Kill the Messenger

by Tami Hoag

  “I asked Rob to come to my house for dinner the night Tricia was killed. To talk about things, I told him, smooth everything over between us. No hard feelings. He actually thought we could still be friends. He said it the day he told me he couldn’t leave poor pathetic Tricia, that his feelings for me had changed, that the sex had been really great but that everything else was over. But couldn’t we still be friends?”

  She laughed at that. “Why do men think that can happen? That they can lead a woman on, and lie to her, and treat her like shit, but she should be a sport about it in the end. That’s delusional. Sociopathic. Cruel.”

  Parker said nothing. There was no excuse to make for what Rob Cole had done.

  “It was so easy,” she said, her eyes blank as she looked back into her mind and watched the memory unfold. “He drank too much, because he always drinks too much. It’s part of Rob’s drama, that the pressure of being him is such that he has to self-medicate in order to tough it out. I slipped some GHB into his last drink. Not a lot. Just enough to know that by the time he got home, he would be ready to pass out. Driving drunk was nothing new to him. I’m sure he wasn’t even aware of the drug taking hold. He would have thought he’d just had one too many.

  “Later that night I got called to go to a murder scene.”

  “Tricia,” Parker said.

  “Davis had killed her with Rob right there in the house. He staged it to look like Rob did it.”

  “And Cole didn’t have an alibi because he was there, and he couldn’t very well tell anyone he’d been with a lover scorned just prior to the murder. Even he wouldn’t be so stupid. He had to know you’d be called as a corroborating witness, and you’d crucify him.”

  Methodical, cool, smart. Those were words he would have applied to Diane, but never in this context.

  “Why kill Tricia, though?” Parker asked. “Why not Rob? He was the more immediate evil, the one who had carried out the abuse.”

  “Because to die quickly wasn’t punishment enough. But to send him to prison . . . where he would have to wake up every morning and face a life in hell, where being Rob Cole would never, ever be an advantage, or a ticket to do whatever he wanted with no threat of consequences . . .”

  She was right. Rob Cole’s minor celebrity, his too-good looks and cocky attitude, would not have served him in a place like San Quentin. He would have been a target, and he wouldn’t have had any power to do anything about it.

  “And the blackmail?”

  “Started shortly after. I had money. Joseph left me very well taken care of. Davis thought he deserved a bonus because he’d done such a fine job. I paid him. But then he wanted more. He sent me a photograph of me paying him off. The trial was coming up. Everyone said Giradello had a slam dunk. Davis said he could ruin it.”

  “By incriminating himself?” Parker said.

  “He didn’t care. He said he’d disappear, go underground. But that wouldn’t stop him from putting the photographs and the story out there. He actually liked the idea of having people know he had killed Tricia and gotten away with it. He thought he could sell his story to the movies while living a dashing life of international intrigue.

  “I gave him Joseph’s Lincoln. That wasn’t enough.”

  She went to the darkened glass and stared at her reflection.

  And then there was her lover, Parker thought, investigating the crime, piecing the story together, working to tie two seemingly disparate crimes together. His big comeback case. He wanted to throw up.

  “I offered them two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to sell me the negatives outright, but then everything went wrong, and it just got worse and worse. . . .”

  She continued to stare at her reflection, as if she was trying to recognize someone she couldn’t quite remember.

  “I just wanted him to pay,” she said softly, her voice strained. “I wanted them both to pay for what they’d done to me. I wanted Rob to be punished. I wanted him to hurt the way I hurt.”

  The last threads of her control shredded, and tears came in a torrent. Sobs tore loose from the depths of her soul. The sounds were of something dying inside her.

  Parker turned her to him then, and held her as gently as he would a child. He couldn’t connect the woman he knew to the things she’d done. As she had said, the person who had committed those acts couldn’t have been her. And yet the woman he knew would pay, and there was nothing he could do about it . . . except hold her, and be there for her as her demons raked her with their claws.

