Chasing Darkness

by Robert Crais

  “Who’s that?”

  “Marx. The deputy chief in charge of the task force.”

  Starkey nudged me.

  “You were supposed to be gone before he got here.”

  Great.

  Poitras moved to greet him, but Marx didn’t want to be greeted. He came up the steps at a quick march, locked onto Poitras like a Sidewinder missile.

  “I ordered this scene to be sealed, Lieutenant. I specifically told you that all inquiries would be handled through my office.”

  “Chief, this is Elvis Cole. Cole is a personal friend of mine, and he’s also involved.”

  Marx didn’t offer to shake my hand or acknowledge me in any way.

  “I know who he is and how he’s involved. He conned the DA into letting this murderer go.”

  Marx was a tall rectangular man built like a sailing ship, with tight skin stretched over a yardarm skeleton. He peered down at me from the crow’s nest like a parrot eyeing a beetle.

  I said, “Nice to meet you, too.”

  Marx turned back to Poitras as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “I’m not just being an asshole here, Lieutenant. I clamped the lid so nobody could run to the press before the families were notified. Two of those families have still not been reached. Don’t you think they’ve suffered enough?”

  Poitras’s jaw knotted.

  “Everyone here is on the same side, Chief.”

  Marx eyed me again, then shook his head.

  “No, we’re not. Now get him out of here, and take me through this goddamned house.”

  Marx went into the house, leaving Poitras to stare after him.

  I said, “Jesus, Lou, I’m sorry.”

  Poitras lowered his voice.

  “The real chief’s out of town. Marx figures if he can close this thing before the chief gets back, he’ll get the face time. I’m sorry, man.”

  Starkey touched my arm.

  “C’mon.”

  Poitras followed Marx back into the house while Starkey walked me down. The two uniforms and Marx’s driver were talking together, but we kept going until we were alone. Starkey fished a cigarette from her jacket as soon as we stopped.

  “That guy’s an asshole. It’s been like this all week.”

  “Is Marx really going on TV tonight?”

  “That’s what I hear. They wrapped up their work last night.”

  “A week to cover seven murders?”

  “This thing was huge, man. They had people on it around the clock.”

  She lit the cigarette and blew a geyser of smoke straight overhead. I liked Starkey. She was funny and smart, and had helped me out of two very bad jams.

  “When are you going to quit those things?”

  “When they kill me. When are you going to start?”

  You see? Funny. We smiled at each other, but her smile grew awkward, and faded.

  “Poitras told me about the Bennett thing. That must be weird, considering.”

  “Was her picture in the book?”

  Starkey blew more of the smoke.

  “Yeah.”

  I looked up at the house. Someone moved in the shadows, but I couldn’t tell if it was Poitras or Marx.

  Starkey said, “Are you okay?”

  When I glanced back, her eyes were concerned.

  “I’m fine.”

  “It was me, I’d be, I dunno, upset.”

  “He couldn’t have killed her. I proved it.”

  Starkey blew another cloud of smoke, then waved her cigarette at the surrounding houses.

  “Well, he didn’t have any friends here in the neighborhood, I can tell you that. Most of these people didn’t know him except to see him, and the ones who knew him stayed clear. He was a total asshat.”

  “I thought the task force cut you out.”

  “They used us here with the door-to-door. Lady at that house, he told her she had a muscular ass. Just like that. Woman at that house, she runs into him getting his mail and he tells her she could pick up some extra cash if she dropped around one afternoon.”

  That was Lionel Byrd.

  “Starkey, you’re right. Byrd was a professional asshat, but he didn’t kill Yvonne Bennett. I don’t believe it.”

  Starkey frowned, but the smile flickered again.

  “Man, you are stubborn.”

  “And cute. Don’t forget cute.”

  I could have told her I was also sick to my stomach, but I let it go with cute.

  She drew another serious hit on the cigarette, then flicked it into a withered century plant. Here we were in fire season with red-flag alerts, but Starkey did things like that. She pulled me farther away from the uniforms and lowered her voice.

