L.A. Heat

by P. A. Brown

  “If I was you I’d find myself a good lawyer and give it to them. Jesus, you hear about them railroading innocent people, but you never expect...Get a lawyer, Chris. Now.

  Before this goes any further.”

  “Already done.” Chris started the car. He glanced at the dashboard clock. Nearly three-thirty. “In fact I think I’ll give him a call now, let him know what’s going on.”

  “I’d say that’s a good idea.”

  “Call me later, okay? Don’t do anything that will get you in trouble, but if you happen to overhear something...”

  “Gotcha. Talk to you later then.” He could hear the sound of a toilet flushing, then the line went dead. He dialed Simon Weiss’s number. “You were right about them acting quickly,” Chris said. “They’ve shown up at my work with another one of their damned warrants. No way have I got a job after this. How the hell can they just walk in and fuck up my life this way?”

  “Tell me what happened,” Simon said.

  Chris did. Then something else occurred to him. “Becky isn’t going to get into trouble, is she? For calling me like that, I mean?”

  “We do not yet live in a Gestapo state,” Simon reassured him. “You are not a fugitive, so there is no legal reason to prohibit a person from calling you. Is she discreet?”

  “As a Holmsby Hills madam. She’s going to call me later and let me know what happened when she got back to her desk.”

  “I will begin making phone calls now. Do not worry, Christopher. The police are on a fishing expedition, nothing more. They will come up empty-handed, which will make subsequent attempts more difficult. Even the most hard-nosed of judges cannot justify harassment in the name of justice.”

  Chris stared down at the Palm Pilot full of information written by a dead man.

  “I might have something for you—let me get back to you.”

  “What are you up to, Christopher?”

  “Nothing, I swear.”

  “Hmmm...” Weiss didn’t sound like he believed him. “See you keep doing that.”

  Tuesday 4:20 pm, Northeast Community Police Station, San Fernando Road, Los Angeles

  Chris’s computer went down to the techies with their gadgets designed to decrypt and recover files people thought they could cleverly hide by deleting.

  In the meantime he and Martinez got on the phone with DataTEK’s clients and proceeded to query IT managers at DataTEK’s client firms about their recollection of Chris’s time on-site with them.

  Just as David got off the phone with his sixth puzzled and harried IT manager, Martinez also slammed his phone down. He yanked his red tie with its dimpled-golf-ball motif away from his thick neck and swore. “What is this guy, some kind of fucking saint?

  He never overbills?”

  “Doesn’t look like it.” David made a note in the margin of his notepad about the last call. “So far his hours billed match what he turned in to DataTEK, and in some cases I get the impression he may have put in some extra time he didn’t bill.”

  “Fuck.” Martinez threw his pen across the desk. “Dios, you see what this guy charges for his time? No wonder he doesn’t have to overbill. I’m in the wrong field.”

  “You’re only figuring that out now?” David drew out the billing sheet for a place called Pharmaden. Billed hours: seven. Hourly charge: two hundred. “Of course that’s the company charge. Our guy only gets part of it.”

  “Want to bet he still gets five times what we make? No wonder he can afford Weiss.”

  Martinez scowled. “What now?”

  “We got the court order for these things, we may as well check them all. Maybe by then the tech guys will have something to tell us about his files.”

  “What about his truck? Anything come up on that search?”

  “I think it’s still in processing.” David flipped the phone up and pressed it to his ear.

  “Let me check.” When he hung up ten minutes later he grimaced. “Nothing. Not one fingerprint besides Bobby’s anywhere in the vehicle. Minuscule traces of semen in the front seat, not Bobby’s, not any of the other victims, either.”

  “Probably the fudge packer’s.” Martinez scowled. “Getting off with guys in the front seat. Too bad patrol never caught him. A criminal record for indecent would have looked good for us right now.” He slammed a hand down on the folders in front of him. “Woulda sullied his saintly reputation.”

