Kill the Messenger

by Tami Hoag

  Gotta get out of here.

  Footfalls slapped on pavement. Jace couldn’t tell from where. The alley? The street? He made himself as small as he could, a tight human ball tucked against the side of the building, and counted his heartbeats as he waited.

  A dark figure stopped at the end of the building, street side, and stood there, arms slightly out to his sides, his movements hesitant as he turned one way and then the other. There wasn’t enough light to make out more than the vague shape of him. He had no face. He had no color.

  Jace pressed his hand against his belly, against the envelope he had tucked inside his shirt for safekeeping. What the hell had Lenny gotten him into?

  The dark figure at the end of the tunnel turned and went back the way he had come.

  Jace waited, counting silently until he decided Predator wasn’t coming back. Then he crept along the wall through scraps of trash and puddles and broken glass, and cautiously peered out. A Dumpster blocked his view. He could see only one section of taillight, glowing like an evil red eye in the dark some distance down the alley.

  His bike lay crumpled on the ground somewhere behind the car. Jace hoped against hope that the frame wasn’t shot, that maybe only a wheel had been mangled. He could fix that. He could fix a lot of damage. If the frame was bent, that was something else.

  He could hear Mojo now, telling him the bike was cursed. Mojo, the tall, skinny Jamaican who had dreads down to his ass and wore the kind of black wraparound shades meant for blind people. Mojo was maybe thirty, an ancient among the messengers. A shaman to some. He would have plenty to say about that bike.

  Jace had inherited the thing, in a manner of speaking. That was to say no one else would touch it when it had suddenly become available two years before. Its previous owner, a guy who called himself King and worked nights as an Elvis-impersonating stripper, had lost control dodging street traffic and ended up under the wheels of a garbage truck. The bike had survived. King had not.

  Messengers were a superstitious bunch. King died in the line. Nobody wanted a dead guy’s bike if he died in the line. It sat in the back hall at Base for a week, waiting to be claimed by King’s next of kin, only it turned out he didn’t have any, at least none that gave a shit about him.

  Jace didn’t believe in superstition. He believed you made your own luck. King went under the wheels because he was cranked up on speed most of the time and had poor judgment. Jace believed in focus and hustle. He had looked at the bike and seen a strong Cannondale frame, two good wheels, and a gel-cushioned seat. He saw himself cutting his delivery times, making more runs, making more money. He waved off all warnings, left the piece of shit he’d been riding leaning against an LA Times box for anyone who wanted to steal it, and rode home on the Cannondale. He named it The Beast.

  The car’s engine revved and the taillight disappeared from view. Predator was going home, calling it after a hard day of trying to kill people, Jace thought. Chills shook his body, from the rain and from relief. This time when he thought he was going to puke, he did.

  Headlights flashed past on the street. Predator passed by, the big car growling like a panther as sirens whined in the distance.

  Jace went back to the scene where his fallen mount lay, the rear wheel mangled beyond saving. If it were a horse, someone would shoot it, put it out of its misery. But it was a bike, and the frame was still intact. A miracle from God, Preacher John would have said. In his downtime between runs, Preacher John stood on the corner of Fourth and Flower in front of the upscale Bonaventure Hotel and recited the Bible for all those unfortunate enough to have to pass by him.

  Jace didn’t believe in miracles. He’d caught a break. Two, considering he was still alive.

  He looked around for his bag, but it was gone. Taken as a trophy by Predator, a consolation prize. Or maybe he thought he’d accomplished his true mission. Someone wanted whatever the hell was in Lenny Lowell’s packet, held tight against Jace’s belly by his bike shorts.

  Whatever it was, Jace was going to find out. Lenny had a lot to answer for.

  He picked up the bike, tilted it up onto the front wheel only, and started walking.

  4

  Don’t step on his brain,” Kev Parker warned. Kev Parker, forty-three, Detective 2, kicked down to one of the lesser divisions to finish out his career in disgrace and oblivion.

  Renee Ruiz, his latest trainee, looked down at her stylish beige suede and leopard-print shoe. The spike heel was already stuck in a squishy gob of gray matter that had splattered some distance away from the body.