  53

  Parker left the building and just stood for a while in the night air. It was closer to morning than to midnight. The empty streets were shiny black, wet with sea mist. No one was around. He wondered what would happen if he just walked away and never came back.

  The thought was fleeting. He wasn’t the type to walk away from anything, God help him. He could only be thankful that for now all he could feel was numbness.

  Andi Kelly was curled in the passenger seat of his car, huddled in a microfleece jacket he kept in the backseat. She jumped awake like a jack-in-the-box as Parker unlocked the doors and let himself in.

  “As a car thief,” he said, “you’re a very good writer.”

  “I stole your little plastic emergency key earlier. It let me in the door, but it wouldn’t start the engine.”

  She turned sideways on the seat and just stared at him for a moment. Parker started the engine and turned on the heater. The dash lights glowed green.

  “How are you doing, Kev?”

  “No comment.”

  “Off the record.”

  “No comment. I can’t talk about this, Andi. Not now. It’s too raw.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “I just wanted to offer. I’m a good listener.”

  “How can that be?” he teased gently. “You never shut up.”

  “I’m multitalented. I can juggle a little bit too.”

  “Well, you’ll always have something to fall back on.”

  “Diane Nicholson is a friend?” she asked carefully.

  Parker nodded. He focused his stare on the odometer—something mundane, unimportant—in the hopes that the tide of emotion rising inside him would recede a bit. He hurt. For Diane, and because of her.

  “I’m really sorry, Kev.”

  He nodded again, a pressure building in his head, behind his eyes.

  Andi picked up her bag from the floor of the car, rummaged through it, pulled out a flask, and offered it to him. “Have a wee nip, as my grandfather used to say to us as children. Hell of a baby-sitter, Granddad. He taught us how to play poker so he could cheat us out of our allowance money.”

  Parker managed a chuckle, took the flask, and poured a shot of very good scotch down his throat.

  “Eddie Davis is conscious and talking,” Andi said. “Your pal Metheny was right—he really wasn’t using that frontal lobe after all. Brains are miraculous little globs of gross, disgusting goo. Unnamed hospital sources say he’ll be released in a matter of days.”

  “That sucks,” Parker said. “He’s not worth the powder to blow him up, and he walks away from getting shot in the head. Rob Cole fucks up people’s lives right and left, and he’ll walk out of jail tomorrow, a free man.”

  “Well, it turns out he didn’t kill anybody,” Andi said.

  That wasn’t exactly true, Parker thought, but he didn’t say it.

  “You know he’ll sell his story for a movie of the week and insist on playing himself.”

  “Stop. You’re making me wish I’d gotten shot in the head,” Parker said. “Any word on Abby Lowell?”

  “She’s stable. They won’t know until the swelling goes down around the spinal cord whether she has any permanent damage. A day or two.”

  They were quiet for a moment. Diana Krall’s smoky voice drifted from the stereo speakers, reflective and sad. The perfect sound track for the night.

  “I feel like the whole damn world has blown apart, and we’ll each drift on our own
little rock and scatter like dust in the wind,” Parker said.

  “That’s not true. You’re not alone, Kev,” Andi said. “None of us is.”

  “I’m not convinced that’s a good thing.”

  “You’re done in. Go home. Sleep for a couple of days. Call if you decide you want company,” she said, and waggled her eyebrows.

  Parker smiled reluctantly. “I’m glad we found each other again, Andi.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “I’m right here,” she said, gesturing to a silver Miata, the next car down.

  She leaned over and kissed his cheek, and gave him a hug around the shoulders. “Take care of yourself, Kevin.”

  He nodded. But as he drove the deserted streets home to Chinatown, he found himself thinking that he wished he didn’t have to take care of himself. He had won the battle and lost the war. This was a night for a soft place to fall, but the person he most wanted to share his victory with was gone. Lost to him. Lost to herself. Forever. And there was nothing to do but mourn.

  54

  Another gorgeous Southern California morning. Sunshine, traffic jams, and sensationalism.