  David felt like asking if he’d never fooled around with girls in his car. He knew the answer and he knew what Martinez would say, too. It wasn’t the same thing. It was never the same thing.

  David could visualize the look on Martinez’s face if he faced him right now and said,

  “Guess what, I’m gay. I’m one of those fudge packers. A faggot.”

  But every time he imagined that conversation he shied away. He wasn’t ready. He doubted he ever would be.

  He envied Chris the ease with which he faced a hostile world and got on with his life.

  But it went beyond envy, didn’t it? If he was honest with himself he wanted to do more than be like Chris.

  But there wasn’t room in his crowded closet for another man, no matter how attractive.

  David picked up the phone and read off the number for Venice Savings and Loan.

  “I’d like to speak with a Terrence Miller, please. Yes, I’ll hold.”

  Martinez’s phone rang. David heard his partner answer it, saw the thundercloud roll over his dark face, and finished up with Terrence as fast as he could. It was all the same story anyway. Chris had done his job efficiently and billed the hours he reported to DataTEK—no anomalies.

  He half listened to Martinez’s end of the conversation; it wasn’t good. He leafed through another folder. This one was a different listing. He caught the name of a hotel chain at the same time Martinez slammed his phone down.

  “God damn it, we can’t cut a break.” He stabbed a thick finger at the phone. “That was the lieut. Bellamere’s lawyer is contesting the search warrants. He’s got a judge looking at them right now. And those glasses you found in Bellamere’s truck, the prints don’t match Bellamere or Blake.”

  If the warrants got tossed, then anything they had secured from those searches would be thrown out. David knew it validated his belief that Chris was innocent. “Looks like we’re barking up the wrong tree here, wouldn’t you say?” David sighed at the look his partner gave him. “Have we even found anything? So far these searches have been a monumental waste of time.”

  “Not the point. How the hell can we do our job if these assholes can just have some stupid bleeding-heart judge toss it out on a whim.”

  David knew his frustrations were legitimate, but he also knew you had to learn to pick your fights.

  “I’d hardly call someone else’s prints nothing.”

  “I still think this guy’s perfect for it. He’s just cagier than most. Why the hell should we drop it?”

  David glanced down at the folder he’d been half studying. A date caught his eye. He sat up. Then he reached for the murder book.

  “When did Blake go missing? July?” David found the report. “July fifteenth. He was found Saturday morning, the nineteenth. No way his death occurred before Thursday.”

  “Okay, sure,” Martinez said. “He was picked up Wednesday, the sixteenth. Killed the next day. What’s your point?”

  David slid the folder to the end of the desk. Reluctantly Martinez got up and they both looked down at the report. David tapped the relevant line.

  “Christopher Bellamere booked a hotel room in Salt Lake City Sunday night for the entire week. He wasn’t even in town when Blake was taken or killed.”

  “Why are you so hot to clear this guy?”

  “Why are you so hot to convict him?”

  They glared at each other across David’s desk.

  “Call the Salt Lake City P.D.,” David said. “Find out what you can about this conference. You find something that stinks, I’ll stay on this with you. Otherwise—” />
  “You bailing on me, partner?”

  “We got the wrong guy, Martinez.”

  “I don’t believe it. Goddamn pansy freak did something, sure as shit.”

  “Jesus, you want to nail him because he’s gay? Or because he’s gay and doesn’t try to hide it?”

  “He’s a freak, and he’s been waving it in our faces that he’s a freak. ‘I’m gay. I have boyfriends.’” Martinez mimicked Chris’s words in the interrogation room. “He’s a sick fuck, is what he is. Hey, where you going?”

  David couldn’t listen anymore. He grabbed his jacket and cell phone off its charger.

  “I’m going back to the Nosh Pit,” he said, forcing himself to speak levelly. “I’m going to keep going back until I find someone who saw Blake leave with someone. I’m going to take a sketch artist out to the Jungle Arcade and get those kids to give me an eyewitness account of Anstrom’s phony uncle. That’s your killer. Not Chris. And I’m not wasting any more time hounding an innocent man. I don’t care who he sleeps with.”