  “Jesus Christ, Parker!” she squealed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I just did.”

  “I could have ruined my fucking shoe!”

  “Yeah? Well, your fucking shoe is the least of your problems. And since you were standing behind a door when they handed out common sense, I’ll tell you again: Don’t wear stiletto heels on the job. You’re supposed to be a detective, not a hooker.”

  Ruiz narrowed her eyes at him and spat a few choice words in Spanish.

  Parker was unfazed. “You learn that from your mother?” he asked, his attention going to the body on the floor of the office.

  Detective trainee Ruiz stepped wide of the mess to try to get in Parker’s face. “You gotta treat me with respect, Parker.”

  “I will,” he said, not even glancing at her. The dead body had his undivided attention. Massive trauma to the head. Whoever killed this guy enjoyed his work. “When you deserve it,” he added.

  Again with the Spanish.

  Parker had been breaking in new detectives for going on four years, and this one was at the top of his shit list. He didn’t have a problem with women. He didn’t have a problem with Hispanics. He had a problem with attitude, and Renee Ruiz had attitude coming out of her pretty Jennifer Lopez–esque ass. Or she would have, if her skirt hadn’t been so damn tight. Parker had been working with her for less than a week and already he wanted to strangle her and throw her body into the La Brea tar pits.

  “Are you paying attention here?” he said impatiently. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re at a homicide. There’s a dead guy on the floor and his head is bashed apart like a rotten cauliflower. What are you supposed to be doing instead of giving me shit about your shoes?”

  Ruiz pouted. She was a knockout. A body that would turn any unsuspecting straight man with a pulse into a drooling idiot. Her lips were full and sexy. She outlined them in a color three shades darker than the shiny wet gloss she used to fill them in. The “Mall Mexican” look was the way Detective Kray described it.

  Kray, another of their Homicide team, had problems with women and Hispanics, and blacks, and Jews, and every other definable ethnic group that wasn’t a stupid, racist, redneck cracker from Bumfuck, Louisiana—which was how Parker described Kray.

  “Where’s your notebook?” he demanded. “You have to write everything down. And I mean every thing. You should have started writing the second you got this call. What time the call came, who told you what, what time you wedged your ass into that skirt and put on those ridiculous shoes. What time you arrived at the crime scene, who you spoke to first, what you saw when you came in the front door, what you saw when you came into this room. Position of the body, location of the murder weapon, which way his brain splattered and how far the pieces flew, whether or not his fly is open. Every damn thing in sight.

  “You leave something out and I can guarantee you some dirtbag defense attorney will get you on the stand and ask you about that one seemingly insignificant item, and he’ll unravel the DA’s case like a cheap sweater. The worst two words in the English language, babe: reasonable doubt.”

  Parker refused to call her “Detective” Ruiz one second before she had her shield in hand. She was not his peer, and he would remind her in subtle and not-so-subtle ways every day of her training period. He didn’t have control over a hell of a lot in his job, but for the time he was partnered with Ruiz, he had at least the illusion of contr
ol over her.

  “And measure the distances,” he said. “If you find a booger on the carpet, I want to know exactly where it is in relation to the body. Put the exact measurements in your personal notes, approximate measurements in the notes you’ll take to court. If you put your exact measurements in your official notes and your measurements don’t match the criminalists’ to the millimeter, you’ll have a defense attorney all over you like a bad rash.”

  Ruiz came back with the attitude. “You’re lead. It’s your case. Why don’t you do the scut work, Parker?”

  “I will,” Parker said. “I sure as hell am not trusting you to do it right. But you’ll do it too, so when the next vic comes along and you get the lead, you at least look like you know what you’re doing.”

  He looked around the room cluttered with crap and crime-scene geeks. One of the uniforms who had answered the initial call stood by the front door, logging in every person who entered the scene. The other one—older, heavy-set, and balding—was on the other side of the room, pointing out to one of the geeks something he thought might be significant evidence. Jimmy Chewalski. Jimmy was good people. He talked too much, but he was a good cop. Everyone called him Jimmy Chew.

