Alex Delaware.
Evidence.
Jonathan Kellerman.
CHAPTER.
1.
I tell the truth. They lie.
I"m strong. They"re weak.
I"m good.
They"re bad.
This was a zero job but Doyle was getting paid.
Why anyone would sh.e.l.l out fifteen bucks an hour, three hours a day, five times a week, to check out the empty sh.e.l.l of a rich-idiot monster-house was something he"d never get.
The look-see took fifteen minutes. If he walked slow. Rest of the time, Doyle sat around, ate his lunch, listened to Cheap Trick on his Walkman.
Thinking about being a real cop if his knee hadn"t screwed up.
The company said go there, he went.
Disability all run out, he swallowed part-time, no benefits. Paying to launder his own uniform.
One time he heard a couple of the other guys talking behind his back.
Gimp"s lucky to get anything.
Like it was his fault. His blood level had been .05, which wasn"t even close to illegal. That tree had jumped out of nowhere.
Gimp made Doyle go all hot in the face and the chest but he kept his mouth shut like he always did. One day ...
He parked the Taurus on the patch of dirt just outside the chain-link, tucked his shirt tighter.
Seven a.m., quiet except for the stupid crows squawking.
Rich-idiot neighborhood but the sky was a c.r.a.ppy milky gray just like in Burbank where Doyle"s apartment was.
Nothing moving on Borodi Lane. As usual. The few times Doyle saw anyone it was maids and gardeners. Rich idiots paying to live here but never living here, one monster-mansion after another, blocked by big trees and high gates. No sidewalks, either. What was that all about?
Every once in a while, some tucked-tight blonde in Rodeo Drive sweats would come jogging down the middle of the road looking miserable. Never before ten, that type slept late, had breakfast in bed, ma.s.sages, whatever. Laying around in satin sheets, getting waited on by maids and butlers before building up the energy to shake those skinny b.u.t.ts and long legs.
Bouncing along in the middle of the road, some Rolls-Royce comes speeding down and kaboom. Wouldn"t that be something?
Doyle collected his camouflage-patterned lunch box from the trunk, made his way toward the three-story plywood sh.e.l.l. The third being that idiot castle thing-the turret. Unfinished skeleton of a house that would"ve been as big as a ... as a... Disneyland castle.
Fantasyland. Doyle had done some pacing, figured twenty thousand square feet, minimum. Two-acre lot, maybe two and a half.
Framed up and skinned with plywood, for some reason, he could never find out why, everything stopped and now the heap was all gray, warping, striped with rusty nail-drips.
c.r.a.ppy gray sky leaking in through rotting rafters. On hot days, Doyle tucked himself into a corner for shade.
Out behind in the bulldozed brown dirt was an old Andy Gump accidentally left behind, chemicals still in the john. The door didn"t close good and sometimes Doyle found coyote scat inside, sometimes mouse droppings.
When he felt like it, he just whizzed into the dirt.
Someone paying all that money to build Fantasyland, then just stopping. Go figure.
He"d brought a good lunch today, roast beef sandwich from Arby"s, too bad there was nothing to heat the gravy with. Opening the box, he sniffed. Not bad. He moved toward the chain-link swing gate... what the- Stupid thing was pulled as wide as the chain allowed, which was about two, two and a half feet. Easy for anyone but a fat idiot to squeeze through.
The chain had always been too long to really draw the gate tight, making the lock useless, but Doyle was careful to twist it up, make it look secure when he left each day.
Some idiot had monkeyed with it.
He"d told the company about the chain, got ignored. What was the point of hiring a professional when you didn"t listen to his advice?
Sidling through the gap, he rearranged the chain nice and tight. Leaving his lunch box atop raw-concrete steps, he began his routine. Standing in the middle of the first floor, saying, "Hel-lo," and listening to his voice echo. He"d done that first day on the job, liked the echo, kinda like honking in a tunnel. Now it was a habit.
Didn"t take long to see everything was okay on the first floor. s.p.a.ce was huge, big as a ... as a... some rooms framed up but mostly pretty open so you had clear views everywhere. Like peeking through the skeleton bones of some dinosaur. In the middle of what would"ve been the entry hall was a humongous, swooping, double staircase. Just plywood, no railings, Doyle had to be careful, all he needed was a fall, screw up some other body part.
Here we go, pain with every step. Stairs creaked like a mother but felt structurally okay. You could just could imagine what it would be like with marble on it. Like a ... big castle staircase.
Nineteen steps, each one killed.
The second floor was just as empty as the first, big surprise. Stopping to rub his knee and take in the western treetop view, he continued toward the rear, stopped again, kneaded some more but it didn"t do much good. Continuing to the back, he reached the smaller staircase, thirteen steps but real curvy, a killer, tucked behind a narrow wall, you had to know where to find it.
