It had taken fourteen hours to process the crime scene on Barton Avenue. Fourteen hours to photograph it and dust it. Fourteen hours to log the evidence in, break it down, and carry the mess away. For Lena, it had only taken a split second to understand that the thoughts and images she collected and endured would haunt her for the rest of her days.
It was after ten, the streets wetted down by a light rain. As she reached Beachwood Canyon and started up Gower Street past the Monastery of the Angels, the road leading to her house appeared more desolate than usual. The night, three or four shades darker.
Lena had shown the Andolinis the six-pack that Rollins had created on his computer-the six faces generated from the image recorded by the witness on his cell phone. Working with a sketch artist, a single image emerged and was fine tuned. Remarkably, Rollins had come close to depicting the killer’s actual face. Using the nose from one image, the mouth from another, the eyes and ears from the next two-it all added up to the man who rented the garage. The man calling himself Nathan Good, who didn’t seem to exist when Lena made the call and Barrera ran his name through the system. The man no one saw or wanted to remember seeing when she canvassed the neighborhood in search of a witness. The man with the meat grinder who drove a red Hummer and lived below the water line.
She pulled into her drive. The outside lights were off. As she lugged her briefcase through the darkness, she felt the cool rain misting her face.
On the plus side, if there could be a plus side, the depravity of the case was out in the open now. The gruesome reality was no longer reserved for Art Madina and herself as they examined the victim at the autopsy on their own two days ago. Somehow, word of what they found had traveled down Barton Avenue to the press staging their cameras in front of the graveyard. Perhaps because of their grim location, perhaps because of the foul weather, or perhaps because SID couldn’t back their truck up the narrow drive and everyone got a good look at that makeshift operating table being carried out-an almost palpable current of fear swept through the press corps. More important to Lena, it was a Sunday and details had already risen to the brass on the sixth floor. Already reached them in their warm and comfortable homes. No one would be dropping the case because Jane Doe No. 99 had worked in the sex trade. Nor was there any threat of delay at the crime labs. SID had moved the investigation to the top of their list.
Lena unlocked the front door, pausing a beat as she sensed something was wrong. She pushed the door open and peered into the darkness.
The phone was ringing inside the house. Not once before bouncing over to her cell, but in succession as if she hadn’t turned call forwarding on.
She hit the lights and crossed the living room. When she saw Denny Ramira’s name and number on the screen, she grabbed the phone before her answering machine picked up.
“I’ve gotta call you back,” she said.
“Call me back? We’ve gotta talk right now.”
“Can’t do it, Denny. I’ll call you back in five minutes.”
She switched off the phone before the reporter could say anything someone might hear. Although his voice sounded shaky, she couldn’t think about it right now. Her friends from Internal Affairs had figured out what she was doing with the phones. Obviously they had been inside the house.
She noticed the cold air and turned up the heat, then unlocked the slider and legged it around the house. As she expected, the tap and wireless transmitter had been removed. But she could hear something. Footsteps on gravel fading onto soft earth. She looked ahead and caught a glimpse of two men moving quickly through the brush toward the road. Rushing up the path, she climbed the bluff and saw the two men hurrying back to the Caprice parked thirty yards down the road. The first was familiar to her, the same clean-cut man with the young face and short brown hair she had seen before. But it was the second man who shook her up. She got a good look at him as he turned to get in the car. His lean, rigid body. His short gray hair and wounded eyes.
It was the chief’s adjutant himself. Ken Klinger.
She took a deep breath and exhaled. She didn’t have time for this.
Sliding down the hill, she ran back to the house and shut the slider. Nothing that she could see appeared out of place, but she expected this, too. She picked up the phone, stepped into the kitchen, and pried off the faceplate with a knife. Lifting away the speaker, she spotted a small black cylinder with metal coils buried in the wires. She was familiar with the device and knew that the microphone inside could pick up anything in the room whether she was on the phone or not. A radio transmitter went with the low-tech bug and would be hidden somewhere away from the television and her audio equipment in the living room. But what worried her was Klinger. Because he worked for the chief, he knew that she would have been tied up at the crime scene all day. He would have had time to wire the rest of the house. This was obviously the bug she was meant to find-the feel-good bug that was supposed to make her feel safe after she located the device and discarded it. They could have planted anything anywhere. Internal Affairs owned the equipment and supposedly knew how to use it.
She closed the handset and returned it to her charger, leaving the bug in place and wondering why they hadn’t turned call forwarding back on. As she thought it over, she realized that they probably turned off the service in order to test their handiwork. Once the service was off, there would have been no way to restore it without calling her cell. Lena would have seen her home number when the call came in and figured it out. Instead of taking the risk, they were probably counting on her not remembering whether she’d turned the service on this morning.
