Kill the Messenger

by Tami Hoag

  “Thank you, Detective,” she said softly. “I appreciate that.”

  Parker tipped his hat. “We’re here to serve.”

  13

  Jace watched from across the alley, from inside a soggy cardboard box that had been left behind an Italian furniture store. Crumbs of Styrofoam packing peanuts clung to him like fleas.

  Staying in Eta’s backseat was too risky. He’d been a captive there, trapped, vulnerable. No good. He needed space, a vantage point, escape routes. As soon as she’d gone inside, he had slipped out of the van and gone across the alley. The box squatted, half-hidden, in front of the furniture store’s delivery truck. The store didn’t open for another couple of hours. He was safe to squat there for a while.

  Eta had promised to come back out with the money right away, but half a minute after she had gone inside, Preacher John had shown up, chained his bike to the Dumpster, and gone in. Then came Mojo, then the guy they called Hardware because of his body piercings. They had probably cut out on their paperwork from the day before, wanting to get home and out of the rain, and had come in early to do it before they started their runs.

  No Eta. No Eta.

  All she had to do was put the cash in an envelope and step out to put it in her van. There was no sign of Rocco, the boss, or of his sidekick, Vlad, who seemed to do nothing all day but smoke, talk to other Russians on his cell phone, and putt golf balls around the office. Rocco usually showed up by nine. Vlad usually turned up around noon, and was almost always hungover.

  Come on, Eta. Come on.

  Jace huddled back into his oversize army jacket and looked at the newspaper page he had tried to show her in the van. He reread the piece for the hundredth time. Lenny Lowell’s violent passing from the world had been reduced to two column inches buried in the depths of the LA Times. It said the lawyer had been found by his daughter, Abigail (a twenty-three-year-old student at Southwestern Law), that he had been bludgeoned to death in his office. An autopsy was pending. Detectives from the LAPD were following all leads.

  Abby Lowell. The pretty brunette in the photograph on Lenny’s desk. A law student. Jace wondered if she had seen anything. Maybe she’d seen Predator fleeing the scene. Maybe she knew who would want her father dead, and why. Maybe she knew who the people in the negatives were.

  Speed’s back door opened, and two people came out. A man first: average height, average build, expensive-looking raincoat, and a hat like a 1940s movie detective. Sam Spade. Philip Marlowe. With a petite woman in a black suit, a flash of red in the V of the neckline. Pissed off. Hispanic. Sam Spade ignored her.

  Cops. At least the guy was—even though he was really too well-dressed. Jace had a sixth sense for cops. They held themselves a certain way, walked a certain way, moved a certain way. Their eyes never stopped scanning the territory when they came into a new situation. They were taking in everything about their surroundings in case they needed to remember details later on.

  This one walked around Eta’s van, slowly, looking in the windows. A chill swept over Jace, pebbling his skin with goose bumps. The woman seemed more interested in chewing out the guy than she was in the van. Neither of them tried to open a door, and then they went back inside the building.

  Jace shivered. Why would the cops be interested in Eta’s van, unless someone had told them to be? She’d told him to go to the police. Maybe she had made the decision for him.

  He told himself he couldn’t be disappointed, because he never really expected anything from anyone. Except that he was disappointed. People never meant what they said. Or they meant to keep a promise in the moment it was made, but not under pressure. That was always the fine print in a deal—Does not extend past the introduction of extenuating circumstances.

  Eta treated the messengers like she was their cranky, surrogate mother. She had a good heart. But why would she put her neck on the line with the cops for him? She had her own life, her own real kids. He wasn’t part of her family. Or maybe she was the kind of mother who did things for her children “for their own good,” which almost always turned out to be bad.

  Jace told himself he’d been stupid going to her for help, asking her to lie for him. Involving other people meant losing absolute control of the situation. But he’d seen a quick way to get his hands on a couple hundred bucks. Money he could use to lay low for a while, if he had to. He didn’t want to take money out of his bank, which was not a bank at all but a fireproof lockbox he kept hidden inside an air duct in the bathroom at the apartment. That money was for Tyler to live on, in case something happened.

