No Place to Die (Sam Leroy Book 3)

by Philip Cox

  The Facility is perched on Mount Lee just above the Hollywood sign, and comprises a couple of small whitewashed buildings and a white and red tower hosting dozens of eclectic communications dishes. The facility provides communication services for the City’s numerous authorities such as the police, fire department, emergency and otherwise.

  Leroy followed Mount Lee Drive through several 180 degree turns, the final one leading to the slight incline which leads up to the facility, just above the rear of the sign. Just past the back of the massive d, through the open gate, joining the other three vehicles parked. As he got out of the car, Leroy could hear an engine throbbing, the generator required to power the crime scene lights.

  ‘Where is everybody?’ Leroy called out to the officer, who called back, ‘Down below the sign. The gates are open. Security’s switched off.’

  Leroy waved his thanks and headed down the hillside. He noticed Quinn’s car arrive, and indicated for his partner to follow.

  The world-famous and iconic sign stands on the side of Mount Lee, 45 feet tall and 350 feet wide. From a distance it looks wavy because of the contours of the land, but in actual fact the letters are nearly level. The original purpose of the sign was not to advertise Hollywood, but to promote Hollywoodland, the real-estate development owned by Harry Chandler, the then publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Built in 1923, the sign was built to advertise the 500-plus homes for sale as part of Chandler’s development. Eventually, the sign fell into disrepair and in 1949 was taken over by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which removed the last four letters and kept the sign as a landmark.

  In 1932 the sign was the location of the suicide - the only recorded suicide here - of the actress Lillian (Peg) Entwhistle. After RKO studios refused to renew her contract, she made her way through the thick brush, climbed to the top of the h, and jumped.

  Since then, there has always been some kind of security around the sign: nowadays more sophisticated than merely fences. The LAPD has installed motion detectors and CCTV; the perimeter fence is tall, topped with razor wire; there are infrared lights and cameras, and there are even monitoring microphones and motion sensors. Any movement within the perimeter triggers an alarm. The penalty for intrusion is now a thousand dollars.

  All this was switched off this afternoon as Leroy, followed quickly by Quinn, arrived at the actual scene, fifty feet down the hillside. Leroy could see the usual attendees at such a scene, which was normally the end of somebody’s life. There was no yellow crime scene tape here; it was hardly a major thoroughfare. Dr Russell Hobson, one of the chief MEs, and an old friend of Leroy’s, was in attendance. He saw his friend arrive and turned towards him.

  ‘Hey, Sam; I heard you had an interest in this one.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Leroy said, scampering down the last few feet of the hill. ‘We picked up the rest of him earlier in the day.’

  ‘We don’t know that yet. Who’s to say it’s the same person?’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘You two want to see?’ Hobson asked.

  ‘Okay. Lead the way.’

  Hobson led Leroy and Quinn along a pathway - the ground had levelled off beneath the sign - and through some bushes. ‘There you go,’ he said, breezily.

  It was indeed a severed head.

  Resting at a forty-five-degree angle against a rock and tuft of brush, it seemed to be staring up at the sign. It was a man’s, not youthful but not old, with short, unkempt brown hair. The hair on the side of the head, just above the temple, was matted with a thick black residue. Part of the left cheek and around the left eye had been gnawed at. There were still some ants crawling around the wounds and the neck. Quinn coughed. Where the head had been severed, the cut was clean, as with the corresponding body.

  If this was the same man.

  ‘What can you tell me, Russ?’ Leroy asked.

  ‘Some of it is hypothesis at this time, but you can see the cut on the neck is very clean. Done with a very sharp cutting implement.’

  ‘Same as the torso,’ Quinn observed.

  ‘Hunting knife, maybe?’ said Leroy.

  Hobson shrugged. ‘Maybe. That’s something we’ll check. The decapitation wasn’t the cause of death. Look at the expression on the face: no sign of pain, or anguish or stress. I would say having your head cut off would be painful, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Unless it was done real quick,’ Quinn said, ‘like with a sword.’

