The Girl Buried in the Woods

by Robert Ellis

  Matt turned to face her. “You’re a piece of shit, Colon. A real piece of shit. They came here the same way you did.”

  She giggled. Somehow it seemed so vicious. “But I made something of myself, Cowboy, and they didn’t. They’re scum. They could be deported tomorrow.”

  Another long moment passed, the card on the table, Colon’s dirty hand played.

  Matt lowered his voice and gave her a look. “And if I back off Sonny Daniels and DMG?”

  She shrugged. “Then we’ll see.”

  Matt grimaced again as he chewed it over. “I don’t work for you.”

  “Yes, you do,” she said with another dark smile. “You just don’t know it yet. You work for me, and you’ll always work for me. I run this city.”

  “What about the mayor?” he said.

  Colon glanced up front at her go-go boy, then turned back to Matt, winked, and lowered her voice.

  “He watches me run it,” she said.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The limo stopped a block short of the bistro. Matt climbed out of the back seat without a word and slammed the door shut. Once the limo got lost in traffic, he checked his cell phone for text and voice messages and was surprised not to find any. He hoped that it meant his partner was home in bed and on his way to a decent night’s sleep.

  Matt walked down the sidewalk, passing the Yum Yum donut shop and entering the strip mall’s parking lot. It seemed unusually dark tonight. Looking overhead, he noticed something was wrong with the lighting. He walked by an SUV and then a pizza delivery car. When his view cleared the pizza sign on the car’s roof, he saw Robert Gambini leaning against his black Mercedes with his arms folded over his chest. Gambini’s dark eyes were all over him. And there was no way out. The heroin dealer had backed his car in front of Matt’s, blocking the street.

  Gambini gave him a look up and down. “You got directions to Paradise, Detective? There’s a club on Paradise. I’ve heard it’s nice, you know. Pretty girls and pretty men. Supposed to be safe and real peaceful. You got directions to a place like that?”

  Matt stopped ten feet out and met the man eye to eye.

  “You’ll never get to the club on Paradise, Gambini. You’ll never make it. Not in a million years.”

  Gambini laughed. “Who says so, Detective? You?”

  Matt remained motionless, still eyeballing the heroin dealer hard. He was dressed in the dark slacks and casual shirt he’d been wearing at Grubb’s house. But now, standing this close, Matt could tell from the cut and quality of the fabric, everything was Armani. Everything except for the gold Rolex around his wrist.

  “Why are you bothering me?” Gambini said. “Why aren’t you chasing whoever murdered that little Mexican girl?”

  “But I am chasing him. I’m looking at him right now.”

  Gambini shook his head in disappointment. “I don’t mess with kids, Detective. No matter who they are or what they might have done. That’s one of the rules.”

  “Rules?”

  The heroin dealer nodded slowly in affirmation.

  “What about Moe Rey?” Matt said. “Is there a rule for a guy like him?”

  “Moe Rey’s a schmuck who worked for my uncle. What about him?”

  “He was murdered with the girl.”

  Gambini flashed a short smile. “I heard about that. You know what? Everybody’s better off with a jackrabbit like Moe Rey gone. Less CO2 in the air. Less dead weight to help the world spin around the sun.”

  “How’s Lane Grubb spinning?”

  Gambini gave him a long look. “You know as much about that as I do,” he said finally. “You were there. You had a seat in the front row.”

  Matt paused a moment. He had followed both Grubb and Gambini into Hollywood Hills, but he’d given them more than enough distance. It seemed hard to believe that he’d been made.

  “You knew I was watching?” he said.

  “Sure,” Gambini said. “I’ve had my eye on you all night. Me and Grubb. It was a command performance, don’t you think?”

  “You beat him up pretty good. You threatened his life. Seems like there might be rules for that, too.”

  Gambini didn’t say anything. It looked like he was thinking something over. He glanced at the bistro, the windows dark and the Closed sign on the door, then turned to watch a police cruiser pass the lot heading south toward Melrose.

