by Tami Hoag
And then he was moving. Right turn, left turn, right turn, left turn, headed east.
He slowed his pace as quickly as he dared. He didn’t want a trail of complaining citizens for the cops to follow.
A radio car would arrive on the scene at Abby Lowell’s building. There would be confusion, excitement. It would take time to sort it all out. Maybe there wasn’t a chopper cruising the skies nearby. If a chopper got on him, he was screwed.
He kept moving east at a normal pace, like a normal human being in a normal situation. Behind the wheel he was shaking, sweating, his heart still racing. His throat squeezed closed every time he thought he saw a black-and-white.
He couldn’t have fucked up any bigger than he had. What had he thought, that Abby Lowell would offer him a drink and they would sit down and discuss the situation calmly? Her father was dead. And as innocent as she pretended to be, she had to know something. Why else would some thug leave a death threat on her mirror? Next You Die.
Next, as if Lenny had been a warning, or just the first on a list of things to do.
Jace put a hand against his stomach and felt the package. He wondered how she would have reacted if he had told her he had it.
Shaking himself free of his thoughts for a second, Jace glanced to either side of the car. He had worked his way north and east, north and east, all the way to Silverlake, about five miles northwest of downtown.
Silverlake had been a happening place in the twenties and thirties, when silent film stars and movie moguls built homes and studios in the area. The hills above the reservoir were full of homes from that era that had been refurbished for modern, hip, artsy types with bucks.
Jace found a place to pull over and park near the reservoir. He got out of the car to move and stretch and gather his thoughts. He walked to the back of the car and swore under his breath. Madame Chen’s pride and joy was no longer pristine. Half the taillight cover was gone, left shattered on the street where the minivan had clipped him. Scratches and paint marks from the pale-colored van highlighted the area below the taillight.
What now?
Now he was wanted for a murder and an assault, home invasion, and vandalism. And for stealing who knew how much out of Lenny Lowell’s safe.
He played back the few minutes he had been in Lowell’s office last night. He remembered thinking the place was a mess. He had glanced around, looked at the television, touched Lenny’s bowling trophy and left a great set of fingerprints. He didn’t remember any safe being open.
Sitting back against the hood of the car, he drank some of the Gatorade he’d bought at the 7-Eleven, and washed down three Tylenol. He needed to keep his energy level up and try to minimize the pain enough to think through it. His brain was what kept him alive on the streets every day. The ability to see a couple of jumps ahead, yet to focus on the moment.
He took his life into his own hands every day on the streets as a messenger. Risking his own life and having someone else put him at risk were very different scenarios. He chose to put himself on the street. He knew the risks, he knew his abilities. If he went under a bus, a bus killed him, not the people on the bus. If he made a mistake, it was on him.
None of this mess seemed within his control. He’d been thrown into the middle of the mix like he’d been sucked into a tornado. The only thing he could control was his own mind, and in the end, that would be the only thing that could save him.
He wished he knew what he was up against—who he was up against. He could easily call to mind the blockheaded guy in the dark car. But when he called up the memory of the attack in Abby Lowell’s apartment, he came up blank. In his mind’s eye he tried to see things he hadn’t seen. He tried to look in the mirror, to see the guy behind him, but it hadn’t happened that way.
What the hell is going on, and why do I have to be in it?
Luck of the draw. If he hadn’t been late with the blueprints, he would have gone home that night like any night, and Eta would have told Lenny Lowell they couldn’t take his package. Lenny Lowell would have been a story buried in the paper. Jace probably wouldn’t have paid any attention to it, just as the majority of Angelinos wouldn’t have paid any attention to it. Nobody blinked at an ordinary, run-of-the-mill murder. Murders happened every day. There had to be a hook. Something kinky, something twisted, and/or a celebrity.
Jace wondered if the people in the negatives taped to his belly might be famous. Some celebrity being blackmailed over deviant sexual behavior. The kind of seedy story that made up the gritty side of LA. City of angels, city of sleaze. It depended on who was looking, and where.