  ‘True,’ Hobson conceded, ‘but look at the side of the head. That’s probably the exit wound: there’s no GSR, no sign of heat.’

  ‘So he was killed by a shot to the head?’ Leroy said.

  ‘Looks like it. Quick, and clean.’

  ‘Done here?’

  ‘Who’s to say? I guess you’ll need to search, but there’s no sign of any casing or anything around here. But the decapitation took place here.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ asked Leroy.

  ‘Look down there. Can you see?’

  Leroy crouched down and sure enough, around the base of the neck, the soil was slightly darker. He looked up at Hobson. ‘Like a dried up pool of blood.’

  Hobson nodded. ‘Right. Now, normally any blood would be soaked up by the soil, as it’s started to do here. See? It’s soaked in some, you know, but enough for us to take a sample.’

  ‘Lucky,’ Quinn remarked, kneeling down to look.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Hobson said. ‘The ground here is so dry. When was the last time it rained here?’

  ‘Winter?’ asked Leroy.

  ‘Yes. I checked: the last precipitation here was February 22nd. And that was half an inch. So there’s not really anywhere for the blood to go. Very fast, at any rate.’

  ‘Time of death?’ Leroy asked.

  ‘Too early to say. There’s been quite a bit of degradation as you’d expect. One of our first tasks is to check it belongs to the body you found. Then take it from there.’

  ‘Thanks, Russ.’ Leroy turned to the uniformed officer behind Quinn. ‘Who found it?’

  ‘Three kids. Backpackers. Australians.’

  Quinn asked, ‘What were they doing up here? Making out?’

  ‘They said,’ the officer replied, ‘they had gotten lost. Out hiking. Saw the sign and thought there’d be something up here: a restroom, maybe a cafeteria.’

  Leroy laughed. ‘A cafeteria? You’re joking.’

  ‘That’s what they told me, Detective. Apparently the girl needed to take a wiz, dove into here and found it.’

  Leroy shook his head disbelief. ‘Where are they now?’

  The officer indicated back up the hill. ‘Up there, waiting for you guys. Either in the office there or in one of the cars.’

  ‘Let’s go talk to them,’ Leroy said.

  ‘You done with the head?’ Hobson asked.

  ‘Yeah, I guess. For now.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll get it back to the lab. See if we get a match.’

  ‘Christ, I hope so. Come on, Ray. Let’s talk to these kids.’

  They clambered back up the hill, passing the blue suited scientific investigation division officers making their way down.

  ‘I’d hurry,’ Leroy said to them. ‘They need to get the head back to the lab before any evidence is compromised more. And check the scene for cartridge shells.’

  When they got back to the facility Leroy asked where the backpackers were. All three were sitting in the back of one of the patrol cars.

  Leroy opened the rear door and leaned on the roof. Quinn crouched in front. They introduced themselves, and the backpackers did the same.

  The two men introduced themselves as Mark Smith and Robbie Lee, both from Sydney, Australia. The girl, who had a blanket wrapped round her shoulders said her name was Jan White, from Newcastle. The two men were sitting next to each other, the girl by the window.

  ‘Newcastle?’ Quinn asked, thinking of the one in England.

  ‘Newcastle, Australia,’ Jan White replied. ‘150 k’s north of Sydney.’

  ‘Y
ou guys here on vacation?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mark Smith. ‘Due to fly back home day after tomorrow.’

  ‘What were you doing up here?’

  ‘Getting lost,’ Jan grumbled.

  ‘Obviously,’ Leroy said. ‘Where were you headed?’

  Robbie Lee answered this time. ‘We were heading back to Canyon Drive. We had our car parked down there.’

  ‘Bronson Cave,’ Jan said. ‘The guys wanted to check out Bronson Cave.’

  ‘And you got lost?’ said Leroy.

  ‘I had a map -’ Mark began to say.

  ‘Yeah, right. Upside down,’ Jan muttered, staring out of the window.

  Mark continued, ‘Well, anyway, the map didn’t correspond with the terrain here…’

  ‘So we could see the Hollywood sign,’ Robbie cut in, ‘and used that as our frame of reference.’

