by B. J. Graf
The BMW rammed Lee’s Lexus and sent it spinning into the telephone pole on the mountain. I pulled over and raced out of my Porsche. Frank’s Toyota was swallowed in flames, a fireball raging twenty feet below. I’d only scrambled a couple steps down the cliff when the hot blast from the second explosion hit me like a force field, slamming me up and back into the cliff.
“Frank,” I croaked. But there was no way to get down there. I stood watching - helpless.
That’s when I heard Lee’s strangled yell for help up above.
I scrambled back up the cliff. A little river of gasoline slithered out from under his car. I hit the auto-emergency icon on my glove phone.
The BMW driver sat in his car without moving, eyes wide and round, white-knuckled hands gripped tight around the steering wheel.
“Get out and get back!” I yelled at him, slamming my hand on his car door to jolt him out of his shock. “Way back!” I yanked his arm and propelled him towards safety.
The BMW driver stirred and stumbled back two hundred feet. I raced to Lee’s Lexus and forced open the driver’s side door, but he was already an accident cyborg – a big spear of telephone pole, metal and flesh melded into one bloody mess. The airbags had inflated, but he hadn’t been wearing a seat belt. There was no way I could get Lee out without disemboweling him.
“Hang on,” I said. “Help’s coming.”
Lee was still conscious. He stared at me with a puzzled, almost vacant look. Shock. He closed his eyes, chin falling to his chest.
“Please identify yourself,” the maddeningly calm emergency services voice on the other end of my phone said. She asked for details.
“Detective Eddie Piedmont.” I gave coordinates and requested ambulance and firetruck. ASAP.
“Piedmont?” Lee tried to sit back up. His eyes went wild like a terrified horse. He grabbed my arm hard with his bloody claw. “They got to you too?” His voice was a hoarse croak. “Like Fuentes.”
I locked eyes with him. “Who’s Fuentes?”
“Since their talk? A dead man.”
“Who’s they?” I said, taking hold of the arm that grabbed mine. “What are you talking about?”
Lee’s mouth opened, but the strangled sounds were no longer intelligible. Choking out syllables, he struggled to speak. He wouldn’t make it to the hospital, let alone the interview room.
“Tell me about Britney,” I said, grabbing his shirt. “Britney Devonshire. Did she blackmail you?”
His face was ashen now. He nodded.
“Did you kill her? Is that why you ran?”
His mouth opened and closed. “3.3.3…1.1,1,0.” Lee pointed at me. “Fa-ther…” The rest of his words drowned in his own blood. I ripped off my suit jacket and wadded it up, trying to staunch the flow. Lee was rambling but held my arm in a death grip.
“Did you kill Britney?” I pressed. “Did you?”
Lee shook his head. He opened his mouth to say more, but all that came out was a gush of red. His head drooped like a cut flower wilting in a blast of heat.
The smell of spilled gas was sharp. I pried off his arm and ran back to my car for the first aid kit. Maybe I could find something to keep him alive. But before I could open the trunk of my Porsche, Lee’s Lexus exploded.
The blast hurtled me five feet into a close encounter with the tarmac. Skin skidded on pavement. When I dragged myself upright, there wasn’t much to do besides watch in horror.
The wall of flames from Frank’s car matched the fireball in front of me. I couldn’t breathe. But it wasn’t the pain of the fire that doubled me up.
I heard a long, drawn out animal scream. The stranger howling was me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
An hour later police swarmed the area like ants on an anthill. Detective Rubinov of the Clara Vista P.D. took my statement and released me under my own recognizance with an order to appear in his office at nine the next morning.
My first call was to Shin.
He took one look at my face. It must have been bad. “Jesus. What happened?”
“Lee confessed to Britney Devonshire blackmailing him.” I filled him in on the essentials of the crash. “Listen,” I said. “The case was closed. You were off duty. If the Captain asks, you didn’t know anything about anything until I called you. This call.”
“Eddie,” Shin said, rubbing his shaved head. “I’m primary on the Devonshire case. I should have been the one to run it down.”