The reservoir was the gray of gunmetal, reflecting the heavy clouds that hung above it, but shining metallic where the low western sun skipped rays across it. The sky in the west was the color of molten lava, purple twilight seeping down toward it. It would all disappear into the ocean soon, and darkness would fall like a cloak over the city. He would go home and maybe he would be able to sneak upstairs through the shadows, and escape Madame Chen’s scrutiny.
He wanted to go home, to be home, to stay home, or to throw his books into his bag and jump the Gold Line train to Pasadena for his social sciences class at City College. He wanted to do something normal. He wanted to help Tyler with some project for school, watch television, make popcorn. Maybe he would do that, he thought, mail Lenny’s package to Abby, get a new job, start over again, pretend none of this had ever happened.
As he slid behind the wheel of the car and reached to turn the key, the two-way on the passenger seat gave a blast of static, then Eta’s voice. “Base to Sixteen. Base to Sixteen. Where you at, baby?”
Jace reached over and touched the radio, fingered the call button, but he didn’t push it. He didn’t dare.
“Base to Sixteen. Where you at, Lone Ranger? You gotta come on home to Mama, sugar. ASAP. You got that? I’m still holding money for you. You copy?”
“I’m in the twilight zone, Eta,” he murmured. “I’m going home.”
17
Abby Lowell’s story about Cicada checks out,” Ruiz announced as Parker approached the building from the parking lot. She stood outside the doors, smoking a cigarette under cover from the rain that had started to spit down in slow, fat drops.
“What else did you find out at the restaurant?”
“They have a wonderful poached pear salad,” she said.
“Did you sample the wine cellar too?”
“No, but I got a date with a really cute waiter,” she said, preening. “He’s going to be the next Brad Pitt.”
“Aren’t they all? You spoke with the maitre d’ who was there last night?”
“Yes. He said she seemed impatient, kept checking her watch.”
“Was she upset? Crying? Did she look shaken?”
“Impatient was all he said. They were busy.”
“What about her waiter?”
She shook her head. “They never seated her. The maitre d’ showed her to the bar. The bartender said she had a vodka tonic. A couple of guys tried to hit on her. She wasn’t interested. He saw her on her phone a couple of times. She left a nice tip, but he didn’t see her leave.”
Parker frowned, looking out at the gathering gloom as evening crept near. “I want her phone records, home and cell.”
“You think she had something to do with it?” Ruiz asked, puzzled.
“I caught her at her father’s office this morning. She said she was looking for his life insurance policy and his will.”
“That’s cold, not criminal.”
“She violated a sealed crime scene,” Parker said. “And she didn’t leave with an insurance policy. She left with documents and a key to a safe-deposit box at City National Bank. She went there directly after leaving the office and tried to get access to her father’s box.”
“They didn’t let her in?”
“She gave the manager her sob story, but she wasn’t authorized by Lowell to sign for the box. The manager told her she needs to file a probate peti
tion along with an affidavit, and get a court order. Ms. Lowell was not a happy girl.”
“Did you get in the box?” Ruiz asked.
“We’ll have a court order first thing tomorrow,” Parker said. He yawned as he moved toward the doors. “I need a cup of something.”
“I called Massachusetts,” Ruiz said as they went toward the squad room. “They ran the DL number we have for Allison Jennings. It came back to a woman living in Boston.”
“Did you get a phone number?”
“I did better than that,” Ruiz said smugly. “I called her. She said she has no idea how her license turned up here. Said she had her handbag stolen and lost her driver’s license with it once a long time ago. Maybe that’s it.”
They went into the squad. Parker hung up his raincoat and his hat and went directly to the coffee machine. He poured a cup and leaned back against the cupboard. The coffee tasted three times worse than it had in the morning.
“You were just a regular whirling dervish while I was out,” he said. “I’m impressed.”
She looked at him like she was waiting for the nasty punch line.