  Something had happened.

  Time to go.

  Using the delivery truck for cover, Jace crawled out of the box. He flipped up the collar of his coat, hunched his shoulders, held the newspaper like a tent over his head, and started down the alley. He tried not to limp, tried to look like he wasn’t in a hurry, like he had nowhere to go, like he didn’t want to run. He kept his eyes on the ground.

  What now, J.C.?

  The negatives were in their envelope under his shirt, strapped around him with athletic tape. He had to find a place to hide it, someplace away from Tyler, and away from the Chens. Obviously, it was valuable to someone. He could use it for leverage, use it as an insurance policy if things went further south than they already had. He needed to find safe, neutral ground. A public place. And he needed to get to Abby Lowell.

  A car turned in at the mouth of the alley, crawling toward him. Maybe the two cops.

  A dark sedan.

  A cracked windshield.

  Fear hit Jace in the belly and shot through his veins like mercury. Quick, toxic. He wanted to look, to put a face on his hunter. Humanize the monster. See that in the light of day the guy was just a small, inadequate man who posed no real threat. But of course none of that was true. He wanted something Jace had, and even if Jace simply gave it to him, the guy would probably kill him anyway because Jace knew too much—even though he really knew nothing at all.

  The car slowed as it neared him. Jace’s chest tightened. He was on the driver’s side. Could the guy put a face on him? Flashes of the night before burst behind his eyes. He was on the bike, swinging his U-lock into the windshield. He couldn’t remember the driver’s face; could the driver remember his? He’d had his helmet on. And his goggles.

  He glanced over out the corner of his eye as the car came even with him.

  A head like a square block of stone, small, mean eyes, dark hair buzzed short. The guy’s skin was pale with blue undertones beneath his beard. He had a piece of white tape across the bridge of his nose, and a black mole on the back of his neck. The kind of mole that was more like a growth, sticking out, the size of a pencil eraser.

  The sedan cruised past like a panther in the jungle, quiet, sleek, ominous.

  Jace kept walking, refusing the urge to look back. His legs felt like jelly.

  The guy was cruising the Speed office. Of course he knew where Jace worked. He had Jace’s messenger bag. Another flash of memory: being grabbed and yanked backward by the strap of his bag. There was nothing much in the bag—a tire pump, a spare tube, a couple of blank manifests . . . with the Speed logo and address in red at the top of the page.

  Next the guy would try to find out where Jace lived, just as the cops would. But none of them would be able to, he assured himself. The only address Speed had for him was the old P.O. box. And the only address the P.O. box people had on file was an old apartment he had lived in briefly with his mother before Tyler was even born. No one would be able to find him.

  But the sharks were in the water, moving, hunting.

  Two cops and a killer.

  I never wanted to be the popular guy, he thought as he crossed the street. The position came with too much trouble.

  He chanced a look back over his shoulder. The sedan’s taillights glowed at the far end of the alley.

  Jace broke into a jog, pain throbbing in his ankle with every footfall. He couldn’t afford to feel it. He didn’t have
the luxury of time to heal. All his energy had to go to survival now.

  He needed to find Abby Lowell.

  14

  What’s your opinion?” Parker asked as they eased back into traffic.

  “That I’m glad I don’t have a shit job like that,” Ruiz said, checking her hair in the mirror on the back of the sun visor. It was frizzing from the humidity.

  “So now we know where the suspect works,” she said. “But he’s not going back there anytime soon. We know where he gets his mail, but we don’t know where he lives. There’s nothing to make much of.”

  Parker made the rude sound of a game-show buzzer. “Wrong. First of all, we could have his prints on the job ap. We know his name, or an aka at least. We can kick up his sheet if he has one. Scrutinize his prior bad acts. And there’s a good chance he has priors. He keeps to himself, gets paid in cash, mail goes to a box; no address, no phone. He operates like a crook.”

  “Maybe he’s homeless,” Ruiz pointed out. “And what if he doesn’t have a sheet?”