“Shikata ga nai,” I said. ‘It can’t be helped.’It was one of Shin’s favorite tag-lines. “What good does it do for us both to take the hit?”
“We’re partners.” Shin screwed up one side of his face. “I can’t leave you holding the bag.”
“I lost one partner today,” I said. “I won’t lose another.”
Shin went silent. Then he nodded slowly.
Next I called Jo, my finger hovering over the video option on this one. The phone rang on her end. Shin had recoiled at my appearance. I took my finger away, leaving the phone on audio only.
“Eddie?” she said. “I can’t see you. Are you there?”
“Yes,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m north of Ventura County. There’s been an accident, but I’m fine.”
“Thank-God.” The relief in her voice suddenly shifted to anxiety. “Was anybody else…?”
“… Frank. And the guy we were tailing. Somebody else was after him too. He panicked and things got out of hand. I just wanted to tell you before you hear about it from someone else.” There was a long pause.
“But you’re okay. And you weren’t drinking.” Jo dropped the last words casually, like adding ice to a soda.
When I didn’t reply, she continued. “Were you?”
“Clean and sober,” I said, “and two people are still dead. I gotta go.” Hanging up I started the car. My foot crunched on something under the accelerator. Leaning down I found the crumbled remains of my unread fortune cookie from the Chin-Mex place. It must have dropped out of my pocket. I picked it up.
Count no man happy while he still lives, it read. I dumped that cheery fortune in the trash and drove to a motel nearby.
**
I’d barely checked into my room and tossed the overnight case on the bed when my phone rang. It was Captain Tatum. She waited for me to confirm I was in one piece. Then she lit into me.
“We gave you vacation so something like this wouldn’t happen, Piedmont. What were you thinking?”
I came clean - about the blood spot, Lee’s confession that Britney Devonshire had blackmailed him, and how he’d spooked because somebody else was after him. “We didn’t chase him, Captain.”
Tatum took a deep breath. “You know this is still going to play badly with the IAC.”
I knew. The hole I was standing in had gotten deeper.
“It’s not just the press and the public,” she said, her voice softening a hair. “I don’t have any leeway on this one. If the IAC doesn’t rule in your favor, you’re off the force. Without pension.”
Yesterday that would have mattered. Today Frank was dead.
When I didn’t respond, Tatum continued. “I’ll do what I can. I don’t want to lose you, Piedmont. Make sure you keep your therapy appointments going.” And she was gone.
I dreaded what I had to do next, but Detective Rubinov had agreed to let me be the one to call Frank’s family. I couldn’t tell Frank’s wife that she was now a widow over the phone. Every cell in my body cried out for the drink everybody thought I’d already had. I took a shower instead, holding my head under the pounding water. If only the whole day could’ve washed off with the blood and grime.
My suit jacket was stiff with Lee’s blood. I pulled out a second suit of a darker shade of grey from my overnight bag and let the steam from the shower do its work on the wrinkles. I dressed with care. Frank’s words when I’d just gotten my gold shield came back to me as I tied the knot in my tie a little tighter than usual.
“Telling people their loved ones are gone for
ever’s the worst part of the job. The suit shows respect.”
Hell of a thing to be wearing the suit for Frank.
In slow motion, I drove over to the house where Frank had lived with Ruth, his wife of thirty-one years. She met me at the door. It was the first time I’d seen Ruth’s short brown hair uncombed, her normally ruddy face ashen and without makeup. The local news must have covered the bones of the story. I took a deep breath and began.
Two hours later I was still sitting with Ruth at her kitchen table. “It’s funny,” she said, running her hand over a face which now looked much older than its fifty-two years. “All those years, every time Frank stepped out the door, I was afraid he wouldn’t make it back. When he retired on disability, I could finally breathe.” She tried to smile, but it was a thin effort. “And now it happens.”
“I’m sorry, Ruth,” I said. I’d lost track of my apologies – and regrets. There were too many to count.
She waved me to silence, then took my hand. “Not your fault. Frank hated retirement. When you called, his whole face lit up, Eddie. Frank was alive again in a way I haven’t seen since he was first diagnosed.”
