down the pergola, his head lost in a cloud of tobacco mist.
“Hey, Track!” He waved an oversized hand at me, curly billows of smoke jetting out of his nose. Dr. Thomas Ellis, L.A. county medical examiner: ashen face, aquiline nose, and long cheekbones jutting below gray, hollow eyes. He was skinny everywhere but on his stomach, which was as round as a cantaloupe and sat on his lanky frame like an Afro wig sat on Asian face. His wardrobe consisted exclusively of gray suits, which nicely matched the grayish tint of his complexion, and his body odor was a unique blend of nicotine, formaldehyde, hypochlorite and dead flesh.
I introduced Nelson and scrunched my nose in disgust. “What the hell is that, Doc? You’ve changed brand of smoke?”
“You noticed, huh? My wife talked me into this lighter stuff.” He looked at the half-smoked cigarette between his index and middle finger, the heel of his fingernails rimmed in nicotine yellow. “Man, it sucks.”
From a second-hand smoker’s point of view, I couldn’t have agreed more. “Of all people, I thought you’d be the first one to stay away from tobacco.”
He shrugged. “What can you do? Human nature is weak. I’ll see you up there in a sec,” he added, taking another drag. “I’ll let you settle yourself, first.”
I caught on the comment and snorted. A little too often crimes in the Hollywood area turn into high-profile cases. The divisional detectives arrive on the scene and get their asses moving locating witnesses, calling the paramedics, identifying the victims. When some high-ranking boss calls and tells them to get out of the way because the case got transferred downtown, the news is not always welcomed with enthusiasm. Facts turn into innuendos, and findings are shared only under highly privileged conditions, in a more or less implicit battle for territory.
The main entrance to the house had been left ajar. As I pushed it open, I noticed an injured camera perched atop the door and miserably gaping at me. Gunfire, I realized, counting two bullet holes. The device had been tagged and numbered, which meant the SID guys had already logged the piece of evidence. Nelson and I donned our protective gear—the latex adhering to my hands like a suffocating sheath—and got to work.
Inside, the villa was a continuation of mismatched styles: the cotto floors, partly covered by Persian rugs in the living room, gave way to cream-colored carpet in the office. The kitchen had Spanish tiles, pueblo-style niches in the walls, and Italian appliances. A German grand piano dominated the ballroom, surrounded by walls decorated with African masks and Japanese watercolors. Bits of interrupted life recurred everywhere—a half glass of water on the kitchen counter, an open musical score on the piano, a bunch of keys casually tossed on a console, a magazine flopped upside down on the couch. They clashed with the different hues of fingerprint dust dutifully brushed on all light switches and doorknobs, and the loose crime tape rattling against the windows.
I inhaled old and new scents, smells that belonged, and ones that didn’t: I smelled blood, sifting down from the open loft, together with the first hints of decay and methane coming from the dead bodies. It mingled with a trace of male sweat and nicotine, and the metal of guns rubbing against leather holsters.
I smelled testosterone. Loads of it.
Nelson paced quietly behind me, her eyes straying wherever mine went. Voices barked upstairs. She stared at me. “So. Do we wait here, or do we go introduce ourselves?”
I didn’t need to answer. A face emerged from across the banister of the loft and looked down at us. “Oh, look. It’s Presius. Changeover time. Beer for us, double stiff for you. And you’re welcome, by the way.”
“Glad to take it off your hands, Spencer,” I replied.
“Yeah, right.”
“Be good, Don. Let’s do this civilly, shall we?” a second voi
ce interjected, slightly higher in pitch and diplomacy.
Nelson stiffened and mouthed, What the—?
They took their time as they came down the circular stairs: tasteful civilian clothes, the straps of their shoulder rig holsters visible from underneath their black jackets, their white shirts rimmed by halos of sweat and the stench of nicotine. Spencer stared at me defiantly, a strip of forehead stuck between a low hairline and a pair of bushy eyebrows. Tufts of black hair sprouted out of his wide nostrils like spider legs. He stood in front of me in a wide-legged stance, his face inches away from mine, and his clean-shaven chin scalloping down to his neck.
“Sorry, pal,” he mocked in falsetto. “We didn’t get you a murder weapon, this time.”
“It was hardly a bonus, last time.”
A robbery gone wrong in Beverly Glen, two years earlier. Spencer and his partner found the smoking nine-millimeter as Satish and I were en route, and by the time we got to the scene they claimed the case was theirs. Too damn good to let go. The battle for turf escalated, forcing Gomez to step in with a few phone calls to the Hollywood brass in order to grease the way. We got the case, and Spencer never forgot.
“Let it go, Don,” Spencer’s partner said, almost quietly. “We’re all following orders, here.” Leaner than his partner, with an angular jaw line and a buzz haircut that badly camouflaged the thinness of his hair, he squeezed Spencer’s shoulder while flashing me a somehow conciliatory smile.
Spencer wasn’t done, though. “I just hate it when some people get it easier than others,” he spat, his breath a mix of black coffee, smoke, and useless Listerine strips. “It’s not fair, ya know?”
“I didn’t hear you caught the perp already,” I replied.