  “Okay, listen, I know some things about this Poitras doesn’t know. I’m going to tell you, but you can’t tell anyone.”

  “You think I’m going to run home and put it on my blog?”

  “Guy I worked with at CCS is on with the task force. He spent all week analyzing the stuff we pulled out of the house. You won’t like this, but he told me Byrd’s good for the killings. He says it’s solid.”

  “How does he know that?”

  “I don’t know, moron. We’re friends. I took his word for it.”

  Starkey nudged me farther from the uniforms again and lowered her voice even more.

  “What I’m saying, Cole, is I can have him explain it to you. You want me to set it up?”

  It was like being thrown a life preserver in a raging storm, but I glanced up at the house. Poitras was standing in the door. They were about to come out.

  “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “Hey, fuck Marx. The real chief gets back, he’ll probably ream the guy a new asshole. You want in with my guy or not?”

  “That would be great, Carol. Really.”

  The woman across the street was still in her window, watching us as I left.

  5

  STARKEY SET me up with a Criminal Conspiracy Section detective named Marcus Lindo, who was one of many detectives brought in from the divisions to assist with the task force. She cautioned that his knowledge was limited, but told me he would help me the best he could. When I called him, it was clear from the start that Lindo didn’t want to see me. He told me to meet him at a place called Hop Louie in Chinatown, but warned he would not acknowledge me in any way if other police officers were present. It was as if we were passing Cold War secrets.

  Lindo showed up at ten minutes after three with a royal blue three-ring binder tucked under his arm. He was younger than I expected, with espresso skin, nervous eyes, and glasses. He walked directly to me and did not introduce himself.

  “Let’s take a booth.”

  Lindo put the binder on the table and his hands on the binder.

  “Before we get started, let’s get something straight. I can’t have this getting back to me. I owe Starkey plenty, but if you tell anyone we sat down like this, I will call you a liar to your face and then it’s on her. Are you good with this?”

  “I’m good. Whatever you say.”

  Lindo was scared, and I didn’t blame him. A deputy chief could make or break his career.

  “My understanding is you want to see the death album. What is it you want to know?”

  “Three years ago I proved Lionel Byrd did not kill Yvonne Bennett. Now you guys are saying he did.”

  “That’s right. He killed her.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know how, not the way you mean. We broke the casework down into teams. My team worked on the album and the residence. The vic teams worked the ins and outs on the vics. I know the book. The book is how we know he’s good for it.”

  “Having pictures doesn’t prove he killed these women. Pictures could have been taken by anyone at the scene.”

  “Not pictures like these—”

  Lindo opened the binder, then turned it so I could see. The first page was a digital image of the album’s cover showing a hazy beach at sunset and curving palms. The
cover was embossed with gold script lettering: My Happy Memories. It was the type of album you could buy at any drugstore, with stiff plastiboard pages sandwiched between clear plastic cover sheets that adhered to the plastiboard. You could peel the cover sheet up, put your pictures on the page, then press the cover sheet back into place to hold the pictures. Just seeing the cover creeped me out. My Happy Memories.

  “There were twelve pages in all, but the last five were blank. We recovered fiber and hair samples trapped under the cover sheets, then lasered everything and put it in the glue for prints—”

  Lindo checked off the elements with his fingers.

  “Front cover, back cover, inside front cover, inside back cover, the seven pages with the pictures plus the five blanks, the twenty-four plastic cover sheets, plus all seven Polaroids. All of the discernible prints or print fragments matched one individual—Lionel Byrd. The fibers came from Byrd’s couch. They’re running DNA on the hair now, but it’s going to match. The criminalist says it is eyeball-identical with Byrd’s arm hair.”

  “Who’s the criminalist?”

  “John Chen.”

  “Chen’s good. I know him.”

