Authors: M. Z. Kelly
The next morning Bernie and I got to the station early so I could sort through the stack of paperwork that I knew would be in my in-basket. I hadn’t slept well, anticipating my return to work, and also because of Carly Hogg’s comments about me being on a TV show about detectives. I’d had some bad experiences with the media in the past, and, if I had any say about it, I planned to make it clear that I didn’t want to be involved.
I’d made some progress on the paperwork mountain on my desk by the time the other employees began trickling in. I said hello to Selfie and Molly, the civilian employees assigned to Section One. Selfie, real name Sophia, was our twenty-something crime analyst. She made a habit of displaying the latest trends in metallic piercings and hairstyles. Molly was in her thirties, with red hair and green eyes; a single mom raising two young children. Both women were wizards at pulling together records and other information needed on our cases.
Lieutenant Oz arrived a little after eight, said hello to me, and then said he wanted to meet with everyone in his office. I was gathering up my briefcase for the meeting when my phone rang. I recognized that the number was from an FBI agent I’d worked with in the past.
“I hear it’s your first day back at work, Buttercup,” Joe Dawson said in his deep baritone.
Dawson was a gruff, smart-mouthed bulldog of an agent with a take-no-prisoners attitude when it came to his job. He’d come up with the nickname when we’d first met, something that I tolerated. Despite his rough exterior and misogynistic tendencies, we’d managed to become friends and bond over some difficult cases.
My anxiety level was spiking as I said, “Why do I get the feeling you’re not calling to ask me about celebrity sightings in Hollywood.”
“I wouldn’t know a celeb if it staggered out of a nightclub and bit me on my big ass.”
I chuckled. “Stranger things have been known to happen around here. What gives?”
His voice came down a notch. “You’ve probably heard the latest about The Swarm. Janice Taylor is in custody and is in the process of being transferred to a federal prison in Colorado.”
Dawson was referring to a case that had been one of the most difficult I’d worked since coming to Robbery Homicide. It had started with a mad woman named Myra, a surrogate killer, who was acting on behalf of someone she called Azazel. They were both eventually stopped, but not before their killing spree took the lives of dozens of victims. Before Azazel was killed by the SWAT team, he told me that he was one of seven disciples determined to seek vengeance in the world for the perceived injustices they’d suffered.
A few months back, another member of the original seven, a one-time FBI agent named Janice Taylor, had come after me. Before she’d escaped, Taylor had told me there were other members of her group, radicalized killers, who she referred to as The Swarm, waiting for a signal to resume the killing spree.
“The only better place I could think of for Taylor would be hell,” I said to Dawson.
“I’ve heard the supermax prison is about as close as you can get.” He paused and cleared his throat. “She wants to talk to you.”
I took a breath and released it slowly, his words settling into a dark place in my psyche. “What about?”
“Not sure. She hasn’t said a word to anybody since being arrested in Florida, but a couple of weeks ago she told her attorney she wants to see you.”
Janice Taylor had held me, and a young girl who I’d met while doing some charity work, hostage. She’d come close to killing us both. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“Greer and your brass cleared it, but I understand if you don’t want to be involved.”
Peter Greer was Joe Dawson’s boss. He’d been the head of the taskforce assigned to deal with Taylor and the others in the past.
Dawson’s voice came down even further as he added, “If you’d like, I can go at her alone. Try to get her to talk to me.”
I was grateful for what he was proposing and for trying to keep me out of the case, but knew it would never work. Janice Taylor had taken a personal interest in me. If she did have a message about The Swarm, I was probably the one that she intended to hear it. And I knew that lives might also eventually hang in the balance.”
“When…when are you planning to see her?”
“A few days, not sure exactly.”
“Give me a call when you’re ready. I’ll be there.”
“Anybody ever tell you that you’re the best, Buttercup?”
“It’s been a while. Stay in touch, Joe.”
