Keep cool. Trouble ahead.
She lit a cigarette and cracked the window open. The radio was tuned to KFWB, but she wasn’t listening. Instead, she was staring through the windshield, her car idling in the rusted out garage across the street from Parker Center. She took another drag on the smoke, hoping that the nicotine would settle her nerves. But it wasn’t enough-not near enough. She could see Chief Logan exiting the building with Klinger, his car and driver waiting for them in the VIP lot by the door. She could see both men laughing.
Keep cool. Trouble ahead.
Lena watched them drive off, thinking about the number of blows she had taken. Most of them felt like head shots, her mind still numb. Her career, dead on arrival.
She tapped the ash out the window, then focused on a Lincoln pulling into the lot and parking in a space reserved for members of the police commission. Senator Alan West got out from behind the wheel and walked over to the cop in the guard shack. It looked like the senator was showing him the pin he wore on his lapel. The gold fire engine he had received from the LAFD after 9/11. As she watched, she remembered what he had said to her less than a week ago when they met and he showed her the same pin.
This is Los Angeles. Chiefs come and go. If I can do anything for you, I’ll try my best.
She reached inside her pocket. West’s business card was still there and she gazed at it. Looking back, she followed his progress across the lot until he reached the door and vanished inside the building.
Lena knew with absolute certainty that going to West was not an option. Not if she still hoped to remain a detective anywhere near Los Angeles. Any contact with West would be suicide. He might be one of the good ones. There was even something reassuring about the fact that he drove his own car. But like every other commissioner, he wasn’t a member of the club. No one would ever trust her if she went outside the blue curtain. No one would ever work with her again. Being right had about as much relevance and worth as half a dollar bill. She couldn’t buy anything with it. And she couldn’t save it for a rainy day no matter how big the storm.
Her cell started vibrating. Glancing at the display, she saw Lieutenant Barrera’s name and flipped it open.
“You okay, Lena?”
“Since when did we stop following leads,” she said. “It must have been in a department bulletin I missed.”
Barrera didn’t say anything right away. From the lack of background noise, she guessed that he was in the captain’s office with the door closed.
“Something’s up,” he said finally. “I told you that last week. I wish I could tell you what it was.”
“What’s up is easy,” she said. “They’re looking for a way to give Tremell’s kid a pass. How did the chief put it? The girl pointed her dirty finger at him. Her finger isn’t dirty, Frank. And we didn’t move with just one eyewitness. Four people put him with the victim that night.”
“That’s what you said. What’s so bizarre is that the chief knows it, too. After we talked Saturday night, I called and gave him a complete briefing. It’s a disgrace, simple as that. He’s fucked up. The whole thing’s fucked up, so don’t let it get to you. Don’t let it get inside you. Don’t let it fuck you up, too.”
“So, what comes next?”
“Fuck him, Lena. That’s what comes next. You’re a cop. Do what you gotta do.”
She pulled the phone away from her ear-Barrera shouting. Switching over to speaker, she turned the volume down. She had never heard him so upset before. It occurred to her that the meeting must have been just as tough on him. Maybe even worse because he couldn’t say anything, and had to stay after she left. Barrera was a fair-minded man who began his career in a patrol car just like every other cop. He had risen through the ranks on his own and worked the homicide table long before his promotion to lieutenant. Long before Chief Logan ever dreamed of moving to Los Angeles and starting at the top. Barrera had the support and respect of every investigator he supervised. And everyone on the floor knew how much he despised department politics. But what the chief was doing amounted to more than that. He and the DA were breaking a cardinal rule.
“Follow the evidence,” Barrera said in a firm voice. “And I don’t care where it leads or who it fucks up. You know what the Groucho is, right, Lena?”
He was referring to the way SWAT teams entered a hostile location. The way they bent their knees and kept their backs straight so that they could aim their shotguns and rifles, and fire on the move. Because the posture mimicked the way Groucho Marx often walked in his films, the tactical move was often called the Groucho.
“I’ve heard of it,” she said.
“Then keep it in mind. Stay low and push forward. After what just happened, if you want to take the day off and get drunk, I’ll say okay to that, too. I’ll buy the first and last round. But I’m hoping you won’t. I’m hoping none of this bullshit really matters to you. Either way, Lena, be careful and keep me in the fucking loop.”
He hung up. Lena stubbed her cigarette out, lighting another and thinking it over. What the chief had done was already inside her. Already fucking her up. She couldn’t help that. But Barrera didn’t need to buy her a drink, either.
Something clicked and she became aware of the radio. A story on the news.
A dead body had been found in an apartment on Willoughby Avenue early this morning. An old man who once ran a hotdog stand in West Hollywood had been discovered by a maintenance worker. According to the investigator from the coroner’s office, the old man was found sitting in a chair in his living room. He had been dead for more than a year, his body mummified by the dry air. When authorities entered the apartment, the TV was still on.
