City of Fire, page 3
part #1 of Lena Gamble Series
Lena noticed the SID van pulling around the corner.
“What’s your dog’s name?”
“Louie,” the man said with pride.
“Make sure you tell the officers about Louie when they stop by.”
The man nodded. She pulled a business card from her pocket, a generic card provided by the department, and filled in the blank spaces with her name and phone number. She had placed an order for preprinted cards last week. Like her cell phone, she would have to pick up the expense on her own. She passed the card over, then asked for the man’s name and phone number. Shielding her notepad from the drizzle, she wrote the information down and drew a circle around the time the dog started barking last night. It was only a hunch, but odds were that the deputy coroner and pathologist would match it with the time of death.
Slipping her notepad into her blazer pocket, she thanked the man and headed down the street. But as she passed a hedgerow, her view cleared and she slowed down to take in the death house through the mist. It was an older home, probably built in the 1920s, and had the feel of a one-story gatehouse leading to something bigger hidden in the foliage. The exterior walls were a mix of smooth river rock and cedar clapboard that had been stained a dark brown. Patches of emerald green moss marred the slate roof along the seams. Behind the house she could see a grove of sycamores and two huge oak trees. The canopy overhead looked particularly thick. Even on a clear day, she doubted the place got much sun.
She stretched the crime scene tape overhead and stepped beneath it. Then a cop handed her a clipboard, and she signed in with her name and badge number. As she crossed the yard to the drive, she sensed the tension in the air. Crime scene techs were readying their equipment, absorbed in their tasks, speaking in whispers if they spoke at all. She looked for a familiar face but didn’t recognize anyone. All except for the burly figure with the coffee-and-cream skin hopping off the back of the SID van. Lamar Newton flashed an uneasy smile her way, scratched his head, then sat on the rear gate and opened his camera bag. They had known each other since the bust at Rustic Canyon Park. Two cameras equipped with night-vision lenses had been mounted in the trees overhead. While Lena met with Rafi Miller, Lamar sat in the community center, documenting the event on videotape. Lena and Lamar shared a bond after that night, working well together ever since.
She stepped around the coroner’s van and found Novak standing on a six-foot ladder, clipping a blue tarp to the rain spout. He seemed concerned with the view from Brooktree Road and took a sip from a can of Diet Coke as he made an adjustment. If the press arrived, they would come with cameras and long lenses, maybe even tip-readers. Novak was trying to buy some privacy.
“You made good time,” he said, climbing down.
His smile was forced. She caught the ragged look in his blue eyes, the gray overtaking his blond hair, his ashen skin. He looked ten years older than he did before they’d grabbed a day off. She felt her stomach begin churning again.
“You took a peek,” she said.
He nodded. Novak was the first one here and had to look.
“How bad is it?”
He didn’t say anything right away. Instead, he turned toward his unmarked car backed into the drive across the street. Lena followed his gaze. An identical car was parked beside it. She could see Tito Sanchez sitting in the front seat beside a man she didn’t know. He looked about thirty and appeared distraught, and Lena guessed that Nikki Brant had a husband.
“Remember Teresa Lopez?” Novak asked in a low voice.
The memory registered. Her partner didn’t need to say anything more.
They may still have been getting used to each other, but Hank Novak was easily the best partner Lena had ever had. At six foot one he was taller than her by three inches, but they always seemed to stand eye to eye. Their friendship had begun the moment Lieutenant Barrera introduced them and asked Novak to show Lena her desk. He seemed pleased with the partnership rather than burdened and did everything he could to make her feel comfortable as he showed her around. Novak was divorced but had three daughters, and Lena could tell that he liked women, which was important to her. Although retirement was a favorite subject, and the front seat of his car was littered with travel brochures and fishing magazines, he loved talking about his twenty-seven years as a cop. The mistakes he’d made, and what he’d learned as a result. Lena often wondered how Novak managed to survive with his humanity intact and hoped that she would be as lucky.
