City of Echoes (8 page)

Matt took it in hard and grimaced. It felt like all the air in his lungs had made a rush for the exit in a single instant. He settled back into the passenger seat, considering what had just happened.

Another murder like the others.

The drive up Beachwood Canyon to the Hollywood sign was more difficult than expected. More of a winding, mazelike journey past homes strewn through the steep hills and wrapped around every curve. It was a dark night. The air still had a bite to it, and the wind had picked up, as if January had arrived three months early. When they gained elevation, Matt could see the carpet of lights from homes on the Westside vanishing as the marine layer swept through the basin like an ocean wave over sand.

The caravan finally reached the communication tower and parking area within the fence at the top of Mount Lee. Matt pulled two flashlights out of the glove box and tossed one over to Cabrera as they got out. Grace led the way down the hill. He was moving fast, too fast for the steep terrain and unsure footing. As they passed the Hollywood sign, Matt gazed at the unlit letters in the darkness. They stood three stories high and were set a hundred yards across the mountaintop, and he found the close-up view surprising, even bewildering. He could remember reading somewhere that it was rigged with alarms and surveillance cameras linked to the LAPD. But when they reached the trail in the dry brush and he spotted a pair of first responders waving flashlights at them fifty yards down the way, he realized that the crime scene was too far away for the killer to have tripped an alarm or camera.

Cabrera gave him a nudge as they approached. “There she is,” he whispered.

Matt looked ahead and could see her form in the darkness. His stomach was churning and he wasn’t sure why. While serving overseas, he had seen more dead bodies than he could count. Many of the corpses had been found in similar terrain. Most of them had been armed men, but every once in a while he’d come upon a woman or a child who had been executed or wounded and left to die alone under a hot sun in the rocks and sand.

But this time it was different.

He could feel it. The work of a madman.

Ignoring the others, he knelt down before the girl’s nude body and switched on his flashlight. Her wrists and ankles had been bound and staked to the ground, her face mutilated and placed on a sheet of mirrored glass—just like the others. But what struck Matt most about the way the body had been left were the variety of different scents in the air. Her blond hair was rich with the fragrance of shampoo. He could smell the soap on her clear skin. Freshly applied deodorant. When he examined her nails, both her toes and fingers appeared to have just been polished.

A tremor quaked through his body from somewhere deep inside. It seemed so odd. So singular. So familiar.

“What is it?” Grace said. “What do you see?”

Matt stood up and turned, sensing that something was wrong by the sound of Grace’s voice. His supervisor appeared nervous and afraid and looked like he was struggling to keep cool and hide it.

“The killer cleaned her up, Lieutenant.”

“The copycat. How so, Jones?”

“He gave her a bath, did her hair, and painted her nails before he staked her down in the dirt and cut up her face.”

A moment passed. Long and dark and exceedingly still.

Grace didn’t say anything, and Matt didn’t think he was looking at the girl’s body anymore. He was too caught up in whatever was on his mind. Matt backed out of the way, unlocked his phone, and found Howard Benson’s number in his contacts list. Benson worked in the Missing Persons Unit. Anyone involved in narcotics spent a lot of time working with Missing Persons, and he and Benson knew each other well. Benson picked up on the first ring.

“Are you still in the office?” Matt said.

“I’ve been trying to get out of here for the past two hours. How can I help?”

Matt turned back to the body. “A young woman, eighteen to twenty, about five ten, blond hair, on the slender side but with a belly, maybe a student.”

“That could be anybody, Matt. What color are her eyes?”

Matt knelt down again and panned his flashlight across the victim’s face, straining to see through the blood. The mutilation was hideous, her skin puffy, her features so deformed that it looked like she was wearing a mask made of pulp. It was an image that he knew he’d walk with for the rest of his life.

“I can’t see her eyes,” he said.

“What about a tattoo? A small heart-shaped tattoo just below her left hip bone. There’s a birthmark beside it.”

“You’ve got someone in mind?”

“A girl went missing five days ago. Another student. She had blond hair and lived in a dorm in Westwood.”