“I do say nice things every once in a while,” Parker said. “When earned.”
Ruiz seemed not to believe him, but she didn’t call him on it. She leaned back against her desk and crossed her arms, pushing the red lace bra and its contents up into sight. “Latent has Damon’s job ap. They haven’t called back. And I got the local usage details for Speed, and for the victim—office and home.”
Parker squinted at her. “Who are you? And what have you done with Ms. Ruiz?”
She gave him the finger and went on. “The number off Abby Lowell’s cell phone call list? Leonard Lowell called that number yesterday from his office at five twenty-two in the afternoon. The call lasted one minute, twelve seconds.”
Parker frowned and thought about that. At 5:22 P.M. Lenny Lowell had called an untraceable cell phone number. A little more than an hour later someone using that same cell phone had called Abby Lowell and told her that her father was dead.
How did that tie in with the bike messenger? It didn’t. The lawyer had called the Speed office to arrange the pickup.
Even if the phone belonged to Damon, it didn’t make sense. Why would Lowell have called him directly, then set up the pickup through Speed? There wouldn’t have been any reason to.
And then what? Damon shows up, kills Lowell, takes the package and the money from the safe, turns the office inside out looking for something, bashes in Lowell’s car window on the way out, then calls a woman he doesn’t know to tell her her father is dead?
“This isn’t working for me,” Parker muttered, going around the desks to lower himself into his chair. He yawned and rubbed his hands over his face. He needed a second wind. His shift might be over, but his day wasn’t.
The first couple of days of a homicide investigation were crucial. Trails cooled fast, witnesses started losing the details of their memories, perps slithered away into holes. To say nothing of the fact that oftentimes three days was as much priority time as they could devote to a case before another dead body turned up and they had to move on that one because the first couple of days were crucial . . . And round and round they went.
There was no luxury of time. The LAPD employs roughly 9,000 cops for a city of 3.4 million people. The NYPD has a force of 38,000 for just over twice the population.
“What?” Ruiz asked, perturbed. “Looks pretty neat to me.”
“That’s why I have the number two in my rank and you don’t. Most murders are easy. A guy kills another guy because the second guy has something the first guy wants. Money, drugs, a woman, a leather jacket, a ham sandwich. A guy kills his wife or girlfriend because she’s been screwing some other guy, or because she burned the pot roast, or because he’s just a plain vanilla mentally unbalanced asshole.
“Same thing for women. It’s usually straightforward. They kill someone they know because they’re jealous. It’s always jealousy with women. Sometimes jealousy mixed with greed, but mostly just jealousy.”
Parker shook his head. “There’s something wrong with this picture. A bike messenger is dispatched by chance. He gets in Lowell’s office, sees money hanging out of the safe, kills Lowell, steals the money, beats it out of Dodge. Lowell didn’t call him up beforehand and say, ‘Hey, come steal my money and beat my head in.’
“And if it was a crime of opportunity,” he went on, “the messenger doesn’t take the time to look up Abby Lowell’s cell phone number and call her to pretend he’s a cop and tell her to go to her father’s office. Why would he? What’s it to him?” The phone on Parker’s desk rang. He snatched up the receiver. “Parker.”
“Kev, it’s Joan Spooner over at Latent.”
Parker flashed the grin, even though she couldn’t see it. “Tell me something I want to hear, Joanie. What have you got for me besides your heart?”
“A husband,” she said dryly.
“A podiatrist,” Parker said with distaste. “A guy who comes home every night smelling like other people’s feet. When you could have me. A lot of women would kill to have me.”
“Right. They do. They’re called perps,” she said. “What a sad commentary that you have to put women in handcuffs to have them go anywhere with you.”
“Some like it that way,” he purred into the phone. “Don’t knock it ’til you try it, Joanie.”
Across the desk, Ruiz rolled her eyes.