  Every early news show of every television station in the city was running footage of “Peril in Pershing Square,” followed by “Shootout on Olvera Street.” Much of the Pershing Square fiasco had been caught on videotape by a USC film student, who had been in the park to make a documentary about the movie crew that had been setting up for a shoot on the site.

  Every station had reporters live at the scenes, where absolutely nothing was happening at six in the morning, and no one had anything of any real value to say.

  “Regurgitating and rehashing sketchy facts and supposition—live at [crime scene of choice] this is [reporter’s name here] for channel whatever news.”

  Television journalism in the new millennium.

  Parker watched TV with the sound muted, reading the closed- captioning for Diane’s name, which appeared again and again. Every cop and SID tech and paramedic at the scene knew her. There had been no shortage of people willing to step into the glare of the lights and make some comment, or express their shock. The upper-right-hand corner of the screen on every channel had her booking photo already.

  It hurt to see it, to see the emptiness in her eyes, the pallor of her skin. The vibrant, strong woman he knew was not there. This was some other Diane. This was the Diane she had spoken of, a stranger even to herself. In this Diane lived fear and fury, and the kind of raw pain that drove otherwise good people to cross lines they otherwise would not. This Diane had committed murder by proxy. This Diane had shot a man in the head. This Diane had planned and executed the plan to frame a man for a capital crime punishable by death.

  In this Diane lived the need for love, the hunger for connection, the vulnerability of a child. This Diane had been used and abused by a sexual sociopath in a cruel and heartless game.

  Parker walked away from the plasma-screen TV and went up onto the roof to stretch, to close everything out of his mind and walk through the movements that had helped to calm and center him every day for the past few years. Today the dance was tense with anger, the energy—the chi—blocked by the strength of his emotions.

  When the frustration had tried his patience long enough, he gave up and just stood there for a long time, looking out over Chinatown, listening to the sounds of the city awakening and beginning the day.

  One of the things he loved most about LA was the overriding sense that every day was new, brimming with the possibility of dreams coming true. Today, all he could feel was the opposite of hope. Today, he would in all likelihood lose the career he had fought so hard to resurrect. Today, a woman he loved would be charged with murder, and a morally bankrupt, emotional rapist would be set free with an unspoken endorsement to go on with his life as if nothing had ever happened.

  Parker released a heavy sigh and went back inside to prepare to face it all. The best thing to do with a bad day: get through it and end it, and hope the next day would somehow be better.

  Parker made his first stop of the day the hospital. One, because it was early, and he had a better chance of avoiding anyone from Robbery-Homicide. They would certainly interview Abby Lowell that day, but there was no urgent need to do it right away. Eddie Davis wasn’t going anywhere. And two, because he still had a badge, and the badge would get him in to see her with no questions asked.

  She was a ghostly figure under the white sheet, the machines monitoring her vital signs the only things that indicated life. Staring up at the television growing out of the ceiling, her face was blank, her eyes expressionless. She was watching the Today show. An NBC news reporter was standing in Pershing Square talking about the incident, the film student’s footage was rolling, and Katie Couric looked concerned as she asked the reporter if there had been any bystander casualties.

  “Your fifteen minutes is starting,” Parker said, tapping the face of his watch.

  Abby’s eyes darted toward him. She didn’t say anything. Parker pulled a stool over to the side of the bed and perched on it.

  “I’m told your prognosis is good,” he said. “You have feeling in all extremities.”

  “I can’t move my legs,” she said.

  “But you know they’re there. That’s a good sign.”

  She just looked at him for a moment, trying to decide what to say. Her gaze flicked to the television and back. “Thank you for staying with me in the park last night. That was a very kind thing for you to do.”

  “You’re welcome.” He gave her a crooked smile. “See? I’m not all bad.”

  “You’re pretty bad,” she said. “You treated me like a criminal.”

  “I can apologize now,” Parker said. “But it’s my job to be suspicious of people. Nine times out of ten I’m proven right.”

