City of Fire (41 page)

“Your brother was murdered?” he whispered.

“Five years ago.”

He was thinking it over. She could see it on his face.

“Did they get the guy?”

“Not yet,” she said. “They haven’t figured it out.”

He turned toward her and sat up. “But it’s been five years.”

“It’s been a long time.”

She let the thought sit there, giving him a chance to chew it over.

“Let’s go back to the house,” she said.

He shot her a look but rose to his feet. Crossing the lawn, they passed through the gap in the hedgerow and stepped into the house.

“I need to know some things about your sister, John. It’s important.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s take a look at her bedroom.”

She followed the boy upstairs and down the hall to a room just past the bathroom. When they entered, Lena took a quick look around and then stopped.

“Is something wrong?” the boy asked.

She was staring at a poster tacked to the wall. It wasn’t
Tim Holt’s new band. It was a photograph of the old one. She looked at her brother’s face. The sweat streaming down his cheeks. His hands on the guitar. The people rushing the stage.

She turned away, taking a moment to scan the rest of the room. She noted the stacks of CDs, the fashion magazines, a stuffed animal. Molly McKenna may have looked like a woman. But when she died, she had been a girl.

“Your sister didn’t know Tim Holt, did she?” she said.

He pulled the chair away from his sister’s desk and sat down, eyeing her bed.

“No,” he said quietly. “She was just a fan.”

“Did she tell you what she was up to?”

“It was crazy. If I’d known about it, I would’ve stopped her. I heard about it from one of her friends.”

“What did her friend say?”

“Molly thought that if Holt came home and found her in his bed, he’d do her. That’s what she wanted. She was living a fantasy life. All she could think about was him.”

“How’d she find out where he lived?”

“I don’t know. My mom works in real estate. I heard on the news that Holt just moved in.”

His voice trailed off. And Lena had confirmation now. Holt didn’t even know the victim. She played the scene back in her head. The break-in at the house had been crude because it was performed by a seventeen-year-old girl, not the killer. Lena could see McKenna removing her clothing, getting into Holt’s bed, and waiting for him to come home. It was supposed to be her big night. No matter how irrational, it was supposed to be the night she lost her virginity. When the killer entered the bedroom instead of Holt, she would have been terror-stricken. On the plus side, it would have been quick, just as Art Madina said. Just a few seconds of horror before the killer smashed her head open and everything went black.

The boy cleared his throat. “Can I ask you a question?”

Lena’s mind surfaced and she looked at him.

“What if it takes you five years to find out who murdered my sister? What if takes even longer?”

She sat down on the bed. “I need to know about that cop, John. The one who told you not to talk to me.”

His gaze fell away from her face. His hands were trembling again.

“I don’t know his name.”

“What did he say?”

The boy took a deep breath but didn’t shut down. “Would this help you find out who killed Molly?”

“It could. Of course it could.”

He thought it over, then spoke. “He told me that if I talked to you, I could end up like Molly.”

“He threatened you.”

The boy nodded. “He said lots of people would die and it would be my fault.”

“What did he look like?”

“He wasn’t wearing a uniform, if that’s what you mean.”

She leaned closer. She could barely hear him. “Then how did you know he was a cop?”

“He showed me his badge. He made me look at the gun inside his jacket.”

“But you didn’t see a name when you looked at the badge?”

“He was covering it up with his thumb. He was wearing a leather jacket. And he had a scar. It was on his ear. It was shaped like an
X.”

She could feel the rush of anger flooding her body, a hot load of wrath cut with overwhelming sadness. She wasn’t sure she could stand up right away. Wasn’t sure that she could maintain her footing. She had gone the extra mile for Rhodes, rationalizing his actions and reserving judgment until later. But now her doubts had been transformed into certainty. Rhodes had slipped into the dark. He was the ticket. He was the one.

LENA walked around the corner, entering the bureau floor and slamming into a wall of silence so dense that she could feel it in her ears. There were ten, maybe twelve RHD detectives in the room. No one looked up, but she could tell that every one of them knew she was there.

She spotted a single pair of eyes. Novak, at his desk staring back at her with empathy and concern. As she moved down the aisle, she glanced at Rhodes, but only briefly. Just long enough to measure the distance between them, not in feet, she decided, but miles.

And then someone began shouting.

“Gamble. Here. Now.”

It was Lieutenant Barrera, standing in the alcove and waving her into the captain’s office.

She dropped her briefcase on her desk, glanced at Rhodes before giving Novak a long look.

“Don’t say anything to him,” she whispered. “We need to talk.”

“I’m waiting on you, Gamble,” Barrera shouted.

She entered the alcove and stepped into the captain’s office. She heard the glass door slam behind her.

“Have a seat, Detective.”

Barrera hustled around the conference table, too upset to sit down. His face was more purple than red as he stewed over what he wanted to say. When he leaned over the table to face her dead on, she could see the vein in his neck ticking like a snare drum.

“I don’t give a shit how smart you are,” he said. “I gave you an order yesterday, and you acknowledged that I gave you that order. Now tell me what it was.”

She met his gaze. She knew that she had to take whatever Barrera wanted to give. That she had to eat it and remain silent about what she knew. Barrera would never believe her. But even worse, if Rhodes found out, he’d react. And if he was willing to murder two innocent people to cover up her brother’s murder five years back, then it followed that he would be willing to kill again to protect his growing list of secrets.