She pulled a fresh pair of vinyl gloves from the box she kept in her briefcase and slipped them on.
“Where’s Rhodes?”
“Inside stretching tape,” Novak said. “The body’s in the bedroom. That’s James Brant in the car with Tito. He says he got home around five-thirty after doing an all-nighter at work. When he found his wife, he dialed nine one one.”
She took another look at James Brant, concerned that he might have contaminated the crime scene.
“How long was he in the house alone?”
“About half an hour. West L.A. had him in their cruiser when I pulled up. Brant says he didn’t touch anything. That he never got past the bedroom doorway. He took one look and made the call.”
“What about West L.A.?”
“They never entered the room. They backed out and sent the paramedics home. The case got bumped to us based on the view from the bedroom door.”
The view from the bedroom door.
Lena tried not to think about it, but she knew that it was already seared into Novak’s brain by the way he drained the can of Diet Coke as if it were a Bud Light and he could still drink beer. As she turned away, Stan Rhodes walked outside carrying a spent roll of crime scene tape. He looked at her with those dark eyes of his, something he hadn’t done since she was promoted to RHD. They shared a history, but Lena didn’t want to deal with it right now. His gaze appeared steady and even, the way it used to be, and she guessed that Rhodes was looking at the situation just as she was.
“It’s clear all the way to the body,” he said to her. “SID ready?”
Novak answered for Lena. “In a minute.”
“I’ll meet you guys in the foyer,” she said.
“Sounds good,” Rhodes said quietly. “But I wouldn’t wander too far down the hall.”
LENA stepped over the threshold into the death house. She might have been anxious, but she also wanted to get a feel for the way Nikki and James Brant lived before the investigation really got started. It had been her practice ever since she’d shed her uniform, particularly when entering a home with a dead body. She wanted a clean view, an unbiased first impression no matter how sketchy, before her mind was forever jaded by the sight of the victim and how they met their end.
The house was smaller than she first thought—about thirteen hundred square feet. And the layout was more open than most homes of the same period. From where she stood in the foyer, she had a partial view of the kitchen on her left and the living room through the archway. To her right was a small den and the hallway leading to the back of the house.
Nothing seemed out of place. There were no obvious signs of a struggle. Just the yellow tape Rhodes had strung across the entrances to each room and along the walls, roughing out a safe zone down the hall to the bedroom in the very back.
The murder room.
Lena looked away, sensing a chill in the air. It felt almost as cold inside as it was out. She glanced at the table and mirror opposite the front door and spotted a thermostat on the wall, wondering why the heat wasn’t on. Digging into her pocket for her notepad, she wrote down the temperature, then took another look at the table. The lamp was still burning, and she noted the lack of dust, the faint scent of polish. The house had recently been cleaned. Not yesterday or even last night in order to cover something up, but sometime over the past week. Dust and the story it left behind was a tech’s best friend. No one from SID would be pleased.
Lena turned to a blank page in her notepad and made a rough sketch of the floor plan. Peeking into the kitchen, she noted the stack of newspapers by the breakfast table and the dinner dishes set beside the sink. There weren’t many dishes, and she figured it had been dinner for one last night.
When she moved to the archway, she noticed the lack of furniture in the living room. Pressing her body against the crime scene tape, she leaned forward for a better view. The ceiling was vaulted, the rear wall lined entirely by glass. Through the French doors she could see a flagstone terrace giving way to a sizable backyard enclosed by a fence. She looked back at the empty room, searching for personal items but not finding any. Just a TV on the floor set beside a boom box and short stack of CDs.
Lena turned to the front door, saw Lamar Newton asking Novak a question in the driveway, and crossed the foyer for a quick look at the den. The walls were lined with books, but the shelves were built-ins. The only furniture in the room was an old leather couch and a small wooden desk and chair that seemed better suited for a child. A table lamp was set on the floor. In lieu of a coffee table, fifteen oversize books were spread out on the white carpet as if someone had been studying them from the floor. A path had been cleared from where Lena stood in the foyer to the computer on the desk.