  Lindo turned the page. The next scan showed a single Polaroid of a thin young woman with short black hair and hollow cheeks. She was on her right side on what appeared to be a tile floor in a darkened room or enclosure. The wall behind her was burned by the glare from the camera’s flash. Her left cheek was split as if she had been struck, and a red trace of blood had run down her face to drip from the end of her nose. Three overlapping drops were spotting the floor. A cord or wire was wrapped so deeply into her neck it disappeared into her skin. Someone had labeled the bottom of the scan with the victim’s name, age, date of death, and original case number.

  Lindo touched the image.

  “This was the first victim—Sondra Frostokovich. See the cut here under her eye? He coldcocked her first to stun her. That was a unifying element of his M.O. He stunned them so they couldn’t fight back.”

  “Was she raped?”

  “None of them were raped, so far as I know. Again, I didn’t work the individual cases, but this guy didn’t play with them—there wasn’t any rape, torture, mutilation, or any of that. You can see that much in the pictures. Now check this out—”

  Lindo touched the page by her nose.

  “See the blood drops below her nose? Three drops, two overlapping. We compared this picture with the original shots taken by the coroner investigator. The crime scene pix show a puddle about the size of her head. Likely your boy was in front of her for the strike that cut her cheek, then strangled her from behind. The blood started to drip as soon as she was down. Three or four drops like this, she couldn’t have been down more than twenty seconds before he snapped the picture.”

  “He wasn’t my boy.”

  “Point is, we have time-specific indicators in pretty much every picture that marks them at or near the time of death. This is his second victim, Janice Evansfield—”

  The second picture was of an African-American woman with Rasta hair whose neck had been slashed so many times it was shredded. Lindo pointed out a blurry red string floating across her face.

  “See that? We didn’t know what it was until we enhanced it.”

  “What is it?”

  “That’s blood squirting from the carotid artery at the base of her neck. See how it arcs? She wasn’t dead yet, Cole. She was dying. This exposure was taken at the exact moment her heart beat. That kinda rules out some cop later at the scene, doesn’t it?”

  I looked away, feeling numb and distant, as if the pictures and I weren’t really in the booth, so I could pretend I wasn’t seeing them.

  Lindo showed me each of the remaining victims, and then a photograph of a clunky black device with knobs and sensors like you’d see in a dated science fiction movie.

  “Okay, the second way we put him with the murders is by the camera. These cameras, they push the picture out through a little slot when you snap the exposure. The rollers leave discrete impressions on the edges of the picture—”

  It was easier to look at the picture of the camera.

  “Like the rifling in a gun barrel marks a bullet?”

  “Yeah. This is a discontinued model. All seven pictures were taken with this camera, which we recovered in Byrd’s house. The only prints on the camera belong to Lionel Byrd. Ditto the film packs we found in the camera.”

  He showed me a picture of two film packs, one labeled with the letter A, the other with B.

  “Partials belonging to a different individual were found on the unopened film, but we believe they belong to the cashier or salesclerk where he bought the film. The lot numbers gave a point of sale in Hollywood, not far from Laurel Canyon. You see how it’s adding up?”

  Lindo went through his facts with the mechanical precision of a carpenter driving nails.

  “Byrd bought the film. Byrd put the film in the camera. Byrd, using the camera, took seven photographs that could only have been taken by someone present at the time of the murders. Byrd was at one time charged in the murder of one of the women whose death shot—a photograph taken within moments of her death—has now been found in his possession. Having taken the pictures, Byrd then placed them with his own hands in this sick fucking book. Byrd then picked up a gun with his own hands, as evidenced by fingerprints found on the gun, cartridge casings, and ammunition box recovered in his home, and blew out his own fucking brains. What we have here is called a chain of reason, Cole. I know you were hoping we wouldn’t have squat, but there it is, and it is good.”

  I suddenly wanted to see Yvonne Bennett again, and flipped to the fifth picture. Yvonne Bennett stared up at me with mannequin eyes. Brain matter and pink shards of bone were visible, along with a bright ball that had apparently been placed in the wound. I didn’t remember seeing the ball in the wound when Levy showed me the coroner’s picture.