“What was the order, Gamble?”

“You wanted me to attend the press conference and recite a statement that had been written for me by someone on the sixth floor, Lieutenant.”

He gave her a hard look. He was angry, but he was true. She could tell that for a split second, he knew the order was just as bogus as she did.

“Listen, Gamble. I know things have been tough. If someone I called a friend murdered someone in my family, I’d be at my wit’s end.”

Her eyes flickered. Barrera was talking about Holt, but Rhodes had been a friend, too.

“So maybe these are special circumstances,” Barrera said. “That doesn’t change who you are or what your job is. This is an elite unit. We follow orders, right?”

She nodded but couldn’t help wondering if something else was going on. Something more than her ducking the press conference yesterday.

“When I say jump, you jump or you’re out, Gamble. All the way out. I sponsored your promotion out of Hollywood, so I’m taking this personally. You’re making me look bad. And if I give you the boot, I’ll make it my personal calling to fuck you up. We follow orders, is that understood? Every order. And we follow the evidence. When the science comes in, it’s as good as an order. It’s like it’s coming from God. We’ve got a problem, Gamble. Not two problems. Just one problem. And his fucking name is Romeo. Is that clear?”

Someone knocked on the door and opened it. Barrera’s head jerked up. When Lena turned, she saw Novak standing beside Upshaw, the analyst from the Computer Crime Section.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Novak said. “But I need Lena and I need her now.”

“What is it?” Barrera said, trying to regain his composure.

“It could be Romeo’s motive for killing Charles Burell.”

“Show me,” he said.

Upshaw entered ahead of Novak, placing a nude photograph of a model on the conference table.

“Romeo visited two porn sites the night he murdered Nikki Brant,” Upshaw said. “There’s no way to know what he did when he got there, but this model is the only one that appears on both sites.”

Candy Bellringer. Lena recognized her face instantly. Bellringer was the woman with black hair doing Burell on the couch when she’d first visited the Web site. Even more troubling, Bellringer was one of the models who lived within Romeo’s comfort zone and hadn’t called her back.

“Did you talk to her?” Barrera asked.

Lena shook her head. “We haven’t been able to reach her.”

“She’s the most popular model on Burell’s Web site,” Upshaw said. “Fifteen hundred more hits than anyone else. She caught my interest because most of her hits are coming from L.A. With every other model, the hits are spread out. And then I noticed her left foot.”

Lena’s eyes went back to the photo and she spotted the toe ring.

“It’s the toe Romeo severs from his victims,” Novak said. “The second toe on the left foot.”

NOVAK wheeled the Crown Vic down the freeway with the Christmas lights running. By the time they reached the north end of Santa Monica, Lena had brought her partner up to speed on what she’d learned from Art Madina and Molly McKenna’s brother. Novak didn’t say anything for a long time. She could see his eyes going as he chewed it over. The fear and pain that wouldn’t let go when she told him that McKenna had been an innocent teenager, a young girl who broke into the house ahead of the killer and had no relationship with Holt at all. It didn’t take much to know that he was thinking about the horror as both a detective and a father. That in the end, he was thinking about his daughter Kristin.

“Maybe he’s using again,” Novak said.

“I didn’t know he ever did.”

“Rhodes got sent down to Chinatown. It was about five years ago, but I can’t remember whether it was before or after your brother’s death.”

Her mind clicked back to the time she’d spent with Rhodes. Although she remembered thinking he seemed intense, she never saw any indication that he had a drug problem. But then, she knew so little about the man and what he was capable of.

“What was he using?”

Novak shook his head. “I don’t know. He looked like he does now. He was strung out and went on leave. Not for a couple of weeks, but for two or three months. Lots of sessions with Dr. Andy. When he came back, he was different.”

“How?”

“I never really thought about it. He was just different. I didn’t hold it against him because I work homicide, not dope, and I knew what my daughter was going through. Rhodes was a good detective and I trusted him and that’s all that mattered. Whatever problems he had seemed like they were over when he came back. Now I’m seeing it in another way.”

“Things were quiet today on the floor. You didn’t say anything, did you?”

Novak shrugged, then turned up the fan and adjusted a vent on the dash.

“What did you do, Hank?”

“I told him that if he ever made an ID in one of my cases again and waited a day to tell me about it, I’d throw him out the fucking window.”

She gave Novak a look. “You said it in front of everyone?”

“No. I had a one-on-one with the piece of shit in the hall. I don’t think I blew it. I did what anybody would do. Things were dead up there for a lot of reasons, Lena. Madina called Barrera and said he wouldn’t sign off on Holt or McKenna until he had a chance to think things over. He’s hedging on the suicide and Barrera’s having a shit fit. Lots of pressure from the sixth floor. They’re out on a limb because of that press conference yesterday. They think it’s a suicide, but with Madina stalling, the possibility that it isn’t just got real.”

“Barrera didn’t mention it.”

“Of course he didn’t. It’s a major-league fuckup. The kind that knocks people down the totem pole. The kind that sends us back to the good old days when we were the problem and juries decided to set all the assholes free. And if it’s like you say and Rhodes did your brother, then he’s gotta be feeling the heat, too. Like just maybe the motherfucker committed two more murders and screwed it all up. Without the suicide, the DNA looks bogus and Romeo’s not good for the kills.”