  ‘They thought there’d be something up here by the sign,’ Jan said.

  ‘Like a cafeteria or something?’ Leroy said, looking down with a grin at Quinn.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Robbie, ‘at least a dunny - a restroom – and a phone box. None of us could get a signal up here.’

  ‘Yes, that’s quite ironic,’ Leroy said. ‘Here is the most sophisticated communications centre in Southern California, but it’s not a cell phone tower. Reception always is patchy up here.’

  ‘So we found out,’ Jan grumbled.

  Leroy asked, ‘So, you all needed the bathroom?’

  ‘She did,’ Mark replied, looking out of the car window.

  Leroy looked at Jan.

  ‘Yes, I did. I needed to go. The bushes were all I could find. I went in there, just as I was… you know, squatting, I saw it.’

  ‘That must have been a shock for you,’ Leroy said.

  ‘No kidding it was.’

  ‘Did you touch it?’

  ‘No way. I just ran.’

  ‘Screamed a lot,’ said Mark.

  Jan flashed Mark an angry glare but said nothing.

  Robbie continued. ‘We all ran. We found a gate in the fence, but it was locked. We made our way round the fence, up the side of the hill. When we did make it to the top, a cop car was there already.’

  ‘This place is heavily alarmed. You would have tripped one.’ Leroy straightened up and looked around. The sun was beginning to set, the sky above the Pacific beginning to turn a purplish red. ‘Where are you kids staying?’ he asked them.

  ‘We have an apartment on Highland Avenue,’ Robbie told him. ‘Just down from the Hollywood Bowl.’

  ‘Okay. One of the officers will take you back to the Camp Howland Parking Lot – I’m guessing that’s where you left your transportation?’

  Robbie and Mark nodded.

  ‘I’d suggest you stick to the sidewalks till you fly home.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we will,’ Jan said.

  ‘We’ll be in contact once more before you go,’ Leroy told them, ‘just to check if there’s anything else you might have remembered, and to take formal statements.’ He called over to the patrolman whose car they were using and arranged for their ride back to their car. He and Quinn watched as they headed back down Mount Lee Drive.

  ‘What now?’ Quinn asked.

  ‘It’s twilight now. There’s nothing much for us to do here. Russell’s taking the head back to the lab, and we should get the prelim report on the body any time.’

  ‘Let’s hope they are a match.’

  ‘God, I hope so. Let’s call it a day. I need to sleep like right now. We’ll pick things up in the morning.’

  With that, they both returned to their respective cars and slowly made their way out of the facility, through the twists and turns of Mount Lee Drive, to the now darkened streets below.

  Chapter 14

  It was an hour later when Leroy finally reached home, home being his apartment in a small building in a side street in Venice. It was a warm evening, the sky was clear, and the streets were busy with people walking one way to the Promenade, and the other to one of the many restaurants on Main Street.

  He parked his car in his usual spot in the space in front of his building. He inhaled deeply, taking in the sea air. He lived not far from the beach, and late at night when the streets were quiet, he could hear the waves crashing against the sea wall. Tonight he was sure he could hear the music and sounds from Santa Monica Pier, less than two miles away.

  Up on his floor, as he stepped along the corridor to his apartment, he noticed a light under the door. He was too tired to remember whether he had left a light on or not that morning. Cautiously, one hand on his service weapon, he put the key in the lock. The door was already unlocked; he turned the handle and opened it.

  ‘So there you are.’

  On the couch, sitting on one cushion and her legs curled up on another, was Julia Moore, Leroy’s girlfriend. A fourth grade school teacher, Leroy had begun seeing her a few years back after meeting her in the line of duty. She also lived in Venice, alone: by some unspoken agreement, they had each retained their own apartments, allowing each other to have their own space, but at the same time spend evenings in together. Being a teacher, she kept more or less regular hours; Leroy did not. He had not seen her for four days: in their early days together, they saw each other, or at least spoke, every day; of late it had been less frequent.