She thought it over, cataloging the inventory in her head. In spite of the address, money had been an issue for Nikki and James Brant. Their home was nearly empty. What they owned could easily fit into a van or small trailer. Yet a presence was here. Something extra Lena couldn’t put her finger on.
Her eyes drifted down to the books laid out on the carpet. They were filled with works of art. Paintings, sculptures, but also buildings dating from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. Lena recognized one of the books on architecture because she’d read it as a student at UCLA before she’d ever dreamed or even thought about being a cop.
She looked back at the shelves, scanning the titles with surprise when she didn’t find a single work of fiction. At eye level every book was about business. At knee level the subject switched to art.
“We’re ready, Lena,” Novak said in low voice.
She turned to the door. He was entering the foyer with Rhodes. Lamar followed them in, along with Ed Gainer, an investigator from the coroner’s office Lena had met several times. Their preliminary sweep would remain small.
“Let’s do it,” Rhodes said.
They started down the hall. They moved slowly, without words, the only sound coming from the hardwood floor creaking beneath their feet. Closet doors and a laundry room filled out the left wall. They passed a bathroom on the right, halfway down, and didn’t stop until they reached the door at the end. The reason the case had been bumped up to them.
Rhodes gave her a look. She saw the deputy coroner flinch and thought she heard Lamar whisper, “Oh, shit.” She gritted her teeth and peered into the room.
The curtains were drawn, the handles tapping in the breeze. It took a moment for her to realize that the walls had once been painted white. That she wasn’t standing in a slaughter-house at the edge of civilization, but in someone’s home on a quiet street. She took a deep breath and exhaled. There was more blood than she had ever seen. The spatter fanned out from the middle of the room, blowing against the walls, dusting the vaulted ceiling, and splashing across the floor. Yet in the center of the room, the eye of the storm, there was a certain peace. A small body, seemingly at rest, was carefully posed beneath a clean white bedspread.
It wasn’t a murder room, she thought. It was a death chamber.
Lena’s eyes cut through the darkness, searching out the victim’s face. When she couldn’t find it, she realized that the young woman’s head was wrapped in a plastic grocery bag.
“Watch the steps,” Rhodes whispered under his breath.
Lena glanced down at her feet. Like the living room, the bedroom was three steps below the rest of the house. As she followed the crime scene tape, she wondered how Rhodes had managed to find a clean path to the body. The task seemed impossible, but somehow he had.
She needed a moment to collect herself. When the blue-shaded room lit up in a quick succession of white flashes, she stepped out of Lamar’s way and joined Novak and Rhodes at the foot of the bed. She noticed a photograph set beside the clock radio on the dresser. She glanced at the picture without touching the silver frame. Nikki and James Brant were sitting in a field of grass with their arms around each other. They seemed so innocent, so happy. Lost in their dreams and ready to face a future together that didn’t include this.
Lena shook it off and moved to the open window, parting the curtains and checking the floor and sill for blood. Next to the body itself, she knew the point of entry was the most likely place to find blood. She didn’t see any and wondered if the open window was in play. Moving closer, she drew fresh air into her lungs and studied the backyard. The fog had become more dense, lingering beneath the roofline and settling onto the ground. Still, she could make out the faint outline of a tennis court on the other side of the fence and knew that she was looking at Rustic Canyon Park.
She turned back to Lamar, watching him cover the body in wide shots and close-ups. After burning through a roll of film, he pulled the camera away from his eye and gave her a look. The department had upgraded to digital cameras a few years back but still relied on film to record crime scenes.
“Let’s pull the covers,” Novak said in a low voice.
Lena stepped out of the safe zone and worked her way around the spatter to the far side of the bed.