As I walked to Lieutenant Oz’s office, I did my best to put the phone call out of my mind. Along the way, Bernie and I stopped and I said hello to several coworkers. My assignment in Section One felt like home to me. The unit was a prototype created to handle some of the department’s high profile cases. It was the brainchild of Bradley East, the chief of police, who used the unit to garner favor with the press when we broke big cases.
Oz’s large office had been outfitted with so much high tech gear and equipment that Selfie had nicknamed it the bat cave. In addition to TV monitors and computers, the cave had a large flat screen TV embedded in the glass tabletop that displayed graphics with virtual mock-ups of the crime scenes we worked. A row of smaller flat screen monitors encircled the walls of the office, along with equipment that was linked with local, state, and federal databases.
Our unit consisted of three teams of detectives. Woody Horton and Harry Braden made up one team. They were both easygoing and hardworking. I respected their dedication to a job that was never easy.
I’d recently been told that Darby Hall and Mel Peters had been assigned to the unit. I only knew the detectives, who had previously worked out of the Rampart Division, by reputation. I’d heard that Darby was a tough cop who had paid his dues, but had a cynical streak. Mel, or Melvina, was said to be in her thirties with the ambition to someday be a part of LAPD’s command staff—never a good thing, in my opinion. My retired partner, Charlie Winkler, knew Mel and once described her as a rung humper, someone who didn’t mind using her sex to jump a rung or two on the promotional ladder.
When I arrived, I saw that my temporary new partner Alex Hardy was already seated at the table in the bat cave across from Selfie and Molly. Hardy’s former partner, Christine Belmont, had been killed in a shootout during the last case we’d worked together. The lieutenant had promised that my partnership with Alex would only last until he could arrange a new partner for me, and find someone desperate enough to work with Alex. I’d previously been partnered with Pearl Kramer, a semi-retired detective who worked cases part time, but I’d been told he’d recently gone back into retirement.
I learned that the other teams were working their own cases this morning, which only left me with the Alex problem. The big cop wasted no time irritating me.
“You up to this?” Alex asked me.
My new partner was a big marshmallow who was in his forties, with a bushy mustache and no sense of humor. I’d had some past issues with the arrogant detective and he hadn’t taken it well when I called him out on his bad behavior.
I met his murky eyes as I settled in at the table. “What do you mean?”
“The work. After what happened, I thought you might be looking for another line of work.”
I drew in a breath, released it slowly, and locked eyes with him. “It’s history. I’m ready to roll.”
A big smile found his mushy face. “What I meant is that I thought maybe you were ready to start a more glamorous career.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Everyone saw your performance as a Hollywood madam on that TV show. It looked like you were a natural for the part.”
His reference was to the bet I’d lost with my friends when I’d been forced to be in an episode of their TV show and portray a madam. It had been one of the most embarrassing nights of my life.
Selfie and Molly also made comments about seeing the show. There was little I could do to defend myself so I simply said, “I think my acting career is history.”
Alex made a scoffing sound but otherwise didn’t respond. I knew it was just a matter of time before we got into it again and it wouldn’t be pretty.
Bernie wandered off to a corner as our lieutenant got down to business. Oz was pushing sixty, with snow white hair and piercing blue eyes. He had almost forty years on the job and was one of the good guys in a department that too often neglected those who did the heavy lifting in a sometimes thankless job. After officially welcoming me back, he told us about our new case.
“A girl was murdered in MacArthur Park the night before last. It’s now our case.” Oz turned to Selfie and Molly. “I’ll let you two use your toys to get them up to speed.”
I knew MacArthur Park by reputation. It was in the Westlake District of Los Angeles, named after the World War II general. The park had been the scene of lots of crime and gang activity over the years. There had been some attempts to revitalize the area in recent years, not all of them successful.
Selfie, who today had yellow hair and eyebrows, used a remote control and we saw video of the crime scene appear in the glass tabletop. “The victim is Carla Hodge, age twenty-four.” The video zoomed in and we saw the girl’s body on the ground. She wore a jogging suit and there was lots of blood. “Multiple stab wounds to the upper torso. A witness, Roberto Hernandez, told the responding officers that he saw a man leaving the area in a hurry just after seven. No real description of the suspect.”