  “No offense,” he said after a while, “but guys like Lane Grubb and the two dimwits he’s hanging with are stone-cold losers. If you want to break them, the only way to cut through all the noise is to scare the life out of them. It’s all about their generation, Detective. They never grew up. You ever notice how they turn their women into mommies so they can suck their titties and go boo-hoo-hoo?”

  Who’s calling who crazy?

  Matt let it go without saying anything. When Gambini’s eyes dropped down to Matt’s waste, he could tell that the drug dealer had spotted the .45 holstered to his belt.

  “What do you want, Gambini? Why are you here?”

  Gambini, with that MBA from Wharton, thought it over for a while.

  “You’re dirty, aren’t you?” he said finally. “You’re a dirty cop. You’re in it with my uncle. You’re in it with these three little fools at DMG. And I saw you tonight, Detective. I saw you with Dee Colon. You got in her limo. You took a ride up and down the Strip and had a real long talk. You’ve gotta be dirty.”

  Matt had lost his patience five minutes ago. And he felt no need to enlighten Gambini with the truth. The more he tossed it over, the more convinced he became that letting Gambini think he was dirty might even heat things up and prove to be useful.

  “What do you want?” he repeated.

  Gambini lowered his hands and took a step forward. Matt didn’t move.

  “I want you to give my uncle Joseph a message.”

  “What’s the message?”

  Gambini saw something and stopped. Matt turned and watched two cops walk into the donut shop, their cruiser parked on the street at the curb. When the door closed, Gambini leaned closer and lowered his voice.

  “It’s not gonna work, Detective. That’s the message I want you to give my uncle. He can bankroll these three fools and try to muscle in on my business, but it’ll never work. He never helped me, even when I needed it. He never helped me or my family. And now I’m bigger than him. I’m stronger than him, and I’m richer than him. So you tell your new best friend that if he wants to stick it to me, I’m gonna stick him back ten times harder. That’s the message. That’s how I do business. Ten times harder. Got it?”

  Matt didn’t say anything.

  Gambini was seething, no doubt about it. Matt watched him get into the Mercedes and gun it through the lot. When he reached the street, he skidded to a stop and gazed through the window at the two cops in the donut shop ordering coffee. Matt couldn’t really tell, but it sounded like Gambini was shouting at the cops through the glass. After a few minutes, the black coupe made a right onto Highland, its tires screeching as it vanished around the corner and headed north toward the Strip.

  THIRTY-SIX

  He tried not to think too much as he got the front door open and switched on the outdoor lights. He stepped into the dark house, found the lamp by the couch, and turned it on. As he entered the kitchen, it felt like he hadn’t been home in a year.

  He lowered his laptop case onto the chair by the table, then poured a drink over ice from the bottle of Tito’s vodka he kept in the freezer. The first sip was strong and had a bite to it. He needed it to be strong. He needed it to taste like medicine tonight. But like most things in his life, change was built in, and the second sip tasted smooth as silk. He didn’t mind that either.

  He walked back into the living room, shaking his head. His mind was way too stoked to even think about going to sleep.

  Something was wrong with this case. And he had a strange feeling about it. A feeling in his gut that when and if he ever figured it out, that new thing, that new piece to
the puzzle, would be followed by doom.

  It almost seemed like déjà vu. Almost the same feeling he’d had after talking to Val Burton, only worse.

  Somewhere upstream was a storm. When he reached it, everything would seem tantalizingly familiar—and then everything would end.

  He guessed as much the minute Robert Gambini showed up and started talking about that imaginary club on Paradise Road.

  Matt had no doubt that Gambini was vicious. Just a few hours ago he’d witnessed the man’s brutality firsthand. But after meeting Robert Gambini in the flesh, after talking to him, Matt knew something else about him that even his uncle Joseph didn’t seem to get.

  Robert Gambini wasn’t crazy.

  He was a serious man, albeit dangerous and angry, but he did things for a reason. His actions were planned, deliberate, and well thought out.

