City of Fire (48 page)

She managed to get to her feet, noting the wobble in her knees. After grabbing a steak knife from the kitchen, she pulled the shutters in and watched them rattle as she threw the latch. Smoke was venting through the slats and tumbling into the room. The smell of fire eating away at her broken house that really was a crime scene now.

She started cutting. Slicing. Shaving the wood away from the hole and ignoring the voices in the wind. The only thing
that mattered right now was the knife in her hand digging deeper. And then she wedged the tip of the blade inside the hole and gave the handle a nudge. When the small piece of metal popped out, she palmed it and held it under the light.

It was a slug. A slug from a .38. And from the weathered look of the wood shavings on the floor, she guessed the slug was about five years old.

SHE couldn’t risk making the call. Couldn’t trust anyone with a piece of evidence that might force the department to admit it had made another major mistake. The slug in her pocket was too small. Too easy to get rid of. And the headlines would be too big. The department was on the right track now and couldn’t afford to be embarrassed. Their claim that a rock musician had murdered his partner, then years later turned the same gun on himself, had been made public. No one on the sixth floor would want to admit that the real murderer had been working at RHD and was one of their own. Instead, the evidence would turn up missing. And for exactly the same reasons every piece of evidence in the Black Dahlia case went missing some sixty years ago. Not just the physical evidence. Every interview. Every wire recording.

The department was an institution. Its reputation was more important than a single life.

Lena needed a break. A fistful of luck that wouldn’t require another white-knuckle trip down the freeway to the lab. And she found it when she pulled into the lot behind the Hollywood station and spotted an SID truck idling by the back door.

She skidded to a stop and jumped out. No one was inside the cab, but a discarded cigarette was burning on the pavement. In spite of the smoke from the fires, someone needed even more. The kind with nicotine in it.

Her eyes slid across the lot, then stopped on two cars parked beside the line of cruisers. She had seen the black Mercedes SUV and yellow Corvette before and knew they
belonged to a pair of experienced detectives. From the amount of ash on the hoods, she guessed that they had been here for a while.

Something was going on. Something important enough to keep everyone busy at 1:00 a.m.

She moved to the rear of the SID truck, rolling the door up and climbing onto the bed. Then she rushed down the aisle and ripped open the first locker. Her eyes burned and it was difficult to see in the dim light. But she skimmed through the contents quickly, closing the door and moving on to the second locker.

Lena wasn’t anxious anymore. She was two or three miles down the road, rifling through the tools of the trade with machinelike precision. She had reached a new place. Ground zero fifteen minutes after her life went radioactive. Nothing mattered anymore, yet everything mattered. Everything she saw or touched seemed to glow.

“That you, Lena?”

She recognized the voice and froze. When she turned, she saw Lamar Newton standing on the pavement with a camera slung over his shoulder. She caught the suspicion in his eyes, the look of disappointment. She didn’t care.

“What are you guys doing here?” she said.

“They’ve closed the freeways down. Something’s going on at Griffith Park, a possible dead body, so we’re gonna hang here for a while.”

His eyes moved to the open locker behind her, then bounced back.

“They can’t find it in the smoke,” she said.

He nodded slowly, acknowledging the ash falling from the sky. “The flames jumped over the one-oh-one about an hour ago. The north side of the city’s burning from Malibu all the way east to Rim of the World road. Probably take a week or two to put out. In the meantime we’ve all gotta find a way to breathe. Why don’t you come inside? It’s no good out here.”

She shook her head. “Can’t do it, Lamar. I’m in a hurry.”

“Then why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for?”

“Luminol,” she said. “Mixed.”

His eyes widened a little as he chewed it over. Luminol was a chemical used to detect faint traces of blood evidence.

“You’re working a crime scene on your own?”

“I’m in a hurry, Lamar.”

He sized her up from head to toe, then lowered his voice. “What you’re doing is wrong. You look like a fucking zombie and I won’t help you. But if I was looking for luminol, I’d probably try that one over there.”

He pointed at the locker in the corner. She turned and ripped the door open. When she saw the spray bottle wrapped in a rag, she grabbed it.

“It doesn’t last long,” he said. “You’ll need a camera.”

“I’m all set,” she said, leaping off the truck and racing to her car.

SHE WAS ALONE
, her hands trembling. She wondered if she could take it. Whether or not she could deal with a new truth shimmering above the surface.

Lena powered up her digital video camera, flipped through the menu until she reached the
LOW LIGHT
settings and toggled the
GAIN
all the way up. Moving the tripod to the center of the room, she framed the shot to include the shutter, carpet, bed, and side table. Although she’d replaced the art on the walls and moved the chest, everything else in the shot remained exactly the way it had been when her brother was alive.

She watched her finger press
RECORD
and waited until the icon on the screen stopped blinking. Then she watched herself grab the bottle of luminol and step around her bed. She knew that she had to be careful. Knew that luminol could detect trace blood evidence but was used as a last resort.

She pointed the nozzle at the hole in the shutter and gave it a pump. Taking a step back, she covered the lower wall and carpet. She could feel her heart fluttering as she sprayed down the table and headboard.

