Kill Count (Detective Marcy Kendrick Book 4), page 3
4
CATCHING UP OVER NACHOS
MARCY
The precinct was busy when I arrived, it always was, but as I pulled into the lot, a call came in to all available patrol to head to the 101, as there was a ten-car pileup. My heart sank hearing it. Officers flew out of the lot like a jar of fireflies being opened, with their lights blazing. I really hoped there weren’t too many injured and that they stayed safe out there.
I headed in and met up with Angel near our desks in the detective pool. “Hey, let’s go talk to the captain.” I smiled at him tentatively. I hated feeling like I was walking on eggshells around him, it made things awkward, and I didn’t want things to be awkward between us.
“One sec,” he said as he typed something on his phone. “Texting Callie.”
“How is she doing?” I asked as I put my purse away in my desk.
He glanced up and grinned. “She’s good. I’m meeting her for lunch.” He paused and then offered, “You want to join us?”
“No, thanks, I’m meeting Stephen; he’s back from that trip to Mexico with Yazmine.”
“Oh, cool, it’ll be good for you to catch up with him.” He stood up and put his phone in his pocket. “Ready?”
I nodded, and we headed for Jason’s desk. He just waved us toward the door.
“He’s expecting you,” he said as he picked up the phone.
I knocked twice on the wooden door and heard Robinson call us in. “Good morning, sir.”
“Kendrick, Reyes, come in. Burnett with you?”
“No, sir. She’s going to meet us at the lab tomorrow morning to go over the CSI and autopsy reports and hopefully give us what she’s got on El Gato.”
“Have a seat.” He gestured toward the chairs in front of his desk.
I sat down and looked at Robinson. He was still a bit underweight, but he seemed to be in a good mood, which was nice. His divorce had taken its toll on him, and he’d been a little lost for a while. Now he was living in a fifty-five-plus condo community, and he looked like he was getting some sun. His face looked less stressed, and he seemed happier.
“What’s the case look like?” he asked.
“So we’ve got a deceased actress, no known cause of death yet, but she was in a bathtub full of bleach and water, so she didn’t get in there herself, though there are no marks of a struggle.”
“Okay, and what’s this connection Burnett found to El Gato?”
“A playing card left at the scene. The queen of hearts from a Black Cat playing deck,” I shared.
“Sir,” Angel interjected, “I don’t understand why she’s horning in on this case. It’s clearly a homicide and possibly connected to El Gato, I get that, but it’s not like the victim was a drug dealer or anything.”
“No, you’re right about that, Reyes, but the playing card is concerning. She must have a bigger connection to El Gato than just a client for him to have sent an assassin after her. I’ve heard rumors that an assassin named El Vibora is in town.” Robinson’s voice was laced with concern.
El Vibora wasn’t a name I was familiar with. All these Spanish nicknames were very gang-like in my opinion, and that just made me want to toss the whole case back at Vice and be done with it, but something made me hesitate suggesting that. It was the thought that maybe this assassin wasn’t done, and there were going to be more deaths. In my opinion, assassin was just another name for serial killer. Assassins, though, were generally motivated by money rather than the actual killing, like most of the serial killers I was used to. In a way that made them more dangerous. Assassins had a unique understanding of law enforcement and were generally former military or government men—not necessarily from the US—who were either burned and went rogue, or cut loose for some reason that usually wasn’t in our best interest. They generally sold themselves to the highest bidders and became mercenaries.
“Sir, what do you know of El Gato?” I asked. “And what is his connection with the assassin you mentioned?”
“As far as I know, we don’t have El Gato’s actual identity, though Burnett has been working on it for the past decade. Every time she gets close, her informant ends up dead. She hasn’t been able to get close to the main man or any of his inner circle. His identity is very well protected. Drugs connected to him have been found with a black cat on the packaging. We’re actually not even sure he is living here in LA, he could be down in Mexico, and his men here. Most likely whoever killed Ruby did it for El Gato.”