I looked up at her in surprise. “Diagnosed?”
“Cancer,” she said. “Pancreatic. Got the diagnosis three months ago.”
I sat there stunned. “He never said anything.”
Ruth nodded. “Frank made me promise not to tell you. Didn’t want you to worry, did he.” She patted my hand. “Maybe it’s better he went this way. Beats dying by inches. Frank hated hospitals almost as much as you do.” Ruth took a sip of the now lukewarm coffee. “And good-byes.”
Frank had cancer. How could I not have known?
I felt Ruth’s eyes on me. Frank’s widow was looking at me with pity and concern. And I thought I couldn’t feel worse.
“Can I do anything for you, Ruth?”
“Would you see to Frank’s things at the - morgue?” Ruth stumbled on the word morgue. “I. Can’t.”
“Of course.” A glance at the time on my glove phone told me even on an expedited schedule neither Frank’s nor Lee’s autopsies would be done for another few hours.
On the drive back to the motel I turned on the car’s automated GPS. I didn’t need directions - just wanted to hear the sound of a calm human voice that seemed to have all the answers. Back in my motel room, I fell onto the bed and into a dark dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A couple hours later the vibration of my Nokia Handy woke me. It was Shin with the official report from the Devonshire autopsy, complete with the toxicology follow-up. As expected, massive amounts of Green Ice were found in her blood, but not her urine. That was typical for fatal overdose. The deceased had died before the drug had been metabolized.
“Blue Lotus in her system too,” Shin said. Ice and spice was as lethal as it was popular.
“Any evidence of Gabriel Lee on or in her person?” I scanned through the report.
Shin ran his free hand over the stubble on his head. “It wasn’t his semen in her, but SID matched his thumb print to one on the light switch in her bathroom.” Shin’s gap-toothed grin beamed. “Captain Tatum already reopened the case herself – suspicious death, possible homicide. We’re canvassing neighboring buildings for surveillance footage to lock down times for Lee’s entrance or exit. And I sent a copy of the crime scene’s microbial cloud to the coroner doing Lee’s autopsy.”
“Thanks.” I should have felt a wave of relief. The thumb print put Lee at the scene. His admission that she’d blackmailed him established motive. More would follow. And the fact that my hunch had played out in the reopening of the case gave me additional cover for the IAC hearing.
But when Shin hung up, I didn’t feel relieved. My head was stuffed with thoughts of Frank and cancer, and the signs I’d missed. His wheezing and the ashen skin. His recycling the golden oldies on an endless loop and tossing protocol.
I forced my thoughts back to the case. Straddling a chair opposite the motel bed, I stared at Britney Devonshire’s autopsy report. Questions kept multiplying, but the two people I was sure had the answers were both dead.
It was five a.m. when I drove to the Clara Vista morgue. Even if the autopsy on Dr. Lee wasn’t done yet, I could at least pick up Frank’s things for Ruth.
A full moon still hung in the dark sky, the image of a Nike Swoosh projected on the lunar surface. I could just barely remember what the moon looked like before it became a billboard for athletic shoes and glove phones every month. But that image was already ancient history. Easier to imagine the city at night without electricity.
My footsteps echoed as I walked down the hallway of the Clara Vista morgue. Hard bright light chased shadows from the corners. Ten feet away I heard strains of Mack the Knife, in German, bleed through the door to the autopsy room. There could only be one forensic pathologist who played that during an autopsy in the wee hours.
Pathologist Dr. Sidney Heller, elbow deep in a charred corpse, looked up. He was a pale New England variation on one of those rough-hewn faces you see carved on totem poles. Gaunt to the point where he was all gristle and sinew, Heller was oddly graceful with his long hands and fingers, and the stretched legs of a spider. He moved slowly, but deliberately.
“Hey, Sid,” I said. We’d worked together on the Sphinx case.
“Well, well, well.” He turned that lined face with its deep-set eyes to me. “Been a while, Eddie.”
