Patterns of Brutality: Erter & Dobbs Book 2

by Nick Keller

  2. Don’t tell him to change his research methods. When he investigates dead starlets through the LAPD server system, he does it systematically. It makes tracking his research easy as pie! What a dork, right?

  3. Don’t tell him to do a search for Beatrice Harlow. I found her file in the Cold Case database. I think she’s a key to your investigation.

  4. Don’t get laid for me, and don’t give me the full report. Ha!

  Talk soon! Happy Me…

  William read it a second time mouthing the word Beatrice Harlow. Then he put the letter on his desk and leaned back, contemplating it some more. The letter was revealing in terms of Jacky’s situation. First, the kid was still alive, and he was aware his disappearance might have worried a few people, namely Professor Erter. Also, he was local. After all, he’d most likely delivered the letter himself not wanting to stir up any attention.

  Secondly, his Spyderware hacker program was still active inside the Central L.A.P.D. network. And he was still playing his spy game with the law—pushing his luck. Specifically, he was monitoring Bernie’s movement through the servers. He was a smart kid, knowing to consider the case the “dead starlets.” Also, he was able to discover their investigative track well enough to find a possible fifth victim—Beatrice Harlow. Knowing someone was on to them would have concerned William, but Jacky was not just someone. He was an unusually brilliant young…

  William shot up in his chair.

  Wait a minute!

  The letter offered another insight—a frame of time.

  Jacky had to have dropped off the letter while William was on his date with Ruthi—within the last two hours or so.

  William clicked on his exterior surveillance software and brought up his video stream. The system was managed by a company called LinkTech Inc. and it allowed each door in the apartment complex to monitor their exterior porch. William scrubbed back through two hours of video hoping to catch the hooded form of his former protégé sneaking up to his front porch. He licked his lips moving at four times normal speed. Then six times. Then eight. Nothing. He scrubbed backward and forward through two hours of video—and there was no sign of Jacky.

  William made a frustrated face. How could someone move through a video frame and not be captured on…

  Oh for God’s sake!

  The little mastermind manipulated the video. He broke into LinkTech’s surveillance software and looped the imagery cutting himself right out of the stream! It made William chuckle. The little shit was smart enough to avoid detection even from Big Brother.

  Damn. The kid was good. He was better than good. He was downright rare.

  William tapped his chin. This was a good thing.

  He opened his personal profile—Willboy_84—on LinkTech’s site and navigated to the Contact page. A “compose message” feature popped up in an email field. This was how William could get in touch with LinkTech’s technical support group. But—William grinned—it was also how he could get in touch with Jacky, if he were monitoring his profile page, which he almost certainly was.

  William typed in thanks, but paused. He shook his head. He would only contact Jacky if he absolutely needed to. He deleted the message and closed down the software.

  25

  BERNIE GETS THE MESSAGE

  Bernie hadn’t gotten anywhere. Frustrated, he felt like he’d wasted the entire morning punching keys on a computer endlessly. He’d even made a few phone calls hunting down the old friends and family members of dead people—people who’d been murdered in years past. All he’d succeeded in doing was rustling up some heavy, old memories for a few people, ruining their day.

  His eyes went up instinctively toward Investigations a floor above him. He wondered what Mark Neiman was doing, if he was getting anywhere. He hadn’t heard from the prick all morning. Was he hiding some discovery from him, or was he just as lost as Bernie?

  He rubbed his head and popped his fedora on. It was time for lunch, maybe a midday double down at Murphy’s just to take the edge off. There was a knock at the door to Cold Case. He looked over. Two station Blues were standing there looking in. One of them said, “Detective Bernie Dobbs?”

  “Yeah?”

  The officer turned to someone standing behind and said, “That’s him.”

  “Hell’s going on?” Bernie said, approaching the entrance.

  A young guy with wavy, shoulder length hair wearing a plaid bookie’s shirt buttoned up to the chin, a square-billed cap and an insulting baby face stepped into Cold Case. He held a bouquet of Flora Shop’s Turn-up-the-Summer Bouquet with gerberas and carnations exploding from a vase. His assistant, a tall, skinny version of himself, held a jam box on his shoulder and wore utterly ill-fitting reflector aviator sunglasses which looked ridiculous. He hit a button and the radio started playing a karaoke version of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing.