  Return to Contents

  CHAPTER 18

  Tuesday, 10:00 pm, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles CHRIS FLIPPED THROUGH the channels, restlessly looking for something to occupy his overstimulated mind. He’d spent half the day with Simon. The search warrant hadn’t been quashed yet, but Simon seemed to think it was only a matter of time.

  He was even going to get his SUV back tomorrow. Finally, at nearly five o’clock, he had called Petey and practically begged to keep his job. It had not been pretty. It probably hadn’t even been necessary—Petey let slip toward the end of their conversation that he’d been advised by HR not to be too hasty in terminating an employee who hadn’t been charged with anything.

  Chris had nearly blown it then, but he’d bitten his tongue and kept the words inside, where they’d festered and given him a headache that persisted through the rest of the night.

  Only now, three glasses of wine into the evening, had he managed to knock the headache back. Finally he called Becky. She was on the way out the door with Clay, her live-in boyfriend.

  “You coming in to work tomorrow?” she asked quietly.

  “Petey and I have agreed that I should take the rest of the week off. It’s about the only thing we ever have agreed on in the last six years—oh, that and the fact that I do still have a job.”

  “Oh, Chris, I’m glad.” She let out a gust of air. “I was so sure he was gonna can you.”

  “You and me both. I still got the taste in my mouth.”

  “What taste?”

  “Of Petey’s ass. Jesus, and that was one butt I never wanted to touch in a million years.”

  “You are bad.” She actually giggled. “Tommy’s going to be one disappointed puppy.

  He was so sure you were history.”

  “So, what else did our cop friends do while they were there? Anything interesting?”

  “They took your files.”

  “My files? What would they want those for? Check to see if I’m double billing?”

  “Hey, you’re a serial biller.” The weak joke lay between them.

  Chris loved her for it.

  “They really must be desperate,” she said. “I mean, what are they going to find on your PC? Links to support sites? Software patches. He’s been doing his job too diligently, arrest him.”

  “Thanks, Beck.”

  Chris hung up and went on to spend the evening channel-surfing. Eventually he must have dozed off. When he jerked awake an ancient western was playing.

  He wiped his mouth clean of sour drool and sat up on the love seat. He flicked the TV

  through a few more channels, but now it was either news or old movies and neither interested him tonight.

  He finally gave up and climbed to his feet; his bare toes curled away from the cold tile in the kitchen. He rinsed his wine glass in the sink and set it on the draining board, then washed his mouth out with tepid water from the tap.

  He was halfway up the earth-tone tiled stairs when someone started pounding on his front door.

  Chris turned on the atrium light. He peered outside, dancing from foot to foot; the tile cold compared to the promised warmth of his carpeted bedroom.

  It was David.

  He was leaning against the inner courtyard wall, his tie lying askew on his thick neck.

  His shirt looked like it had been unbuttoned, then done back up crooked. Dark hair peeked out from between buttons. He raised his hand to pound on the door again and nearly fell down the single stone step into the driveway.

  David was drunk.

  Opening the door carefully so as not to startle him, Chris waited for David to notice him. David tried to smile when he caught sight of him. It looked ghastly.

  “Wasn’t sure you’d be home,” he said. “You’re just like me, always working...

  workaholic. Kind of a two.”

  “You mean two of a kind?”

  “Said that. You gonna let me in?”

  David immediately wandered past him into the living room. Chris hoped he wasn’t going to throw up or anything.

  Chris went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. If ever someone needed coffee it was David. Whatever had possessed the guy to get drunk? More, whatever had possessed him to come here?

  “The bathroom’s through there—” Chris came out to find David nowhere in sight. He heard a banging sound upstairs. “Shit.”

  He took the stairs two at a time.

  David was sitting on the edge of Chris’s bed, his tie off completely, his shirt open to the waist. His chest was covered with a thick matt of black hair that thinned out over the soft mound of his stomach. He’d laid his gun belt over Chris’s armoire. The belt to his cotton pants were open, revealing boxers underneath.