“Enough out of you, mister. Put both hands on the table and pay attention. I’ve got a possible match for you on those prints from the Lowell homicide. You can’t hang your hat on it in a courtroom, but it’s something you can play off of. I’ve got a thumb and a partial middle finger on the murder weapon, and a partial thumb on the job application.”
“And they match?”
“In court I’d have to say a possible match on the thumb, and a defense attorney would have me for lunch. Between you, me, and the lamppost, I think it’s probably the same person.”
“I love you, Joanie,” Parker crooned.
“So you say, Kevin. One of these days it’s going to be put up or shut up.”
“Careful what you wish for, doll.”
He thanked her and hung up.
Ruiz tried to lean into his line of sight. “Hey, Romeo, what did she say?”
Parker chewed on his thumbnail for a moment, staring into the middle distance, thinking. “A probable match of a thumbprint on the murder weapon and on the job ap.”
“He’s our guy.”
Parker shook his head. “Play devil’s advocate. If you were Damon’s defense attorney, how would you punch holes in Latent’s evidence?”
Ruiz sighed. “I would say that we concede Damon was in Lowell’s office. He went there to pick up a package. So he touched a bowling trophy. So what?”
“Exactly. And where on the murder weapon are these prints located? To beat Lowell’s head in, he held the trophy upside down. The marble base did all the damage. Do we have photos back?”
“No.”
“Call SID now before they all go home like regular folks. You need to talk with the guy who lifted the prints off the murder weapon. And I need photos of the back of the desk, and the area around the desk.”
“What am I? Your secretary?” Ruiz complained. “My shift is over, and I’m hungry.”
Parker tossed a roll of Mentos across the desks. “When you’re with me, there are no shifts working a homicide, babe. Eat a breath mint. You’ll be fine. Your clothes will fit better.”
His phone rang again and he grabbed it up. “Parker.”
“Detective Parker?” The smoky voice was trembling a little. “It’s Abby Lowell. My apartment has been broken into. By that bike messenger. I thought you should know.”
“I’ll be right there.”
He hung up the phone and pushed himself to his feet. “Get those photos ASAP,” he ordered Ruiz as he went to the coatrack and shrugged into his raincoat. “And get going
on the phone records from Speed. We need to get a line on Damon. Abby Lowell says he broke into her apartment today.”
“And where are you going now?” Ruiz whined.
Parker bobbed his eyebrows and put on his hat. “To the damsel in distress.”
18
Abby Lowell lived outside the lines of Central Bureau. Parker flashed his badge to the uniforms standing in the foyer of the building. One nodded him past. The other was engaged in conversation with a potbellied older guy who was expounding on his theory regarding the downfall of our once-great nation.
A pair of detectives from West Bureau, Hollywood Division, stood in Abby Lowell’s living room, looking around like they were sizing up the place to redecorate. Everything was everywhere. The living room had been tossed like a salad. A Latent Prints guy Parker knew was dusting.
“Some party,” Parker said. “Mind if I join the fun?”
The older of the two Hollywood cops, a square-headed guy with a Marine buzz cut, curled his lip like a dog about to growl.
“What are you doing here, Parker? I thought they had you writing parking tickets.”
“Your vic called me in. Apparently you failed to impress her with your commanding presence.”
“Crawl back in your hole, Parker. This is ours. We’ll send you a copy of the reports.”
Parker curled his own lip and took a step forward. “You think I want your fucking lousy B&E? File all the paper you want, then go chase some 7-Eleven bandits, go scare up some wannabe starlets moonlighting on their backs. Do whatever it is you people do over here.” He twirled a finger around, indicating the room. “This is part of my homicide, ace. You can’t piss the fence higher than I can.”
“The always-charming Detective Parker.”
Abby Lowell stood in the archway leading to the private rooms of the apartment, leaning one shoulder against the wall. She was still dressed in the same sapphire knit outfit she’d had on that morning, but had pulled on an old oversized gray cardigan. She was hugging the sweater around her. Her hair was mussed. Her mascara was smudged beneath her eyes as if she had been crying.