“Valerie’s been on this case for ten years and hasn’t even identified exactly who this guy is?” I asked. “Could it be that El Gato is more than one person? Maybe it’s a corporation?”
“That’s a thought, but from everything I’ve heard, he’s a man, people have met him, but they don’t get his real name,” Robinson replied.
“People are afraid of him,” Angel added. “Him and El Vibora.”
“I get that El Gato is cat, so the black cat makes sense, but El Vee Borda? What is that?”
“It’s Spanish. It’s not a D sound, but a rolled R,” Angel replied. “Vibora. It means viper.” He looked at the captain. “Sir, if El Vibora killed this actress, then she was most likely poisoned, probably via drugs.”
Robinson nodded. “I agree. I know the DEA has also been after El Gato, so we may have to loop them in as well on this case if it proves to be bigger than this one death, but we’ll hold back on this for now. Work the case as if it’s a singular death until we know more. If El Gato is cleaning house, and using El Vibora to do it, we could have a lot more deaths coming.”
“Great,” I muttered.
“Or could just be a one-off,” Angel said. “Maybe this actress got too close to him? Knew his real name or something? We should do that deep dive into her life, see who she associated with.”
“That’s a good idea. Maybe we can figure out what Burnett hasn’t been able to do for ten years.” The woman was a pain in the ass, and the idea of achieving something she couldn’t made me smile. Was that petty? Yes, but I still wanted to do it.
“Speaking of Burnett,” Robinson started, a look of annoyance crossing his face, “tread lightly with her. She’s temperamental and very territorial when it comes to anything related to El Gato. She’s outlived numerous partners over the years in the chase. She’s become paranoid and hard to work with because she doesn’t trust others.”
“We’ll stay respectful,” I replied, not willing to do more than that. I didn’t like Valerie, and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise.
“Thank you. Keep me updated on what you find.”
I took that as our dismissal and stood. “We will, sir.” I tilted my head toward the door as I looked at Angel. “Let’s get started.”
Back at our desks, Angel said, “I’ll get started on her financials; you want to take her social media?”
“Sure, that works. What kind of actress is she, anyway?” I asked. “You ever heard of her before today?”
Angel snickered. “Oh yeah. She wasn’t a mainstream actress; she was best known for doing porn.”
“She was a porn star?” I rolled my eyes. “Because of course she was.”
Angel’s snicker turned into a full-blown laugh. “She was known for doing a lot of the kinky stuff.”
“Great. Incognito on my browser it is. Lord knows I don’t need to be inundated with ads for whatever crazy stuff she was into.” I sighed.
I set up my browser to keep the search engine from sending my research to third and fourth parties. I typed the name Ruby Gold into the browser and started looking into who she was and what her life was like online. Wikipedia said she was born Brenda Sheller; she was twenty-six years old, had blonde hair, brown eyes, stood five feet seven, from Lansing, Michigan. Her parents were both deceased. She’d come to LA about six years ago, changed her name and her looks to match a Kardashian, and shot to international fame by doing porn. I scrolled through some of the titles of the shows she’d done.
“All the King’s Men?” I murmured. My eyes widened as I realized what kind of porno that was, but then I saw another titled All the Queen’s Maidens and noticed that Ruby Gold would have sex with anyone who had a pulse, it seemed. I looked over at Angel. “She didn’t do anything with animals, right?” I asked before looking further. I didn’t want to see that.
He guffawed. “No, she didn’t do bestiality. Just about everything else though.”
I shuddered. “She’s got, like, three hundred shows to her name,” I said, shaking my head.
“You wouldn’t know it by looking at her bank account. I mean, yeah, she had a lot of incoming money, but it went out almost as fast as she made it.”
“I’m moving on to her socials; keep digging, see what the pattern is.”
“I will, looks like her house payment was the biggest logged debt, but there are cash withdrawals for high sums of money. I’ll keep digging.”