  “If Latent can pull a clear print off the job ap, and if they can match it to a print on the murder weapon, we’ll have that. And the dispatcher knows more than she’s saying.”

  “Yeah, but she’s not saying it.”

  “She’s got a conscience, she doesn’t like breaking rules. But she’s protective of her messengers. They’re like a family, and she’s the mom. We’ll give her a little time to think about it, then go back to her. I think she wants to do the right thing.”

  “I think she’s a bitch,” Ruiz grumbled.

  “You can’t take it personally. You make it personal, you lose your perspective. It worked well in this situation to play her off you. You make a good bad cop, Ruiz,” he said. “You’ve got good tools. You have to learn not to throw the whole box at the head of every witness or perp you run into.”

  From the corner of his eye he could see her watching him. She didn’t know what to make of him. She bristled at his suggestions, and didn’t trust his compliments. Good. She needed to be kept off balance. She had to learn how to read people and how to adapt. She should have learned it day one in a uniform.

  “Jesus,” he mumbled. “I sound like a teacher.”

  “You are a teacher. Allegedly.”

  Parker didn’t say anything. His mood had turned south. Most of the time he tried to keep a narrow focus on his goal in the department. He didn’t think of himself as a teacher. He was waiting for the chance to make a comeback.

  He could have quit. He didn’t need the money or the hassle. The job he had on the side had paid off his debts, bought him his Jag and his wardrobe. But he was too stubborn to quit. And every time a case took hold of him, and he felt the old adrenaline rush, he was reminded that he loved what he did. He was old-fashioned enough to be proud that he carried a badge and did a public service.

  And every time a case took hold, and he felt that adrenaline rush, he was reminded that somewhere deep inside him he still believed this could be the case that turned it all around. This could be the case where he proved himself, redeemed himself, regained the respect of his peers and his enemies.

  But if this was the kind of case with the potential to turn his career around, Robbery-Homicide was sure to muscle in and take it away from him.

  He turned the car into the tiny parking lot of a little strip mall with a collection of food shops: Noah’s Bagels, Jamba Juice, Starbucks. The driver picked the radio station, the passenger picked the restaurant. Parker usually chose a cop hangout for breakfast, not because he liked too many cops, but because he liked to eavesdrop, pick up the mood of things on the street, catch a scrap of gossip that might be useful. Ruiz picked Starbucks. Her order was always long and complicated, and if it didn’t turn out exactly to her liking, she made the barista do it over, sometimes by making a scene, sometimes by batting eyelashes. Bipolar, that girl.

  Parker went into Jamba Juice and got a fruit smoothie loaded with protein and wheatgrass, then went into Starbucks and commandeered a table in the back with a clear view of the door, took the corner chair, and picked up a section of the Times a previous customer had abandoned.

  He kept thinking about the fact that Robbery-Homicide had come sniffing around his crime scene. There had to be something to that. They were front-page guys working front-page cases. Lenny Lowell had not made the front page. The Times probably wouldn’t waste any ink on him at all.

  “Watching your girlish figure?” Ruiz asked as she joined him.

  Parker kept his attention on the newpaper. “My body is a temple, baby. Come worship.”

  He hadn’t seen or spoken with anyone at the scene resembling a reporter, and he was the detective of record . . .

  . . . but there it was, a couple of sentences stuck in a lower corner on a left-hand page beside an ad for a sale on tires. ATTORNEY FOUND DEAD.

  Leonard Lowell, the victim of an apparent homicide, found by his daughter, Abigail Lowell (twenty-three, a student at Southwestern Law), bludgeoned to death in his office, blah, blah, blah.

  Parker stopped breathing for a moment as he called up his memory of the night before. Abby Lowell arriving on the scene, carefully controlled. Jimmy Chew had said the call had been phoned in by an anonymous citizen. Abby Lowell said she’d received a call from an LAPD officer notifying her of her father’s death while she was waiting for him at Cicada.

  It was too early to call the restaurant to check her alibi.