“I’m going to pull the spread off first,” she said. “There might be something underneath.”
Novak agreed. “Nice and slow,” he said.
She gripped the spread with both hands and pulled it away to reveal a white blanket. Two plumes of blood had risen from the body and were oozing through the fabric like lamp oil working its way through a wick toward the flame. As Lamar popped in another roll of film and documented the bloodstains, Lena pointed to Nikki Brant’s neck, which had become more visible now. The plastic bag hadn’t been draped over the woman’s head, but was wrapped around her neck and carefully tied into a bow.
Lamar zeroed in on the knot from the other side of the bed. Lena looked back at the bag, trying to decipher the print through the spatter with the hope of identifying the grocery store. When she leaned in for a closer look, she flinched. She could see the young woman’s face through the opaque plastic. Every time Lamar’s camera flashed, the image became clearer and more eerie. Nikki Brant’s eyes were open. And it looked as if she were staring back at Lena through the smoky plastic—as if for a split second their eyes met.
An ice-cold chill ran up Lena’s spine. She took a deep breath.
Lamar lowered his camera. “Got it, Lena,” he said.
She nodded, ignoring the horror and struggling to keep it buried. Gripping the blanket, she pulled it away, carefully folding it over without touching the bedspread. The small body was beginning to take shape beneath the covers now, the two bloodstains more pronounced. When she noticed an extra blanket pushed against the foot of the bed, she pointed it out to Lamar. Once the image was recorded, she gripped the top sheet with both hands and peeled the final layer away to reveal Nikki Brant’s dead body.
A stillness permeated the room. No one moved or said anything for several moments as the weight of the horror nipped and pulled at them.
Dwarfed by the size of the bed, Nikki Brant looked like a child.
She was lying on her back with her legs spread open. Her hands had been placed beside her hips and, like her head, bound in plastic and tied around her wrists. Her body was soft and curvy. Her breasts small and round and tattooed with bruises. Semen stains dotted the sheet between her legs and appeared wet but smeared. But it was the two stab wounds that played with Lena’s soul. The first was just below the collarbone. A through and through that looked clean but unusually wide, almost as if she had been speared. The second wound looked more jagged, the knife ripping upward through her belly. Based on the heavy amount of blood loss and the condition of the room, Lena had no doubt that the young woman was alive through most of the ordeal.
“We need to think about what we’re seeing,” Rhodes said in a voice that was barely audible. “Whether we’re looking at things the way they really are, or the way someone wants us to think they are.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Novak said.
Lena took a step closer, eyeing the wounds carefully. She had seen them once before, but never in this context.
“It’s called the juke,” she said. “I saw it working a dope deal with South L.A.”
“Gangs do it for the effect,” Novak said. “They think the brutality impresses their friends.”
Lena stepped away from the bed as Lamar moved in with his camera, her mind rattling through possible motives. Nothing she saw so far indicated a robbery. There wasn’t anything in the house worth stealing other than Nikki Brant.
Parting the curtains, she took another look at the park beyond the fence and wondered what the view would be like on a clear day. The view from a car parked in the lot at night. This was about anger, she thought. A six-pack of anger. Somebody overdosing on rage.
When she turned back to the room, Gainer had approached the bed and was examining the body. The sheet was still partially covering the young woman’s left foot, and he pulled it away, then jerked his hand up. No one said anything, eye-balling the foot and doing the math. Nikki Brant’s second toe was missing. Something had been taken from the house after all.
Gainer shrugged off the horror as best he could, his face pale, his eyes rising up the body until they reached the plastic bag over the victim’s head.
“I don’t think we should pull this thing,” he said. “Not here anyway. There might be something inside worth preserving. What do you guys think?”
“We need a picture of her face,” Rhodes said. “A Polaroid to show the husband. And we’re gonna need a rape kit.”
“I understand,” Gainer said. “But if we pull the bag at the autopsy, we’ll have more control.”