Whoever had paid for all this was some rich idiot who didn"t appreciate what he had. If Doyle had a hundredth-a two-hundredth of something like this, he"d thank G.o.d every day.
He"d asked the company who the owner was. They said, "Don"t pry."
Climbing the curvy staircase, every step crunching his knee, the pain riding up to his hip, he began counting out the thirteen stairs like he always did, trying to take his mind off the burning in his leg.
When he called out "Nine," he saw it.
Oh Jesus.
Heart thumping, mouth suddenly dry as tissue paper, he backed down two steps, reached along the right side of his gear belt.
Touching air.
Now he was the idiot, there"d been no gun for a long time, not since he stopped guarding jewelry stores downtown.
Company gave him a flashlight, period, and it was in the trunk of the Taurus.
He forced himself to look.
Two of them.
No one else, one good thing about the turret, it was round, mostly open to the sky, nowhere to hide.
Doyle kept looking, felt his guts heave.
The way they were lying, him on top of her, her legs up, one hooked around his back, it was pretty clear what they"d been doing.
Before ...
Doyle felt short of breath, like someone was choking him. Struggling to regain his air, he finally succeeded. Reached for his phone.
Right in his pocket. At least something was going okay.
CHAPTER.
2.
Milo calls me in when the murder"s "interesting."
Sometimes by the time I get involved, the body"s gone. If the crime scene photos are thorough, that helps. If not, it can get even more interesting.
This scene was a three-minute drive from my house and intact.
Two bodies, wrapped around each other in a sick parody of pa.s.sion. Milo stood to the side as a coroner"s investigator clicked off shots.
We exchanged quiet "Heys." Milo"s black hair was slicked down haphazardly and his green eyes were sharp. His clothes looked slept-in, his pallid, pitted complexion matched the smog-gray sky.
June gloom in L.A. Sometimes we pretend it"s ocean mist.
I studied the bodies from a distance, stepping as far back as I could, careful not to touch the curving plywood wall. "How long have you been here?"
"An hour."
"You don"t get to this zip code too often, Big Guy."
"Location, location, location."
The coroner"s investigator heard that and glanced back. A tall, pretty, square-shouldered young woman in an olive-green pantsuit, she took a long time with the camera, kneeling, leaning, crouching, standing on tiptoe to capture every angle.
"Just a few more minutes, Lieutenant."
Milo said, "Take your time."
The kill-spot was the third floor of a construction project on Borodi Lane in Holmby Hills. Ma.s.sive frame-up of an intended mansion, the entry big enough to seat a symphony orchestra. The kill-spot looked like some sort of observation room. Or the turret of a castle.
Ma.s.sive was the rule in Holmby. A whole different universe than my white box above Beverly Glen, but walking distance. I"d driven because sometimes Milo likes to think and make calls while I take the wheel.
A few rafters topped the turret, but most of the intended roof was open s.p.a.ce. Breeze blew in. Balmy, but not enough air movement to mask the smell of wet wood and rust, mold and blood and excreta.
Male victim on top, female victim pinned beneath him, very little of her showing.
His black designer jeans were rolled to midcalf. One of her smooth, tan legs hooked around his waist. Brown pumps in place on both her feet.
Final embrace, or someone wanting it to look that way. What I could see of the woman"s hands were splayed, limp. Flaccidity of death, that made sense.
But the leg propped up didn"t fit; how had it stayed in place postmortem?
The man"s legs were well muscled, coated with curls of fine blond hair. Black cashmere sweater for him, blue dress for her. I craned to see more of her, couldn"t catch anything but dress fabric. Some kind of shiny jersey. Hiked above her hips.
The man"s hair was longish, light brown, wavy. A neat ruby hole stippled by black powder punctuated the mastoid bulge behind his right ear. Blood ran down his neck, slanted toward the right, continued onto the plywood floor. Long dark strands of her hair fanned wide on the floor. Not much blood around her.
I said, "Wouldn"t her legs have relaxed?"
The C.I., still photographing, said, "If rigor"s come and gone, I"d think so."
She worked at the crypt on Mission Road, in East L.A., had managed to maintain the rosy-cheeked glow of a habitual hiker. Lots of outdoor death scenes? Late twenties to early thirties, rusty hair tied in a high ponytail, clear blue eyes; a farm girl working the dark side.
Putting the camera aside, she got down low, she used two hands to lift the man"s midsection gingerly, peered through the resulting two-inch s.p.a.ce. The wraparound leg collapsed like a folding chair improperly set. "Yup, looks like she was propped, Lieutenant."
Looking back at Milo for confirmation, her hands still wedged between the bodies.
He said, "Could be."
The C.I. raised the male victim a bit higher, studied, lowered him with tenderness. The investigators I"ve seen are generally like that: respectful, swimming in more horror than most people encounter in a lifetime, never growing jaded.