It was another L.A. story. A sad and horrific story. But what resonated for Lena was the fact that the old man had died alone. That no one had checked on him or seemed to care. That he didn’t have a lifeline-some connection between himself and the outside world.
Chewing it over, she wondered if she had a lifeline. Someone who checked on her and seemed to care.
She pulled out of the garage, the story following her into the bright daylight-that feeling of loneliness lingering in the smoky air as she stubbed out that second cigarette. Winding her way around Parker Center and through the city, she reached the 10 Freeway and decided to head west. She wanted another look at Jennifer McBride’s apartment on Navy Street. A quiet look on her own. But she needed to get away, too. She needed a time-out to regroup and put things in perspective.
The freeway was moving, the drive across town taking no more than half an hour. As she found a place to park two doors down from the building and got out, she spotted the patrol car at the end of the street. Pacific Division was keeping a loose eye on the place just in case the witness showed up. No one thought that he would. Even though the kid had retrieved the victim’s purse and everything inside it at the Cock-a-doodle-do, the risk of breaking into a murder victim’s apartment seemed over the top. She had forgotten to mention it to the chief. But things had been so bad, she didn’t think that it would have made a difference if she had.
She let the thought go, fishing through her briefcase for the keys. When she got the lobby door open, Jones was waiting for her.
“Why did you put that stupid lock on the door?” he shouted.
She looked up and saw him glaring at her. The small, troll-like man with the damaged eyes hadn’t bothered to dress. He was standing by his door in his boxer shorts and that old tank top. Even from a distance, Lena could tell that he still needed a bath.
“It’s a crime scene, Jones. Go back inside.”
“When can I get rid of her shit and rent the place out? She’s dead, isn’t she? What the fuck’s the difference now?”
“Go back inside.”
“But I want my money,” he said. “I need it.”
She started up the steps, then turned back when she remembered what Jones had done to Jennifer McBride’s rental application. That bottle of "Wite-Out he used to erase her security deposit and pocket the cash.
“You already got the money,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Did you really think that we wouldn’t notice?”
“Notice what?”
“Her rental application, Jones. You altered it. You stole her security deposit. Two thousand bucks.”
His face reddened. He didn’t say anything.
“There’s a cop down the street,” she said. “Do you want me to call him? Do you want to spend the next two years in jail? Or, are you gonna go back inside, get your copy of her application out, and fix what you did?”
“But she’s dead.”
“Your choice, Jones.”
He didn’t spend much time thinking it over. When the door slammed, Lena took a deep breath and trudged up the steps to Jennifer McBride’s apartment. The door had been sealed with crime scene tape. And Kline had added a hasp and padlock. Just enough to set Jones off.
Lena got inside and closed the door behind her. As she stood in the dark foyer, she took another deep breath and wondered if she had made a mistake by coming here. The place was too quiet. Too black. And the day had started off with an overdose of the abhorrent. Two experiences with two people so foul that she could taste it in her mouth.
But there was something else here. Something more. As she first entered the apartment, she became aware of the victim’s scent. It only lasted for a split second, dissipating in the air just as she noticed-but it had been there. And it wasn’t the soap the woman had used, or even the perfume that Lena had smelled twice before. It was her person, lingering behind. Her body. Her physical being, six days gone.
Lena didn’t know whether she could handle this right now. Like maybe the timing was off and five or six shots of tequila with salt and lime would do her good.
She switched on the lamp and gazed through the French doors into the living room. She had forgotten how barren the place was. Not a single photograph. Not a letter from a friend. Just the basics. One set of sheets and a pair of bath towels. Enough clothing to pack a suitcase. Enough lingerie to fill a duffel bag so that Jennifer McBride could make a buck.
Lena glanced inside the bedroom, deciding to enter when she spotted the snow globe on the bedside table. She picked it up and gazed at the snow falling over Las Vegas. The Bellagio Hotel and Caesar’s Palace. All the streets painted a bright gold. Although Barrera had managed to get the story on five stations in Nevada, the response from viewers matched the response here in Los Angeles.
Lena rubbed her thumb over the glass, thinking that its meaning for whoever Jane Doe really was didn’t point to where she came from. It would have been too easy if it had. Instead, the object was probably nothing more than a souvenir from a weekend visit. Or, maybe only a gift from a client or a friend.