Matt pulled the phone away. Orlando and Plank were on the left side of the body, and he asked them about the tattoo and birthmark. Orlando slipped on a pair of gloves. The investigator from the coroner’s office wasn’t here yet, nor was anyone from SID, including the photographer. Touching or moving the body in any way would compromise the investigation and possibly take down a trial. But Orlando had other ideas. The soil beneath the corpse was loose and sandy. Matt watched as the detective scooped away the debris and Plank shined his flashlight on the girl’s hip.

“It’s there,” Orlando said. “A heart-shaped tattoo just below her left hip. And there’s a small birthmark right beside it.”

Matt brought the phone back to his ear. Benson must have heard Orlando’s confirmation.

“I’d call her a Jane Doe for now, Matt. But her name’s probably Brooke Anderson. I’ll give her parents a heads-up and make sure her dental records are at the coroner’s office in time for the autopsy.”

“Thanks.”

“How do you like working homicide?”

Matt winced. “It’s got its moments,” he said.

He switched off his phone and returned it to his pocket. Grace still appeared extraordinarily concerned. He had his phone out and was taking pictures of the victim with the built-in camera. It was a violation on pretty much every level. Matt watched Cabrera pick up on it and give him a look. Orlando and Plank seemed to notice as well but were visibly overwhelmed by the victim’s plight and still dealing with it. When Matt heard the chatter from a handful of SID techs and saw their flashlights moving down the slope, he turned back to Grace and watched him slip the phone into his pocket.

Why?

He let the question pass. Then he parked a fresh piece of nicotine gum against his cheek and forced himself to take another look at the girl’s face. After a few minutes he moved deeper down the trail for some fresh air and turned back to watch from a distance.

What was he seeing?

What the killer wanted him to see.

Why the display? Why the complexity? Why was he torturing his victims with such a hideous death?

But even more, why did it seem so familiar?

Matt sensed something in the center of his back and turned to face the mountain. The darkness. He wondered if someone was out there. It felt like there was. He panned his flashlight off the trail and through the brush. In Afghanistan this same feeling was usually followed by a shot from a sniper.

He switched off his flashlight and moved another fifty yards down the trail, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. The dead of night. He quieted his body and listened. He didn’t see anyone, but the sensation was stronger now. He could almost feel it in his bones. The killer was watching them. He was hiding in the darkness. He felt close.

CHAPTER 17

It was late. Almost midnight.

Matt grabbed the murder books Lane had given him and walked out of the station to his car. Cabrera had already left.

It had taken five hours to process the crime scene, much of the time spent working beneath a tarp, with news choppers hovering above. Still, the media got their money shot when the girl’s body was bagged, strapped to a stretcher, and hauled up the mountain to an emergency vehicle waiting behind the fence. It was more than a money shot. It took five men almost fifteen minutes to reach the top. Two patrol units had stayed behind and would remain at the crime scene overnight. In the morning, Orlando and Plank would return with an SID photographer and a handful of criminalists for a more thorough look in daylight.

Matt tossed the murder books onto the passenger seat and climbed in. As he jammed his key into the ignition, the rear door to the station burst open and he spotted Grace hustling down the walkway. He was talking to someone on the phone. The conversation appeared heated, and he seemed way too distracted to notice Matt. Too animated. Too everything to be righteous.

Grace fumbled with his keys but got himself together and pulled out of the lot with his tires screeching. Matt waited a beat, then made the turn onto Wilcox and started following.

Grace was heading north toward the Valley, the rich fog of the marine layer fading away with each block until it finally vanished. And he was moving fast, running red lights all the way up Cahuenga Boulevard and down the hill on Barham toward the Warner Bros. lot. Matt gave himself a safe cushion, keeping his eye on the car from fifty yards back. There was enough traffic to remain concealed, but not enough to lose sight of the car. The conditions were perfect. When Grace made a left onto Lakeside Drive, Matt closed the distance by half and followed him into the neighborhood. It looked like Grace was working his way around the gates and private roads of a nearby golf club. When he made a hard right onto Toluca Lake Avenue, Matt pulled to a stop and killed the headlights.

He could see Grace making a U-turn and parking in front of a house five or six doors down on the left. The house was recessed from the street. He could see his supervisor hurrying toward the building and slipping out of view.

Matt noted the time and waited. After a few minutes he idled forward and pulled to a stop in front of the house.