  Donna came around the corner with bugging eyes and a wild woman’s grin, curious to see what the hell was going on. Bernie scowled immediately as the opening piano chords played out.

  Once the verse approached, Babyface went into song, rolling out the long, catty tunes: “She just a small town girl… living in a lonely world… she took the midnight train going anywheeeere!”

  Donna did what Donna’s nature dictated. She started clapping and shimmying, laughing uproariously as Bernie stood frozen, frowning.

  “What. The. Hell!”

  “He just a city boy… born and raised in south Detroit… he took the midnight train goin’ anywheeeere!”

  Station personnel began poking their heads into the department, all looking bizarrely interested. Now the growing guitar riff blew forward. Something musical stalked Bernie as he shrank.

  “A singer in a smoky room… the smell of wine and cheap perfume… for a smile, they could share the night, it goes on and on and on and on, c’mon!”

  Everyone started singing along—cops, administrators, clerks, even Donna—“Strangers waiting… up and down the boulevard… their shadows searching… in the niiiiiight!”

  “Enough!” Bernie screamed. “Enough of this shit!”

  “Streetlight people… livin’ just to find emotion… hiding somewhere… in the niiiiiight!”

  “Goddammit, I said… I said… oh fuck.” He flumped down in his chair realizing there was no stopping this ridiculous pandemonium. It would play out before him, like it or not. And it did for several more, eternal minutes, going from verse to chorus, back to verse, complete with air guitar, stupid sunglasses and male dancer-style shimmying. Once it wound down and the department applauded and snickered at Bernie’s complete discomfort, Babyface presented him with the bouquet, kissed Bernie’s hand before he could refuse, and left Cold Case at a double pace.

  When everything settled he plopped the vase on his desk flipping through the flowers gruffly with his fingers. Once Donna collected herself from laughing and smacking him on the shoulders she said, “So, who’s the secret admirer, shoog?”

  “Secret admirer, my ass…” he grumbled before finding a small, two-fold card. He flipped it open in his fingers and read: Check for a Beatrice Harlow. He flipped it closed dawning a curious, secretive look.

  “Well?” Donna said.

  “Uh—no one.”

  “Uh-huh. No one sure went through a whole lot of trouble,” she said, still trying to control her chortling.

  “I need a drink,” he muttered and stormed for the door.

  “Don’t forget your smokes, big boy. Gonna need them afterwards,” she said, and started laughing at him again. He paused to give her mean, puppy eyes, snatched his smokes and left.

  BERNIE SKIPPED LUNCH. He was going to skip the drink, too, but he changed his mind. He popped into Murphy’s for a quick one sitting at the bar turning the two-fold card over and over in his hand.

  Beatrice Harlow. He’d never heard the name. But whoever she was, she’d come to him on the wings of Don’t Stop Believing—a song about hungry starlets coming to the big city from Podunk nowheres. A co
incidence? Bernie thought not. He slammed his drink, left his cash on the bar, and took off.

  An hour later, with Jack Daniels black label on his breath, he returned to Cold Case, sat down and brought up the unsolved files database. Clicking through, he opened the case window on a Harlow, Beatrice—24 years old, female, deceased, July 19, 2012. The file painted a nasty picture.

  She had been another Hollywood hopeful who’d been living out of a one-room studio apartment out on Downey Avenue in another saltbox hotel-style apartment complex full of service-industry movie star wannabes. She was another looker—platinum blonde hair, nice skin, beautiful even features, pretty smile. Just like the rest. Beatrice had tats, big ones, all over.

  From the investigation interviews, she’d been popular with the fellas. She’d had a number of guy friends, but, as it turned out, Beatrice preferred the ladies. In fact, according to her landlord, Beatrice had a live-in girlfriend, at least for a while. She had moved out a month prior to Beatrice’s death. The girl’s name was Tabitha something-or-other. She had been a suspect, but after extensive interviewing, she was ruled out. Besides, she was distraught over her ex-lover’s brutal murder—even had to seek psychotherapeutic counseling. The girl was a nutball, just not a psychotic.