I moved on to her Instagram page and found she liked to post shots of her shopping trips to Rodeo Drive. She bragged about spending $40,000 on a dress. That was more than some people made in a year. To spend that amount on a dress was insane. It wasn’t even that nice, and it looked really uncomfortable.
I scrolled through her page, making notes of the people she mentioned. Samson Martinez was mentioned often, and I realized he was her manager, so that made some sense. There were other actors she was associated with and a few very wealthy businessmen. I wrote down all the names, no matter who they were.
At eleven fifteen, I shut down my computer. “I’m going to head out and meet Stephen; what time are you meeting Callie?” I asked Angel, and grabbed my purse from the drawer.
“At noon.”
“Hey, when you were talking to the front desk, did you happen to ask about surveillance cameras?”
“No, I was”—he paused and looked back at his computer—“I wasn’t thinking. We should go back over there after lunch.”
“I was just thinking the same. Maybe Lindsey will have found something for us to run on as well, if they’re still there.”
“I’ll keep digging until I have to meet Callie. Have a good lunch. Tell Stephen hey from me.”
“I will.” I waved and headed out.
It didn’t take me long to reach the restaurant. Stephen was already there at a table with a plate of nachos waiting for me.
He stood up when he saw me and gave me a hug. “Hey, sis. How’s work?”
I sank down and grabbed a chip, eating it as I realized I was as starving as I’d thought I’d be. “Busy, as usual.” I gave him a quick rundown on what I’d been up to, but really no more information than what he’d see on the news. “Angel says hi.”
“Hi back to him. How’s he doing? Is he still dating that hairstylist? What was her name?”
“Callie. Yeah, he’s meeting her for lunch, but…” I stopped myself from voicing the troubling thoughts that came to mind.
“But?”
“I don’t know. He’s just been a bit…” I shook my head. “He’s been acting a bit annoyed or jealous or something whenever I mention Frank, which makes me think that maybe he and Callie aren’t doing as well as he makes it seem.”
“You think he’s jealous of your relationship with Frank because he doesn’t have that with Callie?”
“Maybe?” I wasn’t sure if that was it or not. It felt more personal, but I really didn’t want to put that in words.
“He’ll get over it, whatever it is,” Stephen suggested. “How’s Frank?”
A grin swept over my lips. “Frank is great. We were supposed to go to the beach today, but I got called back in to work.”
“That sucks.”
“It is what it is. Goes with the territory,” I said as our waitress approached. We both gave her our orders, and then I said, “So how’s Yazmine? How was Mexico?”
“She’s great. Mexico was amazing. We went deep-sea fishing. I caught a huge mahi-mahi; you should have seen it, Marce. It was incredible.” He went on to describe the experience and all the things they did, and showed me pictures on his phone from his trip as we ate.
“I’m glad you two had a great time.” I smiled at him. “Hey, I was thinking of having a barbeque soon at my new place. You and Yazmine up for that?” I had met her about a month ago, and she was still a bit shy and standoffish around me, being afraid of the fact I was a cop, but she was making an effort and so was I.
“Yeah, that sounds nice. Do you like having a house now?” he asked, eating the last of his food.
“It’s different, certainly. No neighbors directly on top of me, nor below me, nor on the other side of the walls. So weird. And the space, I still have empty rooms.” I grinned. “I’m thinking of turning the third bedroom into a workout room.”
He grinned. “You mean I could come work out at your place instead of going to the gym? That would be great; they raised their prices again.”
I shook my head and laughed. “I was thinking a yoga mat and maybe a treadmill and some light weights, not lifting benches and stuff, but sure.” I thought about the large room, it would hold those as well, and I could probably pick up some used ones fairly cheaply.
“One of those stationary bikes with the electronic course programs might be good too.”
“We’ll have to measure the room and see if it will all fit. You want to help me?”
“Sure.”