It was clear to Matt that Grace didn’t live here. He had parked at the curb, not in front of the garage, which was attached to the house. But even more telling, the homes on this side of the street were set on the lake and way out of any cop’s price range. Most of them were outright mansions. The rest were big enough to probably qualify as mini-mansions. This one came with a wooden security gate, a six-foot wall, and a terra-cotta roof. From what Matt could see through the trees, every window in the place was lighted. Grace had gone without sleep for almost forty-eight hours, just as Cabrera and Matt had. So why a meeting at midnight? Why had he photographed the murder victim with his own camera when SID would have given him a complete set of images as soon as they were downloaded and entered into evidence?

Matt opened the lock on his phone, called Central Dispatch, and identified himself to the woman who answered. After double-checking the house number, he gave her the address. Within a minute or two the dispatcher was back on the line.

“George Baylor,” she said. “White male. Fifty-five years old. Five foot eleven inches tall, one hundred and eighty-five pounds. Blue eyes. Light brown hair. He’s an MD. He’s a doctor.”

The name seemed familiar—but everything seemed familiar.

“What have you got on him?”

“Nothing,” the dispatcher said. “He’s clean. I can e-mail you the picture off his driver’s license if you like.”

“Thanks.”

Matt gave the dispatcher his e-mail address and got off the line. When his phone beeped a minute or so later, he checked his e-mail and gazed at the photograph of Baylor. He had hoped that seeing his face would jog his memory, but it didn’t. All he saw was a guy in his midfifties managing to pull off a smile at the DMV.

Matt got out of the car, weighing the risks as he walked underneath the trees and approached the left side of the wall. Because it was so late, because of Grace’s odd behavior, Matt’s best guess was that his supervisor wouldn’t be here if he only intended to stay for ten minutes. Still, if Matt guessed wrong, if he was seen on the property, he wouldn’t be able to explain himself. Things would get tricky, or maybe worse.

If he was seen . . .

He gazed over the wall at the two-story Mediterranean. The side yard between Baylor’s house and his neighbor’s amounted to less than thirty feet but included a twenty-foot-high privacy hedge, running from here all the way down to the lake. Although he could hear a dog barking in the distance, he didn’t see any signs that Baylor owned one. No burned grass or land mines—the landscaping meticulous.

Matt took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Then he pulled himself up over the wall and dropped down on the other side. Moving quickly through the side yard, he ducked as he passed a formal living room, then slowed and finally stopped when he spotted movement in the next set of windows. Baylor had installed shutters, and the slats were open. Matt stepped away from the light reflecting out of the room, found a place in the darkness, and became very still.

It was Baylor’s study, and the two men were sitting before a desktop computer downloading files from Grace’s cell phone. A few moments later Matt had confirmation that his guess was right when images of Jane Doe’s dead body began to appear on Baylor’s oversized computer display.

Why did Grace believe that Baylor needed to see these pictures tonight? What part of this couldn’t wait until morning? If the case against Ron Harris was so airtight that Harris hung himself rather than roll the dice in court, why did Grace still appear so agitated?

It didn’t make any sense. There had to be a missing piece.

Matt turned and looked into the backyard as he thought it over. The place felt more like a resort than a home. He could see a terrace by the water that included an outdoor fireplace, a pool and spa, a lounging area, and a barbecue pit. It looked like another set of steps led to a lower-level terrace for sunbathing and access to the dock. Even better, there was a boat tied to the dock.

Here, Matt thought, in the middle of LA.

He turned back and looked through the window. Grace and Baylor were still at it, enlarging images of the girl’s corpse and talking it over as they examined each one. It looked like it was going to be another long night for everyone. Matt glanced at his watch, then headed back through the yard and climbed over the wall. When he was certain that no one was on the sidewalk, he stepped out from beneath the trees, slipped into his car, and drove off. Somehow he needed to stay up long enough to make a pass through Millie Brown’s murder book. He needed to know how Grace and Rodriguez had come to their conclusions before he went to sleep. Home was on the other side of town. Fighting off a yawn, he hoped that the traffic wouldn’t be too bad. It usually didn’t slow down until 2:00 a.m., but maybe he’d be lucky tonight.