Murder Season
This book is dedicated to two friends.
Joe Drabyak and John Truby.
I owe a great deal of gratitude to my editor, Kelley Ragland at Minotaur Books, for her brilliant effort in making this novel what it is.
I would also like to thank my agent, Scott Miller at Trident Media Group, for his support and enthusiasm for this book, and Eileen Hutton at Brilliance Audio, for the audio editions of my work featuring LAPD Detective Lena Gamble.
This novel wouldn’t ring true without the help and guidance of LAPD Detectives Mitzi Roberts and Rick Jackson from the Robbery-Homicide Division, Cold Case Homicide Unit, and from Harry Klann, Jr., DNA Technical Leader from the LAPD Scientific Investigation Division. I can’t thank you all enough.
I am also deeply grateful for the help I received from John Truby, H. Donald Widdoes, Pat Schrevelius, Peter B. Crabb, Peter & Terry Ellis, Robert & Ruth Ellis, Joe Drabyak & Reggie Painter, Michael Conway & Meghan Sadler Conway, and Debi Watson. Last, but even more, I’d like to thank Charlotte Conway for encouraging me and standing by me all this time.
CONTENTS
Somehow there’s gotta be a thread that stretches across the whole universe.
A motherfucking life jacket.
Something that will pull my sorry soul out of this ditch and into the light.
—Jimmy the Dime, street poet Santa Monica, California
She could smell it in the pillow
as she pulled it closer. On the sheets as she rolled over in the darkness and searched out cool spots that were not there.
Murder season.
She was floating, drifting. Cruising through an open seam between sleep and consciousness.
She glanced at the clock radio but didn’t really see it, then fell back into the stream and let go. It was somewhere after midnight, sometime before dawn. Early spring, and the air inside the house was already deadened from the oppressive heat. A steep, lifeless desert wave had swelled over Los Angeles two days ago, pushing the marine layer and the cool breezes out over the ocean where they could be burned up and erased without a witness.
The city that was left behind felt dusty and canned in. Vacuum-packed. The air perfumed with spent diesel fuel and gasoline.
Murder season would come early this year. It would roll in with the heat like they were best friends. Lovers.
She reached across the bed, probing gently for a warm body but finding only emptiness. Only her dreams. A smile worked its way through her body. The one that came with her dreams. She could feel it in her chest and between her legs. She could feel it spreading across her face and blistering through her skin before it rose up and faded away.
She had spent the night on the terrace drinking ice-cold Irish reds with Stan Rhodes and Tito Sanchez. Sanchez had brought over a flank steak, marinating the meat, and working the grill with mesquite the way his grandmother had taught him. After dinner they sat on the stone wall and gazed down the hill, the lights of the city caught in the dust and glowing like cotton balls from downtown all the way across the basin to the Pacific. They laughed and told stories in the eerie light, opened fresh bottles, and talked shop. Rhodes and Sanchez were deep in on a new murder case and had worked the last forty-eight hours straight out. Both detectives needed to regroup and get some sleep. Lena had tomorrow off and could afford to relax, maybe even get buzzed. When they left around ten, she popped open the last bottle of ale, stripped off her clothes, and slipped into the pool.
Murder season. Trouble ahead. When the streets get hot, business burns.
She rolled onto her back, her mind cutting a jagged path to the surface. She could hear something going on in the house—something in the background behind her thoughts. A noise pulsing through the still air. She tried to ignore it, fight it. Tried to pretend that it wasn’t real. After a while, she wondered if it wasn’t part of her dream, a noise in the darkness breaking up her sleep.
Until she finally realized that it was her cell.
She opened her eyes and saw the light glowing from her phone. She grabbed it, recognized the caller, and slid open the lock on the touch screen. It was her supervisor, Lt. Frank Barrera, Robbery-Homicide Division. She didn’t need to guess what he wanted. She checked the clock and read it this time: 2:54 a.m.
Murder season. The train was rolling in.
“You cool, Lena?” he said. “I know it’s your day off, so I’m asking if everything’s cool.”
“I’m good. What’s up? What’s that noise in the background?”
She turned and looked out the window. Sirens. She could hear them in the distance, and she could hear them over the phone. She made the match—Barrera was close. He was in the neighborhood. She tried to look down the hill and thought she could see flashing lights. Something was going on just west of the Capitol Records Building.
“We’re in deep shit, Lena. Real deep shit.”
His voice broke. Barrera’s usual demeanor—steady as she goes—had become tainted with fear.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” she said.
“We’ve got two dead bodies in Hollywood. That’s all I can say over the phone.”