  “And the tenth time?”

  “I’ll send flowers.”

  “Did you get the bike messenger?”

  He nodded. “He didn’t have anything to do with your father’s death.”

  “He tried to sell me the negatives. I thought he was in on it with Davis.”

  “Why would you have wanted them?”

  “Should I have an attorney present?” she asked.

  Parker shook his head. “It’s not against the law to purchase negatives. Are you in them?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have any part in the blackmail scheme?” He wasn’t sure she didn’t. Her behavior through it all had been less than innocent.

  “I found out what Lenny was up to,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought he could surprise or disappoint me anymore. I was wrong.”

  “It’s hard to learn that lesson with someone you care about.”

  “I didn’t want it to be true. I confronted him, begged him to put a stop to it, like that would have changed the fact that he was guilty of blackmail. He told me he would. He told me he had gotten caught up in it, that he was afraid of Eddie.”

  “How did he get involved in the first place?”

  “Davis was already a client. He came to Lenny and confessed to the murder, bragged about it. He didn’t think Lenny could do anything because of privilege. Then he asked Lenny to help him with the blackmail. He needed someone who wouldn’t rat him out to take the photographs.”

  “And Lenny said yes,” Parker said. The lure of money had been too much for him, and/or having had a confessed perpetrator of a brutal murder make the offer made it too scary to refuse.

  A nurse came into the room and gave Parker the eye as she looked at the machines and checked on Abby, trying to move him along. He could see by the strain on Abby’s face that she was running out of gas.

  “Did Lenny give up Davis to the DA’s office? He wanted the last big payoff to himself?”

  Tears brimmed over her lashes. The machine monitoring her heart rate began to beep a little faster. “I did,” she confessed in a small, hoarse whisper. “I thought if Giradello could go
after Davis . . .”

  Then Davis would have been arrested for Tricia Crowne-Cole’s murder. The negatives showed only Davis and Diane. Maybe they wouldn’t find anything against Lenny, except the word of a hit man. But Davis had had other plans.

  “Did you speak to Giradello himself?”

  “No. To his assistant.”

  “Did you give your name?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  And how seriously would Anthony Giradello take an anonymous tip on a case that was a lock to convict, and a lock to launch his own political career? Not very. He had a vested interest in sending Rob Cole away. It was a wonder he’d even bothered to put Kyle and Roddick into the field to nose around.

  Parker looked at Abby Lowell lying there looking young and frightened and crushed at the losses she had suffered. And he could see her at five or six in his mind’s eye, with that same expression as she sat in the corner of some bookie joint, left there by her father like she was a piece of luggage he would pick up on his way out.

  Her eyes closed. The nurse scowled at Parker. He murmured a good-bye and walked out the door.

  55

  I think the unemployment office is in a different building,” Andi Kelly said, as Parker walked toward her through the waiting mob outside the Criminal Courts Building, where Rob Cole and his dream team would be emerging shortly to tell the world he was a free man.

  Parker had taken off his tie and opened the collar of his shirt. His suit was rumpled from sitting in a Parker Center conference room for two hours. “Suspended,” he said. “Thirty days without pay.”

  “Never mind that you cleared about three cases for them in one fell swoop.”

  “I didn’t ask pretty please if I could.”

  Actually, the words that had been tossed around the conference room by the chief of detectives, the head of Robbery-Homicide, and Bradley Kyle (who had a raccoon’s mask of bruising from Parker breaking his nose at the Olvera Street Plaza), among others, had been words like insubordinate, dangerous, rogue.

  Parker had brought up the subject of Robbery-Homicide’s shadowy involvement in the Lowell homicide investigation, and had been brushed off. He had pointed out that a lot of people could have been killed at Pershing Square. No one wanted to hear it. He mentioned that Kyle had shot a woman in the back. Internal Affairs would investigate the shooting. Kyle would be on desk duty pending the outcome and would likely be suspended afterward.