All in all, it added up to poor planning and sloppy police work. Klinger, the man who thought of himself as an expert at crime detection but hadn’t worked a single day in his entire life as an investigator, couldn’t even wire up a house right.
She hoped he liked good music because he was going to hear a lot of it.
Lena switched on her receiver, moved to the computer, and logged onto WRTI’s Web site, a jazz station out of Philly. Klinger was in luck. According to the playlist, the station would be dedicating the entire night to Coleman Hawkins and his tenor sax. First up was a digital remaster of the LP, At Ease with Coleman Hawkins. One of Lena’s favorites, “Poor Butterfly,” was on the album. But as she played the cut back in her head, it occurred to her that Klinger wasn’t worthy of the music. Returning to her bookmarks, she switched over to KROQ’s Web site and checked their playlist. She smiled as she scrolled through the long list of heavy metal bands. Tonight was theme night. Twelve hours of great headbangers from the past.
Perfect.
She found the LISTEN LIVE icon on the screen and clicked it. Then she turned up the volume, grabbed her leather jacket, and walked out onto the back porch. Moving away from the slider, she leaned against the side of the house and gazed at the pool. The lights were off, the rain breaking the water’s smooth black surface like stones falling out of the sky.
She flipped open her cell. Ramira from The Times would have to wait. When she found the medical examiner’s home number in her address book and hit ENTER, Art Madina picked up on the first ring.
“It’s me,” she said. “And I need a favor.”
“What is it? And what’s that in the background? It sounds like we’ve got the same station on.”
She smiled again. She knew Madina listened to rock and still went to the clubs on weekends. She knew that he had been a fan of her brother’s music as well.
“I need a favor,” she repeated.
“Tell me what I can do.”
“I want to take another look at Jane Doe’s body.”
“That’s easy. She’s in the cooler. Come over any time you want to.”
“I don’t mean a quick look,” she said. “I don’t know what your schedule’s like, but I really think we need to do it as soon as possible, Art. How’s tomorrow morning sound?”
“Hold on a second.”
She heard him set down the phone, then shut off the music at his end. When he finally came back, his voice had changed.
“What’s going on, Lena? Tell me what you’re looking for.”
“We need to make sure that she’s all there.”
A moment passed. She could still see that meat grinder on the workbench.
“Why wouldn’t she be all there?” he asked.
“I can’t answer that,” she said. “It’s something we need to check.”
“How much would be missing?”
“I don’t know.”
Another moment passed. Longer. Heavier. Both of them thinking it over. She could feel the wall vibrating beneath her back from headbanger’s night on KROQ. She could see the lights from the Library Tower, the tallest building west of the Mississippi, flickering in the rain clouds. She kept her eyes on the tower-the city’s beacon standing tall. For a moment it felt like she was riding out a storm in heavy seas, steering the bow of a disabled ship toward a lighthouse on a rocky shore.
“Can we do it?” she asked. “Can we take another look?”
“You bet we can. First thing in the morning.”
“See you then,” she said.
She closed her phone, wondering if it wasn’t too late to call Rhodes. She had held back all day, not wanting to break in on his time with his sister. Just one call in the morning, letting him know that they had found the crime scene and SID was processing the evidence. No need for him to change his plans and return.
Deciding to wait, she scrolled through her address book searching for Bobby Rathbone’s number. She needed another favor tonight, help from an old friend, and hoped that his cell number was still good. But before she could make the call, her cell started vibrating in her hand. She checked the display and saw Denny Ramira’s name pop up. She had forgotten to call the reporter back.
“You said five minutes,” he shouted over the phone.
“I don’t have time for this, Denny.”
“Five minutes,” he repeated. “It’s been more than twenty. When I called the house, all it did is fucking ring.”
“You leave a message?”
“No. I called your cell. I’m in trouble, Lena. Big trouble. I need your help. We need to meet and talk this out.”
She shook her head. She needed to reach Rathbone, not waste time on a reporter worried about making his deadline. She wanted Rathbone to sweep the house tonight. She wanted to know exactly what Klinger had done.
She lifted the phone back to her ear. “Talk about what, Denny? There’s nothing to say. We processed a crime scene. End of story. Call your friend on the sixth floor.”
“It’s not about that. It’s about saving my fucking life. I’ve got information. We need to meet tonight.”
His voice had reached a fever pitch. Ramira sounded frightened.
“Information about what?”
The reporter didn’t say anything.
“Information about what?” she repeated.
“That body you found in the trash.”