  And that’s when Matt began to sense the darkness that comes with an impending doom. It overwhelmed him in the car all the way home, and this time he couldn’t shake it.

  Robert Gambini had no interest in sending a message to his uncle tonight. Matt was certain of this. Gambini’s message had been meant for him.

  Matt switched off the lamp and sat down on the couch in the darkness. He could hear the coyotes stirring underneath his deck through the slider, the sound of the heater shutting down and the house becoming quiet and still except for the refrigerator humming in the background. Outside he could see the lights strewn across the charred basin leading east to the tall buildings downtown.

  He took another sip of vodka, beginning to feel the glow.

  He wondered if Gambini’s message had been some kind of warning or threat. If, in the heroin dealer’s mind, Matt was a dirty cop working with his uncle Joseph, a corrupt politician like Dee Colon, and the three partners at DMG, Gambini could have been saying that Matt’s life was fair game, too.

  It seemed to make sense. Still, there had to be more to it than that.

  The missing piece. The missing thing. Something right in front of his eyes that he couldn’t see yet.

  Matt set his mind adrift.

  A lot of people lease their cars these days. But Lane Grubb was renting his home as well. Why didn’t he own anything?

  There was something odd about that. Something wrong with it.

  Matt wondered about the other two. Did Ryan Moore own his home, or was he renting? And what about Sonny Daniels? Did he own anything at all?

  His cell phone started ringing. Matt dug it out of his pocket, read Mitch Burton’s name on the face, and took the call.

  “Channel four,” Burton said. “Hurry.”

  Matt switched on a light, found the remote on the fireplace mantel, and powered up the TV mounted on the wall. Toggling up to channel four, he saw a video shot of Dee Colon sitting on the couch between Angel and Lucia Ramirez in their home. The camera and microphone were jammed into the Ramirezes’ faces. In this case, the shot was made from over a female reporter’s shoulder. The graphic banner at the bottom of the screen was the same one every news station uses every day for every story, no matter how big or small.

  BREAKING NEWS.

  “I’ve got it,” he said to Burton. “I’m there.”

  “Listen.”

  Colon had her arm around Lucia, who was wiping tears away from her eyes as she wept and tried to speak through her sadness. Matt couldn’t help thinking that she looked frightened.

  “We don’t know what’s going on,” she said in a frail voice. “We miss our daughter very much.”

  The female reporter broke in. “What does it feel like to know that the detective in charge of your daughter’s case may not be doing his job?”

  Matt heard it. He couldn’t believe that it had even been said, but he’d heard it and it had. He stepped closer to the TV.

  Lucia nodded, still wiping the tears away, still looking frightened. “We don’t know what’s happening,” she managed. “We don’t know why the police aren’t trying to catch the man who did this to our little girl.”

  Angel turned and looked directly at the camera. “We’ve got a sex maniac out there. He murdered my daughter. Why isn’t anyone doing anything?”

  For whatever reason, Angel looked frightened as well. Matt’s eyes flicked back to Colon. The vile woman seemed pleased with herself as she milked the tragedy of a young girl’s murder for her own financial benefit and whatever Sonny Daniels had cut her in for. Matt thought about Burton on the other end of the line and pressed the phone against his ear.

  “That’s it,” he said. “We’re dead.”

  “It looked forced to me,” Burton said. “And both of them came off frightened. What Colon’s implying with this spectacle isn’t true. She’s lying. The chief’s a lot of things, Matt, but he’s smart enough to see through this kind of crap.”

  “I’m not sure that’s what matters this time around. What matters is that all of a sudden the chief’s got a major PR problem. Colon went public with false information. She did it on purpose because she’s being paid to do it. That doesn’t change the fact that the chief’s gonna have to deal with it now.”

  “We’ll see,” Burton said. “I’ll give him a call tonight.”

  The production lights in the Ramirezes’ living room shut down, but the camera was still rolling. Angel Ramirez turned directly to the city councilwoman and started speaking off mike. He looked upset and appeared to be pleading his case.