  Turns out, when Beatrice Harlow was late on paying rent, the landlord entered her apartment, and there she was, ten days dead with a cavity in her chest large enough to remove her heart. In fact, her heart was found in the toilet bowl half-dissolved in a gallon of sewage.

  Bernie scanned the final coroner’s report. A blood screen showed trace amounts of cannabis. Bernie shook his head. It proved nothing. Everyone smoked pot in L.A. But his attention was caught on the acid phosphate test results.

  She had semen in her uterus. Female lovers weren’t equipped with semen, lesbian or not. It made him curl his brow. Planted semen? He shrugged.

  Maybe this Beatrice Harlow was bisexual. Maybe she swung both ways. That was as popular in L.A. as smoking pot. It happens.

  He leaned back in the chair putting the events of that bloody night together in his mind: So this guy lures her from some bar somewhere, they smoke weed, she gets him upstairs, they screw, then he kills her. Apparently, that happens, too.

  Leads went nowhere. Questioning dried up. And Beatrice Harlow ends up on his desk five years later. Bernie’s eyes went up to Investigations again. What was Mark doing?

  26

  CHROME STEEL

  Before one o’clock Mark turned out to be good for his word. The autopsy report on Chrissie Newton a.k.a. Harlie Davison, came as an email attachment, signed Dean Olday, L.A. County Coroner’s Office. It arrived in Bernie’s inbox by 10:30. Bernie was half-surprised Mark shared the files. He wasn’t expecting him to extend the olive branch. Apparently, they both had something to gain. Two brains were better than one—not that they would give each other the credit of possessing a real human brain.

  Of course, it had probably helped that Bernie had been good for his word, too. Half-hour ago, he’d wrapped up his own transcripts on the murdered girls and sent them to Mark. What did he have to lose? He shook his head pathetically.

  Don’t look now, Dobbs, but you and Mark are working a case together… again.

  He downloaded the autopsy report, a .pdf file. It had the L.A. county coroner’s seal, stamped for authentication. Dobbs had seen a million of these reports. He looked at this one scrolling it up and down on the screen. It contained the usual coroner’s breakdown, gastrointestinal observation, cerebrospinal inspection, female genitalia system, etc. Phrases caught him: “Lividity on upper chest, thighs and flanks consistent with auto accident and emergency system release (i.e. seatbelt and air bag.)” “Facial dermis removed via sharp instrument, perhaps scalpel or artist’s blade, with incision over temporal line, both tempora and full mandible inclusion.” “Facial muscularity is revealed in full.”

  He made a face like smelling something rancid and read on.

  “Acid phosphate scan showed positive in the victim’s stomach indicating possible ingestion of seminal fluid.”

  Bernie pulled back. “She had funk in her gut. Heh—kinky.” But none in her uterus. Strange. And there was also funk beaded on her detached facial skin. More planted semen.

  The phone rang. Bernie ignored it. He’d let Donna’tella answer it. The phone rang a second time. He looked over to see her swivel her head over and look back at him. They stared at each other momentarily, and it rang again.

  “It’s for you, baby,” Donna said.

  “How do you know?”

  It rang again—a fourth time.

  “’Cause, I know,” she said, dripping with attitude.

  Bernie crooked his lips dropping his pen, and went to answer. He put it to his ear, said, “Yeah?” No one was there, they hung up. He shrugged at her. “Guess we’ll never know.”

  His cell phone chirped back at his desk. Someone was trying to get a hold of him. Donna’tella laughed. “I told you! You didn’t listen, but I told you!”

  “Shit,” he muttered and flipped it open. “Yeah?”

  “Dobbs.” It was Mark Neiman’s voice.

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  “You’re not downstairs.”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  Mark argued, “I just called—oh, forget it. Listen, you get the autopsy report?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Find anything?”

  “Another connection.”