Sid took his gloved hands out of Lee’s charred corpse as if to shake hands, but dropped something on the metal tray at his elbow instead. The hands were coated in blood.
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath and regretted it. The air reeked of disinfectant and charred human hair. “Ruth sent me for Frank’s effects.”
Dr. Sid Heller took a deep breath too. Almost a sigh.
“Over there.” He gestured towards the box of items on the table opposite. “I’m truly sorry, Eddie. I gave Frank VIP treatment. You knew he had cancer?”
I nodded, walking over and picking up the box of Frank’s personal effects. Such a small box for the man.
I turned to the other body Dr. Heller was currently working on. Dr. Lee’s corpse was a charred mass barely identifiable as human, utterly unrecognizable as the man who only hours before had spat out his last words in a river of blood.
“Anything you can tell me so far?”
“His cloud’s degraded and fire-scorched,” Dr. Heller said, “but it’s compatible with the bacterial cloud your partner sent over.”
Everybody who entered a crime scene left detectable, and identifiable, traces from skin and gut bacteria behind. This was additional evidence that put Dr. Lee in Britney Devonshire’s apartment the day of her death.
“Could you verify if Lee had a vasectomy?” I said, nodding at the corpse on the table. “Or check his DNA against this blood spot? I need to rule him out on paternity.”
Pulling up a picture of the fetal partial prelim from the file, I held my phone out for Heller’s inspection. “I’ll pay to expedite.”
Heller leaned close and peered at the partial prelim. “Save your money.” He pointed to the blood type listed on the corner of the page with the fuzzy barcode. “I can tell you right now Dr. Lee isn’t the father. Blood types are incompatible. And yes, he did have a vasectomy.”
I let that information rattle around in my brain for a second. “Father” - that was one of the last words out of the dead man’s mouth, but Heller’s findings confirmed what Denver had told me earlier. Lee had to have known he wasn’t the father of any stripper’s kid when she tried to blackmail him.
According to his boss, Lee had been under a lot of strain from work and the protestors targeting him. Maybe when he’d confronted her with the truth about his not being the father of her child, they’d argued, and things had escalated. Next stop - murder and a panicked run. I called up the Devonshire autopsy results on my glove phone next and held them out for Sid’s inspection. “What about her? Is she the mother?”
“Her blood type doesn’t rule out maternity,” Heller said, craning his neck. “But you’ll need a DNA scan to confirm. No equipment to do that here, Eddie.”
Thanking Sid, I picked up the box of Frank’s effects. The pathologist’s choice of music continued to play in the background. The torch singer wailed like she had glass shards and blood in her throat. I couldn’t understand the German lyrics, but rage and despair needed no translation. The door swung shut as I left to drive back to my motel in the murky dawn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Hills in the distance were etched in indigo against a red-orange dawn as I left the morgue. By the time I unlocked the door to my motel room, the robo-maid had come and gone, leaving a stale mint on the pillow and a trail of dust in its wake. But sleep wasn’t an option.
I started to sort through the box of Frank’s effects, jettisoning things that were scorched or bloodied beyond repair. No point in having Ruth see all that. Frank had his case file for Lee on flash-dot, the fingernail-sized portable memory chip. I kept that for a detailed read later when I was less exhausted.
It took me three attempts to open Frank’s phone. On the third try I entered the year of his anniversary as a password. Bingo. Flipping through the photos, I spotted lots of current family shots and a few old pictures, including one of Frank, Ruth and their daughter Susie at Disneyland. Frank’s unlined face looked so happy – and young. Of course, I knew Frank hadn’t sprung from the womb at age fifty. But in my head, he was always gruff and middle-aged. I never pictured him as a guy my age.
Shit-shit-shit. I carefully tucked the phone back in the box and tidied up the package for delivery to Ruth later that day.
7:30 AM. I turned on the local news. Crimecast was already running the story.
“Detective Edward Piedmont,” the news reader said, “known to many for his starring role in apprehending the Sphinx Serial Killer who terrorized the city of L.A. and Ventura County five years ago…”