  “What’s this round thing?”

  “It’s a bubble. The M.E. says air was probably forced into an artery when he beat her, then floated out when she died. It made a blood bubble.”

  I wanted to look away, but didn’t. I stared at the bubble. It had not been present in the coroner’s picture. At some point between when the two pictures were taken, it had popped. I took a deep breath and finally looked away.

  “Did you read the murder book on Yvonne Bennett?”

  “Told you, we had teams for each vic. I worked the album.”

  “We had a hard time frame in which she was killed. Byrd was in Hollywood when this woman was killed. How could he be two places at once?”

  Lindo leaned back. He seemed tired and irritated, like I was too slow to keep up.

  “Here’s the short version—he wasn’t because he didn’t have to be.”

  “This wasn’t something I made up, Lindo. Crimmens and his partner had the same window. There wasn’t enough time for Byrd to kill her in Silver Lake, then get to Hollywood.”

  Lindo closed the book. He wasn’t going to stay much longer.

  “Cole, think about it. You got a hard edge on one side of your window when the body was discovered. The other side, you have this dude who was the last person to see her alive, what was his name, Thompson?”

  “Tomaso.”

  “I’m not saying Tomaso lied, but shit happens. People get confused. If Tomaso was off on the time, your window was wrong.”

  “It wasn’t just my window. Crimmens talked to him, too.”

  “We know that, man. Marx put Crimmens on the task force to cover that evening. Crimmens thinks it flies. If Tomaso was off by even twenty minutes, Byrd had time to kill her and then get to your bar.”

  “Did Crimmens talk to Tomaso about this?”

  “What’s the boy going to say—he was sure? I don’t know if they talked to him or not, but either way it wouldn’t matter. Physical evidence trumps eyewitness testimony every time, and we have the evidence. That’s it, Cole. I have to go.”

 
; “Hang on. I still have a question.”

  He glanced at the door as if the entire sixth floor of Parker Center might walk in, but he stayed in the booth.

  “What?”

  “What about the suicide?”

  “I don’t know anything about it. I worked on the book.”

  “Did someone tie Byrd with the times and locations where these women were killed?”

  “Other people handled the timelines. All I know is the book.”

  “Jesus Christ, didn’t you people even talk about this? When Bastilla and Crimmens came to see me, they wouldn’t even tell me these pictures exist.”

  Lindo’s eyebrows lurched nervously and he pulled the binder close.

  “They wouldn’t?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me anything, and now I meet you, and you know the book, but you don’t know a whole hell of a lot about anything else.”

  “Maybe I don’t need to know, Cole.”

  He tucked the binder under his arm. He was fine as long as we were lost in the science, but now he was frightened again.

  “You better not tell anyone about this, Cole. This is just between us.”

  “I’m good with it, man. Don’t worry about it.”

  He started to say something else, but stood and walked away without looking back.

  I stayed in the dark booth, still seeing the pictures. I closed my eyes to shut them out, but the pictures came to life. The blood spurted from Janice Evansfield’s throat with each beat of her heart, the stream growing weaker as her heart slowly died. The red pool expanded around Sondra Frostokovich as blood dripped from her nose, the metronome drops logging the time of her death. The bubble of blood swelled in Yvonne Bennett’s wound until it burst. Seeing the images felt like being trapped in a gallery with nightmares spiked to the wall, but I could not believe it. I told myself not to believe it.

  I imagined Lionel Byrd in the chair with the album. In my mental movie, he turns the pages one by one, reliving each murder. The gun is on the chair beside his leg. If he has the gun, then he has planned his own death. He will take the gun and the album to the chair. He will reminisce about his work. Maybe he will even regret these things. Then, when he’s had enough, he will join his victims in death. I wondered if he thought about how he would shoot himself. Up through the bottom of the mouth or in the temple? Up through the mouth feels creepy. You might miss the kill shot, but blow off your mouth. Then you might wake up in the hospital, alive, charged with the murders, mouthless.