“What about surveillance video?” Alex asked.
“Nothing. The victim was in a dead zone between the cameras.”
We saw several more images of the victim, shot from various angles before we saw a close up of the knife that was used in the attack.
Molly took up the story. “The murder weapon was found on the walkway a few yards from the girl, probably dropped as our suspect made a hasty retreat. It’s a replica of a knife carried by German paratroopers in World War II. It’s opened by pulling the handles apart, allowing the blade to slide through the slot in the end of the handle. As you can see, it’s got a swastika and SS markings.”
“Maybe our suspect is a one of those neo-Nazi nut jobs,” Alex speculated.
Oz shook his head. “It’s more complicated.” He lifted his brows as he turned back to his civilian employees.
“SID was able to identify the knife by a small chip in the blade,” Selfie said.
SID was the department’s Scientific Investigation Division. It was LAPD’s version of a typical police department’s crime scene investigation division, only much larger, with laboratories, specialized equipment, and a host of both sworn and civilian employees.
We saw a close up, showing there was a tiny piece of the knife’s blade missing as Selfie went on. “Computer analysis shows it’s an exact match to the knife that was used to murder a movie producer named Bruce Reeder back in 2005.” Images of the deceased producer appeared on the screen, including scenes of a bedroom where the body was on the floor. The knife, apparently also used in the attack on Carla Hodge, was beside the body.”
Oz took up the story. “Reeder’s murder was never solved. The knife was supposed to be with R&I, in storage, along with the murder file.”
R&I was the department’s Records and Identification Division in Los Angeles. Evidence, especially property related to an unsolved homicide, should have been kept there indefinitely.
Alex’s dark eyes lifted from the table monitor and he looked at Oz. “A knife like this might have been a temptation for someone in charge of the evidence. Do we think it might have been taken by an employee?”
Oz shrugged. “Since you and Kate just caught a suddenly hot cold case, along with Hodge’s murder, that will be part of the investigation.”
“Let’s go back over what we know about the victims,” I said. “Maybe there’s some kind of connection between them.”
“And pigs fly,” Alex said. “Somebody stole the knife and used it on Hodge. There’s no connection.”
“We’ll see.” I turned to Selfie and Molly, pushing down my irritation with the arrogant ball of lard. “Fill us in, starting with what we know about Reeder.”
Selfie used another remote and an overhead monitor appeared with several photographs and identifying information about our first victim. “Bruce Anthony Reeder was age forty-three when he was murdered. He was married, but had been separated for about three years. His condo was located in Baldwin Hills, about a block from Bernstein Studios where he worked. He was working on a documentary about the war in Afghanistan at the time of his death. The investigators basically came up empty, no trace, prints, or DNA, and no real suspects or even a motive. The case has been with the cold case unit, but there’s been nothing active on it in recent years.”
Bruce Reeder had been a handsome man, with short blond hair and blue eyes. “I vaguely remember the news coverage about his murder,” I said. “It’s amazing how these stories fall off the radar so quickly.”
“No drama, no news,” Alex said. “There are dozens of cases out there just like it that nobody’s working.”
I did an eye roll, irritated by the way he minimized the taking of another person’s life. I said to Selfie, “And Carla Hodge?”
“I’ve got the background,” Molly said, as some photographs of our second victim appeared on a monitor. Hodge was thin and pale. She looked like she was barely out of high school. “Carla rented an apartment near the Westlake District and lived alone. She worked as a secretary for Wakefield Insurance. Her mom told the original investigators that she wasn’t dating and didn’t have much of a social life.” Our secretary drew in a breath, released it slowly, and looked at me. “It’s just a guess on my part, but I’ve got a suspicion from the reports and the way her mother talked about her, that Carla might have been gay, but hadn’t come out.” She brushed the auburn hair off her forehead. “Like I said, it’s just a suspicion. You might want to follow up with her mom.”