  Ruiz looked right through the crime-scene techs and the uniforms. Having passed the written detective exam, she now considered herself above them. Never mind that she had been in a uniform herself not that long ago, she was now a princess among the lowly hired help. To Ruiz, Jimmy Chew (Choo) was a pair of fuck-me shoes.

  Parker made his way over to the officer, leaving Ruiz to figure out how to bend down and look at evidence without flashing her ass to everyone at the scene.

  “Jimmy, where’s the coroner’s investigator?” Parker asked, stepping gingerly around the body, careful to miss a sheaf of papers that were strewn on the floor. The coroner’s investigator had the first dance. No one could so much as check the dead body’s pockets until the CI had finished his or her business.

  “Could be a while,” Chewalski said. “She’s helping out at a murder-suicide.”

  “Nicholson?”

  “Yeah. Some guy blew away his wife and two kids ’cause the wife brought home a bucket of regular KFC instead of extra-crispy. Then he goes in his bathroom and blows his head off. I heard the scene was so bad, the detectives had to take umbrellas in the bathroom with them. Most of the guy’s face ended up on the ceiling. And, as we all know, what goes up must come down. I heard an eyeball dropped and hit Kray in the head.”

  Parker chuckled. “Too bad he couldn’t have scooped up some of the gray matter. Then at least he’d have half a brain.”

  Chew grinned. “That guy’s head is so far up his ass, it’s popped back out of his shoulders again. He’s a fucking French knot.”

  Parker turned his attention to the dead body again. “So what’s the story here?”

  Chew rolled his eyes. “Well, Kev, we have here dead on the floor an unlamented scum-sucking member of the bar.”

  “Now, Jimmy, just because a man was a soulless, amoral asshole doesn’t mean he deserved to be murdered.”

  “Excuse me? Who’s in charge here?”

  Parker swiveled his head around to see a pretty twenty-something brunette in a smart Burberry trench coat standing three feet away, near the hall to the back door.

  “That would be me. Detective Parker. And you are?”

  Unsmiling, she looked directly at him with steady dark eyes, then at Officer Chewalski. “Abby Lowell. The scum-sucking member of the bar, the soulless, amoral asshole lying dead on the floor, is my father. Leonard Lowell.”

  5

  Jimmy Chew made a sound like he had been impaled with something. Parker took it on the chin with just a hint of a flinch around his eyes. He pulled his hat off and offered his hand to Abby Lowell. She looked at it like she figured he never washed after going to the john.

  “My condolences for your loss, Ms. Lowell,” Parker said. “I’m sorry you heard that.”

  She arched a perfect brow. “But not sorry you said it?”

  “It wasn’t personal. I’m sure it’s no surprise to you how cops feel about defense attorneys.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said. Her voice was a strong, slightly hoarse alto that would serve her well in a courtroom. The withering gaze never wavered. She had yet to look at her father’s body. She kept her chin up, Parker thought, to avoid seeing him. “I’m in law school myself. Just so you can get a head start coming up with new and different derogatory ways to describe me.”

  “I can assure you, we treat every homicide the same, Ms. Lowell. Regardless of who or what the victim was.”

  “That doesn’t instill much confidence, Detective.”

  “I have an eighty-six-percent clearance rate.”

  “And what happened to the other fourteen percent?”

  “I’m still working them. I’ll work them ’til they’re cleared. I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care if by the time I close those cases the perps are hunchbacked old men and I have to chase them down with a walker,” Parker said. “There’s not a homicide cop in this town better than me.”

  “Then why aren’t you working with us, Parker?”

  Bradley Kyle, Detective 2 with Robbery-Homicide—LAPD’s glamour squad, bastion of hotshots and arrogant assholes. Parker knew this firsthand because he had once been one of them, and a more arrogant, hotshot jerk had never walked the halls of Parker Center. In those days he had been fond of saying the building had been named for him. Stardom was his destiny. The memory bubbled up inside him now like a case of acid reflux, burning and bitter.

  Parker scowled at Kyle moving toward him. “What is this? A party? And how did your name get on the guest list, Bradley? Or are you just out slumming?”