  “What are you doing?” Chris asked.

  “Well, aren’t you gonna?”

  “Going to what?” Chris watched the other man warily, unsure how he might react.

  Not sure what he was up to. “Kiss me. I won’t stop you this time.”

  Chris flushed. “No David, I’m not going to kiss you. I’m going to take you home.”

  “Don’t wanna go home.”

  “You have to,” Chris said, as if he were talking to a five-year-old. “You have to go to bed.”

  “Go to bed here.” Awkwardly he patted the pillow beside him. “You can tuck me in.”

  He tried to leer, but it came out as a grimace.

  “David, what are you doing? Simon will kill me—I’m not supposed to talk to you—”

  “Then don’t talk—” David reached for him. “Don’t you wanna take me to bed?”

  “Jesus, David. What’s got into you? Aren’t you investigating me for this homicide?”

  What kind of trouble was David going to be in for this? Hell, what kind of trouble was he going to be in?

  “Not anymore. Cleared you. Wrong person...”

  Chris’s jaw dropped. “What? Since when?”

  “S’afternoon. You were in Salt-Salt-Utah. You were in Utah when Jay was sliced.”

  “Utah? That conference?” A wave of dizziness swept through him. “Jesus, I almost didn’t go,” he whispered. “I hate those things.”

  “Good thing for you. Perfect alibi. Got the wrong guy...Not even your fingerprints...Martinez still wants you, though. Had a fight over that. My own partner...God, if he knew...”

  “Knew what, David?” Chris wanted to laugh aloud and jump up and down. He was off the hook. Then it clicked. “Martinez doesn’t know you’re gay, does he, David?”

  David grimaced. “God, I hate that word.” He twisted around to look up at Chris and tried to leer again. “But I like you. Want to fuck? I want to fuck you.”

  “Let’s get you home, okay?” Chris tried to wrestle him up, but it was like lifting a two-hundred-pound sack of sand. He couldn’t control the heavier man and David wouldn’t do a thing to help. Every time Chris got near him David groped his crotch. It didn’t help that Chris had a raging
boner and David knew it.

  Chris rocked back on his heels. “You have to go home, David. You’re going to hate yourself in the morning if you don’t.”

  “Wanted you to know. Not a suspect anymore.”

  “Thank you, David. I appreciate that, you have no idea... but really, you have to go—

  ”

  “Sleep with me, Chris.”

  “If you weren’t drunk, I’d be glad to, David.” Chris stroked his head, feeling the crisp hair curl under his fingers. “But you’d hate me in the morning. I’d hate me in the morning.”

  “You probably think I’m some boring stick-in-the-mud rule follower.”

  What could Chris say? David was a stickler for the rules. He wore his dress shirts buttoned up tight and never let his guard down. Chris wouldn’t necessarily say he was boring, but—

  David cracked a yawn. He blinked at Chris. “I think I had too much.”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Chris said gently. “You’re going to feel like shit tomorrow.”

  “Sleep with me, Chris. I can’t stop thinking about you. Ever since you kissed me.

  Even when I was supposed to think of you as a suspect...”

  “Not tonight—get some sleep now, okay, big guy?”

  Chris thought he was going to argue some more, but his body went limp. Chris wrestled him under the covers, pulling the duvet up to his shoulders. He gave the slumbering man a light kiss on the cheek. Already his soft snores filled the bedroom.

  Chris padded back downstairs to his office, where he pulled out the small futon bed he kept for out-of-town guests. He grabbed a blanket and a set of sheets from the linen closet and crawled under the covers around two o’clock in the morning.

  He wished he wasn’t so damned noble. David might be a stick in the mud, but he was turning out to be one of the most complex men Chris had ever known. He was also sexy in a way Chris couldn’t begin to explain. He just knew he wanted to go upstairs and crawl in beside him and find out what being fucked by David Laine would be like.