She set the snow globe down and returned to the living room. Moving to the couch, she opened her briefcase and pulled out the murder book. The Field Interview cards Kline had sent with the key to the padlock were in the back. She pulled them out, sorting them on the coffee table. Her sole interest was with the tenants living in the building, not the total number of people contacted when Pacific Division canvassed the neighborhood. Other than Jones and the victim, there were six names, and Kline had told her that he conducted these interviews himself. She trusted the detective. They had gone through the academy together and he had played a role in her last case. She skimmed through the cards, rereading his notes. But every card was exactly the same. Every interview, almost identical. The young woman calling herself Jennifer McBride lived a private life. No one in the building knew her. Over the past year, no one really talked to her. She was attractive, had a great smile, but kept to herself and was always seen alone.
Lena set the cards down, that story on KFWB resurfacing in her mind. The story about the old man who died in his living room and sat for a year in front of his TV before anyone noticed. The man without a lifeline.
She lay back on the couch, thinking it over and wondering why this mysterious woman-the woman who cast spells-didn’t have a lifeline, either. No connection between her real identity and the life that she was living under another name. No connection left behind just in case something went wrong.
The more Lena considered the circumstances, the less sense it made. The victim had obviously been too smart, her theft of Jennifer McBride’s identity too thorough. The life she was living had been too risky to not include some sort of an out pitch, some kind of an insurance policy. A lifeline back to the real world and the people who knew her and loved her.
She woke up in the dim light, her body flinching as it broke the surface. She turned and looked back at the lamp on the foyer table. Sat up and stared at the fire escape outside the windows. Night had fallen, the marine layer had rolled in-and she was still in Jennifer McBride’s apartment.
She checked her watch. It was seven-thirty and she’d been asleep for hours. She didn’t understand it. The loss of control worried her.
Lena got up and crossed the room to the window, sorting through the events of the day she couldn’t seem to face. But as her eyes climbed the brick wall on the other side of the alley, everything came to a sudden stop.
That man with the wool cap and the binoculars was staring at her through the fog. Staring at her and not looking away.
She glanced back at the couch, calculating the angle. When she realized that his view included most of the living room, she stopped calculating and drew the curtains. She didn’t really need to do the math. The day was already too rich, too good.
She stepped into the kitchen, splashing her face with warm water. Her mind was still going, and it felt like a migraine was waving at her from an hour or two down the road. She thought she remembered seeing a bottle of Tylenol when she and Rhodes made their initial search. Switching on the overhead light, she found it in the cabinet beside several bottles of vitamins.
The Tylenol was new and she picked out the cotton. After filling a glass with tap water, she popped two caplets and noticed a piece of scratch paper on the counter beside the stove.
It was a grocery list. Lettuce, yogart, bread, and cheese. Four or five basic items the victim had jotted down before her death.
For some reason she found it hard to look at. She thought about her meeting with the chief again. Her confrontation with Jones in the lobby. The pervert with the wool cap watching her sleep. As the moments faded, her eyes drifted back to that grocery list that had been left behind and was no longer needed. She felt the sting and wondered why it was always the small things about a victim’s life that brought a murder home.
Lena flipped the paper over in frustration, but froze before she could shake her head. The grocery list hadn’t been scrawled out on a piece of scratch paper. Instead, the victim had used the back of a script from her doctor.
She whisked the paper off the counter, holding it closer to the light and trying to keep her emotions in check. She saw Jennifer McBride’s name and a drug called Synthroid. The words were barely legible, but they were here. The name of the doctor who prescribed the medication was here as well, along with an office address and phone number, printed neatly at the top.
Everything about the script looked legit.
She packed up the murder book, locked the door, and hustled downstairs. Hitting the sidewalk, she saw Jones keeping watch with his ruined eyes from the window. The clouds were tumbling in at street level, the air, pitch black and raw. She knew that he couldn’t see her in the fog, and even if he could, she didn’t care.
Her car was parked two doors down. As she picked up her pace, she noticed another man exiting the next building. His body was silhouetted in the darkness, but she could see him shouldering a book bag. In spite of the cold, it looked like all he had on were a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He crossed the street, moving away from her into the mist. His gate appeared smooth and easy, like he didn’t know that she was even there. Still, she kept an eye on him and watched as he clicked the remote on his key ring. She heard the alarm chirp and saw the headlights blink. And that’s when she spotted the wool cap.
“Hey, you,” she shouted.
He stopped and turned from half a block away, his face lost in the gloom. Lena searched for the patrol car at the end of the street, didn’t see it in the wall of fog, and turned back. Then the man jumped into his car and pulled out.
Her eyes flicked down to the license plate, but the car seemed new and she didn’t think it was there. She heard the tires screeching on the wet asphalt-watched the car shimmering in and out of the darkness and ghosting as it picked up speed. It was an SRX Crossover. When it rolled beneath a street light, she caught a glimpse of the color before it vanished into the December night. She had seen a similar color on a Lexus SC coupe and liked it. Radiant bronze. At least the perv had taste.