His voice cut off like he needed to catch his breath. Most homicides in Los Angeles were handled by investigators at the local level. For a murder to bounce up to RHD, the crime had to involve a high profile victim or be particularly horrific. For a Homicide Special detective to get the call with a crime scene still open, it had to be more than that. Some unlucky combination of the two.
Lena switched on the light, feeling the rush of adrenaline eat up whatever alcohol remained in her blood. She still didn’t have a partner and wouldn’t until the fall.
“Why me?” she asked.
“Orders from Deputy Chief Ramsey. You’ll know why when you get here.”
Ramsey was one of the few members of the old guard who had survived the department’s reorganization. He reported directly to Chief Logan, and had become his trusted right hand. His fixer. She knew that Chief Logan had left the city on a ten-day recruiting tour for the Scientific Investigation Division. With the success of the CSI franchise on television, the line of students wanting to become the real thing was a long one. Logan was offering better than decent money and the chance to move to L.A. He knew that he would have his pick of the best and brightest. He also knew that SID had taken a big hit recently and the division needed the fire that came with new blood.
“Where?” she asked.
“You ever hear of a place in Hollywood called Club 3 AM?”
Lena glanced at her .45 on the night table as Barrera gave her the address. She didn’t bother writing it down. Everyone in L.A. knew about Club 3 AM. It had become a celebrity hangout. A private nightclub catering to the A-list.
“Who’s dead?” she asked.
“Can’t do it, Lena. Not over the phone. Get here as soon as you can.”
Barrera’s cell punched out. Lena lowered her phone.
Murder season. It had come early this year.
Showered and dressed in fifteen minutes,
she raced down the hill, hit the straight track on Gower, and floored it past the Monastery of the Angels, estimating her time of arrival at less than five minutes. She was driving a metallic-green Crown Victoria with tinted glass that had “cop” written all over it. The take-home car floated over the road, cutting a wide path through the air. But Lena wasn’t thinking about the ride, or even the fact that her Honda had finally hit the skids and needed to be replaced at a time when money was tight. Instead, she was keyed in on the sound of Barrera’s shaky voice.
The roads were empty. She blew through the light at Franklin, the V8 kicking like a shotgun. She was thinking about Club 3 AM. And she was thinking about the man behind the club. A man with a certain reputation who knew things.
Johnny Bosco.
She made a right on Yucca Street. As she crossed Ivar and sped around the bend, she could see the nightclub in the distance and slowed down some. Club 3 AM was tucked in between Yucca and Grace Avenue. The place looked more like a three-story European villa than a nightclub. Easing closer, Lena noticed the high wall around the property and guessed that the front of the building was only a facade. The main entrance would be around back so Hollywood’s A-list could come and go without fear of being seen or photographed. Her view cleared as she passed a white van on the right. Ten black and white cruisers fenced in the street. Searching for a way through the blockade, she spotted a cop waving at her with a clipboard. But as she idled through the intersection, night became day—her car shelled with bursts of white-hot light.
She flinched, then turned to see the press crowding the other side of the street. One hundred cameras were blasting away on full automatic. The paparazzi could smell blood in the water: two dead bodies in Hollywood. They were pushing against the crime scene tape and shouting at each other—screaming at the patrol units holding them back.
She rolled down her window, squinting as the tinted glass gave way and the strobe lights penetrated the car bright as lightning. After signing in, the cop shielded his eyes and pointed at the gated drive.
“The place is set ass backward,” he shouted. “The front’s around back.”
There was no smile on his face, and no verbal acknowledgment of the chaos. But there was something in his eyes that reminded her of the fear she had heard in Barrera’s voice. He stepped away before she could ask him anything, then grabbed his radio mike and waved her through. Lena waved back, easing the Crown Vic down the drive and out of the paparazzi’s bent view.
She found a place to park, got out, and hit the door locks. As she scanned the lot beneath the palm trees, she was struck by the number of city cars already at the crime scene. There were too many patrol cars here as well, too many detectives’ cars. And that black Lincoln idling in the shadows could only mean that Deputy Chief Ramsey was here, too. She glanced over at the SID truck where a team of criminalists were preparing their evidence kits, then gave the lot another quick look.
What she didn’t see was what she had expected to see and wanted to see.
There wasn’t a single Ferrari here, or a single Lamborghini, or the possible witnesses that would have come with them. Club 3 AM never closed. It looked like the A-list had run for cover before anyone dialed 911. The Hollywood Station was just a few blocks south. The first responding units would have arrived in minutes and not let anyone walk away. Hollywood Homicide would have been right behind them.