  “We did everything you said, right? We told them what you told us to say. Now we won’t be deported, right? You promised that we—”

  And then the camera shut down and the shot cut back to the studio.

  Matt’s body shuddered. “Did you catch that?”

  “Now you know why they looked terrorized,” Burton said. “Colon’s blackmailing them. The whole thing was staged. We’re not going anywhere, Matt. Not yet anyway. I’ll let the chief know as soon as we hang up.”

  Matt spent the next ten minutes briefing the deputy DA on tonight’s encounters with Lane Grubb, Colon and the threat she’d made, and then his face-to-face hookup with Robert Gambini. By the time he’d finished, his glass was empty, and he poured another.

  He sat down at the kitchen table. “Gambini said he didn’t kill the girl.”

  “They all say that, Matt. You know that.”

  Matt shook his head, then remembered that he was on the phone and Burton couldn’t see him. “I’m not saying I believe him. I’m just thinking about things. I mean, what if we’re seeing this wrong? What if Robert Gambini isn’t the one?”

  “We agree that the girl witnessed an execution, right?”

  “We agree,” Matt said. “That’s why she’s dead.”

  “Okay,” Burton said. “Then it’s all about Moe Rey. What motive would Sonny Daniels have for killing Moe Rey?”

  Matt thought it over as he stepped back into the living room and started pacing between the slider and the fireplace.

  “What if Sonny Daniels didn’t want Joseph Gambini involved in their business?” he said finally. “What if Joseph Gambini was trying to muscle his way in without an invitation. What if Moe Rey had been working at DMG as Joseph Gambini’s spy and Sonny caught him?”

  “It’s possible, I guess.”

  “But wouldn’t that be enough reason for Sonny to want Rey dead?”

  Burton didn’t say anything for a while. Matt wondered if Burton was standing in front his window with that wide-screen view of the city as he thought things over. That big game-board view.

  Burton cleared this throat. “Everything you just said is possible, Matt. More than possible. Except for one thing, and it’s a big thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The crime itself.”

  “What about it?”

  Burton lowered his voice. “The crime itself,” he repeated. “The brutality of it. The way it happened. The things that were done. The condition the victims were in when they were pulled out of the ground. Think it over for a while. Sleep on it, Matt,
and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  Burton’s phone clicked.

  Matt pocketed his cell, then switched off the TV and the lamp. With the room lit by only what outdoor light passed through the windows, he sat down on the couch again and gazed at the city in the distance. He’d known what Burton was trying to say, just as he knew that he himself had made a mistake. The kind of mistake a detective makes when he’s not basing his conclusions on hard evidence.

  The execution of Moe Rey, followed by the murder of the girl who witnessed the killing, Sophia Ramirez, had been ferocious—the doer a savage. There weren’t many people capable of committing a crime that harsh. Not many people who could reach the point of becoming merciless. While the idea that Sonny Daniels was involved in the murders might seem to fit logically, Matt began to see the possibility as flawed. At least for now, it had no basis in reality and deserved to be shelved somewhere in the back of a drawer.

  The phone rang. Not Matt’s cell this time but the house line. Matt grabbed the phone and switched it on, thinking Burton was calling back.

  “How’d you get this number?” he said.

  The caller didn’t say anything. Matt sat down in his reading chair when it occurred to him that it might not be Burton on the other end of the line.

  “Who is this?” he said, carefully.

  Several seconds ticked off in a heavy silence. Then a male voice came on, sounding ultraweak and far away.

  “Is this Detective Jones of the LAPD?”

  The tone the caller had used to say “LAPD” appeared sarcastic, but Matt ignored it.

  “This is Jones,” he said.

  “We need to meet, Jones.”

  “Who are you?”

  The man didn’t respond.

  “Who are you?” Matt repeated.

  The man let out a sigh. “Lane Grubb,” he said.

  Matt felt a sudden chill quake through his body. “What’s going on, Grubb?”

  “I’m done,” he said. “I want out. I wanna come in.”

  “When? Where? Tell me how I can help you.”