Nothing mattered anymore, yet everything did. When she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she didn’t recognize the woman staring back at her and turned away.

She gave the bottle a shake, eyeballing every surface. Squeezing the handle one last time, she watched the mist drift through the smoky air and cling to the foot of her bed. Then she closed the bedroom door and switched off the lights.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She could hear the Devil Winds pushing against the house. The shutters rattling as if someone were trying to break in. A ringing in her ears that seemed in tune with the howl of the wind.

And then time swung back again. The view of views smacking her in the face. Her eyes were locked on the luminol and it was working. Splotches of bluish green light were beginning to rise out of the black. She heard herself sigh as she moved closer and stared at it—a prickling sensation eating up her skin.

It hadn’t been a stray bullet accidently fired through the screen into the shutter. David had been shot here.

She could see the murder going down as if she had been in the room. She could see remnants of her brother’s blood splashed on the floor and against the wall below the window. When the blood spatter began to glow on the headboard, the image poked at her soul and she struggled to catch her breath.

He had been murdered in bed. In the same bed she’d slept in for the past five years.

The thought had a certain corrosive feel about it. An aftertaste that burned the throat and would never go away.

She leaned against the chest, wiping her eyes and lowering herself to the floor. She could see herself finding his body that night. Running toward the car and searching out his face. The jolt she took as she made the ID and the horror punched through her gut.

Her brother’s body had been dumped there. Thrown out on a Hollywood street like a bag of trash. Rhodes had shown no remorse. No respect. He picked Vista Del Mar because that’s where the junkies hung out. Beside that abandoned chapel with all those spent needles on the ground.

Moments passed, memories rushing at her with a clarity that appeared surreal. Her father’s face. David telling a joke
one night as they tried to get to sleep in the car. When the thought stream suddenly dried up, she bolted to her feet.

The glow from the luminol had brightened, the definition more vivid now. She could see the blood spatter on the headboard and floor. But bluish green spots were beginning to appear on her comforter. A comforter that was less than one season old. Her body shivered as she watched the spots sharpen and grow. She reached out with her right hand. When she ran her finger through the spatter, she realized that it was semen. And it was still wet.

Her heart skipped a beat, her mind racing. Then she heard the bedroom door opening behind her back.

She froze, her mind flooding with adrenaline. Someone had turned the lights out in the living room and kitchen. The house was dark. But she knew that he was here. She could hear him breathing. She could feel the electricity skimming across her scalp and shooting through her hair.

She turned and saw the outline of his nude body in the gloom. His buffed head and ultrawide shoulders.

Martin Fellows was running toward her. In a full sprint and leaping through the air.

She reached for her gun as he crashed into her, but felt his hand already drawing it from the holster. She felt his overwhelming strength seize her body and toss her across the room. When he knocked over the camera, she made a run for it but couldn’t get past the door. His hands were wrapped around her jacket—pulling her toward him, then pushing so hard, she flew into the living room and bounced off the floor.

Lena scrambled onto her back. He was on top of her now, ripping her blouse open and pulling away her bra. She could feel his hands squeezing her breasts. See the red-hot coals smoldering in his eyes.

She tried to scream but he covered her mouth. She could smell cocoa butter wafting from his sweaty skin.

She dug her teeth into his finger as if chewing through steak. She could taste the lump of human meat in her mouth, his blood streaming down her chin. He pulled his hand away but didn’t make any sound. Instead, he watched her spit it
out, then grabbed her hair and knocked her head against the floor.

Her strength slipped away after that, almost as if her will were carried out to sea. Then a wave of panic washed back in as her entire body went lazy. She looked through the sliding door and saw someone standing by the pool. When the figure turned, she shuddered. It was Rhodes.

She turned back to Fellows. He had followed her gaze and seen Rhodes. She caught the grin on his face and connected the dots.

Fellows wanted Rhodes to be here. He needed a witness to find the body just as he had found his sister’s body. That’s why he wanted to watch. He needed to examine the reaction. Calculate the witness’s moves for comparative study.

What he couldn’t possibly know was that Rhodes was here for the same reason and would probably thank him for the kill.

Fellows cupped his bloody hand over her mouth, his eyes staring right through her.

“Do you know what’s happening?” he whispered. “Have you figured it out?”

She nodded.

“Then let it happen, Lena. Let go and no one will ever forget you.”

He pulled her belt away and opened her jeans. She heard the sound of plastic rustling in the darkness, then a grocery bag went over her head. His hand clamped down on her mouth again as she tried to scream. She reached up and caught his ear, twisting it and digging her nails into his flesh. But then she let go, her body writhing as it ran out of air. Her head began to spin. Round and round until the ride went black and came to an end.

HER mind buoyed to the surface. She gagged on the air, heaving until she took in a breath. The bag was gone. Her cheek still stung from what felt like a hard slap.

Rhodes was kneeling over her with that faraway look in his eyes.

She flinched, then caught herself. She didn’t say anything. Instead, she watched him switch the lights on and walk outside. Glass crunched beneath his boots, and she noticed that the sliding door was gone. His gun was drawn. He looked toward the driveway, then stepped back inside and slipped on a pair of gloves.