My phone buzzed for the twentieth time in my pocket. I’d been attempting to ignore it, but I knew he wasn’t going to stop, so I pulled it out. Jordan. “Damn it. I’m going to have to block him,” I muttered.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s Jordan. He keeps blowing up my phone, blaming me for everything wrong in his life. He’s gotten more and more unstable since he was fired.” I was annoyed by the distraction he was causing in my life.
“You haven’t been answering him, have you?”
“No, mostly been deleting them without reading them.”
“You should get a restraining order. I don’t like that he’s harassing you. Forward that shit to me, and I’ll keep a record of everything for you so you don’t have to deal with it.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said and sent the messages that had accumulated over the last couple of hours to him. It was nice having a brother who was an IT specialist.
We finished up our meal and paid our tab, then headed out. “I’ll let you know about the barbeque, okay?” I said as I hugged him goodbye.
“Sure, and I’ll stop by sometime and measure the room.”
“Be safe; there was a big accident on the 101 this morning,” I said, opening my car door.
“I heard about that. No deaths, thankfully. You be safe too, sis.”
I watched him in my rearview mirror as I pulled out of the parking lot. It had been nice to catch up with him, but now my mind was back on the case. I really hoped there was something in those surveillance videos that would help us catch this viper assassin. I didn’t like the thought of him running loose in my city.
I needed to catch him fast.
5
BACK AT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
ANGEL
Lunch with Callie had been nice and helped me to let go of the jealousy I’d been dealing with all morning over the fact that Marcy had spent the night with Frank. I was glad she was happy and in a good relationship. Honestly, I was. But a small part of me wished it were me she was with, and occasionally that green-eyed monster got the best of me, and I couldn’t get thoughts of her out of my head. This morning was one of those days.
We were best friends, partners. I loved her, and I’d do anything for her. She held a good chunk of my heart in her hands, but I didn’t think she was aware of that. No matter how much I wished things could be different for us, that we could be together, it just wasn’t going to happen. Not only had the brass implemented a new departmental policy about significant others not working together—all thanks to Jordan and his bizarre behavior over the last year—we both knew it was a very bad idea because we worked so close together. It was for the best that we stayed just friends.
However that didn’t stop my brain from reacting when she mentioned being with Frank. Most days I could control it, could be happy for her, but this morning I hadn’t been expecting her to tell me she’d spent the night in Santa Monica with him. Of course, I knew that they were together, that she’d stayed at his place before, and he at hers, but normally I could compartmentalize those thoughts. It was just that I had been blindsided by it today.
As I walked into the precinct and into the detective pool, I saw her seated at her desk, her hair, which was in a bun at the base of her neck, doing its best to escape the confines she’d put it in. She looked different in her casual attire than she did on the daily in her suit. She seemed more relaxed and approachable. Softer even. I liked seeing her like this.
Marcy looked up and smiled, but it seemed almost hesitant, like she was afraid I was going to jump down her throat. I regretted once again how I’d treated her this morning. She didn’t deserve that. She’d done nothing wrong.
“Hey, ready to go?” she said as I got closer.
I smiled at her, a genuine smile. “Sure, you wanna drive?” I knew she preferred to drive, and I didn’t care either way.
“I can,” she replied, picking her purse up.
We were quiet in the car for the first few minutes, and I wondered if she was still feeling like she had to tiptoe around me. I hated that I’d made her feel that way. I did my best to get us back on proper footing. I wanted her to be easy around me. I didn’t like this awkwardness between us. It made things tense, and I just wanted our friendship back on course. Maybe I needed to take another trip with Callie, get my head and heart refocused on her.
To break the silence, I asked, “How was Stephen? Did he have a good trip?”
“Sure did; he caught a mahi-mahi.” She smiled over at me, and her entire face lit up.
“Nice. I’ve been thinking about taking a vacation down there, visiting some relatives, take Callie and introduce her to them. Maybe I’ll do some fishing too.”