  She had two piles of school books on the floor: one pile for assignments she had marked, the other for unmarked work. As she greeted him, she laid down the book she was reading.

  ‘Hey there.’ Leroy tossed his keys onto a table and flopped down on the other end of the couch. ‘Wasn’t expecting you. How long have you been here?’

  She looked up at the clock. ‘Since just before six. I didn’t feel like staring at my own four walls another night, and I wanted to make sure you were still alive.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘I’d not heard from you since the weekend. I tried to call you a couple of times, but you never picked up.’

  He ran his one hand over his face and yawned. ‘Sorry. It’s been crazy the last couple of days. I’ve not had time to scratch my ass, let alone check my messages.’

  Julia nodded over to the kitchen. ‘I brought some food over.’

  ‘Great,’ Leroy said, not particularly enthusiastically.

  ‘Nothing special: just some Chinese stuff we can heat up.’

  He blinked heavily. ‘Cool, thanks.’

  ‘I had some bad news today,’ Julia said.

  He blinked again and looked at her. ‘Oh, what?’

  ‘Meryl West – you remember me talking about her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She used to work in the languages department. About the same age as me; no, a little older, maybe.’

  Leroy said nothing.

  ‘She took extended sick leave about eighteen months ago when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had chemotherapy, and it looked as if it had gone. They were talking about her coming back to work, part-time.’

  Leroy sat forward. ‘Perez called me about five thirty this morning about a body found in a dumpster off Mulholland. No head. I’ve just come back from the Hollywood sign where they found the head.’

  ‘Sam, I’m talking. Meryl West.’

  He flopped back down. ‘Sorry, miles away. Carry on.’

  She huffed. ‘Well, we heard today that the cancer had returned, more aggressive this time, and she died at the weekend.’

  Leroy looked over at her, reached out and held her foot. ‘Sorry to hear that.’

  ‘She wasn’t that old. Married with kids.’

  Leroy said nothing: he stared into space, slowly shaking his head.

  Julia huffed again. ‘The funeral’s on Friday. Some of us are going.’

  He stood up, stretched. ‘Have you eaten?’ he asked.

  ‘I did already. I wasn’t sure when you’d be back.’

  She got up and followed him into the kitchen. ‘Why were you up in Hollywood, anyway?’

  Leroy put the food
into the microwave and pressed the button. ‘We were working on that case where some TV host’s bodyguard got offed by mistake.’

  ‘The one where the guy was accused of -?’

  ‘That’s the one. We wrapped that about one this morning. Perez called me four hours later as the powers that be think that the body found in the dumpster might be connected to this case.’

  ‘Why do they think that?’

  He put up his hands. ‘Why do they think anything? Because the body was found near Hollywood? You tell me.’

  ‘Are they connected?’

  The microwave pinged and he took out the food. ‘No, of course not. But now we’ve started on this one, we’ll see it through to its conclusion.’ He took the tray of food over to the couch and sat down, apologetically tripping over one of Julia’s pile of books. He lay on the couch.

  Julia followed him over to the couch and sat astride him. He moved slightly underneath her. She leaned forward and began to unbutton his shirt.

  ‘How much sleep did you say you got last night?’ she asked.

  ‘Three or four.’

  ‘You must be tired. Sam, if I go to Meryl’s funeral Friday, would you be able… Sam? Sam?’

  *****

  It was gone 11pm when Leroy’s bladder woke him. He lifted himself off the couch. There was cold Chinese food next to the couch, and Julia’s books had gone. The apartment was quiet and empty.

  ‘Shit,’ he said aloud, lying back down again.

  Chapter 15

  Next morning, Leroy and Quinn were both at their desks at Police HQ on Butler and Iowa.

  Leroy arrived first, and began his day by updating Lieutenant Perez with the progress they had made so far. Perez and Leroy were once partners, and when the position of Lieutenant came up, both applied for the job. Perez got it, mainly because as the previous captain told Leroy, ‘he kisses ass better than you.’ They never had been friends in the true sense of the word, and their working relationship now was always cordial and professional, but deep down, Perez always suspected that Leroy resented being overlooked.