  The byline on the story was “Staff Reporter.”

  Ruiz was paying no attention, too busy sipping her extra-hot double venti half-caf no-whip vanilla mocha with one pink and one blue sweetener, and making eyes at the hunky barista.

  “Ruiz.” Parker leaned across the table and snapped his fingers at her. “Did you get a name for that phone number I gave you to check out? The number from Abby Lowell’s cell phone call list?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do it. Now.”

  She started to object. Parker slid the paper across the table and tapped a finger on the piece. He got up from his chair, dug his phone out of his pocket, and scrolled through the address book as he went out the side door into the damp cold.

  “Kelly.” Andi Kelly, investigative reporter for the LA Times. A fireball in a small red-haired package. Tenacious, wry, and a lover of single malt scotch.

  “Andi. Kev Parker.”

  There was a heavy silence. He pictured confusion then recognition dawning on her face.

  “Wow,” she said at last. “I used to know a Kev Parker.”

  “Back when I was good for a headline,” Parker remarked dryly. “Now you never call, you never write. I feel so used.”

  “You changed your phone number, and I don’t know where you live. I thought maybe you’d gone to live in a commune in Idaho with Mark Fuhrman. What happened? They didn’t approve of your smoking, drinking, womanizing, arrogant ways?”

  “I repented, gave all that up, joined the priesthood.”

  “No way. Cool Kev Parker? Next you’ll be telling me you’ve taken up yoga.”

  “Tai chi.”

  “Fuck me. Where have all the icons gone?”

  “This one crumbled a while ago.”

  “Yeah,” Kelly said soberly. “I read that in the papers.”

  Nothing like a public flameout to win friends and influence people. The cocky, arrogant Robbery-Homicide hotshot Parker had been made the whipping boy by an equally cocky, arrogant defense attorney in a high-profile murder trial.

  The DA’s case had been good, not watertight, but good, solid. A mountain of circumstantial evidence had been gathered against a wealthy, preppie UCLA med student accused of the brutal murder of a young female undergrad.

  Parker was second on the team of detectives sent to the crime scene, second lead in the investigation. He had a reputation for shooting his mouth off, for riding the edge of the rules, loving the spotlight, but he was a damn good detective. That was the truth he had held on to during the trial while the big-b
ucks defense team shredded his character with half-truths, irrelevant facts, and outright lies. They had impugned his integrity, accused him of tampering with evidence. They couldn’t prove any of it, but they didn’t need to. People were always eager to believe the worst.

  Anthony Giradello, the ADA set to make his career on the case, had seen Parker dragging down his ship, and had done the cruel and certain thing any ADA would have done: He took up his own whip and joined in the beating.

  Giradello had done everything he could to distance his case from Parker, to downplay Parker’s role in the investigation. Sure, Parker was an asshole, but he was an unimportant asshole who hadn’t really had anything much to do with the investigation or the gathering or handling of evidence. The liberal LA press had joined in the feeding frenzy, always happy to eviscerate a cop doing his job.

  Andi Kelly had been a single voice against the mob, pointing out the defense was employing the shopworn but tried-and-true “When All Else Fails, Blame a Cop” strategy. A shell game devised to draw attention away from overwhelming forensic evidence, to plant a seed of doubt in the minds of the jury. All they needed was to convince one juror that Parker was some kind of rogue, that he wouldn’t think twice about planting evidence, that he had some kind of racial or socioeconomic bias against the defendant. One juror, and they would hang the jury.

  They managed to convince all twelve. A murderer walked free.

  The political fallout had been ugly. The DA’s office had pressed for Parker to be fired, to continue to deflect the spotlight away from the fact that they had lost and a killer had walked free. The chief of police, who loathed the DA and feared the police union, had refused to get rid of Parker, despite the fact that every brass badge in the department wanted him gone. He had been painted as a problem, a loose cannon, insubordinate. The public spotlight was on him. He was a black eye on a department that couldn’t take another scandal.

  The only interview Parker had granted during all of it was to Andi Kelly.