  “Well, what?”

  Bernie balked, giving in. “All the vics had semen. But this one’s different. It wasn’t in her uterus.”

  “Yeah, I know. Her facial skin. What’s that tell you?”

  “He jacked off on her.”

  Mark groaned, “Either that, or…”

  “He’s planting it on them.”

  “So where’s the connection between my girl and yours?”

  “He possibly planted it on mine, too.”

  “What’s your evidence?”

  “Mine was a lesbo. Lesbos don’t cream like that, unless she was a bi. It’s possible.”

  “Huh,” Mark said. “Look, have you ever heard of Chrome Steel?” Mark asked.

  “Like on bumpers?”

  “Right, I guess you haven’t, then. Meet me at interrogation room one.”

  “What’s this—” The phone hung up. He looked at it in his hand feeling his face go hot. He hated being hung up on. Nevertheless, Mark had called from Investigations. He took it as a good sign. He plopped his fedora on and said, “I’ll be back.”

  THROUGH THE INTERROGATION window Bernie could see some guy sitting at the table looking nervous as shit. He had long, thick arms, a thin swErter which fell over a narrow torso and surfer’s blond hair hanging down over his face. Mark was waiting. When they met, he thumbed back at the guy in the room. “There’s your bumper.”

  “Huh?”

  “His name’s Chrome Steel. Some porn star. Apparently, he’s got a dick like a fireplug. You should ask him about it.”

  “Oh, really,” Bernie said.

  “Yeah. So anyway, he was seen with Chrissie Newton the night of her murder, and guess what. We think it was his semen in her stomach.”

  Bernie huffed. “She must have had a mouth like a fire hose, then.”

  “Guess so.”

  “What about the semen on her face, was that his, too?”

  “Maybe,” Mark said. “I just had him brought in.”

  Bernie made a pitiful face at Chrome and said, “Boy looks more nervous than a virgin in a dildo factory.”

  “He’s got good reason,” Mark said.

  “Besides being a murder suspect? What’s that?”

  “FBI wants in.”

  Bernie turned all the way around and said, “Jesus Christ.”

  “They’re working with Hollywood Station, but you can bet we’re next.”

  “Fucking FBI.”

  “Yeah, you ready?” Mark asked.

  “Yeah.” Bernie started for the door but Mark
grabbed his arm.

  “I’m doing the talking, Dobbs.”

  Bernie jerked his arm away. “Just ask the right questions.”

  When they opened the door, Mark entered powerfully and said, “Man, you’re in some deep shit, pal.”

  Chrome looked up through fear-bloated eyes. “Huh?” he said.

  Mark kicked a chair and sat in it. “Deep shit. You know what deep shit is?”

  Chrome looked up at Bernie as if searching for help. Bernie stood against the wall with his arms crossed, looking nonplussed.

  “What’d I do?” Chrome asked. He looked like he was about to piss his pants.

  “What’d you do?” Mark said, he leaned in threateningly. “Chrissie Newton. That’s what.”

  “Who?”

  “You telling me you don’t know who Chrissie Newton is?” Mark said.

  “No I—I don’t know no Chrissie Newton.”

  “She sucked your cock couple nights ago.”

  Chrome made a confused look and said, “Lots of girls suck my—do that.”

  Bernie and Mark switched eyes. “Did lots of girls suck your cock at the Red Rocket party, too?” Mark asked.

  “No. I mean, just Harlie.”

  “Uh-huh. Who the fuck is Harlie?”

  “Harlie Davison. It was a party for her. She—she just got signed up with—it was, uh, Focus Films or something like that. It was her party. We—uh…”

  “Had relations?”

  He looked down. “Yeah.” He looked back up.

  “Harlie Davison sounds like a stage name,” Bernie said. “What was her real name?”

  Chrome shrugged. Bernie and Mark looked at each other again. He didn’t even know her real name was Chrissie Newton. Jesus. “Okay, so then what?” Mark said.

  “Nothing, that’s it.”

  “What do you mean that’s it?”

  “I crashed out. I was… you know.”

  “No, what?”