  Kyle ignored him and started looking around the crime scene. His partner, a big guy with no neck, a blond flattop, and horn-rimmed glasses, spoke to no one as he made notes. Parker watched them for a moment, a bad feeling coiling in his gut. Robbery-Homicide didn’t just show up at a murder out of curiosity. They worked the high-profile cases, like O.J., like Robert Blake, like Rob Cole—LA’s celebrity killer du jour.

  “Don’t piss on my crime scene, Bradley.” Parker emphasized the name, dragged it out, knowing Kyle hated it. He wanted to be called Kyle—or at the worst, Brad. Bradley was a name for an interior decorator or a hairstylist, not a kick-ass detective.

  Kyle glanced at him. “Who says it’s yours?”

  “My beat, my call, my murder,” Parker said, moving toward the younger detective.

  Kyle ignored him and squatted down to look at the apparent murder weapon—an old bowling trophy, now encrusted in blood and decorated with Lenny Lowell’s hair and a piece of his scalp.

  Kyle had been on his way up in Robbery-Homicide while Parker was being driven out. He was at the top of his game now and eating up the spotlight every time he got the chance, which was too often.

  He was a good-looking guy, good face for television, a tan so perfect it had to have been airbrushed on him. He had an athletic build, but he was on the slight side, and touchy about it. Made a point of telling people he was five eleven and a half, like he’d knock anyone on their ass for making something of it. Parker, who was himself a hair under six feet, figured Kyle for five nine and not a fraction more.

  Parker squatted down beside him. “What are you doing here?” he asked quietly. “What’s Robbery-Homicide doing cruising the murder of a low-rent mouthpiece like Lenny Lowell?”

  “We go where they send us. Isn’t that right, Moosie?” Kyle tossed a look at his partner. Moose grunted and kept on making notes.

  “What are you saying?” Parker asked. “Are you saying you’re taking this? Why? It won’t even make the paper. This guy’s clients were scumbags and dirtballs.”

  Kyle pretended not to have heard him, and stood up. Ruiz stood a scant few inches away from him. In her ridiculous heels she was almost at eye level with him.

  “Detective Kyle,” she purred in a
hot phone-sex voice as she offered her hand. “Detective Renee Ruiz. I want your job.”

  This in the same tone she might have used to say “I want you inside me,” not that Parker had any desire to find out. He stood up and gave the dead eyes to his partner. “Trainee Ruiz, have you finished diagramming the crime scene?”

  She huffed a petulant sigh at Parker, then tossed a sexy look at Kyle and walked away like a woman who knew a guy was watching her ass.

  “Forget it, Kyle,” Parker said. “She’d grind you up like lunch meat. Besides, she’s too tall for you.”

  “Excuse me, gentlemen.” Abby Lowell joined them. “If I might intrude on your little game of who has the biggest dick—” She offered her hand to Kyle, all business. “Abby Lowell. The victim is—was—my father.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Lowell.”

  “You’re with Robbery-Homicide,” she said. “I recognize you from the news.”

  “Yes.” Kyle looked as pleased as a second-rate dinner-theater actor thinking he was about to be asked for his autograph.

  Parker expected Abby Lowell to say “Thank God you’re here.” Instead, she looked Kyle square in the eyes and said: “Why are you here?”

  Kyle gave her the poker face. “Excuse me?”

  “Come on, Detective. I’ve been around my father’s business all my life. His clients and their accused crimes should be way below your radar. What do you think happened here? Do you know something I don’t?”

  “A man was murdered. We’re homicide cops. Do you know something I don’t? What do you think happened here?”

  Abby Lowell took in the mess as if seeing it for the first time since she had entered the room: the files and paperwork everywhere, the overturned chair, maybe from a struggle, maybe from a ransacking after the murder.

  Parker watched her carefully, thinking there was a whole lot stirring beneath the thin facade of calm. He could see it in her eyes, in the slight tremor of her lips. Fear, shock, the struggle to control her emotions. She kept her arms crossed tight, holding herself, keeping her hands from shaking. She was very careful not to look at the floor in front of her.